“Are we going to need a lawyer, Bruno?” asked Stephane. At least he understood.
“Not yet, but I’ll let you know. And in the meantime, if you have any documents that show you’re not against GMOs, this would be a good time to get them together.”
“That I can do,” Dominique said thoughtfully, sobered by his speech. “We had a whole debate about them in our chat group, and I wrote a piece about them for Grenoble Vert, the Green newsletter at the university. But what about Max? What should I tell him?”
“That’s up to you. He didn’t work at the station, so there’s no reason for him to come under suspicion. But you’re in a very different situation. What’s the name of that chat group, by the way?”
“Aquitaine Vert, the same as the organization. It just sort of grew out of their Web site, and I’ve been in it since I’ve been at school. Well, thanks for the warning. But I haven’t done anything wrong, so I’ll be fine.”
“Whatever you wrote for that newsletter, e-mail a copy to me, just in case. It might come in handy,” said Bruno, closing his notebook. “By the way, you might like to know that your boss thinks very highly of you. Petitbon told me earlier that he’d like to offer you a permanent job once you get your diploma.”
“So he must be sure I had nothing to do with it.”
“Right-you’ve got a witness for the defense already,” Bruno said with a grin. “Along with me, of course.”
In a slightly easier frame of mind, Bruno went on to his next errand, wondering who the dead woman might be who had given Alphonse’s commune as her address. Her name had provided no clue and there were no records of her at the mairie. If she had been here, it had been before Bruno’s arrival a decade ago. Bruno took the back road toward Saint-Denis over the railway crossing, skirting the new cemetery and turning onto the small single-track lane that led out of the town and up the hill to the water tower. Beyond it lay the rolling wooded countryside, where the hay was freshly harvested and the golden Limousin cattle grazed contentedly in the early September sun. He drove on up the gentle slope to the high plateau, where the land was cheap and the farming difficult. Bleak and windswept in winter, these high lands had a certain austere grandeur now at the tail end of summer, and spectacular views over the river valleys on either side.
Farther along the ridge, standing watch over the confluence of the rivers, were the ruins of the Chateau de Brillamont, the nearest to Saint-Denis of the chain of medieval fortresses that marked the shifting frontier between the English and the French. Their war had lasted more than a hundred years, until Jeanne d’Arc restored the French morale and Bertrand du Guesclin devised an artillery train that was light enough to be moved and heavy enough to batter the English castles into submission. Despite what he had been told in school of the national heroine, Bruno knew from his army days that it was the gunpowder that had won decisive victory. It usually was.
8
Bruno turned off at a half-rotted and illegible wooden sign that pointed to a primitive road. He heard the blades of grass between the tire treads swish against the bottom of his van as he followed the lane through an avenue of trees into a broad and protected hollow. He sounded his horn as he came to a wooden gate across the lane, turned off the ignition and walked alongside a large and well-kept vegetable garden. It led toward the curious assortment of buildings that faced the sun from the northern slope of the hollow. A woman he recognized was weeding, while two of the children from his tennis class were picking tomatoes. Briefly he paused at the sturdy fence of chicken wire that surrounded the plot, greeted the woman and children and accepted a gift of two plump and perfect cherry tomatoes.
“Salut, Bruno. What brings you up here?” called Celine, a grandmotherly type who had been with the commune from the beginning. “Have you come to help?”
“I’m too busy with my own garden these days, Celine. Is Alphonse around?”
“In the cheese barn.”
Bruno nodded and turned away to view the small village that the young revolutionaries of 1968, the soixante-huitards, had built in the nearly four decades since their arrival. Even if he had not known the steady output of healthy and well-mannered youngsters they had sent through the schools and sports clubs of Saint-Denis and seen Alphonse elected as the first Green member of the town council, he would have been impressed. In pride of place stood a traditional stone farmhouse, with ivy covering most of the side wall. It was topped with the usual red tile roof shaped like a witch’s hat native to this part of Perigord. Beside it stood a tall and spindly windmill that seemed to provide enough power for the needs of the dozen or so people who usually lived here. Closer to Bruno and the lane stood a large log cabin with a shaded porch, on which a middle-aged woman with long straight hair sat cross-legged, her eyes closed and her back straight. The gaps between the logs were stuffed with clay, and the roof was composed of two layers of planks separated by thick sheets of polystyrene foam, all covered by solar panels to heat water.
Then came a wide and deceptively large building that Bruno knew from previous visits to be constructed of homemade bricks of mud and straw; it was covered with earth and dug into the side of the hill so that the doors and windows appeared to peek out from the living turf. A goat grazed on the roof, and two children were seated on benches in front of the building, where they appeared to be playing chess. To the right was the barn, a simple but sturdy A-frame made of abandoned planks of wood and some salvaged iron piping welded into bracing triangles for strength. Bruno’s favorite building was the dome, perched on the grass like half of a gigantic multicolored golf ball, composed of triangles, some of glass, some of wood painted in various hues, some of plastic and some of shards of mirror.
To one side of the dome was a wooden framework over which grape vines had been trained for years to make a shaded terrace. Its floor was stone, and it housed a long wooden table with a variety of chairs and benches, and a remarkably wide and ornate hammock that was festooned with sashes and ribbons. Goats lounged around the hammock like courtiers waiting on the empty throne of their monarch. Standing in the doorway of the dome was a naked toddler, the little boy’s arms resting on the neck of a kid goat about his own size. The kid bleated and the toddler waved. Bruno waved back.
Alphonse emerged from the barn, wiping his hands on a long apron. His face was looking older these days, but he was still slim and spry with his long gray hair braided into a ponytail. He wore jeans, rubber thong sandals and the top half of a pair of embroidered pajamas from India, and he topped off this unique confection with a colorful silk bandanna that glinted with gold threads.
“Bruno, welcome,” Alphonse said. “Some tea? A homemade beer? How about some of our new cheese?”
“Nothing, thanks. I’m here on business, and I hope it won’t be too sad. Do you recall a woman named Mireille Augereau? She claims this as her address.”
“Mireille, yes; she lived here nearly twenty years ago for over a year, and then moved on. She first came even before that for a summer as a student with one of the original members, who had become her professor. But I haven’t heard from her for years.”
“And Maximilien Augereau? Would that be the Max I know?”
“Sure; that’s her son. Only he calls himself Vannes after me, I suppose because I brought him up and he never heard much from his mother after she left. Mireille was a pretty thing when she first came here. What’s happened?”
“Well, we received word that she died yesterday in a car crash just outside Paris. Her license and identity card listed Max as next of kin. It seems that some money may be involved. She was working in a municipal nursery school, so she had life insurance, and Max was the beneficiary.”
“It’s bound to be a blow. He may not have known much of her, but still, losing your mother… I thinks she sent a birthday card once or twice, whenever she sobered up and got off the drugs.”
“She just left the boy here, with you?”
Alphonse nodded. “She met some guy in the market. It
was right after we started selling our cheeses, and she was good in the markets. A pretty face always helps, and she spoke a bit of English for the tourists. She said she was going off with him for a weekend, and she never came back. That was it. And Max, well, he was part of the family by then, even if he had nowhere else to go.”
“Was there a father? A birth certificate? What’s on Max’s identity card?”
“I’m listed as the father. Mireille never mentioned the father. Bruno, she slept around. She might not have known for sure who the father was.”
“Where’s Max now? Still working at Hubert’s cave?”
“By now he’ll be over at Cresseil’s place, helping the old boy with the vineyard. It’s what Max most likes to do. He’s really interested in winemaking as a career, so he’ll help Cresseil bring in the crop before he goes back to school. He’s a fine boy, Bruno.”
Bruno nodded. He liked Max, who kept all his violence to the rugby field. Fast and slippery, and a determined tackler, he played center for the second team whenever he was home.
“I’d better go over and tell Max the bad news,” Bruno said. “Unless you’d rather do it?”
“Let me come with you. I have to get something in town anyway. Try a bit of the new cheese while I clean up. You know where it is, and you’ll find some bread on the counter.”
Alphonse ducked into the dome, and Bruno headed into the dark barn, which smelled of goats and urine and warm ripening milk. Most of the cheeses were stored in the cooler room at the rear, but here in the workroom Alphonse had left row after row of fresh crottins, the small disc-shaped cheeses that could be sold fresh or in varying states of dryness. On a wooden board stood one of the big round loaves of brown bread that was the commune’s specialty. Bruno took his Laguiole knife from his belt, cut himself a slice of bread and half a crottin and leaned back against the counter to enjoy it. To one side he noticed a brown cardboard box with a small tap and he turned it to the window. South African pinotage. There was an empty glass beside the box, so he poured himself a taste. No nose to speak of but not bad in the mouth. He looked at the price tag. Four euros for five liters. No wonder the French couldn’t compete.
“You found the South African wine,” said Alphonse. “Not bad, is it? Max bought it; he also bought some from Australia and the stuff from Chile, trying all the different wines. Research, he called it. But here, try a glass of this.”
“The cheese is really good,” said Bruno, holding out his empty glass to the anonymous bottle of red wine that Alphonse was pouring. He took an appreciative sniff and a good sip to taste, smacking his lips and then nodding a cautious approval.
“It’s our own, and a lot better than the crap we used to make up here, thanks to Max. The techniques aren’t much different-it’s just better when he does it.”
“You’re right,” said Bruno. “It’s a lot better than your old plonk, and now I can tell you that I only used to swallow it to be polite. This is very drinkable.”
“All organic, too. I got him onto that. Now he says it’s the future of the wine business, as if it was all his own idea,” Alphonse said, then smiled. “If you’re finished, let’s go and break the bad news.”
Bruno stopped the van where the road emerged from the trees and reached the top of the ridge. He loved this view above all others, he explained when Alphonse turned to him, raising his eyebrows in a silent question. The familiar view down the valley of the Vezere to the hilltop villages on the far ridge was splendid in its lavish sweep. Immediately below him stood the small chateau that was the heart of Julien’s Domaine de la Vezere. Bruno got out of the car to look down at the rows of new vines that Julien had planted. He brought his eyes back to the Philibert farm that Hubert had bought, and to Cresseil’s ramshackle place beside it. It boasted a farmhouse, not much more than a shepherd’s cottage, where the old man lived, with two barns, a kitchen garden and perhaps twenty rows of vines. Cresseil had not been mobile enough to farm the place for years, so the rest of the land down the slope to the river was left to grow hay for him to sell. A dozen of the giant cylinders of compacted hay, wrapped tightly in black plastic strips, lay in the shorn field where the baling machine had left them.
Bruno tried to estimate the extent of Cresseil’s holding. Long and narrow, it was a bit more than half the size of the Philibert farm, maybe even two-thirds. Looking back to Saint-Denis a couple of miles up the river, and then down to the river bend where it began the long sweep to join the Dordogne, he could not begin to estimate the full extent of the south-facing slope that Hubert de Montignac had suggested might grow decent wine. There were places where the slope steepened sharply to become the sheer chalk-white and limestone cliffs pockmarked with caves where people had taken shelter in the Middle Ages, and where prehistoric men probably had lived. But the Domaine itself took up no more than a fraction of the length of the gentle hillside, so if Hubert was right to suggest that the Domaine was worth three million euros, the overall value could be enormous.
“You don’t know your own valley yet?” called Alphonse from the van window. Bruno turned back.
“How did Max come to know Cresseil?” Bruno asked, leaning against the side of the vehicle while Alphonse rolled himself a cigarette.
“Through the college. Rollo links each of the older kids to a resident of the retirement home, almost like a kind of adoption.” Alphonse broke off to lick the paper and light up. “Max was visiting Madame Cresseil just before she died, must be three years ago now, and her husband took a shine to him. It probably helped that Max represented a new audience for his stories about the war. Then Max started helping him out in the garden, doing a few chores around the house, and Cresseil started teaching him about winemaking. Max got Cresseil’s ancient motorbike running again, and Cresseil lets him use it. Max likes the old boy, says it’s like having a grandpa.”
The postman at Coux had seen a man on a motorbike, Bruno remembered, but not an old model. Perhaps Max also had access to a more modern one.
“Cresseil didn’t have any kids of his own, as far as I know,” said Bruno.
“Just the one who got killed in the air force, in Africa, long before your time.” Alphonse pinched out the half-finished cigarette between his horny fingers, and put it carefully back into his tobacco pouch. “Come on, let’s go see Max.”
“Alphonse, there’s something I have to ask you, officially.” Bruno explained the background to the fire and asked Alphonse whether as a committed Green he knew of any militant ecolos in the area capable of doing such a thing.
“You’re not joking, are you?” Alphonse asked, more resignation than question in his voice. “I was wondering if it might get around to this. Any real ecolo might trash a crop if he thought it was some GMO business, but he’d never start a fire. And nasty rumors are going around about that crop. I had some people calling me from Bordeaux, asking whether as a council member I could check if a special GMO permit had been issued. So I looked into the law because I’ll be bringing this up at the next council meeting.”
“There’s no permit, Alphonse. The mayor and I are as much in the dark as you.”
“Well, if that was a GMO crop and our town council knew nothing about it, there’s going to be a scandal, I promise you that. This is not just me, Bruno; the whole Green Party will kick up a stink, arson or no arson.”
“I can’t say I’m a fan of this GMO stuff,” said Bruno. “But arson is a crime. I’ll pursue that, GMO or no GMO. And I’ll expect your help, Alphonse. We can be on the same side about that, just as I think the whole council and the mayor will be on your side about permits for GMOs.”
Alphonse gave a cursory nod.
“One more thing, Alphonse. A bit of advice: There are so few leads on this case that the detectives are getting anxious. So it won’t be your old friend Bruno making inquiries but some serious cops looking for leverage. If they have to pin something unrelated on you to make you cooperate, they will. That’s how they work. And a commune like yours is just
asking for a drug raid, so if there’s anything up there that shouldn’t be, you’d better get rid of it fast.”
Alphonse nodded.
“Now let’s go down and find Max,” said Bruno.
9
Max, bare-chested and tanned, his long, fair hair sun-streaked, was energetically wielding a hoe on the weeds of Cresseil’s kitchen garden when Bruno pulled up in front of the barn. Beside Max was the French-Canadian girl Bruno had met at the cave. As she stood up from the weeding she was almost as tall as Max. She wore a low-cut T-shirt that revealed the tops of her tanned breasts, and her shorts were very short indeed. No wonder Max always seemed to be wherever she was, Bruno thought.
Cresseil was sitting on an old wooden chair, resting his chin on his walking stick and watching the youngsters work. An aged Porcelaine, one of the classic French hunting dogs, lay asleep at his feet. The old man turned to see his visitors approaching and held out a gnarled right hand.
“Alphonse, Bruno,” he said. “Welcome to you both. A little apero? Max, time to stop work. Your dad’s here.”
“Thanks. I’ll take a glass of that wine you made last year,” said Alphonse, before Bruno could say this might not be the best time to sit around drinking, at least not until Max had been told of his mother’s fate. “Give it a try, Bruno,” Alphonse went on.
Max put down his hoe and came toward them, murmuring greetings. He kissed Alphonse on both cheeks, then did the same to Bruno, whom he’d known since boyhood.
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