Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard

indeed heard something.
    “Just after three-thirty—and I know because I looked at the clock when I woke up—I heard a motorcycle coming down the street and then stopping by the
mairie
. I looked out and the bike was parked and someone was going into the phone booth. But he wore a helmet, one of those big ones with a chin piece. He came out and went off down the hill.”
    “Did you see his face? Would you know him again?” Bruno asked. Félix shook his head. “Not in that helmet.”
    “Didn’t he take it off to make the call?”
    Félix shrugged. “I didn’t look out for long, just went back to the kitchen to make some coffee.”
    “What about the bike? Anything about it you remember?”
    “It was a modern one, the kind they use for motocross, tiny mudguards, fast-revving engine, noisy. All the youngsters drive them these days.”
    “Did you see him drive off?”
    “No; didn’t hear him either. He could have freewheeled down the hill.”
    Bruno climbed into the furnace of his van as the heat finally began to fade from the late-summer day. He opened all the windows and pondered the delicate tasks ahead. First he would have to interrogate Stéphane, and then he would have to stop at Alphonse’s commune to deliver the death notice he had received in the office. Sighing, he set out on the same winding road up the hill that he had taken on the morning of the fire. He turned off over a small bridge by a wayside shrine that commemorated two young Resistance boys
“fusillés par les allemands,”
one of them Stéphane’s uncle. This road led past a steep and muddy hollow that seldom saw the sun; Stéphane rented it out to the local motocross club for their trail bikes. Beyond the hollow, with its constant buzzing whine of straining engines, Bruno came to Stéphane’s pastures and the old farm, now almost overwhelmed by the new dairy and cow sheds and cheese barn.
    He had spent many a happy evening here, enjoyed long Sunday lunches, brought back game from his hunting forays with Stéphane and every February had helped the family kill and clean a pig in the annual ritual. He had taught Dominique how to rinse out the intestines in the swift brook of running water that led down to the shrine. Stéphane’s friendship would be a central part of Bruno’s life long after the ministers of the interior and agriculture had been voted out of office. He would handle this meeting with great care.
    “Salut
, Bruno,” said the big farmer, greeting him at the entrance to the milking shed, a broom in his hand. Dominique was playing a running hose over the floor. She turned it off and clomped across in her big rubber boots to hug Bruno.
    “We’re just finishing,” said Stéphane. “Care for a little
apéro?
I always reckon I deserve a Ricard after this job.”
    “Not this time, thanks. I’m on business, looking into that fire. It looks as though it was started deliberately, so I’m checking with everybody nearby to see if they heard or saw anything at about three that morning.”
    “That’s a bit early, even for me,” said Stéphane. “I was up at about four-thirty, as usual, and then I got the phone call from the
mairie
. I looked out and saw the glow. I woke Dominique and we left the cows in the barn and took the truck up to the fire. That’s where we saw you. I didn’t hear anything. What about you, Dominique? You were fast asleep when I came to your room.”
    She shook her pretty head, her cool gray eyes and clear complexion the very image of youthful innocence. “I didn’t hear anything, not even the phone.”
    “Did you know the place at all, from when you were working at the research station?”
    “Sure; I was up there once or twice a week to bring back samples and take up testing equipment. We never left expensive stuff there overnight. And every time I was there, I had to fill in the log, but that must have been burned.”
    “So you knew what they were growing up there.”
    “You mean those GMO crops? They used to scare me stiff, but not now that I know more about it. The only thing that worries me now is contamination, seeds blowing over into our fields and getting into the crops and maybe into the milk. One of the projects I worked on was seeing whether we could test milk for GMO traces. I remember worrying what might happento my dad if our customers thought they were getting these traces of Frankenstein foods in his milk and cheese.”
    “I see what you mean,” said Bruno. “What did you