Martin Walker: Bruno, chief of police

These had been early skirmishes in the age-old war between the French peasant and the tax collectors and enforcers of the power of the state. And now, the latest depredations of the inspectors (who were Frenchmen, but took their orders from Brussels) was simply the latest campaign in the endless struggle. Had the laws and regulations been entirely French, Bruno might have had some reservations about working so actively, and with such personal glee, to frustrate them. But they were not: these were Brussels laws from this distant European Union, which allowed young Danes and Portuguese and Irish to come and work on the camp sites and in the bars each summer, just as if they were French.

His local farmers and their wives had their living to earn, and would be hard put to pay the inspectors’ fines from the modest sums they made in the market.

Above all, they were his friends and neighbours.

In truth, Bruno knew there were not many warnings to give. More and more of the market stalls these days were run by strangers from out of town who sold dresses and jeans and draperies, cheap sweaters and T-shirts and second-hand clothes.

Two coal-black Senegalese sold colourful dashikis, leather belts and purses, and a couple of local potters displayed their wares. There was an organic bread stall and several local vintners sold their Bergerac, and the sweet Monbazillac dessert wine that the Good Lord in his wisdom had kindly provided to accompany foie gras. There was a knife-sharpener and an ironmonger, Diem the Vietnamese selling his nems – spring rolls – and Jules selling his nuts and olives while his wife tended a vast pot of steaming paella. The various stalls selling fruit and vegetables, herbs and tomato plants were all immune – so far – from the men from Brussels.

But at each stall where they sold home-made cheese and patй, or ducks and chickens that had been slaughtered on some battered old stump in the farmyard with the family axe rather than in a white-tiled abattoir by people in white coats and hairnets, Bruno delivered his warning. He helped the older women to pack up, piling the fresh-plucked chickens into cavernous cloth bags to take to the nearby office of Patrick’s driving school for safe keeping. The richer farmers who could afford mobile cold cabinets were always ready to let Tante Marie and Grande-mиre Colette put some of their less legal cheeses alongside their own. In the market, everyone was in on the secret.

Bruno’s cell phone rang. ‘The bastards are here,’ said Jeanne, in what she must have thought was a whisper. ‘They parked in front of the bank and Marie-Hйlиne recognised them from the photo I gave to Ivan. She saw it when she stopped for her petit cafй. She’s sure it’s them.’

‘Did she see their car?’ Bruno asked.

‘A silver Renault Laguna, quite new.’ Jeanne read out the number. Interesting, thought Bruno. It was a number for the Departement of the Corrиze. They would have taken the train to Brive and picked up the car there, outside the Dordogne.

They must have realised that the local spy network was watching for them. Bruno walked out of the pedestrian zone and onto the main square by the old stone bridge, where the inspectors would have to come past him before they reached the market. He phoned his fellow municipal police chiefs in the other villages with markets that week and gave them the car and its number. His duty was done, or rather half his duty. He had protected his friends from the inspectors; now he had to protect them from themselves.

So he rang old Joe, who had for forty years been Bruno’s predecessor as chief of police of St Denis. Now he spent his time visiting cronies in all the local markets, using as an excuse the occasional sale from a small stock of oversized aprons and work coats that he kept in the back of his van. There was less selling done than meeting for the ritual glass, a petit rouge, but Joe had been a useful rugby player two generations ago and was still a pillar of the local club. He wore in his lapel the little red button that labelled him a member of the Lйgion d’Honneur, a reward for his boyhood service as a messenger in the real Resistance against the Germans. Bruno felt sure that Joe would know about the tyre-slashing, and had probably helped organise it. Joe knew everyone in the district, and was related to half of them, including most of St Denis’s current crop of burly rugby forwards who were the terror of the local rugby league.

‘Look, Joe,’ Bruno began when the old man answered with his usual gruff bark, ‘everything is fine with the inspectors. The market is clean and we know who they are. We don’t want any trouble this time. It could make matters worse, you understand me?’

‘You mean the car that’s parked in front of the bank? The silver Laguna?’ Joe said, in a deep and rasping voice that came from decades of Gauloises and the rough wine he made himself. ‘Well, it’s being taken care of. Don’t you worry yourself, petit Bruno. The Gestapo can walk home today. Like last time.’

‘Joe, this is going to get people into trouble,’ Bruno said urgently, although he knew that he might as well argue with a brick wall. How the devil did Joe know about this already? He must have been in Ivan’s cafй when Jeanne was showing the photos around. And he had probably heard about the car from Marie-Hйlиne in the bank, since she was married to his nephew.

‘This could bring real trouble for us if we’re not careful,’ Bruno went on. ‘So don’t do anything that would force me to take action.’

He closed his phone with a snap. Scanning the people coming across the bridge, most of whom he knew, he kept watch for the inspectors. Then from the corner of his eye he saw a familiar car, a battered old Renault Twingo that the local gendarmes used when out of uniform, being driven by the new Capitaine he had not yet had time to get to know. From Normandy, they said, a dour and skinny type called Duroc who did everything by the book. Suddenly an alert went off in Bruno’s mind and he called Joe again.

‘Stop everything now. They must be expecting more trouble after last time. That new gendarme chief has just gone by in plain clothes, and they may have arranged for their car to be staked out. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’

‘Merde,’ said Joe. ‘We should have thought of that but we may be too late. I told Karim in the bar and he said he’d take care of it. I’ll try and call him off.’

Bruno rang the Cafй des Sports, run by Karim and his wife, Rashida, very pretty though heavily pregnant. Rachida told him Karim had left the cafй already and she didn’t think he had his mobile with him. Putain, thought Bruno. He started walking briskly across the narrow bridge, trying to get to the parking lot in front of the bank before Karim got into trouble.

He had known Karim since he first arrived in the town over a decade ago as a hulking and sullen Arab teenager, ready to fight any young Frenchman who dared take him on. Bruno had seen the type before, and had slowly taught Karim that he was enough of an athlete to take out his resentments on the rugby field. With rugby lessons twice a week and a match each Saturday, and tennis in the summer, Bruno had taught the lad to stay out of trouble. He got Karim onto the school team, then onto the local rugby team, and finally into a league big enough for him to make the money that enabled the giant young man to marry his Rashida and buy the cafй. Bruno had made a speech at their wedding. Putain, putain, putain…

If Karim got into trouble over this it could turn very nasty. The inspectors would get their boss to put pressure on the Prefect, who would then put pressure on the Police Nationale, or maybe they would even get on to the Ministry of Defence and bring in the gendarmes who were supposed to deal with rural crime.