Inspector Lascaux

     Inspector Lascaux brushed the dry leaf from his shoulder and surveyed the the vineyards from the porch of his house at 12 avenue des Cathars.  Even in the August heat, sitting on the porch of the house was all he could have asked for, whether he had a pastis in his hand or not.

     After fifty years serving the forces of order in France --first in Algeria, then Cameroon, then the blissful years in Martinique-- he had returned, with Josianne, to the village he was born in, which had of late enjoyed some success in attracting buyers of the villager's houses from that odd country, le Royaume Uni.  Mainly English, but some Scots and Irish, too, paid good money for quaint houses wedged in close together in the village.  After they put down their money, many found that the tiny ruelles were more difficult to drive in and out of than they had imagined, and that angling their left-hand drive vehicles into crevices to park stripped paint off.  But after a few glasses of the solid Minervois reds, it was all put into perspective.  They could be sitting in a caf, looking at the rain coming down somewhere in the British Isles, or they could be here, helping the local economy and their states of mind.  Once settled here, few Brits ever looked back.

     He, too, scarcely ever looked back.  His work had had very disagreeable aspects --not just the need for force, which was rare; but the aftermath of force unleashed by others against others, which Inspector Lascaux came upon, whether in a bedroom, on a street, in a shop, or in a car, as a mere witness to the detritus of human emotions of the most negative kind willfully given into.  He was not sorry he had retired, he and Josianne.  The fierce curiosity that had turned a young country recruit from the Midi into a cool professional had been a refining fire: the more he worked at his investigations, the more his faculties were engaged, and that engagement bred results, which pleased his superiors and led to promotion.

     At some point, though, he began to sense that he had seen about everything that police work could capture within its net.  The perpetrators appeared less sociological studies than instruments of a malevolent instinct that reappeared over and over again despite the efforts of social workers and defense attorneys to introduce mitigating factors into consideration of the responsibility of the accused.  When he found himself filled with contempt for a ten-year old boy who had, fatally, set fire to the bed his grandmother slept in, he told himself his soul was at risk and he had better get out.

     Here in the Minervois, writing reports concerning break-ins into the houses of part-time residents was the main preoccupation of the gendarmerie.  The foreigners demanded them for insurance purposes, so they were produced by the officers called to the scene.  Their main occupation was riding around the villages, checking to see that no one had inadvertently left a door or window open, a service for which the villagers were glad to pay taxes.  For Inspector Lascaux, buying the home on avenue des Cathars was a return to a distant past, now more prettily remembered because both he and the village had prospered in each other's absence.  He had no more to do with the gendarmerie than any other citizen, although the outlines of his career were known among them.  They accorded him the respect of, if not a senior colleague, of one who had plied their trade beyond the perimeters of Metropolitan France, in places however legitimately of French concern, none of them would have willingly served.