Black Diamond

say Hercule was a
barbouze
. I left him at the scene.”
    “Fine. You call J-J while I sort things out with the gendarmes and get somebody to the house in Ste. Alvère. I’ve got people in Bordeaux; with a chopper from the military airfield, expect them anytime after a couple of hours. But nobody else gets into that house.”
    “I need to do this by the book,” Bruno said. “Once I get the SAMU guys to the body and they pronounce him dead, the rule is that any available law officer has to secure the scene until relieved by a senior officer or by the scene-of-crime unit. So we’d better get a gendarme out here fast. I’ll call one of the motorcycle teams from Sarlat to stand by until the SOCO guys turn up.”
    “I’ll fax your mayor with a request for you to be seconded to us as a matter of national security. You’ll be covered.”
    Bruno made his calls and waited, wondering what kind of
barbouze
Hercule had been. The word meant simply someone with a false beard, but had come to mean somebody operating undercover or in the murkier areas of security and intelligence. In the Algerian War the
barbouzes
had been outright killers, some of them taken straight from prison and offered apardon if they joined the underground war to kill members of the OAS, the secret army fighting de Gaulle in a quixotic bid to maintain the French empire. Deals had been done with the Union Corse, the mafia of Corsica, to turn a blind eye to some of their organized crime work in return for help against the OAS. They had kidnapped, tortured and assassinated each other and had become almost indistinguishable, except that one group had the backing of the French state and the other did not.
    Somehow, despite the gruesome manner of his killing, Hercule did not strike Bruno as that kind of
barbouze
. You learn a lot about a man from the way that he hunts, Bruno thought, and Hercule was subtle. He did not go charging into the woods, gun blazing. He considered his quarry, tried to think the way it did and to anticipate its moves. He seldom fired more than a single shot in a whole day of hunting, but it was always a shot that found its mark. Bruno pondered Hercule’s knowledge of foreign languages, the books in his home. However basic his education may have been, Hercule was thoughtful, learned and well read, something of an inspiration to Bruno, who was learning that he need not be limited by the inadequacies of his own schooling but that he could read for himself, learn by himself, think for himself.
    Hercule had been no thug, no gangster lying in wait to kill renegade French officers in Madrid nightclubs or to kidnap
pied-noir
nationalists in Rome brothels. The brigadier had called him “a legend in this business,” which meant a strategist, a planner. Who would want him dead? Bruno thought as he heard the siren and saw the red SAMU van coming over the far hilltop. The method of the murder itself had to be the message. It was a killing designed to demonstrate the ruthlessness of the killers and to intimidate by its very brutality.
    But anyone who sought to intimidate, thought Bruno, needs to be known. There is no point in anonymous terror. One has to be frightened of someone or something. And once that someone emerged, Bruno would have his target, both for justice and for vengeance.

8
    Bruno parked the baron’s jeep on the slope behind the ruined castle and looked up the lane to Hercule’s house. It seemed normal, as if waiting for its owner’s return. He rang the medical center in St. Denis to ask if Vinh or his wife had turned up for treatment, but there had been no sign of them. Bruno rang Vinh’s home number and his mobile, cursing himself for not doing it earlier, but got no reply from either. This was ominous; he’d have to visit Vinh’s home as soon as he was relieved here at Hercule’s place. But there was no telling how long that would be. He called the gendarmerie, and Sergeant Jules answered the phone.
    Bruno explained his anxiety about Vinh and asked Jules to send someone to check on the house. Then he told Jules what had happened to Hercule.
    “Hercule from Ste. Alvère? Who’d want to murder the old boy?”
    “It’s complicated and I’ll explain later, but can you check on Vinh?”
    Jules said he’d put Françoise onto it. Then he told Bruno that Poincevin had returned to confirm that the Chinese studentwas an illegal immigrant who would plead guilty to all charges, pay the costs of all damages and accept