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

somebody burned out your stall and I said that was just a joke? Or if somebody held you up at gunpoint and I just shrugged and said you shouldn’t take it seriously? We’re cops. We’re not supposed to back away and say it’s all a joke. It’s not a joke to me when some cop-hater trashes the reputation of a good man.’

He stared around at the people who had gathered to watch this confrontation, and one by one they dropped their eyes. As they began to move away, Bruno felt a hand land heavily on his shoulder and heard Léopold’s deep voice.

‘I was right here in this market just before Christmas when some young thugs trashed the Vietnamese stall that sells those nems we all like,’ the big Senegalese said quietly, looming over the T-shirt seller. ‘This cop here, Bruno, was dressed like Santa Claus, raising money for kids. And he went for those thugs, knocked them down and took them out. Alone.’

‘I didn’t mean anything,’ mumbled the T-shirt man, backing away to the shelter of his stall. ‘Sorry.’

Bruno nodded at him coldly, turned, and Léopold shook his hand. ‘My boys and I will be going to the pompiers to sign up for the fire watch after the market closes,’ he said.

‘Thanks, Léopold, See you there,’ Bruno said, and walked on to the fire station. Ahmed was holding the fort, Albert’s deputy and the only other professional firefighter in the St Denis team. The rest were all volunteers.

‘Albert is getting some sleep,’ Ahmed said. ‘He’ll be on watch all night. We’ve got some more professionals coming up from Bordeaux later today, bringing water tenders. You ought to go home and get some sleep. We might need you tonight.’

Instead, Bruno went back to his office and called an old contact in army records to see if there was any record of Henri being excused military service for asthma. He gave Henri’s details, and was promised a call back. Then he called the Belleville archives again, to see if they had any medical records of children at the orphanage suffering from asthma. They would check. Almost as soon as he put down the phone on his desk, the mobile at his waist buzzed.

‘What’s this crap on Twitter about J-J?’ came Isabelle’s familiar voice.

‘Bonjour, Isabelle. It’s good to hear your voice,’ he replied. ‘There’s a publicity-hungry lawyer playing games over the Oscar case.’

‘That’s clear from the Twitter feed but is this guy that J-J interrogated really a suspect?’

‘His name is Henri Bazaine and his identity was visually confirmed by an old girlfriend who knew both him and Max – that’s Oscar’s real name. The guy says she’s mistaken, so we’re double-checking his background at an orphanage in Bellville that was long since closed and the local records were left in a mess, lots of files missing or destroyed.’

‘Belleville? In the old Red Belt?’

‘Yes, an orphanage named after someone called Paul Lafargue.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me. Lafargue was Karl Marx’s French son-in-law. He founded the Workers’ Party in France and wrote a book with the brilliant title, The Right to be Lazy. No wonder they liked him in Belleville. Still, it’s convenient that this Henri claims to be from somewhere where the archives are a mess.’

‘I’m checking his military service records. He claims he was excused because of asthma.’

‘Would you like me to have someone take a look at the old RG files?’ she asked. The Renseignements Généraux was the old police and security intelligence network which devoted much of its time to watching French political activists of left and right. Some of its employees were once famously discovered planting microphones in the offices of the investigative weekly Le Canard enchaîné. The RG had long since been merged into a new Directorate of Internal Security but its files and its work continued.

Hoping the RG might turn up something useful, Bruno gave her Henri’s details, including his original surname, and then ended the call as his desk phone rang again. It was J-J, announcing himself by saying, ‘Your mobile line was busy.’

‘It was Isabelle, worried about your Twitter attack.’

‘A man is judged by the enemies he makes,’ J-J replied, his voice calm. ‘Enough of that. I seem to recall that you had a contact with the Quebec cops in Canada. Are you still in touch?’

‘I can be. Why?’

‘I’m interested in Henri’s wine-consulting business. Don’t ask how I know but there are hefty annual payments to Henri from a Montreal-based corporation that owns vineyards and distilleries in Quebec and on the west coast. It all looks legal – a friend in the fisc tells me the money was declared and tax paid. It’s a lot, ten grand a year going back as far as we can track – over ten years – and rising to fifteen the last two years. We looked at the firm’s website and it seems real but maybe the local cops know something different.’

‘I can try. What have you got?’

‘It’s called Vins de la Nouvelle France, and it’s run by a guy called Laurent Loriot, and guess what? He was born in Belleville, just two days before our Henri. It seems a hell of a coincidence. He emigrated to Quebec from France in ’91 and made good.’

‘You have to be joking.’ Bruno scratched his head, thinking hard, and said, ‘I just talked to Isabelle. She’s looking into old RG files about Belleville. You could ask her to try Loriot’s name along with Henri’s and I’ll do the same with army records and a helpful guy at the Belleville archives. And she’s the one with the Quebec police contacts.’

Bruno tried his army records contact first, a retired sous-officier who had helped him in the past, who began by saying he was about to call Bruno.

‘There’s nothing here in the Henri Zeller file about asthma or any medical condition. He got a deferment to finish vocational school and the next thing we knew was that we were informed that Henri Zeller had died in a