Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard

of a town’s health, Saint-Denis was in fine shape, Bruno thought as he tipped his peaked hat to the assembled mothers and stepped into the road to pass them.
    Ahmed was in the fire station, as arranged, and the two of them went up to join Albert in his office to try Bruno’s experiment. It had been Ahmed who had taken the alarm call on the night of the fire, and although the call had not been recorded, Bruno thought it was worth taking a chance on Ahmed’s hearing and his memory.
    “I don’t know how much I can help, Bruno,” said Ahmed as they stood by Albert’s crowded desk. “I told you it sounded to me like there was a cloth over the mouthpiece. The voice was muffled, hard to make out.”
    “But you remember what the caller said?”
    Albert pushed toward Bruno the notepad he had on his desk. “Here’s what Ahmed scribbled down as he took the call.” It was just a list of single words—“Fire. Barn. Field. Behind woods. St.-Cham. road. Before St.-Cyp. turn.”
    “That’s pretty much all the caller said,” Ahmed confirmed. “Then when I asked for his name and address he just said he was calling from the Coux phone booth and hung up.”
    “Well, try to remember the voice and then listen to this,” Bruno said, picking up Albert’s phone and calling the voice mail message box at his office. “The quality isn’t brilliant, and you’ll hear me talking a bit, but there’s another man’s voice and I want to know if it sounds like the caller from Coux.”
    Ahmed took the phone and listened, closing his eyes in concentration. “Can you play it again?” he asked when the short conversation at Cresseil’s farm was over. “It’s a bit faint.”
    Bruno hung up and dialed again. This time Ahmed’s eyes were open and his lips moved as if he was reciting the words to himself. Albert sat motionless behind his desk, his eyes fixed on Ahmed, the only sound the tinny crackles that leaked from the phone at Ahmed’s ear. Bruno realized he was holding his breath in response to the tension that was building in the room.
    “One more time,” Ahmed said, handing the phone back to Bruno. “There’s something familiar about the voice. Maybe it’s just someone I’ve met once or twice. But try again.”
    “As often as you like.” Bruno dialed again.
    “You think it’s him, don’t you?” said Albert. “You think it was the caller who set the fire.”
    “Maybe,” said Bruno, handing Ahmed the phone for the third time.
    Again, the voices leaked from the phone into the silence and tension of the room. From outside the window came the voicesof the children liberated from school, followed by the howl of the noon siren.
    “I can’t swear to it,” said Ahmed. “But I think it’s him. It’s the way he says the word ‘fire.’ But when he says he knows you and he’ll see you at rugby practice … maybe I heard that voice there at the rugby club. He’s one of us, isn’t he, from Saint-Denis?”
    “Don’t worry, Ahmed. I won’t ask you to testify in court about this,” said Bruno. “I’m just trying to narrow things down a bit.”
    “Maybe this will persuade the mayor to let us have a new phone system in the next budget,” said Albert. “One that records calls automatically.”
    “Not until I get my new van,” said Bruno.
    As he climbed the familiar steps of the
mairie
Bruno had the uncomfortable feeling that he was losing his grip on the affairs of his town. It wasn’t just the arrival of the brigadier but also the coming of Bondino and the scale of the change the venture might bring to Saint-Denis. But his immediate problem was the brigadier. It felt like a personal humiliation, knowing that Dominique and Alphonse, friends of his, were now to be hauled in for a less-than-gentle grilling by the big guns from Paris. And his own hardening suspicions about Max made the fate of the other two seem all the more unfair.
    Bruno paused at the top of the stairs, reflecting on the prospect that matters were likely to get a lot worse. This wouldn’t stop with Alphonse and Dominique, nor with Max, when the brigadier got around to him, as he surely would. Once the Paris politicians got worried, the people of Saint-Denis became just so many pawns. His anger brought back the old bitterness that he’d hoped to leave behind when he left the army. It was all part of the same rotten system. The people ofSaint-Denis were going to be treated poorly, just as he and his fellow soldiers had been used and