The Coldest Case by Martin Walker (mobi reader android txt) 📕

‘I’d love one and I can see Gilles and Fabiola coming up the lane. Better put two more eggs on.’

He put four eggs into a pan he filled with boiling water and set the alarm for five minutes. He took butter and a jar of Pamela’s home-made apricot jam from the fridge, added two more cups, plates and egg cups and began squeezing more oranges.

‘There’s nothing like a breakfast someone else has made for you,’ she said, kissing him lightly. ‘It feels like being in a hotel.’ She sat down and began pouring out orange juice as Gilles and Fabiola arrived. Bruno put the kettle on for more coffee.

‘I have news,’ he announced. ‘Balzac’s a father: nine pups, four boys, five girls, all doing well. I went up to the kennels yesterday to see them. I’m going to ask Florence if she’d like one for the twins.’

‘Don’t mention it in front of them or they’ll give her no rest until she gives in,’ said Fabiola. ‘Gilles and I were saying the other day that we’d be interested but we can’t agree whether we want a boy basset or a girl.’

‘There’s no hurry,’ Bruno said. ‘Apparently Balzac is a much grander pedigree than I thought and he’s been such a success that the kennels want him back again to father another litter in a few months. If you can’t agree this time, you’ll have another chance.’

They ate quickly and within ten minutes they were trotting past the paddock, each with an unsaddled horse on a leading rein. Pamela took them along one of the shorter routes since each of the horses would be working later in the day. She restricted them to a canter, a pace so measured that even Balzac could very nearly keep up. But it was also a pace too slow for Bruno to lose himself in the thrill of Hector’s speed and the insistent rhythm of his hooves. He found himself thinking of the way Sabine had stood at the door of her father’s nursing home, sobbing quietly with her back to them; the way J-J had told Tante-Do that she had no choice but to surrender to his determination to pursue a case that had never lost its grip on him. At what point, Bruno asked himself, does long-delayed justice, inflicting so much pain as it grinds through the innocent lives of others, start to become absurd?

‘What is it, Bruno?’ Pamela asked when they were back at the stables, after Fabiola and Gilles had departed. ‘You’re miles away, distracted. I thought you said all the puppies were fine.’

‘It’s not that,’ he said, looking out through the stable door, barely aware of her behind him. ‘It’s this case that’s been on J-J’s mind for the last thirty years. There’s been a small breakthrough and he’s determined to see it through but I fear it’s not going to lead anywhere. And it’s my fault, really. I had this idea when I saw the exhibition at Les Eyzies of faces rebuilt from the original skull. I got his hopes up and the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether we should have just left it alone. This damn investigation has already started eating away at people.’

He let out a long sigh. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said all that. Shouldn’t offload it all onto you.’

‘We’re not just friends, Bruno,’ she said. He heard a jangling as the bridles dropped to the floor and she came up behind him, wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. He could hardly hear her, had to strain to catch the muffled words.

‘We have a history, you and I, so you can share stuff with me all you want. Lord knows I dumped more than enough on you, about my mother, and about that sad mistake of a husband I had.’ She squeezed him hard. ‘Let’s go and make some more coffee.’

She took his hand and pulled him along behind her, the pair of them clomping over the courtyard, still in their riding boots. There was the sound of a car, and then a cheerful toot-toot of a car horn as Miranda, waving cheerfully, drove her kids off to school.

‘I ought to be there, seeing the kids across the street,’ he said.

‘You know you’re probably the last cop in France who still sees children across the road, but you don’t have to do it today. Come and have some coffee, and you can just guess what Miranda’s thinking we’re up to, seeing me haul you across the yard like this.’

In spite of his sombre mood, he laughed and hugged her tightly.

‘You’re a very fine woman, Pamela. And thank you. But no coffee. Duty calls.’ He turned back to the stables, pulled off his riding boots, sluiced his face with water and headed off to see Joe, his predecessor as the town policeman of St Denis, and the man who had called in a very young J-J thirty years ago when a body had been found buried in the woods.

Joe kept goats, geese, chickens and bred pigeons. He fed his large extended family from a vegetable garden that was fenced more securely than some prisons to stop the goats from invading it. He also made the worst wine Bruno had drunk since his days in the army. But he had taught Bruno how to be a neighbourhood cop and he still knew everybody in the town and around it. He lived in a small hamlet a couple of kilometres outside St Denis and Bruno found him in his garden, installing taller sticks to support his tomato plants. He turned at Bruno’s call and came to the fence, opened the gate and then secured it, shook hands with Bruno and gave Balzac an affectionate pat.

‘What can I do for you, Bruno?’

‘Not sure it’ll help,’ Bruno began, ‘but could you take me to that spot where you found the body all those years ago? That cold case has