Bruno, Chief of Police

by Martin Walker

  “Well, you turned out okay,” J-J said. “And I’m a prying old fool. I suppose it goes with the job. Still, I meant it about my wife, she’s a good woman. I’m lucky.” J-J paused. “You know she’s got me playing golf?”

  Bruno chuckled, grateful for the change of subject, and of mood.

  “She started playing with a couple of her girlfriends, then she insisted I take some lessons, said we had to have some common interests for when I retire,” J-J said. “I enjoy it; a nice stroll in the open air, a couple of drinks after, some decent people in the clubhouse. We’re planning on going down to Spain this summer on one of those special golfing vacations, play every day, get some lessons. Look, forget all this, I need a drink. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  Bruno turned and looked back at the house. All the lights were on and white-garbed figures crossed back and forth behind the windows. The last time he had seen this many police was at the big parade when he completed his training course.

  “Well, it looks like we have our chief suspect for the poor old Arab,” J-J said as his silhouette loomed out of the light in the house, offering him a glass. A Ricard, mixed just right, not too much ice. The furniture tycoon would hardly miss a couple of drinks.

  “It’s circumstantial, unless forensics comes up with some traces or we find the weapon,” Bruno said. “You know you’re going to lose control of this case once Paris gets involved, J-J. There’s too much politics.”

  “That’s why I want to wrap it up fast,” said J-J. “They’re sending down a special magistrate from Paris, along with something they call a media coordinator to handle the press. They’ll be spinning everything for the evening news and the minister’s presidential ambitions. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t come down here himself, maybe even for the funeral.”

  “The mayor is already worried enough about the impact on tourism this summer without having ministers making headlines. I can just see it now.” Bruno shook his head. “St. Denis: The little town of hate.”

  “In your shoes, I’d try to keep out of the way of those mouettes from Paris, those damn seagulls who fly in with a lot of noise, crap on us all from a great height and then fly off again. Let the big boys do their thing and then try and sweep up the mess when they go. That’s the way it works.”

  “Not with my mayor, it doesn’t,” said Bruno. “Don’t forget he used to be on Chirac’s staff in Paris. He can play politics with the best of them. He’s been good to me, helped me, taught me a lot. I don’t want to let him down.”

  “You mean, like the father you never had?”

  The remark stung. Bruno stared intently at J-J then told himself to relax. “You must have been reading some paperback on psychology,” he said, more curtly than he had intended.

  “Merde, Bruno, I didn’t mean anything by it.” J-J leaned forward and punched his arm gently. “I was just talking, you know.”

  “Forget it, maybe you’re right,” Bruno said. “He has been like a father to me. But it’s not just the mayor. It’s the town itself and the damage all this mess could do. It’s my home and it’s my job to defend it.”

  10

  It was raining, a thin persistent drizzle that would last for a couple of hours. The four men hurried across the wet grass to the covered court of which Bruno was so proud. It looked like a disused hangar on an old airfield, with a corrugated roof in translucent plastic and tarpaulins for walls. But the court was sound inside, and boasted an umpire’s chair, a scoreboard and benches for spectators. An array of small placards, advertising local businesses and the Sud Ouest, hung on the metal frame. Bruno partnered with the Baron. Xavier, the deputy mayor, and Michel, who ran the public-works department, took the other side, as they usually did, and they began to hit the ball back and forth across the net, not too hard and none too skillfully, for the pleasure of the game and of the weekly ritual. When Bruno took the ball to serve, the Baron stayed alongside him at the back of the court. He preferred playing the backcourt, letting “young Bruno” take the volleys at the net. As always, each man was allowed to have his first serve of the day as many times as he required to get the ball in. And, as usual, Bruno’s hard first serve went long but his second was decently placed. After a double fault, a missed volley and one accidentally excellent serve that made Bruno think he might one day be able to play this game, they changed ends.

  “Have you caught the bastard yet?” Michel asked as they passed each other at the net. He was a powerful man physically, though not tall, compact with a small but firm paunch. He was even more powerful in the life of the town, and his signature was needed on any planning permission. Sixteen men served under him and he supervised a motor pool of trucks, ditch-diggers and a small bulldozer. He came from Toulon, where he had served twenty years in the Navy engineers.

  Bruno shrugged. “It’s out of my hands. The Police Nationale are running the show, and Paris has got involved. I don’t know much more than you do, and if I did, you know I couldn’t talk about it.”

  But of course he knew his companions wouldn’t let him get away with that. These four were the town’s shadow government. The Baron owned the land, and was rich enough to make the donations that helped the tennis and rugby clubs to keep functioning as they did. Michel was a man of real influence and Xavier did most of the administrative work and ran the day-to-day business of the Mairie. He had worked in the sub-prefecture in Sarlat until he came home to St. Denis, where his father ran the Renault dealership and his father-in-law owned the big local sawmill. Along with Bruno and the mayor, these men ran the business of the town. They had learned to be discreet and they expected Bruno to keep them informed, above all at these ritual Friday matches.

  Michel had a classic serve, a high toss of the ball and a good follow-through, and his first service went in. Bruno’s forehand return hit the lip of the net, and rolled over to win the point.

  “Sorry,” he called out, and Michel waved acknowledgment, then bounced the ball to serve again. When they reached deuce, two men entered the court, wiping the raindrops from their faces. Rollo, the school headmaster, always arrived a little late. He waved a greeting, and he and Dougal, a Scotsman who was the Baron’s neighbor and drinking chum, sat on the bench to watch the end of the set. It was not long before Rollo and Dougal rose to take their turn. This was the usual rule. One set, and then the extra men played the losers. Bruno and the Baron sat down to watch. Rollo played with more enthusiasm than skill and loved to attack the net, but Dougal had once been a decent club player and his ground shots were always a pleasure to watch.

  “I suppose you can’t say much,” the Baron began, in what he thought was a low voice.

  “Not a thing,” replied Bruno. “You understand.”

  “It’s just I heard there were some arrests over in Lalinde last night and that you were involved. A friend of mine saw you there. I just want to know if there was a connection to our Arab.”

  “Our Arab, is he now?” Bruno asked. “I suppose he is, in a way. He lived here, died here.”

  “Our Arab I said, and I mean it. I know Momu and Karim as well as you do. I know the old man was a Harki, and I have a very special feeling for the Harkis. I commanded a platoon of them in the Algerian war. I spent the first month wondering when one of them would shoot me in the back, and the rest of the war they saved my neck on a regular basis.”

  Bruno turned and looked at the Baron curiously. In the town, he had a reputation as a true Right-winger, and it was said that only his devotion to the memory of de Gaulle kept the Baron from voting for the Front National.

  “I thought you were against all this immigration from North Africa,” Bruno said, breaking off to applaud as Michel served an ace.

  “I am. What is it now, six million, seven million Arabs and Muslims over here, swamping the place? You can’t recognize Paris anymore. But Harkis are different. They fought for us and we owed them—and we left too damn many of them behind to have their throats cut because we wouldn’t take them in. Men who f
ought for France.”

  “More than just a Harki, our victim got a medal. He fought for us in Vietnam, too, that’s where he won it,” Bruno said.

  “In that case, he wasn’t a Harki. They were irregulars. He sounds like he was in the regular Army, probably a Zouave or a Tirailleur. That’s what most of those colonial regiments were called. They were allowed back into France when it was over, but most of the Harkis were refused entry. And those who made it to France were put in camps. It was shameful. Some of us did what we could. I managed to bring some of my men back on the troopship, but it meant leaving their families, so the bulk of them decided to stay and take their chances. Most of them paid the price.”

  “How did you find out about who was killed?” Bruno wanted to know.

  “I stayed in touch with the men I brought over, helped them get jobs, that sort of thing. I took some of them on in my business. They had ways of keeping contact through their families. You know I’m not much of a churchgoing type, but every time I heard one of my Harkis had been killed, I used to go and light a candle.” He cleared his throat and sat up. “So tell me about our Arab, a good soldier of France. Do you know who killed him?”

  “No. We’re just starting the investigation, and I’m not even really involved. As I said, the Police Nationale are handling it. They’ve set up a temporary office in the exhibition rooms.”

  “What about Lalinde?”

  “There may not even be a connection. It seems to have been more of a drug bust,” Bruno said, careful not to tell his friend an outright lie.

  The Baron nodded, his eyes still fixed on the game. Rollo had just served two double faults.

  “Did I ever tell you how we left Algeria?” he asked suddenly. Bruno shook his head.

  “We were in Oran, at the harbor. It was chaos. De Gaulle had signed the peace deal at Evian and then half the Army in Algeria launched that crazy coup d’état.

  “Anyway, I got our unit down to the troopship, and on the way we picked up those of my old Harkis that we could find, or who were smart enough to know they had better get out fast. My sergeant had been with me all through the war and he liked the Harkis, so he helped. We scrounged some uniforms—no shortage of them—and we just let them board with us. There were no lists, nothing organized, because there were so few officers, so I just bullied them all aboard.”

  “And when you got to France?” Bruno asked. “How did you get them ashore?”

  “They couldn’t put us all into the naval base at Toulon, where at least there was some kind of control system, so we docked at Marseilles, at the commercial port, and the Army had dozens of trucks to drive us to the nearest bases. But there was no system for which unit went to which base, so we all just boarded the first trucks we saw and Harkis jumped off them at every corner. We had found some civilian clothes for them and a few francs. Apart from that, all they had was my name and address.”

  “I knew the Algerian war ended in a mess, but I didn’t know about that,” Bruno said.

  “Game and set,” called Dougal, and on the court they began collecting the tennis balls.

  “The thing I remember best,” said the Baron, “was the very last moment when we left Algiers. I stayed at the foot of the gangplank, trying to be sure I had all my men. And one of the Algerian dockworkers was standing by me, ready to cast off the ship’s rope. He looked me straight in the eye, and he said, ‘Next time, we invade you.’ Just like that. And he kept his eyes fixed on me until I turned and boarded the ship. I’ll never forget it. And when I look at France these days, I know he was right.”

  As always after their game, the group of men walked back to the clubhouse. The rain had eased. They showered and then brought in the ingredients of their ceremonial Friday lunch from their cars. Bruno provided eggs from his hens and herbs from his garden. In early spring, he picked boutons de pissenlit, the tiny green buds of the dandelion, but now it was young garlic and flat-leaf parsley. He also had some of his own truffles, which he had stored in oil since the winter. Michel brought pâté and rillettes, made from the pig they had gathered to slaughter in February, in happy defiance of the European Union regulations. Dougal supplied bread and cheese and the bottle of Scotch that they took as an aperitif after their first thirst-quenching beers from the tap at the clubhouse bar. Rollo brought steaks and Xavier the salad and a tarte aux pommes, and the Baron provided the wine, a St. Emilion ’98 that was tasted and judged to be at its best.

  Bruno cooked, as he always did, and when they had set the table and prepared the salad the men gathered at the hatch between the kitchen and the bar. Usually they joked and gossiped, but this time there was only one topic on their minds.

  “All I can say is that we don’t yet have any firm evidence, and so no obvious suspect,” Bruno told them as he broke the dozen eggs, lit the grill for the steaks and threw a stick of unsalted butter into the frying pan. He began to slice the truffle very thin. “We have some leads that we’re following. Some point one way and some another, and some of them I don’t know about because I am on the fringes of this investigation. That’s all I can say.”

  “The doctor’s son has been arrested, along with a bunch of Front National thugs,” said Xavier. “That we know.”

  “It may not be connected,” said Bruno.

  “It looks connected,” said Michel. “Front National thugs and a swastika carved into the poor old bastard’s chest. Who else would do that?”

  “Maybe the murderer did that to cast suspicion elsewhere,” said Bruno. “Have you thought of that?”

  “Which doctor’s son?” asked Rollo.

  “Gelletreau,” said Xavier.

  “Young Richard?” said Rollo, startled. “He’s still at the lycée.”

  “He wasn’t there this week. He forged a note from his dad saying he was sick,” said Bruno, tossing the whipped eggs into the sizzling butter and the fresh garlic. As the base of the omelette began to cook, he threw in the sliced truffle and twirled the pan.

  “In the Front National? Richard?” Rollo had disbelief in his voice. “I never had any idea when he was in school.” He paused. “Well, I suppose there was one thing, a fight with one of Momu’s nephews, but nothing serious. Two bloody noses and some name-calling, the usual thing. I suspended them both from school for a day and sent a note to the parents.”

  “A fight with one of Momu’s nephews, and then Momu’s dad gets killed?” said the Baron. “That sounds significant. What was the name-calling? Sale beur— dirty Arab—that kind of thing?”

  “Something like that,” Rollo said stiffly. “Look, I didn’t mean … it was just one of those tussles that boys get into. It happens all the time. I should never have mentioned it.”

  They fell into a silence, all eyes on Bruno as he lifted and tilted the heavy iron pan, gave two strategic pushes with his wooden spoon and tossed the herbs into the runny mix before folding the giant omelette over onto itself. Without a word, they all trooped to the table and sat. The Baron poured the wine and Bruno served the perfect omelette, the earthy scent of the truffle just beginning to percolate as he divided this opening course onto six plates.

  “One of your best, Bruno,” said the Baron, savoring his first mouthful and slicing the big country loaf against his chest with a Laguiole knife he took from the pouch at his belt. He was not trying to change the subject, since all the men understood that something significant had been said and the matter could not be allowed to rest.

  “But you did mention it, Rollo,” the Baron went on. “And now you must satisfy not just our curiosity but the judicial questions this must raise. Our friend Bruno may be too delicate to insist, but you understand what is at issue here.”

  “It was just boys,” Rollo said. “You know how they are. One gets a bloody nose, the other gets a black eye and then they’re the best of friends.” He looked from one to the other, but none was meeting Rollo’s eyes.

  “Well, were they?” asked Michel.

  “Were they what?” snapped Rollo. Bru
no could see he hated the way this was going.

  “Did they become the best of friends?”

  “They didn’t fight again.”

  “Friends?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean anything. They got on. Momu even invited the boy back to his home, sat him down to dinner with the family so he could see for himself they were just another French family. No difference. Momu told me he liked the boy. He was bright, respectful. He brought flowers.”

  “That would have been his mother’s idea,” said Xavier.

  “She’s on the Left, isn’t she?” Michel asked.

  “Green,” said Xavier, who followed such allegiances closely. “She got involved in that campaign against the pollution from the sawmill. Thirty jobs at stake and those daft Ecolos want to close it down.”

  “What I mean is that Richard wouldn’t have heard any of this anti-immigrant stuff at home. His mother is a Green and the doctor doesn’t seem to have any politics,” Michel continued. “So where did he pick it up?”

  “In bed, I think,” said Bruno. “I think he fell for that girl from Lalinde who got to the tennis semifinals last year, and she was in the Front. She’s a pretty thing and he was besotted with her.”

  “Then that’s that,” said Rollo. “This fight took place three years ago. And Richard didn’t meet the girl until the tournament last summer.” He took his glass as if he were about to gulp the wine, but remembered himself and took an appreciative sniff of the St. Emilion and then a sip. “When he left my care, he was a fine boy, a good pupil, a credit to the town. I thought he might go on to Paris, the Sciences-Po or the Polytechnique.”

  “Instead, it looks like it could be prison for your fine boy,” said the Baron, using a chunk of bread to mop up every last trace of buttery egg from his plate.

  11

  Bruno did not normally drink in the mornings, but Saturday was the exception. It was the day of the small market of St. Denis, usually limited to the open space beneath the Mairie where the stallholders set out their fruit and vegetables, their homemade breads and their cheeses between the ancient stone pillars. Stéphane, a dairy farmer from the rolling country upriver, parked his custom-made van in the square to sell his milk and butter and cheeses. He always arranged a small cassecroûte, a breaking of the crust, at about nine a.m., an hour after the market opened. For Stéphane, who rose at five to tend his cows, it was like a mid-morning snack, but for Bruno it was always the first bite of his Saturday, and he drank a small glass of red wine with the thick hunk of bread stuffed with Stéphane’s rabbit pâté. The wine came from young Raoul, who had taken over his father’s business selling wines at the various local markets. This day he had brought along a young Côtes de Duras, best known for its whites, but he thought this red was special. It was certainly an improvement on the Bergerac Bruno normally drank on Saturday mornings.