The Coldest Case

by Martin Walker

  He went to the kitchen and brought out a wicker basket and let Virginie pick the courgettes, herbs and tomatoes he’d be preparing. He cut down onions, garlic and shallots from the braided strings that hung from beams in his kitchen. He added a carrot to the basket for his horse. Then he led her to the rear of his cottage and let her choose between the peaches, apricots and figs on his trees for their dessert. She took a selection of all three.

  ‘Don’t you entertain here?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, often, but with a fire warning in place, the local fire chief has forbidden me from staying here overnight since it’s so close to the woodland. As the local policeman I’m on his list of essential personnel, like the Mayor, doctors and pharmacists. I’m staying at the Mayor’s house until we get the all-clear. I’m very pleased that these fruit and vegetables we’re taking away won’t be going up in smoke.’

  ‘What about your chickens?’

  ‘If a fire looks like getting close, my job is to organize an evacuation for some neighbours who live out of sight but quite nearby, which means I’ll have time to rescue the geese and chickens. I’ve already stored my essential documents and personal treasures in town. That reminds me, I need to bring up some wine from the cellar for our dinner tonight.’

  ‘Is that why I’m staying at your friends’ house, because of the danger of fire?’

  ‘No, I thought it inappropriate to invite you to stay with me, and it means you’ll make new friends. We’re also dining there because Gilles wants to talk to you about your work on the skull. He mainly writes books these days but he was on Libération and then Paris Match for many years so he still does journalism. Now we’ll call in at the stables so you can say hello to Hector, my horse. You may also meet another friend who’s coming to dinner, Pamela. She runs the riding school, a cookery school and some gîtes for tourists.’

  ‘I was raised in cities so I don’t ride and I don’t know much about horses.’

  ‘Nor did I before coming here. I grew up in Bergerac and only learned about the country once I arrived in St Denis, over ten years ago,’ he said. ‘I didn’t ride, didn’t know much about dogs or chickens or even about gardening. You can learn all these things and every single one of them has enriched my life. I didn’t know much about wine, either, but I’ve really enjoyed getting to know winemakers and beginning to understand a little of what they do.’

  ‘My mum always used to say you should never stop learning because life never stops offering you lessons.’

  ‘She sounds like a wise woman,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and meet Hector, and Pamela, and two of Balzac’s friends, sheepdogs called Beau and Bella.’

  When they arrived at Pamela’s place, she was in the courtyard of the stables with her horse, Primrose, already saddled. She greeted Virginie, saying, ‘You must be the artist Bruno has been telling us about, or are you a sculptor?’

  ‘I think I’m more a technician.’

  ‘That’s not what I hear about your work, and it’s not what I saw at the museum of the creations your teacher made from skulls. I think what you do is extraordinary.’ Pamela turned to Bruno. ‘Do you want to take Hector out?’

  ‘Virginie doesn’t ride. And she just had a bit of an accident, broke her nose.’

  ‘Poor thing. Miranda is about to start with the beginners, putting young girls onto a pony and walking them round the ring. Would you like to try that, Virginie?’

  ‘Not today, but I’d like to watch while Bruno goes for his ride. May I meet Hector, please?’

  Bruno led the way to Hector’s stall, took the carrot from his pocket, broke it in half and gave half to Virginie and showed her how to hold out her hand and let Hector find his own way to the treat and not to worry; the horse wouldn’t bite. He held out his own half-carrot first and told Virginie to watch from the side and see how delicately the horse took it.

  ‘You’ll feel his breath on your hand, very warm, and his amazingly soft lips and then without you noticing, it’s gone and he’s chewing away.’

  Bruno put on his riding boots and cap as Virginie rather nervously held out her hand but then kept it immobile as Hector took his treat. He brought the saddle across, kneed Hector gently in the tummy as he tightened the girth and then fitted the bridle. He gave the rein to Virginie, suggesting she lead him out to the yard to join Pamela and Primrose. They showed Virginie the way to the rail from where she could watch the ponies walking sedately round the ring as Miranda stood in the centre, encouraging the little girls, some as young as six or seven.

  Pamela let Primrose ease into a canter as they left the paddock by the lower path that led up a gentle slope to the church at St Chamassy. She was avoiding the woodlands, thought Bruno, perhaps nervous at the thought of fire. There wasn’t much chance of a decent gallop on this track. It was the long, straight firebreaks between patches of forest that gave the best chance of the kind of run that Hector and his rider most appreciated. Still, with Virginie in tow he should not indulge himself; there were limits to how long one could watch small girls parading past, each on her placid pony. Within twenty minutes, they were back at the riding school, and as they rubbed down the horses Bruno explained his bet with Gilles.

  ‘You!’ she exclaimed, laughing. ‘You’re cooking vegan? Wonders will never cease. If this works, I might have a whole new task for you at the cookery school – we can call you the vegan master-chef of Périgord, if that’s not a contradiction in terms. How on earth can you cook, my dear Bruno, you of all people, without your beloved duck fat, without your cherished bouillon from wild boar, your cheese and your cream?’

  ‘In the face of such a challenge, Pamela, I shall be inspired,’ he replied, grandly. He made a flourish with his hand and bowed low in the manner of some Renaissance courtier, and Pamela playfully threw her brush at him. At this point Virginie appeared at the stable door.

  ‘Am I interrupting something?’ she asked, her voice hesitant but she was grinning.

  ‘Not at all,’ announced Pamela. ‘It’s an old Périgord custom to throw a brush at your cavalier after an enjoyable ride.’ She paused as Virginie raised her eyebrows and then chuckled. ‘Oh, dear,’ Pamela added quickly. ‘Please don’t misunderstand me, I didn’t mean to phrase it like that.’ She giggled. Bruno laughed in turn and Balzac, not to be left out, jumped up. Virginie looked back and forth at them and then joined in the laughter.

  ‘It’s lovely to laugh like that even though it makes my nose hurt,’ she said, and burst into giggles again.

  ‘Now I have to cook,’ said Bruno. He looked at Pamela, who was smiling at Virginie, thinking how fond he was of this generous, warm-hearted Scotswoman who’d made her home in the Périgord.

  ‘And I’d better head for the shower,’ said Pamela. ‘Virginie, feel free to use the spare bathroom. Bruno, you should leave now if you’re cooking at Fabiola’s and I’ll bring Virginie along in my car.’

  With Balzac back in his favourite place on the passenger seat, Bruno drove the route he knew so well to Pamela’s old house. After greeting his friends, he installed himself in the familiar kitchen with his basket of fruit and vegetables and the wines he’d brought. There was a bottle of Château Lestevenie white, which was certified vegan, which meant no egg whites had been used in the finings to clarify the wine. And then for the omnivores one of Château de Tiregand red and a bottle of Rosette from Château du Rooy, a slightly sweet white wine that was unique to the Bergerac and a perfect apéro for a summer evening. The white wines went in the fridge and the red wine he opened so it could breathe for a while before dinner.

  First, he turned the oven on, set to a hundred and seventy degrees centigrade. He chopped the pumpkins into slices about an inch thick and put them into his biggest roasting pan with a small head of celery, equally sliced. He then mixed a cup of maple syrup into the same amount of olive oil, poured the mixture into the roasting pan and tossed the pumpkin and celery slices un
til they were all coated. He added salt and pepper and put the pan into the oven for twenty-five minutes. In that time, he made the soup, chopping four fat green peppers, peeling and then chopping two cucumbers, and tossing them all into a blender with two chopped onions. He added several cloves of garlic that he squeezed through a press, salt, pepper, olive oil, tarragon vinegar and two glasses of Bergerac Sec white wine. Once blended he put the soup into the freezer to chill.

  Then Bruno washed the peaches, figs and apricots and put them into a bowl. Now he had just enough time to make the sauce for the pumpkins. He chopped a generous handful of fresh sage, put it into a bowl with a pound of walnut halves, added a pinch of sea salt and then poured in another splash of maple syrup and a tablespoon of olive oil and stirred them all together. He checked his timing. The twenty-five minutes were up. He took the roasting dish from the oven, poured the sage, walnut and maple syrup mixture over the pumpkin slices, tossed them again and put the dish to one side. When he served the chilled soup, he’d put it back into the oven. He then sliced the tomatoes he’d brought. He made a dressing with a little walnut oil and tarragon vinegar and tossed them with a couple of handfuls of shredded basil. He was washing his hands when Gilles appeared, handing him a glass of white wine and then loading a tray with plates and glasses to set the table in the courtyard.

  ‘All in order?’ Gilles asked. ‘Will your vegan feast meet our mutual expectations? This is a bet I truly wish to lose.’

  ‘Who knows?’ Bruno replied, as they heard the unmistakable sound of Pamela’s ancient Citroën deux-chevaux. ‘I’ve never done this before.’

  They went out to welcome their guests and Fabiola appeared looking enchanting in a sleeveless dress of light-blue silk belted with a white sash. Pamela was wearing a kaftan of red and gold that set off the colours in her chestnut hair. Virginie had changed into something that Bruno recognized from Pamela’s wardrobe, an Indian-style garment of jodhpurs, tight on the calf, generously cut on the thighs, topped with an embroidered silk jacket. The bandage still covered her nose and tendrils of her pink hair splayed out from a white headband.

  Bruno and Gilles raised their glasses in admiration and then the Baron’s venerable Citroën DS, a car that dated from the fifties but still looked like something from the future, made its own grand entrance. The pneumatic suspension made the vehicle rock gently, like some prehistoric beast coming to rest, as the Baron braked it to a halt.

  ‘This is a charming idea,’ the Baron said, emerging to brandish a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne, which he proceeded to open. ‘I’m honoured to be welcomed by three such glorious women.’

  He was introduced to Virginie and avoiding her nose, kissed the air in the vicinity of her ears before embracing Pamela and Fabiola and greeting Gilles and Bruno. They were holding empty champagne flutes, ready to hand them to Fabiola, Virginie and Pamela once the Baron had filled the glasses.

  ‘Not good news on the radio, a fire in the woods east of Belvès and another north of St Pompont. The pompiers are trying to prevent them joining up and becoming more serious,’ the Baron said, drawing Bruno and Gilles aside and speaking in a low voice. ‘With this wind we could be smelling the smoke before dinner is over. We might even have to move indoors from the terrace.’

  Bruno knew the area, a thinly populated region with a lot of old woodland, stretching about twenty kilometres northwards to one of the most celebrated stretches of the River Dordogne, where it was flanked by the three castles of Milandes, Beynac and Castelnaud. Quietly he explained to the Baron and Gilles what he’d learned from Ahmed about the shortage of water tenders.

  ‘We’d better eat soon, in case I’m called away,’ he said, and asked Gilles to bring out the green gazpacho and start serving while Bruno went into the kitchen to put the pumpkins back into the oven. He sliced the fat tourte of bread and took it out to his friends on the terrace and sat down to enjoy the chilled soup.

  To his surprise, Fabiola was holding Virginie’s face. She had unpeeled the bandage and was looking carefully at her broken nose, still swollen and now marked by a wide purple bruise.

  ‘How on earth did this accident happen?’ she asked, glancing quickly at Bruno. ‘I don’t think you walked into a door. It looks to me as though somebody slapped you very hard.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Virginie. ‘Just a stupid cop. Bruno came along in time to stop anything worse happening.’

  Merde, Bruno thought to himself. The story would doubtless emerge when Baldin was formally charged but he didn’t want rumours to start spreading before that.

  ‘You were doing very well on your own, Virginie,’ he said. ‘I think we’d better leave it there for now. The cop has been suspended, there’s the usual internal police investigation under way and I’m told he’ll be formally charged with assault. Now, we’d better eat before the next course is ruined. Red wine or white?’ he asked, rising with a bottle in each hand, poised to pour.

  Fabiola wasn’t going to let it rest, though. Ignoring Bruno, she asked Virginie where she’d been treated. ‘A police doctor. They didn’t want me going to the emergency room at the hospital since the cop who attacked me had been taken there after I slashed him with a scalpel.’

  ‘This sounds rather serious,’ said Pamela. ‘Are we to presume this was a sexual assault by a policeman?’

  ‘I’m afraid it was,’ said Bruno. ‘But please do eat up. We have what could be a serious fire south of the Dordogne and I may get called away.’

  He began to eat and the others followed suit, except for Fabiola.

  ‘I’m very sorry that your visit here has been marred by this, Virginie,’ said Fabiola. ‘I thought you were working in the police lab in Périgueux. How come you were alone?’

  ‘One of the staff was on maternity leave and the chief technician had been taken to hospital last week for an unexpected appendix operation,’ Virginie replied. ‘The third one was in court, testifying on forensic evidence. It was just bad luck that all three were absent.’

  ‘Virginie’s work has been a great success,’ Bruno said, in another attempt to change the subject. ‘She’s helping us resolve a really fascinating thirty-year-old murder case.’

  ‘A sexual assault in a police station, and the assaulting cop taken to hospital after being stabbed by a young woman with a scalpel,’ said Gilles. ‘You won’t be able to keep that out of the press.’

  ‘Nor should it be kept out of the press,’ said Pamela. ‘I’ve half a mind to call Phillipe Delaron. What about you, Gilles? What do you think?’

  ‘I think we should listen to Virginie and Bruno and let the law take its course,’ Gilles replied. ‘This sounds to me as though it could be a messy case, a cop taken to hospital after being stabbed. The police union will get the cop a good lawyer. He might even try to get Virginie charged with assault.’

  ‘Please, just stop,’ said Bruno, rising to take his empty soup plate to the kitchen. ‘And all of you be assured that there is irrefutable evidence that this cop was engaged in a sexual assault on Virginie. I won’t go into details but this case is solid and the two top cops in Périgueux, male and female, are determined to throw the book at this bastard.’

  He collected the rest of the soup bowls, except for Fabiola’s who was still eating, and went into the kitchen to take the roast pumpkin dish from the oven, put the serving dish on a tray and take it out to his friends. To his relief, they were talking about the fire to the south, and sniffing at the wind to see if there was any trace of smoke on the steady breeze. Bruno put the dish onto the table and at once their noses caught the heady scent of sage, maple syrup and roast pumpkin. The conversation shifted at once to the food and the red wine, just as he’d hoped.

  23

  The call came for Bruno as they were enjoying their dessert of fresh peaches, asking him to report to the crossroads at the Siorac golf course, where the fire engines of St Denis, St Cyprien, Belvès and L
e Buisson were assembling. Another team was gathering at Sarlat, he was told, and a third at Gourdon. Reinforcements were on the way from Cahors and Périgueux. Mon Dieu, he thought, this is a maximum effort. As he rose from the table, Fabiola’s phone trilled out the opening chords of Noir Désir’s ‘Le Vent Nous Portera’. She was being summoned as well.

  Bruno had a sudden image of the powerful video that had accompanied the song, a mother and her child on a beach, the wind blowing away a sandcastle as the sky darkened and the mother searched in vain for her son as the wind drove her back. He shivered, hoping it was not an omen.

  Dinner was over. Gilles decided to drive Fabiola to the clinic and then report with his car to the St Denis fire station. He and the Baron were both on the list of volunteers to help drive people being evacuated to the shelter at the St Denis collège. Pamela said she’d drive Virginie back to her place where she could stay the night, since Gilles and Fabiola would both be away from their home. She would also look after Balzac.

  ‘Before we all go,’ said Gilles, ‘I have a question for the Baron. How did you enjoy the meal?’

  ‘Very good, reminded me of a meal I enjoyed in the Algerian war,’ he said, and then paused and his face widened into a smile. ‘I’d almost forgotten how delicious a meal of simple vegetables could be.’

  ‘I win,’ said Bruno. ‘Gilles bet me a bottle that you wouldn’t notice.’

  ‘But I didn’t notice all through the meal,’ the Baron said. ‘It didn’t cross my mind until Gilles asked the question in that rather pointed way which suggested that a private wager was at stake. And since I was given that clue, I’d call it a draw, except that we all won. It was a fine meal, Bruno. Off you go, and good luck.’

  Bruno called the Mayor, who was already at the St Denis fire station. He immediately asked, ‘What do you want me to do with your Land Rover? It’ll be far more useful off road than your police van and I’ve made sure the petrol tank is full. Philippe Delaron is here, about to go to Siorac where I gather the control point will be.’