A thought struck Bruno. “Would any science diploma be sufficient? Someone with a chemistry degree from Paris, for example?”
“If you can find someone with a Paris degree in chemistry to teach at our college I’ll make you headmaster. Even with the new budget, we can only pay two thousand a month. I may have to settle for someone with a science bac and a teaching certificate.”
“Is the teaching certificate essential?”
“Not entirely. Somebody with good science qualifications can get the certificate while teaching under supervision. I’m senior enough to arrange that. Why, did you have someone in mind?”
“A young woman in Ste. Alvere, recently divorced and raising two kids. She’s working part-time at the truffle market for about half of what you’re offering. She strikes me as a very sharp woman, and she’s got a chemistry degree and a research diploma.”
“A research diploma? That means she’d qualify for an extra five hundred a month. Do you think she’d do it?”
“I’ll ask her,” said Bruno, after a quick mental calculation that told him Florence, if she took the job, could be earning more than he did. He thumbed through his mobile phone for the numbers he’d taken down at the truffle market and punched in the call.
After Bruno relayed his conversation with Rollo, there was a silence on the other end of the line.
“Bruno, is this a joke?” she asked.
“No, not at all. Let me pass you to the headmaster. School hours and vacations, that’s good for your children. He says you can qualify for the teaching certificate while working. Here he is.”
He handed his phone to Rollo and leaned back against the wall while they spoke and arranged to meet. When Rollo handed back the phone, Bruno said, “She’s got a miserable job in Ste. Alvere, working for a real bastard.”
“You mean Didier at the truffle market? I was at school with him. I didn’t know him well, but he wasn’t much liked. He used to enjoy making girls cry.”
“He still does,” said Bruno. “Let me know how you get on with Florence.”
“With those qualifications, if she can stand up and see the blackboard, I’ll hire her,” said Rollo, and he walked toward Gelletreau’s office with a spring in his step. At the door he turned. “Will I see you at the meeting tonight? You know the Greens and Socialists are announcing their pact for the elections?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
Rollo paused. “You know this means the mayor could lose?”
Bruno nodded.
“Where would that leave you?”
Bruno shrugged. “I wouldn’t lose my job. But a new mayor could have me transferred elsewhere.”
“ Merde, Bruno. Tell people that, and the mayor wins by a landslide.” Rollo winked and went into the consulting room.
As he left the medical center, Bruno’s phone rang. J-J’s number was on the screen.
“They’ve got four guys here at the house, and they’ve been through everything. No sign of the truffle journal,” J-J said. “But there is a safe-deposit key for a bank in Bergerac, and I’m arranging for an authorization letter to examine the contents tomorrow. And there was no journal listed in his belongings on the forensic report. And talking of forensics, they have some interesting stuff from the stolen Mercedes. Human hair, a cigarette butt and a used tissue, which means DNA evidence if we ever manage to find a suspect. By the way, you’ll be in trouble with the investigating magistrate for taking the Land Rover.”
“No, I won’t. Forensics had already examined it and gave me the receipt to prove it. And I’m an executor of Vendrot’s estate. What’s more, he left me the vehicle in his will, along with that journal.”
“You go on like this and you’ll be a suspect,” said J-J. Bruno could almost see his grin through the phone connection.
“That’s what Isabelle said.”
“She’ll get her hands on you yet. Listen, I’m going back to Perigueux to take a look at the Chinese restaurant. You get anything out of the Duongs?”
“Not much. They said Vinh and his wife are safe and they’ll try to put me in touch.”
“No cooperation?”
“Not much. They’re frightened and clammed up. Duong came in a car with a driver and what looked like a bodyguard. Did you put in a request for the citizenship papers?”
“First thing I did. And I also spoke to this special unit in Paris that’s dealing with Chinese organized crime, and they’re sending somebody down to work on the fire. They added their own priority onto the request and say we should get something on the citizenship papers tomorrow.”
“We’ll talk then,” said Bruno, and checked the time before he closed his phone. He’d just have time to take his dog for a run, shower and change and pick up Pamela before the meeting. And he’d better take that side of venison out of the baron’s freezer on the way. That was the unwritten rule. When a hunting friend died, you ate some of the last meat you’d hunted together and then drank to his passing.
11
The dining room of the retirement home was the largest indoor space in St. Denis, and by far the most popular for political meetings, since even the most boring event would get at least a modest audience from the old folk. But this time it was more than crowded, with the tables stacked away, every chair occupied and another hundred people standing against the walls and in the doorways. Bruno was impressed. At least one in ten of the inhabitants of the commune of St. Denis was present, and he couldn’t remember any previous political meeting getting even half that number. At the far end of the room three more chairs were squeezed precariously onto a very small dais, and Alphonse was trying to stop the microphone from howling every time he brought it toward him.
“Turn your phone off,” shouted someone from the front row. Alphonse obeyed, and the electronic howling stopped.
“Friends, comrades, fellow citizens of Planet Earth,” he began. “This is a public meeting, but only those with Green and Socialist Party membership cards will be allowed to vote. And we have our party lists here, so we’ll know who you are before we hand out the ballots. It will all be democratic and transparent.
“As you know, we’ve hammered out a joint program for the Greens and Socialists for next year’s municipal elections. There are copies of the program here in the hall for anybody who hasn’t read it already. If it’s approved tonight, we’ll present a common list of candidates next year, whose names will be on tonight’s ballot paper. So there’ll be one box to vote for the program, another box for the common list of candidates and a last one for our joint nominee for mayor. We all know and like Gerard Mangin, but he’s been mayor for too long, and it’s time for a change. So now let me present our joint candidate, born and bred in St. Denis, as good a Green as he is a Socialist, Guillaume Pons.”
The contrast between the mumbling Alphonse and the dynamic and dashing figure of Pons in his open-necked white shirt was more than striking. It was like a shift in time between Alphonse’s era of dull but worthy causes and a new politics of image and excitement. Bruno could almost feel a thrill of expectation run through the hall as Alphonse handed over the microphone. Pons climbed up onto a chair and beamed at the crowd.
“Can you all see me?” he asked. A roar came back. “Can you all hear me?” Another roar. “Welcome to everybody, Greens, Socialists, Communists and monarchists, you’re all welcome here tonight-just so long as you don’t try to build a sawmill where we’re trying to raise our children.”
Another roar, but this time it was mainly laughter. Bruno found himself warming to the man, Pons’s charm somehow coming across in public in a way that Bruno hadn’t seen before in St. Denis. People instinctively took to him. Within thirty seconds, Pons had established himself as a born speaker and politician. Even the hard-line old lefties who thought it heresy to have a common program with the Greens were smiling.
“Now I’m sorry to say that here comes the boring part, but it’s important for our kids and our town, so we’re going to have to put up with it as we go through the c
ommon program we’ve agreed upon.” He paused. “And if it’s going to be a dull ten minutes for you all, then think about those of us who spent ten hours drafting this.”
More laughter, and then a respectful and interested silence as Pons went through the ten points. Bruno wouldn’t have disagreed with a word of it, nor would Mayor Mangin, or any other politician in France. It was a list of generalities on jobs, the environment, low taxes and the importance of children and the elderly. It was so bland that Bruno felt his customary skepticism start to creep back.
“He’s a good speaker,” Pamela murmured, her eyes fixed on Pons. Beside her, Fabiola looked at Bruno and rolled her eyes. He winked back at her, relieved that he wasn’t the only one to find this party manifesto less than persuasive.
“Now you may say that this program is not very detailed, and you’d be right,” Pons went on, running his fingers through his already tousled hair. “But we have spent a lot of time working together on this and learning that we can indeed work together. What we have produced here is a set of binding principles. I repeat, binding principles. They are our bedrock, our moral and political foundation, and these principles will inform and shape every decision we take as members of your town council.
“I can’t tell you tonight what’s going to come up. Let’s be honest about this. I don’t know what new regulations on water supply and sewage we’ll get from Paris or what new rules on recycling we’ll get from Brussels. Nobody yet knows what the regional council may ask us to do about public housing or about building codes. But what we can promise you is that we’ll never violate the principles I have spelled out tonight. Your jobs are too important, and the air your children breathe is too important.”
“So why did you close down the sawmill and put me out of work?” came a shout from the crowd. Bruno turned and saw it was Marcel, the foreman at the sawmill.
“We didn’t,” Pons replied. “The law did that. We put up compromise after compromise to keep the sawmill open and to save your jobs. We offered to buy a piece of land that would have made the sawmill legal. And we all know who turned us down. We’ve done a lot here in St. Denis, all of us, all of you and every taxpayer, to help hang on to those jobs. Your own taxes helped pay for the last piece of antipollution equipment that was installed. And that was the right thing to do, because jobs and the environment have to go together. We can’t be made prisoners of a false choice between the two-that is principle number seven in our joint program.”
More cheers. It was a clever answer, Bruno concluded, conciliatory and glib at the same time. And already Pons was changing the subject to talk about the plan to turn the empty sawmill into an industrial eco-park with tax-free premises for green jobs. He didn’t know where Pons had learned public speaking, but Bruno acknowledged that he was very good at it. Pamela was right about that. He cast his mind back to the evening in Pons’s restaurant when he had spoken of his various careers in Asia. Hadn’t he been a salesman, a champagne salesman, or was it cognac? And he’d been a teacher, so had grown accustomed to speaking in public. And he’d been a croupier in a casino, whatever skills that had taught him.
He began to make mental note of the sequence of tricks that Pons was using: the joke, the arms opened wide, the self-deprecating grin, the sudden turn to solemnity as he banged one fist into his palm to make his points, one, two, three. This was political speaking by numbers, Bruno thought. Pons was playing his audience like an angler plays a fish, and from the rapt faces around him, they were enjoying the manipulation.
Bruno glanced down at Pamela. Her eyes were shining, and the warm smile on her face gave way to a look of purpose as Pons struck another serious note. Her hand came up to touch her own cheek, her little finger just brushing the corner of her lips as if unconsciously caressing herself. It was an almost intimate gesture, and he was startled to see it here.
Looking around the hall, Bruno noticed similar gestures among other women, touching their hair or putting a hand to their necks or their temples. The men were reacting differently, their heads nodding or their jaws set firm before relaxing into a smile again. Suddenly he was aware of Fabiola watching him as he studied the crowd. She seemed immune to Pons’s skills, shaking her head as she looked at Bruno. She was as unmoved as he.
Fabiola sidled around Pamela and put a hand on Bruno’s shoulder. “I don’t like this. It feels creepy,” she said, too quietly for Pamela to hear.
“I know what you mean,” he said.
“Can you do something?” Fabiola whispered. “He seems to have cast a spell over people.”
Bruno shrugged. He was known to be close to the mayor. Even if he could think of some way to intervene, it would be seen as a political move, even a hostile one. That might do more harm than good. But almost without being aware of it, he raised his hand and took advantage of one of Pons’s dramatic pauses to call out, “Will you take questions?”
“Who’s that? I can’t see with these lights. Of course I’ll take a question.”
People were standing back from Bruno, giving him space.
“Oh, it’s you, Bruno, our respected chief of police. I didn’t recognize you out of uniform,” Pons said. “Welcome to the meeting. What do you want to know?”
“It’s about the town budget,” Bruno began, using his parade-ground voice so that his words would carry. “We all know that the sawmill was one of the biggest taxpayers in St. Denis and we’re going to lose that money. How big a hole will it make in the budget and how does your program plan to fill it? Will you have to raise our taxes? Perhaps Alphonse could answer this as well, since you’re partners.”
Pons studied Bruno for a moment, then glanced around the crowd, as if he were measuring the degree to which their mood had changed.
“That’s a very good question, and it’s one all of us in this hall are going to have to think about and work together as we try to answer it. But let’s hear from my friend Alphonse first. Just one thing, Bruno,” Pons said with one of his trademark smiles. “If I’ve got anything to do with it, your own salary will be safe from any cuts. You’re too valuable a member of this community.”
That raised a laugh, and Bruno felt himself color slightly, almost angry. Alphonse took the microphone and began stammering about priorities and hard choices while all the energy leaked from the meeting like air from a deflating balloon. People in the crowd began to shuffle their feet and mutter to their neighbors as he tried to come up with a number that would answer Bruno’s question. When he sat down, nobody was at all clear what Alphonse had said. Pons took the microphone again.
“I can’t give you this year’s figures because we don’t have them yet, but on the basis of last year’s budget, the sawmill paid less than five percent of the tax revenue. That’s a challenge, but it’s not a desperate one, and it gives us an opportunity to use the old sawmill premises for new businesses and new jobs.”
People began to drift toward the doors at the back. Pons noticed and changed his tone.
“We don’t want to be here all night, so let’s move to the main business of the evening, the vote. We have two voting tables-Green Party members to my left, Socialist Party members to my right. Show your membership card and get your ballot paper, cast your vote and put it in the boxes provided. Thanks to our student volunteers from the college, we’ll have the result counted within five minutes. And let’s give a big hand to our young people for volunteering to come and help us with our town meeting tonight.”
This brought scattered applause, the sounds of chairs being pushed back and then a chaotic muddle of people moving left and right to get to the voting tables as they paused to greet one another and shake hands and forget which table they were heading for.
“Well done, Bruno,” murmured Xavier in his ear. “For a moment there I thought we were going to elect him mayor by popular acclamation.” The deputy mayor squeezed Bruno’s arm and moved on. Then came a thump on Bruno’s back, and Montsouris, the only Communist on the council, put his burly arm around B
runo’s shoulders.
“Good question, Bruno. And even better timing,” he said, and moved to rejoin his much more left-wing wife.
“I have to go and vote,” said Pamela at Bruno’s side. “I didn’t know you were so serious about the town budget.”
“I didn’t know you’d joined a party. You have to be a member to vote tonight,” Bruno said. “That’s why I can’t vote. I’m nonpolitical.”
“Oh yes, I joined the Greens yesterday,” she said. “It seemed like a good idea to get involved. Bill signed me up himself. I’ll be right back. Are you still coming for supper afterward?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for anything. No time for lunch today.”
“You handled that well,” said Fabiola, once Pamela was out of earshot. “I didn’t know what to do, but I felt we had to do something. I hate that crowd thing, when people all get caught up in an emotion like that. You’d think we’d have learned by now.”
“You haven’t joined a party?” Bruno asked her.
“I got all that out of my system when I was a student,” she said, smiling. “Very militant, I was. I began with straight Marxism and then drifted off to the Trotskyists. I almost became a Maoist, but then the feminist movement got me, then the mountain climbing. The mountains cured me of politics. And there was also a very cute mountain climber who rescued me from the feminists just in time to settle down to study for my medical finals.”
“Well, you know the old saying: If you’re not on the left when you’re twenty, you have no heart.”
“And if you’re still there when you’re thirty, you have no head. My dad used to say it to me, and he’d been a Communist.” She paused. “I get the impression this is Pamela’s first flirtation with politics,” Fabiola said. “It can be a dangerous experience, when you come to it late.”
She looked meaningfully across the hall to the stage, where Pons was bending down attentively to talk to Pamela. Bruno noticed that Pons’s Chinese chef was standing watchfully at the side of the stage, getting his first taste of French democracy. He reminded himself that he really needed to check on getting the man’s nieces into school, but was distracted when a very pretty young blond girl whirled into his arms and gave him a strong hug. A large paternal presence loomed behind her, his plump face in a wide grin and his hand out to be shaken.
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