The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

by Martin Walker

  Bruno scratched Balzac’s belly and looked out of Pamela’s window at the sky, bright with a few high streaks of cirrus; it should be a fine day. He glanced at his watch, almost nine. The others had left around midnight and they had said goodnight to Fabiola and taken Balzac into Hector’s stall so he could sleep beside his friend the gelding. Then they had stood a while, Pamela leaning her back against him as they looked at the vast reach of the stars against the clear night sky. When he began to kiss her neck she’d unpinned her hair to let it float down around his head, turned to kiss him properly and then taken his hand to lead him to her bed.

  ‘Thank you for this,’ he said, gesturing at the tray. ‘And thank you for last night. I feel wonderful.’

  ‘You know, there was a moment last night when I thought Gilles might be staying the night with Fabiola,’ she said. ‘They lingered together over coffee and exchanged what my mother would have called meaningful looks.’

  ‘You mean like the looks I was giving you?’ He took her hand and raised it to his lips.

  ‘No, you knew exactly what would be coming next. And so did I. But they didn’t. The looks were exploratory, aware of possibilities in one another, looks full of uncertainty about how the evening might end. It was quite romantic, just watching them. Maybe she’s finally ready to have an affair, but I don’t think she’s yet made up her mind about him.’

  ‘Gilles is a good guy, she could do a lot worse.’

  ‘He’s a few years older than her, which might not be a bad thing,’ Pamela said. ‘And he’s a bit plump. But she could always take him in hand, get him down here at weekends. I’m sure he lives on pizzas and sandwiches in Paris and he probably drinks too much.’

  ‘You sound like you’re planning the wedding and thinking about names for their first child,’ he said, surreptitiously giving Balzac the final bite of his croissant as Pamela stared up at the ceiling.

  ‘I saw that, and you’d better be sure he leaves no crumbs in the bed,’ she said, turning onto her side to face him and putting a hand on his bare chest. Her face bore a serious look. ‘Do you think Fabiola’s happy?’

  ‘She seems to be. She’s got an interesting job, earns more money than me, has lots of friends, horses to ride and she’s passionate about that women’s shelter in Bergerac she volunteers at.’

  ‘Does it worry you that she earns more than you do?’

  ‘No, because I don’t spend the money I do earn. I get my food for free from the garden or hunting or cheaply from my farming friends. My uniforms are free so I don’t spend much on clothes. The Mairie pays for my petrol and my phone bills. I don’t owe a penny on my house, I have a wonderful horse and good wine in my cellar. Other than raffle tickets at the tennis club I don’t gamble and I just spent the night with a beautiful woman who brings me hot croissants in bed, all of which makes me the richest man in St Denis.’

  ‘Do you think Fabiola’s attractive? She’s so sensitive about that scar.’

  ‘I think she’s very attractive with a lovely figure and that scar’s not prominent and it’s the kind of feature that makes a man look twice, and be curious about how she got it. When she says it was a mountaineering accident, it’s like she’s handed him a rope. Once he starts talking to her about where she’s climbed and why she likes it then he’ll realize what an interesting, intelligent woman she is, quite apart from being a doctor. Plus she makes a great risotto and those fondues of hers are irresistible.’

  ‘But that’s the thing. Intelligent women make men nervous. Maybe that’s why she’s started learning to cook.’

  ‘You don’t make me nervous.’ He kissed her hand again.

  She gave him a playful slap and said: ‘Time to get up. The horses need riding. I’ll go and see if Fabiola’s awake while you get dressed. See you in the stables.’ She kissed him on the forehead and headed for the stairs. As his eyes followed her appreciatively, he was sure she was putting a deliberate extra wiggle in her hips.

  *

  An hour later Bruno arrived at the Gendarmerie. Summoned by a message on his phone from J-J, he was dressed in civilian clothes. It was Sunday, after all.

  ‘We’ve got a camper van Murcoing’s sister rented but we can’t find it,’ said J-J, averting his eyes from the little red monkey that still sat atop Yveline’s computer. ‘One of the Bergerac cops was trawling through every ad on the Internet and came up with a guy in Issigeac who rented it to her. We’re checking every campsite and layby and the motards are checking every camper van on the roads. We’ve even got checks on the Spanish border. Any ideas?’

  ‘We’re still watching his mum’s house in Bergerac and checking every day with his aunts,’ said Yveline. She looked exhausted, nothing like the fighting-fit athlete in the photos on her wall. ‘We’ll get him eventually when he runs out of cash. They’ve got to turn up somewhere.’

  ‘I’ve had a detective taking Paul’s photo around all the gay bars,’ said J-J. ‘A lot of people know him but he’s not popular. We followed a few leads and called on some old boyfriends, but no result.’

  ‘What about the brocante route?’ Bruno asked. Some of the antiques fairs had already begun, early in the season though it was. Bruno supposed that Murcoing could be raising cash by selling off some of the more portable items from his loot, jewellery and silver, either at the fairs or directly to antiques dealers.

  ‘We’ve visited the dodgy ones, at least the ones we know about, and we’ve had a cop looking at every brocante that’s advertised in the whole of southern France,’ J-J said. ‘We can’t afford to keep up this level of manpower much longer, so we need some new ideas.’

  ‘If he’s not on the road with the camper van then either he’s found a place to hole up or he’s already out of the country,’ said Yveline. ‘It would have taken him just four hours to get to Spain. I know we’ve got Interpol on this, but can’t we get the Spanish police to make more effort?’

  J-J looked at her, glanced at the stuffed toy on her computer and rolled his eyes at Bruno.

  ‘There’s no shortage of holiday homes all over southern France, places he could go looking, find one that’s empty and hole up there, just as he did at Fullerton’s place,’ said Bruno.

  ‘That’s where the manpower problem comes in. There’d be thousands of such places and we can’t just send a solitary cop to check out each one. This guy’s armed.’

  ‘Was there nothing on Fullerton’s laptop that might give us a lead?’ Bruno asked.

  J-J looked up sharply. ‘Fullerton’s laptop, where’s that?’

  ‘The Apple laptop that belonged to the murdered man, the one we found in the van in the Corrèze barn.’

  ‘Putain, now you tell me. I didn’t see any laptop.’ He leafed through his file and pulled out some papers stapled together. It looked like a long list and he ran his finger swiftly down each page. ‘There’s nothing on the inventory about a computer. Where the hell is it?’

  Bruno remembered Brian Fullerton’s cry of triumph when he found his brother’s password for the laptop.

  ‘The brother must still have it’ he said.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  Bruno was pulling out his phone and looking up the number in the address book even as he answered. ‘Hôtel St Denis, I’m calling them now.’

  Fullerton was still checked in but had gone to church, he was told by Mauricette on the reception desk.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Bruno said. ‘I should have made sure you knew about the laptop but I was just so pleased we’d found all the stolen goods. Merde, J-J, I’m sorry.’

  Yveline made a sound of disgust and shook her head.

  ‘It’s our fault as much as yours,’ said J-J. ‘I remember seeing that power cord on the desk in the study where the guns were. I should have made the connection.’

  ‘I’ll go to church and bring Fullerton out, get the computer and bring it back here,’ said Bruno, heading for the door.

  ‘These village coppers are all the same,’ he heard Yveline say
as he left. ‘Bloody amateur night, the lot of them. God knows how we’ll explain this to the juge d’instruction.’

  Bruno almost ran down the steps of the Gendarmerie, heading for the Rue de Paris towards the church, when he heard the cheerful toot of a horn and managed to stop just before he had dashed into the path of Dougal’s daughter Kirsten on her Mobylette.

  ‘You want to look where you’re going, Bruno,’ she said. ‘You’d have done more damage to my bike than we’d have done to you.’

  ‘Sorry, something’s come up,’ he said, and suddenly thought: Dougal’s list. If Murcoing wanted to be sure of finding an empty holiday home, his sister would have seen the list. He strode after Kirsten, who was already turning into the offices of Delightful Dordogne.

  ‘Could you print me out your work list for this week?’ he asked. ‘I need to see which houses will be vacant, it’s about the burglaries.’

  ‘No problem, just give me a minute to turn on the computer,’ she replied, taking off her helmet and shaking out her white-blonde hair.

  ‘I’ll be back in five minutes.’ This time he looked both ways before he crossed the road and headed for the twelfth-century church of St Louis that dominated this part of the town. Built in an age of faith to hold hundreds, today it could count only a handful of worshippers who seemed to be outnumbered by the choir. Father Sentout’s sonorous voice was stressing the importance of these weeks after Easter in the lives of the faithful and rolled on undeterred by Bruno’s entry. From habit rather than devotion, Bruno dipped a knee and crossed himself, then moved discreetly to the shadow of a pillar and looked for Fullerton. He spotted him in the centre of an empty row of chairs, kneeling and apparently in prayer, and waited until Fullerton resumed his seat.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, but the chief of detectives for the region wants to see you and we also need to check your brother’s computer,’ he whispered.

  ‘Can’t it wait?’

  ‘Sorry, no. There’s a bit of a fuss about your taking them.’

  Fullerton sighed at Bruno’s words, but nodded agreement and the two men crept as quietly as they could along the row and out of the church. Father Sentout ignored their movement and the rest of the congregation seemed too intent on his sermon to notice, or perhaps they were simply asleep.

  ‘Sorry to have caused a problem. Once I had the password and got in I couldn’t wait to find out what was on the hard drive,’ Fullerton said. ‘I didn’t think you’d need it right away, you all seemed so caught up in the stolen goods. Anyway, I hope you’ll be pleased with my progress.’

  He explained that he’d found a long trail of emails between his brother and Paul, some about brocante sales, some personal and a lot about their shared interest in the history of the local Resistance and the Neuvic robbery. There were also exchanges of emails with other men, including Yves. Francis Fullerton had kept a separate file for his travel bookings and expenses, and each of his many trips to France had been carefully itemized with dates and hotel costs. It was pretty clear from the exchanges with Paul about which houses would be empty, Fullerton explained, that his brother had been up to his old tricks with stolen goods again. And there were hundreds of photos on the hard drive of furniture, each one labelled with a reference number for the house it came from.

  ‘Will you give me a receipt for it, since I want to be sure to get it back?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ll wait here and you can bring it down. I presume it’s in your hotel room?’

  He returned within two minutes and Bruno handed him a receipt torn from his notebook, and checked that Fullerton was planning to stay at least three more days. The magistrates had said they hoped to release the body on Tuesday and he had tentatively booked a cremation for Wednesday. Fullerton ducked back into the church.

  Armed with Dougal’s list and the laptop, Bruno re-entered the room where J-J and Yveline were comparing photos of items of furniture against the inventory of the barn. He put the laptop on the desk, scribbled down the password and explained how Dougal’s list showed the holiday homes that Paul Murcoing and his sister would know to be empty.

  ‘It’s a total of twenty-two houses, but I know some of these addresses and they’re close to a town or to neighbours who would spot people coming and going. I reckon there are maybe fifteen that are remote enough to give Murcoing the security he’d need. One of them is Crimson’s house, so that cuts it down to fourteen.’

  J-J looked at Yveline, who pursed her lips and said: ‘We can’t do fourteen simultaneous raids, not without bringing in Mobiles from all over France. They won’t do that just for a murder. Three at a time is the best we could do, and that would mean getting onto Bordeaux for an extra squad.’

  She picked up the little red monkey from the top of her computer and began to pace the room. As if talking to herself she went on: ‘Then we’d have to get approval from the juge d’instruction and that would mean full precautions, helicopters, thorough reconnaissance, warnings through a bullhorn. Each squad could do a maximum of two hits a day and you can’t keep that kind of activity quiet, so then it would be all over the local radio. And what if they’re moving around from place to place?’

  Yveline replaced the monkey on top of the computer and glared from one man to the other. ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘It’s not going to work, is it?’

  J-J cleared his throat and said: ‘She’s got a point, Bruno. We’d have to bring in the juge.’

  ‘What about sending out singles in plain clothes, dressed like ramblers, with a pair of binoculars to see if they see any movement or spot the camper van?’

  ‘They’d be fools to move round outside,’ said J-J. ‘I’m not sending anybody poking around in range of the houses because this guy is armed and dangerous. What we need is to set some kind of trap, something that would tempt him out. Still, I like the idea of taking a careful look at these places. You’re the local man, Bruno, get me some big maps and mark down each house, see if you can locate a likely place nearby where you could stay in cover and watch. Meanwhile, Yveline and I will have a look at the laptop.’

  ‘Leave it with me,’ said Bruno, an idea forming in his head of a way to take a discreet look at each of the houses without needing the elite Mobiles squads from the Gendarmes. Armed to the teeth and encased in body armour, they were trained for terrorist and hostage situations; they’d blunder all over an unfamiliar countryside. It was hunting season, when men with guns and a sense of fieldcraft were a common sight around the woods and farms of the region. He began making a mental list of the friends he could trust enough to call out on a job like this.

  ‘I’ve got to do a report for the Procureur on that burglary yesterday, the one with the American coffee pot,’ Yveline said, giving Bruno a suspicious look. ‘I don’t suppose you’d know why his office seems to be taking a special interest in it.’

  It was on the tip of his tongue to respond with a sharp comment that it was because whoever broke in used the same method as the Crimson burglary. He restrained himself. She was a young woman, nervous at this first job in command, and she was evidently under strain. Older and wiser people had helped him when he was making the inevitable mistakes that came with lack of experience. He should do the same for her.

  ‘Maybe it’s just that they’ve heard of this famous American, Paul Revere,’ he replied from the doorway. ‘I’m off to pick up a sheaf of maps from my office. If you want some advice from a village copper, I’d get ready for a few calls from the local papers about the value of this coffee pot.’

  20

  Hector picked his way down the steep bridle trail through the woods until Bruno reined his horse in at a place where there was a break in the trees and he had a clear view of the isolated house below. For once the binoculars case was being used for its proper purpose rather than as a way to carry Balzac while on horseback. He took out the heavy Second World War binoculars that had belonged to Pamela’s father and brought the house into focus. The shutters were all closed, the cover was still on
the swimming pool and there was no sign of heat from the chimney. A tarpaulin was snugly tied down on the wood-pile, covered in last autumn’s leaves and bird droppings. There was a barn, but its door was too low to take a camper van. He scratched it off his list.

  ‘It’s empty,’ he said to Pamela, settling his shotgun back more comfortably on its strap around his shoulder. He was dressed as a hunter: camouflage jacket and brown trousers and a brown woollen cap instead of the usual riding helmet. If he had to dismount and search on foot, he had to look the part. ‘Give me a moment to check with the others.’

  He pulled out his phone to scroll through the text messages. There was one from the Baron to say that the first house he’d been assigned was certainly empty, and similar ones from Stéphane, Maurice and Raoul. Bruno had been confident that his friends, experienced hunters who had tramped over these valleys for years and knew each fold of ground, would be the most natural and least obtrusive way of checking the rental homes on Dougal’s list. He acknowledged each message and sent a query to the other hunters about their progress.

  He knew this was a long shot. There were many rentals not on Dougal’s list, and Paul Murcoing might be smart enough to have worked out that the police would make the connection between his sister and Dougal’s spreadsheet. But at least Bruno felt he was doing something positive in this increasingly frustrating hunt for Fullerton’s murderer. He put his phone away, checked that his handgun was still on safety and spoke to Pamela in a low voice.