A Taste for Vengeance

by Martin Walker

  “Leave it with me and I’ll keep it under my hat.”

  “You’ll do what?” Bruno asked, wondering what Crimson meant by “sous mon chapeau.”

  “Ah, under my hat. It’s an English saying. It means I’ll keep it secret. What about the woman? Do you have her name?”

  “Yes, Monika Felder, British passport, so I can call you back with her date of birth. She looked to be in her forties.”

  “Felder? That does ring a bell, but nothing to do with the Périgord. When you get the date of birth, check the back page of her passport. She may have filled in the section about next of kin.”

  As Bruno closed the phone, he heard the sound of a siren, which would probably be the urgences. A few minutes later, he heard the ambulance coming closer and went back to the clearing to show the driver the way. He saw the vehicle lumbering up the track by the log pile to stop where the tree stumps blocked the way. Two medics got out of the back and J-J climbed down from the passenger seat. He trudged after the medics and across the undergrowth to Bruno.

  “Have you got her passport?” Bruno asked.

  J-J pulled an evidence bag from his pocket, checked that Bruno was wearing gloves and handed it to him. Bruno looked for the date of birth, October 27, 1970, and inside the back cover saw that the next of kin had been listed as Michael George Felder, with a British telephone number and an address in a place called East Grinstead. He noted down the details and then scanned the rest of the passport. It was full of entry and exit stamps: the United States, Canada, South Africa, Dubai, Australia, Chile, Turkey, Hong Kong. There were four trips to the U.S. in the last four months, each to Houston.

  “She certainly got around,” he said, returning the passport to J-J, but not before noting the date of issue, four years earlier. “That’s a lot of trips. She was almost commuting to Houston.”

  “No reply from her husband’s phone number,” said J-J. “I’ve got onto British police liaison and I called the consul in Bordeaux. And now, where’s this body?”

  The two medics were standing beneath the body, smoking. “I don’t know why you called us in,” said one of them. “This guy’s been dead for over a day. There’s nothing we can do.”

  As the medics went back to their van, Bruno pointed to the scars and explained why he thought the man had been a soldier. “What do you make of it?” he asked J-J. “Some kind of crime passionnel, a murder-suicide? He wanted to make a new life with her but she wouldn’t leave her husband?”

  “It looks that way, but you know how I hate to leap to conclusions,” J-J replied. “And maybe it’s meant to look that way. We haven’t found the murder weapon so I guess we’ll have to bring some metal detectors to search all this woodland. We couldn’t find his passport until it turned up in the ashes of the fire. Yves from the forensics team did some sort of magic on the cover with a special lamp and he says it’s Irish, but he couldn’t get any of the inside details. We’ve informed their embassy in Paris.”

  “Irish?” Bruno exclaimed. “But they’re neutrals, not even NATO members. Where would he have got combat scars like that?”

  J-J shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he was in the IRA, maybe he served with some other army, or maybe he’s a mercenary. We’ll find out. But to me the most important thing is the open laptop.”

  “You mean it was open to work on? What’s odd about that?” Bruno asked. “Is it the laptop he wrote the suicide note on?”

  “The suicide note was in the printer tray, the only sheet that was printed. All the control buttons and the keyboard had been wiped clean of any prints. The back had been taken off and the hard disk removed. We found the remnants in the ashes of the fire, along with the passport. It had been smashed with that hand ax by the fire before it was burned.”

  Bruno’s eyes widened in surprise. “Really? Can the technicians get anything from it?”

  “I don’t know yet but I doubt it. And I don’t know what it means. Maybe he was obsessed about his privacy or maybe there was something more significant to hide. I’d like to know a lot more about this McBride and his girlfriend before we can take this much further. One thing I know from looking at his wine cellar is that he was a wealthy man. It’s full of bottles you and I could never afford. He has cases of Château Pétrus and Pape Clément, Lafite and Latour and Margaux. There must be a hundred thousand euros’ worth of wine down there.

  “One more thing, and it’s important,” J-J went on as they walked back to the house. “Absolutely no talking to anyone in the press, not even that friend of yours on Sud Ouest, and certainly not to any British reporters who might turn up. I’ve dealt with them before and they’re a nightmare, a real wild bunch. They’ll steal family photos, pretend to be doctors or cops, even tap phones in the hunt for an exclusive. And along the way they’ll probably try to make us look bad. So if any of them get onto you, refer them to the official police spokesman; all queries to go to Périgueux or the international liaison desk at Scotland Yard.”

  Chapter 4

  Bruno picked up Balzac at the mairie and walked him across the bridge to the clinic where he waited to ask Fabiola about what she’d learned from Paulette.

  “All I can say is that I saw her, confirmed my diagnosis and the expected date of delivery and we discussed the situation,” Fabiola said briskly. She had her coat on and her hand reaching into her bag for her car keys, ready to go, but she softened at the sight of Balzac.

  “Paulette asked about her options and I explained them. You know perfectly well what those options include and she said she’d think about it.” Fabiola looked up from where she was petting Bruno’s dog. “She also asked me not to discuss this with anybody else. And that includes you, Bruno. This is not in any way a police matter.”

  “Does that include her parents?”

  “Of course. She may be living at home with them but she’s over eighteen, an adult who is fit to make her own decisions. And you know her parents are devout Catholics, in church every Sunday. Given their religious convictions, there’s not much doubt what their view will be.”

  Bruno nodded, trying to think this through rationally and discount his own ambitions for Paulette’s future in rugby. Of course, Fabiola was right. It would be up to Paulette whether or not to go ahead with the pregnancy. He knew Fabiola; she believed that every woman, and only the woman, had the right to make that decision.

  In principle, Bruno agreed, but he wished he could share Fabiola’s certainty. He wasn’t sure what was right. Abortion meant the death of a potential human being. Bruno had tried to avoid the issue by telling himself that he was sworn to uphold the law, and the laws of France were on Fabiola’s side. An adult woman had the right to total control over her own body. And in this case, the thought came that Paulette having the baby would be a sad waste of a brilliant sporting talent. He caught himself. The coming of a new life could never, ever be dismissed as anything remotely like a waste.

  “I’m afraid I’m being selfish,” he said with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I was so caught up in the hope that one day someone I’d coached might play for France. For someone like me, it’s akin to the Nobel Prize in Medicine for you. It’s a dream. But I guess it’s my dream, not necessarily Paulette’s.”

  Fabiola gave him a rueful smile as she gave Balzac a last pat and stood up. “Bruno, you do love your sport, but this is about her, not about you. I knew you’d eventually come around and see it from her point of view. She may not be quite as sports-mad as you. Maybe her sporting career is taking second place to her love affair.”

  “If that’s so, why is she so secretive about the father of her child?”

  “Good question, and I wish I had an answer. But I don’t, and nor will anybody else until Paulette chooses to tell us. She’s quite a private person and maybe her own dream is different. Maybe what she really wants is to have a home, a man she loves, and to cook and have babies and raise children.
There are a lot of women like that around here, particularly if they were raised like Paulette in a traditional family that goes to church, where Mother cooks lunch for them all every day and defers to her man. We aren’t all like that high-powered friend of yours, Martine, with her business degree and her own company in London. Some of us want to please a man we love, even to pretend an interest in things he likes. Look at me, keeping up with all the boring details of politics because that’s what Gilles likes to talk about even though he never tries to follow my interests. You won’t catch him reading The New England Journal of Medicine.”

  Fabiola sighed, ran her hand through her hair and looked at him, a challenge in her eyes. Bruno stared at her, knowing he’d been allowed to see a side of Fabiola that he’d never suspected. He found himself nodding, not only in agreement but in appreciation of Fabiola’s character and her honesty.

  “Thank you,” he said, smiling at her with affection. “I’ll need to think about all that.”

  “All right, lecture over,” she said. A brief, almost perfunctory smile flickered across her features. “And in the meantime, we have the horses to exercise since Pamela is tied up with that cooking school of hers.” Her last phrase was spoken curtly.

  “It’s your horse and mine that we’re going to ride,” Bruno replied, surprised by Fabiola’s obvious irritation. “It won’t be any trouble to take the others on a long rein. And Pamela has exercised our horses often enough when we’ve been caught up in our work, so it seems reasonable to me.”

  “Fair enough, that makes us even,” said Fabiola, with a shrug. “I’ve put you in your place over Paulette and now you’ve put me in mine over the horses. It’s nice to know we can both be in the right.”

  They set off in their separate cars for the stables. On the way Bruno thought about Fabiola’s resentment at the way the cooking courses were taking up so much of Pamela’s life. The only irritation that Bruno felt was the interruption of their Monday evening ritual, when the same group of friends would gather each week to cook and eat together. But the cooking clients were now Pamela’s priority.

  The property she shared with Miranda had originally been a farm until it had been transformed decades earlier into a successful riding school. But when its star teacher died, the school had fallen on hard times and was for sale cheaply. Pamela and Miranda decided to buy it. The barns and outbuildings had long since been converted into gîtes, which were rented out each summer to tourists. But even with the rental income, money was tight. So Miranda had come up with the idea of the residential cooking school, which would operate in spring and autumn and therefore lengthen the rental season beyond the usual summer months of June to early September. They had started the school the previous autumn and after a friendly write-up in a British magazine they were now fully booked until the end of May. But the cooking classes kept Pamela and Miranda busy on Monday evenings, when Pamela’s friends had grown accustomed to gathering at her big house and taking turns to cook for the whole group.

  Like Fabiola, Bruno missed the Monday evenings. And he knew that Fabiola’s partner, Gilles, missed them, too. And so did the baron and Miranda’s dad, Jack Crimson, and also Florence, the science teacher at the local collège. Her two young twins kept asking when would they have bath times and suppers with Miranda’s kids again. For Bruno, the pleasure of the Monday evenings together was more than the company and the way they all shared the cooking. It was the sense of family that moved him, more profoundly than he would ever admit. It was the blend of generations: Jack and the baron as the elders; Florence and Miranda as the mothers; Fabiola and Gilles as the young couple. He didn’t want to think where that left him and Pamela, now that they had become friends rather than lovers. As he tugged his thoughts away from that uncomfortable area, he had a sudden flash of inspiration.

  Why didn’t he start hosting the Monday evenings at his place? There were spare bedrooms upstairs where the children could sleep and a big bathroom for the four of them to share. And there was Balzac, whom they all adored, and Bruno’s chickens and geese, whom the children found endlessly fascinating.

  “I’ve had an idea,” he told Fabiola as they saddled up their horses. He explained his plan for Monday evenings, and she said that similar thoughts had crossed her mind. She offered to raise it with Gilles and Florence and leave Bruno to suggest it to Jack and the baron.

  “Jack never says no to any opportunity to spend time with his grandchildren,” Fabiola said, her voice eager. “I’m sure he’ll want to join in. And it solves Miranda’s babysitting problem.”

  Bruno was attaching leading reins to the other horses when one of the women from the cooking class came into the yard, dressed in riding clothes and carrying a riding cap. He recognized Kathleen, the journalist, from her prematurely gray, almost white hair. It contrasted strangely with her jet-black eyebrows. She was strikingly thin with a brittle manner and heavy eye makeup and had eaten little at the dinner of blanquette de veau the previous evening. She had drunk a lot of wine and had darted outside between courses for a cigarette. She had also shown great interest in the missing Monika Felder, knowing the name because Pamela had circulated the names and hometowns of this week’s batch of clients among them as a way to help break the ice.

  Bruno had exchanged only a few words with Kathleen over dinner, but he had been impressed when he heard her explain to a neighbor who had asked about the origin of the word blanquette for the dish they were eating. Kathleen had said that it came from the word blanc, for white, since neither the veal nor the butter in which it was initially fried was ever allowed to go brown. Bruno hadn’t known that.

  “I think it was your horse I rode yesterday evening, the big one, Hector,” she said to Bruno in good French, shaking hands with him and Fabiola. “He’s a fine animal, a pleasure to ride. But this evening, Pamela said I should ride Primrose.”

  She bent down to greet Balzac, then went straight to Primrose, murmuring something to the horse in a low voice, holding out her hand, a carrot cupped in her palm. Primrose sniffed and nuzzled at the hand, then bared her lips and seemed to suck the carrot into her mouth. Kathleen detached the leading rein, took Primrose into the stable, saddled her with speed and competence and led her out to join Bruno and Fabiola.

  “Which way did you ride yesterday?” Bruno asked.

  Kathleen pointed. “Straight up to the ridge for a long canter and then down through some woods to a trail that led to a big quarry.”

  “Would you like to try another route?” Bruno asked. “The only problem is I’m not sure about galloping with all these horses on the long rein.”

  “You’re right. But I’ll be happy with an easy canter,” Kathleen replied. “Primrose probably knows what she’s doing but she’s a new horse to me.”

  They went along the flank of the ridge, skirting the edge of the woodland, and then up the shallow rise of the firebreak to the plateau and the open fields that led to St. Chamassy. As they paused to admire the view an unfamiliar cell phone trilled with an incoming call. Kathleen pulled a slim phone from an inside pocket, turning away to answer and signaling that the others should ride on. She didn’t rejoin them for some minutes and remained silent until they were back at the stables.

  “That was my news desk in London,” she said to Bruno as they unsaddled. “They say their crime reporter has heard a rumor about the murder of an Englishwoman here in the Dordogne. They want to know if I could get some details from the French police. Do you know anything about this?”

  “I’m very local police, only for this immediate area,” said Bruno, J-J’s instruction about the British press fresh in his mind. His answer was not quite a falsehood. Lalinde, where Monika’s body had been found, was not even on Bruno’s enlarged turf of the Vézère Valley. “Murder is a matter for the Police Nationale in Périgueux. There’s a bureau de presse there for media inquiries. I can give you their phone number.”

 
She took the number, dialed and was put on hold for a while. Bruno and Fabiola rubbed down the horses, refilled their water troughs and sluiced off in the sink. Kathleen was still talking in French when Bruno was ready to go.

  “Un instant,” Kathleen called out as he headed for the door. “Could you possibly help? They say that since I’m not an accredited member of the French press they can’t talk to me. They want me to get the Paris correspondent to call. Perhaps you could talk to them?”

  Several thoughts raced through Bruno’s mind at the same time. The first was J-J’s lecture. The second was that this journalist might not be able to make or break Pamela’s cooking course, but an unhappy Kathleen would not be likely to write a good review about it. The third was that J-J was being overcautious. There would have to be an announcement of suspicious death in the daily incident report that went out to the local media each evening, usually at about this time.

  He pulled out his own phone, called J-J and asked if the incident report had been published yet. It was about to go out over the wire, J-J said, and it was as blandly worded as he could make it: two deaths, possibly unnatural, of an unknown male and female, at a farmhouse near Lalinde. Police were at the scene, investigating the causes of death and trying to establish the identities of the victims.

  Bruno thanked him, ended the call and passed on the information to Kathleen.

  “Is that all?” she asked. “You can’t confirm that the woman is English? Could it be this Monika Felder, who was supposed to join us?”

  Bruno held up a hand and decided he had better be formal.

  “I regret, madame, that I can only tell you what the official incident report says, which hasn’t been released yet. If you call your news desk now, you’ll be ahead of the competition. But there’s nothing more I can do for you, sorry. And you should know that in France we never release a name until the next of kin has been informed and an identity confirmed.”