Black Diamond

beamed at him, Bruno bit back a surge of irritation at Pamela’s arrival. It was less that her presence would be a distraction, and more that he felt self-conscious at playing his public role under her gaze. Usually he rather enjoyed Pamela’s teasing and the slightly mocking attitude the British seemed to adopt toward their police, but he was beginning to feel nervous about the way the crowd was building.
    He sized up the situation. Other than scattered knots of spectators, the crowd was splitting into two camps. Opposite the main gates of the sawmill were the
écolos
, and at the front of the crowd that flanked them were young women with carriages and strollers. Some of them Bruno knew well, the wives and infants of the men who worked at the sawmill, men who now faced unemployment until Pons’s new plant was ready. The women, glaring at the chanting
écolos
, had gathered by the small side gate their husbands used. Touching the peak of his cap, Bruno strolled across to greet them and to tousle the hair of the toddlers. He’d danced with the mothers at the feast of St. Jean and taught the younger ones to play tennis; he had attended their weddings and the baptisms of their children, hunted and played rugby with their fathers.
    “A sad day,” he said to Axelle as her twin daughters peeked out at Bruno from behind her skirts.
    “Bloody
écolos
, always putting their noses into other people’s business,” she snapped. “How come the law doesn’t look after people like us for a change?”
    “Emile will be back at work soon,” Bruno said, hoping to sound reassuring. “And I hear you got a job at the infants’ school. I suppose Emile’s mother can look after the kids.”
    “Lucky for some,” sniffed another of the mothers. “There’s no job for me, and whatever Pierre gets today will be the last money we see for a while. It’s going to be a pretty thin Christmas.”
    “I hope you’re satisfied, you bastards!” Axelle shouted at the
écolos
. “Our kids will be going hungry because you keep whining over a whiff of smoke.”
    “Pons out, Pons out,” the Greens chanted back, led by the dashing man with the bullhorn. To Bruno, he was the strangest feature of this drama, a long-lost son of St. Denis, home from his years of travel with a brand-new Porsche convertible, enough money to buy an old farm and convert it into a restaurant and exotic tales of life in Hong Kong, Bangkok and Singapore. And he had returned with an evident interest in local politics, a passionate commitment to the Green cause and an eagerness to fund the lawsuit that had finally succeeded in winning an order for the closure of his father’s sawmill. For the young man was Guillaume Pons, who insisted that everyone should call him Bill, and seemed intent on pursuing his family feud against his estranged father by any available means.
    Bruno wandered back to the crowd of chanting
écolos
and tapped Guillaume’s shoulder.
    “Do you think you could stop the chanting for a while? The women over there are worried about their men losing their jobs and they’re getting upset. It won’t help if you rub their noses in it.”
    “I know, it’s not their fault. But it’s not ours either,” Guillaume said pleasantly. As he put down the bullhorn to answerBruno the chanting died away. “We just want clean air, and we could create clean jobs as well, if we put our minds to it.”
    Bruno nodded and thanked him for the pause in the chanting. “Let’s keep this calm and dignified. It’s a sad day for some, and we don’t want tempers raised when the men come out.”
    “Perhaps the
mairie
should have thought of that when this campaign began, instead of using our tax money to subsidize the sawmill,” Guillaume countered.
    “We can all be wise after the fact,” Bruno said. The last time Pons had threatened to close his sawmill, Bruno and the mayor had managed to scrape up some funds from the town’s budget to help pay for the scrubbing equipment. It had gained them four years, until the new directive came in. The sawmill’s four extra years of taxes had more than repaid the modest subsidy.
    “Right now, I’m just concerned that we don’t have an angry shouting match,” Bruno added. “You’re the one with the bullhorn, so I’m holding you responsible.”
    “Don’t worry,” Guillaume replied with a smile that in other circumstances Bruno might have found charming. He put a hand on Bruno’s arm. “I can also use the bullhorn