“I’d say it wasn’t badly hurt, maybe a flank shot.”
Bruno nodded. “So put your mind at rest. You haven’t killed anybody. It was an accident, and you can’t even be sure it was human.”
Maurice nodded dully, and Bruno saw that he was feeling too guilty to be reassured.
“I’ll have to take the gun, they may need to run tests,” Bruno said, thinking that even at a range of over ninety-five feet bird shot could do a lot of damage. “I’ll borrow your hunting permit, make a copy and get it back to you. Don’t worry, Maurice, the gun’s legal, your permit’s in order, and you very reasonably believed you were shooting at a fox to protect your property.”
“What about those cuts in the fence?” Maurice asked, his voice quavering. He suddenly looked very old.
“Nothing about them in the statement. I’ll add a note to say we just found them and patched them now.”
“I don’t like this, Bruno. It feels like deception.”
“Trust me, Maurice. This could turn out badly unless you do what I say and never utter a word that’s not in your statement. And make sure Sophie does the same.”
Back at the house, Bruno asked Sophie to write out a copy of both statements. He and Maurice went out and put a saucepan over the patch of blood to protect it for the likely forensic tests. Back inside, Bruno signed and dated the statement copies. Then he called the medical center and asked for Fabiola.
“Anybody been brought in with gunshot wounds?”
“No, and I was on night call for the whole district, so I’d have heard. Why, should I expect somebody?”
“Looks like some animal rights people got up to their tricks last night and the farmer thought they were a fox. There’s a small bloodstain, about the size of a saucer.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad. I’ll keep my ears open. You might want to try the pharmacies, see if anybody’s buying bandages.”
“Bandages and tweezers-they’re probably trying to pull out bird-shot pellets right now.”
“Some girls carry tweezers to pluck their eyebrows. Stick with the bandages and surgical gauze. And maybe bleach or something, to get the bloodstains out of clothes.”
Bruno scribbled down “Pharmacie” in his notebook, then added the names of the baron, J-J, Jules, the mayor and Herve, the insurance broker. He was that year’s president of the hunting club, which paid an annual insurance premium in case its members needed legal assistance. J-J could recommend a good lawyer, which Maurice would probably need.
The first call was to the baron to come and sit with Maurice and Sophie and be prepared to stand up to the gendarmes and to Annette if they turned up while Bruno was elsewhere. J-J reported that the case did not sound too serious to him, if nobody had reported being hurt, and gave Bruno the name of a reliable lawyer in Perigueux. In any event, the incident had now been officially reported to the Police Nationale, which meant that the gendarmes would not have jurisdiction. Nonetheless, Bruno called Sergeant Jules on his personal number, who told him to bring in Maurice’s shotgun for safe keeping, and he promised to warn Capitaine Duroc that the Police Nationale had taken over the case. He rang the mayor and gave him the details, and finally told Herve, who confirmed that the club’s insurance was both up-to-date and well funded.
The baron arrived in his veteran Citroen DS, greeted them all and proceeded to distribute more cognac, on the inventive principle that anything Maurice might say thereafter could be dismissed as the ramblings of someone who had taken a little too much alcohol for the shock.
Bruno took the shotgun to Sergeant Jules at the gendarmerie and then went to the general office in the mairie to make more copies of Maurice’s statement. He faxed them to J-J and Herve, and to the general number at the magistrates’ office in Sarlat, with a covering note addressed to Annette. That gave Bruno an idea. Rather than call the lawyer in Perigueux, he went into his own office to track down a number for Annette’s predecessor.
As a devoted hunter and an occasional customer of Sophie’s foie gras, the old chief magistrate was delighted to take the case. He assured Bruno he would be at Maurice’s house within the hour. Bruno read him Maurice’s statement aloud, and it was pronounced “most helpful.” The problem would be, the former magistrate noted, if someone reported having been shot. Bruno replied that he was making inquiries.
He phoned both of the pharmacies in St. Denis and drew a blank each time. Where else would students, relative strangers to the area, try to find a pharmacy? The one other town they knew was Les Eyzies, where the museum was located. Bruno called the pharmacy there and was told that a tall, young foreigner had been waiting at their door when they opened. He’d bought bandages, antiseptic wipes and surgical gauze and had paid with a credit card. They gave Bruno the name and number, issued by a British bank, Barclays. Its owner was Edward G. Lloyd.
9
By the time Bruno arrived at the site, Clothilde had installed a security guard from the museum, roped off a field for parking and announced a thirty-minute photo opportunity followed by a press briefing back at the museum. He was impressed. She was standing by the site entrance where the cell phone reception was better, talking fiercely into her mobile and dressed in another shirt that he remembered seeing on Horst. She’d been wearing a skirt the previous evening and was in khaki slacks now and work boots. Bruno found himself hoping she’d spent the night with Horst; he deserved it, after the triumph of the lecture. And so, perhaps, did she.
“Congratulations,” he said as she slammed the phone shut and swore, looking around angrily at the site, where the students were all at work. Then she noticed him.
“Oh, Bruno, those bastards at the ministry!” she said, giving him a resounding kiss on each cheek. “They demand to know who authorized me to lend the name of the National Museum to such a publicity-grabbing hypothesis. I told them it was the same people who gave me my doctorate and elected me to my chair, and if they gave me any more shit I’d take up Yale’s offer of a professorship and triple my salary. That shut them up.”
“You’ve taken care of everything: parking, security, photo op and press conference,” said Bruno. “You’ve done my job for me, as well as being part of the biggest breakthrough in history. And you look wonderful.”
“Thank you, mon cher. I just did the things you said needed doing, while fending off those idiots in Paris and half the archaeologists in Europe. And who is this?” she asked, as Carlos came up the path, after parking his rented Range Rover behind Bruno’s car.
Bruno introduced them briefly, describing Carlos simply as a Spanish colleague on liaison duties, and pointed Carlos toward the empty grave, still circled with yellow police tape.
“I was most impressed by the lecture yesterday,” Carlos said. “It seems you have a historic discovery here.”
“We hope so, thank you,” she said. Her phone rang again. She looked at the screen and ignored it. “Those idiots at the culture ministry again,” she said, fishing her car keys from her bag. “I have to get back to the museum.” She waved a vague farewell.
Bruno led Carlos toward the fluttering yellow tape, but first he wanted to look at the pit where the three prehistoric bodies lay. Bruno recognized the Polish student Kasimir working on a subsidiary trench off to one side and nodded a greeting. Carlos gazed down into the deep hole where the three skeletons were now covered in a sheet of thick plastic. Two students were at work with brushes on one of the walls. Carlos looked up at the overhanging cliff and off to each side, as if trying to imagine how the place might have been thirty thousand years ago.
“It might be an idea for the two ministers to come here, after the signing,” he said. “France and Spain, Lascaux and Altamira, the two great centers of prehistoric art, coming together again at the place where modern man emerges, maybe even a joint visitors’ center. It could be an interesting initiative.”
“You sound more like a publicity man than a security expert,” Bruno said, making a joke of it. “It would double the security problem.”
“It’s the kind of things that ministers like,” Carlos said. “It makes them seem like more than just politicians-a touch of history, a reference to art. You’ve seen the papers. This is big news, and I think they might be wondering how to get some of that attention for themselves.”
Bruno nodded; he could see that. He looked around at the site. Some police on the cliff above, with a security
