The Patriarch: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel (21 page)

“Not for that. It was a bit too heavy for me, like the boar,” she said with an expression that was half smile, half grimace. On any other women it would have looked strange. On her it was charming, a touch of girlishness.

“A bit heavy for me, too, on rough ground,” said Bruno, smiling. A couple of times Bruno had brought boar back from a kill to the trail where the trucks could come. A full-size boar could weigh well over a hundred kilos, a heavy load for two men struggling up and down slopes thick with undergrowth, the boar slung on a pole over their shoulders.

“That’s why our club bought one of those new German trolleys with big wheels and a ratchet system to lift the boar clear of the ground,” she said. “It makes hunting a lot easier.”

Bruno hadn’t thought of that, hadn’t even heard that such trolleys existed. That must have been what Fabrice had used to take the boar to Rollo’s garden. That was the essential piece of evidence against Fabrice that he needed to get the
procureur
to take the case. But there was something else he had to ask.

“Fabrice told me that he was asked to attack Rollo’s garden, apparently by somebody with influence over him or a hold over him, but he won’t say who.” Bruno said it casually, looking for some kind of reaction. He was guessing but could think of nobody outside her family with that kind of power over Fabrice. If so, that meant Marco or Victor or Madeleine.

She stared at him levelly, her hands immobile on her coffee cup. “Maybe his girlfriend,” she said. “Or some close friend he wants to protect.”

Bruno nodded slowly, watching her but seeing nothing except that cool, self-confident beauty. There was nothing more to be gotten from her. “Well, thank you for your help, and for the coffee,” he said.

“You needn’t rush off,” she said amiably, no sign of relief that the interview was over. “You haven’t told me about your dog. Are you training him to hunt?”

“Yes, but it will be a long job,” he said, looking down at Balzac who had curled up in a sunlit corner of the balcony and gone to sleep. “Bassets have minds of their own. Still, he’s got the right instincts, tracks foxes, and he’s found his way to a few summer truffles. This winter I’ll start training him seriously. He’s already made friends with the other dogs at our hunting club, and they’ll probably teach him as much as I do.”

“You must come over to Lalinde someday and hunt our land as our guest. Another couple of weeks, and it’s St. Hubert’s Day.”

Bruno nodded. St. Hubert was the patron saint of hunting, and his name day, November 3, was celebrated in every hunt club in France. “It’s a big day for our club, too, so tradition requires I be there with my friends.”

She nodded, smiling. “Of course, we’ll find another day. You haven’t told me what brings you to Bordeaux, nor what you thought of the debate.”

“Just tracking down a witness on another matter,” he said. “And you don’t need me to confirm that you won that debate. I hear you’re now the favorite for the National Assembly seat.”

“You follow politics?” she asked, rising from her chair to go into the main room and return with two glasses and a bottle of Balvenie. She poured two moderate drinks, splashed in some mineral water, clinked her glass against his and took a sip. Suddenly they were quite close together, each leaning forward over the small table. He felt a stab of sexual tension and found himself wondering how she coped with the impact of her looks. It must become tedious, he thought, always having this effect on men.

“Not really,” he replied. “But enough to be curious why you decided on the National Assembly rather than the European Parliament.”

“It’s a lot easier to commute to Paris than to Brussels, let alone Strasbourg,” she said, smiling, and then she turned the tables on him. “I might ask you why you stay in St. Denis when I’m told there’s a much more significant job waiting for you at the interior ministry in Paris.”

“Where did you hear that?” It must have come from the brigadier, he thought, recalling that he’d been invited to the Patriarch’s birthday party.

“At Marco’s party. Marco asked Brigadier Lannes about you; they’re old friends, and I overheard the conversation.” She paused and then looked at him roguishly. “I hadn’t known you were so interesting.”

“It’s very simple. I love living and working in St. Denis, and I don’t want to move to Paris,” he said. “I wouldn’t be able to keep my dog and my horse. And I don’t want to work for Général de Brigade Lannes.”

“I’m told you’re wasting your talents while waiting to succeed Gérard Mangin as the next mayor of St. Denis.”

Bruno chuckled. “That’s just the mayor’s joke. He knows I don’t have a political bone in my body except on Election Day, and then I tend to vote one way for the presidency, another for the legislature.” He smiled broadly, teasing her. “It’s a way to keep you politicians under control.”

“Good for you, we need that sometimes,” she said and then added, her eyes twinkling at him, “Just as sometimes we all need to be a little out of control.”

What on earth did she mean by that? Bruno cast around for a safer topic to discuss. “I enjoyed your wine tasting, but I was really impressed by the quality of tennis played by Marc and Chantal. I saw them when I parked and stayed to watch; they must be tournament level.”

“You must come and join us for a game at the vineyard,” she said. “You can play with me.”

This time he was in no doubt of the double entendre in her words. Her foot was resting lightly on his beneath the table, and she was leaning forward over the small table, her arms in front of her, pressing her breasts together to deepen her cleavage. Somehow without his noticing she had undone another button on her blouse.

Yevgeny’s portrait rushed back into his mind, and he could remember the sight of her breasts and the achingly desirable length of her, the brazen look on her face and the ivory skin. The expression on her face in the portrait was the same expression she was wearing now, and she stretched out a hand to take his. He felt suddenly flooded, liberated by the sexual tension he had been trying to suppress. Bruno rose eagerly, helpless before this twin assault of her warm and living presence moving into his arms, her mouth opening with soft urgency beneath his, and the surging power of the painted image becoming a glorious physical reality that was blocking out all other thoughts in his mind.

There had been no political dinner she had to attend, she told him as they lay entwined on the long couch in the living room, the twilight gathering in the eastern sky. The night was theirs, she said, and led him into the half darkness of her bedroom. He felt at once helpless and yet hugely empowered. He had never known a lover so accomplished, so tantalizing in her shift of moods and pace, so seductive in her murmurings and her soft laughter.

At one point she had asked if he was hungry, and he was about to reply that his hunger was only for her when he realized that he felt famished. She wearing his shirt, and he wrapped in a towel, they explored the kitchen. Bruno found a packet of premade pizza dough in the fridge, along with tomatoes, onions, cheese and
lardons.
She opened a bottle of the Réserve du Patriarche, poured each of them a glass and then stood watching him as he fried the onions and
lardons,
set the oven, grated the cheese and slipped the tomatoes into boiling water to peel them.

Attracted by the scent of cooking, Balzac came in from the balcony to join them, and Madeleine sat on the floor, fondling his long ears, but her eyes stayed on Bruno.

“It’s very sexy, watching a man cook for me before taking me back to bed,” she said. Bruno knew he’d remember every moment of this evening, every word that she spoke, every touch and gesture.

The evening had turned cool, so she closed the door to the balcony and they sat on cushions on the floor. Madeleine curled into his arms and fed him and Balzac pizza. Bruno could not take his eyes from her. She ate the way she made love, with appetite and appreciation, suddenly overtaken by a lustful hunger as she took a deep drink of wine. Then she put her lips against his and let the wine trickle from her mouth into his.

He left with Balzac not long before midnight, leaving her asleep, his head filled with thoughts of her as he drove back to St. Denis. But some of the thoughts became questions as he played back the evening in his mind. Bruno was no fool; he knew that he had been deliberately and delightfully seduced by a woman of extraordinary skill.

But why? Was he a dalliance for an evening’s amusement? Was he a potential ally to be bound to her with sweet, erotic chains? Hardly; he had little to offer her in politics. Or was she winning his allegiance as a way to deflect his probing questions about Fabrice and his skepticism over Gilbert’s death? Might she know that he was in touch with Chantal over Gilbert’s will? He had no idea of how close she was to Chantal, who might already have phoned Madeleine to tell her everything before he arrived at her apartment.

Not for the first time, he cursed at the way his profession had made him so cynical about people and their motives. His job required him to probe and ask questions, to seek to understand not only what had happened but why. He’d rather have spent the drive in languorous reflections on the evening’s delights, remembering the shape and feel of her in his arms, the gleam of her eyes in the darkness and how she had so slowly slipped his shirt from her shoulders after they’d eaten.

But for Bruno there was no escaping the nagging questions. Each memory of her triggered a demand for an explanation and sparked even more curiosity about this extraordinary family of the Patriarch into whose affairs he’d suddenly been plunged. And at the heart of everything was the Patriarch himself, his boyhood hero suddenly taking an interest in Bruno, bringing him under his wing and offering his patronage. Again Bruno wanted to understand why. He had little enough to offer beyond, perhaps, relief from the possible embarrassments that an overinquisitive country policeman might bring. Already, because of the
notaire,
he was trapped into a kind of deception of the family, keeping the secret of Gilbert’s will and of Chantal’s inheritance.

And what connection did Jack Crimson have to all this? And Yevgeny? So much of this affair seemed to hinge on those historic days in Moscow when the Cold War died and Gorbachev was toppled and the Patriarch’s old friend Akhromeyev committed suicide once his coup had failed.

Bruno turned up the lane that led toward his cottage, enjoying Balzac’s familiar presence as he checked on the chicken coop and went to the edge of the woods for a farewell look at the stars. Balzac headed off for his own patrol of the grounds, and Bruno watched him suddenly stop, poised and alert, one front paw raised and his tail erect. The dog had caught some scent, probably one of the foxes. Good, thought Bruno, he’s already too well trained to growl too soon. Bruno gazed up beyond the shadowy woods to the familiar constellation that led to the polestar. He knew that when he undressed, he’d be able to smell a memory of Madeleine on his shirt and know that her scent was lingering on his body and that she had a grip on his senses. Sad, he thought, to spend an evening making love with a woman but then not to sleep with her and wake to her presence in the morning.

Suddenly he heard Balzac growl, and he was aware of something different nearby, knowing these woods and the night sounds so well that he’d been jarred into alertness. He wasn’t aware of movement and his ears detected no sound, but then he caught it again, just the ghost of a scent, something sour and not natural. Just as he recognized it as stale tobacco, he heard the swish of movement on grass behind him and the sound of a harsh intake of breath.

Adrenaline surging through him, Bruno dropped to the ground and rolled away. He used the momentum of the roll to rise into a crouch and saw a dark and burly shape recovering from a powerful swing with some weapon that had missed its target. The figure was still off balance when Bruno stepped forward and slammed his foot hard into the side of a leg. In the darkness his aim was off, hitting a thigh rather than the knee, bruising his attacker but not crippling him. The weapon was being backhanded toward him now but without much force behind it as his assailant tried to recover his balance. The attacker staggered and then something was flying through the air and the attacker grunted and staggered again as Balzac leaped at his leg.

Bruno ducked beneath the blow, and as the momentum took the man around, Bruno rose to slam a clenched fist into the side of his neck where it joined the shoulder. It should have put the man down, but again he must have been off target because his attacker simply grunted and heaved his weapon clumsily up and back. Balzac leaped again, catching his arm so there was not much force behind the blow, but by chance it connected with Bruno’s hip at the very point where a bullet had struck him in Sarajevo. Bruno screamed in pain, lost all restraint, and using his full weight behind each fist he hammered once, twice, three times into the soft flesh of his attacker’s kidneys.

The man sank to his knees. With open hands, Bruno clapped the palm of each hand simultaneously against the man’s ears, forcing a concussion that should also burst the eardrums. The man fell, heavily, facedown, landing so hard his head bounced against the ground, and the weapon he’d been holding fell from his hands. It was a smooth and heavy piece of wood, perhaps an ax handle. Bruno picked it up, surprised by the weight, and felt along the handle until he touched the metal head of the ax itself.

The bastard had wanted to kill him!

The man was sprawled, his legs apart. Breathing hard and using the ax to brace his weakened leg, Bruno fought down the pain in his hip and called off Balzac who was worrying at his attacker’s ear. Slowly and deliberately and taking his time to aim, he tried to kick the man between his legs until his attacker screeched in pain. He couldn’t do it; even with the help of the ax handle, Bruno’s leg wouldn’t support him. Instead Bruno dropped with his knees, his full weight behind them, onto his attacker’s back just below the ribs, aiming to batter the kidneys again. He felt for the head and found fabric, wool, and it had holes—a balaclava to hide the man’s features. Bruno ripped it down and twisted so the wool was stretched tight around the man’s neck, throttling the life out of him. He could feel only stubble on the man’s head, and at that moment he realized that his assailant was Fabrice.

A kind of sanity returning as Balzac growled menacingly from his grip on the man’s arm, Bruno slackened his hold on Fabrice’s throat and rose, limping with the help of the ax, and staggered to his cottage and groped for the hook behind the door where Balzac’s leash hung. He took it back to the immobile Fabrice and used it to lash his hands together and then returned indoors to turn on the light and call the gendarmerie. Yveline answered, and he reported the assault and said she’d better also bring an ambulance. He had intended it for Fabrice, but when he put his hand on the blazing pain in his hip it came away bloody.

He couldn’t rest now. He took a leather belt from his bedroom cupboard and went back outside, turning on the porch light, and tied Fabrice’s ankles together. Balzac stood guard by Fabrice’s head. Bruno found a plastic bag in his kitchen and used it to cover the head of the ax, smeared with his own blood. No clever defense lawyer would dare claim Bruno had used unreasonable force against an attacker who had slashed him with an ax. He pulled down his trousers and used his phone to take a photo of his bloodied hip, then took another of Fabrice and of the makeshift restraints he’d used to immobilize him.

Yveline and Sergeant Jules from the gendarmes were the first to arrive, followed immediately by the
pompiers
with their floodlights blazing. Ahmed was driving, and Albert was first down from the cab with the first-aid kit. He headed straight for Bruno, who was leaning against his doorframe, his trousers still down around his thighs and the blood on his hip black in the harsh lights.

“I’m okay,” Bruno grunted. Now that the shock was setting in, he could speak only in brief phrases, his breath too short for anything longer. “Check out Fabrice. I had to hurt him. Eardrums. Kidneys. To stop him. Attacked me with an ax. My blood on the ax.”

The last thing Bruno heard as he crumpled to the ground was the double click of Yveline’s handcuffs going around Fabrice’s wrists.

Later, Bruno was slowly aware of a different kind of light, the smell of antiseptic, the sound of running water. He could see white walls, and there was an intravenous drip in his arm.

“You have the luck of the devil, Bruno,” said Fabiola, from somewhere out of his field of vision. “Six stitches and a massive bruise. The X-ray shows no damage to your pelvis. He must have gotten you with the blunt end of the ax.”

She loomed into sight, looking down at him severely. “Your attacker is being taken to Périgueux. We can’t deal with kidney damage here. And what on earth did you do to his eardrums?”

He tried to speak, but only a croak emerged. Fabiola lifted his head and put a plastic straw in his mouth. He sucked on it and tasted something hot, sweet and bitter at the same time. It was comforting.

“Hot lemon juice mixed with honey,” she said. “Don’t talk, go back to sleep, you’ll be fine.”

When he woke, only a dim light was on, and Bruno was alone. On the cupboard beside the bed was a plastic cup with a straw. He sucked on it and tasted the same mixture. It was cold, sticky, but still good. Only a dull ache came from his hip, so he’d been given some kind of painkiller. He fumbled for a light switch, blinked against the subsequent fluorescent glare and then rolled down the bedclothes and lifted the smock to see the damage. There was surgical gauze held in place by three broad bandages just below the hip bone. A bright purple bruise spread from the middle of his thigh up to his ribs. He looked at the bag feeding the drip in his arm: saline solution. He tried moving his leg. It was stiff, but it worked. The knee bent, the foot swiveled, and he could wiggle his toes.

Leaning against the chair beside the bed was a pair of crutches, which he assumed had been left for him. He levered himself to try and sit upright, felt dizzy and was aware of the stitches pulling. His eyes felt heavy, so he let his head fall back onto the pillow, turned out the light and slept again.

Aware that he was dreaming, he felt he was in a gallery looking at canvases of Madeleine, now naked in Yevgeny’s portrait, now speaking in the Bergerac debate, now gazing across the river from her balcony in Bordeaux, now walking away from him at the Patriarch’s party with Chantal and Marie-Françoise at her side. He knew Madeleine was always on display, invariably and deliberately elegant. He had an insight that in his dream he felt was so important that he must engrave it on his memory: that she never moved as other people move but adopted one studied pose after another, as though expecting each moment and each expression to be immortalized by some artist fortunate enough to be granted the privilege. Satisfied with this, he sank into a deeper doze.

He woke to the smell of coffee and hot croissants and the sound of Fabiola unzipping her leather jacket, evidently having come directly from the café. She helped him to sit up and put a tray on his lap. It held orange juice and two croissants. She poured coffee from a
cafetière,
a cup for each of them, and took a bite from a
pain au chocolat.

“I’m supposed to call Yveline at the gendarmerie as soon as you wake up. She wants to get your statement. I imagine from the way you’re wolfing your croissants that you’re ready for that?”

“Sure, just hungry,” he said. He jiggled his leg and wiggled his toes. The hip was sore, but not hurting.

“I want you to get up and start walking to keep your muscles moving,” Fabiola said. “Use the crutches today if you have to, but you should be all right with a cane. Your cut wasn’t very deep. Yveline wants me to order you to take a week off, but I know you won’t, and you’re perfectly capable of light duties, office work and so on.”

Whenever a policeman had been in a fight, the unwritten rule was that injuries were to be maximized, that hospital stays were to be extended, and time off had to be taken, all in the interest of gaining public sympathy. It was a rule Bruno had never bothered to observe, partly because it was foolish but also because nobody would believe it; most of the people of St. Denis had seen him limping off the rugby field on successive Sundays and still turning up for work as usual the next day.