‘Green,’ said Xavier, who followed such allegiances closely. ‘She got involved

in that campaign against the pollution from the sawmill. Thirty jobs at stake

and those daft Ecolos want to close it down.’

‘What I mean is that Richard wouldn’t have heard any of this anti-immigrant

stuff at home. His mother is a Green and the doctor doesn’t seem to have any

politics,’ Michel continued. ‘So where did he pick it up?’

‘In bed, I think,’ said Bruno. ‘I think he fell for that girl from Lalinde who

got to the tennis semi-finals last year, and she was in the Front pretty deep.

She’s a pretty thing and he was besotted with her.’

‘That can’t be right,’ said Rollo. ‘This fight took place three years ago, when

they were at the college here. They’d have been thirteen or so. And young

Richard didn’t meet the girl until the tournament last summer.’ He took his

glass as if he were about to gulp the wine, but remembered himself and took an

appreciative sniff of the St Emilion and then a sip. ‘When he left my care, he

was a fine boy, a good pupil, a credit to the town. I thought he might go on to

Paris, the Sciences-Po or the Polytechnique.’

‘Instead, it looks like it could be prison for your fine boy,’ said the Baron,

using a chunk of bread to mop up every last trace of buttery egg from his plate.

CHAPTER

11

Bruno did not normally drink in the mornings, but Saturday was the exception. It

was the day of the small market of St Denis, usually limited to the open space

beneath the Mairie where the stall holders set out their fruit and vegetables,

their homemade breads and their cheeses between the ancient stone pillars.

Stéphane, a dairy farmer from the rolling country up the river, parked his

custom-made van in the car park to sell his milk and butter and cheeses. He

always arranged a small cassecroűte, a breaking of the crust, at about nine

a.m., an hour after the market opened. For Stéphane, who rose at five to tend

his cows, it was like a mid-morning snack, but for Bruno it was always the first

bite of his Saturdays, and he took a small glass of red wine with the thick hunk

of bread stuffed with Stéphane’s rabbit pâté. The wine came from young Raoul,

who had taken over his father’s business selling wines at the various local

markets. This day he had brought along a young Côtes de Duras, best known for

its whites, but he thought this red was special. It was certainly an improvement

on the Bergerac Bruno normally drank on Saturday mornings.

‘What does that one sell for?’ he asked.

‘Normally five euros, but I can let you have a case for fifty, and you should

keep it three or four years,’ said Raoul.

Bruno had to be careful with his money, since his pay was almost as modest as

his needs. When he bought a wine to store it was usually to share with friends

on some special occasion, so he preferred to stay with the classic vintages that

his chums would know. Mostly he bought a share of a barrel with the Baron from a

small winemaker they knew in Lalande de Pomerol, and they bottled the three

hundred litres themselves, a well-lubricated day to which they both looked

forward and which, inevitably, by evening became a large party for half the

village at the Baron’s chateau.

‘Have you seen the doctor?’ Stéphane asked.

‘Not yet,’ said Bruno. ‘It’s out of my hands. The Police Nationale are involved

and everything is being handled over in Périgueux.’

‘He’s one of us, though,’ Stéphane said, avoiding Bruno’s eye and taking a large

bite of his bread and pâté.

‘Yes, and so are Karim and Momu,’ Bruno said firmly.

‘Not quite the same way,’ said Raoul. ‘The doctor’s family has been here forever

and he delivered half the babies in town, me and Stéphane included.’

‘I know that, but even if the boy is not involved in the murder, there’s still a

serious drugs case being investigated,’ said Bruno. ‘And it’s not just some

weed, there are pills and hard drugs – the kind of things we want to keep out of

St Denis.’

Bruno felt uneasy about the spreading word of mouth. Half the town seemed to

know about young Richard Gelletreau’s arrest, and everybody knew the doctor and

his wife. There were not many secrets in St Denis, which was usually a good

thing for police work, but not this time. Naturally people would talk about the

arrest of a schoolboy, the son of a prominent neighbour, but there were layers

to this rumour, about Arabs and Islam, that were something new both for him and

for St Denis. Bruno read his morning newspaper and watched the TV and listened

to France-Inter when he worked in his garden. He knew there were supposed to be

six million Muslims in a France of sixty million people, that most of them came

from North Africa and too few of them had jobs, probably through no fault of

their own. He knew about the riots and the car burnings in Paris and the big

cities, about the votes that the Front National had won in the last elections,

but he had always felt that was something remote from St Denis. There were fewer

Arabs in the Dordogne than in any other department of France, and those in St

Denis were like Momu and Karim: good citizens with jobs and families and

responsibilities. The women did not wear the veil and the nearest mosque was in

Périgueux. When they married, they performed the ceremony in the Mairie like

good republicans.

‘I’ll tell you what we also want to keep out of St Denis,’ said Raoul, ‘and

that’s the Arabs. There are too many here already.’

‘What, half a dozen families, including old Momu who taught your kids to count?’

‘Thin end of the wedge,’ said Raoul. ‘Look at the size of the families they have

– six kids, seven sometimes. Two or three generations of that and we’ll be

outnumbered. They’ll turn Notre-Dame into a mosque.’

Bruno put his glass down on the small table behind Stéphane’s van, and wondered

how best to handle this without getting into a row in the middle of the market.

‘Look, Raoul. Your grandmother had six kids, or was it eight? And your mother

had four, and you have two. That’s the way it goes, and it will be the same for

the Arabs. Birth rates fall, just as soon as the women start to get an

education. Look at Momu – he only has two kids.’

‘That’s just it. Momu is one of us. He lives like us, works like us, likes his

rugby,’ replied Raoul. ‘But you look at some of the rest of them, six and seven

kids, and the girls don’t even go to school half the time. When I was a lad

there were no Arabs here. Not one. And now there’s what, forty or fifty, and

more arriving and being born every year. And they all seem to have first call on

the public housing. With prices the way they are now I don’t know how my own

youngsters will ever get a start in life and be able to afford their own house.

And for our family, this is our country, Bruno. We’ve been here forever, and I’m

very careful about who I want to share it with.’

‘You want to know why the Front National gets the vote it does?’ chimed in

Stéphane. ‘Just open your eyes. It’s not just the immigrants, it’s the way the

usual parties have let us down. It’s been coming for years, that’s why so many

people vote for the Greens or for the Chasse party. Don’t get me wrong, Bruno.

I’m not against the Arabs, and I’m not against immigrants; not when my own wife

is the daughter of a Portuguese who immigrated here back before the war. But

they are like us. They are white and European and Christian, and we all know the