The Crowded Grave

didn’t have to make an entrance.”
    “You wouldn’t have heard us, mademoiselle,” said Bruno’s new ally, the sergeant. “We were under the flight path of a helicopter.” The sergeant noticed the brigadier, in civilian clothes, but clearly recognized him as a military man and very obviously in charge. He saluted.
    Bruno explained the origin of the weapons and suggested the automatic pistol should be given to the mobile forensics unit to see if there were any matches for the bullets. Isabelle looked at Bruno.
    “Do you have any particular matches in mind?”
    “From the firing pin, it’s been used, and more than once, and cleaned by someone who knew what he was doing. I’d like to know if it could’ve been the gun used to kill our no longer unidentified corpse,” said Bruno. “I don’t think the Heckler and Koch has been fired since it left the factory.”
    “Semtex?” asked Carlos, studying the plastic explosive. “We’d better check it for tags.”
    “It may be too old for tags,” said Bruno. “I think it dates from the 1980s, or even earlier, original Czech stuff, supplied by the Stasi to their allies in the Baader-Meinhof gang. It’s been well stored, but at this age I’m not sure how stable it’s going to be.”
    “Sergeant, take that stuff out to the yard,” said the brigadier. “Better still, take it out well beyond the wall and get an explosives expert to check it over. And now perhaps somebody can fill me in on these developments, starting with this corpse you seem to have identified.”
    Isabelle took over the agenda and went through their discoveries of the day, from Teddy’s Basque connections to Jan’s background in Baader-Meinhof and his relationship to Horst. She confirmed that Bruno had gone through the available mug shots in an effort to identify the young Spaniard who had been seen at Jan’s smithy, but without success. She yielded the floor to the general from the gendarmes, who reported that despite the massive deployment of troops they had not yet located Teddy. Isabelle then said that the Dutch police had visited Kajte’s home, and although her mother had said she had returned, the Dutch police were unable to confirm her statement. The Dutch had then checked that Kajte had used her credit card to buy a ticket from Périgueux to Amsterdam, but the ticket for the Paris-to-Amsterdam leg on the Thalys train had not been used.
    “So the girl is running loose and so is the young Englishman,” said the brigadier. “Do we presume they are together?”
    “They have both turned off their cell phones, so the last tracking we have of them is Teddy in Bergerac at one p.m. today. We don’t think Kajte even went to Paris.”
    “I thought the first report on this Teddy said he did not board the bus with the other students in St. Denis,” the brigadier said. “How did he get to Bergerac?”
    “It seems he did board the bus,” said the general, looking at his papers, refusing to meet the brigadier’s eyes. “Somehow he slipped out of the back door when the gendarme escort at the front of the bus was distracted.”
    “Distracted how?”
    “One of the young women students. It seems that Teddy was quite popular, and the other students cooperated to help him escape.”
    “We’re not doing very well, are we?” the brigadier said in a way that squashed any attempt to interpret it as a question. “We’ve also lost track of the Basque unit and of these two German brothers. And our two ministers arrive the day after tomorrow. So far, our only achievements have been to establish the identity of a twenty-year-old corpse, to find an arms cache and to help our German friends identify a long-lost terrorist from the Red Army Faktion.”
    “We have canceled all leave, and I’m bringing in more
motogendarmes
from other
départements
to help search the roads,” said the general. “We’re also checking out all the rental car companies and garages.”
    “We’ve put a stop on the credit cards of these two students?”
    “The Dutch say they can’t stop the girl’s cards without evidence of criminal behavior,” said Isabelle. “But we have a watch on the cards. If she uses hers to rent a car, we’ll know about it.”
    “Not necessarily,” said Bruno. “Small garages around here will take a credit card imprint as a deposit, but won’t always put the charge through until the car has been returned. That’s why it makes sense to visit all the garages.”
    A silence