Martin Walker: Bruno, chief of police

‘June the eighteenth, Resistance Day,’ he said later. ‘You’ll be able to see all our main suspects gathered at the war memorial at midday. I have to go and make the preparations, and find time to track down a cheese thief, uncover some unemployed labourer for making some cash as a gardener, and probably rescue a lost cat from a tree. And later I have to collect the green walnuts to make this year’s vin de noix. All in a day’s work. And as a special treat because you are the guest of the local Chief of Police, you are invited to lunch in the banquet room of the Mairie after the ceremony, the same place from which you’ll see tonight’s firework display. And then tomorrow, I can show you our famous weekly market and you can help me protect the farmers from the new Gestapo of Brussels.’

‘Poor old Paris will seem very flat, after all this,’ she said drily, kneeling to stroke Gigi as she waved him goodbye.

When he reached the Mairie and parked his van, Bruno noticed Father Sentout bustling up the street from the church into the square, and heading for the building. They shook hands, and Bruno bowed to let the plump priest go first and, as a courtesy, joined him in the elevator rather than taking the stairs.

‘Ah, Father, and Bruno, just the men I wanted to see,’ called out the Mayor, waving them into his office. ‘Now, Father, you know that under the law of 1905 separating church and state, there are strict limits on the degree to which you may participate in civic events. However, since this year we are marking the tragic recent death of an old soldier of the Republic, as well as the usual ceremonies, I wondered if you might give us a short prayer of reconciliation, forgiveness of our enemies. I don’t think the Republic will fall if you do that.

A very short prayer and a blessing. No more than one minute. Forgiving our enemies and we all sleep in the peace of the Lord. Can you do that? I’ll have to cut you off if you go beyond a minute.’

‘My dear Mayor, I shall be delighted. One minute it is, and forgiving our enemies.’

‘And of course we shall see you afterwards, at lunch,’ the Mayor added. ‘I think we are having lamb again.’

‘Splendid, splendid,’ said the priest, bowing his way out, and visibly delighted that at last the word of the Lord had penetrated the secular temple of the Republic.

‘The case is suspended until Tavernier gets his orders from Paris,’ Bruno began once Father Sentout had gone. ‘But I don’t think that future inquiries are going to be energetically pursued.’

‘Good,’ said the Mayor. ‘Putting those two old devils on trial would be the last thing this town needs.’

‘Have you spoken to them?’

The Mayor shrugged. ‘I couldn’t think what to say, and nor I imagine can you.

They are old men, and Father Sentout would tell you that they will soon face a far more certain justice than our own.’

‘Two unhappy old men,’ said Bruno. ‘They fought on the same side and lived and worked opposite one another for sixty years and refused to exchange a single word because of some old political feud, and they all but poisoned their marriages by constantly suspecting their wives of betraying them. Think of it that way and the good Lord has already given them a lifetime of punishment.’

‘That’s very neat, Bruno. Perhaps we should tell them that. But there’s something else – Momu and his family. What did you tell them?’

‘I saw them both, Momu and Karim, and told them that we had new evidence that convinced us that Richard and the girl could not possibly have been reponsible for Hamid’s murder, and that in the absence of any other evidence, the police would now have to start work on the theory that the swastika was a distraction carved onto the corpse to mislead us. So the next line of inquiry would have to be Islamic extremists who saw the old man as a traitor.’

‘Did they buy that?’

‘Momu kept silent at first, but Karim said the old man had a good long life and died proud of his family and knowing that he had a great-grandson on the way. He seemed fatalistic about it. Then Momu said he’d been thinking a lot about the rafle of 1961 that he told me about, and how much things had changed since then.

He said he was touched by the way everybody in the town came out to be sure that Karim was released by the gendarmes. He never thought he’d live to see the day that his son was a town hero. When I left, he came after me and said that as a mathematician he always knew that there were some problems beyond human solution, but none beyond human kindness.’

The Mayor shook his head, half-smiling, half-grimacing. ‘I was a student in Paris at the time of the rafle and all we heard was rumour. But do you know who was the Prefect of Police at the time, the man responsible? It was the same man who had been Prefect of Police of Bordeaux under the Vichy regime in the war; a man who rounded up hundreds of Jews for the Nazi death camps, and had Force Mobile troops under his orders. Then the same man went on to be Prefect of Police in Algeria during that dreadful, dirty war – Maurice Papon. I met him once, when I was working for Chirac. The perfect public servant, who always followed orders and administered them with great efficiency whatever they were.

Every regime finds such men useful. It’s our dark history, Bruno, Vichy to Algeria, and now it all comes home to St Denis again, just as it did in 1944.’

The Mayor’s voice was calm and measured, but tears began spilling down his cheeks as he spoke. Bruno considered: a month ago, he would have stood impotently by, not knowing what to do or say. But now, realising how much he loved this old man, he stepped forward to hand the Mayor his handkerchief, which smelled faintly of Gigi, and put his arm around his shoulder. The Mayor snorted into the handkerchief and returned the embrace.

‘I think it’s over,’ said Bruno.

‘Should we go back to Momu, do you think? Tell him the truth in private and in confidence?’ The Mayor stepped back, his usual self-control restored.

‘Not me,’ said Bruno. ‘I’m content to let it lie, which means that Momu goes on teaching the children how to count, Rashida will still make the best coffee in town and Karim continues to win our rugby games.’

‘And the younger generation uses Resistance tricks with potatoes to immobilise the cars of our town’s enemies.’ The Mayor smiled. ‘They are our people now, three generations of them. One of the things that troubled me most was that Momu and the whole family would feel they had to leave St Denis if all this became public.’

‘They don’t even know that the old man was not who he claimed to be,’ said Bruno. ‘Maybe it’s better that it stays that way.’

The Mayor donned his sash of office and Bruno polished the brim of his cap as they walked down the stairs together to the square, where the town band had already begun to gather for the parade and Captain Duroc had his gendarmes lined up to escort the march to the war memorial. Bruno called Xavier, the Deputy Mayor, and the two of them posted the Route Barrйe signs by the bridge and brought up the flags from the basement of the Mairie. Montsouris and his wife approached and respectfully took the red flag, and Marie-Louise took the flag of St Denis, and Bruno smiled and hugged her closely as he remembered that the Force Mobile had destroyed her family’s farm after she was sent to Buchenwald.

He looked around, just a little nervously, but there was no sign of Bachelot and Jean-Pierre.

A crowd was beginning to gather, and he went across to the outside tables of Fauquet’s cafй where Pamela and Christine were sharing a table with Dougal, wine glasses now empty in front of them. ‘We’re celebrating Waterloo day,’ laughed Pamela as he kissed both women in greeting and shook Dougal warmly by the hand.