“Good.” The mayor paused, then looked at Bruno quizzically. “I don’t want to pry into your emotional life, but is there anything personal that’s gone on between you two that would explain this vendetta? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, that sort of thing?”
“No, not at all, though I gave her a parking ticket once,” he said with a grin. “She may try to blame me for the disappearance of the chief suspect, the Dutch student at the dig, who has apparently returned home to Holland. But since the magistrate has filed no charges against the girl and has just made it publicly clear that she is in sympathy with the allegations of cruelty against animals, she’s on weak ground. Remember, she used the word ‘barbaric’ about foie gras, a dish that is eaten in two-thirds of French households. When it comes to a battle for public opinion I don’t think she can win.”
“Are you sure that’s the right terrain?”
“No, that’s our last ditch,” Bruno said. “We have to do two things. First, we have to separate her from Duroc. And you don’t want to know, but I think I have a way to do that. Second, and this you do want to know because you’ll have to be part of it, we attack her credentials in this case.”
“How do we do that?”
Bruno explained that he’d already asked her, in front of Sergeant Jules, to recuse herself from the case on grounds of partiality. In view of what she’d just said on TV she’d have no choice. It was unfair to have a magistrate investigating an affair where her prejudice was so public.
“Most people already think the magistrates are just a bunch of lefties,” said the mayor, nodding in agreement.
“True, but we mustn’t say that,” Bruno insisted. “The last thing we want is to get all the magistrates rallying to her side in solidarity.”
The mayor looked at him keenly, a half smile on his face. “You want us to speak more in sorrow than in anger.”
“Precisely,” Bruno replied. “We love French justice, we want a magistrate. We just maintain we have a right to be investigated by a magistrate who hasn’t already told the French public that we’re a bunch of barbarians because we make a food that France loves.”
“Meanwhile, we’d better get some allies standing with us. I’ll get the Societe des Gastronomes de France to complain to the justice minister,” said the mayor, his eyes lighting up. “We can ask the great chefs of France for their views on foie gras. I’ll get my old friends in the Senate to pass a resolution on foie gras as part of our national heritage. I’ll get all the other mayors in the Perigord to join us. The farmers’ union, the vignerons of Monbazillac and Sauternes, the deputes of the Assemblee Nationale-we’ll build a coalition, Bruno.”
“And we have to make sure that no coalition rallies around her. Bring in Alphonse,” Bruno said. “He’s a Green, but he’s one of our own councillors and he likes his foie gras. We get him on our side and we split the Green movement. We have to think where she might get support, and work out how we can neutralize it in advance. We have to leave her with no allies but the extremists.”
“Leave this to me,” the mayor said, rubbing his hands together with glee. “This is my specialty. This is politics.”
21
The Danish student was named Harald, and being short, plump and dark haired, he could hardly have looked less like Bruno’s mental image of a descendant of Vikings. But he spoke good French, his eyes were keen with intelligence and he was not lacking in self-confidence.
“That guy’s not a native Danish speaker,” said Harald, settling back into the passenger seat of Clothilde’s car as she climbed in. She handed a wrapped brown-paper parcel that contained a shapely wrought-iron candlestick to Bruno, who was sitting in the backseat.
“You’re sure?” Bruno asked. “This is really important.”
“His Danish was okay, but he’d never fool another Dane. I’d say he was originally German, probably from Hamburg or somewhere,” said Harald, swiveling in his seat to look at Bruno. “What’s this about?”
“I’m not sure yet, but the professor has disappeared mysteriously. Jan was his closest friend in these parts, and now it seems there’s something suspicious about him. I’ll take this candlestick he wrapped and check his fingerprints, see if we can find out anything else. How much do I owe you for the candlestick, Clothilde?”
“If it helps find Horst, consider it a gift,” she said, starting the car and heading back toward St. Denis. “This all seems a bit cloak-and-dagger, you hiding in the backseat.”
“Better not to raise Jan’s suspicions,” said Bruno. “It seemed natural enough for you to bring along a young Danish student to meet the only other Dane in the district. Just so long as it didn’t make Jan think he was being checked out.”
“No, I was pretty casual, just asking him what he liked about the area, why he’d stayed, if he missed going back to Denmark, that kind of thing,” said Harald, who had evidently enjoyed his brief foray into police work. “And I asked him if he knew who’d won the Danish soccer final-just friendly chitchat.”
“Did he know?”
“No. He said he sometimes got Politiken to keep up with the news, but he didn’t follow sports much. That surprised me a bit because he had a copy of L’Equipe in front of him when I saw him in a cafe early this morning. That’s your sports paper, isn’t it?”
“It is, indeed,” Bruno said. “Could Jan’s accent come from being born on the border? He said everybody there spoke German as much as Danish.”
“He’s right about that, but they’re still Danes. I had a girlfriend from down there once and visited her a few times. They speak Danish like me, and he doesn’t. I’m sure he’s not one of us.”
“Anybody else there?”
“Some young guy. We weren’t introduced, and he didn’t speak, but I was pretty sure he didn’t understand the Danish we were speaking.”
“I’m not even sure he understood my French,” added Clothilde.
Bruno nodded, remembering the young relative of Juanita he’d met at the smithy when he called, the one that Jan had said was learning the business. The name escaped him. When Clothilde dropped him at the mairie, Bruno took the wrapped candlestick in his own car to the chateau at Campagne. The workmen had been replaced by armed security guards who called up to Isabelle before letting him enter.
Isabelle had installed herself in what must have been the master bedroom. It was vast, with high ceilings and three tall portes-fenetres that opened on a broad balcony overlooking the gardens. Beyond the chateau wall, Bruno could just see the wind sock of the helicopter pad. Inside the room was an old-fashioned four-poster bed draped in great swoops of heavy cream damask.
“Apparently there was a lovely scene of nymphs and cherubs on the ceiling but they couldn’t save it so they had to paint over it,” she said from the Louis XVI armchair at the elegant desk that stood before the central window. A huge bouquet of flowers dominated the desk.
“You could get used to living like this,” Bruno said.
“Not really,” said Isabelle, gesturing at the small and functional folding table beside her desk. It held two mobile phones and a military radio. Leaning against it was a bulletin board thumbtacked with security team rosters and phone numbers. “I seem to bring this chaos with me.”
“Are you sleeping here?” he asked.
She shook her head. “The bed isn’t even made up. I stay at the hotel across the road, but I hate working out of a hotel bedroom. This is perfect.”
She looked at the parcel in Bruno’s hands, smiling, and surprised him when she asked, “Is that a present?”
“Yes, of course,” he said, recovering swiftly. “But first we have to get it checked for Jan’s fingerprints and see if the Danes or Germans can trace him that way.”
In the courtyard, Isabelle had a mobile police unit at her disposal that could deal with fingerprints. She directed Bruno to it, saying that she would need the prints scanned and e-mailed to her so she could forward them. While that was being done, Isabelle called Danish police colleagues in Copenhagen and asked them to check on the
