Bruno, Chief Of Police

that the Vichy regime became engaged in a civil war of Frenchmen killing

Frenchmen. He knew about atrocities like Oradour-sur-Glane, the village to the

north where German troops, in reprisal for the death of a German officer, had

locked hundreds of women and children into the church and set it on fire,

machine-gunning any who tried to escape the flames. He knew of the small

memorials dotted around his region: a plaque to a handful of young Frenchmen who

died defending a bridge to delay German troop movements; a small obelisk with

the names of those shot pour la Patrie. But he had never known about the Force

Mobile, or the wave of deliberate brutality inflicted on this countryside he

thought he knew so well.

The Force Mobile in Périgord was commanded by a former professional footballer

from Marseilles called Villanova. Oh, sweet Jesus, Bruno thought as he read the

name he’d so recently come to know. Villanova brought a new refinement to the

rural terror. He believed that the French peasants would be even more

effectively intimidated if the reprisals and rapes and farm burnings were

carried out by North Africans, specially recruited for the job with promises of

extra pay and rations, and all the women and loot they could take from the farms

they raided. Villanova found his recruits in the immigrant slums of Marseilles

and Toulon, where unemployment and poverty had provoked desperation, and where

he had many acquaintances in the local football teams that included young Arab

immigrants.

Bruno shivered as he realised where this was leading. He would have to pursue

the hypothesis that his murder victim, Hamid al-Bakr, war hero of France, had

also been Hussein Boudiaf, war criminal and terroriser of Frenchmen. Christine

was right. He would have to go to Bordeaux in the morning, and gather the

evidence about the Force Mobile, Villanova, Boudiaf, and other members. This

theory, which had seemed as obvious to Christine as it now did to him, was

indeed dynamite. The evidence for it would have to be complete and unassailable.

They would also have to research the names of the victims of the Force Mobile in

order to identify the families who had suffered – and who had every reason to

want vengeance against any of Villanova’s North African troops still living.

They would certainly have the motive to kill an old Arab whom they recognised

from those dark days of the war.

And what of Momu? What would it do to Momu, to Karim and Rashida, if they were

to learn that their beloved father and grandfather had been a war criminal, a

terrorist in the employ of the puppet Vichy state, acting under Nazi orders?

What kind of shock would it be to learn that the man you respected as a war

hero, as the brave immigrant who established his family as Frenchmen with

education and prospects and family pride, had in reality been a beast who spent

the rest of his life living a lie? How could the family stay in St Denis with

that knowledge hanging over them? How would the rest of the little North African

community in St Denis react to this revelation?

Bruno could scarcely bring himself to think about the French public reaction to

the North Africans once all this became known, or to imagine by how many hundred

votes the Front National vote would swell. He bent forwards in his chair, his

head in his hands, biting his lip as he tried to cudgel his brain into rational

thought. He had to make some plans, talk to the Mayor, brief

J-J

and Isabelle,

and arrange to go to Bordeaux in the morning. He must talk to Christine, get

some advice on how on earth he could prepare his town for a bombshell such as

this.

‘Are you all right, Bruno?’ Pamela had come in to the room. ‘Christine said you

would have some pretty grim news and you would need a very stiff drink, but you

look quite devastated. You’re as white as a sheet. Here, have some whisky – it’s

not that Lagavullin you tried the other night. It’s plain Scotch, so take a big

gulp.’

‘Thanks, Pamela.’ He took a hefty gulp, and almost gagged on the fire of it, but

it made him feel better. ‘Thanks for the drink, and for being normal. I’m afraid

I have been in something of a nightmare, reading about these horrors of the

Occupation. It’s a relief to come back to the present day and to life in a

pleasant home.’

‘Christine said she thought it was somehow related to Hamid’s murder, but she

didn’t give any details. It’s funny how the past never quite goes away.’

‘You’re right. The past doesn’t die. Maybe it even keeps the power to kill.

Look, I have what I need now. I’ll take these books and leave you in peace. I

have to get back to my office and get to work.’

‘Are you sure, Bruno? Don’t you need some food?’

He shook his head, picked up Christine’s books and took his leave. As he drove

away he looked with new eyes at this placid countryside that had known such

events, and known them within living memory. He thought of smoke in the sky from

burning farms, blood on the ground from slaughtered fathers; he imagined French

policemen giving the orders that deployed military convoys on the country roads

– convoys packed with Arab mercenaries in black uniforms, with licence to rape,

loot and pillage. He thought of half-starved young Frenchmen, hiding in the

hills with only a handful of weapons, helplessly watching the reprisals

unleashed against their families and their homes. Poor France, he thought. Poor

Périgord. Poor Momu.

And, Bruno wondered, whatever can we do with the Frenchmen who took their

long-delayed revenge against one of their tormentors? At least now he knew why a

swastika had been carved into Hamid’s chest. It signified not the politics of

the killers, but the real identity of the corpse.

Once back in St Denis, Bruno drove immediately to the Mayor’s house by the river

on the outskirts of town, showed him Christine’s books and the photograph of

young Boudiaf with Villanova, and explained why he now believed their dead Arab

war hero had been in the Force Mobile. The Mayor was swiftly convinced, but

agreed the chain of evidence had to be made solid. They sat down and, from

memory, composed a partial list of all the families they knew in St Denis or the

surrounding region who had been part of the Resistance. They could flesh out the

list the next day from the records of the Compagnons de la Résistance in Paris.

‘So the police are now going to start investigating half the families of St

Denis to see which of them might have known that Hamid had been in the Force

Mobile. How the hell do we stop this getting out of hand, Bruno?’

‘I don’t know, Sir. I’m trying to think this through. They’ll question the old

ones first, those who might have recognised Hamid. It could take weeks, a lot of

detectives, and then the media and the politicians get involved. We could have a

national scandal on our hands. We may need all your political connections to get

the people in Paris to realise there can be no winners in this, nothing but a

political nightmare when the right-wingers make hay about French families being

burned out and terrorised by Arabs in German pay. Speaking personally, I’m so