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

a consistent and decent wine year after year for the mass market. That’s a skill people want to learn and they’re prepared to pay me for it.’

‘And where are these clients of yours who are willing to pay you to teach them how to succeed with mass market wines?’

‘I protest,’ interrupted the lawyer. ‘These questions are entirely irrelevant to the matter before us.’

‘I have an important client in Canada,’ Henri said, raising his hand to silence his lawyer. ‘I’m advising him on which wines he should plant on the northern shores of Lake Ontario which is becoming interesting wine country, thanks to climate change. More and more of us here in the Bergerac have been experimenting with different varieties of grapes so we have built up a lot of expertise that clients are prepared to pay for.’

‘I think that’s enough of these irrelevant questions,’ said the lawyer.

‘Who is your doctor?’ Bruno went on, ignoring the lawyer’s objection. ‘We should check on this asthma condition. I’d have thought the chemicals you spray on your grapes could be a problem for you.’

‘That’s more than enough,’ said the lawyer, rising. ‘Since you have evidently exhausted your relevant questions I see no reason to waste my client’s time further with these irrelevant ones. And in future, any questions for my client should come first to me. Come along, Monsieur Bazaine, we’re leaving.’

‘I’ll be in touch,’ J-J said cheerfully as they left. Once the door closed behind them, he looked at Bruno and Sabine. ‘That went rather well. Did you note that he swallowed my suggestion that he was here in the first few days of July? I’d expected him to say he wasn’t even in these parts at that time. He slipped up there but maybe he knew we had enough witnesses who recall seeing him. And he’s clearly nervous about this, otherwise he wouldn’t have hired the People’s Pierre.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t understand why you’re so confident,’ said Sabine, a little hesitantly. ‘He just stonewalled you.’

‘But he gave us enough to start checking and verifying. We’ll find people he was at school with and at the orphanage. We could well find that was where he met Max, even though he denied knowing him. Detective work is mainly about this sort of detailed work, slow but sure, Sabine, that’s my watchword, so cheer up because we have lots to check. Once you’ve taken Tante-Do back, perhaps you could start with those schools he attended, see if there are any class photos and if any teachers are still alive. Then track down his old classmates. Bruno, have a word with that Belleville Mairie, if you would, for the orphanage records. I’ll have my team check his car-wash story and the local doctors for his claim to have asthma, although I don’t believe a word of it. I’ll see how many more identifications we have from the media blitz.’

‘I can’t stay long, J-J,’ Bruno said. ‘I have to attend a forest fire rehearsal in St Denis this afternoon.’

Bruno found a spare desk with a phone, found a number for the Paris Mairie and asked for the Mayor’s secretary, explaining his task.

‘I don’t think we can be much help,’ she said. ‘Ever since the old Communist neanderthals lost control of this arrondissement, we’ve had dreadful trouble trying to make sense of the old files. They destroyed a lot, deliberately burning whole sections of the archive trying to cover their tracks or making it difficult for their successors. That included a lot of budget accounts, school records, all sorts of special funds for labour relations, international links, so-called summer schools that seem to have been Communist holiday camps. Even the births, deaths and marriage registrations had huge gaps.’

‘What about the Paul Lafargue orphanage?’ he asked. ‘We’re trying to check the background of a suspect in a murder inquiry who claims he went there.’

‘I’ve never heard of it, which doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. Hang on a minute, I’m just calling up on my computer the index we made of the archives and I’ve found a reference to it but the note says all the files are missing. Shall I pass you on to our archives department? They may be able to tell you more.’

The archives people were friendly but unable to be of much help. They did check on the apprenticeships record and found the name of Henri Thorez Zeller. He was listed as attending the local vocational school for four years after 1985 when he’d have been aged sixteen. He’d started doing three days a week of studies and two days working as an apprentice. In his fourth year he was doing one day a week at the school and the rest at his apprenticeship at the public works department. The file said his marks had varied between good and very good and that he’d graduated as a qualified construction electrician in June of ’89.

‘Do you have an address for him? Bruno asked.

‘The Lafargue orphanage,’ said the archivist. ‘We think it closed a couple of years after Zeller left, when Jacques Chirac was Mayor of Paris and began cleaning up some of the old Communist strongholds. We have no files at all on the orphanage.’

‘Any health records for this guy? He’s supposed to have been spared military service because of asthma.’

‘I doubt if these guys would have put an asthmatic into public works, even as an apprentice, but we don’t have those records. Maybe the army can help you.’

‘Why would all these archives have been destroyed? Any idea?’

‘Some of it was inefficiency. But a lot of it was covering up corruption, jobs for the boys that didn’t involve any actual work except what they called political organization. There were solidarity funds which filed no accounts, public housing for Mairie workers who never seem to have paid rent, that kind of thing. And a lot of incompetence was involved as well. Still, your man Zeller was at the vocational school so at least you have that.’

‘What