Текст книги "Bruno, Chief Of Police"

Автор книги: Martin Walker

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main room with a big old stone fireplace which was kitchen, dining and sitting

room all in one, and a tiny bathroom built onto the side. A meal had been

interrupted; half a baguette and some sausage and cheese lay on a single plate

on the table, alongside the remains of a bottle of red wine and a broken wine

glass. Two chairs had been knocked over, and a photo of the French soccer team

that had won the World Cup in 1998 hung askew on the wall. Bruno spotted a

bundle of cloth tossed into a corner. He walked across and looked at it. It was

a shirt, all its buttons now torn off as if the garment had been ripped from the

old man. No blood on it, so somebody quite strong must have done it before

starting to use the knife. Bruno sighed. He glanced into the bathroom and the

tidy bedroom, but could see nothing out of place there.

‘I don’t see a mobile phone anywhere, or a wallet,’ he said. ‘It may be in his

trouser pocket, but we’d better leave that until the scene-of-crime and forensic

guys get here.’

‘It’ll be sodden with blood anyway,’ said Duroc.

In the distance, they heard the fire engine’s siren. Bruno went outside to see

if his phone could get a signal this far from town. One bar of the four showed

on the mobile’s screen, just enough. He rang the Mayor to explain the situation,

and then everything seemed to happen at once. The firemen arrived, bringing life

support equipment, and Duroc’s deputy drove up in a big blue van with two more

gendarmes, one of them with a large, rather old camera. The other carried a big

roll of orange tape to mark out the crime scene. The place was suddenly crowded.

Bruno went out to Karim, who was leaning wretchedly against the side of his car,

his hand covering his eyes.

‘When did you get here, Karim?’

‘Just before I rang you. Maybe a minute before, not more.’ Karim looked up, his

cheeks wet with tears. ‘Oh, putain, putain. Who could have done this, Bruno? The

old man didn’t have an enemy in the world. He was just looking forward to seeing

his great-grandson. He’ll never see him now.’

‘Have you called Rashida?’

‘Not yet. I just couldn’t. She loved the old guy.’

‘And Momu?’ Karim’s father was the maths teacher at the local school, a popular

man who cooked enormous vats of couscous for the rugby dinners. His name was

Mohammed but everyone called him Momu.

Karim shook his head. ‘I only called you. I can’t tell Papa, he was so devoted

to him. We all were.’

‘When did you last see your grandpa alive? Or speak to him?’

‘Last night at Momu’s. We had dinner. Momu drove him home and that was the last

I saw of him. We sort of take it in turns to feed him and it was our turn

tonight, which is why I came up to fetch him.’

‘Did you touch anything?’ This was Bruno’s first murder, and as far as he knew

the Commune’s first as well. He had seen a lot of dead bodies. It was he who

organised the funerals and dealt with grieving families, and he had coped with

some bad car crashes so he was used to the sight of blood. But nothing like

this.

‘No. When I got here, I called out to Grandpa like I usually do and went in. The

door was open like always and there he was. Putain, all that blood. And that

smell. I couldn’t touch him. Not like that. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

Karim turned away to retch again. Bruno swallowed hard. Duroc came out and told

the other gendarme to start stringing the tape. He looked at Karim, still bent

double and spitting the last of the bile from his mouth.

‘Who’s he?’ Duroc asked.

‘Grandson of the victim,’ Bruno replied. ‘He runs the Café des Sports. He’s a

good man, he’s the one that rang me. I’ve talked to him. He touched nothing,

rang me as soon as he got here.’ Turning back to Karim, he said, ‘Karim, where

were you before you drove here to pick up your grandpa?’

‘In the café, all afternoon. Ever since I saw you this morning.’

‘Are you sure?’ snapped Duroc. ‘We can check that.’

‘That’s right, we can check that. Meantime, let’s get him home,’ Bruno said

soothingly. ‘He’s in shock.’

‘No, we’d better keep him here. I called the Brigade in Périgueux and they said

they’d bring the Police Nationale. The detectives will want to talk to him.’

Albert, the chief pompier, came out, wiping his brow. He looked at Bruno and

shook his head.

‘Dead for a couple of hours or more,’ he said. ‘Come over here, Bruno. I need to

talk to you.’

They walked down the drive and off to one side where the old man kept a small

vegetable garden and a well-tended compost heap. It should have been a pleasant

spot for an old man in retirement, the hill sloping away to the woods behind and

the view from the house down the valley.

‘You saw that thing on his chest?’ Albert asked. Bruno nodded. ‘Nasty stuff,’

said Albert, ‘and it gets worse. The poor old devil’s hands were tied behind his

back. That’s why his body was arched like that. He would not have died quickly.

But that swastika? I don’t know. This is very bad, Bruno, it can’t be anyone

from round here. We all know Momu and Karim. They’re like family.’

‘Some nasty bastard didn’t think so,’ said Bruno. ‘Not with that swastika. Dear

God, it looks like a racist thing, a political killing. Here in St Denis.’

‘You’ll have to tell Momu. I don’t envy you that.’

There was a shout from the cottage. Duroc was waving him over. Bruno shook hands

with Albert and walked back.

‘Do you keep a political list?’ Duroc demanded. ‘Fascists, Communists, Trots,

Front National types, activists – all that?’

Bruno shrugged. ‘No, never have and never had to. The Mayor usually knows how

everyone votes, and they usually vote the same way they did last time, the same

way their fathers did. He can usually tell you what the vote will be the day

before the election and he’s never wrong by more than a dozen or so.’

‘Any Front National types that you know of? Skinheads? Fascists?’

‘Le Pen usually gets a few votes, about fifty or sixty last time, I recall. But

nobody is very active.’

‘What about those Front National posters and the graffiti you see on the roads?’

Duroc’s face was getting red again. ‘Half the road signs seem to have FN

scrawled on them. Somebody must have done that.’

Bruno nodded. ‘You’re right. They suddenly appeared during the last election

campaign, but nobody took them very seriously. You always get that kind of thing

in elections, but there was no sign of who did it.’

‘You’re going to tell me that it was kids again?’

‘No, I’m not, because I have no idea about this. What I can tell you is that

there’s no branch of the Front National here. They might get a few dozen votes

but they’ve never elected a single councillor. They never even held a campaign

rally in the last elections. I don’t recall seeing any of their leaflets. Most

people here vote either left or right or Green, except for the Chasseurs.’

‘The what?’

‘The political party for hunters and fishermen. That’s their name. Chasse,

Pęche, Nature, Traditions. It’s like an alternative Green party for people who

hate the real Greens as a bunch of city slicker Ecolos who don’t know the first

thing about the countryside. They get about fifteen percent of the vote here –

when they stand, that is. Don’t you have them in Normandy?’

Duroc shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t pay much attention to politics. I never

had to before.’

‘Grandpa voted for the Chasse party last time. He told me,’ Karim said. ‘He was

a hunter and very strong on all that tradition stuff. You know he was a Harki?

Got a Croix de Guerre in Vietnam, before the Algerian war. That’s why he had to

leave to come over here.’

Duroc looked blank.

‘The Harkis were the Algerians who fought for us in the Algerian war, in the

French Army,’ Bruno explained. ‘When we pulled out of Algeria, the ones we left

behind were hunted down and killed as traitors by the new government. Some of

the Harkis got out and came to France. Chirac made a big speech about them a few

years ago, how badly they’d been treated even though they fought for France. It

was like a formal apology to the Harkis from the President of the Republic.’

‘Grandpa was there,’ Karim said proudly. ‘He was invited up to be in the parade

for Chirac’s speech. They paid his way, gave him a rail ticket and hotel and

everything. He wore his Croix de Guerre. Always kept it on the wall.’

‘A war hero. That’s just what we need,’ grunted Duroc. ‘The press will be all

over this.’

‘Kept the medal on the wall?’ said Bruno. ‘I didn’t see it. Come and show me

where.’

They went back into the room that looked like a slaughterhouse and was beginning

to smell like one. The pompiers were clearing up their equipment and the room

kept flaring with light as the gendarme took photos. Karim kept his eyes firmly

away from his grandfather’s corpse and pointed to the wall by the side of the

fireplace. There were two nails in the wall but nothing hanging on either one.

‘It’s gone.’ Karim shook his head. ‘That’s where he kept it. He said he was

saving it to give to his first grandson. The medal’s gone. And the photo.’

‘What photo?’ Bruno asked.

‘His football team, the one he played in back when he was young, in Marseilles.’

‘When was this?’

‘I don’t know. Thirties or Forties, I suppose. He was in France then, as a young

man.’

‘During the war?’

‘I don’t know,’ Karim shrugged. ‘He never talked much about his youth, except to

say he’d played a lot of football.’

‘You said your grandpa was a hunter,’ Duroc said. ‘Did he have a gun?’

‘Not that I ever saw. He hadn’t hunted in years. Too old, he used to say. He

still fished a lot, though. He was a good fisherman, and he and Momu used to go

out early in the mornings before school.’

‘If there’s a gun, we’d better find it. Wait here,’ Duroc instructed, and left

the room. Bruno got out his phone again and rang Mireille at the Mairie, and

asked her to check whether a hunting or fishing licence had been issued to the

old man. He checked the name with Karim. Al-Bakr, Hamid Mustafa al-Bakr.

‘Look under A for the al and B for the Bakr,’ Bruno said. ‘And if that doesn’t

find him, try H for Hamid and M for Mustafa.’ He knew that filing was not

Mireille’s strong point. A widow, whose great skill in life was to make a

magnificent tęte de veau, the Mayor had taken her on as a clerk after her

husband died young of a heart attack.

Duroc emerged from the house. ‘Now we wait for the detectives. They’ll probably

take their own sweet time,’ he said glumly. The Gendarmerie had little affection

for the detectives of the Police Nationale. The gendarmes were part of the

Ministry of Defence, but the Police Nationale came under the Ministry of the

Interior and there was constant feuding between them over who did what. Bruno,

with his own chain of command to the Mayor, was pleased not to be part of it.

‘I’ll go and see the neighbours,’ said Bruno. ‘We have to find out if they heard

or saw anything.’

CHAPTER 6

The nearest house was back towards the main road. It led to a gigantic cave, a

source of great pride to the St Denis tourist office. Its stalagmites and

stalactites had been artfully lit so that, with some imagination, the guides

could convince tourists that this one was the Virgin Mary and that one was

Charles de Gaulle. Bruno could never remember whether the stalactites grew up or

down and thought they all looked like giant church organs, but he liked the

place for the concerts, jazz and classical, that were held there in summer. And

he relished the story that when the cave was first discovered, the intrepid

explorer who was lowered in on a long rope found himself standing on a large

heap of bones. They belonged to the victims of brigands who lay in wait to rob

pilgrims who took this route from the shrines of Rocamadour and Cadouin to

Compostela in distant Spain.

The house belonged to Yannick, the maintenance man for the cave, and his wife,

who worked in the souvenir shop. They were away from home all day and their

daughters were at the lycée in Sarlat, so Bruno did not expect much when he rang

the doorbell. Nobody came, so he went round to the back, hoping that Yannick

might be working in his well-tended garden. The tomatoes, onions, beans and

lettuces stood in orderly rows, protected from rabbits by a stockade of chicken

wire. There was no sign of Yannick. Bruno drove back to the main road and on to

the nearest neighbour, the mad Englishwoman. Her house was a low hill and a

valley away from the old Arab’s cottage, but they used part of the same access

road so she might have seen or heard something.

He slowed at the top of the rise and stopped to admire her property. Once an old

farm, it boasted a small farmhouse, a couple of barns, stables and a pigeon

tower, all built of honey-coloured local stone and arranged on three sides of a

courtyard. There were two embracing wings of well-trimmed poplars set back from

the house, sufficient to deflect the wind in winter but too far to cast a shade

over the buildings or grounds. Ivy climbed up one side of the pigeon tower and a

splendid burst of bright pink early roses covered the side by the old

iron-studded door. In the middle of the courtyard stood a handsome old ash tree,

and large terracotta pots filled with geraniums made splashes of colour against

the gravel. Beside the largest barn was a vine-covered terrace with a long

wooden table that looked a fine place to dine in summer. Off to its side was a

vegetable garden, a greenhouse and a level area for parking. On the other side,

behind a low fence covered in climbing roses, he saw the corner of a swimming

pool.

From the top of the long gentle rise of the meadow, the property looked charming

in the late afternoon sunlight, and Bruno drank in the sight. He had seen many a

fine house and some handsome small chateaux in his many tours through his

Commune, but he’d rarely seen a place that looked so completely at peace and

welcoming. It came as a relief after the shock and horror of what he had found

at Hamid’s cottage, as if the two places, barely a kilometre apart, could not

exist in the same universe. He felt calmer and more himself for seeing it, and

was reminded that he had a job to do.

He drove slowly up the gravel road, lined on each side with young fruit trees

that would form a handsome avenue some day, and stopped in the parking area. The

mad Englishwoman’s old blue Citroën was parked alongside a new VW Golf

convertible with English number plates. He settled his cap on his head, switched

off his engine, and heard the familiar plop-plop of a tennis ball. He strolled

around to the back of the farmhouse, past an open barn where two horses were

chewing at hay, and saw an old grass tennis court that he had never known was

there.

Two women in short tennis dresses were playing with such concentration that they

didn’t notice his arrival. An enthusiastic but not very gifted player himself,

Bruno watched with appreciation, for the women as much as for their play. They

were both slim and lithe, their legs and arms graceful and already tanned

against the white of their dresses. The mad Englishwoman – called Pamela Nelson,

he had heard – had her auburn hair tied up in a ponytail, and her dark-haired

opponent wore a white baseball cap. They were playing a steady and impressive

baseline game. Watching the fluidity of her strokes, Bruno realised that the mad

Englishwoman was rather younger than he’d thought. The grass court was not very

fast and the surface was bumpy enough to make the bounce unpredictable, but it

was freshly mowed and the white lines had been recently painted. It would be

very pleasant to play here, Bruno thought, and the mad Englishwoman could

evidently give him a good game.

In Bruno’s view, anyone who could keep up a rally beyond half a dozen strokes

was a decent player, and this one had already gone beyond ten strokes and showed

no sign of stopping. The balls were hit deep, and were directed towards the

other player rather than to the corners. They must be knocking up rather than

playing a serious match, he thought. Then the mad Englishwoman hit the ball into

the net. As her opponent turned to pick up some balls from the back of the

court, Bruno called out, ‘Madame, if you please?’

She turned, shading her eyes to see him against the slanting sun that was

sparkling golden lights in her hair. She walked to the side of the court, bent

gracefully at the knees to put down her racquet, opened the gate and smiled at

him. She was handsome rather than pretty, he thought, with regular features, a

strong chin and good cheek bones. Her skin glowed from the tennis, and there was

just enough sweat on her brow for some of her hair to stick there in charmingly

curling tendrils.

‘Bonjour, Monsieur le Policier. Is this a business call or can I offer you a

drink?’

He walked down to her, shook her surprisingly strong hand, and removed his hat.

Her eyes were a cool gray.

‘I regret, Madame, this is very much business. A serious crime has been

committed near here and we’re asking all the neighbours if they’ve seen anything

unusual in the course of the day.’

The other woman came to join them, said ‘bonjour’ and shook Bruno’s hand.

Another English accent. The mad Englishwoman was the taller of the two but they

were both attractive, with that clear English skin that Bruno had been told came

from having to live in the perpetual damp of their foggy island. No wonder they

came over to Périgord.

‘A serious crime? Here, in St Denis? Excuse me, I’m forgetting my manners. I’m

Pamela Nelson and this is Mademoiselle Christine Wyatt. Christine, this is our

Chef de Police Courrčges. Look, we were just knocking a ball about and it’s

probably time for a drink. We shall certainly have one so may I offer you a

petit apéro?’

‘I’m afraid not this time, Madame. I’m on duty. It’s about the old Arab

gentleman, Monsieur Bakr, who lives in that small cottage near Yannick’s house.

Have you seen him today, or recently, or seen any visitors?’

‘Hamid, you mean? That sweet old man who sometimes comes by to tell me I’m

pruning my roses all wrong? No, I haven’t seen him for a couple of days, but

that’s not unusual. He strolls by perhaps once a week and pays me pretty

compliments about the property, except for the way I prune the roses. I last saw

him in the café earlier this week, chatting with his grandson. What’s happened?

A burglary?’

Bruno deliberately ignored her question. ‘Were you here all day today? Did you

see or hear anything?’ he asked.

‘We were here until lunchtime. We lunched on the terrace and then Christine went

into town to do some shopping while I cleaned the barn for some guests who

arrive tomorrow. When Christine came back we played some tennis for an hour or

so until you arrived. We’ve had no visitors except for the postman, who came at

the usual time, about ten or so.’

‘So you haven’t left the property all day?’ Bruno pressed, wondering why they

were still knocking up after an hour rather than playing a game.

‘No, except for my morning ride. But that takes me towards the river, away from

Hamid’s cottage. I went as far as the bridge, and then picked up some bread and

the newspaper and some vegetables at the market and a roast chicken for lunch. I

didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. But do tell me, is Hamid alright?

Can I do anything to help?’

‘Forgive me, Madame, but there is nothing you can do,’ Bruno said. ‘And you,

Mademoiselle Wyatt? What time did you do your shopping?’

‘I can’t say exactly. I left after lunch, probably some time after two, and was

back here soon after four.’ She spoke perfectly grammatical French, but with

that rather stiff accent the English had, as if they could not open their mouths

properly. ‘We had tea, and then came out to play tennis.’

‘And you are one of the paying guests?’ She had very fine dark eyes and

carefully plucked eyebrows but wore no make-up. Her hands and nails, he noticed,

were well cared for. No rings, and the only jewellery was a thin gold chain at

her neck. They were two very attractive women, Bruno decided, and probably

somewhere near his own age, although he reminded himself that you could never

really tell with women.

‘Not really, not like the people coming tomorrow. Pamela and I were at school

together and we’ve been friends ever since, so I’m not renting but I do the

shopping and buy the wine. I went to the supermarket and to that big wine cave

at the bottom of the road. Then I stopped at the filling station and came back

here.’

‘So you’re here on vacation, Mademoiselle?’

‘Not exactly. I’m staying here while working on a book. I teach history at a

university in England and I have this book to finish, so I worked all morning

until lunchtime. I don’t think I’ve met your Arab gentleman and I don’t recall

seeing another car, or anybody on the way to the supermarket and back.’

‘Please tell me what’s happened, Monsieur Courrčges,’ said the mad Englishwoman,

who was clearly not mad at all. ‘Is it a burglary? Has Hamid been hurt?’

‘I fear that I cannot say at this stage, I’m sure you understand,’ he said,

feeling slightly ridiculous as he usually did when required to play the formal

role of policeman. He thought he’d better try to make up for it. ‘Please call me

Bruno. Everyone does. When I hear someone say Monsieur Courrčges I look around

for an old man.’

‘OK, Bruno, and you must call me Pamela. Are you sure I can’t offer you a drink,

some mineral water perhaps or a fruit juice? It’s been a warm day.’

Bruno finally accepted, and they settled on some white metal chairs by the

swimming pool. Pamela emerged with a refreshing jug of freshly made citron

pressé, and Bruno leaned back to enjoy the moment. A cool drink in a delightful

setting with not one but two charming and interesting women was a rare treat,

and infinitely preferable to what would now be a madhouse of squabbling

gendarmes and detectives and forensic specialists at Hamid’s cottage. That

brought the sobering thought that his next task would be to go and tell Momu of

his father’s death – if the Mayor hadn’t beaten him to it – and arrange a formal

identification. Wasn’t there something special about Muslim burial rites? He’d

have to check.

‘I didn’t know you had your own tennis court here,’ he said. ‘Is that why we

never see you at the tennis club?’ Bruno was proud of the club, with its three

hard courts and its single covered court where they could play in winter, and

the clubhouse with bathrooms and changing rooms, a bar and a big kitchen. The

Mayor had used his political connections in Paris to get a government grant to

pay for it.

‘No, it’s the concrete courts,’ Pamela explained. ‘I hurt my knee skiing some

time ago and the hard court is bad for it.’

‘But we have a covered court with a rubber surface. You could play there.’

‘I get quite busy here in the summer when the guests start to come. Once I have

all three of the gîtes filled, it takes most of my time. That’s why it’s such a

treat to have Christine here and play some tennis with her. It’s not a great

court, hardly Wimbledon, but if you ever want to try a grass court just give me

a call. My phone number is in the book under Nelson.’

‘Like your famous Admiral Nelson of Trafalgar?’

‘No relation, I’m afraid. It’s quite a common name in England.’

‘Well, Pamela, I shall certainly call you and see about a game on grass. Perhaps

you’d like me to bring a friend and we could play mixed doubles.’ He looked at

Christine. ‘Will you be here for long?’

‘Till the end of the month, when Pamela has a full house. So I’ve got three more

weeks here in the lovely Dordogne, then I go back to Bordeaux to do some more

research in the archives, checking on footnotes.’

‘It’s the best time, before the tourists come in the school holidays and block

the roads and markets,’ said Pamela.

‘I thought the national archives were in Paris,’ Bruno said.

‘They are. These are the regional archives and there’s a specialist archive at

the Centre Jean Moulin.’

‘Jean Moulin the Resistance chief? The one who was killed by the Germans?’ Bruno

asked.

‘Yes, it has one of the best archives on the Resistance and my book is about

life in France under the Vichy regime.’

‘Ah, that’s why you speak such good French,’ said Bruno. ‘But a painful period

to study, I think. Painful for France, and very controversial. There are still

families here who never speak to each other because they were on opposite sides

during the war – and I don’t mean just the collaborators. You know old

Jean-Pierre who runs the bicycle shop in town? He was in the Communist

Resistance, the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans. Just across the road is Bachelot

the shoe mender, who was in the Armée Secrčte, the Gaullist Resistance. They

were rivals then and they’re rivals now. They go on the same parades and march

side by side, even on the eighteenth of June, and they never speak. Yet it’s

been sixty years since it happened. Memories are long here.’

‘What’s so special about the eighteenth of June?’ Pamela asked.

‘It was the day in 1940 that de Gaulle appealed to France to fight on. He was

speaking over the BBC,’ said Christine. ‘It’s celebrated as the great day of the

Resistance, when France recovered her honour and Free France declared that it

would fight on.’

‘“France has lost a battle, but she has not yet lost the war”,’ Bruno quoted

from the de Gaulle speech. ‘We all learn that in school.’

‘Do they tell you that it’s also the anniversary of Napoleon’s defeat at the

battle of Waterloo?’ Christine asked teasingly, winking at Pamela.

‘Napoleon defeated? Impossible!’ Bruno grinned. ‘Nobody who built our

magnificent stone bridge here in St Denis could ever be defeated, least of all

by the English of Perfidious Albion. Did we not drive you out of France in the

Hundred Years War, starting here in the Dordogne under the great leadership of

Joan of Arc?’

‘But the English are back!’ Christine said. ‘That was a temporary setback, but

it looks as if the English are taking France back again, house by house and

village by village.’

‘I think she’s teasing you, Bruno,’ said Pamela.

‘Well, we’re all Europeans now,’ laughed Bruno. ‘And a lot of us are quite glad

the English come here and restore the ruined old farms and houses. The Mayor

talks of it a lot. He says the whole Departement of the Dordogne would be in

deep depression had it not been for the English and their tourism and the money

they pour in to restore the places they buy. We lost the wine trade in the

nineteenth century, and now we’re losing the tobacco that replaced it and our

small farmers can’t compete with the big ranches up north. So you’re welcome,

Pamela, and I congratulate you on this place. You’ve made it very beautiful.’

‘You might not say that if you came in midwinter and the gardens were bare, but

thank you. I’m flattered that you approve and I’m very happy here,’ Pamela said.

Bruno rose. ‘Sadly, I must leave now and get on with my work.’

Pamela smiled at him and stood up. ‘You must come again. I’ll expect your call

for that mixed doubles game. And if there’s anything I can do for Hamid, perhaps

take him something to eat, please let me know.’

‘Indeed I shall. And thank you for your thoughtfulness. But I think the

authorities have matters in hand.’ He realised he was sounding formal again.

‘If there has been a burglary, should I take extra precautions?’ she went on,

not looking in the least concerned but obviously probing. ‘I do always lock the

doors and windows at night and set the alarm.’

‘No, there’s no reason to think you’re in any danger,’ Bruno said, but knew she

would be sure to hear of the murder so he had better say something reassuring.

‘You have an alarm, and here’s my card with my mobile number. Feel free to call

me at any time, day or night. And thank you for that refreshing drink. It’s been

a pleasure, Mesdames.’ He laid his card on the table, bowed and walked back to

his car, waving as he turned the corner by the horses. He felt much better –

until he thought of the call he must pay on Momu.

CHAPTER 7

Momu lived in a small modern house down by the river. It looked as if it had

been built from one of the mass-produced kits that were springing up to provide

cheap homes for locals who had been priced out of the market for older houses by

the English with their strong currency. Like all the kit homes, it had two

bedrooms, a sitting room, kitchen and bathroom side by side to share the

plumbing, and all built on a concrete slab. The vaguely Mediterranean roof of

rounded red tiles looked quite wrong in the Périgord, but maybe the

Mediterranean look helped Momu feel more at home, Bruno thought charitably, as

the house where he had spent several convivial evenings came into view. He

sighed at the tangle of illegally parked cars that almost blocked the road. One

of the most obstructive belonged to the Mayor, which was very unlike him. But

the Mayor’s presence was a relief – he would have told Momu. Bruno drove on for

a hundred metres, parked legally and thought about what he had to say and do.

First he would have to sort out the funeral arrangements and then try to

reassure the family that Karim would be home soon, assuming the Mayor had taken

care of the rest.

Bruno walked back to the house. Inside all the lights were blazing and he could

hear the sound of a woman crying. He took off his hat as he entered and saw Momu

slumped on the sofa, the Mayor’s hand on his shoulder, but he rose to greet

Bruno. Momu was a burly man, not as big as his son but barrel-chested and broad

in the shoulders. His hands were big, and his wrists thick like a labourer’s.

Just the solid look of him was enough to keep order among his pupils, but they

soon kept quiet from respect. Momu was a good teacher, they said, and made his

maths classes interesting. Bruno had heard he made every class work out the

combined weight of the local rugby team, and then of all the inhabitants of St

Denis, and then of all the people in France, and then for the whole world. He

had a deep, hearty voice, always heard at rugby matches on Sunday afternoons,

cheering on his son. They touched cheeks and Momu asked for news. Bruno shook

his head.

‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Momu. The police won’t rest until we find who did