The Coldest Case

by Martin Walker

  ‘It certainly should,’ said Bruno, thinking it was never easy to win a case for sexual assault, and even less easy to convict a cop. ‘I gather that Baldin has something of a reputation.’

  ‘He does indeed, but he’s also very active in the AlliancePN,’ she went on, referring to the police trade union. ‘So with all the other entirely justified complaints about all our cops having to do too much overtime and long shifts, he’s been handled with kid gloves for far too long. I’m hoping that’s now over. Prunier tells me that he’s personally outraged by this.’

  ‘That’s good to hear.’ Bruno turned to Virginie. ‘I came to ask you if you’d like to come back to St Denis with me. You can stay with some friends of mine who have a lovely, welcoming house. She’s our local doctor and he’s a writer and journalist. I’m going to tell everybody what a brilliant job you’ve done on the skull. Our Mayor wants to take you to lunch and you can meet my horse who’s just as handsome as my dog. You deserve a break after all the work you’ve put in, and I hate the thought of you going back to a lonely room in an empty student hostel.’

  ‘Bruno is known to be a gifted chef,’ Gouppilleau said, smiling as Bruno looked at her in surprise. ‘Your colleague Juliette in Les Eyzies told me about your cooking,’ she went on. ‘You’d be surprised at the breadth of our intelligence network. In this job, we women have to stick together.’

  ‘Bruno,’ said Virginie. ‘Did you mean it, the message you left on my phone, about my skull?’

  ‘It’s even better than I’d hoped,’ he said. ‘We put together a composite photo from various partial snapshots and you’ve got Max to perfection.’

  ‘But I don’t think I’ve got the hair right.’

  ‘There’s no reason why you should. You warned us about that, remember? Anyway, it looks like you’re part of what’s turned out to be a much bigger case. I can’t go into details now because national security is involved but I think someday they’ll be making TV shows about this case – and you could play yourself! I’m just so sorry that it involved this dreadful assault.’

  ‘It was all over very fast once you turned up. And yes, I’d love to come down to St Denis and have a bit of a break. I’ve been working almost non-stop.’

  ‘Your work has paid off, Virginie, believe me. Now, would you like me to take you back to the hostel and get a change of clothes?’

  ‘I wish I got invitations like that,’ said Gouppilleau. ‘We have another mutual friend in Yveline, the gendarme commandante, and she says St Denis is the best posting she’s ever had. She too says you’re a good cook.’

  ‘We like Yveline too,’ said Bruno, wondering why he’d never before noticed that his women colleagues, whether gendarmes, Police Nationale or municipal, would naturally have their own networks and friendships. He had his own wide range of connections, male and female, from sports and hunting clubs to the regional archaeological society. He saw them as a real asset, not only in human, friendly terms but in the way people could share skills, tips and local knowledge.

  ‘I’d really like to have a bit of a break and get away from Périgueux for a day or so,’ Virginie said. ‘But I wouldn’t want to be in your way. I know you have work to do.’

  ‘I thought you might like to see Elisabeth’s exhibition at the museum in Les Eyzies, which led to your coming down here,’ he said. ‘Then you might like to meet a colleague of mine, the town policewoman and some other friends. I was on fire watch last night so I’ll be spared that tonight and I’ll have time to cook.’

  ‘I’m a vegan,’ Virginie said. ‘I hope that won’t be a problem.’

  Bruno remembered the welcome gift of foie gras he’d given her and strove manfully to keep his expression unchanged. ‘That means no butter, eggs or cheese, is that right?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice neutral and wondering what she had done with the foie gras and cheese he’d given her. ‘And no cooking with duck fat.’

  Virginie nodded cheerfully and said, ‘I don’t mind watching other people eat meat and stuff. I used to eat it myself. And I don’t do without butter. You can buy it made from soya milk, sunflower oil, salt and lemon juice. I even make my own vegan pastry. I could show you how to prepare it, if you like.’

  Twenty minutes later, after a brief call to J-J who was still at the hospital with Baldin, and another to Gilles to say he’d be bringing Virginie, they arrived at the student hostel, where she packed a small bag and they set off for St Denis. Balzac was in the back of the van and the reconstituted skull of Max had been carefully packed in a hat box that was at Virginie’s feet. Gilles and Fabiola now occupied a house that Bruno knew well. It had been Pamela’s home when he’d first known her, before she and Miranda had taken over the riding school. Gilles came out from his study when he heard Bruno’s van, shook hands with Virginie, and showed her to the spare room to leave her bag.

  ‘What happened to her face?’ Gilles asked when he and Bruno were alone. Bruno explained, briefly, and suggested Gilles not bring it up.

  ‘OK, but what about dinner?’ Gilles asked.

  ‘I thought I’d cook, using your kitchen if that’s all right. Virginie’s a vegan so I thought it would be a challenge to make a meal from my vegetables, if you don’t mind being guinea pigs.’

  ‘No problem for me but Pamela’s coming with the Baron, since you missed the Monday dinner,’ Gilles eyes twinkled. ‘Let’s try an experiment. You prepare a vegan meal and see if the Baron notices. I doubt whether he’s ever had one in his life.’

  ‘Of course he’ll notice. He loves his meat.’

  ‘I bet you he doesn’t – a bottle of wine on it.’

  ‘Done,’ said Bruno.

  They had time for a cup of coffee with Gilles before Bruno drove Virginie to the museum in Les Eyzies, where Clothilde had promised to show her the exhibition of Elisabeth Daynès’s skulls. Bruno put the hat box on Clothilde’s desk and invited Virginie to open it.

  ‘This is what I was hoping for when I first saw the exhibition,’ he said as Virginie displayed the extraordinarily lifelike head she had made of Oscar’s original skull.

  ‘This is why I think your work is so good,’ he added, pulling from his briefcase one of the photos of Max that Yves had put together from the various snapshots taken at the félibrée three decades earlier.

  ‘Virginie refused ever to look at this photo, saying it would influence her work, but you can see the likeness is uncanny,’ he told Clothilde. ‘It’s manifestly the same man.’

  He used his phone to take a photo of Clothilde, Virginie and the skull and sent it off to Elisabeth in Paris. He sent her a copy of the composite photo of Max so that Elisabeth could see how close a likeness Virginie had achieved with the skull. Clothilde asked Virginie what had happened to her nose.

  ‘Just an accident,’ Virginie replied. ‘It got broken but it’s not serious and it doesn’t hurt. The doctor at the police station gave me a painkiller.’

  Clothilde glanced at Bruno with a raised eyebrow but tactfully left it at that. She praised Virginie’s work and suggested she might like to look round the rest of the museum and visit the workrooms, usually off-limits to the public. Clothilde’s colleagues were hoping to hear Virginie describe the reconstruction procedure over lunch and then take her to some other of the local sites. Bruno was just wondering whether he should explain to Clothilde what Virginie had been through, when she said eagerly, ‘Yes, please. I’d really like to learn more about these prehistoric people.’

  ‘We thought you might like to see the original Cro-Magnon site where the first skeletons were found a hundred and fifty years ago, and then the Abri Pataud. Bruno has a tendresse for the young woman whose skull was found there,’ Clothilde added.

  ‘That sounds great,’ Virginie said, while Bruno marvelled at the resilience of youth.

  ‘I’ll be back to pick you up around five,’ Bruno said. He left Virginie at the museum and dro
ve back to St Denis to tackle his emails and paperwork. He settled Balzac in his office and then briefed the Mayor and told him of Virginie’s arrival, then checked on Albert’s fire report. There had been a serious blaze that morning in the woods east of St Cyprien, starting in a section that had been clear cut a few months earlier, leaving a tangle of dry branches and twigs on the ground. It was the first time Albert had called in the water-dropping aircraft. Getting the blaze under control had required the fire engines of St Cyprien, St Denis and Sarlat, plus a hundred volunteers. Bruno opened his window and leaned out over the balcony, looking towards the east, wondering if he might see the smoke, but the warm winds from the south would be taking it north towards Montignac.

  Why did everything have to happen at once? he wondered. The fires, J-J’s obsession with Oscar, the attack on Virginie, Balzac’s puppies, the Belleville Mairie, the Dresden orphanage and the mysterious offer of the Rosenholz material to the Elysée: they seemed to be rolling in on him like so many storm clouds. And what on earth did one cook for a vegan? He smiled at himself, knowing he could always relax by thinking of menus. He would make a cold summer soup to begin and beignets de courgettes which he could serve with tapenade de tomates instead of the usual aillou. For the main course he could make the kabocha pumpkin dish that Ivan’s new Japanese girlfriend had offered in Ivan’s bistro. He’d seen the pumpkins on sale in the bio store. And citrouilles rôtis a la sauge et aux noix – roasted pumpkin with sage and walnuts – was a classic French dish, with shallots, parsnips and potatoes in the roasting pan alongside. He’d remove a portion for Virginie so that for the others he could add slices of cabécou goat cheese which would slump in the heat of the vegetables. He’d serve it with a salad of thinly sliced heirloom tomatoes of different colours from his garden, drizzled with oil; followed by pêches au vin rouge.

  He had everything he needed in his garden except for the pumpkins and parsnips. He was about to make a quick trip to the local bio shop when the phone rang. It was Isabelle.

  ‘Two bits of news. Despite General Lannes’ objections, the Elysée wants to go ahead with the lawyer’s deal; his client gets immunity in return for the Rosenholz material. And my colleagues in Canada have come up with some dynamite.’

  Isabelle explained that her contact in Canadian security had sent a colleague based in Quebec City, accompanied by a uniformed policeman, to visit Loriot. They told him they were investigating a Canadian connection to Henri Bazaine at the request of the French police and asked him about the payments to Bazaine. Loriot became uncomfortable and said it was for consulting on different grape varieties and on techniques for mass marketing and box wines. Then they asked why had he paid Bazaine so often when immigration records showed that he’d only visited Canada once? What kind of consultancy was this? Loriot became even more uncomfortable and said he wanted a lawyer. Then they asked about the fake French ID that Loriot had used when he first came to Canada, noting that it could invalidate the Canadian citizenship he’d later acquired. When he remained silent, they played the trump card, asking if he’d ever heard from Jacques and Sylvie Lefort of the Dresden orphanage.

  ‘At that point Loriot broke down,’ Isabelle said. ‘They arrested him for making false statements on his citizenship application, suggested several more charges that could be brought and now Loriot’s lawyer is trying to reach a deal.’

  ‘What kind of deal?’ Bruno asked.

  ‘He’ll tell everything he knows if he can stay out of prison and be allowed to remain in Canada.’

  ‘Does the Elysée know about this?’

  ‘Not yet. I just briefed Lannes and he’s going to let them know. He’s hoping that they’ll now reconsider the deal with Maître Vautan.’

  ‘And in the meantime Henri Bazaine is allowed to remain free?’ Bruno asked. ‘Has J-J been informed of that?’

  ‘I don’t know but Lannes talked to Prunier. Is that not the chain of command you old military guys like to work with?’

  Bruno smiled because he could hear the teasing in her voice and could imagine the mischievous grin on her face as she said this.

  ‘In principle, maybe,’ he said, chuckling. ‘But in practice, we old military guys usually find it easier to work somewhat less formally, a bit like the way you and I try to keep each other informed.’

  After ending the call he went to the bio shop and bought the pumpkins and parsnips and a big tourte of bread. On the way back he saw an unusual vehicle that looked like a furniture van that had been painted red, heading down the Rue de la République towards the fire station. He followed on foot, to see another strange engine drawn up on the forecourt. It looked like a giant off-road four-by-four with enormous wheels but it was obviously some kind of fire engine, with pump settings and coiled hoses stashed along the side. Ahmed, Albert’s deputy, was standing talking to the driver of the huge van and Bruno asked him what it was.

  ‘A water tender, carries about eight thousand litres,’ Ahmed replied, before introducing Bruno to the driver who had come from Bordeaux.

  ‘We really should have more tenders like this because there’s never enough water when you’re facing forest fires,’ Ahmed went on. ‘It’s not like in town where you can connect your hose to a water main. And our power hoses pump out nearly a thousand litres a minute. With four hoses, we can empty a tender in two minutes.’

  ‘Can’t you stick your hoses in a river and draw it up that way?’

  ‘If the river is close enough, we do. Anything over four hundred metres and we’ll need extra pumps and we might run out of hoses. And rivers have silt and debris that can clog them. Quite a few houses around here have their own swimming pool, which is great because even a small pool can hold a hundred thousand litres. We’ve got drones identifying the pools near enough to the blaze to help. But if there are no pools, we’re dependent on the aircraft dumping water.’

  ‘But you pump water onto the flames. Just like you would with a house, don’t you?’ Bruno asked. He’d never thought much about the way firefighters had to work.

  ‘We usually save our hoses for the hot spots, they’re the main danger. A really bad one we have to try doing a knockdown to suppress it because they can suck in enough air to create their own small firestorm. Then they can move very fast, faster than a man can run.’

  ‘What if you can’t knock a hotspot down?’

  ‘You get out fast and try to set a control line some distance ahead to stop it. That’s what we mainly do on the ground, which is why bulldozers can be as useful as water when you’re fighting wildfires. We try to set control lines to steer the fire into directions we want it to go, like towards a river that’s wide enough to block the fire. We usually try back-burning, deliberately setting small fires ahead of the fire so it runs out of fuel.’

  ‘Is there anything untrained people like me can do?’

  ‘The main thing is to evacuate people in danger. We always need bulldozer drivers to help set control lines and people who are good with drones are really useful right now.’

  ‘Do you have enough skilled people?’

  Ahmed shrugged. ‘You never have enough. But we have crews who’ve come in from as far north as Normandy. They’re now fighting the fires in the Landes. Even with them and the aircraft, we’re going to lose a lot of forest, that’s for sure, and maybe some of the walnut plantations.’

  ‘Are you on duty tonight?’

  ‘Yes, while Albert tries to get some sleep. He’s run ragged already. How about you? You’re on again tomorrow night?’

  Bruno nodded. ‘What’s the forecast on how long that south wind keeps up?’

  ‘All week, at least. What are those blue things you’re carrying?

  ‘Japanese pumpkins, an experiment – I thought I’d roast them with shallots and potatoes with a few parsnips and get some slices of goat’s cheese melting over the top . . .’

  ‘Sounds interesting, let me know h
ow it works out.’

  ‘Will do. I hope it’s a quiet night for you,’ said Bruno.

  22

  Bruno collected Virginie from Les Eyzies and brought her back to visit the Mayor and show him her recreation of Max’s head. He found him in an excellent mood. This usually meant that some event had gone entirely to his satisfaction.

  ‘Just had the Defence Ministry on the line, one of the Minister’s staff,’ the Mayor said. ‘As of tonight, the military will be taking part in fire-watch duties from their big transmission towers, not just ours but wherever there’s a fire alert. A rare victory for common sense.’

  Virginie thanked him for his support of the project that had brought her to the region, and opened the hat box to display the head she had crafted of Max. Bruno handed him a copy of the composite photo and the Mayor nodded appreciatively as he compared the two.

  ‘I don’t think I’d have believed it if I hadn’t seen the result of your work with my own eyes. It’s a remarkable achievement and your first solo effort, I believe. Presumably you will have to show this to your teacher in Paris, but after that and when the court case is complete, we’d be honoured to display your work here in St Denis.’

  ‘Commissaire Jalipeau says he would like to have it for the police museum,’ Virginie replied. ‘But now I’ve done the first one I’m sure I can make a replica for him very easily and I don’t think he’d know the difference.’

  Nor would we, thought Bruno to himself, as he led her downstairs to his van for the drive back to his home. And that means Virginie could have two contented customers, each with their own skull, and possibly even a third in Elisabeth’s Paris showroom.

  ‘What a lovely place and a terrific view,’ she said, as Bruno parked in his driveway. She stepped out to admire his garden and watch Balzac trot off to see the geese and chickens. ‘And you have so many vegetables growing here I’d have sworn you were another vegan.’

  ‘No, I’m a happy omnivore but I do like growing and eating my own fruit and vegetables. We’ll dine tonight with Gilles and Fabiola at the house where you left your bag.’