stopped squirming and the bed sheets had fallen away to reveal that she was

wearing black stockings, supported by a black suspender belt over a shaven

pubis.

‘All this and Ecstasy too,’ said

J-J

quietly. It appeared to Bruno that

J-J

looked genuinely shocked. ‘I think we have enough here for trafficking charges.

That could be ten years in prison, Mademoiselle. I hope you enjoy the company of

tough old lesbians. You are going to be spending a lot of time with them.’

He turned to Isabelle. ‘Put the cuffs on this young lady of the house, and then

let’s take our own photos of this scene. I want another forensics team to go

through this room and check out every knife in the house. The Périgueux boys are

still at St Denis so you may have to call more in from Bergerac, and we’ll also

have the narcotics lads in. We could do with some extra manpower for the search.

It’s a big property.’

He looked at Bruno. ‘Bruno, we must track down the owner of the house and this

girl’s parents. They’ll have to be informed, and you’d better do the same with

the boy’s father. Then tell my boys to organise a search of the premises as soon

as they have all the young thugs downstairs arrested, charged with possession of

illegal drugs and in police cells where we can question them. I take it this is

indeed the young Richard?’ Bruno nodded. ‘He looks very like his photo.

Isabelle, I want a lot of shots of the pair of them and make sure you get the

focus just right. Then you can start checking out all the other videos and films

in Mademoiselle Courtemine’s collection.’

‘Including her own,’ Isabelle said drily, pointing at the back wall. Neither

Bruno nor

J-J

had yet noticed the small video camera on its tripod that pointed

at the bed, a red light on its side still blinking.

As evening began to fall, more carloads of police arrived, along with two vans

to take away a total of eight young people. Jacqueline waited in handcuffs;

Richard was finally untied once the police photographers had finished with the

bedroom and the forensics team had taken their samples. He and Jacqueline were

then each given a set of the plastic white overalls the forensics team used,

handcuffed again and taken to police HQ in Périgueux. Bruno had tracked down the

families. Jacqueline’s father was on a business trip to Finland and would fly

home the next day. The mother was driving down from Paris. Richard’s father

would meet them in Périgueux. Lawyers had been arranged, but the search had

already found four shoe boxes of what the narcotics boys said were Ecstasy pills

in one of the outbuildings.

‘Street value of twenty thousand euros, they tell me,’ said

J-J

, lighting an

American cigarette. He and Bruno were standing on the wide terrace in front of

the house that looked down to the small town of Lalinde and the broad Dordogne

river. ‘They just found another shoe box in her car, hidden under the spare

wheels. Lots of fingerprints. She can’t talk her way out of it. And those

tattoo-covered louts in the pool turn out to be members of the Front’s Service

d’Ordre, its own private security guard. They had photos of themselves with Le

Pen at some party rally. Drugs in their cars and very large amounts of cash in

their wallets.’

‘Have you told Paris yet?’ asked Bruno. ‘The politicians will love that. Front

National types involved in a drug-running gang, perverting our French youth.’

‘Sure, sure,’ said

J-J

, ‘but it’s the murderer I’m after. I don’t much care

about the politics, except that I hate that Nazi stuff. My God, after what this

country went through in the war, to see these young kids getting caught up in

that filth … that, and drugs and the kinky sex. Whatever happened to this

generation, Bruno? Do you have kids?’

‘No kids,

J-J

, and no wife as yet,’ said Bruno, surprising himself with the note

of sadness he heard in his own voice. Where had that come from? He changed the

subject. ‘And straight sex was always good enough for me. If I came across a

woman dressed in that Nazi way and wanting to tie me up, I think I’d be laughing

too much to do her justice.’

‘Well, I certainly can’t say that porno film turned me on,’ said

J-J

. ‘Mind you,

at my age there’s not much that does light my fire.’

‘Yet in the old days, there wasn’t much that didn’t get you going. Your

reputation still goes ahead of you,

J-J

. I’m surprised that little Isabelle

isn’t wearing armour.’

‘Not necessary with these new regulations, Bruno. Sexual harassment, rights of

women – you’re lucky to be out it, down here in your little Commune. They can

fire you these days if you so much as look at a woman colleague.’

‘We have that as well. It’s everywhere. We aren’t insulated from what goes on

everywhere else,’ said Bruno. ‘Maybe I was fooling myself when I thought we were

different down here, with our little weekly markets and all the kids playing

sports and staying out of trouble. A good place to raise a family, you’d think,

and now this. You know,

J-J

, this is my first murder.’

‘So when do your start on your own family, Bruno? You aren’t getting any

younger. Or do you have your own little harem among the farmers’ wives?’

Bruno grinned. ‘I wish. Have you seen the farmers’ fists?’

‘No, and I haven’t seen the farmers’ wives either,’ laughed

J-J

. ‘But seriously,

aren’t you planning to settle down? You’d make a good father.’

‘I haven’t found the right woman,’ shrugged Bruno, and embarked on the usual

half-truth that he deployed to keep his privacy, and to damp down the memory of

the woman he had loved and lost, rescued and then failed to save. It was

nobody’s business but his own. ‘I suppose I came close to it a couple of times,

but then I didn’t feel quite ready, or I got nervous, or she lost patience and

moved away.’

‘I remember that pretty brunette who worked for the railway – Josette. You were

seeing her when we worked together.’

‘She went away when they did the cutbacks. They moved her up north to Calais to

work on the Eurotunnel service because she spoke good English. I miss her,’ said

Bruno. ‘We got together once in Paris for a weekend, but somehow it wasn’t the

same.’

J-J

grunted, a sound that seemed to acknowledge many things, from the power of

women to the corrosive effects of time and the inability of men to ever quite

explain or comprehend them. As darkness spread over the river below them, they

stood in silence for a moment.

‘I guess I’m lucky, really, having something close to an ordinary family life,’

said

J-J

. ‘Most cops’ marriages don’t work out, what with the strange hours and

the things you can’t talk about, and it’s not easy making friends outside the

police. Civilians get nervous around us. But you know that – or maybe it’s

different down here for you, a country copper in a small town where everybody

knows you and likes you and you know everybody’s name.’

This time it was Bruno’s turn to grunt. He did think it was different in St

Denis, at least for him, but he was sure

J-J

did not want to hear that.

‘The only thing she gives me grief about now is grandchildren,’

J-J

went on.

‘She goes on and on about why our kids aren’t married and breeding.’ He sighed.

‘I suppose your folks are getting at you about the same thing.’

‘Not really,’ Bruno said shortly. No, he couldn’t leave it there. ‘I thought you