The Crowded Grave

foot Bruno saw a spiral of metal, like a spring. Whatever could that have been?
    There were scorch marks on the walls of the factory, and some of the wood of the shattered window frames was still smoldering, but the inside of the place looked as if it had been destroyed by something more violent than fire.
    “Have you looked around the whole building, or is the damage just here?” he asked.
    Arnaud shook his head helplessly. “I got here and saw this and rang the
pompiers
.”
    “Come with me, tell me if there’s anything unusual,” Bruno said. They set off to make a circuit around the outside of the plant. The wall nearest the road was clear apart from scorch marks, and the rear of the plant looked untouched. On one side of the building, he was not greatly surprised to find that someone had used an aerosol paint can to write
arrêtez foie gras—peta.fr
.
    “Ever heard of these PETA types?” he asked.
    Arnaud shook his head. “Heard of them, yes, but that’s all. We’ve had some nasty letters, but that was some time ago.”
    “What are all these bricks doing, scattered around everywhere?” Bruno asked, hearing the siren of the fire engine coming down the road from the bridge. “Your showroom was mainly wood and glass.”
    “We had a stack of bricks around the side for the extension we were planning,” Arnaud explained. “We hadn’t started building it yet, and now we’re ruined.”
    “Are you insured?”
    “For the building, yes, but not the stock.
Putain
, that was a bad mistake.” He turned away, putting his fist to his mouth as though to prevent himself being sick. The sound of the siren stopped and the fire engine pulled into the yard.
    “You might be all right,” Bruno said. “This looks like more than just a fire to me.”
    “I thought I told you to keep away from fires,” Albert said to Bruno by way of greeting, before peering into the wrecked showroom and looking curiously at the collapsed roof. He scratched his chin beneath the strap that secured his helmet, more like a habit in reflection than to relieve an itch.
    “
Merde
, this is a mess. But there’s not much of the fire left. In fact, I’m not sure this was a fire at all. See the way those tiles from the roof have been scattered out to the sides rather than fallen into the room. And most of the glass has been scattered inward.” He turned to Arnaud. “Did you have any explosives stored here? Propane gas tanks, dynamite, anything like that?”
    “Explosives?” he looked bewildered. “Why would we need explosives?”
    Ahmed climbed down from behind the wheel of the fire engine, and he and Albert clambered through what had been a window, trying to keep their balance on the small tins of foie gras that were underfoot. Albert turned back to Bruno, sniffing. “It smells a bit like cordite. Can you call Jeannot at the quarry? I think we need his expertise.”
    Bruno called him and asked Jeannot to come as soon as he could. It was no comfort that Albert shared his suspicions.
    “How come you didn’t hear anything?” Bruno asked. “That’s your house around the back.”
    “I didn’t spend the night there,” Arnaud said, hesitant.
    “Well, I hope she’s not married because I’m going to have to check with her.”
    For the first time, Arnaud smiled. “It’s not like that. It’sMireille, from the florist’s, and we’re engaged. I’m at her flat in town most nights.”
    “Congratulations,” Bruno said. “You kept that quiet. I hadn’t heard.”
    “It’s my dad. He’s against it, you know, that old family thing.”
    Bruno nodded. Arnaud’s grandfather had been wounded when serving with the Resistance in the war, and Mireille’s granddad had been a
collabo
. There were families where this still mattered.
    “I think it was dynamite, and they certainly knew what they were doing,” said Albert, clambering out of the ruined showroom. “See those bricks and those metal springs?”
    Bruno nodded. “I was wondering …”
    Albert held up a bit of scorched rag. “I think it was a mattress. They used it to tamp down the explosion, covered with those bricks to weigh it down. It would direct the force of the explosion. That’s why the roof tiles were blasted off to the sides.”
    He turned to Arnaud. “You must have some pretty serious enemies. Any idea who it could have been?”
    Arnaud shook his head, hands in the air and mouth agape. “This is crazy. Who’d want to …” He broke off and turned to