Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard

wouldn’t have needed the bike. You could have walked out quietly, even walked up through the hills to the field. It’s not that far,” he said. “You’re fit enough, you could even have run …”
    “I could have, but I didn’t,” Max snapped at him. He regained his composure almost instantly. “You don’t really suspect me, do you? It’s just you being a
flic.”
    “Have you seen my eyebrows, Max?” Bruno said. “See where they’re burned off? And I still cough occasionally from the fumes I breathed in. I’m taking this fire very personally because it could have killed me. So, yes, I’m being a
flic.”
    “Sorry, Bruno,” Max said, scrutinizing Bruno more closely and looking chastened.
    “Whoever set that fire left a kind of bomb in there that went off just as the firemen got close. Did you know that?”
    “That’s not …,” Max began, but then seemed to catch himself. Bruno wondered what he’d been about to say. “That’s not what was in the newspapers. I hadn’t heard anything about a bomb.”
    “Set a fire with the gasoline, then screw the cap back on the not-quite-empty can and you have yourself a fuel vapor bomb that goes off quite a bit later, when the fire gets hot enough,” Bruno explained. “Arsonists know that, and some of them do it deliberately to hurt firemen. That’s why it carries such a long prison term.”
    Max froze for a moment at the mention of prison. Then he shook his head firmly. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said, and Jacqueline looked at him, rather anxiously, Bruno thought. There was nothing that could be called proof, but Bruno suddenly felt with dismay that he could be looking at the culprit. He pulled out his cell phone, as if checking for a message, but instead hit the speed dial to call his office voice mail, which would record the rest of this conversation as a message.
    “You haven’t heard any gossip about it among the
écolos?”
Bruno asked, holding the phone casually in his hand. “People must be talking about it. What about your old girlfriend, Dominique? You must have talked about it with her.”
    “Sure, we’re talking about it; I told you that,” Alphonse broke in. “Some of us were getting very suspicious about that place.”
    “I was asking Max the question,” Bruno said abruptly, his eyes firmly on Max.
    “We talk all the time, via e-mail and instant messaging, texting.Dominique’s always been my best friend.” He turned to Jacqueline with an encouraging smile and took her hand. “She was never my girlfriend, but we’ve known each other forever.” The girl glanced at Bruno before turning her eyes back to Max.
    “So what information did you and Dominique exchange when you talked about the fire? I’m trying to find out if there are any
écolo
crazies around here who would do something like this. It wasn’t just me and the
pompiers
that were at risk. It could have burned down Dominique’s farm, for God’s sake.”
    “Do you think so?” asked Max, real concern in his voice. “It was that dangerous?”
    “A bit more wind, a bit of delay in the
pompiers
getting there, and we’d have had a real disaster,” said Bruno. “So, any ideas?”
    Max shrugged.
    “And why burn down the shed, rather than just the crop?” Bruno pressed.
    “How should I know? Maybe whoever started the fire wanted to destroy the files, whatever it was they had in there. It said ‘office equipment’ in the paper.”
    “Did Dominique tell you about the office?” Bruno could hear the harshness in his voice, and he took a breath to calm himself.
Sud Ouest
had indeed mentioned a destroyed typewriter, but the paper had reported nothing about files.
    “She said she was keeping files up to date when she went up there. She’s furious about the fire. Dominique was starting to think that GMOs made sense. That’s mainly what we talked about.”
    “You agree with her?”
    Max shrugged again. “I don’t know. It’s technical, very complex. I mean, most of the vines in France are transplants of Californian rootstock. And to do that you have to graft yourcutting onto the root of another kind of vine. Isn’t that genetic modification? In its own way, I mean?”
    “So what do you think about the fire?” Bruno wasn’t going to let it go.
    “It was a really foolish, dangerous thing to do. So if I learn anything, I’ll let you know,” said Max. He draped his arm around Jacqueline and turned to go. “If that’s all, I’ll see you at