The dark vineyard b,op-2

by Martin Walker

  “We’re accustomed to commercial discretion, monsieur,” the mayor said. “Perhaps you could ask your colleague with the machinery to be careful with that table. It’s said to be nearly seven hundred years old, which may be an exaggeration, but it is certainly older than all of us in this room put together.”

  Bondino took a glossy magazine from his briefcase and slid it beneath the computer. It was Marie Claire Maison, Bruno noted, a French magazine of decor and design that suggested Bondino might be fluent in the language. Of course, he might just be looking at the photos.

  “Bondino Wines was founded in California by the grandfather of the present chairman, Francis X. Bondino-” Dupuy began.

  “In 1906,” interrupted the mayor, addressing the room but turning to look directly at Bondino. “I should say, messieurs, that Bondino Wines needs no introduction, even here in rural France. We know of your interests in South America and South Africa, of your three thousand employees, so we may be able to dispense with your introduction and come directly to the point.”

  Dupuy seemed about to speak again when Bondino held up his hand. Dupuy sat.

  “It all comes down to one question,” said Bondino, speaking heavily accented but serviceable French, keeping his eyes on the mayor. “Do you have the political juice to get this valley made into an appellation controlee region within the next twelve months? Our embassy is pretty well plugged into Paris, and Dupuy makes a living at this stuff, and they both tell me that you have the political connections to do it.”

  “And if I do?”

  “Then I’m prepared to invest an eight-figure sum in your district. That means over ten million dollars. Correction, I mean over ten million euros. That’s a lot of jobs and a big new tax base for Saint-Denis.”

  “And you would do what with that large sum of money?”

  “Buy land, build a state-of-the-art modern winery with a visitor center, run a hotel, grow vines, make fine wine and export it all over the world.”

  “How much land would you need and how much wine would you intend to produce?”

  “Our business plan calls for a minimum of a million bottles a year within seven years. That means about two hundred hectares.”

  “And how many jobs?”

  “Full-time, probably about fifty when the visitor center is up and running, plus some seasonal employees.”

  Bruno noticed how Bondino and the mayor appraised each other. Each kept his eyes fixed on the other man. There was no staring match, no play for dominance, just two experienced men coolly taking each other’s measure without any apparent emotion. It was clear to Bruno that the American had been through dozens of meetings with politicians, and that the mayor had held just as many meetings with businessmen. Bruno began to temper his dislike for Bondino with a little respect.

  “I see. That’s a very ambitious project,” the mayor said. “And the entire plan hinges on your ensuring that this valley is designated ‘appellation controlee’? ”

  “That’s right. And since that will improve land values for a lot of your voters, I’d like no property taxes for the first seven years.”

  “And what else?”

  “A lot of help in acquiring the land discreetly. Once this is known, land prices are going to go through the roof. If that happens, the deal is off.”

  “Do you know which land you want?”

  “Dupuy, pass the mayor the aerial photos and lay out the map so we can all see it.”

  The land Bondino wanted was, as Bruno and the mayor expected, the Domaine and all the land along the south-facing slope above the river.

  “Just so you know how serious we are,” said Bondino, “I have already obtained an option to buy Domaine de la Vezere, the hotel and the vineyard. I’m sure you know the place. I also have an option to buy the canoeing business and the campground and restaurant on the far side of the river. We have also done very discreet but detailed soil and drainage tests on the land. All this was arranged by my colleague Dupuy here, and the diplomats we’ve talked with assure us that we will face no objections from the relevant ministries in Paris.”

  “When you ask that we waive taxes for the enterprise, do you mean that we’d lose the taxes the commune currently receives from the Domaine and from the other properties you intend to buy?” Bruno asked. “That would be a big hole in our budget.”

  “I understand that, and I know that all of this will only work if we in this room come together in a willing partnership,” said Bondino, with a smile that Bruno did not find convincing. “So I’m prepared to negotiate on this to minimize any negative impact on your revenues. You help me out on the cash flow, and I’ll do my best for you.”

  “I’m a politician who needs to get reelected, monsieur,” said the mayor, his relaxed posture as he leaned back in his chair belying the firmness in his voice. “If my opponents could say that I conspired with an American corporation to buy up land cheaply so that it could benefit from increased land prices, I would lose the next election. And I would deserve to lose because it would be a scandal. So even if I were prepared to do this, you would not have your partner here in the mairie for very long.”

  “I think it’s important to bear in mind that Monsieur Bondino is not trying to speculate in land prices but to build a thriving local wine industry,” said Dupuy smoothly. “Perhaps we can put the matter of land ownership aside while we explain the other benefits…”

  Bondino held up his hand. “What about a lease with an option to buy? Could that work?”

  “You could lease the land for a minimum period of, say, five years, with an option to buy at the end of the lease,” said the mayor.

  “What do you think of that, Dupuy?” Bondino asked, not bothering to look at the consultant. He was leaning back in his chair, which was tilted on its two rear legs.

  “Well, the lease could be written to impose a maximum selling price at the end of the lease period. But you could also give each landowner options to buy shares in your company as a way to ensure they would benefit from the growth in value. There are tax advantages in that, for them and for you.”

  “How does that sound to you, Monsieur le Maire?” Bondino said, almost insolently. “Reasonable?”

  “I think it has some very interesting possibilities.”

  Bondino brought out from his briefcase a document, encased in a plastic sleeve, and slid it across the table to the mayor.

  “Just so you know I’m serious, there’s my letter of credit for ten million euros, certified by the Paris branch of Citibank and waiting to be put to work.”

  As the mayor studied the letter of credit, Bondino spoke up again. “One other thing. I read your local paper about a fire nearby and some political fuss about GMO crops. Unless there is an arrest pretty soon, you’re going to get a lot of unfavorable publicity, and nobody needs that. We are not going to take any risks with ten million euros. I hope that’s clear.”

  11

  The request from the gendarmerie was courteous, but Bruno knew it was an order just the same. The presence of the chief of police of Saint-Denis was requested at his earliest convenience at the gendarmerie by a senior officer from the Ministry of the Interior. As Bruno crossed the square, where the usual game of boules was under way, he saw a large and official-looking black Renault parked opposite the gendarmerie, a driver waiting at the wheel. Inside the building, he was shown to Captain Duroc’s austere office with its view over the village cemetery and the standard framed photograph of the president of France beside the door. A middle-aged man in civilian clothes but with a distinctly military bearing occupied the chair behind Duroc’s desk.

  “Brigadier Lannes, may I present the municipal policeman Courreges,” said Duroc coldly. “The brigadier has been sent down from Paris, from the Ministry of the Interior.”

  As Bruno saluted, he felt himself being studied by a penetrating pair of dark eyes. He recalled that J-J had warned him this might happen.

  “You’re the one with the local knowledge and the
Croix de Guerre,” said the brigadier, standing to shake his hand. “People have been telling me about you. Well, you’d better tell me where we are. It’s been nearly a week since the fire.”

  “We don’t have many new leads, except that forensics was able to determine that the gasoline was Total regular,” said Duroc. “There was nothing from the fingerprints on that phone booth in Coux. The culprit must have been wearing gloves, or used a pencil or something like it to press the buttons.”

  “It’s a phone that takes cards,” Bruno intervened, thinking he’d keep the postman’s evidence to himself for the moment. “I know that Commissaire Jalipeau from the Police Nationale was checking with France Telecom to establish where the card was bought.”

  The brigadier glanced reproachfully at Duroc, as if this had been left out of his briefing. Then he reached into his briefcase, pulled out a printout from a Web site and said: “There’s been a development.”

  “Aquitaine Vert is an ecolo newsletter published in Bordeaux by some militants in the Green Party,” he went on. “Jalipeau is interviewing them now in Bordeaux, because their new issue, which was e-mailed to their members last night, is almost entirely devoted to your research station and the GMO tests. They have a lot of accurate details, and apparently they have copies of test results that seem to have been taken from the barn that was burned. They also have a number of comments from one Alphonse Vannes, a council member here in Saint-Denis for the Greens. He says that no permit for the crops in question was ever issued by the mairie or by the conseil general.”

  “That’s true,” said Bruno. “The mayor is not happy about it.”

  “Well, that’s not my concern. I’ve been brought in because this was a discreet government-backed research project. It now looks likely to become a national scandal, and all the more embarrassing if we can’t find who was responsible for the fire.”

  “Excuse me,” said Bruno. “I just want to be sure I understand. You are a brigadier of gendarmes, assigned to help J-J-I mean Commissaire Jalipeau-of the Police Nationale?”

  “Brigadier is my rank, and I report to the minister of defense, but I’m attached to the staff of the renseignements generaux. I’ve been given the authority to take over this investigation by the minister of the interior. J-J will work under my orders, and I’m sure you two gentlemen will give me your full cooperation.”

  “Yes, sir. Completely,” said Duroc.

  “I’ll be happy to cooperate all I can, but you understand that I’ll have to consult the mayor. He’s my chain of command,” said Bruno formally, not liking this at all. The renseignements generaux was officially the intelligence arm of the French police, with a special mission of counterterrorism and a sinister reputation.

  “J-J told me you’d say that,” said the brigadier with a grin that surprised Bruno. “He also said I should call you Bruno and tell you I really need all the help I can get. Would you mind starting by telling me whatever you feel you can about possible suspects and why you thought they weren’t guilty?”

  It was a reasonable request, Bruno thought, courteously presented, from someone who probably had and certainly could obtain whatever authority he needed. This brigadier appeared to be a decent fellow, or at least he was making the effort to act like one. Knowing something of brigadiers, and the kind of pressure for a swift result that Paris would bring, Bruno reserved judgment. Protecting his town and his people, as well as he could, was his job.

  “There was a possible suspect, Dominique Suchet, a university student who had a summer job at the station and who is very ecolo. But first, she has a strong alibi for the time of the fire from her father. And second, she’s actually a supporter of GMO crops and of nuclear power. She’s a highly evolved ecolo, besides which, if that fire had spread, her family’s farm would have been the next to go. So I don’t think she’s a likely suspect. The most promising line of investigation is through this Aquitaine Vert group in Bordeaux. If they have the documents from the burned-out shed, that’s the obvious connection.”

  “I’ll bet you a beer they’ll tell J-J that the documents arrived anonymously by post,” said the brigadier. “Tell me more about this Alphonse Vannes.”

  Bruno tried to explain Alphonse’s background and the unusual but successful commune in the hills. But he knew from the start that it was hopeless, with Duroc snorting contemptuously from the window. Even when Bruno suggested they call on the mayor to confirm that Alphonse was a model citizen, the brigadier’s eyebrows rose in what looked like mockery. “He’s a responsible type, so he may be prepared to help us if we treat him right,” Bruno concluded. It sounded lame, even to him.

  “You may be right, but we don’t have enough time to treat anybody with kid gloves. If he knows anything, I need to know it now,” said the brigadier. “How did word get out about the GMO crops?”

  “Possibly through Dominique Suchet or one of the other employees at the station,” Bruno said, wondering how he could explain what he knew about his local people to an outsider who simply wanted to make an arrest and move on.

  “Dominique told me that she’s part of an ecolo chat group on the Internet and she started arguing in favor of some GMOs on the basis of her own experience at the station,” he said. “It wouldn’t be difficult for anyone in that chat group to put two and two together.”

  Bruno scratched his head, half remembering something, and then took out his battered notebook and read what he had scribbled after talking to Dominique. He looked up. “This is interesting. She called that chat group Aquitaine Vert, so there must be a connection with this newsletter in Bordeaux.” Suddenly he felt more cheerful. It looked as if the focus of the inquiry might be shifting away from Saint-Denis. “I’d better phone J-J and let him know.”

  “That’s already taken care of,” said the brigadier. “There’s a whole floor of an office building in Paris filled with computer experts who have since this morning been trawling through Aquitaine Vert’s entire history on the Net: e-mails, phone numbers, call histories, credit-card records, Web searches. You have no idea how many resources we have when we focus our efforts. We’ll have every exchange on that chat site, so if our fire starter learned about the GMOs from Dominique Suchet’s indiscretions, we’ll find him.”

  “Captain Duroc, I’m going to need your office,” the brigadier now said. “I also need your men to bring in Alphonse Vannes and Dominique Suchet. I’ll start by talking to them.”

  “Are they under arrest?”

  “No, of course not. Just helping us with our inquiries. But I’ll want their computers.”

  “And if they don’t want to come?”

  “You’ll have to find a way to persuade them.” He turned to Bruno. “Most of these old ’68 types usually have some drugs around. We can always hold them on that. What do you think?”

  “Alphonse must have grown out of it by now,” said Bruno. “And the young people up there now are more interested in rugby. A raid might be counterproductive. It might be more useful to keep Alphonse cooperative.”

  The brigadier studied Bruno in silence for a long moment. “Just so long as you don’t forget which side of the law you’re on,” he said, then turned to Duroc. “Take a long hard look at those rugby-playing youngsters. They were probably brought up to be zealous little ecolos . And when we’ve done that, we’ll go through the other inhabitants of Saint-Denis, one by one until we find what we’re looking for. And make a special note of every France Telecom phone card you find.”

  Bruno felt a chill as the brigadier turned away to pull a laptop from his case, plugged it in and settled down before the screen. Duroc and Bruno were dismissed. Duroc went to the front desk to order a car to fetch Alphonse and Dominique. Bruno walked thoughtfully back toward the mairie, thinking about that room full of computer experts in Paris trawling through e-mails and tracing phone calls and probably listening in to numbers of interest. By now, that would probably include Dominique’s cell phone. His instinct was to give Stephane a warning call. But any
sign that Dominique was prepared, or that she had called in a lawyer, would just deepen the suspicions about her.

  12

  Bruno felt miserable as he took the short stroll from the gendarmerie to the fire station, but his spirits were restored by the cheery greetings he received from the throng on the pavement outside the nursery school. As they always did this close to noon, young mothers with their strollers and shopping bags massed and gossiped and showed off new babies as they waited for the morning classes to end and their children to pour out of the front door in a happy, shrieking horde. If the birthrate alone were the sign of a town’s health, Saint-Denis was in fine shape, Bruno thought as he tipped his peaked hat to the assembled mothers and stepped into the road to pass them.

  Ahmed was in the fire station, as arranged, and the two of them went up to join Albert in his office to try Bruno’s experiment. It had been Ahmed who had taken the alarm call on the night of the fire, and although the call had not been recorded, Bruno thought it was worth taking a chance on Ahmed’s hearing and his memory.

  “I don’t know how much I can help, Bruno,” said Ahmed as they stood by Albert’s crowded desk. “I told you it sounded to me like there was a cloth over the mouthpiece. The voice was muffled, hard to make out.”

  “But you remember what the caller said?”

  Albert pushed toward Bruno the notepad he had on his desk. “Here’s what Ahmed scribbled down as he took the call.” It was just a list of single words-“Fire. Barn. Field. Behind woods. St.-Cham. road. Before St.-Cyp. turn.”

  “That’s pretty much all the caller said,” Ahmed confirmed. “Then when I asked for his name and address he just said he was calling from the Coux phone booth and hung up.”

  “Well, try to remember the voice and then listen to this,” Bruno said, picking up Albert’s phone and calling the voice mail message box at his office. “The quality isn’t brilliant, and you’ll hear me talking a bit, but there’s another man’s voice and I want to know if it sounds like the caller from Coux.”