To Kill a Troubadour (Bruno, Chief of Police) - Hardcover

Buch 15 von 19: Bruno Chief Of Police

Walker, Martin

 
9780593319796: To Kill a Troubadour (Bruno, Chief of Police)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593319796 ISBN 13: 9780593319796
Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

When a musician’s new song hits a political nerve, he finds himself in the crosshairs of Spanish nationalists’ ire, and it’s up to Bruno to track down the extremists who seem ready to take deadly measures, in another delightful installment of the internationally acclaimed series featuring Bruno, Chief of Police.

“As usual, Walker concocts a satisfying dish featuring an intriguing lead character who moves through enviable settings and enjoys wonderful meals while tracking down criminals.”—Booklist

Les Troubadours, a folk music group that Bruno has long supported, go viral with their new number, “Song for Catalonia,” when the Spanish government suddenly bans the song. The songwriter, Joel Martin, is a local enthusiast for the old Occitan language of Périgord and the medieval troubadours, and he sympathizes with the Catalan bid for independence. The success of his song provokes outrage among extreme Spanish nationalists. Then, in a stolen car found on a Périgord back road, police discover a distinctive bullet for a state-of-the-art sniper's rifle that can kill at three kilometers, and they fear that Joel might be the intended target. 

The French and Spanish governments agree to mount a joint operation to stop the assailants, and Bruno is the local man on the spot who mobilizes his resources to track them down. While Bruno tries to keep the peace, his friend Florence reaches out for help. Her abusive ex-husband is about to be paroled from prison and she fears he will return to reclaim their children. Will Bruno and Florence be able to prevent this unwanted visit? Despite the pressures, there is always time for Bruno to savor les plaisirs of the Dordogne around the table with friends.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MARTIN WALKER, after a long career of working in international journalism and for think tanks, now gardens, cooks, explores vineyards, writes, travels, and has never been busier. He divides his time between Washington, D.C., and the Dordogne.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

Bruno Courrèges, chief of police for the small French town of St. Denis and for much of the Vézère Valley, was taking a late evening patrol around the garden with his basset hound, Balzac, when the phone at his waist vibrated. Although it was nearly time for bed, the screen showed that it was his friend J-J, head of detectives for the département of the Dordogne, who was calling, so Bruno thought he’d better answer.

“Glad you’re still up and about,” came the familiar voice. “I’m coming to your place right away. I want to show you something and then you can tell me how worried I should be.”

Commissaire Jean-Jacques Jalipeau was a large and bustling bear of a man who had not been distracted from his duty when he was shot making an arrest. Some called him a cop “of the old school” in that he wore ill-fitting suits, smoked a pack of Gauloises a day, seldom polished his shoes and did not treat the media with the deference they had come to expect. His prisoners did not fall “accidentally” downstairs while handcuffed nor were their fingers caught in car doors. Female cops on his team almost never applied for transfers and he refused to play the usual turf wars with the gendarmes or to sneer at the municipal police.

Bruno went indoors and put out some glasses for drinks in the living room. Then he checked the latest regional news on his phone for any clue to J-J’s unexpected visit. A few minutes later, the headlights of J-J’s big Peugeot flared, and Bruno went to the porch to welcome his friend. Josette, J-J’s driver and aide, reversed into the driveway and stepped nimbly out. J-J took more time to extricate himself from the passenger seat. He emerged carrying a small evidence bag.

“Welcome,” said Bruno. “It’s too late for coffee, but do you want wine, or something stronger?”

“I’ll have a glass of your homemade vin de noix, since I know it has wine plus eau-de-vie,” said J-J. Josette asked for mineral water.

Once installed in Bruno’s living room with his drink, J-J tossed the bag toward Bruno.

“You’re the military man with the Croix de Guerre,” he began in his usual, abrupt way. “What can you tell me about that bullet, beyond the fact that it’s a twelve-point-seven millimeter caliber and one hundred eight millimeters long, with what look like Russian letters stamped into the base?”

Bruno managed to catch the bag without spilling his drink, surprised not only by the unexpected nature of J-J’s inquiry but also by his friend’s confident expectation that Bruno could answer all questions concerning war, weapons and the military in general. Then he recalled that it was many years since all young Frenchmen had been required to do at least a year of military service, and by going to university and then enrolling in the police, J-J had been spared that. The tradition launched by the French Revolution for every male citizen to be trained as a soldier and ready to fight for France had gone for good. Bruno knew that modern weaponry and warfare demanded far more than the ability to fire a simple gun, fix a bayonet and throw a grenade. But he sometimes regretted the passing of the principle that every citizen owed a duty to the homeland and of that egalitarian mood of national integration that bonded young men together in their drills, mess halls and barracks. Bruno supposed that he was the former soldier that J-J knew best.

“It’s a bullet for a Russian heavy machine gun, often used en masse for antiaircraft fire, but it also has the power to blast through body armor, vehicles and buildings,” Bruno explained, weighing the bag in his hand. “The Russians pioneered their use in specialist rifles for snipers, and now everybody else has copied them. With one of these, a trained sniper can kill at a great distance. The current record is a confirmed kill at just over three kilometers by a Canadian in Iraq. The Americans have developed a similar version in their half-inch caliber, almost the same size.”

“Is that what you were shot with in Bosnia?” J-J asked.

“No, thank God,” Bruno replied, surprised at how little J-J knew about military firearms. “A bullet that size would have torn my leg off and probably half my pelvis. I was hit with a standard round, the usual NATO caliber of seven point sixty-two millimeters, half the length and almost half the caliber of this bullet. And even that put me in the hospital for months. So how has this bullet suddenly turned up?”

“In a stolen car, an old Peugeot that crashed and was abandoned. The bullet had rolled down into the spare-tire housing. It was in a ditch on a small road running parallel to the N21, north of Castillonnès and close to Issigeac. It had fake license plates. We’re trying to identify the car now from its serial number.”

“Any other car involved?”

“No, it hit and killed a deer and then went into the ditch, lost a front wheel. No sign of the driver. We think there might have been a passenger. There were two different brands of cigarette butts in the ashtray. Though, of course, they could be old.”

“A trained sniper wouldn’t leave butts,” Bruno said. “Was there anything else in the car?”

“No bags, no papers, but one of the cops at the scene is a hunter and says he could smell traces of fresh gun oil on an old blanket. So the owner of the bullet might have had the weapon in the car with him. That’s what worries me,” J-J said. “Putain, you tell me this thing can kill at three kilometers?”

“In the hands of a trained sharpshooter, yes.” Bruno had seen armored cars immobilized by a few of those heavy rounds. “Almost certainly he’d have to be military trained, and with the right kind of sights. I imagine they could be picked up in war zones like Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Syria, anywhere they used Soviet or Russian weapons. It’s likely that such sniper rifles could get out into the illegal arms trade. There would certainly be a market for this kind of weapon.”

“How do you mean?” J-J demanded. “Terrorists?”

“Yes, there’s that, but some criminals would love to have them, or they could be sold for serious money to passionate big-game hunters. And we can’t rule out the possibility of assassinations. I think you’d better contact the security guys, and maybe also the military police.”

“What about the weapon itself, the gun that could have fired this bullet?”

“There are different models,” Bruno said, “but they’re all big, well over a meter long with a massive shoulder butt and special muzzle brakes at the end of the barrel to cut down the recoil. Without those muzzle brakes you could never fire the big rounds without breaking your shoulder. Mostly the sniper versions are single shot, bolt action, and always with a bipod to hold it steady. Barrett makes them in America, and there’s a Canadian manufacturer whose name I forget. In Russia, Kalashnikov and Dragunov both make them, and then there’s Snipex in Ukraine, Zastava in Serbia—”

“Putain, Bruno, where did you learn all this?”

“Ever since I was shot by a sniper, I’ve had a special interest,” he replied. “When I was convalescing in the military hospital the psychologists had the bright idea of bringing in one of our own snipers to talk to me about how I’d been shot. I’m glad they did. I stopped thinking about me and my wound and began thinking...

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Verlag
Alfred a Knopf Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593319796
ISBN 13 
9780593319796
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
307
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchpark GmbH
gpsr@buchpark.de

Krügerweg 1
Trebbin
Brandenburg
14959
Deutschland

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