almost perfectly spherical in shape. She was not a beauty by any stretch of the
imagination, but a cheerful woman at ease with herself. The old brown leather
satchel in which she collected the modest fees that each stall holder paid for
the privilege of selling in the market of St Denis thumped heavily against
Brunos thigh as Jeanne, squealing with pleasure to see him, turned with
surprising speed and proffered her cheeks to be kissed in ritual greeting. Then
she gave him a fresh strawberry from Madame Verniets stall, and Bruno broke
away to kiss the roguish old farmers widow on both wizened cheeks in greeting
and gratitude.
Here are the photos of the inspectors that Jo-Jo took in St Alvčre yesterday,
Bruno said to Jeanne, taking some printouts from his breast pocket. He had
driven over to his fellow municipal policeman the previous evening to collect
them. They could have been emailed to the Mairies computer, but Bruno was a
cautious man and thought it might be risky to leave an electronic trail of his
discreet intelligence operation.
If you see them, call me. And give copies to Ivan in the café and to Jeannot in
the bistro and to Yvette in the tabac to show their customers. In the meantime,
you go that way and warn the stall holders on the far side of the church. Ill
take care of the ones towards the bridge.
Every Tuesday since the year 1346, when the English had captured half the
nobility of France at the Battle of Crécy and the grand Brillamont family had to
raise money to pay the ransom for their Seigneur, the little Périgord town of St
Denis has held a weekly market. The townspeople had raised the princely sum of
fifty livres of silver for their feudal lord and, in return, they secured the
right to hold the market on the canny understanding that this would guarantee a
livelihood to the tiny community, happily situated where the stream of Le
Mauzens ran into the river Vézčre just beyond the point where the remaining
stumps of the old Roman bridge thrust from the flowing waters. A mere eleven
years later, the chastened nobles and knights of France had once again spurred
their lumbering horses against the English archers and their longbows and had
been felled in droves. The Seigneur de Brillamont had to be ransomed from the
victorious Englishmen all over again after the Battle of Poitiers, but by then
the taxes on the market had raised sufficient funds for the old Roman bridge to
be crudely restored. So, for another fifty livres, the townsfolk bought from the
Brillamont family the right to charge a toll over the bridge and their towns
fortunes were secured forever.
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 paté, 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 Patricks driving school for safe keeping. The richer
farmers who could afford mobile cold cabinets were always ready to let Tante
Marie and Grande-mčre Colette put some of their less legal cheeses alongside
their own. In the market, everyone was in on the secret.
Brunos 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-Hélčne