The Coldest Case

by Martin Walker

  ‘The tourists will love it. Thanks, Philippe.’

  ‘Here’s something you might need,’ Philippe said, reaching into a pocket and handing Bruno a loupe. ‘Screw it into your eye socket and you get good magnification while your other eye can see the wider context. But I’ll want it back and take good care of it – it was my father’s.’

  The town treasurer, a fellow member of the hunting club, saw that Bruno could hardly shake hands while carrying the box, so he patted him on the back before showing him into the long room at the back of the treasury building that contained the archives. He showed Bruno how to use the catalogue that identified where each item was to be found by row and shelf number. There were copies of registrations for births, marriages and deaths going back to the nineteenth century, property tax records and handwritten annual reports from local officials. There were even old cadastre maps that went back to before the French Revolution, showing who had owned every plot of land in the commune. Testing the system, he looked up the reports by the town policemen that went back to Napoleon’s day, when such officials were called garde champêtre, a rural guard. Joe’s reports were also here, but not Bruno’s. Since he was the current holder of the post, Bruno’s reports for the past decade were kept in the Mayor’s office. Bruno made a mental note to come back and glance through all this stuff one day.

  Bruno knew the Mayor had planned the archive system, not only for the convenience of the town administration but also for his own purposes. He was writing the definitive history of St Denis, dating from the Neanderthals who were buried at La Ferrassie seventy thousand years ago and the Cro-Magnons who had engraved bears and mammoths on the walls of a local cave. His account went on through the Bronze and Iron Age peoples, the Romans, the Arab invasion, Charlemagne’s visit, the three centuries of the English occupation, the Wars of Religion and all the way through to modern times. The last Bruno had heard, the Mayor was about to tackle the period of the French Revolution.

  ‘You’ll find the photographs at the far end on the left,’ the Treasurer said and handed Bruno the key. Bruno glanced around, saw a large table with two chairs and more chairs stacked against the wall. That would do. But he’d need a table lamp.

  ‘Commandante Yveline from the gendarmes will be joining me shortly,’ he said. ‘Might you have a magnifying glass and a table lamp we could use?’

  ‘Of course, Bruno. But what’s all this about?’

  The Treasurer seemed as keen as Philippe to be the first to pick up the latest gossip. Bruno smiled and said, ‘It’s a matter of identifying someone. I’m sure the Mayor will let you know the details when he can.’

  Bruno first found the box with all the negatives and beside them three larger boxes of prints covering all three weekdays of the félibrée plus another two boxes for each of the weekend days. He’d just finished carrying them to the desk at the front of the room when Yveline and Sabine came in, carrying a magnifying glass and a table lamp.

  He kissed Yveline on both cheeks and shook hands with Sabine.

  ‘I have a present for you,’ he said, and took out the print he’d made of the photo from the campsite. ‘Look behind Tante-Do at the couple in the swimming pool.’

  ‘Oh, it’s Mum,’ Sabine exclaimed. ‘And she’s looking so happy and beautiful. Can I keep this when we’re done?’ She beamed at him. ‘Thank you, Bruno, that’s terrific.’

  ‘See the guy embracing your mum with most of his face hidden?’ Bruno said. ‘I think that’s Max, your brother’s biological father. And now I have nearly two thousand photos of the félibrée to go through. We’re looking for your mum and Tante-Do and hoping to find them with these two men, Max and Henri.

  ‘We need to organize how we do this,’ he went on. ‘I have a box that contains about a hundred and fifty of the best photos, selected by the photographer’s son. I’ll start with that. I suggest that you two start on the box with the photos from the weekdays, and one of you skims each print for any sign of your mum and Tante-Do. Then the other looks at it with the magnifying glass to see if there are young men with them. That’s what we’re looking for, images of Max and Henri. Pay special attention to Thursday evening, when they all met at some dance. And please be sure to keep them in order or we’ll be lost. When I’ve gone through the selection, I’ll take the Friday box and you two can take the Saturday.’

  They got to work, Bruno with the loupe screwed into his eye, the two gendarmes side by side, Yveline making the first scan and then Sabine examining each chosen print with the magnifying glass. Bruno was halfway through the box of Philippe’s selections, with six of the photos to one side for closer perusal, when Sabine said, ‘I think I’ve got something.’

  Bruno and Yveline crowded around her to examine a print of a musician in a black hat playing a very old-fashioned musical instrument with a crowd around him, Tante-Do and Sabine’s mum in the front row. There was a man behind Tante-Do with his arm around her shoulders, only half of his face visible. Behind Sabine’s mum was a man bending down and only his eyes and forehead could be seen.

  ‘That’s a good one,’ said Bruno. ‘Put it to one side.’ He handed Sabine a business card. ‘Paperclip that to it and note the date it was taken. We’ll need a system to identify each of these shots – let’s call this one the musician.’

  They got back to work and towards the end of his batch, Bruno found an image of people dancing and there was a decent shot of Sabine’s mum facing the camera. Her eyes were focused on a taller, fair-haired man who seemed to be dancing with her. His face was in profile.

  ‘Here’s one,’ he said and the others crowded round. Philippe’s selected prints were not dated but he scribbled ‘Dance scene, Mum and Max,’ on a card as Sabine and Yveline examined the print. Meanwhile, Bruno went through the rest of the selection, picking out two possibles and showing them to the others.

  ‘There’s Mum, moving out of the photo but is she holding hands with the blond guy behind her?’ asked Sabine. ‘I think that might be Max.’

  Bruno finished Philippe’s selection and began to attack the box of prints for Friday. They worked on together and by the end of their session, they had seven photos with more or less clear images of the two young women with their young men. To Bruno’s disappointment, there was no single clear image of either of the men’s faces but they had profiles and half faces, eyes and brows, ears and hands for each one.

  He suggested they examine the possibles again, one by one, which resulted in one shot of Sabine’s mother kissing Max’s nose and giving a clear image of his mouth and chin. If he assembled the various photos, Yves at forensics should be able to put together a complete face. Henri, however, remained elusive. They had his eyes and forehead, his profile, his hands and a shot of the back of his head. There were no scars, no tattoos or any other distinguishing marks. Still, Bruno thought, Yves should be able to put something together.

  ‘This is amazing,’ said Sabine with a catch in her voice as she scanned again through the various photos of Max. ‘That’s my brother’s chin and his eyes and even his hands. There’s really no doubt in my mind that he’s my brother’s father. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Let’s go through the possibles for Henri one more time,’ said Yveline. ‘But this time we’ll go through the Friday ones you looked at, Bruno, and you go through the others.’

  They went back to work for another hour and came up with one photo that Bruno had missed of a group of people dancing. Tante-Do had her back to the camera with Henri facing her, his nose and eyes obscured by one of her arms but his mouth and jaw were clear.

  ‘That should be enough for forensics to put together images of each man,’ said Bruno, much relieved.

  ‘This calls for a drink,’ said Yveline. ‘The Gendarmerie is a stone’s throw from here and I have some wine in my apartment there.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Bruno. ‘Just let me draft a receipt for each of the photos I’m
taking. I could do with a drink after that intense concentration. Do you realize we’ve been at it for nearly four hours? No wonder my eyes feel tired.’

  ‘It’s not like we’ve cracked the case,’ said Sabine. ‘We can put together a couple of images of two unknown guys, one of whom was murdered by a blow to the head, probably on the Saturday night. But we aren’t sure that it was then that he was killed, rather than later. We don’t know his real name nor where he was from. And if we can’t prove when exactly he was killed, we certainly don’t know by whom. There’s no proof Henri was the killer.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Bruno. ‘But Max was buried here near the St Denis campsite so he was probably killed there. And if it wasn’t Henri who killed him, why didn’t Henri report the death instead of just disappearing? Even if Henri was not the killer, we need to talk to him.’

  ‘We’re a long way further down the trail, Sabine, than we were when you arrived from Metz,’ said Yveline. I thought then that this was the longest of long shots and that we were simply indulging J-J’s obsession. Now we have a possible suspect, a face, a name, and a witness who can place him at the right place and probably within the relevant time frame.’

  ‘We have thirty-year-old bits of a face, a false name, and a witness who saw no crime being committed,’ said Sabine.

  ‘We have more than we started with but a lot less than we need, which is not unusual for this stage of an investigation,’ said Bruno, who was still sorting prints. He swivelled in his chair to face them. ‘But we know the next step, which is to wait for forensics to put the photos together and then see where we are.’

  ‘If Tante-Do says the face looks right,’ Yveline was saying, ‘then J-J can run it through the facial recognition software against known offenders, ID cards, driving licences, passports, the lot.’

  ‘We’ll need a magistrate and a court order to do that,’ said Sabine.

  ‘That’s for J-J to handle,’ Yveline replied. ‘This is his case and he really wants it wrapped up and done. He can fix it.’

  Bruno watched this exchange, struck that he’d never seen two women cops thinking through a case before, arguing but in an amiable and positive way without regard to their different ranks. It was refreshing when he compared it to the close but often stormy relationship he shared with J-J. Bruno knew his friendship with J-J could never have prospered if he’d been in J-J’s chain of command, as Sabine was under Yveline. Knowing that Sabine had already qualified for the two-year course that would make her an officer, Yveline had treated her as such, even though Sabine had been a simple gendarme only a week or so earlier; whereas Sabine treated Yveline more as a slightly older sister than a superior.

  Over the past year or more, Bruno had watched Yveline rebuild the small squad of gendarmes at St Denis after her predecessor, a pompous but incompetent officer, had almost destroyed their morale. Yveline had had the good sense to make an ally of the veteran Sergeant Jules, whom Bruno had long befriended through the hunting club. Overweight and close to retirement but experienced and a shrewd judge of people, Jules was loyal to those superiors he judged deserving of his support. He gave Yveline his full backing and a great deal of discreet advice. In return, Yveline had helped Sergeant Jules maintain his long rearguard action against being posted elsewhere. Bruno knew that without Sergeant Jules’s friendship, his own task in St Denis would have faced many more obstacles. These days in St Denis, Yveline’s gendarmes, Bruno as the town policeman and his Mayor, along with the Police Nationale represented by J-J at Périgueux, all worked together in unusual harmony.

  ‘I think we have to wait and see what J-J says when Yves has done his work with the photos,’ Bruno said. ‘We may not have a murderer, but we’ve come a long way towards identifying the victim, which J-J has been trying to do for three decades. Let’s see where we go from there. Yveline is right. We’ve certainly earned a drink.’

  They returned the key and receipts to the treasurer and Bruno took the cardboard box of negatives. The three of them walked up the slight rise to the stucco-fronted building with the flaming grenade escutcheon of the gendarmes. Yveline told the duty officer she’d be in her rooms. Then she led the way through the yard to the apartment block behind, where she punched in the access code at the entrance door. Gendarmes had traditionally lived in barracks, but since the 1960s they had been housed in these newly built blocks where married gendarmes could live with their families.

  Yveline, as commandante was housed in a two-bedroom apartment with a balcony on the first floor. The rooms weren’t large, but she had made her home cheerful with sunny yellow walls covered with batik prints and masks from a holiday in Indonesia. The wooden floors of her living room had been sanded and covered with Persian rugs. Two Wassily armchairs of leather with chrome tubing faced an antique chaise longue. The rear wall was filled with shelves containing books, framed photos of her family and sporting career and a bar. In one corner was a TV set, in the other a small desk.

  ‘Scotch, wine or beer?’ she asked, taking glasses from the bar.

  ‘White wine for me,’ said Sabine. Mopping his brow from the heat, Bruno asked for his to be mixed with mineral water as a spritzer. Sabine then said she’d do the same, told Yveline she admired the way she’d done the room and asked to use the bathroom, adding that she knew the way. All gendarme housing was the same.

  As Yveline poured the drinks, Bruno’s phone buzzed. He opened it to find an email from Claire at the kennels, with three photos attached of Diane de Poitiers and her puppies. He examined them with delight. The first one was as he had seen them on the day of their birth but the next two were a day or so later and he could get an impression of their new energy and curiosity from the way they sprawled over and around, and crawled away from their mother. One was so near to the camera it was almost a close-up. He showed them to Yveline, and then to the returning Sabine and they cooed and enthused over the playful charm of the baby bassets.

  ‘You remember I said I wanted one from when you first took Balzac to the kennels,’ Yveline said. ‘I looked up the kennel website and I know they cost about fifteen hundred each so I’ve been saving.’

  ‘Boy or girl?’ Bruno asked.

  ‘I want a girl.’

  Bruno gave her a broad smile. ‘Done! But I’m not looking to make money out of this. I’m really happy that the puppy will be going to a good home and I’m sure Balzac will enjoy having his daughter around. I think I’ll get a great deal more pleasure from seeing these happy bassets pottering around St Denis with equally happy owners.’

  ‘It’s a deal, so we can drink to that, even if Sabine’s right and we’re being premature about identifying Max and Henri.’

  11

  Just after dawn the next day, Bruno reached the tree at the top of the hill near his home. It was the point at which he usually turned on his morning run, pausing for a moment that allowed Balzac to catch up and for him to look across the Périgord landscape. From this vantage point there was not another house to be seen. Ridge succeeded valley and then more ridges all the way east as the land steadily rose to the extinct volcanoes of the Massif Central, the very heartland of France.

  A snuffling at Bruno’s feet made him bend to caress his dog, which reminded him that he should consult Florence about one of Balzac’s puppies. He set off again down the long, shallow slope leading to a track that gave him an easy kilometre along level ground back to his home, to a shower and breakfast. Twenty minutes later he left for St Denis, to be ready to patrol the crossing over the main road from the post office to the Ecole Maternelle.

  He was there some minutes before eight, chatting with various young mothers he’d known since they were schoolgirls and ruffling the hair of their toddlers as he saw them across the road. Florence and her children were among the last to arrive. Once they had crossed, he waved thanks to the cars that had stopped and then joined them, kissing Dora and Daniel first, then Florence. He took care
to embrace her in the brief, courteous and evidently unromantic way customary among friends. As a highly eligible bachelor in St Denis, whose relationship with Pamela was rumoured to be ending, he did not want to excite any new speculation, even as his mind wandered back to that enthusiastic embrace she had given him when he taught her twins to swim. He would not easily forget that entrancing sight of her in her green bikini, and far less the feel of her body against his.

  ‘Lovely to see you, Bruno,’ she said, with an eager smile. ‘But I’d better take the kids inside.’

  ‘I’ll wait,’ Bruno said. ‘I want to have a word, if you have a moment.’

  ‘It’s about Balzac,’ he said when she returned. Her smile faded a little and she glanced at her watch, a reminder that the classes she taught at the collège started in a few minutes. They began walking to the bridge. ‘You know I took him up to some kennels for a mating. Well, the puppies have been born and I wondered if you thought it would be a good idea for Dora and Daniel to have one.’

  ‘That’s very kind but I don’t think I could afford—’

  ‘It would be a gift, Florence. Christmas and birthday combined for both of them,’ he said swiftly. ‘I thought I’d consult you first, before saying anything to the children. I don’t want to get their hopes up.’

  ‘That’s thoughtful of you, Bruno, thank you. Would you let me think about this for a day or two?’

  ‘Of course, I know you have quite enough on your plate without having a puppy to housetrain.’

  ‘It’s not that, but I’m wondering whether we have enough space or garden, or the time to give him the attention he needs. It’s quite a responsibility and the children are still rather young for that. But of course they’d love to have a basset puppy and so would I. You know how they adore Balzac.’

  ‘That’s why I suggested it,’ he said. ‘But it’s up to you, and it does mean walking duties twice a day. Take your time. Balzac will have more puppies in the next few years so there’s no hurry.’