Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard

Cresseil’s sink.”

35
    Captain Duroc had done them proud. He had moved a small table and two hard-backed chairs into one of the cramped basement cells and put a dirty blanket over the ancient horsehair mattress atop the iron bed frame. Bruno leaned against the metal door as J-J faced Bondino across the table. The cell stank of ancient sweat, black tobacco and God knows what else, with a distant memory of disinfectant. It was an odd place to be for a man as spoiled and well-dressed as Bondino. He was wearing a cream silk shirt—open halfway down his plump chest to reveal two gold chains with various medallions—his usual slipperlike shoes and a matching black leather jacket. Not assuming his usual sprawling pose, he kept his arms and legs tucked in, as if nervous about contamination by the grimy cell. But his face was calm and his gaze firm.
    “You’re lying. We know you were in that house,” said J-J. “We’ve got the fingerprints to prove it.”
    Bondino shook his head. “I only went to that farm once, with Dupuy. I never went inside. I never took a drink of wine or anything else. He was there.” He nodded at Bruno. “He saw me leave. I want a lawyer, and I want the American embassy.”
    “This is France, not the U.S.,” said J-J. “You’re under
garde
à vue
. That means you answer my questions until you’re charged or I’m satisfied. So let’s go through this again. With my own eyes I saw you fighting with a young Frenchman over a girl. I saw him bleeding. I saw you restrained by the owner of the bar whose window you had broken. I saw your rival go off with the girl you thought was yours. This was more than just a barroom scuffle. This was personal, and it was vicious. You went in and hit him, and the guy turns up dead a few hours later and you tell me you had nothing to do with it?”
    “I know nothing about it. I want to contact my embassy.”
    “What really upsets me about this is why you had to kill the old dog,” J-J went on, speaking over him, but this remark about the dog drew a reaction. Bondino began shaking his head angrily. “We found the rock you used, bits of the poor animal’s blood still on it. We’re going to find your fingerprints on that as well.”
    “I have never killed a dog. I would never kill a dog,” Bondino said. “I want to speak to my embassy.” He nodded at Bruno again. “He knows I like dogs.”
    Bruno intervened. “You don’t need to be ashamed of anything. You had a fight over a girl. It happens all the time. We understand that in France.” Bruno kept his voice almost friendly. He and J-J had played the good cop, bad cop roles before. “We call it a
crime passionnel
, and we’ve got a special law for dealing with such matters. It gets a lesser punishment, did you know that? A guy gets home early from hunting, finds his wife in bed with another man.
Blam-blam
, he lets them have it, both barrels.
Crime passionnel
. He walks free. And that’s what it was here, a
crime passionnel
. You were inflamed with jealousy of this handsome young Frenchman who had stolen your girl. We’re all guys here; we understand that kind of thing. Was that how it was?”
    “I’ll say nothing more until I talk to the U.S. Embassy.”Bondino set his shoulders as he looked at Bruno in a way that seemed more confident than defiant. Perhaps it was the manner of a rich and privileged young man who knew that expensive lawyers and political influence were available to him. But that kind of protective shell didn’t usually last long under interrogation, so Bruno found his curiosity growing. They seldom had people in a cell who looked as calm as Bondino.
    “You can talk to the president of the United States if you want, but even he can’t explain away your fingerprints in that farmhouse,” Bruno said.
    “I have nothing more to say.” This time Bondino gave Bruno an almost casual nod. The young man was in complete control of himself.
    “Your body does. It will have a lot to say, just like your fingerprints,” said J-J. He leaned down into his briefcase and pulled out a plastic evidence bag and held it against Bondino’s head.
    “It looks like a match to me,” he said. “We pulled these hairs from under the fingernails of the murdered boy. I say they’re yours, and they’re going to convict you of murder.”
    “They can’t be mine,” Bondino said calmly. “He didn’t even get to touch me in that fight we had in the bar. I hit him, he went down and then the