Children of War (2 page)

He smiled his thanks but shook his head. It was thoughts about women and his confused love life that kept him awake some nights, not memories of war and corpses. Fabiola quickly kissed his cheek and then briefly took shelter with the
pompiers
in the cab of the fire engine to sign the certificate of death before heading home.

The burned-out car was on a rough gravel track about a hundred metres from a minor road, just at the entrance to the commune’s old rubbish dump. It had been closed since the building of the modern
déchetterie
where all the refuse had to be sorted into different containers. The dead man lay a few metres from his charred vehicle. The car had been stopped just beyond the entrance to the dump, beside a pile of logs being seasoned before sale. Bruno raised one end of the topmost log to assess its weight; at least fifty kilos. He could lift it, but he couldn’t carry it far.

Four charred logs lay on the track behind and beneath the
car. Bruno guessed the driver had been lured along this path, and then found himself unable to reverse because somebody pretty strong had been waiting to toss thick logs behind his wheels. But why had the driver stopped? Bruno walked on up the sloping path and round a sharp bend and his torch picked out some broken twigs and crushed grass. He saw tyre tracks; a second car had been parked here, blocking the way. It could have been waiting, then switched on its headlights to force the oncoming car to stop. Then an accomplice would have used the logs to immobilize it. He’d be looking for at least two men, and forensics might get something from the tracks.

The spread between the wheel markings looked too wide for a car. He went back to his vehicle for a metallic tape measure and spanned from the inside of each tyre mark to record a width of one metre thirty in his notebook. He’d have to check this against the width of various types of truck when he got back to his office.

He loosened the hood of his anorak to make room by his ear for his phone and punched in the speed-dial number for the Brigadier, the shadowy official from the Interior Ministry who had given him the phone during a previous case. It was supposed to be secure from wire taps and it rang with a special tone when someone else on the Brigadier’s private network was calling. That had been the tone that had woken him before midnight. The caller had identified himself only as Rafiq and said he was coming onto Bruno’s territory and might need support. He’d said he would call again, but had not done so.

‘Duty officer,’ came the voice in Bruno’s ear. He identified himself, described the call from Rafiq and reported the death
and the evidence of ambush and torture. ‘It may be Rafiq.’ Bruno stooped to protect his notebook from the rain and read out the VIN number. ‘If that’s Rafiq’s car there’s no sign of his phone. It could be compromised.’

‘We’ll check and call you back.’

He began to give his location and was interrupted.

‘We know where you are. With that phone your GPS coordinates come up on my screen. Have any other police officers been alerted?’

‘Just Commissaire Jalipeau, chief of detectives for the
Département
,’ Bruno said. He had pondered calling the Gendarmes, but J-J’s team had the expertise and the forensics lab. And the call from Rafiq on the special line had made him cautious. Bruno, employed by the town of St Denis, got on well with the local Gendarmes, but J-J, like many detectives of the
Police Nationale
, had little time for them, seeing them mainly as traffic cops.

‘Good, keep it that way.’ The duty officer closed the line.

Bruno trudged back through sodden leaves toward the fire engine. Fabiola’s car had already departed but the
pompiers
were happy to stay, warm and dry in their cab and drinking coffee from a thermos. Bruno was just finishing the cup they gave him when his phone rang again.

‘It’s me,’ came the voice of J-J. ‘We’re just coming into St Denis. Can you guide us to the place? I can’t make this damn GPS work and I don’t want to have to ask the Gendarmes.’

Bruno gave directions and told them to watch for the lights of the fire engine. He went to tell the
pompiers
that the police were on their way and they could go home soon. Would French policing be any more efficient if they were all one service, he
wondered, or at least if they could overcome the traditional rivalries and learn to work together? His phone buzzed again with the special tone, and this time it was the Brigadier.

‘The VIN number fits. It’s Rafiq’s car. Are you with the body?’ Bruno confirmed that he was. ‘Check the upper left arm for a tattoo.’

He went back to the corpse, lifted the plastic sheet and loosened the remains of a leather jacket and shirt from the left shoulder and saw a tattoo that brought back memories.

‘Yes, there’s a tattoo, looks pretty old, two digits, one and three.’

‘That’s him,’ the Brigadier replied. ‘He was a good man. I’ll come down for the autopsy.’

‘J-J is on his way here,’ Bruno said. ‘Should I tell him about Rafiq?’ The 13th was a regiment of paratroop dragoons, an elite unit that was part of the French brigade of special forces. Bruno had served alongside some of them in Bosnia. The 13th specialized in discreet reconnaissance in hostile territory. They thought of themselves as the French version of Britain’s SAS. Rafiq would not have been easily subdued, even by two or three men.

‘I’ll call J-J now and put him in the picture,’ the Brigadier said. ‘Expect me later today, probably early afternoon. I’ll fax a letter to your Mayor to say you’re being seconded to my team. And keep an eye out for Arabs. Rafiq was working undercover on jihadists.’

‘Better call J-J right away,’ said Bruno. ‘I can see the lights of his car.’ He rang off and stood in front of the fire-engine headlights where J-J could see him.

‘Can we head off now?’ asked Albert, calling down from the
cab. ‘We’ll have fresh coffee and croissants at the fire station if you want to join us.’

‘As soon as J-J takes over and lets me sign off. Here he is now.’ With the stench of charred flesh still in his nostrils, Bruno would not feel like eating for some time.

By the time Bruno left the crime scene, the sun was up and a brisk, warm breeze was sweeping away what was left of the storm clouds. At Pamela’s house, tree branches were swaying and as he stepped out of his police van he heard the stable door banging in the wind. He went to secure it and saw that the stables were empty. Pamela’s car was gone. She was probably out shopping. She was allowed to drive again but Fabiola hadn’t given her permission to resume riding, after a bad fall that had broken her collarbone. Fabiola must have taken the horses out. Coffee, orange juice and one of Stéphane’s yogurts with a jar of honey were waiting for him on Pamela’s kitchen table. He drank the juice and coffee and took a shower. He shaved with the razor he kept in Pamela’s bathroom for those occasions, not as frequent as he would like, when he was invited to spend the night.

Rather than offend Pamela, he gulped down the yogurt and left a note of thanks. Then he headed for the Domaine to ask Julien if the grapes had suffered in the storm. Most of Bruno’s savings were invested in the town’s vineyard. As he turned into the lane that led to the small château the sun was already high enough in the sky to shine directly through the windscreen into his eyes. He pulled down the visor to see knots of grape-pickers
at work amid the vines that were nearest the river. He stopped the car, enjoying the calm familiarity of the scene that pushed back the memories of Rafiq’s body and reminded him why he loved this land so much. Feeling refreshed if not restored, he drove and found Julien in the
chai
, checking the grapes before they went into the press.

‘You’re the third worried investor I’ve seen this morning,’ Julien greeted him cheerfully. ‘The Mayor was here first, then the bank manager. The grapes are fine. We always trim the higher bunches so the lower ones get protection from the leaves.’

Bruno nodded, reassured but still a little confused. He’d been reading up on wine-making and while one chapter had told him that mildew was the wine-maker’s great enemy, another had waxed lyrical about
Botrytis
, the noble rot that produced such dense sweetness in the Sauternes and Monbazillacs of the region.

‘No problems with mildew?’ he asked, hoping it sounded as if he knew what he was talking about.

‘Not this late in the season when we’ve almost finished picking. And this wind is drying off the grapes. This time of year it’s not a bit of rain but the possibility of hail that worries me. I’ve seen whole vineyards flattened.’

Bruno nodded. In the storms that came around the equinox, in March and September, he’d known hailstones the size of golf balls, big enough to break roof tiles and demolish greenhouses and coming down so thickly they lay ankle-deep on the roads. He declined Julien’s offer of a glass of wine but accepted a cup of freshly pressed grape juice, warm and sticky. He rinsed his hands and left for the
Mairie
. French schools had reopened
after the summer and the rush of tourists had gone, but there were still British families and older Dutch and German couples enjoying the September sun as they breakfasted on Fauquet’s terrace and watched the river flow beneath the old stone bridge. Yogurt and honey were a fine mixture but not what Bruno thought of as breakfast, so he stopped at Fauquet’s for a coffee and croissant.

‘Albert was in just now, told us about the murder,’ said Fauquet, leaning over the bar with the conspiratorial air he liked to assume when pumping Bruno for information. ‘Terrible sight, he said it was. Legs all burned away. Do you know who it was?’

‘There’ll be a statement later today from the
Police Nationale
in Périgueux,’ Bruno told him. ‘They’re in charge now. I just went to secure the scene until they arrived.’

‘Philippe was here when Albert came in. He’s gone up there now, said he’d be taking photos of the police at work,’ Fauquet went on, handing Bruno his espresso. ‘He was asking if you’d been in.’

As he bit into his croissant and took his first sip of coffee, relishing the way the two tastes seemed made for one another, Bruno resigned himself to being pestered by Philippe Delaron. A cheerful young man, Philippe ran the town’s camera shop, with a lucrative sideline in taking photos for
Sud Ouest
, the regional newspaper. A huge family of siblings and cousins gave him contacts in every walk of the town’s life. Philippe often knew as much about local developments as Bruno, but tended to see them in a far more sensational light. Bruno helped Philippe when he could and told him frankly when he couldn’t. They had few qualms about using each other for their own ends, which made for a reasonable if somewhat wary relationship.

‘And Father Sentout wanted to know if there might be a burial,’ Fauquet added. Bruno shrugged but remained silent, knowing that if he said the dead man was probably a Muslim it would be all over town and on Radio Périgord by lunchtime.

Bruno put a two-euro coin on the counter and reached for the café’s copy of
Sud Ouest
. He began glancing at headlines as he chewed his croissant, a signal that he wanted no more questions. Fauquet shuffled along the bar to talk to a bunch of regular customers, doubtless hinting that he’d learned far more from Bruno than he could ever reveal. Gossip was as much his stock in trade as coffee and croissants.

The front page carried the latest depressing news about rising unemployment in France and more violence in the Middle East. The inside pages, by contrast, were filled with happy scenes of grapes being picked in the vineyards, photos of the new schoolteachers and of couples celebrating fifty years of marriage. The sports pages covered in great detail all the doings of the local rugby, tennis and hunting clubs. That was why people bought
Sud Ouest
, he thought, for the chance of seeing local news and pictures of people they knew. He closed the paper, made his farewells and left for his office.

A stack of mail awaited his attention on his desk inside the
Mairie
. He turned on his computer and leafed through the envelopes while it booted up. The ding of an incoming email drew him to the screen. The email address of the sender tugged at his memory; ZigiPara, a name he had not heard for a decade and more. Zigi was a shortened form of Tzigane, or gypsy, which was what the army called anyone of Roma origins. His real name was Jacques Sadna and he came from the Camargue, the vast wetlands at the delta of the River Rhône
where gypsies had settled for centuries and raised their famous horses. Zigi had been a corporal, like Bruno, when they first served together in the Ivory Coast and each had been promoted sergeant during some covert operations on the border between Chad and Libya. Zigi was with the paratroops and Bruno with the combat engineers. He recalled hearing that Zigi had since become an officer.

‘Hi Bruno, a heads-up from an old mate, even though you are a Pékin,’ he read. ‘I’m at Nijrab, adjudant-chef, and a muj has showed up claiming to be French from St Denis. Calls himself Sami Belloumi, says he knows you and has a dad named Momu. Seems simple-minded, scars on his back from whippings. Toubib says badly traumatized. He wants to go home but no documents. Photo attached. You know him? Let me know before this gets into official channels. Zigi.’

Bruno smiled as the old army slang came back to him. A Pékin meant a civilian. Nijrab was the French army base in the Kapisa region of Afghanistan. Bruno couldn’t remember whether they were still doing combat patrols or if the mission had been changed to training the Afghan army. A muj was a mujahedin. A
toubib
was a doctor. Bruno’s grin turned solemn as he read on. He knew Sami Belloumi, a young man who had left St Denis three, maybe four years earlier, supposedly to go to a special school for autistic youths run by a mosque in Toulouse. Sami was the nephew of Momu, the maths teacher at the local
collège
, and now adopted as his son. Momu was also the father of Karim, who ran the Café des Sports and was a star of the town rugby team.

Bruno clicked to open the photo and it was Sami sure enough. Bruno remembered him being as tall as Karim, but now he looked so thin he was almost skeletal, with prominent
cheekbones that emphasized his bulging eyes. He had a long beard and his head had been shaved. The photograph brought back memories of Sami at the tennis club, serving ace after ace, always placing the ball precisely in the corner. Bruno had been able to get back perhaps one serve in three. But Sami had no interest in anything but serving. He never returned a ball, never played a forehand or backhand. He would stay on court alone for hours with a basket full of tennis balls beside him, practising his perfect serves. It was the same with basketball. He could sink the ball from anywhere on the court, but that was all he wanted to do. He wouldn’t pass the ball, wouldn’t dribble or run. And like his tennis serve, he practised sinking the ball for hours.