Black Diamond

asked.
    “Going back to St. Denis, where I’m supposed to work. On the way I’ll stop by the medical center to check on Madame Duong.”

10
    Madame Duong was wearing a suit of white overalls borrowed from a nurse, and she smelled strongly of turpentine. Her son Pierre sat beside her, his face and hair clean, but he was still clad in the paint-drenched shirt and trousers he had arrived in. Sheets of newspaper protected the chair he sat on in the medical center’s waiting room.
    “I don’t know,” she said for the fifth time. Whatever Bruno asked about the attackers, or about Vinh’s whereabouts, or about trouble in other markets, she gave the same flat reply. He couldn’t tell if she was suspicious of the police in general or just wary of anyone who wasn’t Vietnamese. Perhaps she was still in shock. Her fingers kept plucking nervously at the white cloth of the nurse’s jacket, and her fingernails were bitten down to the quick. From the age of her son, she could hardly be older than fifty, but she looked closer to seventy, with tired eyes and white roots in her hair. She kept her eyes down, refusing to look at him, and her thin mouth was set in a determined line.
    “My mother is tired,” Pierre said, more resigned than aggressive. “Can’t you leave us alone?”
    “I don’t know anything,” she said again, but then the medical center’s doors opened, and she rose to her feet as her husband rushed in and embraced her and his son. Probably around forty or forty-five, he was thin and wiry, distinctly shorter than Pierre and dressed in a tracksuit. Through the window Bruno could see the car that had brought Duong waiting outside, one man at the wheel, another standing beside the car and looking tough and vigilant; he reminded Bruno of a professional bodyguard.
    Duong handed a bag of clothes to his wife and another to his son and was walking with them into an adjoining room when Bruno cleared his throat and said, “Monsieur Duong, I’ll have to ask you some questions about the attack on your wife.”
    “Who are you?” he said, although Bruno was in full uniform. Unlike his wife, he spoke French without an accent, and unlike his son he spoke it more like a Parisian than anyone brought up in the Périgord.
    “I’m a friend of your cousin Vinh, who was attacked like your family was,” Bruno said. “I want to find your attackers.”
    “I know nothing. I wasn’t there,” he replied.
    “Where’s Vinh?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Why are Vietnamese stalls being attacked?”
    “I don’t know.” His eyes kept darting around the room.
    “You should know I was a friend of Hercule Vendrot,” Bruno said. And this time Duong focused on Bruno and gave a slight, sad smile.
    “A very good man.”
    “You know that he’s been murdered?”
    He nodded and sighed. “These are very difficult times.”
    “Your wife and Vinh have been assaulted and Vendrotmurdered, very brutally. I need your help if I’m to do something about it.”
    Again that sad smile, but no words.
    “Why are you so frightened? Why do you come here with a bodyguard?”
    “He’s a friend, not a bodyguard. Excuse me, but I must take my family home now,” he said as the door to the adjoining room opened and his wife appeared in black slacks and a sweater.
    “These people are trying to destroy your livelihood. Why won’t you help me find out who they are?”
    “I know nothing that could help you in your work.”
    Bruno shrugged and pulled out one of his cards. Madame Duong came to stand beside her husband. He put his arm around her shoulders. “If you see Vinh, ask him to call me,” Bruno said, and gave him the card. “His friends are worried about him.”
    Duong looked at Bruno for a long moment and then asked, “Are you the man who fought for them in St. Denis dressed like Father Christmas?”
    Bruno nodded. “Vinh is a friend.”
    “Yes, I remember, that feast he gave when he bought the new house. You were there, I think.”
    “Along with Hercule Vendrot.”
    “I’ll try to find a way to pass a message to Vinh, but if you couldn’t protect Hercule Vendrot …” He shrugged.
    “You think the people who attacked you also murdered Hercule?”
    Duong shrugged again. “How would I know?”
    “What will you do, now that they’ve destroyed your stall, and Vinh’s?”
    “We’ll find something. We have friends with restaurants, we can work there.”
    “You know a restaurant was attacked with firebombs in Périgueux