“So then do we bring them in?”
“Maybe so, but let’s think this through,” said J-J. “Consider the relative importance of a case of local murder here in your little commune against a case of international terrorist finance. What is the brigadier going to say if you derail the whole investigation by arresting Sylvestre tonight? What’s Isabelle going to say when you torpedo the first big investigation she has led?”
Bruno bit his lip in frustration, understanding that again J-J was right, even though holding back went against all his instincts.
“And if you are convinced this is a murder, what do we do then?”
“Then we tell Isabelle and the brigadier, and you know as well as I do what they’ll say. They’ll tell us that we can always bring the murder charge once their operation is complete, but, for now, terrorism trumps murder. And both the minister of justice and the minister of the interior will agree with them, and so will ninety-nine French citizens out of every hundred, me included.”
16
He might not be able to arrest Sylvestre, Bruno reflected, but the fact that Oudinot was now considering a sale of some land to his estranged relative gave him the perfect excuse to call at the chartreuse. But first he went home to clean and tidy the place for Martine’s visit, to put some more wood into his stove and to set the table for dinner. Most important, he had to decide on the meal he would prepare.
Martine was born and raised in the region, so truffles and foie gras would be too routine. Her mother would certainly have prepared a classic series of dishes to welcome Martine’s return, and the farm produced ducks and geese and raised some of the best calves in France. Fernand had been the man who had taught him how to recognize a classic veal calf, raised only on its mother’s milk. First, he said, peel back the calf’s eyelid, and if you see any red veins in the eyeball, it is no longer being raised sous la mère. To be sure, Fernand had continued, he steered Bruno to the back of the calf and asked him to raise its tail. Fernand had then leaned forward and used his thumbs to prize open the calf’s bottom. “Look at that,” he said. “Not a single red vein to be seen. That’s the kind of calf you want.”
He didn’t want to serve a heavy meal, so that excluded beef and lamb. That left fish. Bruno called the baron, a devoted fisherman who was an infallible source of fresh trout, and asked if he planned to fish that day.
“I was in the boat with Antoine this morning, and we got some lovely young trout,” came the reply. “Better than that, we went afterward to that little stream that comes down near St. Cirq and got enough écrevisses to feed half a dozen. Do you want to join us for dinner?”
Bruno savored the idea of cooking the wonderful local crayfish. “I can’t, Baron. I’ve got a big date tonight, but I’d love to buy enough for two from you.”
“Who’s the lucky girl? I heard you’d been seeing Oudinot’s daughter, the one who went to Paris.”
Bruno laughed, shaking his head. “There’s no way to keep secrets in St. Denis. Yes, that’s the one. I was going to grill some trout, but now I’m thinking of écrevisses à la nage. When can I drop by and pick them up?”
“Anytime this afternoon. I’ll be working in the garden. I’ll save you a dozen. What do you plan to drink with them?”
“I was thinking of a bottle of Pierre Desmartis’s cuvée Quercus.”
“A fine choice, but what do you plan for the rest of the meal?”
“A zabaglione for dessert, with my own goose eggs. And to begin, you remember that Dordogne food fair we went to in Périgueux, when Pascal, that friend of mine from Neuvic, gave us each a can of the caviar they’re making there? I haven’t used it yet, so I thought I’d make some blinis and serve that as a first course.”
“Don’t forget a glass of ice-cold vodka to go with the caviar. That should do the trick. And you might try using Monbazillac instead of Marsala for the zabaglione; it works very well. Are you going to serve it on its own?”
“No, I was going to poach a couple of pears and throw in some fresh blackberries. There’re still lots of them in the hedge.”
“Excellent. Well, you certainly can’t buy the écrevisses from me, but next time I catch some you can make that meal for the two of us, or a few more of us if I catch enough.”
“Done, even if I have to save up to buy the caviar.”
“Wait for when your truffles are ripe this winter, and you can exchange some of them for more caviar from Pascal.”
Bruno put a bottle of vodka in his freezer and sat down at his laptop to search for something on the web about Freddy. He knew a fair amount about Sylvestre but nothing about Freddy. Isabelle had given his real name as Farid Iqbal so he entered that name, along with “Abu Dhabi” and “car race.” Most of the sites that came up were in Arabic, but there were a couple from an English-language paper, Gulf News. He clicked on the first and found a photo of a beaming Freddy on the winner’s podium at a racetrack in Dubai that described him as a well-known sports enthusiast and businessman, running the classic-car auctions in the region.
The second article was an interview with Iqbal when he and Sylvestre had opened their showroom in Abu Dhabi and staged the first of their auctions. Freddy described being born and brought up in Ahmedabad, in Gujarat state in India, the son of a successful businessman who had sent him to school in Switzerland, where he had been introduced to go-kart racing. He began to win races and placed third in a European championship race when he was just fifteen. But then his parents were killed in a Hindu-Muslim riot that lasted three days and resulted in over a thousand deaths in Gujarat in 2002.
“My parents were martyred in a Hindu pogrom, and it was then I understood the great responsibility of being a Muslim,” Freddy said in the interview. “That is why I am so at home here in Abu Dhabi among the faithful.”
Bruno sat back, thinking that Isabelle’s connection of the car auctions to terrorist financing suddenly made sense. He could see how it might work. Sylvestre sold cars to wealthy Arabs who then registered the cars in the Emirates. They could transfer legal ownership of a valuable car to someone with terrorist connections who then exported the cars back to Europe to be sold at another of Freddy’s auctions. The proceeds would be legal, and the money whitewashed. Bruno scrolled down through more websites but learned only that the total sales at Freddy’s most recent car auction had topped ten million dollars.
He put Balzac in the van before setting off for Sylvestre’s chartreuse. He’d found that people tended to be more friendly and talkative when his dog was present and pondered how far he should go with his questioning. Should he ask Freddy what was in the envelope Hugon had sent to him and whether he knew of Hugon’s death? Should he ask Sylvestre if he and Freddy had been the clients for Hugon’s search for clues about the lost Bugatti, or would that alert them too soon? He decided to play it by ear.
There was nobody in sight when he arrived, but one Range Rover was parked in the courtyard and another by the gatehouse. He knocked there first, and after a moment heard an answering shout. A few seconds later Freddy opened the door, wearing shorts and a sweat-drenched T-shirt.
“Sorry, I was working out on the rowing machine,” he said, and glanced briefly down at Balzac, who was wagging his tail in that friendly way that he greeted strangers. Freddy didn’t react to Balzac’s overtures and looked back at Bruno. “You need to be fit to be a racing driver. What can I do for you?”
“Is Sylvestre around?”
“He’s in the main house, but he’s on the phone to China. It’s about opening the Shanghai showroom next month.” He was standing in the doorway, one hand on the door as if impatient to get back inside and close it.
“Will you be going, too?”
“No, I have business in the Gulf to get back to.”
“I can wait until Sylvestre is free,” Bruno said. “Is he likely to be long?”
Freddy shrugged. “Who knows? He’s been on that call half an hour already.”
Trying to find a way to prolong the conv
ersation, Bruno said, “You told me the other day you liked the castles that you’d seen here in the Périgord. Which ones have you visited?”
“I haven’t really visited them, just seen them while driving around. There was one on the cliff overlooking the big river; I think it’s the Dordogne. I remember Sylvestre saying the English had it, and the French built another castle on the other side of the river. And I saw one by the road on the way to Sarlat and another one from the autoroute on the way down here.”
“Do you have castles like that in India? I remember Sylvestre saying that was where you were from.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I wanted to ask you about that Tesla you were driving,” Bruno said, trying a new line of conversation. “What sort of range do you get from it?”
“It’s got different settings for whether you want to race or cruise or drive in town, but for normal driving about two hundred kilometers.”
“And is it fast?”
“Very.”
“How do you find the Range Rover?”
“It’s okay around here. I prefer the Porsche Cayenne; it gets better traction in the desert.”
“Is that what you were driving in that race you won? I remember Sylvestre telling us about it.”
“I’ve won several, but the one he was talking about was a rally through the desert when I came in second. If there’s nothing else…” His voice trailed off, and he looked across the courtyard where Sylvestre was coming out of the main house.
“There he is, and now excuse me,” said Freddy as he stepped back inside and closed the door.
That didn’t go well, Bruno said to himself as he strolled through the courtyard to greet Sylvestre. This time Balzac got a better welcome as Sylvestre bent down to pat him.
“Do you have a moment?” Bruno asked. “It’s about the problem you have with Oudinot. I notice that I can’t hear the geese today.”
“They were there at dawn, but he rang the bell about an hour ago for feeding time. He’ll probably have them back here later. Can I offer you a coffee?”
“Thanks, that would be good, and maybe some water for the dog.”
Sylvestre led the way back to the main house, saying, “I made the family what I thought was a very decent offer. I just want to buy three hectares that would give me the land up to the top of the ridge. Then Oudinot and I need never have anything to do with one another again.”
“There’s a saying that good fences make for good neighbors,” said Bruno. He paused in admiration as he entered the main hall, paved in checkered-black-and-white stone with a handsome wooden staircase curving up to the next floor. A door to the left led to a sitting room and Bruno saw a couple of chrome and leather armchairs. Sylvestre turned right, through a dining room with a long and heavy table that looked antique and into a very modern kitchen, where an iPad mounted on a speaker system was quietly playing classical music. Bruno sat on a high-backed stool at the raised counter overlooking the cooking area where Sylvestre filled an electric kettle and began loading coffee into a cafetière. He put a jug of milk and some sugar on a tray with two cups and filled a stainless-steel bowl with water for Balzac, who lapped at it eagerly.
Bruno turned to look out of the French windows to the courtyard. Between him and the windows was a sofa facing a giant TV screen and flanked by two armchairs. There was a second dining table in bleached pine on which stood an open laptop and notebook and a mobile phone that had a headset attached. The table was large enough for eight chairs and for a very futuristic chair in black mesh and chrome that faced the open laptop.
“That looks like a very pleasant place to work. You’ve done a great job with the remodeling,” Bruno said. “I can see how frustrating the situation with your cousins must be for you.”
“I’ll win in the end,” said Sylvestre casually, pouring the hot water into the coffee. “I can afford lawsuits, and he can’t.”
“Oudinot is aware of that, and I understand he’s considering the offer you made to Martine, but he’s worried about losing out on the sale of the timber.”
“That’s a new one. I hadn’t heard of any concern about timber, and anyway, I’ve got no plans to cut these woods down.” He poured Bruno some coffee. “In fact I’d rather keep them. They add to the rural atmosphere.”
“He’s also got some good cards to play,” Bruno said. “You may know that all the communes are supposed to provide a certain proportion of social housing for low-income people, the disabled, and so on. We’re desperately short of such places, and if Oudinot applies to build some very cheap social housing all around your buildings, he’ll get instant approval. The mayor would have no choice. It’s Fernand’s land, and it’s already zoned for residential use. You’d find that just as much of a problem as the geese, maybe more so.”
“I see.” Sylvestre stared at Bruno for a long moment. “I presume you have a solution to put to me.”
“He’ll want a high price per hectare, plus the fifty thousand you suggested to Martine and a half share of any eventual timber sale, for a total sum of a hundred thousand euros. You get your peace and quiet, no geese and a good access road. And I’ll propose to the mayor that he put the road leading here on the list for upgrading. I think he’ll do it because he wants this business settled and your tourists to start coming here and spending money. Of course, he would also like to have the social housing.”
“A hundred thousand is a lot more than the land is worth.”
“I know that, but it buys you the certainty of the access and the calm you need to make this place a profitable business. Otherwise all the money you put into it could be wasted.”
“A hundred thousand also buys a lot of lawyers,” said Sylvestre.
“And not one of them would be able to stop Oudinot surrounding you with social housing.”
Sylvestre nodded, looking beyond Bruno to the French windows and the garden. He seemed to reach a decision and looked back at Bruno.
“Fine, you can tell him I’ll go with that.” He stretched out his hand, and Bruno shook it, saying, “You won’t regret this.”
“And I want the transfer done fast, with a contract of sale signed before I have to leave for China in two weeks. More coffee?”
“Just a quick cup, I’ve got to get back for a meeting with the Police Nationale,” Bruno said, wondering how far to push Sylvestre. “They’re investigating what looks like a suspicious death, maybe a murder.”
Sylvestre raised his eyebrows. “Really? You don’t expect a murder here in the sleepy Périgord?”
“It was the day of the vintage-car parade, the day before the rally,” Bruno said. “You might remember I had to leave to go and register the death of a named Hugon. He was a retired archivist who still did some freelance researching on the side, mainly for local lawyers. It looked like natural causes to me, and the local doctor said it was a heart attack. But one of Hugon’s lawyer clients was trying to find some research Hugon was supposed to have finished and found his recent files had all disappeared. So he called the préfecture, and they sent detectives. Hugon should have been buried today, but it looks like they’re doing an autopsy. His wife is very upset. She was the one who found his body.”
“That’s understandable.” Sylvestre had shown no reaction that Bruno could discern.
“As soon as I’ve seen the Police Nationale, I’ll talk to the mayor and get him to talk to Oudinot and recommend the deal,” Bruno said. “We’ll try to get this wrapped up quickly. What number can I call you on?”
Sylvestre pulled out his wallet and gave Bruno a business card with his e-mail address and various phone numbers.
“By the way,” Bruno said as he turned to leave. “How’s your search for that Bugatti going, the one you and Martine were talking about?”
Sylvestre shrugged. “Nothing new to report, but thanks for coming by and for bringing your basset hound. He’s the kind of dog that makes me smile.”
17
Bruno checked his watch and hea
ded for Pamela’s riding stables. He’d have to take Hector out early if he were to be back in time to prepare dinner. But he also wanted to have a word with Félix. After he pulled in, Balzac went off to paw at Hector’s stable door while Bruno went in search of Pamela. She was in the office, looking tired but going through her accounts.
“The good news is that we’re no longer operating at a loss,” she said, looking up at him cheerfully. “The bad news is that it’s only because Miranda and I aren’t taking any wages out of the school yet. But in terms of utility bills, taxes, fodder and running costs, our heads are above water. One bad vet’s bill, however, and we drown.”
“You’ve only just started, and you haven’t started renting the gîtes yet,” Bruno replied. “They’ll provide a good income next summer.”
“Yes, but in the meantime we have to pay money to get them repainted, repaired and have the plumbing fixed. Sometimes I wonder why I ever let myself in for this.”
“You enjoy the challenge and you’re good at it,” Bruno said. “How’s Félix doing? Is he still turning up on time?”
“Every day, and he’s doing well. He’s out with Miranda now, helping her escort the pony trekkers. I thought it was time to put him on horseback, and they’re only walking along. He’s on the Andalusian; she seems to like him. She also seems to like Hector; it’s a pity he’s a gelding. That might have saved me the stud fees we’ll have to pay to get her with foal.”
“If Félix is not back soon, can I ask you to give him this with my compliments?” He handed her the printout he’d made of the photo of the lost Bugatti that Young had sent him. “Tell him it’s a gift for his wall collection.”
“You might find it fighting for space. He found a set of very out-of-date Cheval Magazines in a stable loft and asked if he could take some home to put the pictures up in his room. I got the impression that the cars were now taking second place. It’s a bit like you, Bruno. Once you got close to horses and began to enjoy them, you wondered where they’d been all your life.”
Fatal Pursuit Page 16
