The Coldest Case

by Martin Walker

  They drove back to Les Eyzies, crossed one of the great bends of the Vézère and then a second at Campagne – ‘Another chateau,’ Rosalie announced – and through St Denis to the town vineyard.

  The vines spread out along the hillside, hectare after hectare. First Bruno pointed out the small chateau that was at the heart of the place, where Julien had lived when trying to make a success of it as both vineyard and hotel. Overstretched and in debt, and distracted by his wife’s terminal illness, Julien had been rescued by the Mayor, as well as by Hubert and other local businessmen who had bought out his debt and knuckled down to make the new town vineyard a going concern. Bruno had played a minor role in the saga, sufficient to get him awarded some shares and an appointment to the board of directors. He had used his savings to buy more shares and took great pride in its progress.

  They found Julien and Hubert in the big barn that was now the chai where the wine was made and bottled. They were looking worried but cheered up at the sight of their guests, and led them to a modest table that served as a tasting counter. Despite the Mayor’s best efforts, the plan for a vineyard visitors’ centre was still on the drawing board.

  After giving a special pat and a bowl of water to Balzac, Hubert poured out small glasses of the previous year’s dry white for each of them, explaining that it was a classic blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon grapes.

  ‘It’s three euros twenty a bottle but you can have Bruno’s discount, three euros even,’ said Julien. ‘Or we offer a five litre box at fifteen euros, with Bruno’s discount. That’s a good buy.’

  ‘I could drink a lot of this,’ said Rosalie. ‘It feels very refreshing and has a lot of fruit without being sweet. And I like the name, Demoiselle de la Vézère. Tell me, what’s this dry weather we’ve been having doing to the vines?’

  ‘It varies,’ Julien replied. ‘The old vines have sunk deep roots and can take water from far below the surface. And a bit of stress makes for better wine. But a lot of the young vines we’ve planted over the past few years are really suffering. Hubert and I have just been talking about it. We certainly need rain, the sooner the better.’

  ‘What kind of wine do you usually prefer?’ asked Hubert.

  ‘I’m no expert,’ Alain replied with a smile. ‘Red with meat, white with fish and after the first couple of sips of the stuff they serve us in the air force, I’m damned if I can tell the difference.’

  ‘Mon Dieu, Bruno, your cousin’s an honest man,’ said Hubert. ‘Not many of our customers would admit that. See what you think of this one, Alain. We call it Seigneur de la Vézère, and it’s our standard red. It’s two years old, half Cabernet Sauvignon with a quarter each of Merlot and Malbec. The same price as the white.’

  ‘It’s a lot smoother than what they serve at our canteen,’ Alain replied after taking a sip. ‘I like that.’

  ‘Now try this one, the same blend of grapes but from our older vines and it has spent six months in oak barrels. See if you can taste the difference.’

  Rosalie and Alain sipped and nodded. ‘It leaves a lovely taste in my mouth,’ she said.

  Alain nodded, adding, ‘I agree, and it has more flavour. How much is that?’

  ‘Four euros fifty a bottle but you can buy five litres in a box for twenty-five euros and it stays in top form for six weeks, two months if you keep it somewhere cool.’

  ‘Why is it more expensive?’ Rosalie asked, reading out the name on the bottle, Chevalier de la Vézère.

  ‘Oak barrels are expensive,’ said Julien. ‘Even the cheapest ones are more than six hundred euros each and the really good ones from old wood with a tight grain are a thousand upwards. What’s more, you don’t want to use them for more than three years, four at most. Then we sell them second-hand to Scotland for their whisky.’

  ‘Really?’ Rosalie asked. ‘But whisky’s a spirit. Does it change in the barrel?’

  ‘The colour changes most. Like most spirits, whisky is colourless at first. The colour comes from the wood but you get a slightly different flavour from a sherry barrel from Spain than you do from one of our barrels. And that’s not just the wine, it’s the toasting. Look,’ he said, pointing to a row of barrels. ‘These are marked noisette, but they’re made of oak, not hazel wood. The term comes from the colour of the toasting. All barrels are toasted on the inside. It used to be done over an open flame but these days they use a blow-torch. Noisette is a very light toasting but some heavy wines like a Syrah or a Malbec from Cahors benefit from a much darker toasting.’

  ‘Well, we’ve learned something today and I think we’ve found the wines we’ll serve at our wedding,’ said Alain. ‘I’m driving, so no more tasting for me, but we’ll buy a box of the white and another of the good red.’

  ‘When’s the happy day?’ Julien asked.

  ‘As soon as I get my promotion which should come through within the next month or two,’ Rosalie said. ‘Then I’ll be the same rank as Alain and we can marry and move into married quarters. These wines are for our engagement party. You’ll come, won’t you, Bruno?’

  ‘Certainly, and we look forward to your being regular customers in the future,’ he said.

  ‘And I’ll send along a bottle of champagne with him to help you celebrate, with my compliments,’ Hubert added.

  ‘Good luck with the rain,’ Rosalie said. Bruno told Hubert and Julien they were heading for lunch.

  ‘We only want something light,’ she added. ‘Bruno made us one of his truffle omelettes for breakfast.’

  They ate on the terrace behind the small chateau that was attached to the Domaine, with a view over the swimming pool and tennis courts to the river beyond the gardens and parkland; salade aux gésiers for her, a confit de canard with salad for Alain, and Bruno chose a salade chèvre with goat cheese. He and Rosalie shared a small carafe of the town white and Alain drank mineral water.

  ‘What does it mean, your being a director of the vineyard?’ she asked.

  ‘Lots of meetings, at least once a month,’ he replied. ‘Keeping an eye on the finances, and last month we agreed to postpone building the new visitors’ centre until we see how this year’s récolte comes out. If we get no rain, we’ll need to economize. The best meeting was when we chose the names for the wines. Then there’s the marketing strategy to discuss, which I don’t know much about. But I did push hard for our wines to be on sale at all the marchés nocturnes in the region because they’re less expensive than most. We only charge six euros a bottle, when most vineyards want eight or ten. And we now provide the house wines for several of our local restaurants.’

  ‘It’s a real surprise, Bruno. I never thought of you as a businessman.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he replied, laughing. ‘I’m a country copper trying to do what’s best for our town. Hubert and Julien really run the show.’

  Back at Bruno’s home, their bags packed and loaded in the car with their wines, Bruno embraced them both, saying that they would always be welcome in St Denis and promised he’d keep an eye out for possible houses. Rosalie crouched down, followed by Alain, to say their own farewells to Balzac. To Bruno’s approval, they seemed to enjoy the generous lick of affection the hound bestowed on each of them. Being Balzac, he gave Rosalie a second enthusiastic slathering and watched with Bruno as they drove off.

  16

  The next morning at Bergerac police station, Bruno was drinking coffee with J-J, Sabine and Tante-Do, and leafing through the national newspapers. They found only some small stories with photos of Henri on the inside pages. Save for the local and regional press and TV, J-J’s vaunted media blitz had been more of a fizzle. Most of the papers focused instead on the new scandal of possible German spies in France, following up on Jacqueline’s op-ed article. The reports usually began by citing Le Monde but then went on to pillage Gilles’s post on the Paris Match website, repeating the names of spies and even printing the photo portraits he ha
d used.

  ‘Do we need a new witch-hunt against the Left?’ demanded Libération, the daily that seemed to Bruno to have one foot in the socialist centre-left and the other waving towards the various anti-capitalist sects, militant feminists and even more militant vegetarians and environmentalists. ‘Better late than never for a house-cleaning of security risks,’ suggested the centre-right Le Figaro. ‘Reds under our beds?’ asked the populist Aujourd’hui.

  ‘Those damn friends of yours have stolen my media campaign, Bruno,’ J-J grumbled, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it. He kept glancing at the clock in the borrowed office and his eyes were bright at the promised confrontation of Tante-Do with Henri. He was also pleased when Bruno informed him that his predecessor, Joe, had called to say he recognized Henri’s photo and was prepared to testify that he recalled seeing Henri, Max and Tante-Do together at the félibrée.

  J-J had already made them rehearse his opening gambit twice. The moment the desk sergeant downstairs announced Henri’s arrival, Sabine and Tante-Do were to stroll slowly and casually down the long corridor. That would give her twenty seconds to take a careful look at Henri to confirm his identity and then to greet him by name as an old friend. J-J would take it from there.

  But the plan did not work out that way. Henri wasn’t alone. He came with a lawyer. And not just any lawyer but one of a new breed, Pierre Perle, who liked to be known as the People’s Pierre. A bouncy and aggressive advocate who seemed to have learned his trade from American TV courtroom dramas, he had a genius for publicity. He also had formidable legal credentials from the University of Bordeaux as one of the top law graduates of his year and as the author of a best-selling book, It’s Your Law – how to make it work for you.

  ‘This is outrageous!’ Perle almost shouted the words following a moment of shocked silence after Tante-Do marched up to Henri, embraced him and said, ‘Salut, Henri. It may have been a long time but you haven’t changed a bit. You’re still a handsome devil.’

  ‘This is a trap, a shameful ambush of an honest citizen who has come here to perform his civic duty,’ the lawyer shouted while Henri looked stunned, trapped in Tante-Do’s embrace. ‘I shall complain to the courts. Commissaire Jalipeau, you should be ashamed of yourself.’

  Bruno saw with a start that Philippe Delaron, obviously tipped off to attend this moment, was standing on the stairs, putting aside his camera to start scribbling in his notebook. J-J merely smiled and then brought his hands together three times, very slowly, in a mockery of applause.

  ‘There you go again, Pierre,’ he said. ‘Making it all about you instead of about your client, and whether he can help in our attempt to find out how a young man was murdered thirty years ago.’ He turned to Henri. ‘Monsieur Bazaine, thank you for coming to see us. I hate to interrupt that touching reunion with an old flame of yours, but perhaps you would be happier discussing this in the privacy of an office.’ J-J paused and then threw the People’s Pierre a contemptuous glance, adding, ‘Although I’m sure your lawyer would prefer to have it in the middle of the market hall.’

  J-J opened the office door and gestured to the others to precede him. When Henri and his lawyer were seated before the desk, he stood facing them. ‘Again, thank you for being here. Allow me to introduce the chief of police of the Vézère Valley, Bruno Courrèges, on whose turf the murder took place, and Sergeant Castignac, our liaison with the gendarmes.’

  ‘And what have the gendarmes to do with this?’ the lawyer asked.

  ‘They helped disinter the body and examine the scene of the murder, and Sergeant Castignac has unearthed their contemporary reports. She has also assisted in our research into the St Denis félibrée, during which we believe the murder occurred. You recall the félibrée, Monsieur Bazaine?’

  ‘My client has no recollection of the event,’ said Pierre.

  ‘Despite the photographic evidence that he was present and in the company of the murdered man, and all this confirmed by contemporary witnesses,’ J-J said calmly, taking his seat and opening a bulging file that Henri was eying with some concern. Bruno suspected that J-J had padded it with pages of less than relevant material.

  ‘Photographs that were obviously concocted long after the event,’ Pierre shot back. ‘I shall ask the court to rule against their being admissible as evidence.’

  ‘How fortunate then that we have some living witnesses, one of them a successful businesswoman of unquestioned probity who has identified him,’ J-J said.

  ‘You mean that harpy you launched at us in the corridor?’

  ‘Harpy?’ J-J raised his eyebrows. ‘Tut-tut, Pierre, such outrageously sexist terms discredit you. I’m appalled to hear you speak that way about a woman who obviously cherishes some tender memories of your client in his younger days. I think you should apologize to Sergeant Castignac here.’

  ‘I fear the woman must have mistaken me for someone else,’ said Henri, the first time he’d spoken. He had a harsh, almost hoarse voice but his face was expressionless. ‘I have no recollection of her.’

  To Bruno, who had trawled through so many photos, this was evidently the same man. His hair colour and eyes, the set of his mouth and jaw, his height and build, all matched those of his younger self. And as Bruno studied him, he noticed that his ears were unusually large and set very close to his head, something that also matched the photos he had picked out.

  ‘May I see your identity card, monsieur?’ J-J asked, raising a hand when the lawyer made to object. ‘We can hardly eliminate your client from our inquiries if we can’t verify who he is.

  ‘Henri Thorez Bazaine, born October fifteenth, 1968, in Belleville, Paris,’ J-J read aloud as he copied the details onto a sheet of paper in the file before him. He looked up and said casually, ‘Thorez is an unusual name. Would it have any connection to Maurice Thorez, the old Communist Party leader?’ There was no response from Henri. ‘Ah well, Belleville used to be the heart of the Red Belt even though these days it’s become very trendy and gentrified, I’m told. What was your address there?’

  ‘I was raised in a municipal orphanage named for Paul Lafargue, on the Rue Jean Jaurès,’ Henri said.

  J-J asked for the name of each school Henri had attended, primary, collège and so on. Henri had not gone to a lycée, which would have put him on a university track. Instead he’d attended a vocational school, learning general construction and electronics, and had been an apprentice with the works department of his local Mairie in Paris. J-J asked for more details: how long he’d been an apprentice; who were his teachers and who supervised his work; how much he was paid by the Mairie; when and why he’d stopped working for the Mairie and so on.

  ‘Are you sure all this is necessary?’ the lawyer asked.

  ‘One never knows what is and isn’t relevant until we check,’ J-J replied blandly. ‘And now, Monsieur Bazaine, can you tell us where you were in the first days of July of 1989?’

  Henri looked at his lawyer who shrugged. ‘I don’t recall exactly. It was too long ago. Probably hitch-hiking somewhere in central France, heading for the vineyards to get some work picking grapes. I was aiming for the Bordeaux region but got a lift to Bergerac so that’s where I stayed.’

  ‘The first few days of July would have been a couple of months too early for picking grapes.’

  ‘I earned some money washing cars for tourists on the quayside until it was time for the harvest. I worked with a guy called Gérard Follet and we’re still friends. These days he runs half a dozen automatic car washes in Bergerac and Sainte Foy and he remembers working with me.’

  ‘One of our witnesses, a farmer near Vergt, recognised you from the photo in Sud Ouest. He distinctly recalls you and your friend Max picking strawberries with him on his father’s farm in the last week of June. Is he making it up?’

  ‘Must be mistaken identity,’ said Henri. ‘I never knew a guy called Max. But I can understand people making mist
akes if this Max was around the area with a guy who looked like me. And I accept that there’s a resemblance from the photos in the newspapers. But that’s all it is, a resemblance from three decades ago.’

  ‘I think we’re finished here, Monsieur le Commissaire,’ said the lawyer. ‘My client came here voluntarily, answered your questions and very generously accepted that he bears a resemblance to your suspect. We conclude that you and your witnesses have all made an honest mistake and that should be the end of the matter.’

  ‘Not so fast, Pierre. Naturally, we’ll have to check out some parts of your client’s story and I find it hard to believe that so many witnesses have all made the same mistake. Bruno, do you have any questions for Monsieur Bazaine?’

  ‘Yes, one or two. The first one was where you performed your military service.’

  ‘I was excused for medical reasons as asthmatic. The illness still troubles me. What else?’

  ‘Your work as a wine consultant surprises me,’ Bruno added. ‘It’s very unusual to be a professional oenologue whose own vineyard mainly makes cheap wines for a co-op. How do you explain that?’

  ‘That’s not the only wine I make,’ Henri retorted, clearly stung by Bruno’s mocking tone. ‘And it’s not as easy as you might think to make a consistent and decent wine year after year for the mass market. That’s a skill people want to learn and they’re prepared to pay me for it.’

  ‘And where are these clients of yours who are willing to pay you to teach them how to succeed with mass market wines?’

  ‘I protest,’ interrupted the lawyer. ‘These questions are entirely irrelevant to the matter before us.’

  ‘I have an important client in Canada,’ Henri said, raising his hand to silence his lawyer. ‘I’m advising him on which wines he should plant on the northern shores of Lake Ontario which is becoming interesting wine country, thanks to climate change. More and more of us here in the Bergerac have been experimenting with different varieties of grapes so we have built up a lot of expertise that clients are prepared to pay for.’