The Coldest Case

by Martin Walker

  The phone conversation had taken Bruno halfway to Périgueux and he saw he’d missed an incoming call from his contact at army records. He was making good time so he pulled off the road to return the call. Loriot, he learned, had served his twelve months in the army in 1987, mostly in a signals regiment based in Agen because he’d listed his civilian job as an apprentice electrician.

  Once in Périgueux, Bruno had a few minutes to spare before his meeting, so he called in to see Virginie in the police lab. J-J had said her work on the skull was close to being finished. He was looking forward to seeing it, partly out of curiosity, but also to compare it with the composite photo of Max that he’d helped to assemble. However reassuring Rosa’s decisive recognition of Max had been from the photo, Bruno suspected any able defence lawyer would be able to challenge its authenticity.

  He parked in the cool underground garage at the police building and left Balzac in his van. He walked across the courtyard leading to the separate building where the lab had been installed. The entrance, office and storeroom were on the ground floor. In the basement were the lab, a small morgue and pathology room along with the shielded X-ray section.

  As he trotted down the stairs he heard what sounded like a scream, and then a woman’s voice shrieking at someone to stop, followed instantly by a grunted male curse, the sound of a slap and another cry for help. Bruno found the door locked. He stood back and slammed the sole of his boot as hard as he could against the door right beside the lock. It burst open to reveal the back of a gigantic man in police uniform with his hand up the skirt of a woman. The male figure began to turn at Bruno’s charging entry, but too late. Bruno roared out a war cry as he kicked his boot hard up between the man’s legs, then pivoted to strike the side of his knee and jerk him to one side. The man began to fall as his shattered knee collapsed.

  As he fell, the woman shrieked again and slashed at the policeman’s arm with what looked like a scalpel. She then raised it again to threaten Bruno, blood dripping from her nose, her eyes wide in rage and shock.

  Bruno backed away, keeping his arms high and outstretched, open palms towards her.

  ‘It’s over, Virginie. It’s okay. It’s me, Bruno.’

  Her white lab coat had been ripped apart from top to bottom revealing a torn bra and a small breast that was red from some rough grasp. She blinked as she recognized him, although she kept her scalpel at the ready.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. When she nodded, he said, ‘I have to look at your attacker, he’s bleeding.’

  He bent down to the cop who was curled up in a foetal position on the floor, blood soaking into his uniform and onto the floor from the arm Virginie had slashed. Bruno put one knee on the guy’s back to keep him in place and used one of the plastic cuffs he always carried as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding from the man’s arm. He pulled the tie from around the cop’s neck to bind his ankles together.

  ‘You bastard, I’ll kill you for this,’ the cop grunted, trying to turn over but held face-down by Bruno’s weight.

  It was the cop’s left arm that was bleeding. But there was blood on the fingers of his right hand. Bruno glanced at Virginie and saw a smeared trail of blood stains on her thigh. Putain, what had the bastard done to her?

  Bruno pulled a plastic evidence bag from his hip pocket, put it over the man’s right hand. Then he called J-J.

  ‘It’s Bruno. I’m in the police lab downstairs where one of your cops has just tried to rape Virginie. He’ll need medical attention since she slashed him in self-defence, and I’ll be filing charges of sexual assault against him. We’ll need a female cop and a doctor for Virginie.’

  He turned to look at Virginie. She had somehow pulled the lab coat together with one hand. The scalpel lay at her feet. She had the other hand to her face and was trembling, her shoulders heaving as she sobbed and hiccupped.

  ‘Virginie,’ he said. ‘Are you okay? What did he do? Speak to me.’

  He heard a muffled sob. Then she took a deep breath, looked at him and nodded.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened?’ he asked.

  She answered in a gabble, the words and phrases running together. ‘He keeps coming in to ask me out, day after day, and I keep saying no, I’m working, I’m busy. He won’t stop. And today he just grabbed me, grabbed my breast really, really hard, thrust his hand up . . .’

  ‘It’s okay, Virginie, it’s over. I’m here.’ He was trying to make sense of the blood on the cop’s hand and the smears on Virginie’s thighs. He’d leave that to the policewoman J-J would be bringing.

  ‘I need an ambulance,’ said the cop, lying under Bruno’s knee.

  ‘You’re under arrest,’ Bruno said, and checked the man’s arm. The bleeding had stopped and Bruno recognized the man’s face, the one in the police canteen who had made that offensive joke about sheep-shaggers.

  ‘Virginie, please, pass me your scalpel,’ Bruno said. She simply stared at him until he added, ‘I need to look at his wound, where you slashed him.’

  She nodded, bent down to pick it up and handed it to him. Bruno cut away the sleeve of the cop’s uniform and the shirt beneath to reveal a long, seeping cut running from the man’s bicep down to his elbow. It didn’t look too deep and the tourniquet was holding. He tightened the plastic cuff another notch and looked up to see Virginie staggering to the sink.

  ‘Stop, Virginie. Please, don’t wash anything away,’ he said. ‘We need the evidence to nail this bastard.’

  ‘I’m going to be sick,’ she said, and vomited into the sink.

  As he spoke, he heard a clattering of feet coming down the stairs and J-J was the first in, a policewoman behind him and then a uniformed cop carrying a first aid kit. Finally, Commissioner Prunier himself came to stand, silent and glowering, at the door. J-J must have called him.

  ‘We need medical attention, first for this young woman who’s been assaulted, then for this cop whom I saw assault her,’ Bruno said. ‘I’m ready to give a statement. I should stress that I saw the cop with his hand far up this woman’s skirt. There’s blood on her thighs and on his right hand. That’s why I covered it with an evidence bag. I believe the blood on his hand will be hers. I insist that this be checked at once. The cut on the cop’s left arm was made by the victim in self-defence.’

  ‘Right,’ said Prunier, staring grimly at the scene. ‘Commissaire Jalipeau, you’re in charge.’ He went on to give instructions for the immediate blood tests Bruno had asked for, as well as requesting a female medical examiner to look at Virginie. ‘Nobody leaves this room until that’s done,’ he continued. ‘Gardien Baldin is under arrest but also requires medical attention. I want statements to be taken from all three who were in this room when we arrived.’

  He turned to the policewoman. ‘You will accompany the victim at all times until further notice.’ He turned again. ‘Bruno, I’ll take your statement myself. Come with me.’ He led the way up the stairs and across the courtyard to the main building. They took the lift to his office on the top floor.

  ‘That bastard Baldin is a menace,’ said Prunier, once they were in the privacy of his office. ‘But his dad was a commandant here so he gets away with a lot. He’s also active in the union. Thanks to this sickening business, we might finally be able to get rid of him once and for all.’

  ‘Let’s do this right,’ said Bruno. ‘He ought to be dismissed, never to wear the uniform again. And he should be put on the sex offenders’ list.’ He pulled out his phone, checked that Prunier was happy for him to begin, and pressed the recording function.

  ‘I’m recording this statement of my own free will,’ he began. ‘I arrived at the police lab at eleven thirty on this day, July tenth, to see the progress of the work of the young volunteer, Virginie, whose facial reconstruction skills I recommended to Commissaire Jalipeau.’

  He went on to give a detailed account of what he had seen and done. He forwarded
the sound file of his statement to Prunier’s phone, who in turn forwarded it to his secretary sitting outside to be typed up.

  ‘A couple of questions,’ Prunier said, and turned on his own phone’s record function. ‘First, have you met Gardien Baldin before?’

  ‘I know his face by sight from passing him in corridors and the canteen but didn’t know his name until this incident.’

  ‘What made you call at the lab at that moment?’

  ‘I’d arrived early for an appointment with you and J-J, so I decided to use the time to see what progress Virginie had made on the facial reconstruction. I was the one who first proposed to J-J that we bring her here to work on Oscar’s skull.’

  ‘Last question: how much force did you use to restrain Gardien Baldin?’

  ‘I used reasonable force since Baldin is a big man, nearly two metres tall and powerfully built. When I kicked down the door and saw him assaulting Virginie, I shouted at him to stop, kicked his groin to stop the sexual assault and then his knee to limit his movements. I then pulled him backwards, which probably prevented him being more badly slashed by Virginie’s scalpel. He fell to the floor and I restrained him. I put a tourniquet on his left arm and called for help.’

  ‘Right, that’s it, thanks. We’ll get all that typed up for you to sign. You’ll have to appear at the disciplinary hearing against Baldin and at the trial. I’m suspending him from duty as of now.’

  ‘Good,’ said Bruno. ‘And there have been some developments on the case with Henri Bazaine. It’s all become a lot more complicated.’ He explained the offer made by the lawyer to the Elysée, his own meeting with Rosa Luxemburg Delpèche and his discussion that morning with Isabelle. ‘I suggest that before taking a decision on arresting Bazaine, you wait to hear from General Lannes, who seems to have taken over this inquiry at the request of the Elysée.’

  ‘Putain, just how many French-speaking sleeper agents did the Stasi churn out from this orphanage?’ Prunier asked.

  ‘I don’t know, but Rosa Luxemburg said she saw at least twenty kids and we have no idea how many were produced in previous years. Isabelle is contacting the German security people to see what they can find out. This Lefort couple had emigrated to East Germany in the fifties so they had thirty years to produce their fake French citizens.’

  ‘And we never found any of them, never knew anything about this? It makes my head spin. I suppose I’d better wait to hear from General Lannes before arresting Bazaine. What would you do?’

  Bruno shook his head. ‘I don’t like the idea of granting immunity to a murderer, if indeed that’s what happened. But we may have no choice. If Henri really can give us information that identifies all the undercover agents the Stasi trained and sent us, it’s probably worth doing the deal. Even though the Stasi is long dead, who knows if the Russians are still making use of these people?’

  ‘You really think Henri Bazaine is behind this lawyer’s offer to the Elysée?’

  ‘I can’t be sure but it looks likely,’ Bruno said. ‘That gives me an idea. We can check Henri’s credit cards for train bookings and flight lists to see if he went up to Paris to see this fancy lawyer, Maître Vautan. If he drove, there should be a record on the autoroute tolls. Maybe he arranged it all through his own lawyer, the People’s Pierre. Either way I think Maître Vautan would have wanted to see something that looked like proof before he went to the Elysée. I can’t see Henri giving any lawyer the original scrapbook so he may have made a photocopy.’

  Prunier scribbled a note. ‘I’ll get someone onto the travel records. What are the operative dates?’

  ‘Henri couldn’t have known we were looking for him until last Friday at the earliest, and the publicity about the Rosenholz dossier did not start until Sunday.’

  ‘So if we can show he went to Paris since then, it looks pretty certain. We can arrest him and then search his place for the scrapbook.’

  ‘It could be in a safe deposit box in a bank vault or hidden on his property. I don’t think you have the manpower to dig up all those hectares of vines. And it might all be on microfilm, anyway. He was trained to be a spy, don’t forget, so he’ll know all these tricks. If I were him, I’d have buried the original somewhere very deep but kept a microfilm hidden close to hand. He could even have emailed some selected pages of microfilm to the lawyer in Paris while keeping the original in a safe place.’

  ‘He’d have wanted to brief the lawyer in person, so let’s see if he went to Paris.’

  ‘It’s worth trying,’ Bruno said. ‘But let’s not expect to get a murder conviction. I doubt we’ll ever be able to prove that Henri killed Max, unless he confesses.’

  ‘Well, at least it wasn’t a French citizen that he bumped off,’ Prunier replied. ‘That would really stick in my throat.’

  21

  From Prunier’s office Bruno went to find J-J, without success, and then down to the car park to collect Balzac. He checked the lab to see if Virginie was still there. The place was empty but he was delighted to find the skull she’d been working on. It had been partly hidden by the screen of her laptop during the time he’d been in the lab. Now her laptop lid was closed and the eerily disembodied head of Max – there was no doubt who it was – stared out across the lab.

  He was bald. But strewn beside him were three cheap wigs of fair hair, each of different lengths and shades of blondness. Bruno tried each one on the skull. None seemed quite to capture the curl and thickness Bruno recalled from the photo. But the shape of the face, the cast of the eyes, the prominent nose, narrow lips and thrusting jaw all seemed right.

  Bruno let out a soft whistle of admiration. Even without those hours of scanning through the photographs in the St Denis archive, Max might have been identified from this reconstruction alone. Virginie had done an admirable job and it was outrageous that one of the Périgueux cops should have treated her so shamefully. He sent a text to her phone to say, ‘This is brilliant. I’m full of admiration, Bruno.’ He added a postscript reminding her of the invitation to spend the weekend in St Denis. Then he sent a text to Elisabeth Daynès in Paris, saying that Virginie’s work on the skull had exceeded his highest hopes and when the case was complete, he’d give her a full report.

  Balzac at his heels, he climbed the stairs to the courtyard and headed for the main reception area. The cop on duty told him that J-J was at the hospital with Gardien Baldin, while Virginie was with Commissaire Gouppilleau, the senior female officer at the station. He requested to be put through to her office. When Gouppilleau answered, Bruno identified himself and asked if Virginie would consent to see him. He was told to come right up.

  The commissaire met him in the corridor and greeted him warmly with a firm handshake. ‘Along with every other female cop in Périgueux I’d like to buy you a large drink,’ she said. ‘And that’s a very handsome dog.’ He couldn’t help noticing that her police uniform had been extremely well cut and she looked more like a smart lawyer than a cop. ‘With luck you might have lifted the curse of the big, bad Baldin, the most loathed man in the station. Come in, come in. Virginie has been telling me all about it.’

  Bruno couldn’t help but smile as he noticed the defiantly non-uniform red high-heels the commissaire was wearing. She saw he was staring at her shoes and smiled back at him.

  ‘Even if I have to change into clodhoppers when I go outdoors, these help keep up my morale,’ she said, steering him into her office.

  ‘Hi, Bruno,’ said Virginie from her place in a deep armchair. She looked pale and fragile, wearing a policewoman’s raincoat that was about four sizes too large for her. The blood on her face had been cleaned and a bandage had been taped over her nose. Her voice sounded as if she had a heavy cold. ‘Thanks for turning up when you did.’

  ‘I’m so sorry about this, Virginie, and just wish I’d arrived a minute or two earlier,’ he said, as Balzac trotted up to Virginie and put out a paw. ‘Don’
t worry. Balzac is just trying to say hello.’

  ‘No, you arrived at the right time to stop matters going further,’ said Gouppilleau. ‘Arriving when you did was perfectly timed to nail a cop who’s been a menace to every woman in this building, and heaven knows how many civilian women outside. How the devil did you get the better of that enormous brute?’

  ‘I attacked him from the rear while he was otherwise engaged, probably trying to react to Virginie grabbing the scalpel,’ Bruno said. ‘She was doing a very impressive job of defending herself, shrieking the place down and she had all his attention. I could have come up behind him in a tank and he might not have noticed. I gave Prunier a statement and we’ll need one from Virginie.’

  ‘I already took her statement. Prunier sent me yours and they clearly agree,’ Gouppilleau said. ‘Gardien Baldin has been officially suspended and he’ll be charged when he gets back from the hospital. I’ll do that myself and I’ll personally monitor the case from now on. I already know the female magistrate I want to take on this case, Annette, in the Procureur’s office in Sarlat. I gather she knows you.’

  ‘She’s a demon rally driver,’ he said. ‘She once scared the hell out of me when I had to act as her navigator.’ He turned to Virginie, who was sitting forward and caressing Balzac’s ears.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at the hospital? I was worried about that blood I saw on your thighs and it looked like he really hurt your . . .’ Bruno waved his hand in the direction of her breast.

  ‘My breast is sore but the blood on my thighs was where he scratched me, trying to grope me and pull . . .’ She paused, her eyes fixed on Balzac. ‘That was when I grabbed the scalpel.’

  ‘We had Virginie checked over by a doctor,’ said Gouppilleau. ‘She has a broken nose from where he slapped her but it’s been reset by our police doctor. Thank heavens, Bruno, that you bagged that right hand of his. The scratch wasn’t deep but that’s the evidence of assault that will send him to jail.’