The death of this last connection to someone who had known his mother made Bruno pensive as he drove back to St Denis. He’d always resisted the idea of tracking her down. Occasionally he had fleeting thoughts about her and about his unknown father. He’d have liked to know what she looked like, and what strange fate had driven her to abandon him before a week was out. But he knew the search would probably leave him more frustrated than when he started.
As he slowed down to enter Ste Alvère, the vibration of the phone at his waist pulled Bruno’s thoughts back to the present. He glanced at the screen, saw it was J-J and pulled over to the side of the road to take the call.
‘You are not going to believe this, Bruno, but we have a new lead on Oscar,’ J-J began, sounding more than excited. He went on to explain that France had some special forces troops in Mali, helping the local army deal with a group of jihadists there. All active-service military personnel had their DNA on file, like the police, but for security reasons special forces had their DNA hidden along with their identities. One of the soldiers had been killed in action recently and his DNA was put back onto the database.
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Bruno. ‘This special forces guy was Oscar’s son or his nephew. Or something.’
‘Right first time. He was Sergeant-Chef Louis Castignac, born in Bordeaux, and he was Oscar’s son. We’re checking on the next of kin he listed with the army so we may be able to find his mother and any other family. And more good news. Virginie has arrived from Paris. She has a room in the student hostel and she’s already started work in the lab on Oscar’s skull.’
Bruno sat staring through his windscreen, hardly aware of the half-ruined medieval tower that dominated the view. Sergeant-chef had been his own military rank and, like Louis Castignac, Bruno had served in France’s former colonies in West Africa. Perhaps it was the funeral and seeing the family that gave him a sudden sense of kinship with Louis and made him think of the relatives who would be mourning the dead soldier. Now in the midst of their grief they were going to be caught up in a murder inquiry from long ago. J-J would be relentless in trying to solve the case that had frustrated him for thirty years. He recalled someone saying that history was a cruel goddess who drove her chariot over heaps of dead. Justice could be cruel, too, in her own way.
Bruno took a deep breath and drove home to change out of the blue suit and black tie he’d worn for the funeral. He then headed for Hubert de Montignac’s wine cave in St Denis to buy a bottle for that evening’s dinner party. The event had been arranged by Pamela and Miranda to welcome home Jack Crimson and also Jacqueline, who was coming with the Mayor. The usual gang would also be there: Gilles and Fabiola along with Bruno’s friends: the Baron and Florence, the science teacher at the local collège.
As always on Monday evenings, Florence’s twin infants would be coming and sleeping over with their playmates, Miranda’s two children. Bruno smiled to himself, thinking with pleasure of the moments when all four kids thundered down the stairs, fresh and sweet-smelling from their bathtime, racing out to the stables to find the dogs and say goodnight to the horses.
Which wine should he take? The local wine store offered so much choice, with giant vats at one end selling wine in bulk for less than two euros a litre from a device that always reminded Bruno of a petrol pump. At the other end were the expensive bottles of Château Petrus, Cheval Blanc, Le Pin, Lafite and Latour that cost hundreds or even thousands of euros each. In between were separate stands for Bordeaux, for Burgundy, for sparkling and dessert wines. There was another stand for the wines of Bergerac and along one wall, an array of what Hubert boasted was the widest selection of single malt Scotch whiskies outside Scotland. There were more shelves for bottles of vintage cognac and Armagnac, a small library of books on wine, displays of glasses and decanters and a selection of local delicacies from foie gras and rillettes to fruit cordials.
Hubert, the owner of this and a small chain of other such wine caves in the region, with two more in Paris, was more than just an old friend. He was also one of Bruno’s business partners, a fellow director of the town vineyard. Hubert knew that Bruno seldom spent more than ten euros on a bottle but Bruno said this was a special occasion and on Hubert’s advice paid twenty euros for a bottle of Château Belingard’s cuvée Ortus from 2016.
‘You should decant it a good hour before serving,’ said Hubert over a friendly glass of white wine from the town vineyard, and Bruno swore that he’d do so.
He drove on to Pamela’s riding school where his basset hound, Balzac, recognized the sound of his elderly Land Rover. The young dog stopped his play with Pamela’s two sheepdogs, Beau and Bella, to give a long welcoming howl and race to greet his master. Bruno crouched down as his dog galloped towards him, his long ears flapping like a pair of furry wings and his tongue hanging out like some fat pink necktie. Bruno laughed at the sight, spread his arms wide and braced himself to receive thirty kilos of flying basset.
‘I’ve only been gone since this morning,’
