A Twist of Orchids (12 page)

It had grown colder and more uncomfortable for the two gendarmes as the night wore on. Albert was better insulated by his own body fat, but Laurent, long and lean, kept having to rub his arms and stamp his feet to keep from freezing up altogether. He was tempted to start the engine of the Renault just so they could run the heater for a bit, but of course that would have given the whole thing away. The essence of a good stakeout was unobtrusive surveillance. A police car parked in the shrubbery off a country lane with its motor idling and belching exhaust was hard not to notice on a still, frosty night.

Four days ago, an elderly gentleman, resident of Le Vignal, had seen a dusty green van drive slowly through the
bourg
and turn down that lane, at the bottom of which were two houses, both owned by expatriates, both closed up for the winter. Neither house was visible from the village. The van had come back up the road a few minutes later. Three days later, the man had noticed the same vehicle going down the lane again. This time the van had not returned for a good forty-five minutes.

“Now I ask you,” the man had said to the Brames duty officer to whom he had reported the event, “what could anyone be up to, apart from skulduggery, for so long down a road where nobody’s at home? Especially with all these housebreakings
going on.” Owing to the van’s tinted windows, he had not got a good look at the driver.

The result was two gendarmes sitting in the dark, freezing their butts off (according to Laurent) and wasting taxpayers’ money (according to Albert, who was convinced that the appearance of a green van in Le Vignal on two separate occasions was nothing more than coincidence).

A bright moon rode high in the sky, shedding white light on trees and fields. Laurent’s watch read 3:03 a.m. They had been in place for four hours. Except for the fact that the car windows frosted up periodically and had to be scraped clear, the gendarmes had an unimpeded view of the dark bulk of the two unoccupied houses. So far the only movement they had seen had been a troupe of
sangliers
—wild boars—out for a night’s rooting.

Albert was in the driver’s seat, slouched forward, chin on chest. Laurent had his seat pushed back as far as it would go, but there still wasn’t enough space for his long legs. They felt cramped, and his right foot was going numb. Also, he had drunk a thermos of coffee since midnight. He needed a stretch and a piss. He opened the passenger door, causing Albert to stir, and got out of the car. His breath hung ghostly in the air. He closed the door quietly behind him and walked off into the bushes.

As he stood listening to the soft patter of his urine against a tree, Laurent wondered why it was that men pissed by preference on upright objects—walls, posts, fences, trees. Was there something deep in the male psyche that needed to leave its mark on more than Mother Earth? Maybe, like dogs claiming territory and status—he’d once seen a scrappy little dachshund nearly upend itself in an effort to outdo a bigger dog—human males had an atavistic need to make their mark vertically. He recalled boyhood competitions in which he and his pals, Albert among them, had tried to outdo each other in how high they could pee.
Albert, the dachshund of the gang, had perfected a technique of leaning back so far that he shot his whiz higher than any of them.

Back in the car, Albert, made of less philosophical stuff, was thinking only that stakeouts were boring and damned inefficient. All uninhabited houses should be wired and linked to a central station monitored by commercial security personnel. It would make the life of a gendarme a lot easier. A mild socialistic streak also inclined him to believe that people who were rich enough to buy second homes that they weren’t prepared to live in ought to pay for their which was:

The problem was that the Dordogne was steadily filling up with Parisian and expatriate homeowners who came for brief snatches of time, leaving their properties locked and shuttered but otherwise unguarded for the rest of the year. This was especially true of the British, who seemed to be arriving in the region by the planeload. Someone had said that, having lost their claim to France in the Hundred Years War, they were now buying it back by the square meter.

Laurent concertinaed himself into the car again, bringing a rush of frigid air with him.

“The bastard better show,” Albert muttered through gritted teeth. “Otherwise, I know our adjudant, he’ll have us out here every night until hell freezes over. Which it’s close to doing.”

The cold and the waiting were not the worst of it. For everyone attached to the Brames Gendarmerie, on whose patch the last two burglaries had taken place, and especially for brigade chief Jacques Compagnon, the main problem, the real indignity, was the doggerel.

In the space of six months there had been five burglaries in different communities in the Dordogne, all targeting houses closed up for the winter. The thief had been selective; only portable antiques and objets d’art had been taken. Paintings had
not been touched. Nor had easily disposed-of electronic equipment. The first three break-ins, involving gendarme units of other jurisdictions, could have been isolated events. The fourth, a house on the outskirts of Brames, could also have been an unrelated crime. However, in this case, the thief ’s sense of humor, perhaps excited by his success, had got the better of him. The burglar had left behind a piece of poetry, the translation of which was:

The words had been scrawled in magic marker on a wall about a meter from the floor, leaving one to conclude that the author was either very short or had written the piece while kneeling. Adjudant Compagnon’s protuberant eyes had bulged with annoyance at this piece of crude whimsy, the meaning of which was not entirely clear. The reference to
Alice in Wonderland
gave rise to brief speculation that the burglar was English. However, Lewis Carroll’s fat twins were so well known in France that such a conclusion could not be sustained.

A billet-doux found at the fifth site—it had been typed on the homeowner’s old-fashioned typewriter and left in the roller for police to discover—had removed all doubt as to the writer’s intent and had caused Compagnon’s eyes to stand out even farther from his head:

Obviously, “blue birds” referred to the gendarmes, who wore blue uniforms and worked in pairs. By extension, Tweedledum and Tweedledee must be taken to refer to the police as well—the Brames brigade specifically, since that robbery had also occurred on their turf—who couldn’t get it together and who went ass over rattle in their attempt to enforce law and order. Bad Boy, of course, was the thief himself, who outwitted the police, yanked their tail feathers, as it were.

Adjudant Compagnon was outraged. He took law and order and the
Gendarmerie nationale
very seriously. But mostly he felt personally teased. He expressed himself strongly and publicly on the mentality of criminals who thought they could get away with taunting the police with silly verses. He was widely quoted in the media as promising that the burglar would shortly be singing a different ditty. In confidence, he told his officers and the examining magistrate assigned to the case that Bad Boy had very stupidly given himself away: they now knew they were looking for an educated male perpetrator who worked alone and fancied himself a poet.

Although, the disloyal thought had flitted across Laurent’s mind, it might as easily have been a very subtle female heading up a gang of literate dwarves.

Laurent did not like the prospect of continued below-zero stakeouts any more than his partner. But their boss’s pride had been piqued, and he, like Albert, knew that until the burglar was caught, all suspicious behavior on their territory would have to be investigated thoroughly.

Laurent said, “We need more bodies. We can’t be doing this and keep our eye on Luca as well.”

He referred to the fact that their brigade was also carrying out an informal, low-level surveillance on Rocco Luca, alias Ton-and-a-Half, under the rubric of maintaining public order. Like
waiting for a housebreaker to turn up, the Luca case was very much hit and miss, and it took up personnel time with nothing to show for it so far. Apart from occasional visits from Serge Taussat, Ton-and-a-Half seemed to lead an exemplary existence. You couldn’t arrest someone on the strength of his associates, and up to now the Brames Gendarmerie had no case for launching even a preliminary investigation, or for requesting reinforcements.

Albert grumbled, “A fat zero, if you ask me, our adjudant’s hunch. Even if Luca is running a pipeline through the Dordogne as big as the N21, we have nothing on him. Or that extraterrestrial sidekick of his. Everyone else, including the cops in Périgueux, thinks Yvan Bordas’s death links to Marseille. So how does Compagnon figure the Ton is back in business and using the region as a transshipment point? Personally, I think Compagnon’s dreaming of making a big bust. But he’s going down a dead-end road if you ask me.”

Laurent, stiff with cold, shifted about. In his experience, drugs were a problem mainly in the rougher suburbs of Paris and other big cities. Here in rural Dordogne, kids went in more for grass and E, when they weren’t getting plain drunk, and you had to go all the way to Bordeaux, Toulouse, or Marseille for supplies of the heavy. However—and this was what worried him—things were changing. Now foreigners and Parisians moving into the region were bringing with them their big-city habits, and this was reflected in the stepped-up availability of heroin in modest centers like Sarlat, Bergerac, and Périgueux. You could get a
balle
of shit-quality brown—say, less than 5 percent purity, cut with pepper, talc, or God knew what—on the street for as little as twenty-five euros a gram. Better-quality white sold for a hundred and up.

Heroin—it had other names:
héro, rabla, came, poudre, cheval
, or simply H—was also taking on a new face. Junkies still mainlined, but nowadays users tended to snort or smoke it because of
the fear of dirty needles and AIDS. They often took it with pot, Ecstasy, and prescription drugs, or as a day-after soother to calm the crash landing from cocaine and amphetamines. The damned stuff, Laurent thought grimly, had become the recreational user’s adjunct drug of choice.

However, unlike Albert, Laurent did not think their brigade chief was necessarily heading down a cul-de-sac. He said, “Supposing Compagnon’s right? You’ve got to ask, why did Luca choose to retire here?”

“The
canaille
’s from Bergerac,” Albert pointed out.

“I know. But, I mean, is he really retired? Or is he behind the new action?” Laurent beat his arms to get feeling back in them. “Don’t forget, Bordas was found in Périgueux. The word is he was killed because he got wind of a shipment coming in. So maybe Luca is routing the stuff through his buddy, Pascal Goudy, and then moving it on, and that’s what Bordas found out.”

Albert snorted, “Then the Ton’s got a problem. You know the cops in Toulouse are sitting on Goudy’s tails. The only reason they haven’t brought him in is because they want him nervous to see which side he jumps.”

“Sure. They think he’s working with Bidart or Reynaud. But if Compagnon’s right and Pascal’s really bringing the stuff in for Luca, then the fact that the cops in Toulouse are on to Goudy is going to make the Ton nervous, too. Nervous enough to make a mistake.” Laurent rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s why he’s got Serge Taussat nosing around Périgueux.”

Albert’s laugh, sharp like a fox’s bark, hung frozen in the air. “What, you think Luca’s looking to set up there? He’d be crazy to do that. Périgueux’s too hot after Yvan, and the Ton is smart enough to know it. If it’s him, more likely Périgueux is just a blind. He makes us
think
it’s his base, but his real center of activity is somewhere else.” Albert added cynically, “Like Narbonne
Plage.” Albert’s parents had just retired to the small Mediterranean town, some distance away. In recent years it had mushroomed into a popular family holiday destination. Rental condos crowded the beachfront. People walked their dogs in the sunshine, little kids played with their spades and buckets in the sand. “
Merde!
” he uttered a moment later. “You know, Narbonne Plage is exactly the kind of spot a
crapule
like Rocco Luca would choose!”

Laurent sighed. It was pointless, this shooting in the dark. He changed the subject. “By the way, Roussel said Monsieur Ismet called again.”

Albert groaned. “Complaining we’re not doing enough to catch whoever trashed his shop? I told him just the other day that we’d checked out the toughs his son fought with at the market, but they had an alibi for the night in question.”

“Not much of one, though.” Laurent pulled his jacket tighter and tried to draw his head in, turtle-like, below the level of his collar. “It’s easy to say you were raising hell at a rave in Brives, with a dozen buddies willing to vouch for you, for what their word is worth. Still, I’m inclined to believe them. Or at least I believe they didn’t do the trashing. I can’t see
voyous
like that leaving cash in the till.”

“Yeah. Probably just someone who has it in for Turks.”

“Then you’d think whoever it was would have left a message. Racial insults spray-painted on the walls.” Laurent recalled the mess of spoiled food. “Or scrawled in tomato paste.”

Albert shrugged. “Maybe it’s someone who has a grudge against the Ismets personally. I can see the father getting up your nose. And the son. Sounds like the hot-headed type. Maybe that drink they sell gave a customer the trots. Or maybe it was just a random B and E.”

Laurent was not so sure. There were a lot of things about the case that bothered him, not least the fact that the son seemed not
to be around and the parents were keeping very tight-lipped about his whereabouts. He and Albert had speculated that the trashing might have been some kind of insurance scam, but when they checked it out they had learned that the Ismets carried only basic fire, water, and theft. Nothing had been stolen. The Ismets’ losses had been ruined foodstuffs and unrecoverable labor, for which they could not claim. A torching would have been more to the point.