Martin Walker - Black Diamond

“You’re a lucky man,” Gelletreau said. “Mainly second-degree burns, including some bad ones on the back of your calves. The smoke inhalation doesn’t seem too bad. A few days rest and you’ll be fine.”

“I have to be in Bordeaux at three this afternoon,” Bruno said.

“Too late,” Gelletreau said. “It’s almost three already.”

Bruno looked out the window. It was bright daylight, and he could see the sun on the stone of the mairie across the river.

“Don’t worry,” said Fabiola. “J-J knows all about it. Everything is taken care of.”

“The Chinese girls?” he asked. His voice sounded hoarse and it hurt to talk.

“A boy and a girl,” Fabiola said, but her face was grim. “They’ll be okay.”

“A boy? I’m sure I saw two girls when we were there.”

“You did. We both did. One of the girls didn’t make it.”

“Did I leave her in the room?” he asked, dreading the answer.

“No, she was in the front of the house. She’d have been dead before you arrived. You saved what there was to save, but Albert says he’s never letting you near a fire again.”

“Fine with me,” Bruno said, waving away the milk and sinking back onto the bed.

“There’s something else,” Fabiola said. “Those Chinese children, when I examined them, they’d been abused, sexually abused, not once but repeatedly and over a considerable time. We’re waiting for a Chinese translator and a child psychiatrist to try and find out what happened to them.”

Bruno closed his eyes. That meant they can’t have been Minxin’s nieces. If only he’d gotten the children registered and into school he might have prevented all this. He’d been meaning to do that ever since he saw the girls at the restaurant.

“The girl who died,” Fabiola went on. “She wasn’t alone. There was a big adult male with her. They died in bed together from the smoke.”

“Do we know who he was?”

“They’re checking the teeth with local dentists. It’s the only way he’ll be identified.”

Arson and a double murder, thought Bruno. The Vietnamese were in trouble. He hoped Tran and Bao Le had not been part of it.

“You’ve got some visitors,” Gelletreau said. “I think you’re well enough to see them.”

Fabiola opened the door and the mayor came in, then stood to one side and held the door wide open. A camera flashed from the outer room. Philippe Delaron again, thought Bruno wearily; he’s making a living out of me.

“Look at these, Bruno,” said the mayor, coming to the bed and leafing through some prints. “By the way, I fed your chickens and dog and gave him a walk. In fact he’s in the back of my car.”

He thrust one of the photos close to Bruno’s face. It showed him leaning out of the window, handing one of the children to a waiting fireman while fires leaped from a lower window. There was another, with Bruno swinging on the firemen’s ladder and silhouetted against a ball of flame erupting from the room behind him.

“Tomorrow’s front page, and Philippe says he’s also sold them to Paris Match. That’s why he wanted the picture of you in the hospital, to round out the story.”

“Did you know that young Pons has been arrested?” Bruno said.

“J-J called to tell me. That means I win the election, as Pamela might say. She’s waiting outside, wants to know if you’d like to see her.”

Of course he wanted to see her. “Does she know about Pons?”

“I just told her.”

“How did she take it?”

The mayor shrugged as only a Frenchman can, a gesture that carried with it all the weight of the world’s imponderables and prime among them the glorious mystery of women.

“Have you heard anything from J-J about Isabelle? You know she was shot?”

“J-J said to tell you she’s fine.”

“What have you heard about the bodies they found at the fire?” Bruno asked.

“No identification as yet. There’s a young inspecteur from Bergerac waiting to see you who wants to talk about that, when you’re ready.”

“That’ll be Jofflin. Bring him in first, there’s things that have to be cleared up.”

Jofflin too came into the room brandishing some photos, but his were gray and fuzzy.

“The forensics people used infrared and then computer enhancement on those charred prints in Didier’s wastebasket. This is what they got. I think he was being blackmailed.”

Bruno tried with little success to control the revulsion he felt at the images of Didier with a naked young Chinese boy. It somehow made it worse that Didier had kept his socks on. Bruno looked more closely at the chaise longue on which Didier was lying.

“I think I recognize the furniture from Pons’s Auberge, the house where the children were.” He felt sick. If only he’d pressed the issue sooner about getting the kids into school, this would never have happened. He hadn’t even known there was a boy as well as the nieces.

“There’s no doubt it’s the same Chinese boy as the one here, the one you pulled out of the house,” Jofflin said.

Bruno handed the photos to the mayor. “A hell of a cop I am. Didn’t even know someone was running a pedophile brothel in my backyard. That’s another crime we’ll be charging young Pons with, and to think he might have been your successor.”

“I tried to call his father, to let him know his son was arrested and in the hospital, but I haven’t tracked him down yet,” said the mayor. “I know they were badly estranged, but still, a son is a son. The tie of blood is strong.”

Bruno nodded, feeling very tired, and wondering just what Pons might feel. He turned to Jofflin. “Do you have enough to arrest Boniface Pons for the truffle fraud?”

“More than enough,” the young inspecteur replied. “We’ve already been in touch with the tax authorities about the money laundering. He’s not at home, not in the new office he set up in St. Felix, not answering his phones. I was going to ask you where that plantation of his was, we might find him there.”

“It’s on that back road behind the cemetery,” said the mayor. “The one that leads down past the Lespinasse garage.”

“Of course,” said Bruno, suddenly making the one connection that threw everything in a different light. “I’ve been a fool. They conned us all, the two of them.”

He tried to sit up, but his legs were immobilized.

“Get my feet out of these damn straps and bring one of those doctors in here. I’ve got work to do.”

The mayor protested, but Jofflin unhooked Bruno’s ankles from the supporting straps and helped Bruno to his feet.

“Pass me those trousers on the chair,” he said, clinging to the bedpost as he sat gingerly, his burned legs stretched out before him.

Jofflin held up the trousers with a smile. They were in tatters. Another new uniform to go on his expense account, thought Bruno.

“Pass them over and hand me those scissors on the counter.” He snipped off the legs and was left with a pair of serviceable shorts. Jofflin helped him ease them over the gauze bandages, looked in the closet and held out the shirt and jacket that were hanging there. They stank of smoke and were still smeared with foam, but they would do. There were no socks, but Bruno jammed his feet into his boots and stood, swaying as the dizziness hit him, just as Fabiola reentered the room.

“You’re mad,” she said. “You’re in no condition to be up.”

The faces of Pamela and the baron peered around the door, and in the distance Bruno could hear the clattering sound of a helicopter. He tore his eyes away from Pamela’s worried face.

“Which dentist did Boniface Pons use?” he asked the mayor, who shook his head.

“Same one as me,” said the baron from the door. “Piguin in Siorac; I’ve met Pons in the waiting room there.”