The Coldest Case, Martin Walker [famous ebook reader txt] 📗

Bruno thanked him and then apologized, saying he had to go, explaining that he would tell the Baron about Henri when he could, but now he had to go and cook for the visit of his cousin, Alain.

‘Was that the one I met when he came here before, the one in the air force?’ the Baron asked. ‘I remember him, a decent guy. Bring him round for a drink if you have time.’

Bruno nodded and said he’d try to drop by, but maybe the Baron would like to join them at the Audrix night market the following evening. He made a mental note to call some other chums about Audrix.

‘Good idea, I haven’t been there yet this year,’ the Baron said. ‘Let’s invite the whole gang. We can all meet for a drink here at six, and then get there by seven. I know the village Mayor so I’ll call to make sure he holds a table for us.’

Once back home, after greeting and feeding Balzac and the chickens, he called Pamela, Jack, Gilles, Florence and the Mayor to suggest they all gather at the Baron’s house and then go up to Audrix and meet his cousin and his bride-to-be. Then he called Sabine on her personal mobile to invite her to join them, to meet his friends and experience the local tradition of the night markets. With a touch of guilt he then recalled Virginie, the young woman working on Oscar’s skull at the police lab in Périgueux. He called her mobile and invited her for the weekend, but she had already bought a ticket for an open-air concert in the Parc des Arènes, the old Roman amphitheatre. Could she come the following weekend instead? Of course, he replied.

It was time to start preparing the meal and for such a warm evening, he’d start with the classic cold soup of vichyssoise. In the garden, he dug up a single potato plant, which gave him four fat ones, nearly half a kilo. He pulled out two medium-size leeks, two small onions and snipped off a bunch of chives. Back in the kitchen he peeled the potatoes and onions and stripped off the outer leaves and tops of the leeks, keeping only the whites. He sliced and chopped them into small dice, then began to fry them in duck fat over a very gentle heat. Ten minutes would let them cook without browning as long as he kept turning them.

He returned quickly to the garden with a wicker basket, loaded it with three fat carrots, a head of celery, eight shallots, a large lettuce, a cucumber, parsley and some cherry tomatoes and darted back to turn the vegetables. When the onions and leeks were soft, he slowly added a half-litre of his own chicken stock and a wine glass full of water, bringing the vegetables to a simmer until he was sure the potatoes were cooked through. He thought there would be enough salt in the chicken stock but he’d test it later once the dish had cooled.

Suddenly his ears pricked up as the radio, tuned to France Bleu Périgord, began reporting ‘sensational developments in a murder inquiry that has been unsolved for three decades. The victim of the murder, which took place in the woods near St Denis, has never been identified – until now. The crucial breakthrough in the case came thanks to the Museum of Prehistory at Les Eyzies, where an exhibition of prehistoric faces that had been reconstructed from their skulls inspired local police to bring in an expert to reconstruct the face of the murder victim. Here’s the chief of detectives in Périgueux, Jean-Jacques Jalipeau.’

‘For the Police Nationale, a murder inquiry is never closed,’ J-J said. ‘We have new information and new tools so we are working hard now to push this to a conclusion.’

That was it. Bruno looked up at the radio in surprise as it moved on to the next item. There must have been a leak. That was a non-answer from J-J, framed with unusual caution for a man normally so outspoken. Could the leak have come from Philippe, who regularly worked with the radio station? Bruno thought not; Philippe knew a lot more about the case than just Virginie’s work on the skull. The leak could have come from a cop who knew of Virginie’s work. But did this mean that Bruno should contact J-J at once with the news of Henri Bazaine?

Bruno paused to think, wooden spoon still in his hand. If Henri had heard that news bulletin, might he try to flee, to disappear again as he had thirty years earlier? That was not a risk Bruno had any right to take. He put down the spoon, picked up his phone and called J-J, only to reach his message service. Bruno reported that the man in the photo had been identified as Henri Bazaine, winemaker of Le Clos Bazaine near Bergerac, by Hubert and by the Baron, both of whom J-J knew. He recommended that J-J arrange for Tante-Do, suitably escorted, to be taken to verify the identification.

He washed and chopped the lettuce, peeled and sliced a cucumber and put them into a salad bowl with the cherry tomatoes, then crumbled and added the Roquefort cheese. He cut two slices of bread from the tourte and toasted them, ready to be cut into cubes to go into the salad once he’d added the vinaigrette. The bowl for the walnut oil and white wine vinegar for the dressing stood ready by the chopping board.

He peeled and chopped the shallots, then cut a head of garlic from the braided rope that hung from a kitchen beam. He peeled and sliced two cloves and began peeling the carrots and celery before slicing them into a julienne of fine strips with his mandolin. He was planning écrevisses à la nage, crayfish that would seem to float atop the julienne of vegetables.

He put a hundred grams of butter into