Martin Walker: Black Diamond

“Have you seen her?” His voice sounded thick and slurred.

“I saw her loaded into the chopper. She’ll be okay, Bruno. The brigadier spoke to the chief surgeon.”

“Anyone else hurt?”

“Just the bad guys. Isabelle got one of them when they opened up with AK-47s, and the marines got three more. But it’s all under control. We’ve got the ship, the campers, the site, and we’re still counting the migrants. It was over two hundred last I heard. No kids, but some of them look pretty young.”

“Do you know if the bullet hit the bone? Can I see her?”

“I don’t see why not. It hit her high on the leg, close to the hip, but it didn’t get the joint. That’s all I know. And she lost a lot of blood. They were giving her transfusions as they loaded her into the chopper. She’ll still be under anesthetic for a while. Maybe better to wait till the afternoon. I think the hospital’s called Robert Piquet, or was that the old one? I’ll get you the address and see you there about three. The brigadier wants to see you first.”

“Any idea why?”

“That Guillaume Pons you were asking about, we just arrested him at the campsite. He was the only non-Asian there except for a couple dozen Iraqis and Afghanis who were paying their way. And there’s a lot about him in the brigadier’s files. He may have started as a croupier in Macau, but he rose fast. He took a bullet in the shoulder, and he’s probably going to lose an arm.”

“Is he in the same hospital as Isabelle?” Bruno was surprised that Pons had been at the scene. He’d have thought Pons either too important to the organization to risk his presence at the landing of the illegals, or too peripheral to be so deeply involved. If he hadn’t been at the scene, the only count against him was allowing the campers to stay on his premises. He wouldn’t even have been charged.

“He’s in a prison hospital,” said J-J. “He was armed and shooting back. He’ll be going down for a long time.”

“What was he armed with?” It was hard to imagine Pons with a weapon.

“A cheap handgun. A Norinco nine millimeter, Chinese military issue. You find them all over Asia, they tell me. More and more of them here in Europe.”

“What happens now?”

“The brigadier says it’s time to play peacemaker between the treizieme and the Vietnamese. Now that he’s rolled up this operation, he reckons he’s dealing from strength, and the treizieme is on the defensive, so it’s time for the truce meeting. And that credit card you gave us-it’s leading right back to the big boys. There’s a whole network of connected accounts, and we’ve frozen all of them.”

Bruno hung up and lay back on the tangled sheets, thinking of Isabelle and her wound and the fascination with which she had explored his own scar in this very bed, tracing it with her fingers. And now her perfect body would carry its own mark of violence received. Would she be as lithe, as skilled and fast at her karate, after her release from the hospital? Would she feel the dampness and the coming of winter somewhere deep in the wound, as Bruno did?

Why did it matter so much to him? Their affair was over, the weeks of magic she had brought to his life would never return. But why had he not taken his chance for a final night with her in Bordeaux, to follow her into the elevator and down the hall to her room and into the welcoming darkness where the only light would be from the whiteness of her body and the sparkle of her eyes?

He turned onto his side. He had to try to stop thinking about her. It was finished. He had to find some way to repair his relationship with Pamela. But he’d have to start by explaining that Pons had been shot and arrested. Surely she couldn’t still take Pons’s side after that, even though she’d blamed him and the mayor for the closure of the Auberge. Even if she admits that she’s been wrong about Pons, she’ll feel like a fool, which probably means she’ll resent me, Bruno thought. He’d probably lost her already. And when she learned that Pons would probably lose an arm, she might even blame Bruno. At least her political career wasn’t over, if the mayor went ahead and brought her onto the council. And now there was no chance of his losing the election.

This time it was the siren that woke him, the rising and falling whine from the roof of the mairie that always made him think of war and invasion. He sat up in bed. At this hour, it had to be a fire. He fumbled for the light switch, knocking over the book he’d been reading, and looked for the phone. It was on the chair, recharging. He was about to hit the familiar single number for the pompiers but remembered it was the mayor’s phone. He scrolled through the directory and found it under P.

“It’s Bruno. Where’s the fire?”

“I just tried to call you but there was no answer. It’s Ahmed here.”

“I’m on another number. Where is it?”

“That new restaurant out on the road to Les Eyzies, L’Auberge des Verts, and it sounds like a big one. We’ve got everything out there, and all of the engines from Les Eyzies and Le Bugue as well. Albert’s in charge and he’s been asking where you were.”

“Tell him I’m on my way.”

He washed his face and neck, brushed his teeth and dressed quickly. He swigged at a bottle of milk and remembered to pocket the phone. He fed his dog and his chickens and grabbed the remnant of an old baguette and a hunk of Stephane’s Tomme d’Audrix and raced for the Land Rover. There would be a bottle of water in the car, and knowing Albert, he’d have arranged to have coffee available at the fire.

So the Vietnamese had taken their revenge. He had no doubt that this fire was deliberate. Tran might have been oblique, but his message had been clear: the Vietnamese would have to fight back. How they had identified Bill as an enemy was beyond Bruno. Perhaps they had followed the campers from Lille and seen them seek safe harbor at Bill’s Auberge. Perhaps they were tapping phones as well. It wouldn’t surprise him. A big fire, Ahmed had said. That probably meant that more than just the main building had been hit. Christ, those Chinese girls were living there. He pressed the accelerator against the floor. An old Land Rover would take him anywhere, but it wasn’t built for speed.

He raced through St. Denis, chewing stale bread and cheese, noting all the lights on in the gendarmerie and in the medical center. They’d have been alerted by the siren. There was probably not much need for him to be there, if he were honest. But he had standing instructions at the fire station to call him for every fire in the commune. This was his town and his responsibility. The townsfolk had to know that he’d always be there.

Once past the railway crossing and the bend over the bridge, Bruno could see the red glow up on the ridge against the cold night sky. He dropped a gear, raced into the turn onto the side road and powered up the hill to the pretentious stone pillars that Pons had erected. As he slowed to enter the big compound, he could see three separate fires raging-one in the Auberge itself and two in the outer buildings. As he watched, the glass of the solar panels cracked in a series of small explosions that sounded almost like gunfire. The roof of the restaurant crumpled and fell, and one of the windmills beside it began to topple slowly onto its side. He parked out of the way of the fire engines, went looking for Albert and found him shouting into a mobile phone.

“I don’t care if the silly bastards turned the water off because of a court order. I need it back on again now. We’re running out of water here, and I’ve got three fires.” He waved to acknowledge Bruno’s presence. “At least can you tell me where it was turned off so I can get it back on again? You don’t know? Putain de merde, how am I supposed to fight this fire?”