Текст книги "Bruno, Chief Of Police"

Автор книги: Martin Walker

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‘Cold? Never. The water never freezes and the rocks keep me dry. I have plenty

of wood and my stove is all I need, even on the coldest nights when there’s snow

on the ground. Now you must try my famous water, my dear. If there were much

more of it, I’d call it a source and bottle it and become richer than Monsieur

Perrier.’

She took a sip. It was cool, so lightly pétillant that she could barely taste

the bubbles, and without any of the chalky taste of some mountain waters. She

liked it and took some more, swirling it around her mouth.

‘It tastes like freshness itself,’ she said, and the old man rocked back and

forth with glee.

‘Freshness itself. Yes, that’s a good one,’ he said. ‘Yes, we shall remember

that. You think they would like that in Paris, Mademoiselle?’

‘Paris, New York, London – they would love it everywhere,’ she said. Bruno was

touched by her enthusiasm.

‘May I show her the cave, Maurice?’ he asked. ‘I have brought two torches. And

the vin de noix is for you, old friend, along with some pâté I made this

Spring.’ He took a large glass jar with a rubber seal from his bag and placed it

on the table, and the old man handed Bruno an ancient key and poured himself

another glass of Bruno’s drink.

They walked on past the vegetable garden, along an increasingly narrow winding

track, where only a flimsy rope fence protected them from the drop, and then

around a steep buttress in the cliff. They came to a patch of brilliant green

turf that led to an ancient iron-bound door in the rock. Bruno opened it with

the key, gave Isabelle a torch, and told her to watch her footing. He took her

arm to guide her in, and they stood for a moment to let their eyes get

accustomed to the darkness. Gigi stayed at the entrance, backing away from the

cave’s black interior and growling softly. Bruno was very conscious of

Isabelle’s closeness as he steered her forward, his feet carefully feeling their

way over the rough rock.

‘They call this the Cave of the Sorcerer, but hardly anyone knows about it and

even fewer come to see it,’ he said. ‘Maurice prefers it that way, so he puts up

no signs and will not let the tourist board advertise it. But it has something

very rare among the cave paintings of this district.’

He stopped, turned her slightly towards him and saw her give a small start, and

then lean slightly towards him as if she expected to be kissed, but he shone his

torch high and told her to look carefully. As she followed the movement of the

torch beam she suddenly saw that he was illuminating the outlines of a creature,

crouching and heavy and somehow touched with power and menace.

‘Is it a bear?’ she asked, but the torch was moving on. And there, next to it,

was another image, but now Bruno was playing the torch beam up and down along a

strange curve that seemed at first sight to be part of the rock. Bruno let her

take in the dark painted shape.

‘It’s a mammoth!’ she said, marvelling. ‘I see the tusks, and that’s a trunk,

and those massive legs.’

‘Twenty thousand years old,’ said Bruno softly, and shone the beam further along

to a small creature on all fours, its face turned towards them.

‘Its face is so human,’ Isabelle said. ‘Is it a monkey, an ape?’

‘No tail,’ said Bruno, moving the torch to the rump. ‘This is just about unique,

the only identified humanoid face in all the Périgord cave engravings that are

known. Look: the eyes, the curve of the jaw and shape of the head, and the gap

that seems to be an open mouth.’

‘It’s wonderful, but it looks almost evil.’

‘That’s why Maurice calls it the Sorcerer. See that bag that he seems to clutch

in one hand? Maurice says that’s his magic tricks.’ He paused, and she shone her

own torch around the cave, up to the jagged, sloping roof and back to the

mammoths. ‘There’s one more thing I want to show you, something I find very

moving,’ he said, and steered her around a pillar of rock and into a smaller

cave, his torch darting back and forth at waist height before he found what he

was looking for. Then the beam focused on a tiny hand, the print of a child’s

palm and fingers, so clear and precise that it could have been made yesterday.

‘Oh, Bruno,’ she said, clutching at his hand and squeezing it. ‘A child’s hand

print. That’s so touching, it’s marvellous.’

‘Can’t you just see the little one at play? While his parents are painting

mammoths and sorcerers, the child puts a hand in the paint and then makes a mark

that lasts for ever.’

‘Twenty thousand years,’ she whispered, then impulsively reached up and touched

his cheek and kissed him. She let her mouth linger on his as the light from

their torches darted aimlessly around the cave. Bruno responded, tasting the

wine on her lips, until she moved her hand up to stroke his cheek. She drew

back, her eyes glinting in the torchlight and smiling questioningly, as if

asking herself whether he had brought any other women to this cave, and whether

it had worked the same magic on them.

They bade farewell to Maurice and his dog, and the sun was still an hour or more

from sinking as they returned to the car, hand in hand.

‘Now what?’ she asked.

‘Now for your picnic,’ he said firmly, and drove on up the narrow, winding road.

They came out on a wide plateau formed by the cliff that harboured the cave. He

drove on towards a small hillock topped with a ruined building, but the distance

was deceptive. The hillock was far larger than it seemed at first sight, and the

ruined building was tall and imposing.

‘It’s a ruined castle,’ exclaimed Isabelle with delight.

‘Welcome to the old castle of Brillamont, seat of the Seigneurs of St Denis,

built eight hundred years ago. It was twice taken by the English and twice

recaptured and sacked, and ruined over four hundred years ago by fellow

Frenchmen in the religious wars. It boasts the best view in France and the best

place I know for your picnic. You have a look around with Gigi while I organise

our meal. Just don’t climb the walls or the staircase – it’s not safe.’

Bruno watched as Gigi bounded ahead, occasionally glancing back to see what took

this human so long, and Isabelle climbed the hill past the crumbled castle walls

to a large sloping expanse of turf dominated by a central tower. Three of its

walls still stood, but the whole of the interior was open to her view. A stone

staircase that looked solid enough climbed up the interior of all three walls.

Bruno glanced up from the fire he was making as she paced the exterior walls and

looked out over the plateau, where the view was even grander than it had been

from the cave, with the River Vézčre flowing into the Dordogne as it came from

an adjoining valley.

Swifts and swallows were darting above Isabelle as she rejoined Bruno. He had

built a small fire inside a nest of stones and laid across it a metal grill he

had brought with him. Two freshly gutted fish were steaming gently above the

coals. He had spread a large rug and some cushions on the ground, and two

champagne glasses stood on a large tray. He’d put a fresh baguette ready, with a

hefty wedge of Cantal cheese and a block of pâté on a wooden board. As she knelt

on a cushion, he reached into the cool box and pulled out a half bottle of

champagne.

‘Now there’s a responsible policeman. Only drinking a half-bottle because he has

to drive,’ she said, sinking to her knees on the rug. ‘This looks even better

than I could possibly have dreamed when I asked for a picnic, Bruno. Where did

you get the fish?’

‘From my friend the Baron. He caught those trout less than half an hour before I

met you at the hotel.’

‘What would you have done if he hadn’t caught anything?’

‘You don’t know the Baron; he’s a born fisherman. The fish stand in line for the

honour of taking his bait. But just in case you’re still hungry after the fish,

a couple of my homemade sausages from the pig we killed in February are in the

cool box.’

‘Can we have one of those as well?’ she asked, clapping her hands. ‘Just so I

can try them? I don’t think I have ever had a homemade sausage before.’

‘Certainly, anything for the lovely lady of Brillamont,’ he said, handing her a

glass of champagne, and then diving into his giant cool box to bring out a long

skein of sausage which he laid carefully over the coals.’

‘That’s far too much. I just want a little taste.’

‘Yes, but Gigi has to eat too.’ He raised his glass. ‘I drink a toast to my

rescuer, with my deepest appreciation. Thank you for saving me from a real

beating back there in the square. Some day you must tell me where you learned to

fight like that.’

‘My toast is to you and your wonderful imagination. I can’t think of a better

evening or a better picnic, and there’s no one I’d rather enjoy it with.’ She

leaned forward and kissed him briefly, letting her tongue dart out between his

lips, then sat back, smiling almost shyly.

‘I’m glad,’ he said, and poured the rest of the champagne into their glasses.

‘Drink up, before the sun goes down and it gets too dark to see what we’re

eating.’

‘Knowing you, Bruno, you’ll have thought of that, and some elderly retainers

will march out from the castle ruins holding flaming torches.’

‘I think I’d prefer the privacy,’ he laughed, and handed her a tin plate from

his picnic box. He moved across to the fire to turn the fish and sausage, and

looked back briefly. ‘Help yourself to the pâté and break me off some bread,

please.’ He turned back to his cool box, and came out with two fresh glasses and

a bottle of rosé. ‘This is why we only had the half-bottle of champagne.’

‘Tell me about this pâté – the softer stuff in the middle and the dark bits.’

‘That’s how I like to make it. It’s a duck pâté, and then the circular bit in

the middle is foie gras, and the dark bits are truffles.’

‘It’s delicious. Did you learn to make this from your mother?’

‘No, from friends here in St Denis,’ he said quickly. He paused a moment. How

should he go on? ‘I learned how to do this from my predecessor in this job, old

Joe. He taught me a lot about food and cooking, and about being a country

policeman. In fact, between them, he and the Mayor and the Baron probably taught

me everything I know. I didn’t have a family of my own, so my family is here in

St Denis. That’s why I love it.’

The fish were just right, the blackened skin falling away from the flesh and the

backbone pulling easily free. She saw thin slivers of garlic that he had placed

inside the belly of the trout, and he handed her half a lemon to squeeze onto

the pink-white flesh, and a small side plate with potato salad studded with tiny

lardons of bacon.

‘I couldn’t make a feast like this in a fully fitted kitchen, and you produce it

in the middle of nowhere,’ she said.

‘I think they probably had very grand banquets up here in the castle in the old

days. The sausage looks about ready, and we still have another hour of twilight

after the sun goes down.’

‘I wonder what the cave people ate,’ she mused, picking up a piece of sausage

with her fingers. ‘This is delicious but I’m getting full.’ She put her plate

down, and when Gigi came up to sniff it, the dog looked enquiringly at Bruno. He

put the plate down in front of his dog and stroked its head, giving Gigi

permission to eat.

‘We know what they ate from the archaeologists,’ he said. ‘They ate reindeer.

There were glaciers up in Paris in those days. It was the ice age, and reindeer

were plentiful. The archaeologists found some of their rubbish heaps and it was

almost all reindeer bones, and some fish. They didn’t live inside the caves –

they saved them for painting. Apparently they lived in huts made of skin,

probably like the American Indians in their tepees.’

He tossed the fishbones into the fire and put their plates and the cutlery into

a plastic bag. This went into his cool box after he’d brought out a small punnet

of strawberries and placed it beside the cheese.

‘This is it, the last course, but no picnic is complete without strawberries.’

Then he put some more sticks onto the fire, which blazed up as they lay on their

sides on the rug, the strawberries between them, and the sun just about to touch

the horizon.

‘It’s a lovely sunset,’ Isabelle said. ‘I want to watch it go down.’ She pushed

the strawberries aside and turned to lie close to him, her back against his

chest and her buttocks nestled into him. He blew softly against her neck. Over

on the far side of the fire, Gigi was discreetly asleep. Bruno put his arm

around her waist and she snuggled into him more tightly. As the sun finally sank

she took his hand and slipped it inside her blouse and onto her breast.

CHAPTER

23

Bruno woke up in his own bed, still glowing from what had happened the night

before. He reached across for the enchantingly new female body that had filled

his dreams and, for a moment, the emptiness of his bed surprised him. Then, with

his eyes still closed, he smiled broadly at the memory of the previous evening

by the fire before, reluctantly, they had dressed and Bruno had driven Isabelle

back to her demure hotel, stopping the car every few hundred yards to kiss again

as if they could never taste one another enough.

He sprang from his bed and into his familiar exercises, his mind fresh and alert

and alive with energy as he ducked into the shower, turned on the radio and

dressed to go outside and delight in the newness of the day. He fed himself, his

dog and his chickens, and then pondered the list of names he had scribbled down

from his telephone call the previous evening to the teacher of sports history at

Montpellier.

He read them through again, even though he had made the lecturer spell out each

one, letter by letter, so that there would be no more mistakes. The complete

list should already be on his fax machine at the Mairie, and he would have to

check it again, but clearly there was some error somewhere. How else to explain

why the final list of the Oraniens championship team contained no Hamid al-Bakr,

when the young man had pride of place in the official photograph? Unless of

course he had changed his name?

His phone rang and he leaped towards it, a lover’s intuition persuading him that

it was Isabelle.

‘I just woke up,’ she said. ‘And it’s so unfair that you are not here. I miss

you already.’

‘And I miss you,’ he said, and they exchanged the delightful nothings of lovers,

content just to hear the other’s voice in the electronic intimacy of a telephone

wire. In the background of her room, another phone rang. ‘That’ll be

J-J

on my

mobile for the morning report. I think I’ll have to go to Bergerac for the drugs

case.’

‘This evening?’ he asked.

‘I’m yours, until then.’

He gazed out over his garden, suddenly noting that it must have rained in the

night while he slept. At least the rain had held off for them, and he felt

himself smiling once more. But the list was still there by his telephone,

nagging at him, and he looked at the name that was listed as the team captain:

Hocine Boudiaf. Beside the word Hocine, Bruno had written in brackets ‘Hussein’,

which the Montpellier lecturer said was an alternative spelling and which looked

more familiar. He had not been able to come up with a team photograph, but he

promised to fax Bruno another photo that included Boudiaf, which might help

solve the puzzle. He checked his watch. Momu would not yet have left for school.

He called him at home.

‘Bruno, I want to apologise again, to apologise and thank you,’ Momu began

almost at once.

‘Forget it, Momu, it’s alright. Listen, I have a question. It comes from trying

to track down your father’s missing photograph. Have you ever heard the name

Boudiaf, Hussein Boudiaf? Could he have been a friend of your father?’

‘The Boudiaf family were cousins, back in Algeria,’ Momu replied. ‘They were the

only family my father stayed in touch with, but not closely. I think there might

have been some letters when I went through the stuff in his cottage, just family

news – deaths and weddings and children being born. I suppose I should write and

tell them, but I’ve never been in touch. My father felt he could never go back

to Algeria after the war.’

‘Did you know any of his friends from his youth, football friends or team-mates?

Do you remember any names?’

‘Not really, but try me.’

Bruno read down the list of the Oraniens team. Most got no response, but he put

a small cross beside two of names that Momu said sounded vaguely familiar. He

rang off and called Isabelle again.

‘I knew it was you,’ she laughed happily. ‘I am just out of the shower and

thinking of you.’

‘Sorry, my beauty, but this is a business question. That helpful man you spoke

to in the Military Archives. If you have his number, would he speak to me? I

have the list of the Oraniens team and the mystery is that Hamid’s name is not

on it. I want to see if we can trace any of the other team members. One or two

might still be alive.’

She gave him the number. ‘If you don’t get very far, I can try him. I think he

was an old man who liked talking to a young woman.’

‘Who could blame him, Isabelle? I’ll call your mobile if I need help. Until this

evening.’

As Bruno had expected, the faxes from Montpellier had already arrived at his

office when he got in. He checked the list. The names were the same, and then he

looked at the photo, grainy and not too clear. It had come from an unidentified

newspaper and showed three men in football gear. In the centre was Villanova

with his arms around two young North Africans, one of them named as Hussein

Boudiaf and the other as Massili Barakine, one of the names that Momu had half

remembered. Now he felt he was getting somewhere. He rang the Military Archives

number that Isabelle had given him, and a quavering voice answered.

‘This is Chief of Police Courrčges from St Denis in Dordogne, Monsieur. I need

your help in relation to an inquiry where you’ve already been very helpful to my

colleague Inspector Isabelle Perrault.’

‘Are you the policeman that I saw on TV, young man, in that riot?’

‘Yes, Sir. I think that must have been me.’

‘Then I’m at your entire disposal, Monsieur, and you have the admiration of a

veteran, sous-officier Arnaud Marignan, of the seventy-second of the line. What

can I do for you?’

Bruno explained the situation, gave the names, and reminded Marignan of the

connection with the Commandos d’Afrique who had landed near Toulon in 1944. And

did the archives have a photograph of the young Hamid al-Bakr?

‘Yes, I remember. And we should have an identity photo on the copy of his pay

book, if not for the Commandos d’Afrique then certainly after his transfer. Give

me your phone number and I’ll call back, and a fax so I can send a copy of the

pay book photo. I’m afraid we can’t send the original. And please convey my

regards to your charming colleague.’

Bruno smiled at the effect Isabelle seemed to have on the telephone, and began

thinking what other lines to pursue. He was about to ring Pamela’s number when

he suddenly caught himself, took a piece of notepaper from his desk and wrote a

swift letter of thanks for his English dinner. He put the envelope in his Out

tray, then rang Pamela, exchanged amiable courtesies, and asked for Christine.

He gave her the new names for her researches in Bordeaux, made sure they had one

another’s mobile numbers and rang off. Instantly the phone rang again. It was

J-J

.

‘Bruno, I want to thank you for that good work on Jacqueline’s movements,’ he

began. ‘It turns out those Dutch lads she was with are well known up there.

Drugs, porn, hot cars – you name it, they’re into it. From what I see of their

convictions, in France we’d have locked them up and thrown away the key, but you

know how the Dutch are on prisons. To get to the point, we showed Jacqueline the

evidence you collected and she cracked last night. I tried to reach Isabelle

late last night to tell her but she was out of contact; bad mobile service out

there in the country, I suppose. Anyway, we have a full confession on the drugs,

but she’s still saying nothing on the murder.’

‘That’s great as far as it goes,

J-J

. What about Richard? Was he involved in the

drugs?’

‘She says not, so I don’t think we can still hold him. We can’t shake his story,

and now that she’s come clean on the drugs I’m inclined to believe her on the

killing. If it were up to me, Richard would be out today, but that decision is

up to Tavernier. By the way, what did you guys do to him yesterday? He came back

steaming and spent hours on the phone to Paris.’

‘I think our Mayor gave him a talking to, as an old friend of his father’s. You

know he got the gendarmes to pull an arrest on Karim, the young man who found

his grandfather’s body. For assault, after Karim charged into those Front

National bastards in the riot.’

‘He did what? He must be out of his mind. Half of France saw that riot and they

all think you St Denis lads are heroes.’

‘Not Tavernier. He said the law had to be even-handed.’

‘Even-handed, between a bunch of thugs and some law-abiding citizens? He must be

mad. Anyway, you seem to have sorted it out. Anything else?’

‘We seem to be making a bit of progress on that photo of the football team. I’ll

keep you posted.’

‘It’s a bit of a sub-plot, Bruno, but keep at it. We’re still looking for a

killer, and we don’t have any other leads.’

As he rang off, Bruno heard Mireille’s voice in the corridor greeting Momu.

Should he not be at school at this hour? He looked out into the hallway and saw

Momu about to go into the office of Roberte, who looked after the Sécu, the

social security paperwork. He waved and Momu came over to shake his hand.

‘I can’t stop,’ he said. ‘I just came up in the morning break to sign these

papers closing down my father’s Sécu. But it’s good to see you.’

‘Give me ten seconds, Momu. I have a picture to show you.’ He went and got the

fax from his desk, without much conviction that Momu might recognise any of

them, but since he happened to be here

‘Where in heaven’s name did you get this?’ Momu demanded. ‘That’s my father as a

young man, or his identical twin. What’s the name?’ He pulled out his reading

glasses. ‘Hussein Boudiaf, Massili Barakine and Giulio Villanova. The Boudiafs

are our cousins, so I suppose it’s a family likeness, but that’s an

extraordinary resemblance. And Barakine? I recall that name from somewhere.

Villanova is the coach he talked about. But that Hussein Boudiaf – I’d almost

swear it was my father as a young man.’

Bruno sighed as he opened his mail and read three more anonymous denunciations

of neighbours. It was the least pleasant aspect of the citizens of St Denis, and

of every other Commune in France, that they were so ready to settle old scores

by denouncing one another to the authorities. Usually the letters went to the

tax office, but Bruno got his share. The first was a regular letter from an

elderly lady who liked to report half the young women of the town for

‘immorality’. He knew the old woman well, a former housekeeper for Father

Sentout who was probably torn between religious mania and acute sexual jealousy.

The second letter was a complaint that a neighbour was putting a new window into

an old barn without planning permission, and in such a way that it would

overlook other houses in the village.

The third letter, however, was potentially serious. It concerned that

incorrigible drunk Léon, who had been fired from the amusement park for

misplacing Marie-Antoinette on the guillotine and cutting her in half rather

than just decapitating her, much to the horror of the watching tourists. They

were even more appalled when he fell drunkenly on top of her. Now Léon was

reported to be working au noir for one of the English families who had bought an

old ruin and had been persuaded that Léon could restore it for them, payment in

cash and no taxes or insurance.

He sighed. He wasn’t sure whether to warn Léon that somebody was probably

reporting him to the tax office, or to warn the English family that they were

wasting their money. Probably he’d do both, and tell the English about the

system whereby they could pay a part-time worker legally and cheaply, and still

have the benefit of workers’ insurance. Léon had a family to support, so Bruno

had better get him onto the right side of the Sécu. He checked the address where

he was supposedly working, out in the tiny hamlet of St Félix, where he had had

a report of cheeses being stolen from a farmer’s barn.

He looked again at the letter about the offending window. That was St Félix as

well; mon Dieu, he thought, a crime wave in a hamlet of twenty-four people. He

sighed, grabbed his hat, phone and notebook, plus a leaflet on the legal

employment of part-time workers, and went off to spend the rest of the day in

the routine work of a country policeman. Halfway down the stairs he remembered

that he would need his camera to photograph the window. Fully burdened, he went

out to his van, thinking glumly that Isabelle would not be very impressed if she

knew how he usually spent his days.

Three hours later he was back. The English family spoke almost no French, and

his English was limited, but he impressed upon them the importance of paying

Léon legally. He would leave it to them to discover the man’s limitations. The

owner of the allegedly offending window had not been at home, but Bruno took his

photographs and made his notes for a routine report to the Planning Office. The

affair of the stolen cheeses had taken most of his time, because the old farmer

insisted that somebody was destroying his livelihood. Bruno had to explain

repeatedly that since the cheeses were homemade in the farmhouse, which fell

well short of the standards required by the European Union, they could not be

legally sold, and thus they had to be listed as cheeses for domestic consumption

in his formal complaint of a crime. Then he had to explain it all over again to

the farmer’s wife. She finally understood when he pointed out that the insurance

company would seize the chance to refuse to pay for the theft of illegal

cheeses.

In his office, the phone was ringing. He lunged and caught it just as camera,

keys and notebook tumbled from his grip onto the table. It was the sous-officier

from the Military Archives.

‘This name Boudiaf,’ the old man said. ‘The name you gave me was Hussein, and

for that we have no trace. But we do have a Mohammed Boudiaf in the Commandos

d’Afrique and his file. He was a corporal, enlisted in the city of Constantine

in 1941, joining the Tirailleurs. He then volunteered for the Commando unit in

’43, and on the recommendation of his commanding officer he was accepted. He

took part in the Liberation, and was killed in action at Besançon in October of

1944. No spouse or children listed, but a pension was paid to his widowed mother

in Oran until her death in 1953. That’s all we have, I’m afraid. Does that

help?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Bruno automatically. ‘Does the file list any siblings or

other relatives?’

‘No, only the mother. But I think we might assume that Corporal Mohammed Boudiaf

was a relative of your Hussein Boudiaf. Now I know it’s Hamid al-Bakr that you

are interested in, but there is a coincidence here. Al-Bakr joins the unit in

August ’44 in an irregular way, a unit where his acceptance would have been made

a lot easier by Corporal Mohammed. Is there a possibility of a name change here?

It’s just speculation, but in cases like this we often find that the new recruit

had some good reason to want to change his name when he enlisted. They do it all

the time in the Legion, of course, but it’s not uncommon in other branches of

the service. If your man al-Bakr was originally called Boudiaf and wanted to

change his name, no easer way than to join a unit where his brother or his

cousin was already well installed.’

‘Right, thank you very much. If we need copies of this for the judicial

proceedings, may I contact you again?’

‘Of course, young man. Now, did you receive my fax of the pay book photo?’ Bruno

checked the fax machine. It was there, the first two pages of an Army pay book,

featuring a passport-sized photo of a young man known to the French Army as

Hamid al-Bakr. Beneath it were two thumbprints, an Army stamp, and on the

previous page the details of name, address, date and place of birth. The address

was listed as Rue des Poissoniers, in the Vieux Port of Marseilles, and the date

of birth was given as 14 July 1923.

‘Yes, it’s here. Thank you.’

‘Good. And again, well done in that brawl of yours. We need more policemen like

you. I presume you are an old soldier.’

‘Not that old, I hope. But yes, I was in the combat engineers.’

‘You were in that nasty business in Bosnia?’

‘That’s right. How did you guess?’ ‘I couldn’t resist looking up your file. You

did well, young man.’

‘I was lucky. A lot of the lads were not.’

‘Feel free to call on me any time, Sergeant Courrčges. Goodbye.’

His ear was damp with sweat when he removed the phone. He focused on the notepad

in front of him and the two photos. Hamid al-Bakr of the French Army was the

spitting image of Hussein Boudiaf, the footballer. Could they be one and the

same person? That would explain Momu’s surprise at the photograph and Momu’s

surprise had been real. If Hamid had changed his name, why had he done so? What

was he so intent on covering up that he hid his real name from his own son? And

could this secret of the past explain Hamid’s murder, nearly sixty years after

the young football player decided to join the Army and change his name?

He could talk this through with Isabelle this evening, he thought, smiling at

the prospect, then admitting to himself that there probably wouldn’t be a lot of

time spent talking about crime and theories – or talking about anything. He

remembered the way she had kissed him in the cave, just a millisecond before he

was going to kiss her, and then that sweet and trusting way she had slipped his

hand onto her warm breast … The phone broke into his reverie.

‘Bruno? It’s Christine, calling from Bordeaux. I’m at the Moulin archive and I

think you had better get down here yourself. There’s nothing about Hamid al-Bakr