recognised them from the photo I gave to Ivan. She saw it when she stopped for

her petit café. She’s sure it’s them.’

‘Did she see their car?’ Bruno asked.

‘A silver Renault Laguna, quite new.’ Jeanne read out the number. Interesting,

thought Bruno. It was a number for the Departement of the Corrčze. They would

have taken the train to Brive and picked up the car there, outside the Dordogne.

They must have realised that the local spy network was watching for them. Bruno

walked out of the pedestrian zone and onto the main square by the old stone

bridge, where the inspectors would have to come past him before they reached the

market. He phoned his fellow municipal police chiefs in the other villages with

markets that week and gave them the car and its number. His duty was done, or

rather half his duty. He had protected his friends from the inspectors; now he

had to protect them from themselves.

So he rang old Joe, who had for forty years been Bruno’s predecessor as chief of

police of St Denis. Now he spent his time visiting cronies in all the local

markets, using as an excuse the occasional sale from a small stock of oversized

aprons and work coats that he kept in the back of his van. There was less

selling done than meeting for the ritual glass, a petit rouge, but Joe had been

a useful rugby player two generations ago and was still a pillar of the local

club. He wore in his lapel the little red button that labelled him a member of

the Légion d’Honneur, a reward for his boyhood service as a messenger in the

real Resistance against the Germans. Bruno felt sure that Joe would know about

the tyre-slashing, and had probably helped organise it. Joe knew everyone in the

district, and was related to half of them, including most of St Denis’s current

crop of burly rugby forwards who were the terror of the local rugby league.

‘Look, Joe,’ Bruno began when the old man answered with his usual gruff bark,

‘everything is fine with the inspectors. The market is clean and we know who

they are. We don’t want any trouble this time. It could make matters worse, you

understand me?’

‘You mean the car that’s parked in front of the bank? The silver Laguna?’ Joe

said, in a deep and rasping voice that came from decades of Gauloises and the

rough wine he made himself. ‘Well, it’s being taken care of. Don’t you worry

yourself, petit Bruno. The Gestapo can walk home today. Like last time.’

‘Joe, this is going to get people into trouble,’ Bruno said urgently, although

he knew that he might as well argue with a brick wall. How the devil did Joe

know about this already? He must have been in Ivan’s café when Jeanne was

showing the photos around. And he had probably heard about the car from

Marie-Hélčne in the bank, since she was married to his nephew.

‘This could bring real trouble for us if we’re not careful,’ Bruno went on. ‘So

don’t do anything that would force me to take action.’

He closed his phone with a snap. Scanning the people coming across the bridge,

most of whom he knew, he kept watch for the inspectors. Then from the corner of

his eye he saw a familiar car, a battered old Renault Twingo that the local

gendarmes used when out of uniform, being driven by the new Capitaine he had not

yet had time to get to know. From Normandy, they said, a dour and skinny type

called Duroc who did everything by the book. Suddenly an alert went off in

Bruno’s mind and he called Joe again.

‘Stop everything now. They must be expecting more trouble after last time. That

new gendarme chief has just gone by in plain clothes, and they may have arranged

for their car to be staked out. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’

‘Merde,’ said Joe. ‘We should have thought of that but we may be too late. I

told Karim in the bar and he said he’d take care of it. I’ll try and call him

off.’

Bruno rang the Café des Sports, run by Karim and his wife, Rashida, very pretty

though heavily pregnant. Rachida told him Karim had left the café already and

she didn’t think he had his mobile with him. Putain, thought Bruno. He started

walking briskly across the narrow bridge, trying to get to the parking lot in

front of the bank before Karim got into trouble.

He had known Karim since he first arrived in the town over a decade ago as a

hulking and sullen Arab teenager, ready to fight any young Frenchman who dared

take him on. Bruno had seen the type before, and had slowly taught Karim that he

was enough of an athlete to take out his resentments on the rugby field. With

rugby lessons twice a week and a match each Saturday, and tennis in the summer,

Bruno had taught the lad to stay out of trouble. He got Karim onto the school

team, then onto the local rugby team, and finally into a league big enough for

him to make the money that enabled the giant young man to marry his Rashida and

buy the café. Bruno had made a speech at their wedding. Putain, putain, putain

If Karim got into trouble over this it could turn very nasty. The inspectors

would get their boss to put pressure on the Prefect, who would then put pressure

on the Police Nationale, or maybe they would even get on to the Ministry of

Defence and bring in the gendarmes who were supposed to deal with rural crime.