School had never been like this in his day, Bruno thought. This was an unusual generation that was about to be unleashed on St Denis, a rural commune where there were still farmers who drew their water from an ancestral well and in winter slept above their livestock for warmth.
‘How are things between you and Pamela?’ she asked, clearing away the children’s plates and serving their dessert of stewed apple and yoghurt. ‘I get the impression she’s still depressed by her mother’s death.’
‘She’s due to fly back from Scotland later today after some complicated business with lawyers about the will and inheritance taxes,’ he replied, deliberately not answering her question. ‘Her finances are none of my business, but it seems that she has arranged matters so that she can stay in St Denis.’
Bruno was not at all sure about the status of his relationship with Pamela, a woman with whom he’d had an on-and-off affair over the past few months. It was an affair where he sometimes felt he served at her pleasure, spending the night only at Pamela’s invitation and not allowed to take anything for granted. A woman who guarded her privacy, she could nonetheless charm him with her warmth and generosity. And she could surprise him, bringing a flavour of the exotic and the unfamiliar. She was a woman unlike most of those he knew in St Denis, and it was no surprise that she had forged friendships with Fabiola the doctor and with Florence, similarly strong and independent women with their own careers.
He kissed Florence and the children when he left, the taste of the after-lunch coffee lingering pleasantly in his mouth, and was just climbing into his van when his mobile phone launched into the opening notes of the Marseillaise. He checked the screen and saw a Paris number that he recognized.
‘I got your message,’ said Isabelle. ‘This burglary of yours is delicate stuff. Crimson is not just your usual British pensioner. His last job was running their Joint Security Committee in the Cabinet Office in Downing Street. That’s the body to which both their spies and their security people report. He was their spymaster.’
‘You mean like that “M” woman in the James Bond films?’ He felt himself grinning at the absurdity of such a role being played by the genial old tennis player who had served him such excellent wine.
‘Just like that. And he’s an old friend or at least a longstanding colleague of the Brigadier, so I’ve been ordered down to St Denis to take over the inquiry. There may be more to this burglary than meets the eye.’
3
Bruno could tell from the way he took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose that his Mayor was not happy. His wife was in hospital for some tests that sounded ominous. The project for the new sewers was well behind schedule and the financial crisis meant that funds and grants from Paris were being cut. And now the commune was being hit by this wave of burglaries. The fact that one of the victims turned out to be an eminent Englishman with official connections in Paris was bad enough, but that neither the Mayor nor Bruno had known that a retired British spymaster had been living on their territory for years was even worse.
Burglaries were supposed to be the responsibility of the Gendarmes, but Bruno knew it would have been a mistake to make such a pitiful excuse. This was his turf and therefore his responsibility. However, Bruno knew how easily the Mayor could be distracted by anything to do with local history.
On the shelf by the ancient desk lay a thick file of handwritten pages, the Mayor’s ambitious project of writing the definitive history of St Denis from Neanderthal man through the iron and bronze ages, the coming of the Celts to the arrival of the Romans and all through the centuries to the present day. At various times Bruno had heard him wax lyrical about the Merovingian kings and the ancient Duchy of Toulouse, the Hundred Years War against the English and the Albigensian heresy. There had been a whole year when the Mayor spoke of little but the passage of the conquering Arabs from Spain until they reeled back in defeat after Charles Martel stopped them at the battle of Tours in AD 732. The Mayor loved the coincidence that his three great French heroes shared the same name: Charles Martel, King Charles VII, who finally evicted the English in 1453, and, of course, Charles de Gaulle.
So Bruno solemnly laid one of his banknotes on the Mayor’s desk, smoothed it out, and said: ‘Old Loïc Murcoing died this morning and had this in a box on his bed. Father Sentout thinks it came from the Neuvic train.’
‘The Neuvic train, really?’ The Mayor replaced his spectacles and peered at the note. ‘July 26, 1944. It was the very day the Americans were making their breakout from the Normandy beachhead.’ His voice tailed off and he fell silent, his eyes fixed on some other place, some other time.
‘I’ve only heard the legends. They say it was a lot of money.’
‘Money? Over two billion francs. Two thousand three hundred million, if memory serves me right, which means something over three hundred million euros in today’s money. Did you know it all began as a plot between two of our Prefects? One was a Résistant and the other was condemned as a collabo, although perhaps that’s too crude a word.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Bruno’s head was still reeling at the idea of three hundred million euros in cash, and wondering how much it had weighed, how it had been taken from the train.
‘I suppose it was a credit to the wisdom of our Prefects,’ the Mayor began. There had been the Vichy Prefect, a career civil servant named Callard, and Maxim Roue, the Gaullist one who would replace him after the Liberation. The two men knew each other, and remained in discreet contact. With the Allies already established ashore in Normandy and the Russian armies thundering through Poland towards Germany, Callard knew the Vichy regime was doomed. With an eye to his own future, he tipped off his successor that the Banque de France reserves were to be moved by train from Périgueux, where they had been stored to be safe from the bombing. The money was to be taken to Bordeaux for consignment to the Kriegsmarine. There was speculation that the German navy wanted to ship it out by submarine; perhaps to finance a new Reich in Argentina. Whatever the motives, the Resistance ambushed the train and took the money. A man calling himself Lieutenant Krikri even left with the train guards a signed receipt for the full amount, plus another fifteen hundred francs for the canvas sacks that held the money, each one sealed with lead and stamped with the seal of the Banque de France. Altogether, the haul had weighed six tons.
The Mayor explained that various official inquiries after the war had concluded that the money was spent on pay and supplies for the Resistance and money for their dependants. Even after the Germans lost Paris and retreated back into Germany some of their garrisons held out in La Rochelle and elsewhere. The Allies couldn’t spare any troops for them, so the Resistance took over the task, transforming themselves into official units of the French army in the process. But they still had to be fed and paid and their families supported. That was the official explanation.
‘And the unofficial explanation?’ asked Bruno.
‘All rumour. Some of the local Resistance chiefs enjoyed very wealthy lifestyles after the war, Malraux for one, although he was too close to De Gaulle to be touched. There was another, a man called Urbanovich who suddenly became extremely rich with a big place in Paris and another in Cannes and ran one of the most expensive art galleries in Europe. Not bad for a Communist who was probably a Soviet agent. But nothing was ever proved.’
‘Three hundred million in today’s money – there must have been a lot of cash left over.’
‘Indeed, which is why the rumours persist. But you should remember that there were no public funds for political parties until the mid-1950s, and parties need premises, staff, printing facilities and newspapers, particularly a new party like the Gaullists. I think you’ll find that most political scandals can be traced to money, that or sex.’
‘You mean there’s a difference?’ Bruno said with a grin.
‘So cynical, so young. Leave such unsavoury reflections to your elders.’ The Mayor smiled back, more cheerful now. ‘If you’re interested in all this, t
here’s a woman historian at the Sorbonne who has a house the other side of Les Eyzies. Her name is Jacqueline Morgan and she’s half-American, half-French – her father was a diplomat in Paris after the war and he married a woman from the Périgord. I ran into her in the Bibliothèque Nationale when I was doing some research in Paris. She’s gathered a lot of new material from the British and American archives on the Resistance and their post-war political roles. She’s working on a book that I think should make quite a stir.’
‘Sounds interesting.’ Bruno would make a point of visiting this Jacqueline Morgan. ‘Murcoing had just over five thousand of those old francs in his chest. Not a lot to show for such a haul.’
‘The lads who took part were promised ten thousand each, but a romantic young lieutenant called Gandoin said that for his men of the Groupe Valmy, duty was its own reward. His men would take no fee. But at least one of the sacks of cash disappeared that night when they were moving the money.’
‘Whatever happened to him?’
‘No idea. Perhaps I should have asked Murcoing but it’s too late now. I remember my father telling me of the brave and selfless Lieutenant Gandoin. A lot of those young heroes died that winter, once they were re-formed into the French army and sent up to liberate Alsace and then to invade Germany.’ The Mayor looked up, forcing a briskness into his voice. ‘I suppose these banknotes now belong to Murcoing’s heirs.’
‘Yes, I signed a receipt.’ Bruno leaned over and took the banknote from the Mayor’s hand.
‘I’d like to have one framed and hung here in the Mairie with a suitable plaque of explanation.’
‘You might ask Murcoing’s daughter Joséphine if you could buy it from her. She struck me as the kind of woman who’d do a lot for twenty euros. You should have seen her perk up when I said the state pays for Resistance funerals. I’ve got her phone number here.’
The Mayor reached for his phone.
*
Bruno took the back road to Les Eyzies, a drive that always stirred him with memories of cases and incidents past, as well as for the stupendous limestone cliffs that rose to each side of the river. Off to his left up the hill was the Grotte du Sorcier, the cave with one of the very few prehistoric engravings of a human face, and a place dear in his memory as the spot where he had first kissed Isabelle. Further up the valley was the site of the archaeological dig where the body of a young man wearing a Swatch had been found alongside a grave dating from thirty thousand years ago.
He drove through the narrow main street of Les Eyzies, tucked between the cliff and the river, and mentally doffed his cap to the giant statue of Cro-Magnon man that loomed above the town. He took the sharply curving road that led along the Vézère valley to the Lascaux cave, and then at Tursac followed the Mayor’s directions to the small house of Jacqueline Morgan. A white BMW convertible with Paris number plates, its roof down, was parked beside a well-tended vegetable garden. Bruno noted with approval her choice of cherry tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes, haricot beans and some sweetcorn.
Wearing jeans and a Columbia sweatshirt, clogs on her feet and a headband holding back a mass of iron-grey curls, Jacqueline Morgan took the cigarette from her mouth to extend a hand and greet him. She looked vaguely familiar – perhaps he’d seen her shopping in the market or standing in line at the Post Office. Behind her on each wall of the passage were loaded bookshelves. Bruno explained that his Mayor had suggested she might be able to help him learn more about the Neuvic train, and showed her Murcoing’s banknote.
Her eyes widened. ‘I’ve never actually seen one of the notes before,’ she said. ‘Come in, come in, you’re very welcome. The Mayor has told me a lot about you.’
Off to the left he saw a small sitting room with old furniture that looked comfortable, although hemmed in by more bookshelves that lined all the walls. She led him to the room on the right, again filled with bookshelves but with a large round table in the middle that contained a laptop, boxes of index files and several books. They were held open at certain pages by pens, a pepper mill and a handsome silver coffee pot. From the kitchen came the unmistakable scent of lamb being slowly roasted with rosemary and garlic.
‘I clear all this away for dinner,’ she said, piling together some of the books on the table and clearing more from a chair to make some space for Bruno to sit. On the top of the pile sat a copy of Guy Penaud’s Histoire de la Résistance en Périgord. ‘You caught me working on footnotes, a scholar’s drudgery. I was just about to make some coffee. How do you take yours?’
‘Black, one sugar, please. Are you writing a new book?’
‘Yes, on Franco-American relations during the Cold War, a fertile field. I’ve written on bits of it before, on nuclear cooperation and American policy toward France’s wars in Vietnam and Algeria, but now I’m trying to put it all together.’
‘The Mayor seems to think it will have quite an impact, that you have found lots of new material,’ Bruno said.
‘We’ll see.’ She went into the adjoining kitchen. Bruno heard a clatter of cups and the whir of a coffee grinder. She poked her head round the door and continued talking. ‘He’s a good man, your Mayor. It’s such a shame about his wife. I’m giving him dinner tonight after he gets back from visiting her in hospital. Left to himself, he’d just have a sandwich, one of those men who are useless on their own.’
‘We’re hoping she’ll be able to come home soon.’
‘She’s not coming home,’ came the voice from the kitchen. ‘You don’t come back from galloping lymphatic cancer.’
Bruno was stunned. The Mayor had kept his wife’s condition a secret from everyone, at least everyone but Jacqueline.
‘You mean you didn’t know?’ she said, poking her head out again. ‘Putain, me and my big mouth. I’m really sorry, I thought his friends knew.’
Maybe some of them, thought Bruno. He’d thought he was pretty close to his Mayor, but evidently not. And he was sure nobody else at the Mairie knew. Obviously the Mayor’s relationship with Jacqueline was closer than he’d thought.
‘Let’s forget it, OK?’ she said, coming into the room. ‘And don’t tell him I told you. You were asking about the Neuvic train …’
She turned back into the kitchen and he heard a metal tray being placed on a counter. He’d never been close to the Mayor’s wife, who had rarely appeared at the Mairie, but the news came as a shock. Cécile had never joined her husband in campaigning and seemed content to be a traditional wife, tending her home and her garden, politely greeting people in the market. She had stayed behind when the Mayor had gone to Paris to work in politics, and only joined him there once, for his investiture into the Senate.
Jacqueline re-entered the room with a tray, speaking as if the subject had never changed. ‘Parts of my work led me into aspects of Resistance finance, which is why I got interested in the Neuvic train, the slush-fund to end all slush-funds.’
‘Is this the manuscript?’ he asked as he cleared some more space for the tray with its fine porcelain cups and saucers and a cafetière. He gestured to the typescript in front of him, post-it notes in different colours scattered through the pages.
‘No, mine is still in the computer, with copies sent elsewhere round the net in case my hard drive dies. That happened to me once and it was hell. What you have there are my father’s memoirs, typed up from his handwritten journals.’
‘He was a diplomat, is that right?’
‘Yes, he was in the American Embassy after the war and then on the Marshall Plan, the rebuilding of Europe’s economies. That was where I first read about your train, where he called it the slush-fund.’
‘The Mayor reckons it was worth about three hundred million in today’s money,’ he said.
She shrugged as she rested both hands on the plunger of the cafetière and began to press down. ‘At the time it was worth a lot more in relative terms, at least until the devaluations. In 1945, the official exchange rate was just over a hundred francs to the dollar. But by 1949 it was ov
er three hundred to the dollar. The money aboard the Neuvic train was certainly a vast amount, worth about five per cent of total government spending in 1946. Put it this way, the national education budget that year was 470 million francs, and the Neuvic train held about five times that.’
Five times the education budget? The proportion staggered him, but Jacqueline had just begun. There were at least three official inquiries into the fate of the Neuvic money, she explained, adding that they had all pretty much whitewashed the whole affair, claiming the money went to finance the Resistance and their families and some was used to bribe prison guards. That was true up to a point, she conceded, but only for a fraction of the money, maybe half or a little more. Millions had been stolen.
‘How much do you know about French politics after the war?’ she asked.
‘De Gaulle came to power after the liberation of Paris in 1944 but resigned in 1946,’ he replied. ‘I’m not sure why.’
‘That’s simple. De Gaulle wanted a strong presidency rather than the unstable parliaments of the pre-war days. The parties, who’d been in a coalition of Communists, Socialists and Christian Democrats, naturally wanted a return to the party system and they accused De Gaulle of wanting to be a dictator. Then the other two wanted to get rid of the Communists as the Cold War got under way and the Gaullists started building their own party, the RPF. Politics are expensive, so that’s where a lot of the money went, but maybe it was more virtual than real.’
‘Virtual? I don’t understand.’
She looked at him. ‘Suppose you’re an American diplomat in Paris in 1946 and 1947, and the Communists are the biggest political party. Remember the Cold War is just getting started. What would American policy be?’
‘Stop the Communists, I suppose. And try to strengthen the other parties, the anti-Communists.’
The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6) Page 3
