the number of Jacqueline’s car, and waited, listening to the rustling of pages.

‘Hello, Bruno? Yes, I found it. The car came in at twelve and left at

three-thirty. It looks like whoever it was, they came for a good lunch.’

‘Any idea who was driving the car, or who they visited?’

‘No, just the number.’

‘Do you have the names of the Dutch lads who were staying with you?’

‘Certainly. Names, addresses, car and bike registrations, and some credit cards.

Mostly they paid cash, but some paid with cards.’ Franc spoke hesitantly, and

Bruno smiled to himself at Franc’s new dilemma, whether he would now have to

declare to the taxman even the cash income he had taken from the Dutchmen.

‘Don’t worry, Franc. This is about the Dutchmen and their visitor, nothing to do

with you or taxes. Can you get the paperwork together with the names and

addresses and all the information you have on them and I’ll be down in twenty

minutes to make copies.’

‘Can you tell me what this is about, Bruno? It’s not involved with the murder of

that Arab, is it?’

‘It’s just a hunch, Franc, but we’re investigating the way some drugs have been

getting into the area, that’s all. Twenty minutes.’

With Franc’s paperwork in hand, Bruno thought he had better tie up another loose

end and drove on through the town to Lespinasse’s garage on the main road to

Bergerac. It was a Total filling station, slightly more expensive than the

petrol at the supermarket but well-placed for the tourist trade, and it was

where Jacqueline had filled her car. Lespinasse’s sister ran the pumps, while he

and his son and a cousin tinkered happily with engines and gearboxes and

bodywork in the vast hangar of their garage. Lespinasse liked all cars, but he

loved old Citroëns, from the 1940s Model Sept with the sweeping running boards

and the doors that opened forwards to the humble but serviceable Deux-Chevaux

and the ’60s beauties that were known as the gorgeous goddesses – the

aerodynamic models called the DS that when said aloud sounded like the French

word for goddess – déesse.

As always, he found Lespinasse under a car, chewing on a matchstick and singing

to himself. He called out and the plump, jovial man wheeled himself out on the

small board on which he lay and rolled off to greet Bruno, presenting his

forearm to be shaken rather than cover Bruno’s palm with oil.

‘We saw you in the newspaper,’ said Lespinasse. ‘And on TV. A proper celebrity

you are now, Bruno. Everybody says you did a great job with those bastards.’

‘I’m here on police business, Jean-Louis, about one of your credit card

customers. I need to look at your fuel sales records for May the eleventh.’

‘The eleventh? That would have been Kati’s day off, so the boy would have been

running the pumps.’ He looked back into the garage and whistled, and young

Edouard came out, waving cheerfully. He was the image of his father but for a

full set of teeth. The boy was eighteen now but he had known Bruno ever since

he’d first learned to play rugby, so he came and kissed Bruno on both cheeks.

‘You still write down the registration numbers on the credit card slips?’ Bruno

asked.

‘Always, except for the locals that we know,’ said Edouard.

Bruno gave him the number of Jacqueline’s car, and Edouard leafed through the

file to the right day.

‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Thirty-two euros and sixty centimes at eleven forty in

the morning. Carte Bleu. I remember her, she was a real looker. Blonde. When she

came back she was with a bunch of guys, though.’

‘She came back?’

‘Yes, after lunch, in one of those big camper vans with a bunch of Hollanders. I

filled them up. Here it is, eighty euros exactly at two forty in the afternoon,

paid with a Visa card and here’s the registration number,’ said Edouard. Bruno

checked his own list. It was one of the numbers listed at the camp site.

‘And there were a couple of them on motor bikes at the same time and I filled

them too,’ Edouard went on. ‘They must have paid cash. I remember asking myself

what a nice French girl like that was doing with a bunch of foreigners.

Tough-looking guys, they were. I saw her in the back of the van with them when

the guy that paid opened the back door to get his jacket with the wallet. I

don’t think we saw them again, and I’d have remembered if we’d seen her.’

‘If you hadn’t given up playing tennis you might have met her at the tournament

last year. She came and played at the club.’

‘Well, it was either tennis or rugby so maybe I made the wrong choice,’ said

Edouard. ‘But you know me, I was always better at rugby and I like the lads in

the team.’

CHAPTER

21

Bruno left the garage feeling rather proud of himself and went directly to see

Isabelle in her temporary office above the tourist board. Trying not to show

that he felt like some ancient warrior returning with trophies from the

battlefield, he went straight to her desk, laid down three thin files and

announced, ‘New evidence.’

Isabelle, in dark trousers and a white shirt of masculine cut, sat pensively at

her desk with a pencil in her hand and wearing earphones. She looked startled to

see him at first, and then pleased. She took off the earphones and switched off

a small machine that Bruno could not identify, then rose and kissed him in

greeting.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was listening to the tape of the last round of

interrogation.

J-J

emailed it to me. You said there was new evidence?’

‘First, I’ve identified the missing photo,’ he said, trying to sound

matter-of-fact rather than pompous. ‘It’s of a team called les Oraniens who won

the Maghreb League trophy in Marseilles in 1940. They were coached by a

professional player called Giulio Villanova. By this evening we should have a

full list of the team, thanks to this man, a sports historian, who wrote a

thesis on it. Here are my notes and his phone number.’ He pushed out one of the

files he had brought.

‘Second, I’ve traced Jacqueline’s movements on the day in question.’ He put his

finger on the next file, which contained the list of Dutch names and credit card

numbers and a photocopy of the camp site’s visitors’ book with Jacqueline’s

registration number. It also contained the numbers of the vehicles that had left

the camp site while Jacqueline’s car was there.

‘Third, we can put Jacqueline in the company of the visiting Dutch boys for

almost all of the time that we think the murder was committed. This third file

has photocopies of the credit card they used to buy diesel, and the name of an

eye witness who saw her with them, and who earlier saw her fill up her own car.’

Isabelle poured him some of her own coffee before returning to her desk and

looking through the files Bruno had brought. ‘So why would she not explain to us

that she was simply visiting some Dutch boys at the camp site?’ she asked.

‘My question exactly. And you know you thought it might be drug-related, and she

was frightened of her suppliers if she talked? Well, the Dutch produce most of

the Ecstasy pills, and a bunch of Hollanders were staying at the camp site when

she visited. They came down in cars, camper vans and bikes, mainly for the

Motor-Cross rally but they stayed on – not a bad cover for distributing drugs. I

have a list of names here, some of them with credit card numbers, and I thought

you might want to see if any of them are known to your Dutch colleagues or to

any of those Europol cooperation agencies.’