Fatal Pursuit

by Martin Walker

  When they returned to the table with the loaded plates, the baron had joined them, bringing a double portion of mussels cooked in white wine for the table to share. Yveline had already bought salad and pommes frites for everyone, and Florence had ordered apple pies for dessert. Bruno, who enjoyed the way these night markets always seemed to expand beyond the original guests to create an unexpected fellowship in which all shared the food, poured the wine and offered a toast to Annette. Thomas went for more wine, and Ingrid came back from Stéphane’s stall with some goat cheese and Cantal.

  “What’s it like, being married to a policeman?” Florence asked Ingrid. “Do you worry about what might happen to him?”

  “Of course,” Ingrid replied. “But it’s what he wants to do or, rather, he did, until these new rules and management systems came in with Sarkozy. Now they have targets and quotas for arrests, and Thomas agrees with Bruno that’s no way to judge police efficiency. He’s thinking of taking early retirement.”

  “He’s not the only one,” Yveline chimed in. “They’re turning us into not much more than traffic cops. That’s not why I joined the gendarmes. It’s all right for Bruno; he works for the mayor, who likes the way Bruno operates. He hardly ever has to make an arrest.”

  “That can work in a small town like St. Denis, where I know everybody,” said Bruno. “It wouldn’t work in a big city.”

  On the stage, Arlette, a newcomer to St. Denis who had recently joined the mairie as an accountant, was adjusting the microphone as she settled on a stool and began to play some classical guitar music. Yveline was asking Young if there was much theft in the antique-car business, and Florence was telling Annette about the latest efforts of the collège computer club to design a video game they hoped to sell. The sun was setting, streaks of rosy pink and red alternating with the scattered lines of cloud, and the old stone of the mairie had turned into a rich gold. It was that brief moment of twilight before someone turned on the lamps over the diners, and Bruno murmured to himself one of his favorite words.

  “Crépuscule,” he said as he looked at the red sheen of the setting sun on the bend of the river, not aware that he had spoken aloud until the baron repeated it back to him.

  “Crépuscule, one of the loveliest words in our language, for one of the loveliest times of day just as it gives way to night,” the baron said softly, gazing at the shifting planes of red and crimson light on the river. “Sitting here, with wine and food and surrounded by friends as generations must have done before us in this very place, makes all the world’s troubles seem very far away. Sometimes I imagine the prehistoric people sitting here on the riverbank, sharing their roast mammoth or whatever it was, and watching the sun go down just like us.”

  He raised his glass. “I drink to them, whoever they were.”

  “I never thought of you as such a romantic,” said Bruno.

  “When you get to my age, you’ll realize that we men are the real romantics. Women are much more practical; they have to be.” The baron paused, turning his head to look at the stage. “Who is that girl playing guitar? She’s good.”

  Bruno explained, and as he spoke, Arlette ended the piece, put down her guitar and picked up a lute. She was a tall, slim young woman but seemed to have a wiry strength. She was shy, usually playing with her head bowed so her face was hidden by long wings of straight, dark hair. She bent to raise the microphone higher and announced she intended to play an old medieval song by one of the troubadours of the region, Bertran de Born, a twelfth-century knight who had been lord of the castle of Hautefort. She began to pick out a delicate but haunting melody on the lute.

  Suddenly to the surprise of all at the table, Young rose to his feet and began to sing in a fine tenor voice, in a language that Bruno could not understand although it seemed distantly familiar. He heard the baron mutter that it was Occitan, but then all fell silent as Young sang through to the end, Annette gazing up at him entranced and then bursting into applause, in which other tables joined. Ingrid called out “Bravo,” and Valentin the butcher banged his tongs against the grill and demanded an encore.

  “Another?” Arlette called down to him from the stage.

  “Mon chan fenisc ab dol et ab maltraire,” Young called back, and she nodded and began to play again, a slower song that sounded like a lament.

  Bruno had applauded politely with the rest, but while he respected the antiquity of the music and the tradition it represented, it was not much to his taste. Young sang well, and it was interesting to come across a man whose main interest was cars who also had this side to his character. Annette clearly delighted in it and in Young, but except for their common interest in motor sports he seemed an unlikely partner for her. Annette was fair-haired, slim and pretty in the way of a little girl. She looked much younger than her years and had a shy, almost-timid manner until you got to know her. Bruno would have thought Young was the type to be attracted to a more dramatic, assertive kind of woman, one of those leggy blondes who liked fast cars and discos. Maybe he was misjudging Young, but again Bruno wondered if Young knew of Annette’s father’s wealth.

  “Where did you learn that?” Annette asked as Young sat down, kissing him on his cheek. “You were brilliant.”

  “I read Romantic languages at university, and Bertran de Born was required reading,” Young said, laughing as he picked up his wineglass. “I’m not a great fan, all that glorifying of wars and battles and how he loved to fight and see men die. One of his poems was about Richard Lionheart, to tell him there was too much peace about and it was time for some more slaughter.”

  “We have an early start tomorrow to get back to Alsace, so for us it’s time for some sleep,” said Thomas, rising. “Thank you all for a very fine weekend, and you are always welcome to visit us.”

  8

  After saying good-bye the next morning to Thomas and his wife before they set off on the long drive home to Alsace, Bruno was in his office going through routine paperwork when his desk phone rang. He put aside a circular from the office of the prefect of the département on police exceptions to the thirty-five-hour workweek, thinking there were many weeks when he worked twice that much, picked up the phone and recognized the voice of the manager of the local supermarket.

  “Another shoplifting case, caught on the security camera,” Bruno heard. “You can probably guess the identity of the kid who did it?”

  “Félix again?” Bruno asked with a sigh.

  “Right, and as you know, it’s not his first time. We’re holding him here in my office with our security guy, and we’ll wait for you.”

  “I have to contact his father first, then the youth services people. You know the rules for juveniles, whatever your cameras might show.”

  “I know these damn rules only too well, Bruno. You’re never going to straighten these kids out if you baby them.”

  “Come off it, Simon. You’ve got the lowest shoplifting rate in the département. I’ll be there as soon as I can. What was he stealing?”

  “A set of stereo headphones.”

  To double-check on Félix’s age, Bruno first went to the dusty room filled with old files that the mayor called his archives and pulled out the large ledger that recorded the town’s births and deaths. He saw that Félix would not be sixteen for another ten days and, as Bruno suspected, he had to be treated as a minor. He returned to his office and called the youth services in Périgueux, but no one was available to talk to him. The receptionist said he should use someone from the social services at his own mairie to sit in for the preliminary questioning.

  Bruno sat back, considering. The rules on dealing with minors were strict, and on the whole Bruno thought they made sense. If this case was going anywhere, a magistrate would have to be called in, and the magistrate who usually dealt with juvenile cases was Annette, as the most junior in the office. He called her and explained. Her office was in Sarlat, but she was in a meeting with a lawyer in Les Eyzies. She could join him at the supermarket within the hour.

>   Félix’s father wasn’t at home, but Bruno knew he could find him in a local café that had offtrack betting and TV sets permanently tuned to horse racing. He rounded him up, and along with Roberte from the mairie they headed for the supermarket. A discreet door at the side of the row of checkout counters led to a staircase and the office upstairs.

  Félix was slumped on a chair in the corner of the room. He was wearing jeans that were too short for him, an old denim jacket and a T-shirt. The sneakers on his feet had seen better days, one sole repaired with duct tape. The security man, Bertrand, whom Bruno knew from the rugby club, was standing over the boy. He was wearing a single earphone in one ear with a flesh-colored wire leading from it and disappearing under his collar. That was new, thought Bruno. Simon, the manager, was behind his desk. Four TV screens on the wall showed images from the security cameras. A fifth TV stood on a filing cabinet.

  Félix looked up at the new arrivals, his lip curling in a sneer at the sight of his father and Bruno. Bruno tried to remember what it had been like to be almost sixteen and to have no money when prosperous schoolmates were buying CDs and fashionable clothes and seemed to have endless supplies of one-franc pieces to put into pinball machines.

  “You should be at school, Félix,” he began after the usual greetings. “Would you like to tell me what happened?”

  Félix shrugged and turned away to look out of the window.

  “Answer the policeman, you little jerk,” said Félix’s father, stepping forward aggressively. Bruno put a restraining hand on his arm.

  “Simon, do you have a statement?” he asked.

  “Mine and our security guard’s statement are already typed up, signed and witnessed,” said Simon, handing the neat sheets of paper across his desk, briskly confident in his familiarity with the procedure. “You realize that I have no latitude in these cases. Company policy is that all shoplifters must be pursued to the limit of the law. And it’s not the first time with this kid. I’ve made a copy of the videotape for you, but let’s take a look at it.”

  The TV screen on the filing cabinet flickered into life, showing a washed-out image of the aisle with CDs, DVDs and electronic equipment.

  “We have one fixed camera here and another for the alcohol, since they’re the two high-value zones. The other cameras are on swivels so they can monitor different aisles,” Simon explained. “The boy came in just as we opened at eight-thirty, when there’s always a bit of a rush, as he well knows. He probably thought he could slink out without us spotting him.”

  “I wanted to get to school,” said Félix in a low voice, the first time he had spoken. He was looking out the window at the parked cars as if these proceedings had nothing to do with him. His arms were folded protectively across his chest.

  The screen showed a modest throng of shoppers walking along the main aisle and then a thin youngster peeling off and going into the electronics aisle, straight to a section with stereo headphones. He pulls down three or four, examining them in turn. Then he turns his back on the camera while appearing to replace the headphones and walks quickly to the end of the aisle and turns left past the microwaves and coffeemaking machines.

  “I was watching the camera, spotted Félix and thought he was behaving suspiciously,” said Simon, reading aloud from his copy of his written statement. Bruno recognized the wording. It came straight from the template given to all the store managers by the company’s legal office.

  “So I used the radio to alert Bertrand, the security guard, who was standing by the entrance. When Félix walked through the checkout without paying, Bertrand stopped him and asked him to come to the office. The boy tried to run out of the store, but Bertrand caught him by his jacket, and these headphones fell from under his arm where he’d hidden them. The retail price is thirty-nine euros and ninety-nine cents. Bertrand then made a citizen’s arrest, and we called you at once.”

  “Anything to say, Félix?” Bruno asked.

  “Ask him why I took that brand of headphones,” said the boy, still gazing at the world beyond the window.

  “Why do you think he took that brand?” Bruno asked.

  Simon shrugged. “Maybe he liked the color. I don’t know.”

  “Is it the best brand or the most expensive?”

  “No, it’s a midprice model. Some are over a hundred euros.”

  “Why did you take that brand, Félix?” Bruno asked.

  “Because that was the brand I used to have, earphones that I bought here a week ago with money that I earned chopping wood. Ask my mother, she can confirm that.”

  His father grunted something that might have been agreement. Bruno knew that Félix’s mother worked weekends cleaning houses, as well as cleaning at the collège during the week. He could imagine that the boy’s only pocket money would come from odd jobs he found through his mother.

  “So what happened to your old earphones?”

  Félix continued to stare out the window. “Tell him to ask his son.”

  The plot thickens, thought Bruno. Simon’s son, Tristan, was the same age as Félix and in the same class at the collège. Tristan was big for his age, a forward on the school rugby team and strikingly good-looking with clear skin, curly fair hair and very long eyelashes. When he began playing rugby, his mother had badgered Bruno about the game being too rough and could Bruno guarantee that his handsome features would not get damaged. But Tristan’s manners did not match his looks. He was brash, noisy and inclined to throw his weight about. Bruno had warned him several times about dirty play, and he’d noticed that while most of the good young rugby players seemed popular with the local girls, Tristan was an exception. They steered clear of him. Bruno looked quizzically at Simon, who was blushing.

  “Let’s talk privately,” Bruno said, and led Simon out into the corridor and then into the staircase where they would be out of hearing.

  “Could Tristan be involved in this in some way?” he asked. “I’m trying to understand why Félix said we should ask him about the earphones.”

  “I don’t see how,” Simon replied, but he wouldn’t meet Bruno’s eyes.

  “Has Tristan got earphones of his own?” Bruno pressed.

  “Yes, a much-better set, he got them for his birthday.” Simon paused and then sighed. “But I confiscated them last week because he wasn’t doing his homework.” He looked up at Bruno. “When they get to that age, it’s not easy to discipline them.”

  Bruno nodded sympathetically. Simon was a slim man, shorter than Bruno, and about the same height as his wife. She was a burly woman, an aggressive tennis player with a loud voice who seemed to change her hairstyle and color almost every week. Their son took after her, rather than Simon. Tristan was already bigger than his father and probably stronger.

  “So if I went to the collège, do you think it’s possible that I’d find Félix’s earphones on Tristan?”

  “Look, Bruno, this kid Félix has been in trouble with the law before. My son has never been caught doing anything wrong. You’d have no right to do that, none at all.”

  “I know your son. I’m his rugby coach, and I’ve seen him behaving badly on the field too many times. It’s not just that Tristan seems to have little idea of fair play; he’s cost us more penalties than anyone else on the team. It’s very unusual for anyone to be sent off in collège games, but it happened to him twice last season. You know I’ve threatened to drop him from the team unless he starts to control himself?”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” Simon said, sounding tired and sad. Again he wouldn’t look at Bruno.

  “Do you think your son is a bully?”

  “It’s just his age, high spirits; he’ll settle down.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” Bruno said. “But it looks to me as if your son took Félix’s headphones, and Félix came in today to replace them from the store run by Tristan’s father. He might even have seen it as a kind of justice. Does that sound plausible to you?”

  “It was still shoplifting, and anyway, the p
rocedure has started. We can’t drop it now.”

  “Of course you can. I can take care of Bertrand and Roberte. Even if you go ahead, Félix is still a few days short of sixteen. As far as the law is concerned, he’s a juvenile, so nothing is going to happen to him, except that the very word ‘justice’ will leave a nasty taste in his mouth. But he’s not going to get off lightly. I’ll go back in there, take him home with his dad, put the fear of God into him and search his room. If there’s any more evidence of shoplifting, I’ll throw the book at him.”

  “What about Tristan?”

  “You’re his dad, that’s up to you,” said Bruno. “But if you want to go ahead and press charges against Félix, I think I’ve got reasonable cause to haul your son out of his classroom and, if I find those headphones, that would be a case of theft, probably theft with threats of violence. And your son has passed his sixteenth birthday, so in the eyes of the law he’s an adult. Do you really want me to do that?”

  Simon closed his eyes, his mouth working. He seemed about to speak but then stopped himself and clenched his jaw.

  Bruno decided to use his last weapon. He spoke so quietly that it was almost a whisper. “I don’t think your wife would like that.”

  Simon closed his eyes again and took a deep breath and looked at Bruno and shrugged. “Okay, I’ll drop the charges. And I’ll pay for the headphones. But if that kid ever comes in this store again, we’ll film his every move.”

  “You’re right,” said Bruno, knowing it was time to leave Simon with some shred of self-respect. “And I’ll make sure Félix knows that. And we both know you’re doing the right thing, Simon. You’re a good man.” Bruno slapped him gently on the shoulder. “I’ll take him off now and search his room and make sure he never gives you reason to regret this.”

  “Regret what?” came a familiar voice and the sound of high heels on stairs as Annette appeared. She was wearing her usual working uniform of a dark blue suit and a white blouse buttoned to the neck, a black leather briefcase in one hand.