Martin Walker - The Crowded Grave

“This second stroke was very bad,” she said tiredly. “They think there may be severe brain damage.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Even if she gets better, I’m going to be stuck here for some time sorting out her affairs.”

“Don’t worry about anything here. We’ll take care of it all.”

“God, I miss you. And Fabiola, and St. Denis,” she said. “How are the horses?”

He reassured her that all was well with her house and stables and described Fabiola’s dinner, remembering to emphasize the success of Pamela’s apple pie. Her replies were understandably short and distracted. She had weightier matters on her mind.

The next missed message was from a French mobile phone, the number of which was not in his own phone’s memory. Curious, he called back and heard a familiar accented voice say, “Bruno?”

“Teddy? You know half the police in France are looking for you? And where’s Kajte?” He went up the stairs to Isabelle’s room in the chateau and put a finger to his lips as she turned from her desk. He walked across as he listened to Teddy and scribbled down the cell phone number the call had been made from. He scribbled “Trace this-it’s Teddy” on a pad beside Isabelle. She nodded, scribbled “Keep him on the line,” and left the room.

“She’s with me,” Teddy was saying. “In fact it was she who persuaded me to call you. She borrowed a car from a friend in Paris and came to pick me up. Look, we want to give ourselves up. How can we do that?”

There was no arrest warrant out for either one of them. Sneaking off the bus to Bergerac was no crime; the students’ agreement to undergo explosives testing had been voluntary. Teddy was wanted solely for questioning about how he came by the map and therefore knew where to find his father’s body, something he could only have learned from someone with knowledge of where the killing had taken place.

“You can give yourself up to me, if you can get through the various patrols that are looking for you,” Bruno said. “But you’ll still be facing some tough questions. I’ll try to see you’re treated fairly. Do you want to tell me where you are?”

“We’re not far away,” Teddy said. “What sort of tough questions?”

“I think you have a good idea,” Bruno said. “It’s about that unidentified body you found. We’ve identified it and we know it’s your father. That’s why you’ll be in real trouble if you don’t give yourself up and cooperate.”

There was a silence of several beats before Teddy spoke. “What about Kajte?”

“There’s no more against her now than there was when she took the train. I think all the foie gras charges are going to be dropped.”

“We saw that story in Libe,” he said. “It seems like it’s all gotten way out of control.”

“Particularly your involvement in this Basque business,” said Bruno. “Tell me where you are and I’ll come and get you.”

“When you say this Basque business… I just wanted to find my father.”

“Teddy, you know there’s more to it than that. And don’t think you can get out of this by going home. The British police are now involved. They’ve interviewed your mother. She’s worried sick about you.”

“Will I have to spend the night in jail?”

“Hopefully you’ll be able to spend it at the campground. Your tent’s still there and I’ve got your rucksack.”

“We’re driving around now, but in about ten minutes we’ll be at that same place where you met us before, remember?”

“I remember,” said Bruno, and heard the click as Teddy disconnected. Bruno went down to the communications room to find Isabelle. She looked up from one of the two phones she was holding.

“They just lost the connection,” she said. “He’s somewhere near here, in a car.”

“I know,” said Bruno. “I’m going to pick him up now. But I’d like it understood that he’s in my custody, please. I think he trusts me. Do you want to come with me?”

“I’ll call you back,” she said into both phones at once, then put one on the table, the other into her belt pouch and stood up. “I was thinking that so far there’s nothing we can charge him with unless we can use your criminal damage case.”

“I don’t think we should charge him at all. We’ll do better to treat Teddy as a cooperative witness.”

“Tell that to the brigadier. Oh yes, and here’s the Identi-Kit photo of this Fernando who went to see Teddy’s mother. It just came in by fax from London. It’s not too helpful.”

Bruno studied the picture as Isabelle got her coat and bag. It showed a man in early middle age with receding black hair, gray at the temples, and prominent ears. His face was very pale and his eyes dark, and he had the beginnings of a double chin. The most prominent feature was the way his eyebrows, which were thick and bushy, met over the bridge of his nose. It wasn’t familiar from the file of mug shots that Bruno had already seen; he’d have remembered a face like that.

Teddy and Kajte were sitting on the same steps of the rugby stadium where he had found them last time. They stood up as he approached, looking warily at Isabelle limping beside him on her cane.

“I haven’t brought a SWAT team,” he said, shaking hands with each of them. He introduced Isabelle and told them she was a friend.

“How’s the leg?” he asked Kajte.

“It’s fine, thank you. You did a good job. I don’t even need the bandage anymore.”

“Have you seen a doctor about it?”

“No, nothing since I saw you,” she said. “I just used that cream you gave me.”

“Let’s take a look.” He led the way into the dressing rooms. Kajte slipped off her cargo pants and lay facedown on the massage table. Isabelle’s eyes were riveted on the girl’s slim and perfect thighs, Bruno saw, as if she were thinking of the wreckage the bullet had done to her own. He shook his head and told himself to focus. He peeled the bandages from Kajte’s wounds. They all looked clean and were scabbing over. He gave Kajte more bandages from the cupboard.

He turned to Teddy and handed him the Identi-Kit picture. “Do you recognize this man?”

“Yes, that’s Fernando, a cousin of my father’s. He came to see us at home every once in a while. And he came to see me at university last year.”

“Was that when he gave you the map identifying your father’s grave?” Isabelle asked.

Teddy gulped in surprise, looked down at Kajte, who was clutching his arm, and nodded. “Yes, he said he’d gotten it from a sympathizer in the Spanish police who knew my father had been assassinated by the GAL in the dirty war. He said that I was entitled to know my father’s fate and to see he got a decent burial, a place where my mother could mourn.”

“Do you know how to get in touch with him? A phone number or an address, perhaps.”

“Only an e-mail address on Yahoo. He was very cautious about being contacted.”

“So you knew he was ETA?” Isabelle asked.

“I suspected it. It was pretty obvious. He said my father had been an ETA sympathizer, which was why he was killed. He said they’d probably kill him if they could. I didn’t know what to think. It’s quite something to learn that your father was assassinated for being a member of a terrorist group.”

“And what do you think about that, about terrorism?”

“I don’t think terrorism is ever justified in a democracy. Spain these days is a democracy and the Basques have a lot of autonomy.”

“Have you ever been to the Basque country, looked up your roots?”

“I’ve never been to Spain,” he said. “The only Basque roots I know about are the ones I dug up here.”

“How often did you see Fernando, growing up?”