The Crowded Grave

by Martin Walker

  “José Mari Larraetxea,” said Carlos, his voice somber. “He was the head of ETA at the time. It was a very embarrassing operation.”

  “Our German professor could be a kidnap victim,” said Bruno, thinking that nobody else seemed much concerned about Horst’s fate. “You saw my report on the scene at his house, the bloodstains and the marks of someone being dragged.”

  “All that could have been staged,” said Isabelle. “But what worries me most about all this is our almost complete lack of intelligence on this ETA active service unit. It’s said to have been based in France for months now, and all we have is one name, Michel—I can’t pronounce this—Goikoetxea, and a photograph of him at age eighteen. He’s now what, almost forty.”

  “Mikel Goikoetxea, he’s named after his father, one of the ETA leaders,” said Carlos, “killed by a GAL sniper in Bayonne in 1983. The son is forty next year, and we’ve never laid eyes on him, since he was arrested at a student demonstration. What can I say? They have very good security. It’s almost impossible for a non-Basque to infiltrate them.”

  “And now we come to the latest drama,” said the brigadier. “Bruno, what do you know about this morning’s bombing? There was something on my car radio about a war on foie gras, but Isabelle e-mailed me that there could be a connection.”

  “There’s certainly a connection with the dynamite theft from the local quarry,” Bruno replied. He explained that the dynamite that was used had come from the batch that was stolen the previous day and there was a scrawled slogan about animal rights on the side of the building.

  “Is anything more known about any of these students?” asked the brigadier.

  “We put through a routine inquiry to all the relevant foreign police, but nothing of significance came back,” Isabelle said. “I’ll do it again with a priority code, and with a special request under your name asking for a full security readout on the two students directly involved in the earlier attacks.”

  “The Dutch girl was supposed to have been back home in Holland by the time the bomb went off,” Bruno said.

  “We’ll get the Dutch police to do an eyeball, make sure she’s there.”

  “What I really want to know is how and when the information about this summit meeting leaked out,” Bruno went on. “How did the ETA group find out it was taking place? If we’re sure they do know, that is.”

  Isabelle and Carlos looked at each other, as if sharing something on which Bruno had not been briefed. But knowing the brigadier, he felt a suspicion begin to dawn.

  “That comes under the category of need to know,” said the brigadier, his image flickering so that Bruno could not read his expression. But his words confirmed Bruno’s thoughts.

  Bruno looked from the brigadier to Carlos and Isabelle at the table. A controlled anger was building inside him at the way these people worked, at the job Isabelle had chosen to do, the job that she had preferred to him and the life he offered in St. Denis.

  “I think you leaked it deliberately, setting a trap for this ETA cell to fall into,” Bruno said, his voice deceptively calm and his manner as restrained and philosophical as he could conjure. “You’re using this summit as a lure. You’re putting my town at risk of a terrorist attack and you’re even using your own minister as bait.”

  “Putain,” said J-J. “He’d better not be right about this. That’s two top ministers’ lives you’re playing with.”

  “The ministers are in full agreement with this operation,” said Carlos.

  “In the meantime, you all have your to-do lists,” said the brigadier, coldly. “And if you breathe a word of this to anyone outside that room, Bruno, I’ll have your job and your pension.”

  He leaned forward and pressed something and the video screen went blank.

  “A useful meeting,” Isabelle said briskly, gathering her files and folders. “I think it went well, considering. We all have our jobs to do and we meet again to report back at six. By then, let’s make sure we have some results, shall we?”

  She began to stalk out, but her bad leg failed and she stumbled. Carlos steadied her by the arm and led her out, neither one of them with a backward glance.

  “Putain de merde,” said J-J, looking after them as they left the conference room. “What do they do to these people?”

  19

  The text message that Bruno had ignored since the beginning of the security meeting had come from Annette. It was politely worded but uncompromising. His presence at the gendarmerie was required as soon as possible. On arrival he asked Sergeant Jules if he knew what she wanted.

  “She’s been with Duroc in his office most of the morning,” Jules said, shrugging. “I know they went to Gravelle’s place to see the bomb damage and then I saw her give a radio interview outside.” He jerked his thumb at the small radio on the side of the counter, its volume turned low. “It hasn’t been played yet, but I’ll be listening.” He gave Bruno a quizzical look. “There’s a disposable razor and some soap in the shower room downstairs. I’d use it if I were you.”

  Bruno took the advice, and a few minutes later, cheeks stinging slightly from the crude soap, he straightened his uniform, tucked his hat under his arm and knocked on Duroc’s door. Without waiting, he entered and greeted both him and Annette formally. She was sitting at the desk, a sheaf of what looked like witness statements before her, and Duroc rose quickly from where he had been leaning over her, his arm on her shoulder. He colored slightly.

  “I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything,” Bruno said innocently. “You asked me to come as soon as I could.”

  “You’re in the shit this time,” Duroc said. Annette grimaced, visibly irritated by his coarseness in what she intended as a formal occasion. Bruno raised his eyebrows at Duroc’s remark but said nothing. Duroc looked down at Annette and stepped back, as if letting her take the lead.

  “I’ve asked you here to inform you formally that I am initiating disciplinary proceedings against you on charges of unauthorized entry, obstruction of justice and incitement to riot,” Annette said, reading from a paper before her rather than looking at Bruno’s face. “I have signed an order to retrieve your phone records and have asked the mayor to suspend you from duty while these charges are pending.”

  She lifted her head and looked him in the eye. “Do you have anything to say?”

  “No,” said Bruno. “But I have some questions to clarify matters, and I’d like to have a witness present.” He turned back to open the office door and asked Sergeant Jules, who was standing suspiciously close to the door, to join them. Briefly he explained the situation and asked Jules to take note of his questions.

  “First, which was the riot in question? Second, which were the premises I’m supposed to have entered without authorization? Third, I’d like a detailed account of the supposed obstruction of justice. Fourth, what was the mayor’s response? Fifth, have you informed the office of the minister of the interior of your attempt to suspend me? I should add that I’m currently attached to his staff, with the mayor’s approval. Finally, the sergeant here will kindly note that I freely give approval for my phone records to be examined. I have nothing to hide.”

  “You know perfectly well which riot we’re talking about because you organized it,” Duroc snapped. “The unauthorized entry was Professor Vogelstern’s home. The obstruction of justice was protecting your damn farmers and aiding and abetting two students suspected of criminal damage to escape arrest by me and my men. I personally delivered the letter of request for your suspension to the mairie earlier this morning. We’ll see what the Ministry of the Interior has to say when we send them these charges.”

  “So you haven’t talked to the mayor?” Bruno wondered how Duroc had learned of the help he’d given to Teddy and Kajte.

  “We haven’t yet had a reply,” said Annette, in a voice that sounded a little uncertain, as if confused by Bruno’s reaction and Sergeant Jules’s presence.

  Bruno pulled out his phone, speed-dialed the mayor and expla
ined the reason for the call.

  “Put this on speaker so that they can hear this as well as you,” the mayor said. Bruno complied and watched stone-faced as Annette and Duroc listened to the mayor.

  “I have your letter before me and I reject the request,” said the tinny voice over the phone’s speaker. “Chief of Police Courrèges has my full confidence, but I am writing to the head of the judicial office in Sarlat, Mademoiselle Meraillon, to say that this mairie has no confidence in you. We will in future withhold all cooperation with you and I formally request your transfer to a less demanding post. Were it not for your youth and inexperience I would have requested a formal disciplinary hearing against you. I have also written, Capitaine Duroc, to the prefect and to the general of gendarmerie in very similar terms. I should add that the subprefect has sent me a copy of the highly critical report he has filed on your unprofessional behavior in St. Denis yesterday.”

  The mayor disconnected and Bruno closed his phone. Duroc’s face was white and Annette looked up at him nervously as his Adam’s apple began its usual dance.

  “I think that covers everything, for the moment,” Bruno said. “But to save you some embarrassment, you might want to drop the charge about unauthorized entry. The owner of the house, Professor Vogelstern, entrusted me with a key some time ago, along with a letter asking me to inspect the premises in his absence and collect his mail and forward it to him in Germany.”

  “So why did you ask the neighbor to let you in?” asked Annette, pulling a witness statement from the file before her.

  “Because I wanted someone else present when I searched the premises, in the course of an investigation into his disappearance, requested by the curator of the National Museum,” Bruno said. “Anything else?”

  “I’ll want to see this alleged letter,” Annette said.

  “You’ll have a copy later today,” Bruno replied. “You will understand when I say that in view of the personal malice that I believe is part of these proceedings, I’m not prepared to entrust you with the original. You may, of course, make an appointment to come to my office in the mairie and examine the letter in my presence and the mayor’s. Might I also put on record that I request Mademoiselle Meraillon to recuse herself from this case on grounds of partiality and transfer it to a colleague.”

  He put his hat on his head, turned and marched out, Sergeant Jules following behind and closing the door on Duroc’s office. When Bruno reached the main entrance, he felt Jules pluck at his sleeve and beckon him to follow. He led the way across the road and into the Bar des Amateurs. Jules ordered two coffees, unbuttoned the breast pocket of his uniform and took out a folded sheet of paper.

  “We’ve got them both by the balls,” Jules said, unfolding the paper so that Bruno could see it was a photocopy of his charge book, with its carbon of the original speeding ticket that he’d written against Annette.

  “He’s sweet on her, so Duroc fixed the ticket. The copy that should have gone to the main office was never sent, and Françoise is prepared to swear that she saw him take it out of the box of outgoing mail and tear it up. We’ve got the evidence that the speeding ticket was issued, which means that she as a magistrate is in trouble because she hasn’t paid it. And Duroc faces an internal investigation and that could mean a court-martial.”

  “Did Françoise really see him tear it up?” Bruno asked. “She’s never liked him.”

  “Françoise is straight as an arrow. She wouldn’t lie about this. She’s also made a sworn statement that she saw him do it, and I’ve got a copy.”

  “I presume she dated the statement, so you can’t sit on it too long before doing something about it,” Bruno said.

  “I can say I was making inquiries about it. We’ve got a few days. It’s your call, Bruno. Either I can report this to the internal investigations branch and get them both in trouble, or you can use it to make them drop these crazy charges against you.”

  Bruno shook his head. “It’s gone too far for that, now that she’s sent the letter to the mayor and he’s filed his own complaints in return. This inquiry’s going to go all the way. Besides, if I tried to use it discreetly, Duroc would know that you and Françoise were both conspiring against him. He could make your lives a misery and you’d have no comeback. I think this is one of those times when justice has to take its course.”

  Back in his office, after briefing the mayor, Bruno called Pamela’s home. Fabiola answered and said Pamela was packing her suitcase and was taking the afternoon train to Bordeaux from Le Buisson for a flight to Edinburgh. Bruno checked his watch. He could leave at two and take Pamela to the station. That gave him a little time.

  He went to the dusty registry of the mairie, a long, thin room lined with shelves and filing cabinets, to look up the copy of Jan’s carte de séjour in the mairie’s registry. All foreigners, even citizens of another European country who had the right to live in France, had to file registration papers. Jan Olaf Pedersen had established residency in the commune in December 1985. His date of birth was September 1942, in Kolding, Denmark, and there was a photocopy of his passport in the file. Jan’s taxe foncière and taxe d’habitation and water bills were paid on time. The registration papers for his company were up-to-date, and there was an avis from the conseil général for Jan to be an approved instituteur external, authorized to demonstrate and teach technical skills outside of school premises. He had married Juanita Maria Zabala, a French citizen born in Perpignan, in May 1993, years before Bruno had arrived in St. Denis. Bruno reflected that he’d been in Bosnia on the day Jan had married, as a member of the UN force that was keeping Sarajevo airport open.

  Everything was in order as Bruno scanned the slim file, but as he dragged his thoughts back from those days of living in a bunker and sheltering from the Serbian artillery barrages, his eye went back to the wife’s name, Juanita. And Joe had said something about her talking about the Basques. He went to the office, checked his watch again and called Joe at home.

  “Joe, that woman who married Jan, the blacksmith. You said you remembered her talking about the Basques. Do you remember her name?”

  “Anita, but she talked about human rights for everybody, Bosnians, Rwandans, Palestinians. She was always taking up collections and getting people to sign petitions. A heart of gold but a pain in the neck, if you know what I mean. She was the sort of woman you admired, but you ducked when you saw her coming.”

  “It’s just that she’s listed as Juanita in the registry, and I’m interested in any Spanish connections.”

  “Everybody called her Anita,” Joe said. “She came from Perpignan, already had her teaching diploma when she arrived. I don’t recall ever hearing her called Juanita. Try the mairie in Perpignan, they should have something. I think she was born there.”

  The mairie at Perpignan took his number to check that he was indeed calling from the mairie of St. Denis, and a sergeant of the town’s municipal police called him back almost immediately, saying that Bruno had met his brother on a legal training course in Toulouse. He was happy to help and called him again with details from the birth certificate. Juanita Maria Zabala had been born in Perpignan in April 1950, daughter of Joxe Asteazu Zabala, a naturalized French citizen, and Marie-Josette Duvertrans of Perpignan.

  Bruno thanked him and went to his computer, called up Google.fr and typed “Joxe Asteazu” into the search box. The first item that came up was “Sculpteurs Basques en Espagne,” and the second was in Spanish that he could understand, “Lista de atentados del GAL,” a catalog of the assassination attempts on Basque militants during GAL’s dirty war. So Juanita’s father was a Basque. Bruno then ran a search of her father’s full name plus “Perpignan” in French Web pages only. He was directed to a list of people awarded the Médaille de la Résistance. Bruno called Perpignan again and asked the helpful sergeant to look up any details of Zabala’s naturalization papers, adding that the man had served in the Resistance.

  “Naturalization was granted in 1946, and there’s a note
about special recognition for Resistance services, despite his internment record. He was in Camp Gurs; that was the big one for the Spanish Civil War troops who fled to France when Franco won. That’s all it says.”

  Bruno then called the Centre Jean Moulin in Bordeaux, the Resistance archive named after the man who had tried to unify the Resistance under de Gaulle and had died while remaining silent under Gestapo torture. Bruno asked for the curator, whom he knew from a previous case, and asked if there was anyplace that collected details of naturalized Spaniards who had been awarded the Resistance medal. The curator asked for details, took Bruno’s e-mail address and promised to find out what he could.

  Then Bruno called Rollo, headmaster of the local college, to ask when Anita had first started teaching in St. Denis, and who among the other teachers might have been close to her. He was given two names, but while neither one knew of Anita as Juanita, he learned that Anita had been a member of the Communist Party and that she had arrived in town and started work in 1985. Bruno’s next call was to Montsouris, the only Communist on the St. Denis Council, and his inquiry was met with the usual suspicion.

  “I’m trying to find Horst, that German archaeologist,” Bruno began. “He’s disappeared, and he was a great friend of Jan, the blacksmith. Jan said that he’d met Horst through Anita, so I was wondering if there were any other old friends he might have known through her. I’m clutching at straws here so any help you can give …”

  “Horst wasn’t in the party, I can tell you that. Nor was Anita, really. She paid her dues, but it was no secret she was a member out of sentiment because her father had been a lifelong member. I think he was in the International Brigades or something in the Spanish war. I remember she said her dad came into the party through the Resistance, when he was in the FTP. But that’s all I know, and she’s been dead for years now.”