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

said Bruno, who was still sorting prints. He swivelled in his chair to face them. ‘But we know the next step, which is to wait for forensics to put the photos together and then see where we are.’

‘If Tante-Do says the face looks right,’ Yveline was saying, ‘then J-J can run it through the facial recognition software against known offenders, ID cards, driving licences, passports, the lot.’

‘We’ll need a magistrate and a court order to do that,’ said Sabine.

‘That’s for J-J to handle,’ Yveline replied. ‘This is his case and he really wants it wrapped up and done. He can fix it.’

Bruno watched this exchange, struck that he’d never seen two women cops thinking through a case before, arguing but in an amiable and positive way without regard to their different ranks. It was refreshing when he compared it to the close but often stormy relationship he shared with J-J. Bruno knew his friendship with J-J could never have prospered if he’d been in J-J’s chain of command, as Sabine was under Yveline. Knowing that Sabine had already qualified for the two-year course that would make her an officer, Yveline had treated her as such, even though Sabine had been a simple gendarme only a week or so earlier; whereas Sabine treated Yveline more as a slightly older sister than a superior.

Over the past year or more, Bruno had watched Yveline rebuild the small squad of gendarmes at St Denis after her predecessor, a pompous but incompetent officer, had almost destroyed their morale. Yveline had had the good sense to make an ally of the veteran Sergeant Jules, whom Bruno had long befriended through the hunting club. Overweight and close to retirement but experienced and a shrewd judge of people, Jules was loyal to those superiors he judged deserving of his support. He gave Yveline his full backing and a great deal of discreet advice. In return, Yveline had helped Sergeant Jules maintain his long rearguard action against being posted elsewhere. Bruno knew that without Sergeant Jules’s friendship, his own task in St Denis would have faced many more obstacles. These days in St Denis, Yveline’s gendarmes, Bruno as the town policeman and his Mayor, along with the Police Nationale represented by J-J at Périgueux, all worked together in unusual harmony.

‘I think we have to wait and see what J-J says when Yves has done his work with the photos,’ Bruno said. ‘We may not have a murderer, but we’ve come a long way towards identifying the victim, which J-J has been trying to do for three decades. Let’s see where we go from there. Yveline is right. We’ve certainly earned a drink.’

They returned the key and receipts to the treasurer and Bruno took the cardboard box of negatives. The three of them walked up the slight rise to the stucco-fronted building with the flaming grenade escutcheon of the gendarmes. Yveline told the duty officer she’d be in her rooms. Then she led the way through the yard to the apartment block behind, where she punched in the access code at the entrance door. Gendarmes had traditionally lived in barracks, but since the 1960s they had been housed in these newly built blocks where married gendarmes could live with their families.

Yveline, as commandante was housed in a two-bedroom apartment with a balcony on the first floor. The rooms weren’t large, but she had made her home cheerful with sunny yellow walls covered with batik prints and masks from a holiday in Indonesia. The wooden floors of her living room had been sanded and covered with Persian rugs. Two Wassily armchairs of leather with chrome tubing faced an antique chaise longue. The rear wall was filled with shelves containing books, framed photos of her family and sporting career and a bar. In one corner was a TV set, in the other a small desk.

‘Scotch, wine or beer?’ she asked, taking glasses from the bar.

‘White wine for me,’ said Sabine. Mopping his brow from the heat, Bruno asked for his to be mixed with mineral water as a spritzer. Sabine then said she’d do the same, told Yveline she admired the way she’d done the room and asked to use the bathroom, adding that she knew the way. All gendarme housing was the same.

As Yveline poured the drinks, Bruno’s phone buzzed. He opened it to find an email from Claire at the kennels, with three photos attached of Diane de Poitiers and her puppies. He examined them with delight. The first one was as he had seen them on the day of their birth but the next two were a day or so later and he could get an impression of their new energy and curiosity from the way they sprawled over and around, and crawled away from their mother. One was so near to the camera it was almost a close-up. He showed them to Yveline, and then to the returning Sabine and they cooed and enthused over the playful charm of the baby bassets.

‘You remember I said I wanted one from when you first took Balzac to the kennels,’ Yveline said. ‘I looked up the kennel website and I know they cost about fifteen hundred each so I’ve been saving.’

‘Boy or girl?’ Bruno asked.

‘I want a girl.’

Bruno gave her a broad smile. ‘Done! But I’m not looking to make money out of this. I’m really happy that the puppy will be going to a good home and I’m sure Balzac will enjoy having his daughter around. I think I’ll get a great deal more pleasure from seeing these happy bassets pottering around St Denis with equally happy owners.’

‘It’s a deal, so we can drink to that, even if Sabine’s right and we’re being premature about identifying Max and Henri.’

11

Just after dawn the next day, Bruno reached the tree at the top of the hill near his home. It was the point at which he usually turned on his morning run, pausing for a moment that allowed Balzac