Текст книги "Bruno, Chief Of Police"

Автор книги: Martin Walker

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

‘You saw him damage your car today?’ enquired Bruno politely. He was damned if

these two grey men were going to get away with this.

‘Not exactly,’ said the inspector. ‘But we saw him hanging around our car and we

called the gendarmes, and when we pounced he had a potato in his hand.’

‘Forgive me, but this is a vegetable market with hundreds of potatoes on sale.

What’s so unusual about a boy holding a potato?’

‘He used a potato to immobilise our car at the Tuesday market. That’s what. The

engine seized up on the road to Périgueux.’

‘Somebody threw a potato at your car. Was the windcreen broken?’ Bruno was

beginning to enjoy this.

‘No, no. The potato was stuffed into the exhaust pipe to block the escaping

gases, and the engine died. It was quite badly damaged and we had to wait for

two hours for a breakdown truck.’

‘Did you see this boy do this on Tuesday?’

‘Not exactly, but Capitaine Duroc told us when we complained that he thought it

must have been some boy, and so we came back today to see if we could see one –

and we caught him.’

‘You are on duty today, on a Saturday?’ Bruno pressed.

‘Not exactly,’ he repeated, ‘but since our duties bring us to the Dordogne this

week and next, we decided to stay over and make a weekend of it in your

delightful part of the country,’ he added ingratiatingly. ‘So much history …’

His voice trailed off as he saw the coldness in Bruno’s expression.

‘So, you are “not exactly” on duty today. Yes or no?’

‘Er, no.’

‘Let me get this clear, Monsieur,’ said Bruno. ‘Your car was allegedly damaged

by a person or persons unknown on Tuesday, and it is not yet established that

any damage was caused by the potato rather than by other causes. And now because

you find a boy holding a potato, in a vegetable market, somewhere near your

unharmed car of today – a day when you are not on duty and thus I presume not

empowered to enforce the hygiene rules that you tried to deploy against the

kindly Madame Vignier – you are now proposing to take the very serious step of

arresting and bringing charges against a minor?’

‘Well, yes.’

Bruno drew himself up to his full height, frowned and assumed his most formal

tone of voice.

‘I suggest that while I telephone the boy’s parents to inform them of the

forcible detention of their son for being in suspicious possession of a potato

…’ he paused to let the absurdity of this sink in, ‘I am also bound as an

officer of the law to inform the parents of their right to file a formal

complaint against persons responsible for what may be the wrongful arrest of a

minor. So, at this time I would advise that you might want to contact your own

superiors in order to establish what exactly is your personal authority and

responsibility in such matters, and whether your department will defray any

legal expenses that you are likely to incur. This will include any liability

that you may have unfortunately brought upon the gendarmes if unlawful arrest is

indeed established. I’m sure that you would not want to implicate Capitaine

Duroc and his men, who clearly acted in the finest and most efficient traditions

of the Gendarmerie, if such is the case.’

Somebody in the crowd let out a long, appreciative whistle for his performance,

and Bruno then solemnly opened his shirt pocket and drew out the pencil and

notepad on which he had written his morning shopping list. ‘I had better make a

formal record of this notification,’ he said. ‘So, gentlemen, might I see your

identity cards, please, along with any documents that testify to your lawful

authority? – oh, and Capitaine Duroc,’ he went on, ‘we shall obviously need a

camera to take photographs of that young boy’s arm and shoulder where you have

been gripping so tightly. Just a formality, you understand, to protect you

personally against any malicious charges of ill-treatment as a result of your

being suborned into what seems very likely to be a case of wrongful arrest.’

There was a long silence, and then the Captain let go of the boy’s arm. The lad

burst into tears, scurried over to Bruno and buried his face in the policeman’s

freshly laundered shirt.

‘Well, we may have been a little hasty …’ began the more grey of the two grey

men. ‘But the damage to our car is a serious matter.’

‘Indeed it is, Sir, which is why we should proceed according to the letter of

the law,’ said Bruno. ‘We will all go to the Gendarmerie where you will file

your complaint, and I shall bring the parents, and probably their legal

representative, and there will be no need for further witnesses since the Mayor

and I saw the arrest and forcible seizure of this young boy from the window of

the Mayor’s office.’

‘My chief of police is absolutely right,’ said the Mayor from behind Bruno’s

shoulder. ‘We saw the whole thing, and I must state that I am deeply disturbed

that an underage member of our community can be seized in this way on what seems

the flimsiest of evidence. As Mayor of St Denis and a senator of the Republic, I

reserve the right to bring this matter to the attention of your superiors.’

‘But unless we file charges, we’ll be liable for the damage to the car,’ bleated

the younger grey man.

‘Shut up, you fool,’ hissed his partner, who had been visibly jolted when the

Mayor mentioned that he was also a senator, and he turned towards Bruno and

Mangin. ‘Monsieur le Maire, Monsieur le Chef de Police, mon Capitaine, allow me

to congratulate you on the efficiency and good sense you have brought to ease

this little misunderstanding. I think it might be advisable for all of us to let

this matter rest, and we shall continue our duties elsewhere in the region.’

He bowed slightly, took his companion firmly by the elbow and beat a hasty but

still dignified retreat from the market.

‘Bloody Gestapo,’ said the Mayor, and Duroc’s eyes widened.

Bruno leaned down and ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Where did you learn that trick

with the potato?’ he asked.

‘From my great-grandpa. He told me it was what they used to do to the German

trucks in the Resistance.’

CHAPTER

12

Bruno’s garden had been planned with decades in mind. The first time the Mayor

had shown him the small stone cottage, its roof just beginning to collapse, with

its sheltering trees on the hill above and the great sweep of the view to the

south across the plateau, Bruno had known that this place would suit him well.

The old shepherd who had lived here had died almost a decade earlier. His heirs,

who had gone away to Paris, had neglected to pay the modest taxes so it had

fallen into the hands of the Commune, which meant into the disposition of the

Mayor. They had walked over the wide stretch of rough turf that would become

Bruno’s lawn and his terrace, poked around the overgrown vegetable garden and

the collapsed hen house, and carefully lifted the rotting wooden cover from the

well. The stone work was still sound and the water fresh. The beams of the old

barn behind the cottage were solid chestnut and would last forever, and the cart

track from the road up to the cottage, although rutted and overgrown, was easily

passable. They had paced out the dimensions, twelve metres long and eight deep.

Inside, there was one large room and two small, and the remains of a ladder that

went up to the attic beneath the roof.

‘It comes with four hectares but it will take a lot of work,’ the Mayor had

said.

‘I’ll have the time,’ Bruno had replied, already imagining how it could be and

wondering whether his Army gratuity would be sufficient to buy this home of his

own. Not a countryman born, he had little idea what four hectares of land would

be.

‘The land stretches to the brow of the hill behind, in those woods, about a

hundred metres to the right and down to the stream below us,’ the Mayor

explained. ‘We cannot legally sell the place unless it is habitable, which means

that the Commune would have to instal electricity but you would have to fix the

roof and put in some windows before we can make a contract. That’s your risk. If

I’m voted out of office in the elections, you might have done the work for

nothing. I cannot promise that my successor would honour the deal, but we might

be able to reach a long leasehold agreement, tied to the post of Chef de

Police.’

Bruno, just a few months into the job as the Municipal Policeman of St Denis,

was confident that the Mayor would be re-elected in St Denis so long as he was

breathing, and probably even if he were not, so they shook hands on the bargain

and he set to work. It was springtime, so to save his rent money Bruno moved

into the barn with a camp bed, a sleeping bag and a camping stove, and came to

relish the briskness of his morning shower – a bucket of water from the well

poured over his head, a quick soaping, and then another bucket to rinse himself

off. It was the way he and his unit had kept clean on manoeuvres. He spent his

first days off and all his evenings clearing the old vegetable garden and

building a new fence of chicken wire to keep out the rabbits. Then, with a happy

sense of mission, he began planting potatoes, courgettes, onions, lettuce,

tomatoes and herbs.

He explored the copse of trees behind the vegetable garden and found wild

garlic. Later, in the autumn, he discovered the big brown cep mushrooms, and

under one of the white oaks he saw the darting movement of the tiny fly that

signalled the presence of truffles on his land. Below the turf that stretched

out generously to the front of his new home were hedges of raspberries and

blackcurrants, and three old and distinguished walnut trees.

By the time the electricity was connected, he had put new lathes and tiles on

the cottage roof and installed insulation. He had bought ready-made windows from

Bricomarché, making them fit by building his own wooden frames. The doorway was

of an unusual size, so he built his own door of planks and beams, and to fulfil

a longstanding fancy of his own ever since he had first seen a horse staring

curiously over a half-door in the cavalry stables at Saumur, he made the door so

that the top half could open separately, and he could lean on the sill of the

half-door inside the cottage and gaze out at his property. Michel from the

public works depot had brought up a mechanical digger to repair the old car

track, dig a hole for the septic tank and lay trenches for the pipes. Michel

stayed to help instal the electricity circuit and run cables to the barn. René

from the tennis club had put in the plumbing, and old Joe had brought his cement

mixer up the newly levelled track to help him lay a new floor, and then showed

him how to make foundations for the additions that Bruno was planning – a large

bedroom and bathroom. Without really thinking about it, Bruno assumed that

someday there would be a wife here and a family to house.

By the end of the summer, the foundations of the new wing were laid and Bruno

had moved out of the barn and into the big room of the cottage with its view

over the plateau. He could take a hot shower in his own bathroom with water from

the gas heater, fuelled by the big blue containers that Jean-Louis sold at the

garage. He had a gas cooker, a refrigerator, a sink with hot and cold running

water, wooden floors, and a very large bill at the Bricomarché that he would be

paying off with one fifth of his monthly paycheck for the next two years.

He signed the contract of sale in the Mayor’s office, the town notaire on hand

to ensure that all was legal. There was enough of his Army gratuity left to pay

the first year of property taxes and to buy a good wood-burning stove, a lamb

and a hundred litres of good Bergerac wine, and throw himself a housewarming

party. He dug the pit for the fire that would roast the lamb and borrowed the

giant fait-tout enamel pot from the tennis club to make his couscous. He added

trestle tables and benches from the rugby club, feasted all his new friends,

showed off his house and became an established man of property.

What he had not expected were the gifts. His colleagues at the Mairie had

clubbed together to buy him a washing machine, and Joe brought him a cockerel

and half a dozen hens. It seemed that every housewife in St Denis had prepared

him jars of homemade pâté or preserved vegetables and jams, salamis and

rillettes. Not a pig had been killed in St Denis over the past year but some of

it ended in Bruno’s larder. The tennis club brought him a set of cutlery and the

rugby club brought him crockery. The staff of the medical clinic gave him a

mirror for his bathroom and a cupboard with a first-aid kit that could have

equipped a small surgery. Fat Jeanne from the market gave him a mixed set of

wine and water glasses that she had picked up at the last vide-grenier jumble

sale, and even the staff at Bricomarché had donated a set of cooking pots.

Michel and the lads from the public works depot made him a gift of some old

spades and garden tools that they had managed to replace by juggling next year’s

budget. The gendarmes bought him a big radio, and the pompiers gave him a

shotgun and a hunting licence. The minimes, the children of the tennis and rugby

clubs whom he taught to play, had put together their centimes and bought him a

young apple tree, and everyone who came to his housewarming brought him a bottle

of good wine to lay down in the cellar that he and Joe had built under the new

wing.

As the night wore on, Bruno had felt compelled to take a small toast with every

one of his guests. Finally, when wine and good fellowship overcame him sometime

towards dawn, he fell asleep with his head on one of the trestle tables. The

friends who had stayed the course carried him into his house, took off his

shoes, laid him on the big new bed that René had built and covered him with the

quilt that the pompiers’ wives had sewn.

But Bruno had one more gift. It was curled up peacefully asleep on an expanse of

old newspaper, and, as Bruno rose with an aching head, it woke up and came

across to lick his feet and then scrambled up into his lap to burrow into the

warmth and gaze at its new master with intelligent and adoring eyes. This was

the Mayor’s gift, a basset hound from the litter of his own renowned hunting

dog, and Bruno decided to name him Gitane, or gypsy. But by the end of the day,

when Bruno had already come to delight in his puppy’s long, velvet ears,

outsized feet and seductive ways, it had been shortened to Gigi. For Bruno it

had been the most memorable evening of his life – his formal baptism into the

fraternity of the Commune of St Denis.

Dressed in shorts and sandals, Bruno was staking his young tomato plants when he

heard a car labouring up the track and one of the celebrants from that first

happy night came into view. But there was no cheer in Doctor Gelletreau as he

levered himself from the elderly Mercedes, patted the welcoming Gigi, and

lumbered up the path to the terrace. Bruno rinsed his hands under the garden tap

and went to welcome his unexpected guest.

‘I called at your house earlier, but there was no-one there,’ Bruno told him.

‘Yes, thanks, Bruno. I found your note on the door. We were in Périgueux, with

the lawyer and then at the police station,’ said the doctor, who had taped

Bruno’s broken ribs after a rugby game, tended his influenza and signed his

annual certificate of health after a casual glance up and down the policeman’s

healthy frame. Gelletreau was overweight and far too red in the face for

comfort, a man who ignored the sound advice he gave to his patients. With his

white hair and heavy moustache, he looked almost too old to have a teenage son

but there was a daughter even younger.

‘Any news?’ Bruno asked.

‘No, the damn fool boy is being held pending drugs charges, which the lawyer

says may not stand since he was under – er – restraint when the police arrived.’

The doctor was visibly embarrassed, and Bruno resisted the temptation to grin.

‘But it’s the murder they are interested in,’ Gelletreau said.

‘I can’t talk about that, Doctor, not with you,’ said Bruno, as Gigi came to

nuzzle his leg. Automatically, he reached down to scratch behind his dog’s ears.

‘Yes, yes, I understand that. I just wanted you to know that I strongly,

thoroughly believe him to be innocent of this crime. He’s my son, and I’m bound

to say that, but I believe it with all my heart and soul. There’s no cruelty in

the boy, Bruno, you know that. You have known him long enough.’

Bruno nodded. He had known young Richard since he was little more than a

toddler, taught him to hold a tennis racquet, and then how to serve and hit a

ball with topspin. Richard was a careful player rather than an aggressive one,

and if Bruno were any judge of human nature, he doubted the lad had anything of

the killer about him. But who knew what people could do under the sway of drugs

or passion or political fervour?

‘Have you seen Richard?’

‘They gave us ten minutes with him, just us and our lawyer. The Mayor

recommended some bright young fellow called Dumesnier from Périgueux so we

engaged him. Apparently they didn’t even have to let us see him, but the lawyer

fixed it. They let us give him a change of clothes, after they searched every

seam,’ he said heavily. ‘He’s terrified – and ashamed and confused. You can

imagine. But he says he knows nothing of the killing. And he keeps on asking

after that damn Jacqueline. He’s besotted with her.’

‘His first girlfriend,’ said Bruno, with understanding.

‘She’s his first lover, his first sex, and she’s a pretty little thing. Pure

poison, but certainly pretty. He’s seventeen this week, you know. You remember

how we were at that age, all those hormones raging. She’s all he can think

about. He’s infatuated.’

‘I understand.’

‘Can you tell them that?’ Gelletreau asked eagerly. ‘Can you speak for him, just

to explain that? I know you aren’t running this business, Bruno, but they’ll

listen to you.’

‘Doctor, sit down, and let me get you a glass. It’s hot and I need a beer and

you can join me.’ He steered Gelletreau to one of the green plastic chairs on

his terrace and went inside to get two cans from the refrigerator and two

glasses. When he emerged he was surprised to see the doctor drawing on a yellow

Gitane.

‘You made me give those things up,’ Bruno said, pouring the beers.

‘I know, I know. I haven’t smoked in years, but you know how it is.’

They raised their glasses to one another and drank in silence.

‘You have made it very pleasant here, Bruno.’

‘You said that when you were here last year for the barbecue, Doctor. I think

you’re changing the subject. Let me try to answer what you said before.’ Bruno

put his glass down and leaned forward, his elbows on the green table.

‘I’m not really part of the case,’ he began. ‘It’s a matter for the Police

Nationale, but they consult me whenever they want some local knowledge. I

haven’t seen all the evidence. I haven’t seen the full forensic report on the

murder, or on the house where Richard was arrested, and they probably won’t show

them to me. But I can tell you that the detective running the investigation is a

decent sort and he’ll go with the evidence. In a case like this, he’ll want to

be sure that the evidence is very clear before he makes any recommendation to

the Jugemagistrat. I wouldn’t be surprised if they send some ambitious hotshot

down from Paris because of the politics that are mixed up in this affair. This

is the sort of case that can make or break a career, and the Juge-magistrat will

want to be very certain before he lays formal charges. If Richard is innocent,

I’m very confident that he’ll be cleared.’

‘The Mayor just told me the same thing.’

‘Well, he’s right. And you have to concentrate on being a support for your wife

and family, and for Richard. You’ve got a good lawyer, which is the most

important thing at this stage. Other than that, what you have to focus on is

telling Richard you love him and believe in him. He needs that right now.’

Gelletreau nodded. ‘We’ll give him all the support we can, you know that, but

the question I keep asking myself is whether I really know my son as I thought I

did. I can’t get this dreadful Front National business out of my head. We had no

idea he was getting involved like that. He never showed any interest in

politics.’

‘It may have been the girl who drew him in. That’s one of the things the

detectives are looking at. They’ll get to the bottom of it, Doctor. And I don’t

know about you, but at that age if my first lover had been a raging Commie I’d

have carried a red flag and marched wherever she asked me to.’ Bruno emptied his

glass. ‘Another beer?’

‘No thanks. I haven’t finished this one. And you don’t want to have a second

after being out in this sun.’ Gelletreau managed a wan smile. ‘That’s your

doctor speaking.’

‘There’s one more thing.’ Bruno twirled his empty glass, wondering how best to

put this. ‘You’d better start thinking about what to do if and when he’s cleared

and released. It wouldn’t be a good idea to keep him at school locally. It would

be difficult, with the gossip and the relatives of the old man. You should send

him away to stay with a relative or think about a boarding school; maybe even

send him abroad where he can make a fresh start and put all this behind him.

Perhaps you could even suggest that he goes into the military for a while. It

did me no harm, and it would be the kind of clean break the boy will need.’

‘It did me no harm either, although I just did three years as a medical orderly

in West Africa, enough to save me a year of medical school. But I don’t think

the boy is cut out for that kind of life, that kind of discipline. Maybe that’s

the problem,’ said the doctor with a sigh. ‘Still, he respects the military. He

said how could anyone think he would kill someone who’d won a Croix de Guerre.

But getting him out of here when all this is done is a good thought, Bruno.

Thanks for the advice.’

As the good doctor drove away, Bruno began to wonder how on earth the boy had

known about the Croix de Guerre

CHAPTER

13

Less than an hour later, with the sun sinking fast and the heat easing so that

he had donned a T-shirt, Bruno was watering the garden when he heard another

vehicle lumbering up the track. He turned, just in time to catch a glimpse of a

strange car and some unknown young man with short hair staring intently at the

track. Then the hedge rose again and blocked his view. He emptied the watering

can and turned again, at which point he recognised the car. It was Inspector

Isabelle in her unmarked car; her short hair had fooled him. She got out, waved,

and opened the rear door to bring out a supermarket bag.

‘Hi, Bruno. I came to invite you to supper, unless you have plans.’

‘It looks like you made the plans already, Isabelle,’ he said, coming forward to

push the enthusiastic Gigi out of the way and kiss the young woman on both

cheeks. She was looking carefree and casual and distinctly appealing in her

jeans and red polo shirt, with a brown leather jacket slung loosely over her

shoulders. In her trainers, she stood just a fraction below his height.

‘Pâté, beefsteak, baguette and cheese,’ she said, standing back to brandish her

bag. ‘That’s what

J-J

said you liked to eat. And wine, of course. What a

wonderful dog – is this the great hunting dog

J-J

told me about?’

‘

J-J

asked you to come?’ She was not the first woman to come here alone bearing

food, but she was the first to descend upon him uninvited, and he was

old-fashioned enough to be disconcerted by her arrival. He decided he had better

approach this unexpected evening as if she were here as a professional

colleague, just another police chum. At least he had no inquisitive neighbours

to start a new episode of the St Denis soap opera that he privately dubbed

Catching Bruno.

‘Not exactly,’ said Isabelle, down on her knees and making much of the enchanted

Gigi, who always liked women. ‘Can basset hounds really hunt wild boar?’

‘That’s what they were bred for, supposedly by St Hubert himself. They aren’t

fast but they can run all day and never tire so they exhaust the boar. Then one

hound goes in from each side and grabs a foreleg and pulls and the boar just

sprawls flat, immobilised until the hunter comes. But I use this one mainly to

hunt bécasse. He has a very gentle mouth.’

‘

J-J

said I should brief you on the day’s developments,’ she said, prising

herself free from the dog’s attentions. ‘He left me in charge at the murder room

here, but all the action has moved to Périgueux and I got bored and lonely, so I

thought I’d pay you a visit. It was another time

J-J

told me what you liked to

eat, as if I couldn’t guess.’

‘Well, I’m curious to know the latest and you are most welcome. And

congratulations on finding the house.’

‘Oh, that was easy,’ she said. ‘I just asked the woman in the Maison de la

Presse when I went to pick up Le Monde. They have a small piece about a racist

murder in the Périgord, with the Front National involved. Half of the Paris

press corps will be down here by Monday.’

And with Dominique in the Maison de la Presse, the whole of St Denis would know

by now that Bruno had a new lady friend. They’d be staking out the bottom of the

road to see if she left at a decent hour. He resolved privately that she would.

‘He’s called Gigi,’ said Bruno, as his dog signalled complete devotion by

rolling onto his back and baring his tummy to be scratched.

‘Short for Gitane.

J-J

told me. He’s a great fan of yours and he told me all

about you on our first drive down here.’

‘He’s a good man and a fine detective,’ said Bruno. ‘Hand me that bag and come

and sit down. What would you like to drink?’

‘A petit Ricard for me, lots of water, please, and then can you show me round?

J-J

said you’d been in the engineers in the army and you built the whole place

yourself.’

She was trying very hard to please, thought Bruno, but he smiled and invited her

through the main door and into the living room with the large fireplace he had

built last winter. They went into the kitchen where he made the drinks while she

leaned against the high counter where he normally sat for his solitary meals. He

poured four careful centimetres of Ricard into each tall glass, tossed in an ice

cube and filled the glasses from a jug of cold water from the refrigerator. He

handed one to Isabelle, raised his glass in salute, sipped and turned to work.

He unwrapped the beefsteak she had brought and made a swift marinade of red

wine, mustard and garlic, salt and pepper. Then he took the flat of a cleaver

and hammered the steaks until they were the thinness he liked, and put them in

the marinade.

‘Your own water?’ she enquired.

‘We put an electric pump in the well. It takes it up to a water tank and it

tastes good, I had it tested. I said we. My friends from the town built this

place more than I did – the plumbing, electricity, foundations, all the real

stuff. I was just the unskilled labourer. Come on, there’s not much more to

see.’

He showed her his boot room by the door, where he kept the washing machine and

an old sink, his boots and coats, fishing rod and gun, and the ammunition, all

locked away. She hung her leather jacket on a spare hook and he showed her the

big bedroom he had built and the smaller spare room that he used as a study. He

watched her make a fast appraisal of the double bed with its plain white sheets

and duvet, the bedside reading lamp and the shelf of books. A copy of Le Soleil

d’Austerlitz, one of Max Gallo’s histories of Napoleon, lay half open by the

bed, and she moved closer to look at the other books. She ran a finger gently

down the spine of his copy of Baudelaire’s poems and turned to raise a

speculative eyebrow at him. He half-smiled, half-shrugged, but said nothing, and

kept silent when she turned to him again after studying the print of Douanier

Rousseau’s Soir de Carneval on the wall opposite the bed. He bit his lip when he

saw her looking at the framed photographs he kept on the chest of drawers. There

were a couple of happy scenes of tennis club dinners, one of him scoring a try

at a rugby game, and a group photo of men in uniform around an armoured car,

Bruno and Captain Félix Mangin with their arms around each other’s shoulders.

Then, inevitably, she focused on the photograph of Bruno, in uniform and

laughing and lounging on an anonymous riverbank with a happy Katarina, pushing

her long fair hair back from her usually sad eyes. It was the only picture he

had of her. Isabelle said nothing but brushed past him and looked into the

spartan bathroom.

‘You’re very neat,’ she said. ‘It’s almost too clean for a bachelor.’

‘That’s only because you caught me on cleaning day,’ he grinned, spreading his

hands in innocence. So now she knows there was a woman in my life, he thought.

So what? It was a long time ago, and the ache had dulled.

‘Where does Gigi sleep?’

‘Outside. He’s a hunting dog and supposed to be a watchdog.’

‘What’s that hole in the ceiling?’

‘My next project, when I get round to it. I’m going to put a staircase and a

couple of windows in the roof, and make an extra bedroom or two up there.’

‘There’s no TV,’ she said.

‘I have a radio,’ he said flatly. ‘Come and see the outside and I’ll make a

barbecue for the steak.’

She admired the workshop he had made at one end of the barn, the tools all

hanging on a pegboard on the wall, and the jars of pâté and preserves standing

in military ranks on the shelves. He showed her the chicken run, where a couple

of geese had joined the descendants of Joe’s original gift of chickens, and she

counted the numbers of tomato plants and the rows of vegetables.

‘Do you eat all that in a year?’

‘A lot of it, and we have dinners and lunches down at the tennis club. Any extra

I can always give away. I put some into cans for the winter.’

He picked up a stack of dried branches from last year’s grapevine and stacked

them in the brick barbecue, then he shook a bag of wood charcoal onto the top,

thrust a sheet of old newspaper underneath and lit it. Back in the kitchen, he

put plates, glasses and cutlery on a tray and opened her wine, a decent cru

bourgeois from the Médoc. He opened the jar of venison pâté she had brought, put