screen.

This time the photos, of the same event in the same square, had been taken from

another vantage point. Again, Bruno tried to look at each face. Nothing, nothing

– then he stopped. There was a face he knew, a central heating salesman from St

Cyprien to whom he had once given a ticket for obstruction. Again, Isabelle made

a note then went on scrolling. The same rally, yet another vantage point, but no

face he recognised except those that he’d seen in the previous photos.

‘Right, that’s the Périgueux rally. On to the one in Sarlat,’ said Isabelle,

clicking her way expertly through the computer screens. She probably used these

machines every day. The only computers they had in the Mairie were the big ones

used for local taxes and social security and the one he shared with the Mayor’s

secretary. In Sarlat the rally was smaller. Again, he saw a couple of people he

knew from rugby, and one from a tennis tournament, but nobody from St Denis.

Then she brought up the photos from a campaign meeting in Bergerac, and at the

third shot he gave a small gasp.

‘Seen someone? I can blow the faces up a bit if you want.’

‘I’m not sure. It’s that group of young people there.’

She enlarged the image but the angles were wrong, and she scanned through the

rest of photos, looking for shots from a different viewpoint. And there, close

to the stage, were two youngsters he knew well. The first was a pretty blonde

girl from Lalinde, about twenty kilometres away, who had reached the semi-finals

of the St Denis tennis tournament last summer. And the boy with her, looking at

her rather than at the stage, was Richard Gelletreau, the only son of a local

doctor in St Denis.

‘We may get lucky here,’ Isabelle said, when she had printed out the photos and

scribbled down Richard’s name. ‘The Party branch in Bergerac is two doors down

from a bank, and it has a security camera. Don’t ask me how, but somehow the RG

got hold of the tape and made some mug shots of everyone coming in and going out

during the campaign.’

‘Is that legal?’

She shrugged. ‘Who knows? It’s not the kind of stuff that can be used in court,

but for an investigation … well, it’s just the way it is. If you think this is

something, wait till you see the stuff the RG has on the Communists and the left

– archives going back to before the war.’

The Renseignements Généraux was the intelligence arm of the French police, part

of the Ministry of the Interior, and had been collecting information on threats

to the French state, to its good order and prosperity, since 1907. They had a

formidable, if shadowy, reputation, and Bruno had never come across their work

before. He was impressed, even though the shots of the people entering and

leaving the FN office were not very good. It was too far for a clear focus, but

he could pick out young Richard easily enough, holding hands with the girl as

they went in, putting his arm protectively around her waist when they left.

They went through the rest of Isabelle’s mug shots, but Richard Gelletreau

provided the only clear connection to St Denis.

‘What can you tell me about the boy?’ she said, swivelling her chair and picking

up a notepad from the desk.

‘He’s the son of the chief doctor at the clinic here, and they live in one of

the big houses on the hill. The father is a pillar of the community, been here

all his life, and the mother used to be a pharmacist. I think she still owns

half of the big pharmacy by the supermarket. The girl is from Lalinde. She

played tennis here last year and I can get her name from the club easily enough.

The boy went to the usual schools here and has just finished his first year at

the lycée in Périgueux. He stays there in the week and comes home for weekends.

He’ll be about seventeen by now, a normal kid, good at tennis, not much involved

in rugby. His parents are well-heeled so they’d go skiing. And of course he was

in the mathematics class with Momu – that’s the teacher who is the son of the

dead man.’

‘Local knowledge is a wonderful thing. I don’t know what we’d do without it.’

Isabelle smiled at him. ‘Thanks, Bruno. Just hang on here and I’ll go and tell

J-J. It may be nothing, just coincidence, but so far it’s the only lead we

have.’

The forensics team were still working, and the fingerprints report had yet to

come in, but the preliminary report that lay on Isabelle’s desk was clear

enough. Hamid had been hit hard in the face, probably to stun him, and then tied

up for some time. The weals on his wrists where he had tried to work loose the

rough red twine that farmers use were a clear indication that he had been alive

and working on his bonds for more than a few minutes. He had been stabbed deep

into the lower belly by a long, sharp knife, which was then pulled up and across

‘like a Japanese ritual suicide’ said the report. There was no sign of a gag,

and screams would have been likely from the victim, the report went on. Traces

of red wine were found in his eyes and his thinning hair, as though someone had

thrown a glass of it in his face. The time of death was put between midday and

two p.m., most probably around one o’clock. Indications were that the swastika