‘Canada was the only place they mentioned,’ J-J replied. ‘We’ve started checking on his passport and movements. I have his bank account details from the co-op so we’ll soon have his credit cards, mobile phone, all the usual data. And one more thing, now that we have a photo for Max, I’ll ask Interpol to try again on medical records for that unusual break in his leg. I’m told those data banks are a lot more complete than they used to be. Maybe we’ll get lucky and get a surname for him, too.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ said Bruno. ‘What about his income? Did you get to see the co-op accounts?’
‘Yes, he seems quite wealthy. The co-op said he was the first of them to push for the bag-in-the-box and almost all his wine is now sold that way. You know the things, fifteen euros for a five litre box. He gets just over a third of that, one euro ten per litre, and he usually produces about a quarter million litres a year. The co-op pays for the boxes, delivery and marketing and he also gets a share of the profits the co-op makes, which netted him another nine thousand euros last year.’
‘He has to pay for labour, the picking, his wine-making equipment, insurance, social costs, fertilizer and taxes,’ Bruno said. ‘And don’t forget that every few years there’s a hailstorm or some expensive blight or a drought. If we don’t get some rain soon he won’t have much of a harvest this year. Still, he must usually clear close to a hundred thousand a year.’
‘More than you and I make combined,’ said J-J, shrugging. ‘He has no labour costs. His family helps him work the vines and the grape-picking is all done by the co-op machines. What’s more, he drinks for free.’
‘We’re in the wrong business,’ said Bruno, laughing. ‘If it wasn’t for the company, J-J . . .’
‘Very funny. Sabine can take Tante-Do back to Bordeaux. I’ll get the Paris police looking into Henri’s background, now that we have his real name. He was born there so they’ll check his school records, get the address where he grew up and the names of any relatives. They should have something for me on Monday.’
‘You still running a media blitz with the photos on Monday?’ Bruno asked.
‘We might as well. It can’t hurt and it puts a spotlight onto him. And if it panics him into doing a runner, all the better. We’ll have his credit card numbers, his passport and the details of his cars. He won’t get far.’
‘What if he just uses cash to buy a train ticket to Italy or Spain?’
‘And then where does he go?’ J-J replied. ‘Henri’s found a safe harbour here that has sheltered him for the last thirty years. D’you think he’s the type of professional criminal to have fabricated a second identity with a false passport, secret bank accounts, all that?’
‘I don’t know. It’s unlikely but possible.’ As Bruno spoke, he knew that J-J was thinking aloud. He was at least a step behind but he followed the direction of J-J’s mind. He knew better than most that J-J’s bullish manner and appearance concealed a profound and subtle intelligence. He’d been a successful detective for thirty years and had navigated the complexities of police politics to reach his current job. Bruno would never underestimate him.
‘Do you think Henri’s going to stay here and brazen it out? Plead that all your witnesses are mistaking him for someone else?’ Bruno asked.
‘I believe Tante-Do. I don’t think she’d be mistaken in identifying him after that passionate weekend together. Guilty or innocent, brazen denial could be his best bet, if he can bring forward someone who gives him an alibi for the time of the félibrée.’ J-J’s voice sounded almost detached, as though he were thinking of something else entirely. ‘Even if he admits to being Tante-Do’s Henri, we still need evidence that he killed Max.’
Bruno nodded. Identifying Henri was one thing. Proving that he was the one who had killed Max was something quite different.
‘But if we can’t prove that he was Max’s killer, maybe if we look hard enough we can find something else.’ J-J turned to look at Bruno directly. ‘Any ideas?’
‘None at all.’
‘You’re the hunting club man, Bruno. I’m surprised you didn’t know that Henri is a member of the Pomport club, just a few kilometres from here. And he’s a crack shot, they tell me.’
‘You’ve lost me, J-J. Where are you going with this?’
‘Where did he learn to shoot? What was his military service? You still have that friendly contact in army records?’ When Bruno nodded, J-J said, ‘Give him a call on Monday and see what you can find out.’
‘Will do. What’s your next step?’
‘I’ll do the obvious. Go to Henri’s house, show my police ID and ask for him. If he’s not there, I’ll ask where he is and when he’ll be back. I’ll leave my card and request that he calls, that I have some questions for him.’
‘You’re a commissaire, the top detective in the département,’ Bruno said. ‘That would scare anybody.’
‘You could be right, but it makes no difference if I send a junior. Henri will still end up talking to me. The sooner he learns that I’m interested in him, the more time he has to worry, perhaps even to panic. Always take account of the panic factor in police work, Bruno. Over the years it’s probably caught as many criminals as fingerprints.’
14
Alain and Rosalie had caught the sun on their canoe trip, their faces glowing red. Nonetheless they were beaming with delight as they came from the car to join Bruno on his terrace. Balzac darted from his spot by Bruno’s feet to welcome them, circling around them twice and then standing before them appealingly, one paw raised, until Rosalie bent down to stroke him.
Bruno had spent two calming hours weeding his garden, scything some long grass behind the house and deadheading the faded roses. He feared for his flowers if some rain did not come soon. For the past few days he had watered only the vegetables, following a tip he’d learned from Marcel in the market. He had planted discarded plastic bottles upside down at strategic points, having pierced small holes in the caps, screwed them back on, cut off the bottoms and half-filled each one. From the healthy look of his tomatoes, peas and lettuces this primitive drip irrigation seemed to work.
‘Lemonade, coffee, tea?’ he asked his guests. ‘We should leave for the Baron’s place in about half an hour if you want to shower first.’
‘That’s okay,’ said Rosalie. ‘We took a dip in the river before we handed the canoe back. It was spectacular, those amazing castles, one after another, and that little village that clambered up the cliff was too pretty for words. And at Castelnaud we saw them fire the smallest of the trebuchets. Very impressive. They said some of the damage to the castle was done by catapults like that.’
‘And how was Lascaux this morning?’
‘Amazing,’ she said. ‘I had no idea that it was so beautiful and that those prehistoric people were so smart. The only way they could get enough light inside the cave to paint was to invent a special kind of lamp that used a juniper twig as a wick in rendered reindeer fat. Any other kind of flame would have covered the white chalk walls with soot. How long did it take to develop that? I’ll never think of those people as primitive again.’
Bruno was used to the enthusiasm of visitors, but it always pleased him. ‘There are many more caves worth a visit, twenty-four painted caves and over a hundred with various engravings. One is so big you take a train to get deep inside and the walls are covered with mammoths.’
‘I told you we’d need more time here,’ Alain said, putting his arm around Rosalie’s waist.
‘Should we dress for this evening with your Baron friend?’ she asked.
‘Not at all, I never do and nor does he, you both look fine as you are. We’ll stop to pick up a friend called Sabine, a young gendarme who’s on temporary assignment here.’
‘I’m getting out of these bathing trunks under my slacks,’ said Alain. ‘We’ll go up and change but we won’t be long.’
The eyes of Sa
bine and Rosalie widened when they drove along the Baron’s driveway and saw his four-hundred-year-old home. It was a chartreuse, the local name for a building that was smaller than a chateau but larger than a manor house. The rear looked like a fortress, a fifty-metre stretch of stone wall with a tower at each end, a bleak façade broken only by a few windows, recently added. It formed one side of a square in the small hamlet that had grown up around the building, mainly cottages and smallholdings for families who had worked the land of the Baron’s ancestors.
By contrast, the front of the chartreuse, framed by a long avenue of apple and walnut trees that led up to a wooded slope, was open and welcoming. Tall windows suggested the height of the rooms within, and stone steps, wide at ground level but narrowing as they rose, led up to a venerable set of double doors studded with iron. The bottom half of the doors was darker and the Baron claimed they were scorch marks from an attempt to burn out his ancestor in the turbulent years after the Revolution. Since that same ancestor had survived to become one of Napoleon’s generals, the attack had been briskly defeated.
At some point large French windows had been installed on either side of these steps, and from one of them the Baron emerged, carrying a tray of drinks and glasses, to welcome his guests. He put the tray down on a round metal table, painted white, which stood on a stone terrace that stretched along the whole front of the building. Big terracotta urns that reached above Bruno’s waist were filled with bright red geraniums.
‘Welcome,’ he said, advancing to greet them with the stride of a much younger man. ‘Alain, it’s good to see you again, and Bruno, please introduce me to this charming young woman. If you are marrying Alain, my dear, then he’s a lucky man. And Sabine, you must be the gendarme of whom Bruno has spoken.’
Then he sat on one of the garden chairs to greet Balzac, who seemed to assume that the Baron was a member of the family, along with all the other friends of Bruno that Balzac saw almost every day.
‘Your welcome is as courtly as your home, monsieur,’ Rosalie said, as a car horn tooted. Fabiola’s Twingo swung into the driveway and parked to disgorge the doctor, her partner, Gilles, and Florence. Pamela’s elderly deux-chevaux then hove into view, followed by the Mayor, bringing Jacqueline. Balzac at once raced off to greet each of them, and Bruno wondered, not for the first time, whether his dog’s hearing was so acute that he recognized people by the sound of their car engines.
‘Looks like we’re all here,’ the Baron said. ‘Bruno, would you take care of the drinks while I greet the others?’
Three bottles, white, red and rosé from the town vineyard, stood on the tray with bowls of nuts and olives and a bottle of cassis. Bruno began to serve, thinking it might be time for Hubert and Julien to add a sparkling wine to the town’s production. There were chairs enough for all on the terrace but they gathered instead under the shade of a cypress tree. Balzac snuffled around the feet of each one of them, waiting for the inevitable snacks that would come his way.
‘Make a note in your diary for Monday afternoon, Bruno,’ said the Mayor. ‘We’re having the forest fire rehearsal that was postponed, but it’s going to be much bigger with some pompier experts, people from other communes and the Préfecture. Your colleagues from Les Eyzies and Montignac will also be there. It starts at two.’
‘I’ll be there,’ said Bruno, handing the Mayor a glass of kir. ‘Let’s just hope the rehearsal is never needed.’ He made sure everyone had a glass, then managed to have a quiet word with Gilles.
‘Have you and Jacqueline conferred on those articles you’re each writing about that spy business?’ Bruno asked him. ‘It’s tomorrow they come out, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Jacqueline’s is in Monday’s Le Monde, which will be available in Paris late tomorrow afternoon. My piece goes up on the website at five tomorrow, with a longer piece plus photos in next week’s print edition.’
‘What photos have you found?’ Bruno asked.
‘Gisela, of course, sometimes called the spy of the century. Her real name was Gabriele Gast. She went from think-tanks into West German intelligence, the BND.’ Gilles explained that Gisela was an attractive woman and there was a romantic angle, too, with her Stasi handler. That made her story perfect for Paris Match.
‘Then there was the biggest spy of all, Rainer Rupp, code name Topaz,’ Gilles went on. Rupp had worked at NATO HQ in Brussels and photographed secret documents in his wine cellar at home and had a British wife who tried to persuade him to stop but stayed loyal to him. He gave over the crown jewels, the locations of the Cruise and Pershing missiles, NATO’s strategic plans and its assessment of what the Warsaw Pact could do. A lot of that material was given the ‘Cosmic Top Secret’ classification, NATO’s highest, and was copied at once to Moscow.
‘Then I list some of the spies exposed in the Rosenholz dossier in various countries,’ Gilles went on. ‘This raises the obvious question: why would there not be Stasi spies in France? Rupp was recruited when he was a young student leftist in 1968, when our own student revolt would have been a happy hunting ground for Stasi and the KGB. Most of this stuff is available if you know where to look for it.’
‘What about Jacqueline’s article?’ Bruno asked.
‘As you’d expect, hers is much more policy based, on the implications of the continued lack of trust between Paris and Washington, with the Rosenholz dossier as Exhibit A. Predictably for Le Monde, her piece is aimed at the policy-makers whereas mine is aimed at ordinary people, the office worker on the Metro. It’s the same story but with different targets and you know how people always love to read spy stories. I threw in some stuff about how we expelled Dick Holm, the CIA station chief in Paris during the Clinton years, for running an operation against France.’
He gave Bruno a shrewd glance. ‘Are these questions just for your own interest or are you asking on behalf of somebody?’
‘A bit of both,’ Bruno acknowledged.
‘I can guess who’s interested,’ Gilles said, grinning. ‘It’s not a problem for me if I email you my article tonight. It’s already ancient history, anyway. I filed my final version minutes before I came here.’ He took out his phone, tapped a few buttons and said, ‘There you are. On its way to your private inbox. Give Isabelle my compliments.’
Bruno strolled discreetly into the Baron’s kitchen, read what Gilles had sent and forwarded it to Isabelle, with a note saying Gilles sent his regards. That was how it worked. Gilles had done Isabelle a favour and would doubtless expect one in return. Jacqueline would probably not be so helpful. Back in the garden, Bruno went up to where she was chatting with Rosalie, Sabine and Pamela and offered to refresh their drinks. As he handed them back, he managed to steer Jacqueline aside and ask if her Le Monde piece was running the next day.
‘So they tell me. I hope it makes a stir,’ she said.
‘If it’s anything like your remarks over dinner the other day, I’m sure it will,’ he said. ‘I never cease to be surprised at the way history thrusts its claws into our present. It must be even stranger for you, a historian of the Cold War, to find it here again thirty years after it ended.’
‘If it has ended – that’s the question,’ she said. ‘Every one of us here is a child of the Cold War, Bruno. It shaped us, defined our politics and reshaped our economies and our systems of government. Not just the Russians and Americans but we Europeans in our own way also became national security states. The past always lives on in profound ways, particularly in our security agencies, arms industries and defence bureaucracies.’
‘I remember once in Sarajevo, taking shelter in a slit trench at the airport when the Serbs were shelling it, and I was reading a piece in Le Monde about the Cold War being over. It certainly didn’t feel like it.’
‘Yes, I can recall articles like that in those days,’ Jacqueline said with a chuckle. ‘I may even have written one or two suggesting that the Balkan wars were the sign of a return to th
e traditional wars of national interests. I even called it the first war of the Soviet succession.’
‘National interests never go away,’ said Bruno. ‘Just look at this Franco-American suspicion you’re writing about.’
‘I think you might enjoy my Le Monde piece,’ she said. ‘I make the point that the Americans still assume that their interests are the same as those of the other members of the NATO alliance, particularly with Russia making trouble again and China playing its own superpower games. In reality, most of us NATO allies have moved on, not just to our traditional national interests but to the new interest of this Europe of ours after Brexit. The British were always the linchpin of the Atlantic alliance. Without them in Europe, who knows?’
‘Too soon to tell,’ he said.
‘We’ll see. But would you not agree that it’s better to be early in thinking publicly about these things than too late?’
‘You’re probably right. But there’s such a thing as being right too soon. Didn’t you write a book about the people who went to fight in Spain against Franco? Premature anti-fascists, you called them.’
‘I did indeed, and if you recall my conclusion, I noted that some of those Spanish war veterans who came to France as refugees became the hard core of our own Resistance in France.’
Suddenly their exchange was interrupted by the Baron, clapping his hands and announcing, ‘Drink up, it’s time to go to Audrix for the night market and dinner.’
The tiny hilltop village of Audrix clustered around a small square that was dominated by a simple twelfth-century stone church on one side, facing the Mairie on the other. On a third side stood the local inn, the precisely named Auberge Médiévale, with a good restaurant where Bruno liked to eat on the terrace. Opposite this was a road that was wide enough for a row of stalls, selling the usual range of wines, cheeses, strawberries, grilled meats, ducks and chickens, salads and pastries, that were common to all the night markets of the region.
The Coldest Case Page 15