Henry turned to look at Natasha, who was studying the village behind them.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I had a beer with George at that cafe beneath the oak tree, over there,” he said, pointing.
“You have been here before, Inspecteur?” Lagarde said, removing his cap and wiping his glistening forehead on his sleeve.
“Oui oui,” Henry replied, “ces derniéres années.”
Henry felt an immediate pang of guilt, a sudden visceral longing for George. It felt as though he was betraying her by being here with others, trampling on their private and special memories. He suddenly felt a strong desire to hear her voice.
“Do you have a primary crime scene, or do you know where the body may have entered the river, Lieutenant?” he asked.
Lagarde shrugged.
“We do not, but there are two… er… how do you say… possibilités.”
Henry scratched his scalp through the short back and sides he had been obliged to surrender to before boarding the train at St Pancras International. Natasha had driven him to her own hairdresser, Pasquale, who had spent an excessive amount of time running his fingers through Henry’s hair, before charging extortionately for this pleasure.
“This is the confluence of two rivers, is it not?” Henry asked, turning his head and following the substantial expanse of water flowing in from two directions, funnelled together in a Y-shaped cauldron right in front of Limeuil.
“Oui, Inspecteur, the Vezere and Dordogne rivers meet here at Limeuil. Monsieur Pequignot’s body could have come down either one.”
“They’re big rivers. Finding the scene of crime could be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Natasha said, studying the receding footprints of each river.
“I not fully understand, Sergeant,” Lagarde said, frowning at Natasha, “but we do have two clues. Come, we drive now and I show you.” He gestured for them to join him in his white Renault Megane with deep blue block writing on the doors – ‘POLICE’. Thankfully it had air conditioning. Natasha made Henry sit in front, perhaps to keep Lagarde’s eyes on the road.
“Tell me about the victim, Monsieur Pequignot,” Henry said, as they began to wind their way along a very narrow road towards Le Bugue.
Lagarde drove fast, faster than was comfortable on such a twisting road. Henry was aware of his fingers gripping his seat occasionally as they brushed narrowly past cars around numerous blind corners.
“Francois Pequignot was a high court judge in Sarlat for the past, er, twenty years. He was being considered for the European Court of Human Rights and had previously worked at Den Haage,” Lagarde said.
“The Hague,” Henry translated for Natasha, whose perspiring face he could see reflected in the rear view mirror.
“He was still a young man, er, how you say, soixant-trois?”
“Sixty-three,” Henry replied.
“Don’t tell me, you speak French as well,” Natasha said.
Henry caught her eye in the mirror and shrugged modestly.
“Where did he live?” Henry said, turning in his seat to face Natasha. “Would you take notes, in English, please, Sergeant?”
She mouthed ‘Piss off, sir’ as she raised a solitary eyebrow.
“He lived in a small village outside Sarlat called La Chapelle-Aubareil.”
The car drew to a rapid halt on the gravel at a small intersection and turned right towards Le Bugue.
“Was he married?” Henry asked.
“He was, er, divorcé.”
“Family?”
Lagarde sighed and looked at Henry as he drove. In the mirror Henry could see Natasha’s eyes widening at Lagarde’s inattention to the road.
“Two children, but they have all, er, I do not know this in English,” he shrugged, “coupé le pont… their father.”
Lagarde turned his eyes back to the road and swerved the car away from an oncoming tractor that was pulling a trailer laden with bales of hay.
“Why did they disown their father?” Henry asked.
“He had a weakness for, er, les prostituées.”
Henry glanced at Natasha in the mirror. She was flushed in the back of the car, blowing air up out of her mouth so that it flared the fringe of her hair.
“Any relatives, parents or siblings, Lieutenant?” Natasha asked.
Lagarde frowned and then suddenly his face lit up.
“Ah, family, no, we have not been able to trace any family for Monsieur Pequignot, other than his wife and children.”
They crossed a beautiful stone bridge over a wide river as they entered the old heart of Le Bugue.
“This is the River Vezere,” Lagarde said, indicating the waters that flowed beneath the bridge.
The road wound on for another six miles until they entered the ancient village of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, nestled against an overhanging limestone cliff that soared above the Vezere down below. From certain angles the cliff resembled enormous anvil- shaped cumulo-nimbus clouds; from others it was reminiscent of gigantic grey forest mushrooms. Punched into the tall cliff at irregular intervals, like holes in Emmental cheese, were the prehistoric caves of the Troglodytes, the oldest human inhabitants of Europe.
“Of all the villages along the Vezere, why Les Eyzies?” Henry asked as they parked outside the boulangerie opposite a curiously modern limestone building, square and angular, whereas everything else in the village was medieval, imperfect and weathered.
“Monsieur Pequignot was found with two… er, billets for the Musée National de la Préhistoire in his coat,” Lagarde said, gesturing at the modern building beside them before extracting his stocky frame from the car.
The heat hit them like a weight being dropped from a height. It seemed even hotter than it had earlier. The illuminated sign outside an adjacent Pharmacie indicated the air temperature to be thirty-nine degrees Celsius. Henry stared at the museum as he held Natasha’s door open for her. Memories stirred inside his head. Had he been here before, he wondered?
“Wait, I know this place. It is the cradle of modern human evolution in Europe, post Neanderthal man,” he said thoughtfully.
Lagarde nodded.
“You’ve been here?” Natasha asked, straightening her clothing as she emerged from the car.
Henry hesitated and took a few steps closer to the glass-fronted museum entrance.
“I can’t remember, but I think so. The whole… concept seems familiar. But then again, I was having an ironically pertinent conversation with Harold Spencer at Mensa recently, all about evolutionary possibilities of the human brain.”
Natasha whistled.
“Sounds riveting, guv. Who is Harold Spencer?”
“Professor of Anthropology at the Natural History Museum in London. I was looking for information about brain size and evolution, in view of our unusual cases, you see. I wanted to know if it was possible for the human brain to evolve into a larger organ over time.”
“This museum shows all the evidence found in this area documenting the evolution of human, er, intelligence, dating back tens of thousands of years.” Lagarde said proudly, pushing out his chest.
“Troglodytes inhabited this valley and those caves up in the limestone cliffs about seventy thousand years ago. All the evidence in the world is displayed inside this building… and yet… we have stumbled upon a handful of human beings with extraordinary neurological development, way beyond what is known in there.” Henry turned around to view the narrow, shop-lined avenue.
“What are you looking for, Inspecteur?” Lagarde asked, a puzzled look on his sweaty face.
“Do you have any evidence other than tickets to this museum that place Pequignot in Les Eyzies?” Henry asked.
“There is CCTV from inside the museum. It shows Monsieur Pequignot at various stages, occasionally talking with another man with, er, very big, er, how you say… coiffure…”
“Hairstyle.” Henry said.
“Oui… hair.” Lagarde framed his own head with his hands, giving the impression o
f it being much larger.
“Have you identified this other man?”
“The video is not, er… how you say… sharp, Inspecteur.”
“Clear?” Henry said.
“Oui!”
Hands on hips, Henry surveyed the village.
“So, he was here with someone else around the time that he died, right?”
Lagarde nodded.
“But you have no evidence that the murder, which would have been pretty bloody, took place here in Les Eyzies?”
“No.”
Henry and Natasha faced each other over the Renault. It was sweltering, the sunlight blazing off the car.
“Come, now I take you to the next clue,” Lagarde announced with a proud smile.
“God, I need a drink first,” Natasha said.
Three bottles of water later they turned left at the roundabout and headed in the direction of Sarlat.
“What date do you think he was murdered?” Henry asked as they flew along the D47, barely missing a family of tourists on bicycles.
“We think it was about first week of Septembre, last year. Our pathologiste says the body was in the water for no more than two or three days.”
The drive to Sarlat, the town where Pequignot had cultivated for himself both professional esteem and personal disgrace, took about thirty minutes. Thereafter they turned south towards Vitrac, continuing on the D46 which had become a narrow track on which Henry was certain that he would have driven at half the speed that Lagarde did. Beside the winding roads fields of tobacco, corn and sunflowers ripened lazily in the sunshine.
“Our next stop is Cenac St Julien, which is on the River Dordogne,” Lagarde said.
He parked the Renault beside a towering cornfield, like a scene from Day of the Triffids, and strode on to the ancient stone Pont de Domme, an enormous arched bridge which crossed the Dordogne and entered Cenac on the far side. Henry and Natasha followed, once again sapped by the searing heat. The popularity and habitation of the banks of the Dordogne below the bridge made it abundantly evident why this would have been a very risky place to commit such a murder and discard the body into the water.
“That’s a campsite,” Natasha observed as they surveyed the area from the centre of the bridge.
“A very busy one, sergeant, with canoe, er, louer…” Lagarde began.
“Canoe rental, yes. You can see them both sides of the bridge. A very busy place and an unlikely site for a murder with so many tourists around, just like Les Eyzies,” Henry said.
Below them on the clear, wide water dozens of canoes – reds, yellows, greens – and kayaks, weaved their languid way down the mighty old man of a river.
“What was the clue you found here, Lieutenant?” Natasha asked, taking a swig of water from her second bottle.
“Monsieur Pequignot’s abandoned car was found in Cenac, about one week after his body was discovered,” Lagarde told her.
Henry had found something. He stood reading a plaque on the bridge.
“Look at this, Natasha,” he said, touching her on the elbow.
The plaque read: ‘Le 26 Juin 1944 Ici fut massacré par les hordes Allemandes Louis Desplat de Sarlat, a l’age de 53 ans ardent patriot’.
“There were many atrocities by the Allemanders against the French people and French résistance during the war, very much in this area as well. The people here have never forgotten the massacre at places like Oradour and Montignac,” Lagarde said, as though reciting lines he had learned at school.
“All of our victims were born in Germany and came to England as orphans in early childhood,” Henry said. “It certainly catches my eye that one possible site for Pequignot’s murder commemorates a German war atrocity that occurred only four years before he was born.”
“Mon dieu!” Lagarde appeared surprised. “Monsieur Pequignot was born in Germany, that we do know, but as I say before, we have not traced any family…” His voice trailed off.
A feeling of foreboding descended over Henry: they were dealing with something far bigger than ever imagined.
“Do you know where his birth was registered, Lieutenant?” he asked, watching Natasha’s face for her reaction.
“Oui, Inspecteur, it was Sten… no Stein… something…”
“Steinhöring?”
“Voila!”
Henry felt the noose around his own neck tightening another notch and the small hairs at the back of his head prickled. The inevitability of being forced into confronting his uncertain past moved yet another step closer. His head began to throb, perhaps from the heat, the lack of fluids, or perhaps simply from the rising tension that he was feeling. Lagarde sensed that a connection had been made.
“Steinhöring: is that where your victims were born as well?” Lagarde asked.
“Oui,” Henry said resignedly, his eyes drifting down to the weathered surface of the road bridge. ”Will I be able to see Pequignot’s post mortem report, Lieutenant? That would be very useful.”
Lagarde tilted his head to one side.
“I’m sorry, Inspecteur?”
“Pequignot’s rapport d’autopsie, s’il vous plait.”
Lagarde nodded and promised to produce it the next morning. Swallowing two ibuprofens as they drove off the bridge towards their hotel in Carsac, Henry knew he would need to ask Natasha for a massage that evening.
His mind was doing flick-flacks down the rabbit-hole. How deep, just how deep did it go? First Haysbrook, then Vera, then Barnabus, now Pequignot. Who was next?
Twenty-Four
Falling back on to the starched pillow on his bed, Henry pressed the phone against his ear as he closed his eyes and began to rub his throbbing temples.
The hotel was typically French provincial: the bed lumpy, the pillow feathery and tired and the plumbing noisy. But, for a man exhausted both physically and mentally, being able to take the weight off his feet and his brain out of gear was worth more than any star rating.
Within three rings the phone was answered, not surprisingly, as it was one o’clock in the morning in Cairo.
“George, it’s me… Henry.”
“Henry?” came the sleepy reply in a voice thick with unrequited rest.
“Sorry, love, I know it’s late, I just wanted to hear your voice.”
Henry could hear rustling of bed sheets and the jarring sound of George’s phone possibly being dropped.
“Do you know what time it is?” George said, the effort to sound lucid apparent in her voice.
“I know. I’ve just finished work.”
“Where are you?” George’s voice was instantly edged with something that did not sound warm. “I’ve tried the apartment.”
Henry hesitated, rubbing his temples rhythmically with his right hand – the ibuprofens had not yet had any effect.
“We’ve had another murder, another clue in the puzzle surrounding Vera’s death,” he said. He knew he must sound evasive.
Silence for a few moments.
“How are things with you in Cairo?” he asked quickly.
“OK. It’s tense here and there’s a lot riding on a knife edge, but exciting because so much is changing so quickly, unlike what I experienced in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or even Kosovo.”
Henry lay back with his eyes closed, enjoying hearing George’s infectious enthusiasm, even if she was half asleep.
“I’m sorry I missed you in London,” he said.
George paused, her breathing audible on the phone.
“I’m sorry about that, too, really I am, I was… I was…”
“It’s OK, George. I miss you.”
Henry’s headache was killing him and he could no longer keep his eyes open. Even though he had closed the shutters on his first floor bedroom overlooking the main road, his eyes remained acutely sensitive to light. The closed shutters seemed to accentuate the musty smell of old furnishings in his room. In the background the distinctive sound of a French police siren whined past the hotel.
“Henry,” George said, e
dgily.
“Yes, love?”
“Where are you?”
He sighed, anticipating the reaction he would unleash.
“I’m in France, in the Ibis Hotel in Carsac.”
Henry thought he heard muted gunfire in the background of George’s silence.
“Are you alone?”
He sighed again, and though it hurt, he opened his eyes and looked up at the high, ornate ceiling and dusty cornice.
“I’m here with my investigating team, George. The boss organised it.”
“Natasha.” George’s voice was sharp with disapproval.
Henry closed his eyes again, switched phone hands and began to rub his temples with the other. It was awful to admit, but he was beginning to regret making the call. He should have known better: he was tired; he had a monstrous headache; he was in France with Natasha and he had not cleared the air with George since she left their apartment without saying goodbye. Each one of these, let alone their combined mass, was a portent of imminent trouble.
“How are you otherwise, George? Are you safe?” Henry said quietly, hoping to steer the conversation towards the things he had intended to discuss.
“How am I supposed to feel, Henry? It’s one o’clock in the morning, I’m tired and once again faced with you and the gorgeous Natasha away in each other’s company.”
“It’s business, George, you know that.”
He could hear her sighing irritably and rustling in the bed.
“That’s what I used to say to you when I was with Vera,” George said, her voice tinged with deflation, perhaps even resignation, or was it a taunt?
Henry did not know how to react to her comment. Was she suggesting that he never believed her when she told him that, or that she had lied to him and now felt the tables were reversed?
“What are you saying, George?”
Henry heard her take a deep breath as he waited for a response.
“God, I don’t know. I’m tired, you’re tired. Let’s call it a night, shall we?”
Henry felt annoyed that he should have to be defensive when it was he who had taken the initiative to call her in Cairo, something she had chastised him for not doing in the past. His head pounded and his mind began to long for the gentle pressure from Natasha’s skilled fingers. She seemed more capable of relieving his headaches now than any amount of medication he could swallow.
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