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

road accident. We received a death certificate from the Belleville Mairie along with another one who died at the same time, Max Morilland, who was also on a vocational school deferment. They each had the same address, the Lafargue orphanage in Belleville.’

Bruno suppressed his excitement. ‘What was the date on the death certificate?’

‘December tenth, ’89. Both men were supposed to turn up for military service the following month, January.’

‘Thank you, my friend. This is very important. Could you email me a scan of those death certificates, please? We’re into a murder inquiry involving a man who’s been using that identity of Henri Zeller, changing his name to Bazaine. And the murdered guy was called Max.’

‘I’ll do it now. Let me know how this turns out. You’ve got me interested.’

Forgetting his promise to check army records for Loriot in Quebec, Bruno immediately called J-J to convey the news that Henri Bazaine had officially been dead for three decades, supposedly in a car crash with a man from the same orphanage named Max Morilland. As they spoke, his desktop computer pinged to signal an incoming email. It was the scans of the two death certificates that he at once forwarded to J-J and to Isabelle. The printed form itself looked straightforward, with the official stamp of the Mairie, the date, and the name of the doctor who certified the cause of death as a traffic accident.

‘I suppose this means I can arrest him for identity theft, or for forgery to evade military service,’ J-J said, sounding hesitant. ‘I’ve never come across anything like this before. I’d better have a word with our police lawyer. And this other guy, Max Morilland, do you suppose he’s the murder victim?’

‘I presume so,’ said Bruno. ‘It could be a coincidence. I’m as confused as you by this. Either Henri forged the death certificate or, more likely, got somebody in the Mairie to do it for him and sent it to the army. But the record of Henri’s death should have gone automatically to other official databases like the electoral roll and the social security register. You’d better check whether this supposed death was recorded elsewhere. And before you arrest him, do you have any evidence that he was involved in this fake certificate? He could claim he was the innocent victim of some bureaucratic mix-up – and given what I’ve been told about the state of the local archives in Belleville, that’s entirely possible.’

As Bruno spoke, his computer pinged again. The new email was from the archives in Belleville, informing him that Henri had a classmate in vocational school called Max Morilland. He immediately passed on the news to J-J.

‘It all seems too convenient,’ J-J replied.

‘It reminds me of something I read about the Resistance during the war,’ Bruno said. ‘They always wanted to have somebody inside a Mairie who could arrange to concoct apparently genuine identity documents, working papers, coupons for food rations, justifications for travel. Maybe there was somebody doing that in Belleville and making money out of it. This was back in the eighties, when it must have been easier to get away with it. Registers were filled in by hand and kept in filing cabinets, before everything became computerized.’

Bruno’s computer pinged yet again. This time it was an email from Isabelle, with a copy to J-J. It read, ‘Have passed this to Paris police and to RG. It smells fishy. We’ll also take a look at Malakoff, which has had a Communist Mayor since the 1920s and a sports stadium named after Lenin. RG suggests no arrests yet. We’ll talk.’

18

Bruno had hoped to catch a few hours’ sleep at home before heading out at around ten to his fire-watching post on the church tower of Audrix. Now he wondered whether he’d make it. He felt almost overwhelmed with all the balls he was juggling – the fire precautions, worrying about Pamela’s house and Hector as well as trying to keep straight all the aspects of the murder case. He called his friend at army records and asked him to find what he could of the military service of Laurent Loriot, the Quebec winemaker who’d been born in Belleville and had become the main customer of Henri’s wine consulting business.

His phone rang again almost at once. It was Florence to say that she had thought about his offer of one of Balzac’s puppies and she was very grateful, but her children were still too small to take proper responsibility. Bruno said he understood and promised to save one from a future litter. Then he called Rod Macrae, a former rock musician who lived nearby. He’d told Bruno months earlier that he wanted one of Balzac’s pups and now he could have one. Macrae was delighted and they agreed to visit the kennels at some future weekend and he invited Bruno to drop by to seal the deal over a drink.

The next call came from Sabine, saying that Tante-Do was becoming increasingly nervous for her own safety as a woman living alone and had asked if Sabine might come and stay with her. Bruno, feeling instantly guilty at not thinking of this, said he saw no objection but she’d better check with J-J. Moments later, Isabelle was calling again, this time to say that the latest edition of Le Monde had just arrived on her laptop and the expected counter-attack of the French establishment had begun. As she spoke, a copy of the article appeared in Bruno’s inbox.

The new ‘Finlandization’ and the danger to France [ran the headline]. As France considers how to deal with the latest eruption of the East German spy scandal of the Rosenholz dossier, a timely warning comes from Finland. During the Cold War, the term ‘Finlandization,’ deployed in the American capital as a term of abuse, described the way that the small Nordic country felt the need to remain neutral to appease its giant Soviet neighbour. Now France is threatened with a new kind of Finlandization,