“Dad and I are fine. Fabiola’s working today, so she dropped me off in time to join them for breakfast. Mom is still in a state, but she’s being kept busy with phone calls from people who heard the news on the radio about the rugby team.”
She broke off to attend to another customer, who came in from the garden with Bernard, each of them loaded down with young geranium plants.
“I’m sorry about last night, Bruno,” said Bernard, once the customer had gone.
“Forget it, and I’m glad to see you two on good terms again.” That was one thing about running a shop, Bruno thought. The customers had to come first, leaving little time for moping. “You both know where to reach me if there’s anything I can do, and the whole town is really proud of you, Paulette, me most of all.”
He left as more customers came in, one of them from the rugby club, who shook Bruno’s hand warmly before embracing Paulette and congratulating her father and then asking when the club would celebrate Paulette’s success. Bruno hadn’t thought of that but knew there was a game at the town stadium the following afternoon. Maybe they could organize something for afterward. He called Lespinasse, the club chairman, while returning across the bridge and was told a vin d’honneur for Paulette was already in the works. Paulette would toss the coin before the game, and the club would also take advantage of the occasion to celebrate the championship cup the young women’s team had won. Bruno was glad to hear it, feeling guilty that, with the murders and the other dramas of the week, he’d let that slip his mind.
Back in the mairie, Bruno knocked on the door of the mayor’s office and found him at his desk, fountain pen poised over his manuscript, with some old documents beside him and his favorite pipe giving off an aromatic scent. The laws against smoking in offices seemed not to apply to a mayor in his own mairie.
“I’m very glad to hear it and I’ll certainly attend,” the mayor said once he heard of the ceremony for Paulette. “What do you know about her pregnancy?”
“She seems to be reconciled with her father, and she is planning to have an abortion next week, something she decided before the news came through about the national team. She’ll be in her eleventh week, so she’s cutting it fine.”
The mayor shook his head sadly. “I voted for the new law that extended the approved period from ten to twelve weeks when I was in the Senate. Now I wonder if we did the right thing. Perhaps it’s for the best.”
Bruno recognized the manuscript the mayor was working on, had watched his history of St. Denis grow from a few sheets of paper to its current impressive dimensions, a stack of handwritten pages as thick as Bruno’s clenched fist.
“How much further to go?” he asked.
“I’m working on something that might excite your professional interest. I’m up to the chapter on the Revolution and I’ve come across some old letters of denunciation to one of your predecessors.”
“They were in the town archives?” Bruno asked, thinking that perhaps it was time to add his own files of such letters to the archive.
“Yes, it’s remarkable what you can find in the attic up there. And the same family names keep recurring. Here’s a man called Marty denouncing a female Lespinasse for witchcraft. It’s quite something to find in one letter two of the most common family names in St. Denis to this day. And here they are again, Lespinasse and Marty, in muster rolls in 1793, when the Austrians and Prussians and the English declared war on the Revolution after we guillotined the king.”
“My predecessor who received the letters, who was he?”
“The letters were addressed to the Committee of Public Safety in Bergerac, where some honest constable doubtless was told to do his duty, whatever that was at the time. The Revolution prided itself on a belief in reason, so I doubt whether they’d have swallowed any tales of witchcraft. What we have here is a copy of the denunciation signed by a man named simply Taroupe.”
“Who was he? A clerk in the mairie?”
The mayor shrugged. “It’s an old name, but it seemed familiar so I looked it up. It means hair growing between the eyebrows. He was conscripted, too. This commune sent a hundred and ten young men off to the Revolutionary armies, and then more each year for Napoleon’s wars.”
“And there are two hundred names on the town memorial for the Great War,” Bruno said. “It hardly bears thinking about.”
“Perhaps it will put your current concerns into some perspective. I saw Philippe’s report about the IRA men. Any developments I should know about?”
“Jack Crimson was told to beat a hasty retreat back to London. Now that the IRA men have been arrested, he may think it’s safe enough to return.”
“How about your little difficulty with Prunier? Is that resolved?”
“I haven’t heard anything more about it,” said Bruno. “But I’m no longer being called in to his morning case meetings at headquarters. That suits me since it means I don’t lose half my mornings.”
“But you still know what’s going on with the investigation?”
“Yes, there’s a special computer network that has all the case files, updated three or four times a day. And the British and American cops seem happy to keep me informed. In fact, they’re coming to dinner tonight.”
“Good,” said the mayor. “I’ve always thought that a little judicious hospitality was an essential lubricant in most human affairs.”
Chapter 19
Bruno took his sharpest knife from the bowl of hot water, dried the blade carefully and then sliced the raw foie into six generous portions, each about the thickness of his finger. The hot knife ensured a clean cut. Six big tranches of bread had already been toasted and he’d made the chocolate mousse, which was now chilling in the fridge. The potatoes had been peeled, parboiled and dried, ready to go into the duck fat. The garlic had been peeled and sliced. One of the last of Bruno’s black truffles from the winter had been taken from his freezer earlier and was now ready to be grated over the pommes de terre Sarladaises. The parsley and the salad had been picked from the garden and washed.
He had taken from his pantry two big jars of confit de canard that he’d made in the winter, sealing them with the yellow duck fat that filled the top third of each jar. There were four generous thighs and legs in each one, and they were all now roasting in the oven, almost filling his largest casserole. The Tomme d’Audrix and cabécous of goat’s cheese were set on a plank of wood from a case that had once held six bottles of Château de Tiregand’s Grand Millésime, a choice vintage from 2009 of which Bruno was especially fond.
The wood-burning stove in the living room was warm and glowing, a fresh log of applewood starting to catch fire. A bottle of champagne and another of Monbazillac from Clos l’Evêque were chilling in the fridge and his last two bottles of the 2009 Tiregand had been decanted. The table was laid for six and the champagne flutes were set out on the coffee table along with Stéphane’s aillou and a pile of paper napkins for his guests to hold the hot zucchini, which he had sliced, ready for the frying pan.
Hector had been ridden, Balzac had been exercised, brushed and fed and the chicken coop had been emptied of fresh eggs. Bruno had cleaned the bathroom and laid out fresh guest towels. He had vacuumed the carpets, changed the sheets on his bed, showered and changed into jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. Now he slipped a cherished CD of Jean Sablon songs from the 1930s and 1940s into his player, and the haunting notes of the first song, “J’attendrai,” began to fill the room. Bruno was ready for his guests.
He was not, however, prepared for the sudden phone call from Gilles, who began by saying he had just posted a story on the Paris Match website that might cause Bruno and his colleagues some embarrassment.
“It’s about McBride’s real identity as a former British intelligence officer called Rentoul who had been one of the planners of the SAS killing of three IRA men in Gibraltar,” Gilles said. “So it looks to me lik
e a revenge killing. And some official is on his way here from the Special Branch of the Garda, that’s the Irish police.”
“You’re doing your job as a journalist,” Bruno said. He remembered how good a reporter Gilles had been when they’d first met, during the siege of Sarajevo. “And I’m not going to confirm or deny your story, so why should that embarrass me?”
“We’re known to be friends, so you’re the one most likely to be accused of leaking it to me.”
“You and I both know that I’m not your source,” said Bruno, although he suspected that Gilles was right. “But I imagine you aren’t going to say who gave you the information. Remember that people who leak stories to journalists usually have their own reasons for doing so, and their motives aren’t always pure and leaks aren’t always true.”
“I know. Anyway, I point out in the piece that the information came from a foreign intelligence source, so I hope that leaves you in the clear.”
“We’ll see, Gilles, thanks for the call.”
Bruno put his phone back in his pouch and thought that a foreign source was likely to mean Moore, Hodge or Jack Crimson, unless Gilles had been digging into diplomatic sources in Dublin. On the whole, and given that nugget about the Garda, Bruno thought Dublin the more likely, and Prunier was smart enough to reach the same conclusion. He shrugged, knowing he’d rather live with a free press than the alternative. At his feet, Balzac twitched his long ears and gave his little bark to signal that a vehicle was coming up the road, half an hour early.
Bruno looked out of the window to see Isabelle, alone in a rental car. She drove past him to park discreetly around the back of the house. What did that mean? he wondered. Was she planning to stay the night or did she simply want some time alone with Balzac? With Isabelle, he never knew what to expect. He opened the back door to let Balzac charge out to greet her and stood smiling as he waited for their reunion to take its course. The car door was hardly open before Balzac had scrambled into Isabelle’s embrace with a sonorous bay of welcome that blended with her own delighted laughter.
Finally, she disentangled herself and came to embrace Bruno, with a bottle of Taittinger champagne, still chilled, in her hand. He hugged her in return, about to kiss her cheek, but she turned her head to find his lips for a tantalizing moment that lasted just long enough for Bruno to overcome his surprise and appreciate it.
“I missed you as well as Balzac,” she said, drawing back her head a fraction before he could respond. And then, briefly, she kissed him again before tucking her head against his chest and squeezing.
Hand in hand, they went into the sitting room, and Bruno opened the champagne as Isabelle gazed around the familiar space, spotting immediately on one wall a simple watercolor of St. Denis, painted from the riverbank.
“That’s new,” she said. “I like it.”
“I bought it the other day at an exhibition of local artists.” He handed her a flute of champagne and bent to pour his own. He stood and raised his glass to her.
“You look wonderful,” he said. “Lovelier than ever. Your hair suits you like that.”
She was wearing black jeans and ankle boots, an untucked shirt of heavy maroon silk with an open collar and hardly any makeup, only some lipstick that matched her shirt. She handed him the long black raincoat he remembered.
“There’s news,” she said. “The FBI in Washington has put out a press release about reopening the investigation into the loss of the money in Baghdad. I don’t know why they’ve gone public, but maybe Hodge can explain it to us.”
Bruno told her about the call from Gilles and his story on the website of Paris Match. And the imminent arrival of someone from the Garda.
“I hadn’t heard about that, but I had to inform Dublin since they’re represented on my counterterrorism committee, along with all the other EU countries,” she said. “The two Irishmen are still saying nothing and neither are their wives. We’re keeping them all separate and I spent six hours getting nowhere with the women. But we got something from the GPS in their car. We think they were heading for an address in Ustaritz, near Bayonne. Their car had been there before, to the home of a known Basque militant, son of the old ETA veteran who first put the IRA in touch with the Libyans over forty years ago.”
“Has he been picked up?”
“Of course, and the Basque is not talking either. He was born in France so we can’t threaten to deport him to Spain. Forensics have been going through his house and car, but I haven’t seen their report yet. We assume the Irishmen were hoping he’d get them another car or get them over the frontier into Spain. But there is some good news.”
“About time,” said Bruno. “A link to Rentoul?”
“A perfect link, from the garbage bins nearest to Kelly’s garden center in Bergerac. Forensics got a yellow recycling bag that had envelopes addressed to him, English and Irish papers, along with the usual household rubbish. And mixed in were bits of two torn-up photographs from a computer printer. After we’d done the jigsaw puzzle of putting the photos back together, we could see that one was of a young Rentoul in a British army uniform, the other was taken recently in Lalinde market. On each photo the words ‘Remember him?’ were hand-printed in felt pen. Kelly’s fingerprints were on it, but nobody else’s, so we don’t know who sent it.”
“What about the envelope?” Bruno asked.
“We found it in the same bag. Brown paper envelope, addressed to Kelly in the same hand printing and mailed in Bergerac.”
“And then the person who sent it made contact?”
“Two days after the postmark on the envelope a woman speaking English called Kelly at the garden center from a Bergerac pay phone. She used a ten-euro phone card that had been bought at the Leclerc supermarket in St. Cyprien.”
“And we were monitoring his phone?” Bruno asked hopefully.
“Not live, but we were recording everything, so we went back through the tapes for that week and found it. All she said was ‘I just sent you something, Mr. Kelly, and I think we should meet. I’ll come to your business later today.’ That was all, but it’s enough for voice recognition if we can find her.”
“So Kelly was the killer, or one of them,” Bruno said. “Does he know he’s now facing a murder charge?”
“No. We’re working out how to play it.”
“You could try showing him some photos,” Bruno said. “Let me get them for you.” He went to his study and brought back the photos of Felder’s first wife and two children. “Hodge gave them to me this morning. The FBI took one of them from Felder’s daughter’s social media page; the others they took themselves. I’m sure he’ll have copies for you. And I can take them to the Leclerc where the phone card was bought. I already sent them around my own little network, hotels and gîtes, rental car places and campsites, you remember.”
She nodded. “We’ll share the audiotape with Moore. The British have a huge database of IRA voices, but that doesn’t stop us doing both.”
“This was meant to be a social evening without talking shop,” Bruno said as Balzac gave his warning bark again. “You already know Yveline from the gendarmes, and Juliette is also coming, my new counterpart from Les Eyzies.”
“I hope she’s an improvement on Louis, but I suppose she couldn’t be any worse,” Isabelle replied, drily.
Bruno turned up the heat on the vegetable oil for the zucchini before opening his front door. Hodge and Moore arrived together in an unmarked police car that Bruno recognized from the Périgueux motor pool. Each man had brought champagne, the bottles still very cold, so they must have stopped at the cave in town to buy them. Almost immediately they were followed by Yveline, who was dropped off by one of her gendarmes. She presented Bruno with a bottle of Tiregand. They had hardly been given their champagne when they heard the angry buzz of a trail bike engine revving hard as it came up the lane, skidding on the bend into Bruno
’s drive.
They all turned to watch as a helmeted figure in white leather put the bike on its stand. The rider removed the helmet to reveal Juliette, running her hands through her short hair and taking a duffel bag from the bike’s rack.
“Greetings, Bruno,” she said, handing him a large jar from the bag. “Pickled mushrooms, made by me. Where’s your bathroom so I can change?”
“Thank you and welcome,” he said, showing her the way. “Or you could use my room to change; it’s the door at the end. Would you like a glass of champagne?”
“Yes, please. I’ll be right back.”
Bruno gave the batter a final whip and then dipped in a dozen sliced zucchini before dropping them into the sizzling fat. He went back to his guests in the sitting room, refilled their glasses and poured one for Juliette, who made her entrance in a plain white dress with a bright pink belt at her waist, which matched the color of her high-heeled shoes. Bruno handed her champagne, made the introductions and went for the zucchini, replacing them in the hot oil with another dozen.
“I recommend using a napkin to hold these and then dip them into that aillou,” said Bruno, handing them round. “There are more to come so don’t hold back.”
Juliette’s noisy arrival had inspired them all to talk of motorbikes, a topic which immediately created the amicable mood that Bruno always hoped for at his dinners. Hodge recalled a Harley-Davidson he’d ridden while in the military and Isabelle confessed that she’d consented to go out with her first boyfriend only so she could ride on his ancient BMW before making him teach her how to drive it. Moore said the first thing he did with his first police paycheck was to put down a deposit on a Triumph Bonneville and that he’d spent the next two years paying it off. Yveline chimed in that as a student she’d been devoted to her Peugeot scooter. Bruno left them to it and went back for more zucchini and another bottle of champagne from the fridge.
A Taste for Vengeance Page 23
