outraged by it I can hardly think straight, Sir.
Stop calling me Sir, Bruno. Weve been through too much for that and I dont
know what to do any more than you do. In fact, I trust your instincts on this
better than my own. Im too much the politician.
Politics may be what we need to get through this. But I have to go and brief
the investigation team.
You havent told them yet? So they dont know anything about the Force Mobile?
the Mayor demanded, and then paused before continuing thoughtfully, So we have
some time to think how much to tell them.
No time at all, Sir, Bruno said briskly. Determined to squash whatever
thoughts might be stirring in the Mayors mind, he went on, They know Im
working on this and Isabelle, the Inspector, has already been delving in the
military archives about Hamids mysterious war record. They are close on that
trail, and I have to go.
Bruno left the Mayor sitting hunched and looking slightly shrunken in the rather
over-decorated sitting room that was his wifes great pride, and walked out to
his van to call Isabelle. They met in his office at the Mairie where he laid out
the evidence for her. Together they rang
J-J
and agreed to meet in Bordeaux the
next morning. He phoned Christine at her Bordeaux hotel, got from her the mobile
number of the curator of the Jean Moulin archives, and arranged for the next
mornings visit. He decided it was not his job to alert Tavernier.
J-J
could do
that.
More depressed than he had ever felt, Bruno could not think of food, but
Isabelle took him off to the local pizza restaurant where he ate mechanically
and drank too much wine. Careless of the towns gossips, she drove him home and
put him to bed. She fed his chickens, undressed and climbed into bed beside him.
He awoke in the early hours, and she pushed him into the shower and put on a pot
of coffee. Then she joined him under the steaming water and they made urgent
love amid the soap suds, ending up passionately on the bathroom floor.
Later she brought the coffee and they went back to bed. There, they turned more
gently to one another and were still engrossed in each others bodies when the
cockerel crowed to signal the dawn which made them both laugh and Bruno
realised he felt human once more. They showered again, and Bruno watered his
garden and fed Gigi, then made fresh coffee while Isabelle went back to her
hotel to dress. She returned with a bag of fresh croissants from Fauquets and
they took her car to Périgueux. Bruno kept his hand resting lightly on her thigh
for the entire journey.
Youre a very remarkable woman, he told her as they reached the new motorway
at Niversac. That makes twice youve rescued me. And this time you did it even
after you saw me drunk.
Youre worth it, she said, taking his hand, putting it between her thighs and
squeezing it. And theres another bad moment ahead, when you have to help us
make the arrest. Youd better prepare yourself for that. Whatever Hamid was or
whatever he did, he was unlawfully murdered.
I know, he said. But if it had been your family, your farm, your mother, you
would have killed him yourself. Thats justice.
It may be justice, but its not the law, she said. You know that.
Indeed he did know it, and it saddened him. Yet his sadness was of a different
order to the despair that had gripped him the previous evening. That at least
had lifted.
Bruno and Isabelle met
J-J
and a liaison officer from the Bordeaux police on the
steps of the Centre Jean Moulin at nine a.m. Christine was already inside with
the elderly French historian who ran the archives. The Centre was named after
one of the most famous of Frances Resistance leaders, who had sought to unify
Communists, Gaullists and patriots into a common command and had been betrayed
to the Gestapo. It stood in the centre of the city, an elegant neo-classical
building of white stone that hid the dark history within. Best known to the
public as a museum of the Resistance, it contained showcases of domestic
objects: wooden shoes, wedding dresses made of flour sacks, ration cards and
other realities of daily wartime life. Also on show were bicycle-driven dynamos
that produced electricity for clandestine radios, and cars with giant bags on
the roof that contained carbon gas made from charcoal, to use in the absence of
petrol. There were displays of the different contents of the weapons containers
Sten guns and bazookas, grenades and sticky bombs dropped by British
aircraft for use by the Resistance. Underground newspapers were laid out to
read. And playing in the background was a discreet but continuous soundtrack of
the songs they sang, from the love songs of Charles Aznavour to the defiant
heroics of the Resistance anthem, Le Chant des Partisans.
But Bruno discovered that the real heart of the Centre Jean Moulin was to be
found on its upper floors, which contained the written and oral archives and the
research staff who worked there, keeping alive the memory of this tortured
period of French history.
Christine and
J-J
sifted through the fragmentary records of the Force Mobile,
and established that Hussein Boudiaf and Massili Barakine had been recruited to
a special unit of the Milice in Marseilles in December 1942. After two months of
basic training, they were assigned to the Force Mobile, a unit of a hundred and
twenty men commanded by a Captain Villanova, which specialised in what were
described as counter-terrorist operations in the Marseilles region. In October
of 1943, after the British and Americans had invaded Italy and knocked Hitlers
ally Mussolini out of the war, the Germans had spread the Occupation into the
previous autonomous zone run by the Vichy government, and the Force Mobile
came under Gestapo rule. The outfit was expanded, and Villanovas unit was
assigned to Périgueux in February 1944, charged with taking punitive measures
against terrorist supporters.
They found pay slips with Boudiafs name, movement orders for Villanovas unit,
payroll listings that included Boudiaf and Barakine, and requisitions for
special equipment that included explosives and extra fuel to destroy terrorist
support bases. The curator, cross-checking with the records of the Force
Mobiles pay office, found a record of Boudiafs promotion to squad leader in
May, after one of Villanovas trucks was destroyed in a Resistance ambush. The
promotion listing included a new Milice pay book and identity card, complete
with photograph, that had never been collected by Boudiaf. The Milice records
stopped in June 1944, with the Allied invasion of Normandy and the complete
collapse of the Vichy regime.
Bruno and Isabelle went through the Force Mobile mission reports, the punitive
sweeps staged from the Périgueux base north into the Limousin region, west
to the wine country of St Emilion and Pomerol, east toward Brive and south into
the valleys of the Vézčre and the Dordogne. They hit the region around St Denis
in late March of 1944, raiding farms where the sons had failed to appear for