“E-mail it to me at this address,” Carlos said, handing across a business card that bore simply the arms of Spain, his name, an e-mail address and phone number. “Then I can forward it direct. It will be faster. But I’d like to take a look at the archaeological site, if that’s possible. It’s mainly for my own interest, but I’d like to be able to report that I’d checked the site of the grave, if this dead man turns out to be interesting. And I’d like to take you to lunch, but perhaps you have other plans.”
“We have the security meeting at the chateau this evening,” Bruno said. “I also want to go and have a quiet talk with the old man who did this job for thirty years before me. He knows everybody, so I was going to ask him about Basques, as well as the mysterious corpse. You’re welcome to come along, but be careful of any wine he offers you. His red pinard is terrible, but his vin de noix is worth the detour.”
Carlos smiled. “Thanks for the tip. I suppose we all have friends like that.”
“I’ve got one question for you,” Bruno said, leaning back. His chair squeaked again. “How serious is the security threat? I realize this meeting makes an inviting target, but ETA has been on the defensive for years. You must have some idea of what resources and capabilities ETA still has.”
“We know they used the cease-fire to rebuild some of their networks,” Carlos said. “And we know they have now determined France to be an enemy state and a legitimate target. We think they have two, perhaps three, active service teams available, at least one in southern France. We’ve already passed on everything in our files to your minister of the interior, including what few photos and records we have on the members, and I’ll be providing daily updates.”
Bruno nodded and rose. “I’m going to the site of the dig, if you’d like to come.”
The Spaniard pointed to his computer and said he’d work on his e-mails. As Bruno trotted down the stairs to his van, his cell phone rang. Bruno looked at the screen and saw the name of Maurice, a friend from the hunting club. He clicked the green button to take the call.
“Bruno, it’s Maurice. You’d better get here quick. I’m in trouble. I think I’ve shot somebody.”
8
Maurice Soulier’s farm was on the lowest slope of the hillside below Coumont. On the flat land that stretched down to the busy stream that joined the Vezere near St. Denis he kept the ducks that he fattened by hand in the old-fashioned way. Lacking a permit to slaughter them, he had the ducks collected twice a week by a cousin who was a local butcher. He paid Maurice a fair price for the foie but kept all the money from selling the meat and carcasses. Of course, the entire hunting club and its extended families bought Maurice’s foie gras and his magrets and the confits made by his wife, Sophie. This meant that Maurice was still killing a couple of dozen ducks a week with his grandfather’s ax on the old stump in the barnyard, and Bruno was not the only citizen of St. Denis who slept under a magnificent eiderdown made by Sophie from duck feathers. So it was with considerable alarm that Bruno pulled into the farmyard, to find Sophie weeping in the kitchen and Maurice trying to comfort her.
Bruno sized up the situation, went to the familiar cupboard in the corner opposite the stove, removed the bottle of cognac that Maurice kept to fill his flask before a hunt and poured a glass for each of them. They drank, and then husband and wife began to speak at once.
“One at a time.” Bruno held up a hand. “Maurice, you first-tell me what happened.”
Maurice explained that it was about 5:00 a.m. and he was asleep when the dog started barking in the yard. He went downstairs and saw nothing but then heard a noise over by the barn where he kept the car. Then the ducks started making a racket. Maurice thought they must have been startled by a fox, so he grabbed the shotgun and went toward the duck barn. He heard glass breaking in one of the cold frames he used to plant early seeds. He had shouted and heard another frame break. When he turned the corner he saw something moving low down by the fence and was sure it was a fox so he fired. He heard a scream and someone shouting in a foreign language and the sound of running. That was all.
“Tell him about the blood,” said Sophie, hiccupping now rather than sobbing.
“I looked around and saw the fence had been partly cut through so I patched that with some twine. Then I went to see if Sophie was all right because she’d been woken by the shot. I saw to the ducks and took the dog out to see what was what. He stood barking just where I’d patched the fence, but it wasn’t until after dawn that we came out to look and then we saw the blood-”
“I said we should call you,” Sophie interrupted. “But he’s a stubborn old devil and he said you wouldn’t be in the office until after eight and it wasn’t fair to call you before then.”
Bruno rubbed his jaw and pondered. It was a strange time for a shot to be fired and somebody may have reported it, or gone to a hospital where a doctor might already have called the gendarmes.
“I’m going to take a statement right now, get your version down. It’s important to say that you really believed it was a fox and only later thought it might be a human attacker. Give me some writing paper.”
“We had that fox dig his way in last December, you remember,” said Sophie, getting up to pull a writing pad from a drawer. She seemed calmer with something to do. “No wonder that’s what he thought. But then I remembered what happened to the Villattes and thought about those animal cruelty people. Do you think it was one of them he shot, Bruno?”
“Right now, we don’t know what was shot. Please, can you make us some coffee, Sophie, while I take Maurice’s statement?”
Bruno led Maurice carefully through the statement, suggesting phrases and sentences and putting the best possible face on Maurice’s account that after the previous fox invasion, he had fired at what he thought was another fox to protect his livelihood. Then he had heard what might have been human voices, but he could not be sure because the sounds were in no language he could understand. It was only when it was light enough to see the bloodstains that he had called the chef de police, who was taking his statement.
Bruno drank his coffee and got Sophie to make a brief corroborating statement before going outside to look at the patched fence and the blood.
“Just one thing,” he said, standing at the door. “Whoever else comes here, whether gendarmes or a magistrate or the president of the Republic, say nothing. You’ve made a sworn statement to me. I’ll get it registered, and that’s all you have to say. If anyone makes threats about charging you, say you insist on your right to a legal adviser and ask them to send for me.”
Sophie looked even more frightened, but Maurice nodded and led the way to the rear of the old barn where the vegetable garden was protected by a wire fence. Just inside the fence was Maurice’s row of cold frames, two of them broken, and Bruno saw that Maurice’s careful watering the previous evening had preserved a very clear footprint of what looked to Bruno like a small sneaker. He went to his car, pulled out a roll of yellow police tape and fastened it around and across the cold frame, then covered the useful footprint with one of Sophie’s plastic bags. The small patch of blood was beside the cold frame. As he bent to examine it, he saw a couple of what could have been wormholes in the wood of the barn. But the holes in the wood were fresh, so he guessed they must be pellets from Maurice’s shotgun. They were below waist height. That would support Maurice’s claim that he thought he was shooting at a fox.
“What kind of shell did you have in the shotgun?”
“Just bird shot. It was what was in the drawer when I fetched the gun.”
“Can you show me where you were standing at the moment you fired?”
“About here, I reckon. I’d just turned the corner,” Maurice replied, from the angle of the old barn that he used as a garage. Bruno paced out the distance, taking thirty-six long steps. He sighed in relief. At that range, the bird shot would have spread. Then he went back to the cold frame.
There wasn’t much blood, a small patch roughly four inches across. It was maybe thirty feet from the woods. At the spot where the vegetation was trampled down he found some more blood on the crushed leaves. The trail continued through the woods toward the track that led up the hill to Coumont. Attached to the thorns of a bramble bush he found a crumpled copy of the leaflet he had first seen at the Villatte farm. Using his handkerchief, he removed it from the bush, and noting some smears of dried blood on the paper, he placed it carefully inside a plastic bag. On a small pile of dead leaves nearby he found two more smears of blood. He tied his handkerchief to a twig to mark the spot, and then called Maurice to examine them.
“If that was a deer, what would you say?” he asked Maurice.
