top of the Mairie. And since the firemen were also the emergency medical team

and the first people called out to any sudden death or crisis, it was impossible

to keep anything quiet. The volunteers talked to their wives and the wives

talked to each other and the whole town knew of fires or deaths or road

accidents within hours.

‘It was a brutal killing, a stabbing. That’s all we really know so far,’ said

Bruno cautiously. He had a good idea of what Ahmed must have heard from the

other firemen.

‘It was racists, fascists,’ Ahmed snapped. ‘I heard what was carved on old

Hamid’s chest. It was those Front National swine, taking on a helpless old man.’

Putain. This bit of news had become public even faster than he had feared, and

it would spread more poison as it travelled.

‘I don’t know what you heard, Ahmed, but I know what I saw, and I don’t know if

it was meant to be some kind of pattern or if they were wounds he received when

he put up a fight,’ he said levelly, looking Ahmed in the eye. ‘Rumour has a way

of exaggerating things. Let’s stick with the facts for the moment.’

‘Bruno is right,’ said the Mayor quietly. A small, slim man whose mild-mannered

looks were deceptive, he had a way of making himself heard. Gérard Mangin had

been Mayor of St Denis long before Bruno had taken up his job a decade earlier.

Mangin had been born in the town, into a family that had been there forever. He

had won scholarships and competitive examinations and gone off to one of the

grandes écoles in Paris where France educates its elite. He worked in the

Finance Ministry while allying himself with a rising young star of the Gaullist

party called Jacques Chirac and launching his own political career. He had been

one of Chirac’s political secretaries, and was then sent to Brussels as Chirac’s

eyes and ears in the European Commission, where he had learned the complex art

of securing grants. Elected Mayor of St Denis in the 1970s, Mangin had run the

party for Chirac in the Dordogne, and was rewarded with an appointment to the

Senate to serve out the term of a man who had died in office. Thanks to his

connections in Paris and Brussels, St Denis had thrived. The restored Mairie and

the tennis club, the old folk’s home and the small Industrial Zone, the camp

sites, the swimming pool and the agricultural research centre had all been built

with grants the Mayor had secured. His mastery of the planning and zoning codes

had built the commercial centre with its new supermarket. Without the Mayor and

his political connections, St Denis might well have died, like so many other

small market towns of the Périgord.

‘My friends, our Momu has suffered a great loss and we grieve with him. But we

must not let that loss turn into anger before we know the facts,’ the Mayor said

in his precise way. He gripped Momu’s hand and pulled the burly Arab to his side

before looking round at Ahmed and Momu’s friends. ‘We who are gathered here to

share our friend’s grief are all leaders of our community. And we all know that

we have a responsibility here to ensure that the law takes its course, that we

all give whatever help we can to the magistrates and the police, and that we

stand guard together over the solidarity of our dear town of St Denis. I know I

can count on you all in the days ahead. We have to face this together.’

He went first to Momu, and then shook hands with each of the others and gestured

to Bruno to leave with him. As he reached the door, he turned and called out to

the head teacher, ‘Rollo, stay a while until I return to collect my wife.’ Then,

gently gripping Bruno’s arm, he propelled him into the night, along the driveway

and out of earshot of the house.

‘What is this about a swastika?’ he demanded.

‘It isn’t clear, but that’s what the gendarmes and the firemen thought was

carved into the guy’s chest. They’re probably right, but I told the truth in

there. I can’t be sure, not until the corpse is cleaned up. He was stabbed in

the belly and then eviscerated. There could have been the Mona Lisa painted on

that chest and I couldn’t swear to it.’ Bruno shook his head, squeezing his eyes

to block out the dreadful image. The Mayor’s grip tightened on his arm.

‘It was a butchery,’ Bruno went on after a moment. ‘The old man’s hands were

tied behind his back. There were no signs of a robbery. It looked like he was

interrupted while having his lunch. Two things were missing, according to Karim.

There was a Croix de Guerre he won while fighting for France as a Harki, and a

photo of his old football team. The neighbours don’t seem to have seen or heard

anything unusual. That’s all I know.’

‘I don’t think I ever met the old man, which probably makes him unique in this

town,’ said the Mayor. ‘Did you know him?’

‘Not really. I met him at Karim’s just before he moved here. I never spoke with

him beyond pleasantries and never got much sense of the man. He kept himself to

himself, always seemed to eat on his own or with his family. I don’t recall ever

seeing him in the market or the bank or doing his shopping. He was a bit of a

recluse in that little cottage way out in the woods. No TV and no car. He

depended on Momu and Karim for everything.’