Martin Walker - Bruno, chief of police

The old man had been gutted. He lay bare-chested on the floor, intestines spilling out from a great gash in his belly. The place stank of them, and flies were already buzzing. There was indeed blood everywhere, including some thick pooling in regular lines on the chest of the old Arab.

‘It seems to be some kind of pattern,’ Bruno began, leaning closer but trying to keep his shoes out of the drying pools of blood around the body. It was not easy to make out. The old man was lying awkwardly, his back raised as though leaning on something that Bruno could not see for the blood.

‘My God,’ said Duroc, peering closely. ‘It’s a swastika. That’s a swastika carved in the poor bugger’s chest. This is a hate crime. A race crime.’

Bruno looked carefully around him. It was a small cottage – one bedroom, this main room with a big old stone fireplace which was kitchen, dining and sitting room all in one, and a tiny bathroom built onto the side. A meal had been interrupted; half a baguette and some sausage and cheese lay on a single plate on the table, alongside the remains of a bottle of red wine and a broken wine glass. Two chairs had been knocked over, and a photo of the French soccer team that had won the World Cup in 1998 hung askew on the wall. Bruno spotted a bundle of cloth tossed into a corner. He walked across and looked at it. It was a shirt, all its buttons now torn off as if the garment had been ripped from the old man. No blood on it, so somebody quite strong must have done it before starting to use the knife. Bruno sighed. He glanced into the bathroom and the tidy bedroom, but could see nothing out of place there.

‘I don’t see a mobile phone anywhere, or a wallet,’ he said. ‘It may be in his trouser pocket, but we’d better leave that until the scene-of-crime and forensic guys get here.’

‘It’ll be sodden with blood anyway,’ said Duroc.

In the distance, they heard the fire engine’s siren. Bruno went outside to see if his phone could get a signal this far from town. One bar of the four showed on the mobile’s screen, just enough. He rang the Mayor to explain the situation, and then everything seemed to happen at once. The firemen arrived, bringing life support equipment, and Duroc’s deputy drove up in a big blue van with two more gendarmes, one of them with a large, rather old camera. The other carried a big roll of orange tape to mark out the crime scene. The place was suddenly crowded.

Bruno went out to Karim, who was leaning wretchedly against the side of his car, his hand covering his eyes.

‘When did you get here, Karim?’

‘Just before I rang you. Maybe a minute before, not more.’ Karim looked up, his cheeks wet with tears. ‘Oh, putain, putain. Who could have done this, Bruno? The old man didn’t have an enemy in the world. He was just looking forward to seeing his great-grandson. He’ll never see him now.’

‘Have you called Rashida?’

‘Not yet. I just couldn’t. She loved the old guy.’

‘And Momu?’ Karim’s father was the maths teacher at the local school, a popular man who cooked enormous vats of couscous for the rugby dinners. His name was Mohammed but everyone called him Momu.

Karim shook his head. ‘I only called you. I can’t tell Papa, he was so devoted to him. We all were.’

‘When did you last see your grandpa alive? Or speak to him?’

‘Last night at Momu’s. We had dinner. Momu drove him home and that was the last I saw of him. We sort of take it in turns to feed him and it was our turn tonight, which is why I came up to fetch him.’

‘Did you touch anything?’ This was Bruno’s first murder, and as far as he knew the Commune’s first as well. He had seen a lot of dead bodies. It was he who organised the funerals and dealt with grieving families, and he had coped with some bad car crashes so he was used to the sight of blood. But nothing like this.

‘No. When I got here, I called out to Grandpa like I usually do and went in. The door was open like always and there he was. Putain, all that blood. And that smell. I couldn’t touch him. Not like that. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

Karim turned away to retch again. Bruno swallowed hard. Duroc came out and told the other gendarme to start stringing the tape. He looked at Karim, still bent double and spitting the last of the bile from his mouth.

‘Who’s he?’ Duroc asked.

‘Grandson of the victim,’ Bruno replied. ‘He runs the Cafй des Sports. He’s a good man, he’s the one that rang me. I’ve talked to him. He touched nothing, rang me as soon as he got here.’ Turning back to Karim, he said, ‘Karim, where were you before you drove here to pick up your grandpa?’

‘In the cafй, all afternoon. Ever since I saw you this morning.’

‘Are you sure?’ snapped Duroc. ‘We can check that.’

‘That’s right, we can check that. Meantime, let’s get him home,’ Bruno said soothingly. ‘He’s in shock.’

‘No, we’d better keep him here. I called the Brigade in Pйrigueux and they said they’d bring the Police Nationale. The detectives will want to talk to him.’

Albert, the chief pompier, came out, wiping his brow. He looked at Bruno and shook his head.

‘Dead for a couple of hours or more,’ he said. ‘Come over here, Bruno. I need to talk to you.’

They walked down the drive and off to one side where the old man kept a small vegetable garden and a well-tended compost heap. It should have been a pleasant spot for an old man in retirement, the hill sloping away to the woods behind and the view from the house down the valley.

‘You saw that thing on his chest?’ Albert asked. Bruno nodded. ‘Nasty stuff,’ said Albert, ‘and it gets worse. The poor old devil’s hands were tied behind his back. That’s why his body was arched like that. He would not have died quickly.

But that swastika? I don’t know. This is very bad, Bruno, it can’t be anyone from round here. We all know Momu and Karim. They’re like family.’

‘Some nasty bastard didn’t think so,’ said Bruno. ‘Not with that swastika. Dear God, it looks like a racist thing, a political killing. Here in St Denis.’

‘You’ll have to tell Momu. I don’t envy you that.’

There was a shout from the cottage. Duroc was waving him over. Bruno shook hands with Albert and walked back.

‘Do you keep a political list?’ Duroc demanded. ‘Fascists, Communists, Trots, Front National types, activists – all that?’

Bruno shrugged. ‘No, never have and never had to. The Mayor usually knows how everyone votes, and they usually vote the same way they did last time, the same way their fathers did. He can usually tell you what the vote will be the day before the election and he’s never wrong by more than a dozen or so.’

‘Any Front National types that you know of? Skinheads? Fascists?’

‘Le Pen usually gets a few votes, about fifty or sixty last time, I recall. But nobody is very active.’

‘What about those Front National posters and the graffiti you see on the roads?’

Duroc’s face was getting red again. ‘Half the road signs seem to have FN scrawled on them. Somebody must have done that.’

Bruno nodded. ‘You’re right. They suddenly appeared during the last election campaign, but nobody took them very seriously. You always get that kind of thing in elections, but there was no sign of who did it.’

‘You’re going to tell me that it was kids again?’

‘No, I’m not, because I have no idea about this. What I can tell you is that there’s no branch of the Front National here. They might get a few dozen votes but they’ve never elected a single councillor. They never even held a campaign rally in the last elections. I don’t recall seeing any of their leaflets. Most people here vote either left or right or Green, except for the Chasseurs.’