No crime writer could be more fortunate in a neighbour, and not only because we share each evening the sacred French ritual of the p’tit apéro; a glass of Ricard made cloudy with water, or a splash of crème de cassisin a glass of white wine, or from time to time a good malt scotch. Raymond, in his seventies, is a retired captain of gendarmes, who served a stint on the security detail of former President Jacques Chirac. He has endless stories about life as a young gendarme in Paris in 1968, or as a station chief in Lorraine, on the German border, or running a team of a hundred gendarmes in sight of the Pyrenees near the Spanish border.
But there’s one story that nags at him, the case he never solved. A hunter out with his dog one day in the forest that forms the boundary between the Périgord and the Limousin found his dog scratching and pulling at the bones of a human hand. The body had been buried there for close to a year. It was wearing only a T-shirt and despite delving into the earth beneath there was no sign of a bullet. Decomposition meant that there was little the forensic experts, in those days before DNA, could say about the cause of death. The teeth were perfect so dental records could not help. There were no scratches on the ribs to suggest a stabbing.
Raymond secured the authorisation of a friendly magistrate, removed the head from the body, took it to the kitchens of the Gendarme HQ in Limoges, and cooked the flesh away. He was able to include that the man had been killed by a heavy blow to the head with an army surplus trenching tool, popular with campers. But the scent released by his efforts provoked outrage in the neighbourhood. The mayor came, followed by local shopkeepers, to complain. Armed with his magistrate’s order Raymond was able to persevere and to pursue his enquiries for months and even years, across France and elsewhere in Europe. But was never able to identify the man. A photograph of the skull, which he named Oscar, went with him to every new assignment and when we first met I asked Raymond about the photo that he kept, fixed with magnets, on the door of his fridge.
It was a very cold case and one that Raymond never forgot. But then one day, the nearby National Museum of Prehistory held a special exhibition on the work of a remarkable woman artist, Elisabeth Daynès, who specialised in recreating a face from a skull. The face she made from the skull of Tutenkhamen at the Cairo museum had made the cover of National Geographic. Her pioneering reconstruction of the faces of prehistoric Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon humans from caves in our valley of the River Vézère, made a considerable stir in France. And it inspired me to write ‘The Coldest Case,’ with a pupil of Daynès giving us at last a convincing image of Oscar’s face.
From there, I thought that at last DNA could give us a clearer time of death and help trace any living relatives. But then other questions arose. Why had Oscar’s disappearance never been reported? What was happening at the time of death in the forest region where the body was found? Was there a local festival or concert that might attract campers. One interesting point that Raymond recalled was that there were signs of other campers, a latrine and a buried rubbish pit at the site near where Oscar had been found. And it had been a long, hot and very dry summer, which had sucked all the moisture from the earth and made it easier for the dog to smell and unearth the body. We have had more and more such summers lately, bringing us forest fires that have our emergency services mounting regular exercises on evacuation and buying new aircraft designed to drop flame retardants.
Little by little, and thanks to many conversations with Raymond over our p’tit apéro, the outline of the novel took shape. Some new characters were required, a fireman or two, the pupil of Madame Daynès who built up Oscar’s face from the bones, and perhaps the DNA might lead a modern investigator to a still-living relative of Oscar.
And of course the key question is always what kind of meals might Bruno cook while pursuing his researches?
Bruno Courreges is Chief of Police of the lovely town of St Denis in the Dordogne. His main wish is to keep the local people safe and his town free from crime. But crime has a way of finding its way to him. For thirty years, Bruno's boss, Chief of Detectives Jalipeau, known as J-J, has been obsessed with his first case. It was never solved and Bruno knows that this failure continues to haunt J-J. A young male body was found in the woods near St Denis and never identified. For all these years, J-J has kept the skull as a reminder. He calls him 'Oscar'. Visiting the famous pre-history museum in nearby Les Eyzies, Bruno sees some amazingly life-like heads expertly reconstructed from ancient skulls. He suggests performing a similar reconstruction on Oscar as a first step towards at last identifying him. An expert is hired to start the reconstruction and the search for Oscar's killer begins again in earnest.
More information about Martin Walker and Bruno Courreges, Chief of Police can be found on his website.
Picture © Martin Walker
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