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

Bruno strolled discreetly into the Baron’s kitchen, read what Gilles had sent and forwarded it to Isabelle, with a note saying Gilles sent his regards. That was how it worked. Gilles had done Isabelle a favour and would doubtless expect one in return. Jacqueline would probably not be so helpful. Back in the garden, Bruno went up to where she was chatting with Rosalie, Sabine and Pamela and offered to refresh their drinks. As he handed them back, he managed to steer Jacqueline aside and ask if her Le Monde piece was running the next day.

‘So they tell me. I hope it makes a stir,’ she said.

‘If it’s anything like your remarks over dinner the other day, I’m sure it will,’ he said. ‘I never cease to be surprised at the way history thrusts its claws into our present. It must be even stranger for you, a historian of the Cold War, to find it here again thirty years after it ended.’

‘If it has ended – that’s the question,’ she said. ‘Every one of us here is a child of the Cold War, Bruno. It shaped us, defined our politics and reshaped our economies and our systems of government. Not just the Russians and Americans but we Europeans in our own way also became national security states. The past always lives on in profound ways, particularly in our security agencies, arms industries and defence bureaucracies.’

‘I remember once in Sarajevo, taking shelter in a slit trench at the airport when the Serbs were shelling it, and I was reading a piece in Le Monde about the Cold War being over. It certainly didn’t feel like it.’

‘Yes, I can recall articles like that in those days,’ Jacqueline said with a chuckle. ‘I may even have written one or two suggesting that the Balkan wars were the sign of a return to the traditional wars of national interests. I even called it the first war of the Soviet succession.’

‘National interests never go away,’ said Bruno. ‘Just look at this Franco-American suspicion you’re writing about.’

‘I think you might enjoy my Le Monde piece,’ she said. ‘I make the point that the Americans still assume that their interests are the same as those of the other members of the NATO alliance, particularly with Russia making trouble again and China playing its own superpower games. In reality, most of us NATO allies have moved on, not just to our traditional national interests but to the new interest of this Europe of ours after Brexit. The British were always the linchpin of the Atlantic alliance. Without them in Europe, who knows?’

‘Too soon to tell,’ he said.

‘We’ll see. But would you not agree that it’s better to be early in thinking publicly about these things than too late?’

‘You’re probably right. But there’s such a thing as being right too soon. Didn’t you write a book about the people who went to fight in Spain against Franco? Premature anti-fascists, you called them.’

‘I did indeed, and if you recall my conclusion, I noted that some of those Spanish war veterans who came to France as refugees became the hard core of our own Resistance in France.’

Suddenly their exchange was interrupted by the Baron, clapping his hands and announcing, ‘Drink up, it’s time to go to Audrix for the night market and dinner.’

The tiny hilltop village of Audrix clustered around a small square that was dominated by a simple twelfth-century stone church on one side, facing the Mairie on the other. On a third side stood the local inn, the precisely named Auberge Médiévale, with a good restaurant where Bruno liked to eat on the terrace. Opposite this was a road that was wide enough for a row of stalls, selling the usual range of wines, cheeses, strawberries, grilled meats, ducks and chickens, salads and pastries, that were common to all the night markets of the region.

Some night markets liked to offer different foods, like St Denis’s stalls of Vietnamese, Caribbean, Moroccan, West African and Indian-style food from Mauritius, gifts of the old French colonial empire. Audrix remained proudly traditional; the specialities were dishes based around roast chicken and barbecued steak, along with snails from a local farm and raw foie gras sautéed with a sauce of honey and balsamic vinegar. Then there was the village bread oven, a beehive-shaped structure of stone which baked fresh bread and pizza, all surrounded by a paved space without walls but covered by a wide roof supported by wooden beams. This was where the musicians played while visitors danced. Thanks to the passionate Greens on the local council, the village had banned the use of plastic plates and utensils, so beneath the Mairie was a stall where crockery, glasses and cutlery could be hired for a modest deposit.

Having waited for Pamela, who always took longer in her trusty but ancient deux-chevaux, Bruno and his group strolled up from the car park in the fields, pausing to admire the gigantic straw sculptures of a mammoth and a warrior of ancient Gaul, at which Balzac always paused to lift his leg. Bruno assumed it was his dog’s way of paying respect to such magnificent structures. The Baron and his friends had secured a large table on a patch of higher ground beside the Mairie and had spread out plates, glasses and cutlery from their various picnic hampers. Bottles of wine had already been bought and opened. Florence was standing in line for salads, Fabiola for cheese, Gilles for roast chicken and lamb chops, Jack Crimson for bread and pizza and Jacqueline for the foie gras. Everybody had put twenty euros into the communal pot and planned to spend any remainder on dishes of strawberries and cream.

The band was a local favourite, composed of an accordion, guitar, drums, saxophone and a woman in a blonde wig who dressed and performed like a pre-war torch singer. They made a living in summer by playing each night at a