“I’m pretty sure that’s a bullet hole,” she said, and looked up at Bruno. “At least he wasn’t buried alive, but it’s still murder.”
Bruno thumbed the speed-dial number for his friend J-J, Jean-Jacques Jalipeau, chief of detectives for the Police Nationale in the region. While waiting for a response, Bruno wondered how he could explain to Horst and Clothilde that their precious dig was about to become a crime scene. Whatever the demands of scholarship, much of the area would soon be closed off to them as the forensic specialists began the search. Perhaps J-J could be persuaded to limit the restrictions on the dig, since the killing was hardly recent.
J-J’s phone told him to leave a message after the beep. He did so, then hit 0 to reach the police switchboard. He reported the find and Fabiola’s certification of death and was asked to secure the site and to detain all possible witnesses until a murder team could reach the spot. Bruno asked how long it would take and was told it could be a couple of hours or more. He hung up and then called Sergeant Jules at the gendarmerie and asked him to send someone in uniform to hold the fort, since Bruno had appointments elsewhere.
“I’ll need a list of names of all the students on this dig, along with their identity card numbers or passport numbers,” Bruno said, not sure whether he should address Horst or Clothilde. It was Horst’s dig, but Clothilde would be officially in charge of the site, since it was on French soil.
“If you can come back with me to the museum, I have a list there,” said Horst. “And I found nothing like a wallet, but I didn’t want to disturb things too much.”
Bruno shook his head. “I’m sorry but nobody can leave until the detectives get here from Perigueux and take over custody of the site. That’s the law. Even I can’t leave until a gendarme gets here to replace me.”
“What’s your e-mail?” Clothilde asked, tapping at her phone. Bruno gave it. She tapped again and looked up at him with that cheeky grin. “I just e-mailed the list to your office, names, ages, passports and universities for all eighteen of them. Can I go now?”
“Sorry, not quite yet. Can you tell me if any of the students are involved in the animal rights movement. We had another crime here last night. Someone ripped down a stretch of farm fences and let out a lot of ducks and geese. They left leaflets behind, and since your students are all strangers, I’ll have to ask about their movements last night.”
“If they’re anything like students in my day, they’ll all be able to give each other alibis for the night,” said Clothilde, nodding toward Teddy and Kajte.
3
Sergeant Jules was as good as his word and arrived quickly to stand watch at the dig, so Bruno could leave in time to make his appointment at the Chateau de Campagne. The brigadier was not a man to be kept waiting. Even though he held no formal authority over St. Denis and its chief of police, Bruno and the mayor knew that the orders of this senior but shadowy figure in French intelligence were best obeyed. He had summoned Bruno to a meeting at the decayed gem of a castle whose pointed turrets and battlements the state had been promising to restore for as long as Bruno could remember. But as Bruno turned in through the tall iron gates, now gleaming with black paint, he was surprised to see its courtyard bustling with life. He could barely find a place to park. There were furniture trucks, vehicles of plumbers and electricians, a catering van and a large truck loaded down with fresh-cut turf for a lawn gardeners were laying below the broad balcony. There was a smell of fresh paint, the sound of electric drills, cheerful voices of decorators and the blare of tinny radios from the open windows. But there was no sign of the black limousine Bruno had expected; the brigadier had not yet arrived. As Bruno looked around at a building project that seemed almost complete, his phone rang, and J-J’s name appeared on the screen.
“I’m on my way, be another thirty minutes.”
“I won’t be at the site-I’m tied up with the brigadier,” Bruno replied. “But we’ve got no missing person on file that could fit the body, let alone explain the way he was executed.”
“I know, it’s a forensics job. What does the brigadier want?”
“Apart from a welcoming glass of Monbazillac and some foie gras he hasn’t told me.”
“He can’t get that in Paris?”
“Isabelle told him he had to try my pate, so I have a cooler in the van with a bottle of Tirecul la Graviere, and a fresh baguette from Fauquet.”
“What year for the Tirecul?”
“The ’05.”
“That should do it. Call me when you’re done. We can have lunch, and I can tell you about the new nightmare that’s coming into your life. Her name’s Annette Meraillon, and she finished at the top of her class at the magistrates’ school in Bordeaux last year. She’s right up your alley. She’s a vegetarian feminist, and she spent her last summer vacation in Paris working for some rights group for Muslim women. She’s just been assigned to the subprefecture at Sarlat, which means she’ll be your new magistrate.”
“A vegetarian magistrate for St. Denis? They must be mad. What does she think about hunting?”
“She’s against it. She wants all guns out of private hands. Unless they’re Muslim women, I suppose. Remember that young inspector of mine in Bergerac, Jofflin? He met her taking a course at law school and said she didn’t even drink. Not a glass. And she’s going to hate foie gras, even yours. You’re in for a fun time with her, Bruno.”
As a municipal policeman employed by the mairie, Bruno seldom sought to bring prosecutions under criminal law. So he’d have a great deal less to do with the new magistrate than the gendarmes and the Police Nationale. But she could call on him to help her with local inquiries, take up his time and interfere endlessly in his business. Bruno had so far been lucky; for the past decade and more the main magistrate for St. Denis and the neighboring communes had been a genial fellow, a keen hunter and former chairman of the rugby federation for the Departement of the Dordogne. He was also a prud’homme of the Jurade de St. Emilion, which since the twelfth century had defined when the grapes should be harvested and had kept jealous guard over the branding iron which marked each barrel of the renowned wines of St. Emilion. These days it was an honorary role for local worthies and the occasion for some spectacular dinners. But it meant that he took his wine and the pleasures of the table and local tradition very seriously. Bruno could hardly imagine a more appropriate principal judicial officer for the region that saw itself as the gastronomic heartland of France. This new woman sounded as if she’d be very much less accommodating.
“There’s a chopper coming in, probably the brigadier,” said Bruno. “I’ll call you back if he’s finished with me in time for lunch.”
Bruno hung up and walked out of the courtyard and into the park where the commune of Campagne held an open-air antiques market every summer. For the first time he saw the newly erected wind sock and the big whitewashed circle, marked for a helicopter to land. He put his hand on his hat against the sudden rush of air as the chopper swooped in to flare for its landing on the marked patch of grass. Two tough-looking men in dark suits were the first out, one carrying a FAMAS submachine gun and frowning as he scanned the nearby hillsides, the second with his hand casually inside his jacket. He nodded into the darkness of the helicopter, and two more men appeared in the doorway. Bruno recognized the brigadier and watched him invite the other man to precede him. Trust the brigadier never to turn his back, Bruno thought.
Officially a senior officer in the gendarmes, but long attached to the shadowy Renseignements Generaux intelligence arm, the brigadier was now on the personal staff of the minister of the interior. Bruno had known him to be involved in monitoring militant ecologists, the extreme right, Asian gangs and networks that smuggled illegal immigrants. He had wide powers, a very loosely defined job and access to a helicopter whenever he wanted. Since Bruno was employed by the commune of St. Denis, the brigadier had no formal authority over him. The brigadier overcame this technicality by bringing a formal request to the mayor from either the prefect of the departement or from the interior minister himself for Bruno to be seconded on special duties. And if that failed to work, Bruno had few doubts that the brigadier would activate his army reserve status and have him conscripted.
Bruno felt a wary respect for the man. He had also been in command of an operation in which Isabelle Perrault, a woman with whom Bruno had had a truncated love affair, had been seriously wounded. She had been a police inspector when Bruno had met her, before being lured away to the brigadier’s staff in Paris. The brigadier had informed Bruno that a similar job awaited him in Paris should he choose to take up the offer. Bruno noted that the
