The Crowded Grave bop-4 Page 13

  “Here, take the wheel,” said Carlos, pulling the Range Rover onto the side of the road and thumbing his cell phone as he walked around the front of the car to take the passenger’s seat.

  J-J was already at the quarry, squatting outside the small blockhouse with the iron door where the explosives were kept. With him were Jeannot, the site foreman who had done twenty years in the army engineers, and a worried-looking man in a gray suit which carried traces of the yellow-gold limestone the quarry produced. The system of dead bolts and padlocks on the door seemed intact, but around the side of the low building lay a pile of broken bricks beneath a large hole.

  “The explosives were secured according to the regulations,” the man in the suit was saying.

  “You can have all the locks in the world, but they’re useless if they can crowbar their way through the bricks,” said J-J, ignoring the man in the suit to address his words to Bruno and Carlos.

  “What did they get away with?” Bruno asked.

  “There were sixteen sticks left in the case,” said Jeannot. “We only ever keep one case at a time in the store. The rest are at the secure depot at Perigueux.”

  “Let’s hope it’s more secure than this place,” said J-J. “The stuff could have been taken anytime from six last night until Jeannot here opened the quarry at eight this morning. They were blasting yesterday and had a permit to continue blasting today. Forensics will be here soon, but I’m not confident of finding much here. They also used wire cutters on the fence that seals this place off from the road. I say ‘they’ but it could have been a single man. The dynamite wouldn’t weigh much and my grandma could break through those bricks with a good crowbar.”

  “We reckon four sticks weigh a kilo,” said Jeannot. “It’s the usual stuff, ammonium dynamite, fifty percent strength, stabilized with gelatin and sawdust.”

  “What about blasting caps?” Carlos asked.

  “We use the electric-match type, and store them separately in the safe in the office. That wasn’t touched.”

  “So either it was a thief who didn’t know what he was doing, or one who knew perfectly well where else he could get some blasting caps,” said Bruno.

  “I’ve checked the employee list,” said J-J. “Everybody has worked here at least six years and there are no connections with any of the names on that list you sent me.”

  “How often do you have dynamite stored here?” Bruno asked Jeannot.

  “Every second or third week. But it depends. For the big blasts, we drill a ten-meter hole, ten centimeters wide, fill it with about a hundred pounds of ANFO and then tamp it down with six or so feet of gravel. But then we have to do secondary blasts where we use dynamite, and we also use dynamite where the rock formation is tricky. We blast, then we quarry until we have to blast again. As I say, it depends on the rock formation, but we usually do two or three days’ blasting at a time.”

  “So anybody who knew the routine would have heard the blasting yesterday and could assume you’d be storing dynamite overnight?”

  Jeannot nodded. “It’s the way most quarries operate these days, ever since the restrictions came in on storing explosives on site.”

  “What’s that ANFO you mentioned?” J-J asked.

  “Ammonium nitrate fuel oil,” said Jeannot. “It’s cheap and it does the job. But that’s stored at the depot and we only bring that in on blasting days.”

  “I have a copy of all our licenses and permits,” said the man in the gray suit. “Everything is in order…”

  “Except that you’ve lost enough dynamite to blow up a battleship,” said J-J.

  Jeannot looked mournfully at the hole in his blockhouse. “I always said we needed concrete, but the company never got around to it.”

  “That’s enough,” said the man in the gray suit.

  Jeannot rolled his eyes at Bruno, then turned to J-J and asked, “I presume you’ll bring dogs in, give them a sniff?”

  “Sometime later today,” said J-J, and led the way back down to the road and the cars, where he paused and looked at Carlos. “What do you think? Could this be your guys?”

  “ETA prefers explosives to anything else and they’ve used dynamite before, stolen from quarries. But there’s no shortage of Semtex on the black market. Still, I think we’d better assume that it’s them. And if they’re here they’ll need a base.”

  “If they’re using explosives, then they need to place them,” said Bruno. “Our ministers are coming in by helicopter direct to the chateau so they can’t mine a road. The chateau is under guard around the clock and there’ll be dogs. Where and how do they plant the stuff?”

  “We’ll thrash it out at the evening conference,” said J-J, thumbing his way through messages on his cell phone. “By then I’ll have a preliminary forensic report on the quarry. In the meantime I have a bank robbery suspect in custody back in Perigueux… and what the hell’s going on in St. Denis? I’ve just gotten a message saying that traffic is backed up halfway to Perigueux, the gendarmerie’s asking for reinforcements and the prefect wants to know what’s going on.”

  “Duroc,” said Bruno. “And the new magistrate. They make quite a combination. They arrested a popular local farmer and his wife for killing and cooking their own ducks, and the other farmers are demonstrating for their release.”

  “ Merde. Shouldn’t you be there?”

  Bruno sighed. “When the brigadier seconded me to the security team he said this takes priority.” He took the opportunity to check his own text messages. There was one from Pamela, saying “Happy birthday; see you tonight,” and another from Stephane that said, “St. Denis bloque. Tout le monde a la bataille.”

  “I can report to Isabelle on the dynamite theft,” said Carlos. “We can do without you until this evening’s meeting. Come on, I’ll take you back.”

  Once in the car, Bruno rang the mayor, to learn that St. Denis was at a standstill. Since it was the intersection for roads running both east-west and north-south that meant a large part of the departement ’s traffic was now stalled. Duroc’s van was surrounded by immobile tractors, so close that he couldn’t even open the doors. Maurice, Sophie and the magistrate were all still inside with Duroc, and children were clambering over the tractors to taunt him. Women gathered on the pavement were demanding Sophie’s release, and Father Sentout was with them. It was all, the mayor stressed, completely peaceful, extremely noisy and great fun.

  Even if Duroc made it to the gendarmerie, its entrance was blocked by a large heap of steaming manure, the mayor gleefully reported. The pompiers had been called to use their fire hoses to wash it away, but their fire engines were also stuck and were adding to the traffic jam. Sergeant Jules, who understood the difference between duty and folly, had apparently taken one look at the gathering storm on his way to begin his shift and gone home to call in sick with a convenient migraine. And as luck would have it, a TV crew from TF1 had been making a program at Horst’s dig and was now filming the besieged gendarmerie, and its reporter was about to interview the mayor.

  “Wonderful,” said Bruno. He wished that he’d been there to watch this mobilization of St. Denis. “For the media, let’s play up the absurdity of it all. You might tell them that a farmer’s wife has been arrested for making bouillon,” he suggested. “ L’affaire bouillon has a certain ring to it, the kind of phrase the headline writers like.”

  “It invites them to add that the gendarmes are in the soup as a result,” said the mayor, chuckling. “I think this is our chance to get Duroc transferred out of St. Denis.”

  “You might want to give Radio Perigord a call. They’ll put you right on the air, and it’s crucial to get our side of the story out first,” Bruno said.

  “By the way, Bruno,” the mayor added. “Happy birthday. We’ll have a drink when we see you tonight.”

  The blockade of St. Denis was over by midday, as Bruno expected, when the thoughts of all good Frenchmen turned to lunch. Several of the farmers stopped for a petit apero of Ricard to c
elebrate their victory on the way home, and he waved away a dozen invitations to join festive groups at the bars as he headed along the rue de la Republique toward the gendarmerie. He wanted to ensure that Maurice and Sophie were released as the subprefect had insisted.

  “Want a lift, Bruno?” came a voice from the road. It was Albert, the chief fireman, making room on the wide running board for Bruno to step up and join him. “Now that the road’s clear we’re off to the gendarmerie to hose the manure from the steps. Is Maurice okay, do you know?”

  “That’s why I’m going to the gendarmerie, to find out. Sophie was the one who seemed most upset.”

  By the time they reached the square in front of the building, Duroc’s van was already parked inside the yard of the gendarmerie. A heap of manure, not nearly as large as the mayor’s description had led Bruno to believe, was tumbled over the steps, but the armored glass entrance door to the building was only partly blocked. Bruno stepped down with a wave of thanks to Albert. A few seconds later he heard the hydraulic pump of the fire engine and the spluttering inside the hose that meant the water was on the way. Ahmed had the hose pointed directly at the steps, and Bruno saw, in a moment of appalled anticipation, the handle of the door start to turn.

  Events then seemed to happen in slow motion, but unfolded in an inevitable progression as Duroc held the door open for Annette to walk through. She paused above the steps, obviously surprised to find the manure still there. Not expecting her to halt, Duroc bumped into her as he came through the door in turn. Then with one hesitant initial burst the full force of the fire hose hit the manure and sprayed it powerfully up the steps in a pungent brown flood, over Annette and Duroc and into the gendarmerie through the still open door.

  15

  Clothilde’s call came as Bruno was driving back to the mairie after dropping Maurice and Sophie at their farm. The presence of Stephane and the Villattes and other well-wishers, all proudly recounting their various feats of traffic disruption, had delayed him. Before escorting Maurice from the gendarmerie, Bruno had stopped to buy some shampoo and shower gel for Annette. He couldn’t see her relishing the harsh industrial soap that was on offer in the shower that served the gendarmerie’s cells. Along with the smallest pair of overalls that he could borrow from the firemen, he thought the toiletries a wise peace offering, making up a little for the laughter that had him and Albert leaning helplessly against the fire engine as Duroc and Annette stood and dripped manure. Still stunned by the shock of her foul drenching, Annette had barely recognized Bruno’s gesture, but he was glad he’d made it. Duroc could fend for himself.

  “ Salut, Clothilde,” he answered when she rang, pulling onto the side of the road to take the call.

  “Bruno, I’m worried about Horst. Have you seen him? He’s not at home, not at the museum and not at the dig. Nobody’s seen him since he left the dig yesterday afternoon.”

  Bruno explained about the traffic jam in St. Denis, and Clothilde objected that being stuck in traffic would not stop his answering his mobile phone. Calls for him were still coming in from archaeologists around the globe. Clothilde had phoned his neighbor who did Horst’s cleaning. She hadn’t seen him, and there was no answer when she went to knock on his door. The woman used her key to let herself in and had told Clothilde the place looked as if there’d been trouble. Furniture had been knocked over.

  “I’ll go and check his house and call you back,” Bruno told Clothilde. He hung up and then he tried Horst’s mobile number, but there was no reply. He set off for Horst’s home. The neighbor let him in, and at first Bruno thought she must have exaggerated when she’d told Clothilde the house was in disarray. One of the chairs at the big round table had been knocked over and some papers had been spilled on the floor.

  “You might want to accompany me while I look around,” Bruno told her. “I think we’d both feel reassured.”

  Horst had many years earlier bought a small and half-ruined house, one of a row of cottages just outside St. Denis on the road to Ste. Alvere, and by the time Bruno had arrived in the town he’d restored the place in a way that was both functional and lavish. The downstairs was one large room with a big round table where Horst worked and ate, a couple of armchairs and an expensive stereo system, its power light glowing red. The walls were lined with shelves for books, CDs of classical music and files and papers.

  Horst’s laptop was open on the table, its power cable trailing down to a plug in the floor. The screen was dark, but it lit up when Bruno pressed the ENTER button, open at the front page of Die Welt. Bruno checked the date; it was yesterday’s. He noted with surprise that it was still connected to the Internet. Horst was paranoid about viruses and had often warned Bruno never to leave a computer connected when not in use. The commands were all in German, but he moved the cursor to the place where the HISTORY button was usually found to see what Horst had been looking at. Another surprise; he’d been looking at peta. de sites on foie gras and animal cruelty.

  Upstairs looked tidy, the big double bed neatly made and the bathroom clean, towels hanging folded on their rails and toothbrushes and toothpaste in their jar. The bedroom was large, and the bathroom was the most luxurious Bruno had seen in St. Denis, with a large Jacuzzi bath and a separate shower stall with nozzles spraying water from every possible direction. With a smile, he remembered one evening over dinner when Clothilde had joked she had only started her affair with Horst so that she could use his bathroom. The kitchen seemed like an afterthought, a lean-to attached to the rear of the house but filled with expensive German appliances. The kitchen door led to Horst’s small terrace and garden and the space where he parked his car. Unable to park in front of the cottages, Bruno had driven into the alley and parked beside Horst’s familiar black BMW with the Cologne registration. He checked that the doors were locked.

  It was the kitchen that worried Bruno, the chopping board with an onion half sliced, a splash of olive oil in an empty frying pan and the refrigerator door ajar. A bottle of Chateau de Tiregand 2005 was open on the counter, a half-filled wineglass beside it. Horst was careful about his wine. He’d never have left a decent bottle uncorked. Horst’s overcoat was hanging on the rack by the front door, and his leather gloves were in the pockets. The morning had been cold enough that he’d have worn them if he’d been going out.

  The wooden floorboards, golden with age and layers of wax, were highly polished by the conscientious cleaner, and Bruno knelt down to see if there were any marks that might suggest a scuffle. There were some smears on the wax by the round table and more by the kitchen door. On the kitchen floor were two thin black parallel lines leading past the refrigerator to the back door. It could have been feet being dragged. On the side of the half-open refrigerator door was a reddish-brown smear that might have been a meat sauce, or it might have been blood. The back door was closed and locked, but it was a Yale so it would have locked itself.

  “Don’t touch anything,” said Bruno, when he saw the woman take a cloth from her apron. “Have you done any cleaning since you looked in when Clothilde called?” She shook her head.

  “When did you last see Horst?”

  “Yesterday morning, quite early,” she said. “He came in to give me my week’s money and then he and Clothilde left in his car. I didn’t see it come back last night, but it’s there now.”

  “You heard nothing unusual?” She shook her head again.

  “Do me a favor,” he said. “Go and ask the other neighbors if they heard or saw Horst come back anytime after he left yesterday morning, if they heard anything, or if he had any visitors.”

  Bruno used his handkerchief to open the back door for her, blocked it open with a stone and went to his car to get a pair of rubber gloves. A couple of plants had been half wrenched from the ground beside the terrace, and there were two more lines dragged in the thin grass that led to the pounded patch of gravel where Horst’s car was parked.

  Back indoors, he examined the papers strewn across the floor. They were printout
s in German, heavily corrected and annotated in Horst’s spiky handwriting. Bruno recognized the words Archaeologie and Neanderthal, but that was all. The bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling, but one of them had a cupboard where the lower shelves should have been. Inside were more files, marked “Bank” and “Tax” and another marked “Clothilde,” which contained letters and photos. Beneath them was an old photo album, and as Bruno leafed through he saw pictures of Horst as a young man getting his university degree and as a student with long hair and one of those curved mustaches that had been popular back in the sixties. The photos were chronological, so as Bruno turned the pages back he saw Horst as a schoolboy and as a child. There were family snaps of Horst with an older woman, presumably his mother, and several in which he had his arms around the shoulders of another boy, a year or two older.

  There seemed to be no pictures of a father, until he turned one page and stopped in surprise at a family group, of Horst as a baby in his mother’s arms. The older boy was sitting on the knee of a man in black uniform with a swastika armband. On the lapels were the two jagged lightning flashes that Bruno knew stood for SS.

  Horst was in his mid-sixties and had already stayed on at his university beyond the usual age of retirement. He’d have been born close to the end of the war, so he shouldn’t be surprised at Horst’s father, if that was indeed who he was, being in uniform. Being in the SS was somewhat different.

  He and Horst had never talked about the war, nor had Horst discussed his parents, although once or twice he’d remarked on the occasional incident of anti-German prejudice. But he seemed to understand it as the result of the ferocity with which the local Resistance had been crushed by the Wehrmacht. Bruno leafed back quickly through the remaining photos. There was one, clearly a wedding day with a younger, prettier version of Horst’s blond mother holding the arm of the same man, still in uniform and with an Iron Cross around his neck.

  Bruno eased the photo from the little corner tabs that held it in place, and on the back was a faded stamp of a photographer with an address in Friedrichstrasse, Berlin. There was no date, but tucked beneath it was another photo, the same man sitting on top of a tank with some other men in overalls, all of them grinning for the camera. Behind them was a burning house and one of the old French road signs. Bruno strained to read the words on the concrete arrow and was pretty sure it was Dunkerque.