A Taste for Vengeance

by Martin Walker

  Through his hunting club, Bruno was never short of a shoulder of venison or a haunch of wild boar. The bécasse Bruno most liked to hunt, the wiliest and most tasty of game birds, were always in demand among his neighbors. In exchange, Oudinot the farmer would always let Bruno have some of his milk-fed veal. His friend Stéphane, the cheesemaker, kept Bruno in butter, cheese, milk and yogurt in return for the ducks, chickens and truffles that Bruno brought him, and the pots of blackberry jam that Bruno made at the end of summer from the abundant hedgerows at the bottom of his garden. The old ways of the barter economy remained vibrant in the Périgord and the sense of community was all the better for it.

  Bruno had reached home, showered and changed and was eating one of Stéphane’s yogurts with a spoonful of honey from another neighbor when the seven o’clock news came on the radio. War in Syria, an earthquake in Italy, a volcano erupting in Indonesia and a French minister caught with an illicit bank account in Switzerland gave way to the local bulletin, which led with the British press report of an IRA death squad at work in the Périgord. That wasn’t quite what the newspaper had said, Bruno thought, but it would certainly get the attention of the public and set alarm bells ringing at police headquarters in Périgueux.

  He assumed he was still in trouble with Prunier. Certainly he had not been invited back to the morning team meetings in Prunier’s office, but if they needed him, Bruno was always easy to find. The only message on his phone was from Isabelle, accepting with pleasure his invitation to dinner. He collected a dozen eggs from his chickens for Pamela and set off for the riding school and the pleasure of a reunion with Hector.

  “It’s wonderful news about Paulette being on the team,” said Pamela, hugging him when he handed her the carton of eggs. “Give her our warmest congratulations, and I’m also delighted for you. You worked so hard with her and I know what it means to you. Don’t forget the farewell cocktails for the cooking class here tonight at six, before I take them all off to the Vieux Logis.”

  “I’ll have to miss it, I’m sorry,” he said. “But I’ll try to come to your oyster feast in St. Cyprien tomorrow morning to say goodbye to them.”

  Kathleen joined them as Bruno was leading Hector out into the yard. She didn’t quite avoid Bruno’s eye but gave him only the most cursory nod, and there was none of that quiet air of triumph Bruno knew from Philippe Delaron after he had scored some scoop for his newspaper. Bruno guessed that Kathleen knew of the IRA story but couldn’t claim personal credit for it. Besides, the Sunday paper she worked for was not attached to the Daily Mail. If anything, her own paper’s news desk would be annoyed with her. And today was Saturday. Her newspaper came out Sunday. That meant she’d be under pressure to write something special for it today.

  They rode out, the clatter of hooves in the yard giving way to gentler thudding as the horses reached the softer ground. Pamela led them at a trot up the lane that climbed through some woods to the water tower, beyond which ran a long, level slope along the ridge to the village of Meyrals, home to a famous round loaf of dense bread and to a colony of local artists. Pamela paused at the water tower, announced that she planned a long ride that morning, but that Bruno and Fabiola might like to turn back early, since they had work that day.

  There was time for a fine gallop, Hector taking Bruno into the lead ahead of Pamela mounted on her own horse, Primrose, and Fabiola on the Andalusian. Kathleen had trouble keeping up. She was riding the warmblood, a slightly lazy horse that preferred show jumping to the kind of cross-country rides that Pamela and her friends enjoyed. They stopped at the turnoff to the shortcut back to the riding school and said their farewells, Kathleen asking if Bruno might be in the market later that morning.

  “Maybe, but not for long,” he called back before turning away after Fabiola. “But I’ll see you for oysters tomorrow.”

  Back in the yard, Félix was using a pitchfork to clear the stables of old straw, which he piled into a trailer to take to the dung heap. The custom was that families whose children were taking riding lessons were allowed to help themselves for their gardens, and each of them thanked Félix with five euros. Bruno chatted with him while rubbing down his horse and then heard a clatter of hooves as Kathleen came into the yard.

  “I really need to talk to you,” she said, jumping down. “Something important has come up.”

  “You mean the IRA? I heard it on the radio this morning,” he said. “I can’t help you on that.”

  “Is there a connection to the Lalinde murder?” she pressed. “Please help, Bruno. I’m under a lot of pressure from London on this.”

  Bruno sighed theatrically. “I’m sorry but I don’t know, and even if I did, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know who leaked that bit of information, but if it was a French policeman, he’ll be in real trouble.”

  “It wasn’t a French cop,” she said, almost interrupting him. “The story came out of Dublin last night from the crime reporter for RTE, the Irish TV and radio network. Apparently one of the two men arrested is an Irish national so the Irish government had to be informed. My news desk got onto me to see if I could add anything. Can you at least confirm that two men have been arrested? You know the police spokesman won’t talk to me because I’m not accredited.”

  “If that’s right about the news coming out of Dublin, then you’re a lot better informed than I am,” Bruno replied. “But you know Philippe Delaron, so if I were you I’d try asking him. Philippe had some story about an IRA connection on his paper’s website overnight. And now you’ll have to excuse me, Kathleen. I have to get to work.”

  Chapter 18

  The Saturday morning market occupied the whole of the square in front of the mairie, so Bruno parked his van outside the gendarmerie and called in to say hello to Sergeant Jules and see if Yveline was in her office. Jules told him to go straight in, and Bruno found her doing paperwork, preparing the schedule of drunk-driving patrols for the following month. She put a manila file on top of the paper she was working on before coming from behind her desk to greet him.

  “So after all this time you still don’t trust me?” he said, grinning, with a gesture at the schedule she had hidden.

  “I don’t trust anybody with that file,” she said. “But you’ve been around long enough to know how it works. The teams usually go out Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons after all those family lunches. That’s when the pickings are rich, and we have these arrest quotas to fill. But sometimes we mount a little surprise.” She shrugged. “Count yourself lucky you don’t get judged by the number of your arrests. What can I do for you?”

  “I came to invite you to dinner at my place this evening, unless you’re tired of the company of cops.” He explained that Hodge and Moore would be there, along with Isabelle, but it would be a social occasion rather than a working dinner.

  “I never say no to your cooking,” Yveline replied. “And it sounds like an interesting group.”

  Bruno walked along the rue de Paris, stopping every few yards to shake hands or kiss cheeks, and be slapped on the back by those who had heard Paulette’s interview on the radio. When he reached the first stalls of the market, which had overflowed from the town square, he paused, looking for inspiration.

  Other than the duck breasts, he’d hardly given a thought to the evening’s menu. Since Hodge and Moore were foreigners, he’d have to introduce them to real foie gras, but should he serve it cold as a pâté or sauté it with honey and vinegar? He’d need to get some cheese from Stéphane, and for dessert he planned to make a chocolate mousse. He saw that the first young zucchini of the season were already on sale and also some of the early strawberries, the long-shaped gariguettes that were the first variety to ripen. Maybe they should be the dessert.

  Bruno asked Marcel, whose produce Bruno always trusted, whether he thought the strawberries were worth buying. Marcel held out his hand palm down, waggled it and shrugged.


  “They’re on sale at other stalls but not mine. Congratulations on Paulette being selected for the bleus. Everybody’s been talking about it,” he said. “For the strawberries, I’d prefer to wait another week or so. But the young zucchini are good. What are you cooking?”

  “Some foreign friends are coming to dinner so I thought I’d make a classic Périgord meal, foie gras and magret de canard, and I’m trying to decide between oranges and cherries for a sauce. And since you’ve warned me off the strawberries I’ll make a chocolate mousse.”

  “Wish I were coming. But if you’re serving magret you’ll be doing pommes de terre Sarladaises and I know you grow your own potatoes so how would you use the zucchini?”

  “Slice them lengthways, deep-fry them in batter and serve them hot with Stéphane’s aillou to eat with our drinks before dinner.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll give you a kilo and pick out some of the bigger ones for you while you get your cream and aillou from Stéphane. How many are coming to dinner?”

  “We’ll be six, maybe seven.”

  “How are you preparing the foie gras? Mi-cuit or what?”

  “I thought perhaps poêlé, with a sauce of honey and balsamic.”

  Marcel shook his head. “If you did oranges or cherries with the duck, that’s two sweet sauces in a row. Why not offer them one of your confits de canard instead? That’s what I’d do.”

  Loaded down with the foie, cheese, cream and aillou, Bruno returned to Marcel’s stall to pick up the fruit and zucchini. He was heading toward the mairie with his purchases when he heard his name called from an outside table at Fauquet’s.

  “J-J told me I’d probably find you here,” said Hodge, standing up and towering over Bruno as he held out his hand. “He also said you reckoned this place served the best croissants in the Périgord, so I thought I’d give them a try. And I’ll be sure to call in at your local wine store. J-J made St. Denis sound like the culinary heart of France. I can see you’ve been shopping for dinner. Let me buy you a coffee.”

  “Give me a second to put all this in the office fridge. Order the coffee and I’ll be right back.” Bruno darted into the mairie, stowed his food and then called Juliette in Les Eyzies to invite her to dinner.

  “Is it formal?” she asked, nervously.

  “Not at all, very relaxed, all cops, all French-speaking. One FBI man from the Paris embassy and a very nice rosbif from Scotland Yard plus Yveline, the commandant from the gendarmerie, and a woman from French counterterrorism who used to be a detective in Périgueux. All colleagues.”

  “I see, all top brass so no pressure,” she said cheerfully. “I’d love to come. What can I bring?”

  “Just yourself,” he replied. “About seven.” He gave her directions and went down to join Hodge, who had that morning’s Sud Ouest open before him. Fauquet, realizing the second coffee would be for Bruno, had automatically put a basket of croissants and pains au chocolat on the table.

  “Nothing in here about the IRA,” Hodge said, pointing to the paper.

  “It came in too late for the local edition, but it’s on their website and on the radio,” Bruno said, picking up a croissant. “There’s a British journalist here who told me the story broke in Dublin on Irish radio. I suppose J-J had to inform their embassy.”

  Hodge was already halfway through his croissant. Bruno was amused to see that with his mouth still full, he washed it down with a sip of coffee, just as Bruno did. They grinned companionably at each other.

  “I thought the croissants were pretty damn good in Paris, but this is in a different class altogether,” Hodge said.

  “Where do you go in Paris?” Bruno asked.

  “I’m working my way through the ones that won the prizes for the best in the city. My favorites are Poilâne on the rue du Cherche Midi and Blé Sucré, off the rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine. The coffee here is as good too.”

  “I’m glad you like them. Fauquet will be delighted, even more so when I tell him you’re from the FBI.”

  “I guess I’m not the first one from the Bureau to come here. My predecessor, Nancy, told me about this region, and about your cooking, in a long memo she sent me after she left Paris and heard I was her replacement. That was before she resigned from the Bureau. You know she’s gone into politics, running for a seat in Congress?”

  “Yes,” said Bruno, an image suddenly leaping into his mind of Nancy stripping off her shirt to stand amid a knot of soldiers in her black bra before putting on a bulletproof vest. “She was a very impressive woman.”

  “She says the same about you. Her after-action report made for quite a read. She says you saved her life. The Bureau owes you a debt for that. So I brought you something.” Hodge pulled a large envelope from the briefcase at his feet and handed it to Bruno.

  “I saw that note you made on the case file about Felder’s family and social media. That’s something we do as a matter of course, so in there you’ll find photos of his first wife and children and some of their postings, along with the websites they’ve been using in Houston.”

  “How did you get these?” Bruno asked, leafing through the photos.

  He was sure the photo of Felder’s son, Julian, had never come from Facebook. It had been taken in the street as he climbed out of a car, and showed an athlete running to seed with a double chin and puffy eyes. The daughter, Portia, was blond with a clear complexion, thin lips and hard eyes, very fashionably dressed as she climbed from the same car as her brother. In one photo that probably had come from social media she was wearing a strapless evening gown that showed off a gym-toned body. There was a photo of their mother smiling at what looked like a family gathering. She was plump and looked comfortable about it, happy in her skin, and her face still carried some hints of what must have been a striking beauty. He looked up at Hodge, waiting for an answer to his question.

  “Don’t ask.” Hodge gave a lopsided grin before adding, “Our Houston field office is checking on the movements of the family to be sure they’ve all been where they say they have. J-J told us what the lawyer said about Felder’s will, which could give them a motive to get rid of Monika.”

  “I’m glad we agree, but I thought your only concern was what had happened to the money stolen in the Baghdad ambush,” Bruno said, signaling Fauquet for more coffee.

  “Well, you know how it is,” Hodge drawled, reminding Bruno once again of cowboy films. He could picture Hodge in a broad-brimmed Stetson, squinting across some endless prairie. “When it comes to crime one thing leads to another and you find yourself coming at the thing from a different direction. But you’re right. My job is to find out what happened to Uncle Sam’s cash, get it back if we can and nail the bad guys even if we don’t find a red cent.”

  “Is there enough money at stake for your Treasury experts to make a real effort? They must have bigger targets.”

  Hodge shrugged as Fauquet brought more coffee. “We’ll see.” He reached for a pain au chocolat. “If these are as good as the croissants I might be tempted to move down here myself.”

  “I’m grateful for this,” Bruno said, tapping the envelope. “Is there anything I can do for you down here?”

  Hodge grinned at him. “Just point me to this famous wine shop of yours.”

  “Cross the bridge and go straight on for about four hundred meters. You can’t miss it. There’s a big pile of wine barrels outside. You can taste as much as you want, and if you like it, you can order it here and he has a store in Paris where you can pick it up.”

  “Right, I’ll let you get on with your day. Since you’re in uniform I guess you’re still working.” Hodge put a ten-euro note under his saucer and rose, waving away Bruno’s attempt to pay. “See you this evening, about seven. I may have some news by then. I asked J-J to organize a really thorough search of Rentoul’s place, not only metal detectors but some ground-penetrating radar. I
bet he has a safe buried somewhere, or a cache of some kind. A guy like that, he’d want to have a quick escape kit on hand, some other documents and cash.”

  Bruno nodded, thinking that made sense. “Any idea what Moore is working on?”

  “Trying to backtrack Monika and find out how she met Felder and how his first marriage broke down. There’s no indication of her having any German family, and that’s unusual.”

  Bruno made no secret of his surprise. “A senior officer in military intelligence getting divorced to marry a foreign national? There must have been a security review at the time.”

  “That’s what Moore is trying to find, but he’s having trouble getting into the archives,” Hodge said. “Felder was at Rheindahlen, the main British base in Germany, just west of the Rhine. It was huge, over ten thousand people. The IRA hit the place with a car bomb in March 1987, injuring about thirty people, mainly Germans. You may recall some of our bases in Germany had been attacked by Libyan bombs, so our army intel guys did their own report on the Rheindahlen attack. I’m hoping to dig it out, thanks to a buddy who’s still in the military. It’s interesting that the IRA keeps coming into the picture. Maybe we’ll hear something from Moore tonight.”

  Bruno did a brief patrol of the market, which was busy for this early season between Easter and summer. He noticed several new faces that were clearly French. He knew from the mayor that the population of St. Denis was climbing as more and more people from northern and eastern France moved to spend their retirement here, which meant the average age in the commune was also rising. He wondered what that would mean for him, whether older people would be targets for burglary or confidence men or the new phenomenon of cybercrime. The département of the Dordogne had one of the lowest levels of violent crime and burglaries, and Bruno wanted to keep it that way.

  He crossed the bridge, glancing down at the fishermen dotted along the quayside as he headed for Bernard’s flower shop. It was always busy on market day as people bought flowers and plants when invited to a lunch or dinner, or took advantage of the spring weather to tend their gardens and fill them with color. To Bruno’s surprise, he found Paulette busy behind the cash register while her father offered advice to customers in the garden where he displayed his wares. Bruno waited until Paulette had dealt with the various clients before asking if all was well.