Black Diamond - Martin Walker [43]
J-J shook his head, pulled out a pack of Gauloise filters and flicked his old-fashioned gasoline lighter.
“The only plan I have is to wait for the DGSE to tell me what clues they find in Vendrot’s papers,” he said, blowing out a plume of smoke. “But I suspect they’re more worried about what little embarrassments he’s left behind than with solving a murder. What about this truffle business he was stirring up? Where does that fit in?”
Bruno shrugged. “Do you see truffles as a motive for murder?”
“Depends how much money is involved. But it’s a line I have to pursue.”
“One thing you should look out for is Hercule’s truffle book, a journal where he recorded all his finds and sales and prices. Everybody in the market knows about it. Apparently he left it to me in his will. I didn’t see it in his house, and it’s not in his car. That DGSE man promised you full cooperation, and he’ll be at Hercule’s house now, going through the files. You could go and ask him for it, make it official.”
“I’m planning on picking up the records of Hercule’s phone calls. We’ve got a fixed line and a mobile. What about you?” J-J asked.
“Going back to St. Denis, where I’m supposed to work. On the way I’ll stop by the medical center to check on Madame Duong.”
10
Madame Duong was wearing a suit of white overalls borrowed from a nurse, and she smelled strongly of turpentine. Her son Pierre sat beside her, his face and hair clean, but he was still clad in the paint-drenched shirt and trousers he had arrived in. Sheets of newspaper protected the chair he sat on in the medical center’s waiting room.
“I don’t know,” she said for the fifth time. Whatever Bruno asked about the attackers, or about Vinh’s whereabouts, or about trouble in other markets, she gave the same flat reply. He couldn’t tell if she was suspicious of the police in general or just wary of anyone who wasn’t Vietnamese. Perhaps she was still in shock. Her fingers kept plucking nervously at the white cloth of the nurse’s jacket, and her fingernails were bitten down to the quick. From the age of her son, she could hardly be older than fifty, but she looked closer to seventy, with tired eyes and white roots in her hair. She kept her eyes down, refusing to look at him, and her thin mouth was set in a determined line.
“My mother is tired,” Pierre said, more resigned than aggressive. “Can’t you leave us alone?”
“I don’t know anything,” she said again, but then the medical center’s doors opened, and she rose to her feet as her husband rushed in and embraced her and his son. Probably around forty or forty-five, he was thin and wiry, distinctly shorter than Pierre and dressed in a tracksuit. Through the window Bruno could see the car that had brought Duong waiting outside, one man at the wheel, another standing beside the car and looking tough and vigilant; he reminded Bruno of a professional bodyguard.
Duong handed a bag of clothes to his wife and another to his son and was walking with them into an adjoining room when Bruno cleared his throat and said, “Monsieur Duong, I’ll have to ask you some questions about the attack on your wife.”
“Who are you?” he said, although Bruno was in full uniform. Unlike his wife, he spoke French without an accent, and unlike his son he spoke it more like a Parisian than anyone brought up in the Périgord.
“I’m a friend of your cousin Vinh, who was attacked like your family was,” Bruno said. “I want to find your attackers.”
“I know nothing. I wasn’t there,” he replied.
“Where’s Vinh?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why are Vietnamese stalls being attacked?”
“I don’t know.” His eyes kept darting around the room.
“You should know I was a friend of Hercule Vendrot,” Bruno said. And this time Duong focused on Bruno and gave a slight, sad smile.
“A very good man.”
“You know that he’s been murdered?”
He nodded and sighed. “These are very difficult times.”
“Your wife and Vinh have been assaulted and Vendrot murdered, very brutally. I need your help if I’m to do