Blood Hunt

hood as his bench. He took his toothbrush to the toilets, scrubbed his teeth, and splashed water on his face. Then back to the car. He was a hundred miles from his destination, maybe a little less. Despite his stops, he’d made good time. At the back of his map book there was a plan of Limoges. It had two railway stations: the one he wanted-gare des Benedictins-was to the east, the other to the west. He headed south on the N147 and came into Limoges from the north. Almost at once the streets started to hem him in. They either bore no signposts or identifiers, or else were one way. He found himself shunted onto street after street, twisting right and left and right… until he was lost. At one point he saw a sign pointing to gare SNCF, but after following it didn’t see another sign, and soon was lost again. Finally he pulled over, double-parking on a narrow shopping street, and asked a pedestrian for directions. It was as if he’d asked the man to talk him through open- heart surgery: Benedictins was difficult from here, he’d have to retrace his steps, the one-way system was very complicated…

Reeve thanked the man and started driving again, waving at the complaining line of drivers who’d been waiting to pass him.

Eventually he crossed a bridge and saw railway lines beneath him, and followed those as best he could. Then he saw it, a huge domed building with an even higher clock tower to one side. Benedictins. It looked more like an art gallery or museum than a city’s railway station. Reeve checked his watch. It was half past five. He found a parking space, locked the car, and took a few seconds to calm himself and do a few more exercises. His whole body was buzzing as though electricity was being passed through him. He walked on to the station concourse, looked over to the left and saw the restaurant and bar.

He paused again outside the bar itself, looking around him as though for a friend. Actually, he was seeking out the opposite, but it was hard to judge from the people milling around. There were down-and-outs and students, young men in military uniform and businesspeople clutching briefcases. Some stared anxiously at the departures board; others sat on benches and smoked, or browsed through a magazine. Any one of them could be put-ting on an act. It was impossible to tell.

Reeve walked into the bar.

He spotted her immediately. She was middle-aged, wore glasses, and was chain-smoking. There was a fog of smoke in the bar; walking through it was like walking through mist. She sat in a booth facing the bar, reading a large paperback and taking notes in the margin. She was the only single woman in the place.

Reeve didn’t approach her straightaway. He walked up to the bar and settled himself on a stool. The barman had already weighed him up and was reaching for the wine bottle. He managed not to look surprised when Reeve ordered Perrier.

There were six other men in the bar, eight including the waiters. Reeve studied them all. They’d stared at him collectively on his arrival, but that was only natural in a French bar as in bars around the world. Mostly they were drinking short glasses of red wine; a couple of them nursed espressos. They all looked like they fitted right in; they looked like regulars. Then he saw that someone else was watching him. She’d put down her book and pen and was peering at him over the top of her glasses. Reeve paid for the water and took his glass to her booth.

“Mr. Reeve?”

He sat down and nodded.

“A good journey?” There was irony in the question.

“First-class,” Reeve replied. He would place her in her early fifties. She was trim and well dressed and had taken care of herself, but the lines around the neck gave it away. Her hair was salt-and-pepper, swept back over the ears from a center part and feathered at the back of her head. She had the word executive stamped on her.

“So,” she said, “now you will tell me about your brother?”

“I’d like to know a bit about you first,” he said. “Tell me about yourself, how you came to know Jim.”

So she told him the story of a woman who had always been a writer, ever since her school days, a story not dissimilar to Jim’s own life. She said they’d met while she was on a trip to London. Yes, she’d known Marco in London, and he’d told her his suspicions. She had come back to France and done some research. In France the farming lobby was even stronger than that in the UK, with close ties between farm owners and their agrichemical suppliers, and a government-no matter whether left- or right-wing-which bowed to pressure from both. The investigation had been hard going; even now she wasn’t much further forward, and had to leave the story for long periods of time so she could do work that would earn her money. The agrichem story was her “labor of love.”

“Now tell me about Jim,” she said. So Reeve told his side of it, a seasoned performer by now. She listened intently, holding the pen as if about to start taking notes. The book she’d been reading was the biography of some French politician. She tapped the cover absentmindedly with the pen, covering the politician’s beaming honest face with myriad spots, like blue measles. The barman came over to take another order, and tutted and pointed. She saw what she’d been doing, and smiled and shrugged. The barman seemed not much mollified.

“Do you know this man?” she asked Reeve. She meant the politician. Reeve shook his head. “His name is Pierre Dechevement. Until recently he was responsible for agriculture. He re-signed. There was a young woman… not his wife. Normally, such a thing would not be a scandal in France. Indeed, there was no trace of a scandal in Dechevement’s case. Yet he still resigned.”

“Why?”

She smiled. “Perhaps because he is a man of honor? That is what his biographer says.”

“What do you say?”

She stabbed the pen at him. “You are shrewd, Mr. Reeve. For years Dechevement took bribes from the agrichemical compa-nies-well, no, perhaps bribes is too strong. Let us say that he enjoyed hospitality, and received favors. In my opinion one of those favors was the young lady in question, who turns out to have been a sometime prostitute, albeit high-class. Dechevement was quite brazen; she accompanied him to functions here and abroad. He even became her employer, giving her a position on his private staff. There is no record that she contributed any work, but she was paid a generous salary.”

Marie Villambard lit a fresh Peter Stuyvesant from the stub of the old one. Her ashtray had already been emptied twice by the barman. She blew out a stream of smoke.

“Dechevement’s closest ties were to a company called COSGIT, and COSGIT is a French subsidiary of Co- World Chemicals.”

“So Dechevement was in CWC’s employ?”

“In a manner of speaking. I think that’s why he was told to resign, so no one would bother to backtrack and find that the young prostitute had been paid for by Co-World Chemicals. That might have created a scandal, even in France.”

Reeve was thoughtful. “So you weren’t working along the same lines as my brother?”

“Wait, please. We have not yet… scratched the surface.”

Reeve sat back. “Good,” he said as his second Perrier arrived.

“In a sense, Dechevement is only a very small part of the whole,” Marie Villambard said. The waiter had brought her a new pack of cigarettes, which she was unwrapping. Reeve noticed that all the customers who’d been in the bar on his arrival had now been replaced by others-which didn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t surveillance.

“I have become,” she went on, “more interested in a man called Owen Preece. Doctor Owen Preece. Your brother was interested in him, too.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s dead now, unfortunately. It looked like natural causes. He was in his seventies-a cardiac crisis. It could happen to anyone that age…”

“Well then, who was he?”

“An American psychiatrist.”

Reeve frowned; someone else had mentioned a psychiatrist in connection with CWC…

“He headed what was supposed to be an independent research team, funded partly by government and partly by agrichemical companies, to look into BSE, what you call mad cow disease.”

Reeve nodded to himself. Josh Vincent had mentioned something similar-research funded by CWC itself, using psychiatrists as well as scientists.

“This was in the early days of the scare,” Marie Villambard was saying. “The team comprised neurologists,