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

protect the Frenchelon base. We’re down to two water tenders and our one remaining mobile pumping truck was caught in the fire. It got out, but its tyres were burned so it’s immobilized. I protested against losing the trucks and men to Domme but we had orders from the Elysée.’

As well as the famous walled bastide-fortress on the hilltop of Domme, the ridge also housed the main base of Frenchelon, the French intelligence electronic listening system that monitored the airwaves and the worldwide net, its name copied from the similar Anglo-American Echelon programme. Run by the Direction Technique of the DGSE, the French equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency, the presence of the base was an open secret in the region.

‘The wind is blowing sparks and cinders right across the containment line that was made a couple of hours ago. The volunteers spent half the night making it and then they had to run for it when the sparks blew right among them,’ Prunier added, with a shrug of resignation. ‘We’re promised a dawn flight of aircraft dumping water and flame retardant but that may be just too little too late. The fire is moving too fast. The pompiers can’t get any closer than the fortress car park and we haven’t enough pumps so their hoses haven’t got the range to send water over the top of that hill.’

‘Have you visited the fortress?’ Bruno asked. ‘That war museum has three trebuchets, medieval catapults that were used to batter down castle walls. I saw them in action here, sending fifty kilo rocks soaring for more than two hundred metres. They might be able to pitch water over the top of that hill and at least buy us some time before the aircraft arrive.’

Prunier raised his eyebrows. ‘Could you make one work?’

Bruno shook his head. ‘I saw it done but you’d need local experts, the guys who built these modern copies. The Mayor would know who they are, or Monsieur Rossillon, the owner of the castle. It was his idea to have those trebuchets built and put into operation.’

‘How would we get them to deliver water?’

‘We’d need sacks, maybe those hundred-litre heavy-duty plastic sacks used for rubbish collection. We can use plastic ties to close the tops, put them to the sling on the end of the throwing arm and send in barrages of water that way. The bags would burst when they hit the ground.’

‘Be realistic, Bruno. It may be an emergency but we still have to live with politics. The Prefect would have a fit and the Greens would go crazy if we used plastic bags. Plastic burns, and then there’s the ground pollution problem.’

‘Let’s not tell him. It’s usually better to apologize later than ask permission,’ Bruno said, but then saw Prunier frown. He tried another tack. ‘Maybe we can find some alternatives. Farmers use jute sacks and fishermen use waterproof ones to ship oysters and mussels in bulk. Get onto the main warehouses for the big supermarkets. They’ll have some. You just spoke to the Prefect. Get him to wake up the supermarket managers and get their oyster bags shipped here – by helicopter, if necessary. If that doesn’t work, tell them to ship every bag of ice in their freezers. We can pour the ice cubes into ordinary sacks and fire them.’

‘Okay, let’s try it,’ said Prunier. ‘I’d rather do something than just abandon this village and the castle.’

‘I’ll call the supermarket manager in St Denis. I know him well. Then I’ll head up there to the bastion where the trebuchets are based with as many volunteers as I can round up and you get Rossillon and his team to join me. Tell him this could be the only chance we have to save his chateau.’

‘He’s here somewhere. He was one of the volunteers,’ Prunier said, as Bruno called the home number for Simon, who managed the biggest supermarket in St Denis. A sleepy voice answered.

‘Simon, it’s Bruno. Wake up. We have an emergency. Those sacks at the supermarket in which the oysters are delivered. How many do you have in the warehouse? I remember once seeing a stack of dozens of them.’

‘Bruno, off hand I just don’t know. We send them all back at the end of every week so we’ll have twenty or thirty, I suppose. Why do you ask?’

Bruno explained why he wanted Simon to drive to the supermarket, collect all the sacks and bring them as quickly as he could to Castelnaud. Simon should quote Prunier’s authority and the police on the roads would be notified. As he ended the call he saw Prunier already speaking on his own phone.

‘Monsieur Rossillon?’ A pause. ‘This is Prunier. Can you come to the control centre here at once, if you please.’

He turned to Bruno. ‘You deal with him. I’ll call the Prefect.’

‘Wait,’ said Bruno, explaining that the police on the roads should be notified that Simon from the St Denis supermarket was bringing a carload of sacks and should be allowed to cross the bridge. Prunier told an aide to take care of it and began calling the Prefect.

Usually a friendly, energetic man in his fifties, Rossillon was more than tired, almost swaying as he joined Bruno at the door of the control truck. Bruno introduced himself, explained his idea and saw the man’s eyes brighten and his back straighten. But then his shoulders sagged.

‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘They’re pointing across the river, the wrong way.’

‘There’s a bulldozer here, the one they used to make the containment line,’ Bruno said. ‘Could that turn the trebuchets?’

‘Maybe, yes, I think they could. And I’ve got some of those jute sacks. We use them for the armour.’

Bruno looked blank.

‘When the medieval armour rusts, we put the pieces into the sacks with a lot of sand and roll them about to clean the metal. And they have more at the walnut orchard. We’ll need string to close the bags but this might just work.’

Rosillon turned and shouted some