Black Diamond - Martin Walker [26]
“We can sort this out at the gendarmerie,” said Bruno. Jules attempted to haul the young man to his feet, but he crumpled back down again, whimpering as he tried to crawl behind Jules and away from Léopold. “We’ll need to bring in the forensics experts to look at his mobile phone. They’ll have to try and identify the source of that stun grenade, if there’s anything left of it. That means bringing in the Police Nationale from Périgueux.”
“It looks like this boy might need an ambulance,” Jeanne said, to be howled down by other stallholders who were clustering around. Melanie from the cheese stall was close enough to give the young Asian a kick in the ribs with her heavy winter boots. Bruno began pushing the crowd back, but they were in no mood to listen. Two more gendarmes arrived.
“To hell with the ambulance,” said Jules. “I’m putting this little bastard in jail. We can always call a doctor to the gendarmerie.”
“You know that Vinh had trouble in Sarlat last Saturday?” said Léopold. “Same thing, some young Chinese telling him they wanted his spot. There were some hard words exchanged, a bit of pushing. But all the stallholders backed Vinh, and the others left.”
“Thanks for your help,” Bruno said to the big Senegalese, shaking his hand. “I’d have been in much worse trouble without you. And let us know how much that bolt of cloth cost.” It was lying in a pool of oil, clearly ruined. “The mairie will reimburse you.”
Léopold pulled from beneath his stall the small dolly he used to load and unload his van, and they pushed the half-conscious youth onto it, and with Sergeant Jules beside him, Léopold pushed the prisoner down the rue de Paris.
Bruno bent down to dip a finger into the dark oil and raised it to his nose to sniff and shrugged. Probably fuel oil, but he’d better check. He turned to Jeanne. “Please, can you call Michel at public works, get him to clean up this mess. Not that there’s much to be saved of Vinh’s stall. But tell him to keep some of this oil for the police lab. And ask him to hang on to the bucket they used. Thanks, Jeanne.”
He pulled out his own phone and rang the Police Nationale switchboard in Périgueux, reporting the assault, the use of explosives and the theft of his van and asking for assistance and a forensics team. The word “explosives” would get swift and top-level attention.
6
By the time Bruno reached the gendarmerie, his police van had been found, rammed into a concrete lamppost at Lespinasse’s garage on the outskirts of town. Two Asian men had abandoned it, leaped into an almost-new silver Renault that had just been filled with petrol, and driven off leaving the driver with the gas cap in his hand. The registration number had been circulated to all police, but there were many silver Renaults on the road. The young Asian had nothing to say. He sat silently in the interview room, his head bowed and his hands on his knees, refusing even to acknowledge questions or the offer of a glass of water. The telephone number he carried turned out to be that of a lawyer’s office in Périgueux, who did not seem much surprised at the call from the gendarmerie. A lawyer would be there within the hour, accompanied by a Chinese translator.
“So at least we know the nationality,” said Capitaine Duroc. “I tried calling the most recently dialed numbers on the guy’s phone, but all I got was a burst of Chinese or something. We’ve got France Télécom looking up the subscribers.”
“Has a doctor seen him?” Bruno asked, suppressing his irritation at the way Duroc worked. It would have made more sense to check the subscriber names first, and then probe the numbers that they called most frequently. It was called a tree analysis, from the way that a trunk led to branches, which led in turn to twigs. Once the computer had churned through the numbers it could chart entire networks of connections. But now that Duroc had started calling, cell phones would be ditched and numbers changed.
“He looks okay to me,” Duroc said.
“He could have a possible concussion from a blow to the head,” said Bruno.