He closed his phone and punched a triumphant fist at the sky. He’d have given a whoop of joy except for the sleeping children. He felt the tension that had been building all evening fade away before heading back indoors with a beaming smile on his face and tears welling in his eyes.
“I should have brought champagne,” he said as he went back into the kitchen. “Congratulations, Paulette. You’ve made the national squad. That was Radio Périgord. They were sent the list under embargo, but they want to arrange for an interview tomorrow morning.”
She leaped to her feet, raising both her hands in the air in joy and then coming around the table to hug him. “We made it,” she declared. “Mon Dieu, I’m a bleu! I’m going to play for France.”
“I can’t tell you how proud you’ve made me,” Bruno said, returning her embrace. Florence joined them in a group hug and then everyone was kissing everyone else. “It’s wonderful and well deserved. They want you to call them back.”
“Give me the number and I’ll call them,” she said. “Oh, what happy news in such a miserable week. It might even shut my parents up.” Then her face fell.
“Merde,” she said. “I’d still better write that letter.” She let out a long sigh and then shrugged, and her mouth grimaced into what might have been a wry smile. “At least now there’s something cheerful to add. Not that my mother will think so. She never thought I should play such an unladylike game.”
She bent over the sheet of paper and then looked up with a challenge in her eyes. “But both of you should know that if I wanted this baby, and if I wanted to spend my life with the father, I’d give up the sport tomorrow. But right now in my life, I don’t want to be a mother, or a wife.”
“I understand,” said Florence. “And I think you’re right.”
“And I certainly don’t want the father. If you knew who it was, you’d probably agree.”
Chapter 17
Bruno was home a little after ten, still thrilled by Paulette’s news and feeling too alert to sleep after taking her to Fabiola’s home and then dropping the letter off. He logged on to his new laptop and went through the procedure with the USB stick to check on the case file for Rentoul and Monika.
The report on the interrogation of Kelly and O’Rourke noted that they had so far refused to say a word, except to demand a lawyer and access to a consul. Bruno shrugged, not surprised that two IRA veterans would give nothing away. He saw that J-J had filed a report on Bruno’s reconstruction of the hanging to show that two men could have accounted for the murder of McBride-Rentoul. Then he scrolled back through the log to see what else was new to him. He paused at a section detailing the expenditures on McBride’s business credit card, recalling that J-J had mentioned a great deal of international travel to countries outside the eurozone, but Bruno had seen no analysis of the man’s travels in Europe.
He pulled over a pad and pen and began making notes of the trips over the past year, as indicated by restaurant and hotel bills. There were two trips to Dublin, one to Vienna, others to Venice, Berlin and Barcelona the previous year. There was one trip to Florence in the current year, another to a place in Switzerland called Sils Maria and one to Amsterdam. Bruno pulled out his diary to check the dates and found that every trip except those to Dublin included a weekend. The Swiss trip, at a hotel called the Waldhaus, had lasted a week. Most of the hotel bills were for more than a thousand euros, which made Bruno whistle. The Waldhaus was even more. The man spent more on hotels than Bruno earned. He found on Google that Sils Maria was next door to St. Moritz, close to the Italian border, probably a winter sports resort.
The file also included information from the British police about McBride’s two HSBC accounts, with eleven thousand pounds in one and a hundred and twenty thousand in the other. Looking at the credits and withdrawals, Bruno saw that the accounts were mainly used to withdraw money from cash machines in the countries McBride visited. There was one extra payment in Sils Maria for renting skis. All payments into the two accounts came from his company, McBride Creative Associates. There was a separate HSBC account in U.S. currency, holding over two hundred thousand dollars. This showed more payments to McBride from various companies Bruno recalled that J-J had mentioned, in Panama, the Caymans, the Bahamas and other tax havens.
Bruno wondered how much progress the U.S. Treasury had made in investigating these sources of McBride’s income at Hodge’s request. It would take a massive investment of time to track everything down, and given the secrecy of most of the locations, even longer to identify McBride’s clients. Certainly it was beyond Bruno’s skills, so he went back to the index and scrolled through, finding another listing of the expenditures on Monika Felder’s credit card. She seemed to travel almost as much as McBride, again for three or four days at a time, and Bruno began to note down the dates and cities on his pad.
He began with the current year, and a payment to a clothing shop in Sils Maria leaped out at him. It was for the same week that McBride had been there. He began cross-checking. Monika and McBride had been in Amsterdam and Florence at the same time. In the previous year, they’d been in Venice and Barcelona as well as Istanbul. Their affair had evidently been going for a while. Then he found an airfare to Bordeaux in Monika’s credit card payments. He checked whether she had been traveling to the places outside Europe where McBride had been but found no matches.
Bruno checked the payments into her account. Her bills were paid automatically at the end of each month from the same British bank that issued the credit card, and each payment was listed “Felder joint account.” That was interesting, Bruno thought. It meant that Monika’s husband would presumably be able to monitor her expenditures and therefore her travels. Did he know she was having an affair? Or with the difference in their ages, did he simply accept it? Between all of her trips that coincided with McBride’s, Monika’s credit card showed her to be in Houston, presumably at her husband’s bedside.
Bruno added a note to the case file, drawing attention to the parallels in the travels of McBride and Monika. What if her husband had not known of the affair, but for some reason had checked her credit card and her movements had made him suspicious? And if he were too ill to check her card himself, could his children or his first wife have had access to the statements on the joint account?
Under the heading “Speculation,” Bruno suggested that this might need to be checked. And it reinforced the case for asking the FBI to check on the movements of Felder’s children. Could their presence in Houston be independently verified by eyewitnesses in the hospital?
Recalling the way a colleague had made use of social media in a previous case, Bruno went into Facebook and looked for Monika Felder. She was there, but she would have to accept him as a friend for him to be able to look into her account. There would doubtless be a way for the police to access it. He added a note to the case file that it would be worth checking, and that perhaps Felder’s first wife and children would have a social media trail.
Bruno looked at his watch. It was midnight. He closed the VPN circuit and logged on to his own internet account and then on to the website of the national rugby federation to look with pride at Paulette’s name on the list, followed by her accreditation, St. Denis Rugby Club (Périgord). That was a battle Bruno had lost. Since St. Denis was the most common name in France for a town, he’d suggested that their formal title should be amended to St. Denis-en-Périgord. The mayor would not hear of it, nor would the rugby club.
Ah well, Bruno said to himself, you can’t win them all. He opened the door to let Balzac out, wondering if it was warm enough for his dog to start spending his nights in the kennel outside. It was the custom in the Périgord that hunting dogs slept outdoors the whole year round, but Bruno had raised Balzac from a puppy, when he hadn’t the heart to put the little fellow outside. And now Balzac chose for himself. At some point each spring, he simply would not return from his nightly patrol of the
grounds. In autumn, one cool evening he’d scratch at the door to come back in. It had become a ritual.
Bruno gazed up at the stars and felt at his waist the buzz of an incoming message. He took out his phone and tapped it to open the text. No name was attached, but he knew at once that it came from Isabelle. Only she ever contacted him this late.
“Sorry I snapped at you,” he read. “It turned out well. Your usual luck. Or instinct. Tomorrow?”
Bruno sighed. It would take an army of psychologists to comprehend the layers of meaning that Isabelle could compress into a dozen words, some of them echoing from moments or incidents in the past that they had shared. Her comment on his luck, or his instinct—how many times had she spoken of them before? But she had said sorry. And what might she mean by that reference to tomorrow? He suspected these brief, tantalizing texts were her way of keeping him on edge, her way of maintaining the connection without commitment. It implied that she was still here, not back in Paris, and that was interesting. Isabelle was not a woman to waste her time in the provinces.
With the arrest of the two Irishmen, some of the urgency seemed to have leaked out of the case. Bruno knew that a police investigation was a hungry but not very discriminating beast that needed to be fed, and two suspects with motive, opportunity and means to kill would satisfy its appetite while the process of interrogation ground on. And le bon Dieu alone knew how long Hodge’s financial sleuths would need to track the sources of McBride-Rentoul’s income, or how thorough the FBI would be in checking the movements of the Felder family.
So Isabelle was staying in the Périgord. He would invite her to join Hodge and Moore for dinner the next night. He should make something a little special. He had some of his truffles in the freezer and he could get some magrets of duck in the market in the morning and some of those slightly bitter Seville oranges that Marcel sometimes stocked. Or perhaps he could take Kathleen’s advice about trying something more modern than the traditional sauce à l’orange.
His phone was still in his hand, so he pondered for a moment what to say and then texted back: “Dinner chez moi tomorrow. Help me give a Périgord welcome to Hodge and Moore. Grace our table.”
Almost as if summoned by some ghostly presence of Isabelle in the air, Balzac trotted back indoors and gazed up solemnly at Bruno before heading for the kitchen to lap some water from his bowl. He came and rubbed the side of his face against Bruno’s leg before settling down on the floor at the foot of Bruno’s bed, where a soft blanket awaited him. Shortly thereafter, Bruno joined his hound, and fell into a deep and contented sleep.
He was awoken, even before his cockerel greeted the dawn, by Balzac’s soft growl, alerting Bruno to the coming of a car. He slipped on his tracksuit trousers and running shoes, kept ready by his bed for his morning jog, and reached his front door as his visitor knocked. It was Gilles, hair tousled, his smartphone held up in his hand so Bruno could see the image of a newspaper headline—IRA ARRESTS IN FRANCE.
“It’s today’s Daily Mail in London,” Gilles said and scrolled down to a subheadline: POLICE SUSPECT IRA DEATH SQUAD BEHIND MURDERS. “What’s going on, Bruno?” he demanded. “And how come the Brits have it when we don’t?”
“Come in, Gilles,” Bruno said, his heart sinking as he recalled what J-J had said about the relentless British press. He would have to be sure he said nothing that would make matters worse. “I’ll make some coffee for us. Can you call up today’s Sud Ouest on your phone? They might have something.”
“They don’t, not in the paper,” said Gilles, following him into the kitchen as Blanco called out his morning cocorico from the chicken coop. “But there’s something on the website, written by Philippe Delaron and filed after midnight, saying some news had emerged from London about IRA terrorists living here and arrested. There was nothing on the radio as I drove here, but that will change soon. How did he find out about it?”
“He probably monitors the British press. It’s easy enough to set up an alert on Google News to cover any reference to the Dordogne or Périgord in the foreign media.” That was true, Bruno thought as he spoke, but he suspected that Kathleen might have been behind Philippe’s news bulletin and that half the French media would be baying after the story today.
“What can you tell me, off the record?”
“Two men, one British from Northern Ireland and one Irish, have been arrested, one in Bergerac for possession of two kilos of cocaine and the other in Montignac for a firearms offense,” said Bruno, turning to face his friend once he’d filled the kettle, set out two cups and put coffee grounds into the cafetière.
“Each man is a former IRA member who served time in that special British prison at Long Kesh for being involved in bomb attacks,” he went on. “But they served their time. They were released and under European law they have paid their debt to society and as European citizens can now live and work anywhere in the European Union. We knew about them and kept a discreet eye on them, but being former IRA members was not the reason for their arrest.”
“The Mail says they’re being questioned about the mystery deaths in Lalinde, that British woman and the Irish man.”
“Of course they’re being asked about that,” Bruno said, pouring the almost boiling water into the coffee grounds and leaving them to steep. “We’d be failing in our duty if we didn’t follow up on any possible connection.” He took care not to lie to Gilles while giving nothing away.
“The paper also says that British and American counterterrorist specialists are in Périgueux to help with the investigation. Is that true?”
“You’d expect that, given the close cooperation we’ve developed in counterterrorist matters. You ought to feel reassured.”
“Can I quote you on that?”
“No, you asked me to speak off the record. But I’d be surprised if the police spokesman didn’t confirm that today, now that it’s already been reported.”
“The Daily Mail says the names are O’Rourke and Kelly, and that the first one lives in Montignac and the second in Bergerac. Is that right?”
Bruno pushed down the plunger in the cafetière and nodded. “Gilles, we’re friends and I trust you, but there’s nothing more I can say about this. Do you want milk or sugar?”
“Black is fine, thanks, no sugar. Did you talk to Philippe?”
“No, and I didn’t say anything to the British woman, Kathleen, the journalist who’s taking the cooking course. Anyway, I have a bone to pick with Philippe. He was supposed to tip me off about the big news last night, that Paulette is on the French national team. All the sports desks get the news in advance under embargo, but Philippe didn’t call me, so he’ll be waiting a long time for any favors from me.”
“She’s made the squad? That’s wonderful!” Gilles’s eyes lit up in genuine delight and he shook Bruno’s hand warmly. “I know what this means to you and I’m glad for both your sakes.”
“Drink your coffee and then I have to feed the chickens and take my morning run. Terrorists or no terrorists, I’m still the policeman of St. Denis, and that means being in the market this morning. Still, thanks for dropping in, and make sure you tell Fabiola about Paulette’s success. And by the way, we’re reinstating the Monday evening dinners, only without Pamela and Miranda because of their cooking course. We’ll have them here at my place, Florence and the kids, you and Fabiola, Félix and Jack Crimson when he gets back.”
“Where’s he gone?”
“He had to go back to London for a few days,” Bruno replied. “You know how he comes and goes.”
“Are you sure he’s not involved in this Irish business?”
“I have no idea, and that’s enough questions, Gilles. Balzac and I need our morning exercise. Care to join us?”
Gilles laughed. “That’s too much activity for me.” He finished his coffee and put the cup in the sink. “Thanks for the coffee and we’ll see you
Monday, if not before. Maybe in the market.”
The day had dawned clear, still chill from the night with the sun not yet above the horizon. But it promised to be warm, and as Bruno reached the top of the ridge, the rays began to reach him slantwise through the trees, lighting up the first leaves, brilliant in the pure, fresh green of springtime and serenaded by the dawn chorus of the songbirds. The chirpy, descending notes of a chaffinch blended with the squeaky calls of the little wrens and the me voici, me voici, as French children called the “here I am” of the song thrush, almost drowned out by the cheerful, assertive calls of a blackbird.
How could I live anywhere but here? Bruno asked himself. Here in these woods where I feel I know every tree and the birds that give each copse and clearing this gift of music that I know so well, where all the stars are familiar and where Balzac feels so at home. These woodlands give me truffles and mushrooms, wild garlic and sorrel and asparagus and the fresh young fiddle ferns. And in autumn come the acorns that Joe, Bruno’s predecessor as town policeman, had shown him how to prepare to make the kind of makeshift coffee from toasted acorns that the French had drunk in the war years. Joe’s wife had once baked for Bruno a loaf of the yellowish brown, crunchy bread made from chestnuts that was another reminder of those hungry times of the Occupation.
Every shop and supermarket could close in St. Denis and we wouldn’t starve, Bruno thought, as he skirted the small outcrop of boulders that marked the last leg of his run toward home. National statistics suggested that this département was one of the poorest in France by average income, and yet the quality of life here didn’t reflect that. Statistics could not show the reality of the local economy in a place like this, where people lived off their vegetable gardens for most of the summer, and the chickens they raised and the eggs they ate or swapped with neighbors for pots of jam and fresh-caught fish from the river.
A Taste for Vengeance Page 21
