Bruno, Chief of Police

by Martin Walker

  That reminded him: He rang Mireille at the Mairie to see if the Ministry of Defense information had arrived yet. It hadn’t, but she told him that Hamid was not named on any local doctor’s list of patients, or at the clinic, or with any of the pharmacies in town, and no medical claims were registered in the social security records. Evidently Hamid was a healthy person, an athlete in his youth. Why had that photo disappeared along with the medal?

  “Salut, Bruno. Robbed any banks lately?” shouted J-J, striding into the room with Isabelle at his heels. Then he grinned. “I always thought you must have been the brains behind that job. It was too smart for those idiots we put away.”

  “It’s good to see you, J-J.” Bruno smiled with genuine pleasure as they shook hands. The last time he had seen J-J they had been taken to a magnificent celebration dinner at Le Centenaire in Les Eyzies at the end of the robbery case by the bank’s regional manager. Two Michelin stars, a couple of bottles a head of some of the best wine Bruno had ever tasted, and a chauffeur to take him home afterward. He’d had to take off from work the next day. “I see you’re a big shot now, top cop in the département,” he added.

  “And there’s not a day goes by that I don’t sit back and feel a twinge of envy for the life you have here, Bruno.” J-J gave him an affectionate slap on the back. “That’s what intrigues me about this vicious little murder. It’s so out of character for this place. Isabelle tells me you think we might have a lead in this doctor’s son.”

  “I’m not sure I’d call it much of a lead, but he’s the only local from St. Denis that I saw in the photos. This is a weekday. He should be at school in Périgueux.”

  Isabelle shook her head. “I just checked. He didn’t turn up on Monday. He called in sick, and they got a note signed by his dad the doctor.”

  “Gelletreau writing a sick note for his son? I think we’d better verify that,” said Bruno, impressed at her speed of action but wary that she’d gone elsewhere to make the calls rather than do so in his presence. Maybe Isabelle was not quite a team player. “He doesn’t like writing sick notes at all, old Gelletreau. He accuses half his patients of malingering. He told me I just had a cold once, and it turned out to be pneumonia. And doctors are notoriously tough on their own families.” He reached for the phone.

  “You see why I like this guy?” J-J said to Isabelle. “Local knowledge. Invaluable.”

  “Madame Gelletreau?” Bruno said into his phone. If Isabelle could move fast, so could he. “Could I speak to Richard, please? It’s Bruno about the tennis, or is he too sick? He’s at school in Périgueux, you say. Oh, my mistake, I’d heard he was at home sick. Very well, it’s not urgent.” He rang off.

  “This looks a little more interesting,” said J-J. “A false note to school, and he’s at neither place.”

  Bruno drove down to the tennis club with Isabelle and checked the records. The semifinalist from Lalinde was named Jacqueline Courtemine. Bruno called Quatremer, his counterpart in Lalinde, a young ex-serviceman whom he knew only slightly. He asked for an address and some information about the family. Bruno explained that they were looking for a young man who might be in her company, and that Quatremer might want to keep an eye on the house until the Police Nationale turned up.

  Then he called Quatremer’s predecessor, an old hunting friend named René who had retired the previous year. He put the same question and elicited a volley of information. Jacqueline’s parents were separated, perhaps divorced. The mother was living in Paris on money from the wealthy father, who had inherited a family furniture store and expanded it into a profitable chain that now stretched across the region. Between his business and his mistresses he was rarely at home, and Jacqueline had the large house on the outskirts of town pretty much to herself, as well as her own car. René thought she would be going to university in the fall. He also said she had a reputation as a wild one. Bruno scribbled quick notes on how to find the house, and then suggested to René that Quatremer might need some support and advice. “And warn your mayor,” Bruno added, before hanging up.

  Isabelle was already downstairs, waiting in her car. She drove down to the main road leading to Bergerac and pulled in to wait for J-J. She fished in the backseat for the magnetic blue light, and as she clamped it onto her roof J-J’s big black Citroën drew up, flashing its lights, with another police car close behind. The small convoy now raced toward Lalinde.

  9

  The police convoy drew up to a large detached house that stood on the low hill that rose above Lalinde with a sweeping view of the Dordogne River. The river was wide and shallow here on its descent from the high plateau and into the flat farmlands that had for a century produced tobacco for the dark Gauloises cigarettes. The house was designed in the traditional Périgord style, with a steep tile roof, tall chimneys, and turrets like witches’ hats, and it gleamed with a brightness of stone that showed it had been newly built. Four cars, a motorbike with a German Army-style helmet hanging from the handlebars and two small Mobilette scooters were parked untidily in the broad gravel forecourt. Behind the house was a large garden, and then the land rose gently again to the hill that stretched all the way to Bergerac. Noisy rock music came from the open windows, and an empty bottle of wine lay on its side in the hallway.

  “Very welcoming,” said J-J as they approached the house and caught the distinctive whiff of marijuana. “A wide-open door and grass. We can hold her on a possession charge if we have to.” He directed the second carload of detectives to go around to the back, knocked quietly on the open wooden door, waited for a moment and then strode in.

  Several teenagers wearing vacant expressions were sprawled around a table in the big dining room, which opened onto a patio and swimming pool at the rear. A large bar ran along the side of the room. Cans of beer and bottles of wine stood on the table, along with dirty plates, a cheese board and a bowl of fruit. Through the window, Bruno could see three young men with shaven heads and tattoos playing in the pool with two bare-breasted girls. J-J went over to the impressive stereo and pulled the electric wire from its socket in the wall. The music came to a blessed halt. Bruno could see no sign of Richard Gelletreau at the table or in the pool.

  “Mademoiselle Courtemine?” J-J asked. There was no response. “Is Mademoiselle Courtemine or the owner of this property present? This is a police inquiry.”

  One of the girls at the table put her hand to her mouth and glanced at the wide staircase. J-J gestured with his head and Isabelle went quickly up the stairs.

  “Seize that,” J-J told another detective, gesturing to the bag of grass and rolling papers on the table. “Then get all their names and IDs. Bring the local gendarme in from the front gate. He should know most of them. What’s his name again, Bruno?”

  “Quatremer.”

  “Good, now we’ll try again,” said J-J, facing the young people around the table. “I’m looking for Richard Gelletreau.”

  No response. The girls in the pool had their hands over their breasts. The guys were looking around, probably considering running for it, Bruno thought, but at that moment more police came from the side of the house to block any possible exit. Bruno tried to focus on the faces. The youths in the pool looked vaguely familiar, perhaps from the surveillance photos he had seen. His eyes kept drifting back to the half-naked girls. His own teenage years had never been like this.

  “J-J,” called Isabelle from upstairs. “Here.” J-J motioned Bruno to come with him. They walked side by side up the wide and handsome staircase. The landing above was the size of an average living room. Straight ahead was a corridor with a series of closed doors to rooms that would have faced the town. As Isabelle called again they followed the sound of her voice to a second wing that must have stretched toward the garden. They walked into a large room that probably would have been bright and airy had the curtains been open, but was now dark except for some low lighting and the flickering of a TV. On the tangled bed were two young people, hauling themselves from sleep. The girl was trying to p
ull the sheet up to cover them. The boy could not move; his wrists were tied to the bedposts with silk scarves.

  Bruno raised his eyes from the couple on the bed to two posters on the wall. One was of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the Front National; the other was what looked like an original cinema placard for the film The Battle of Algiers. The boy on the bed turned his head away from the sudden light and groaned. It was Richard. He looked around, recognized Bruno and groaned again.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the girl screamed. “Get out.”

  “Check out the TV, J-J,” said Isabelle. “Nazi porn.”

  On the screen, two men in black uniforms with swastika armbands and SS lapel pins were being serviced by two young women, one white and blond and evidently willing, one black and in manacles.

  J-J moved quickly as the girl covered herself with the sheet and squirmed to the side of the bed. He caught her wrist in his strong hand and yanked it behind her back as she yelped. He held her firmly while he looked at the bedside table for which she had been reaching. A razor blade lay next to a small mirror on which sat some grains of white powder.

  “You’ve been a naughty girl,” J-J said, still holding her firmly. “Coke. That’s three years, right there.” He took a pen from his pocket and poked the lid of a small box beside the mirror. He shook his head at the pile of small white pills inside and then looked at the girl, who was now silent. She had stopped squirming and the bedsheets had fallen away to reveal that she was wearing black stockings, supported by a black garter belt.

  “All this and Ecstasy, too,” said J-J quietly. It appeared to Bruno that J-J looked genuinely shocked. “I think we have enough here for trafficking charges. That could be ten years in prison, mademoiselle. I hope you enjoy the company of tough old lesbians. You are going to be spending a lot of time with them.”

  He turned to Isabelle. “Put the cuffs on her, and then let’s take some photos of this scene. I want another forensics team to go through this room and check out every knife in the house. The Périgueux boys are still in St. Denis so you may have to call more in from Bergerac, and then let’s get the narcotics people here. We could do with some extra manpower for the search. It’s a big property.”

  He looked at Bruno. “Bruno, can you help us track down this girl’s parents? They’ll have to be informed, and you’d better do the same with the boy’s father. Then tell my men to organize a search of the premises as soon as they have all the young thugs downstairs arrested, charged with possession of illegal drugs and in police cells where we can question them. I take it this is indeed the young Richard?” Bruno nodded. “Isabelle, I want a lot of shots of the pair of them and make sure you get the focus just right. Then you can start checking out all the other videos and films in Mademoiselle Courtemine’s collection.”

  “Including her own,” Isabelle said drily, pointing at the back wall. Neither Bruno nor J-J had yet noticed the small video camera on its tripod, pointing at the bed, a red light on its side still blinking.

  As evening began to fall, more carloads of police arrived, along with two vans to take away a total of eight young people. Jacqueline waited in handcuffs; Richard was finally untied once the police photographers had finished with the bedroom and the forensics team had taken their samples. He and Jacqueline were then each given a set of the plastic white overalls the forensics team used, handcuffed again and taken to police headquarters in Périgueux. Bruno had tracked down the families. Jacqueline’s father was on a business trip to Finland and would fly home the next day. Her mother was driving down from Paris. Richard’s father would meet them in Périgueux. Lawyers had been arranged, but the search had already found four shoe boxes of Ecstasy pills in one of the outbuildings.

  “Street value of twenty thousand euros, they tell me,” said J-J, lighting an American cigarette. He and Bruno were standing on the wide terrace in front of the house. “They just found another shoe box in her car, hidden under the spare tire. Lots of fingerprints. And those tattoo-covered boys in the pool turn out to be members of the Front’s Service d’Ordre, its own private security guard. They had photos of themselves with Le Pen at some party rally. There were drugs in their cars and very large amounts of cash in their wallets.”

  “Have you told Paris yet?” asked Bruno. “Most of the politicians will love it. Front National types involved in a drug-running gang, perverting our French youth.”

  “Sure, sure,” said J-J, “but it’s the murderer I’m after. I don’t much care about the politics, except that I hate that Nazi crap. My God, after what this country went through in the war, to see these young kids getting caught up in Third Reich nonsense … Do you have kids?”

  “No kids, J-J, and no wife as yet,” said Bruno, a note of sadness in his own voice. Where had that come from? He changed the subject. “And straight sex was always good enough for me.”

  “Well, I certainly can’t say that porno film would turn me on,” said J-J. “Mind you, at my age there’s not much that does light my fire.”

  “Yet in the old days, there wasn’t much that didn’t get you going. Your reputation still precedes you, J-J. I’m surprised that Isabelle isn’t wearing armor.”

  “Not necessary with these new regulations, Bruno. They can fire you these days if you so much as look at a female colleague. You’re lucky to be out of it, down here in your little commune.”

  “We have that as well. We aren’t insulated from what goes on everywhere else. Hamid’s death made that clear,” said Bruno. “Maybe I was fooling myself when I thought we were different down here, with our little weekly markets and all the kids playing sports and staying out of trouble. A good place to raise a family, you’d think, and now this. You know, J-J, this is my first murder.”

  “So when are you going to start your own family, Bruno? Or do you have your own little harem among the farmers’ wives?”

  Bruno grinned. “I wish. Have you seen the farmers’ fists?”

  “No, and I haven’t seen the farmers’ wives either,” J-J said with a grin. “But seriously, aren’t you planning to settle down? You’d make a good father.”

  “I haven’t found the right woman,” said Bruno, shrugging. He could have made a joke of it, as he usually did to keep his privacy, but suddenly the memory of the woman he had loved and lost in Bosnia, rescued and then failed to save, was very much with him. Perhaps it was the violence he had seen now in St. Denis as he had seen it in Bosnia. It was nobody’s business but his own. “I suppose I came close to it a couple of times.”

  “I remember that pretty brunette who worked for the railway—Josette. You were seeing her when we worked together.”

  “They moved her up north to Calais to work on the Eurotunnel service because she spoke good English. I miss her,” said Bruno. “We got together once in Paris for a weekend, but somehow it wasn’t the same.”

  J-J grunted, a sound that seemed to acknowledge many things, from the power of women to the corrosive effects of time and the inability of men to ever quite explain or comprehend them. As darkness spread over the river below them, they stood in silence for a moment.

  “I guess I’m lucky, really, having something close to an ordinary family life,” said J-J. “Most cops’ marriages don’t work out, what with the strange hours and the things you can’t talk about, and it’s not easy making friends outside the police. Civilians get nervous around us. But you know that. Or maybe it’s different for you down here.”

  “Yes and no,” said Bruno.

  “The only thing she gives me grief about now is grandchildren,” J-J went on, as if he hadn’t heard Bruno. “She goes on and on about why our kids aren’t married and breeding.” He sighed. “I suppose your folks are getting at you about the same thing.”

  “Not really,” Bruno said shortly. “I thought you knew I was an orphan.”

  J-J turned away from the view to scrutinize him. “I remember somebody telling me that, but it slipped my mind.”

  “I never knew them,” Bruno
said, looking into the distance. “I know nothing at all of my father, and my mother left me in a church when I was a baby. It was the priest who christened me Benoît, the blessed one. You can understand why I call myself Bruno instead.”

  J-J smiled weakly.

  “I was in a church orphanage until I was five,” said Bruno, “and then my mother committed suicide. But first she wrote a note to her cousin in Bergerac naming the church where she’d left me. Those cousins raised me, which wasn’t easy since they never had much money. That’s why I went off to the Army as soon as I left school. I don’t have great memories of childhood. Besides which, they have five kids of their own, so there’s no pressure on me.”

  “Do you still see them?”

  “Weddings and funerals, mostly. I’m close to one of the kids because he plays rugby. I’ve taken him out hunting a few times, and I tried to talk him out of going into the Army. He sort of listened; joined the Air Force instead.”

  “I thought you enjoyed your time in the service. I remember you telling some stories, that night we went out to dinner.”

  “Bits of it were fine. Most of it, really. I try to forget the bad times.”

  “You mean Bosnia?”

  Yes, he meant Bosnia. He’d been there with the U.N. peacekeepers, but he quickly found there wasn’t much peace to be kept. They’d had over a hundred dead, a thousand wounded, but nobody even noticed at the time. They were being hit by snipers and mortars from all sides, Serbs, Muslims and Croats. He’d lost friends, but the U.N. ordered the peacekeeping troops not to fight back. They could hardly even defend themselves. After that, he’d chosen to live here, in the quiet heart of rural France. At least it used to be quiet before a man was found dead with a swastika carved in his chest. Bruno told J-J some of this, but not all.