Free Black Diamond by Martin Walker Page B

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 tellinghim 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 hisirritation 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. “Regulations say a doctor has to check him out. And his lawyer will make a fuss if we don’t.” He took out his own phone and called Kati, the receptionist at the medical center, and asked for a doctor as soon as would be convenient. “It’ll give us a chance to strip his clothes off and check for identifying marks or tattoos,” he added.
    Duroc went down to the communications room to monitor the search for the stolen car. Françoise, the only woman among the small team of gendarmes, came in waving an evidence bag, looking pleased with herself. A curl of