showed few signs of the bulging muscles that Jan’s work had developed.
“This is Galder, one of Anita’s relatives,” Jan said by way of introduction, wiping his hands clean on a towel before greeting Bruno. The young man seemed tense, but nodded coolly and murmured a greeting in mangled French. “He wants to learn the trade.”
“I’ve come to see if you’ve heard anything of Horst since yesterday,” Bruno said. “Clothilde called me, worried because she couldn’t find him. I went to the house and it looked a bit suspicious, as though there might have been a scuffle.”
“I haven’t seen him since the night of the lecture in Les Eyzies,” Jan said quickly. He didn’t sound worried. “Nothing wrong then. Maybe he was called back to Germany. That lecture made quite a stir.”
“His passport and wallet are still at the house, so I don’t think he can have gone far.”
“Maybe he had a fight with Clothilde and went away to cool off,” Jan said. “It’s one of those relationships, up and down, hot and cold.”
“Clothilde said that you’re his closest friend here, and when they had a row he usually came to see you.” Bruno felt the young man watching him carefully. Given his poor command of French, the lad was probably trying to work out what Bruno was saying.
“Yes, often enough,” Jan said, looking down at the iron bar he had been hammering when Bruno first arrived. “But not this time, I haven’t seen him.” He took the rag, picked up the iron bar and thrust it back into the brazier as if he wanted the conversation to end so that he could get back to his work.
“Did he ever talk to you about his family?” Bruno asked, thinking of the photo album.
Jan shook his head. “Mostly we just drank and played cards. Sometimes he said he missed speaking German, so we spoke that.”
“But you’re Danish. Isn’t that your mother tongue?”
“Yes, but I’m from a place just over the border, and we all speak German, just like a lot of Germans on the other side speak Danish. Schleswig-Holstein, it used to be Danish until the 1860s.”
“Is that where Horst comes from?”
“No, he’s from farther south, near Hamburg.”
“So you talked about that, his childhood, where he grew up?”
“No,” said Jan, looking impatient. “It was just something that came up. You know, in conversation, ‘How come you speak German?’ And I say I’m from the border and he says he comes from near Hamburg. It was my wife who introduced us. She’d taken her schoolkids to one of his archaeological digs and got to know him that way.”
“Do you know anything about Horst’s family?” Bruno said. He kept his tone conversational, but determined to press the issue. Jan was not reacting as Bruno had expected. There was no sign of concern about his friend, no evident readiness to help. It didn’t feel right. Maybe he’d better check on Jan’s permis de sejour when he got back to the mairie.
“No, I already said so. I’m pretty busy here, Bruno, so if you-”
“Did you know Horst’s father was a Nazi, in the SS?” Bruno interrupted.
Jan looked as if he’d been hit by his own iron bar. He seemed to stagger, and then glanced quickly sideways at the young man before looking back at Bruno.
“No, I didn’t know. How could I?” he said. “That’s quite a shock, learning something like that about a guy you’ve known for so many years.” Jan paused. “No wonder he didn’t want to talk about his family. It’s not something I’d want to talk about either. Nor would you.”
“Did Horst ever talk about having any enemies here, someone who hated Germans, maybe someone who might have known about his father?”
“No, that never came up,” Jan said. “How do you know about this? Did he ever tell you about it?”
“I can’t remember him ever saying a word about his own past,” Bruno said. “That’s odd when you think his entire life as an archaeologist was about the past.”
“So how did you find out?” Jan said, looking sharply at Bruno. His big hands were twisting the rag he’d used to grip the hot bar.
“Looking around his house today when he was reported missing, I found a photo album with lots of snapshots of Horst as a young man and as a boy. And there were pictures of his mother and father and brother. I can’t imagine either of his parents is still alive so I’ll have to get in touch with the brother back in Germany. Would you have an address or a phone number?”
“I didn’t even know he had a brother,” said Jan, with a quick glance at the young man beside him.
“I’ll have to go through his university, they should have something on his next of kin,” said Bruno, and then added in a casual tone, but watching Jan closely to assess his reaction, “If not, I’ll have to go through the German police.”
There was no reaction from Jan. He was looking down at the iron bar in the brazier, its tip glowing a fierce red. There was sweat on Jan’s face, but there usually was from working so close to the brazier. There was nothing to put his finger on, but Bruno felt Jan was hiding something. It could just be the understandable worry of a foreigner confronted with the French police, but Jan had been here too long for that.
“I’ll get the embassy onto it, since Horst was an eminent man even before this latest discovery of his,” Bruno added, still probing to get some reaction from Jan.
“If I hear from him, I’ll let you know,” said Jan.
16
Bruno had never paid much attention to birthdays, since nobody had ever deemed his own worthy of attention. As an orphan, he had been left at the door of a church and then raised by cousins with too many children of their own and too little money ever to bother about anniversaries, so such events had never marked his memories of childhood. So he was partly delighted and partly alarmed by Pamela’s insistence that he present himself at her house, showered and shaved and neatly dressed, at 7:00 p.m. sharp. This time, she had announced when he confided that he had never blown out a birthday candle nor ever had a birthday cake, his birthday was going to be properly celebrated. Especially, she had declared while standing at the foot of his bed clad only in a very small towel and brandishing a toothbrush, a Big birthday.
But the casual comment from the mayor that he would see Bruno that evening had triggered a certain concern. Bruno had assumed that Pamela’s idea of a proper celebration meant a splendid dinner for two, followed by a particularly romantic evening. With this, he would have been more than content. The presence of the mayor, however, suggested something less intimate and probably more formal, two reasons for disappointment. Moreover, Bruno had not the slightest idea how the English marked their birthdays. He had been stunned to learn from Pamela that the French song “Joyeux Anniversaire” had been stolen from their neighbors across the Channel.
Apprehensive behind the bunch of flowers he had thought it wise to bring, Bruno counted an unusual number of cars parked in the courtyard and along the lane that led to Pamela’s house. He noted that there was no welcoming light in the courtyard, no comforting glow in the windows and indeed no sign of any life at all. Was this some English joke that he would have to pretend to understand and appreciate?
The kitchen door was locked, and he groped his way along the rosebushes, calling out the occasional “Allo,” until he reached the front door that neither he nor Pamela ever used. Its handle turned at his touch, but the hallway within was dark. Sounds of “Shhhh” and smothered giggles led him into the main room, when the lights blazed on and champagne corks popped and a score or more of people erupted from behind chairs and sofas to call out “Surprise” and begin singing “Joyeux Anniversaire.”
Pamela, looking magnificent in a long green dress, was first to embrace him. Fabiola and Dominique were quick to follow, then Florence and the wives of Stephane and the mayor and Sergeant Jules and Albert the chief pompier, who were quickly replaced by Francoise from the gendarmerie, Fat Jeanne from the market and Nathalie from the wine cave. The various husbands came next and some friends from the hunting and tennis and rugby clubs and Julien from the vineyard and Alphonse in his hippie garb clustered around to shake his hand, kiss him and pound him on the back.
A camera flashed, and Bruno turned to see the inevitable figure of Philippe Delaron, which meant that a
