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

‘Write to us. We sell mainly by mail. Thanks for coming.’ The door closed.

Yves and Sabine stared at one another, shrugged and returned to the car, displaying the bottle. It was labelled as a Special Reserve from four years earlier. Bruno knew it had been a decent year.

‘That’s a very strange way to treat customers,’ Bruno said loudly but there was no reaction from the house. Tante-Do was already back in the passenger seat and, as Sabine drove out, she turned to Bruno.

‘That young man is the spitting image of his father thirty years ago. I’m sure of it,’ she said.

‘Look at this,’ Sabine said, handing Bruno a photocopy of a newspaper article with the headline, ‘Love blooms among the vines.’ It showed a photo of a bride and her new husband, who was very clearly Henri but it could have been the son they’d just met.

‘I spent hours at a microfilm reader yesterday going through old newspapers for the relevant time period,’ Sabine went on. ‘I started searching from three months after the murder and the first six months of the following year. That’s what I eventually came up with.’

‘Well done,’ said Bruno, impressed, knowing that he should have thought of that. The caption to the photo gave Henri’s original name, before he changed it: Henri Zeller. The name reminded Bruno of one of the Alsatian brasseries in Paris where he’d eaten a fine choucroute royale.

‘What do we do now?’ asked Tante-Do.

‘We find J-J and check with him. It’s his inquiry,’ Bruno said, wondering if the radio news story the previous evening had alerted Henri and induced him to disappear again. Yves called J-J, who told them he was waiting in the car park at Monbazillac. Yves explained what had happened and J-J suggested they meet up. Bruno gave Sabine directions.

‘D’you think he’s done a bunk?’ J-J asked once they’d joined him.

‘I don’t know. He could have been inside the house or just out shopping. I didn’t see anyone working in the vines,’ Bruno said. ‘What did you learn at the co-op?’

‘They confirmed that it was him in the photo but that was all. He’s a member of the co-op in good standing but seldom appears at meetings, and he refused all requests to go on the board or take any part in management. They called him a bit of a loner and said they used to deal with his wife. Now they deal mainly with his son who’s well-liked and respected and knows the business – he did the wine course at Bordeaux university. Apparently, Henri travels a bit as a wine consultant, they call it an oenologist. Maybe that’s how he earned the money to expand the vineyard.’

‘Unusual for people to pay for a wine consultant who mostly makes wine for a co-op,’ Bruno said. ‘Customers usually want better credentials than that. Did they say where he consults?’

‘Canada was the only place they mentioned,’ J-J replied. ‘We’ve started checking on his passport and movements. I have his bank account details from the co-op so we’ll soon have his credit cards, mobile phone, all the usual data. And one more thing, now that we have a photo for Max, I’ll ask Interpol to try again on medical records for that unusual break in his leg. I’m told those data banks are a lot more complete than they used to be. Maybe we’ll get lucky and get a surname for him, too.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ said Bruno. ‘What about his income? Did you get to see the co-op accounts?’

‘Yes, he seems quite wealthy. The co-op said he was the first of them to push for the bag-in-the-box and almost all his wine is now sold that way. You know the things, fifteen euros for a five litre box. He gets just over a third of that, one euro ten per litre, and he usually produces about a quarter million litres a year. The co-op pays for the boxes, delivery and marketing and he also gets a share of the profits the co-op makes, which netted him another nine thousand euros last year.’

‘He has to pay for labour, the picking, his wine-making equipment, insurance, social costs, fertilizer and taxes,’ Bruno said. ‘And don’t forget that every few years there’s a hailstorm or some expensive blight or a drought. If we don’t get some rain soon he won’t have much of a harvest this year. Still, he must usually clear close to a hundred thousand a year.’

‘More than you and I make combined,’ said J-J, shrugging. ‘He has no labour costs. His family helps him work the vines and the grape-picking is all done by the co-op machines. What’s more, he drinks for free.’

‘We’re in the wrong business,’ said Bruno, laughing. ‘If it wasn’t for the company, J-J . . .’

‘Very funny. Sabine can take Tante-Do back to Bordeaux. I’ll get the Paris police looking into Henri’s background, now that we have his real name. He was born there so they’ll check his school records, get the address where he grew up and the names of any relatives. They should have something for me on Monday.’

‘You still running a media blitz with the photos on Monday?’ Bruno asked.

‘We might as well. It can’t hurt and it puts a spotlight onto him. And if it panics him into doing a runner, all the better. We’ll have his credit card numbers, his passport and the details of his cars. He won’t get far.’

‘What if he just uses cash to buy a train ticket to Italy or Spain?’

‘And then where does he go?’ J-J replied. ‘Henri’s found a safe harbour here that has sheltered him for the last thirty years. D’you think he’s the type of professional criminal to have fabricated a second identity with a false passport, secret bank accounts, all that?’

‘I don’t know. It’s unlikely but possible.’ As Bruno spoke, he knew that J-J was thinking aloud. He was at least a step behind but he