The Crowded Grave

a pig he killed with Stéphane a couple of months ago,” she said. “And his freezer will be filled with rillettes and ribs, sausages and intestines. Nothing ever goes to waste from a good farm pig.”
    “Let’s not go into that, or we’d have to arrest him,” said J-J. “You know those idiots in Brussels have made it illegal for our farmers to kill their own pigs.”
    “If we carried out that regulation, we’d have to arrest half of Spain,” said Carlos. “Our police aren’t fools, most of them know when to turn a blind eye. In the end it comes down to judgment.”
    “Unfortunately, good judgment is in much shorter supply than new laws,” J-J said. “Let’s hope this summit meeting doesn’t produce any new ones because I can’t keep track of all the laws on the books already.”
    “Tell me if I’m wrong, but this summit sounds to me like a political meeting about cosmetics,” said Carlos, pouring out the second bottle as Isabelle passed the cheeseboard. “We’ve already got all the cooperation we need with France, both police and intelligence.”
    “And yet the bastards still seem to keep a step or two ahead of us,” said Isabelle. “The one thing that can make a difference out of this summit will be to agree to joint staffing of the
écouteurs
. We haven’t got enough Basque speakers monitoring the phones.”
    “But that’s not on the agenda,” said Carlos, looking thoughtful.
    “Not explicitly,” Isabelle agreed. “But it’s what my ministerwants. Read between the lines of the draft agreement and it’s there.”
    “Talking of cooperation, we might need some from you,” J-J said to Carlos. “I got the forensic report on that skeleton, Bruno. They say that from the shoes and the Swatch it’s twenty to twenty-five years old, one shot to the back of the head with a nine-millimeter Beretta. They found the bullet in the dirt beneath the body so he was shot in place. The dentistry is poor, but they think it’s Spanish, Portuguese or possibly Moroccan. We’re sending it out on the Interpol wire, but perhaps you can cut some corners.”
    “E-mail me the report and I’ll try,” Carlos replied. “Anything else?”
    “Yes, the report claims he was tortured,” J-J went on. “The finger bones were crushed and splintered with what they think was a pair of pliers. That makes it look like gangland, maybe drugs.”
    Carlos winced and took a deep breath. “Poor devil, whoever he was.” He pointedly looked at his watch, and J-J picked up on the cue.
    “Early start tomorrow, so no time for coffee,” he said, rising, and looked at Carlos and Isabelle. “I’ll drive you both back to the hotel and let Bruno do his washing up.”
    Isabelle looked at Bruno and raised her eyebrows slightly, before leaning down to stroke that spot she knew behind Gigi’s ears. He told himself that he detected a touch of regret in her gesture, but he might have been flattering himself.
    She looked up from the dog, noting quickly that J-J and Carlos were chatting together, and said quietly to Bruno, “Thank you for the books. We must talk about them sometime.”
    When she had been convalescing, Bruno had spent some time considering what books to send her in the hospital. He knew she had a taste for American detective stories, but knewtoo little about them to make a thoughtful choice. But in the brief time they had been together he had seen her reading a couple of his own history books and so he sent her the three volumes of Pierre Nora’s
Les Lieux de mémoire
. He’d devoured them, fascinated, after reading an essay in a popular history magazine about Nora’s analysis of some of the iconic French sites like Verdun and Versailles and the difference between reality and the memory and myth attached to them. Two months later, he had received a short note of thanks from her and a book of Jacques Prévert’s poems. Her gift had been doubly thoughtful. She knew that one of Bruno’s favorite films was
Les Enfants du Paradis
, and Prévert had been the scriptwriter. The note said the book had been her first purchase after leaving the hospital.
    “And my thanks for the poems,” he said, although he’d already sent her a note. They were at the door, Carlos and J-J standing back to let Isabelle go ahead. He remembered the first time she had come to his house. When looking at his books she had gone unerringly to the volume of Baudelaire’s poems that had been a gift from a woman he’d known and loved in the