The Crowded Grave

to visit the site, which means organizing the parking and telling Horst to set up barriers so they don’t all fall into the trenches.”
    “Can’t you get the gendarmes to do that?”
    “Yes, but knowing Capitaine Duroc, he’ll probably set up speed traps to catch all the reporters.”
    Pamela squeezed his hand, but her eyes were serious. “In this blizzard of information I can’t tell whether you’re trying to tell me something or hiding something.”
    “I’m not hiding anything, but after tomorrow those securitymeetings will be taking place twice daily,” he said. “And it seems that they’ll include Isabelle.”
    Pamela’s face went very still, and then she removed her hand and turned to pat her horse’s neck. “I thought Isabelle was still convalescing,” she said quietly.
    Her horse picked up a step and moved ahead of Bruno so he could no longer see her face. He remembered her outburst of anger at the children’s Christmas party when some busybody had told her of seeing Bruno and Isabelle together at a hotel in Bordeaux. It had been an entirely innocent meeting. But that flash of jealousy made Bruno wonder whether Pamela herself was at ease with the controlled intimacies of their own affair.
    “She was supposed to have six months’ leave to recover, but she got bored doing nothing,” said Bruno, talking to Pamela’s back. “I’m told she’s now walking with a cane and is coming down to do something about communications and security. It’s her minister who’s doing the meeting.”
    “What brings the minister of the interior to St. Denis?”
    Bruno shrugged, then realized Pamela couldn’t see the gesture. “Some meeting with a foreign colleague and a photo op,” he said, raising his voice so it would carry.
    “A foreign colleague?” Her voice was mocking. “So St. Denis joins the ranks of international conference centers?” She was sitting very upright in the saddle, her back stiff. “Two meetings a day. I suppose she’ll try to lure you to Paris again. Isabelle has always impressed me as the kind of woman who gets what she wants.”
    Carlos Gambara was sitting on the uncomfortable chair outside Bruno’s office and filling in the blank numbers in
Sud Ouest
’sSudoku game when Bruno arrived. He looked up and caught Bruno glancing at his watch. It was two minutes before eight.
    “Give me a moment,” Carlos said. “I’m almost done.” He scribbled another number as Bruno went into his small office, put his hat on the table, turned on his computer and sat in his revolving chair. It gave the usual, almost welcoming squeak. He rang Claire, the mayor’s secretary, and asked for two coffees and then tapped in his username and password and began dealing with the accumulated e-mail. Most were routine, but two made him pause.
    They both came from Isabelle. The first was a formal note from her ministry e-mail address, attaching a list of “families of interest.” Bruno scanned it, found no surprises and sent it to his printer. The second came from her private Hotmail address.
    “It’s good to know we’ll be working together again. Still a lot of convalescing to do, but the doctors are pleased with me. More important, my karate teacher says I’ll be back to normal by midsummer. Isabelle xx.”
    Bruno pondered his reply, trying to catch the same tone that she had used, of friendly colleagues rather than old lovers. He wasn’t satisfied with his reply, but as Carlos pushed open the door, he hit the SEND button anyway. “Happy to hear you are recovering and fit enough to be back at work. La République can breathe easily again. Always a welcome for you in St D. See you soon, Bruno xx.”
    Carlos held up the front page of
Sud Ouest
with the photo of Horst’s first modern family. There was a smaller photo of Horst, and the headline made Bruno smile—“First Family Found in St. Denis.”
    “What did you think of the lecture?” he asked.
    “I can’t stop thinking about it and what Horst was saying about murder as the first act of modern man, the original sin,” Bruno said. “It makes me wonder who was the first policeman.”
    Carlos pulled two sheets of paper from his inside pocket and laid them on Bruno’s desk.
    “Families of Spanish origin in this region who may be of interest,” he said. “Your records may be better than ours.”
    Bruno handed him the printout from Isabelle’s attachment. “Most of the names are the same. We have a couple more, but none that