The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

by Martin Walker

  ‘We found the stolen camper van, or at least the plates. Some Dutch tourist realized his own van had suddenly grown French plates, the ones we were looking for. It looks like Paul put the Dutch plates on his own van.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘A campsite just outside Hendaye, down by the border. It looks like he got over into Spain. Or that’s what he wants us to think. Still, we’ve got the Spanish police alerted.’

  ‘Have you got anywhere with those wills yet?’

  ‘We have the one with the notaire in Ussel. It’s boilerplate. All his French property goes to his nearest family, which means his brother and sister. He cites the Corrèze farm and a bank account. We’re still waiting for the British will. And we’re having trouble with Fullerton’s computer. A lot of stuff had been deleted and the files written over, so it’s not so straightforward to dig stuff out from the hard drive. We’ll have to send it to the specialists in Paris and that costs a fortune. This job’s breaking my budget as it is. And we heard back from the phone trackers. Valentoux’s story about that disposable phone he bought holds up. It was switched on in Calais on the morning Fullerton was killed and the cellphone masts tracked it all the way down to St Denis. It looks like it was with him all the time and it hasn’t been switched on since.’

  ‘Murcoing could have taken it and used a different SIM card,’ said Bruno. ‘What about this guy in Bordeaux, Edouard? I asked the juge if I could go and interview him but he said he wanted the art squad brought in. Have they been in touch with you?’

  ‘Yes, two of their guys are going through Fullerton’s photos and the Arch-Inter customs forms; that also goes on my budget. There won’t be anything left for my salary at this rate.’

  Bruno rang off and turned to Fabiola. ‘Do you have plans for dinner or shall I make us an omelette?’

  ‘I’ve got plans, I’m afraid, but thanks.’ She coloured a little and changed the subject. ‘Whatever it is that’s on your mind, you know I’ll help if I can.’

  ‘I know. Maybe we can talk later. If you’re in a rush, I can rub the horses down.’ He carefully didn’t ask where she was going.

  She looked at her watch. ‘Thanks, that would help.’ As soon as they reached the stables, she darted into Pamela’s house, taking off her riding jacket as she ran.

  That gave Bruno time to do something that had been on his mind. Once the horses were settled and fed, he climbed into his Land Rover and took the road to the farther end of the commune, to the holiday rental cottage he remembered from his first year as the policeman of St Denis. He knew his district so well by now that he could have found it blindfold, and rather than let his thoughts dwell on Isabelle’s decision, he turned on Radio Périgord for the news, none of which concerned him, except for the final item.

  ‘Police are still searching for Paul Murcoing, said to be the chief suspect in the St Denis murder case of Englishman Francis Fullerton. Juge d’instruction Bernard Ardouin refused to comment on reports that Murcoing was believed to have fled to Spain. And finally, who was Paul Revere, and why is his coffee pot said to be worth as much as a hundred thousand euros? Coming up next, on Radio …’

  Bruno switched off as the gîte came into view, looking a great deal more battered by time than when he had last seen it. The roof was no longer new but the tiles had weathered to the soft red that typified the region, and the gravel of the drive and forecourt had turned grey. One gable end was now green with ivy and some badly pruned roses straggled around the door. A Volvo with Dutch licence plates was parked at the side of the place and a child’s bike lay on its side on the bumpy lawn. Ten years, no eleven, and hundreds of holidaymakers must have lived and eaten and swum and sunbathed here since his last visit, overlaying his own grim memories of the place when he had walked to the rear and seen blood on the tiles and those wisps of blood, hanging like red smoke in the water.

  Balzac had clambered forward from the back of the Land Rover and over the handbrake to sit in the passenger footwell. Bruno scooped him up and put him in his lap. Maybe at last he was on the way to finding some resolution of that case that had haunted him and kept him awake in the early hours, thinking how he could have handled it differently.

  Ironic, therefore, that his future nights would be troubled by the far more personal anguish at what Isabelle had done. He would try to understand it from Isabelle’s point of view as well as his own. He would argue to himself that it was Isabelle’s life, her body, her future, and that she alone was entitled to make the decision. The baby that had been aborted was the promise of new life, but for Isabelle it must have seemed like an almost mortal threat to the life she had planned for herself.

  But could she not have had the child and given it to him to raise? He’d have found nurses, babysitters, taken it to the crèche and the infants’ school, taught it to fish and to cook, to know the woods and the ways of dogs and horses. Why had she never even given him the chance to make that suggestion? Did not a father have rights over the future, over the life and death of his child? Isabelle understood this; it was why she herself had admitted that what she had done was unforgivable.

  No, he understood that Isabelle must have thought this through. She would be aware of the physical changes that would come as the pregnancy progressed. And she would understand the impact on her psyche as the hormonal shifts brought forth the maternal instincts that would wrench at her whole being when it came to part with her child. Even if she gave the child to Bruno and returned to Paris or to Holland to resume her career, there would have been the guilt as her child grew up without her. She must have looked ahead to desperate Christmases and birthdays, brief reunions and heart-rending farewells, and decided against that course. Unlike him, she was trapped by the iron laws of biology.

  He was suddenly aware that tears were running down his face and onto Balzac and that a man had come out of the gîte ahead and was staring curiously at him. He put on his cap and climbed out of the vehicle so that the tourist could see his uniform, and waved.

  ‘Tout va bien?’ he called. ‘All OK?’

  The Dutchman nodded and waved back. Bruno returned to his seat, noticed that the engine was still running, turned his car and drove away, heading automatically to St Denis but not sure if he was in any mood to go home and spend the evening alone.

  He was saved by a phone call. He glanced at the screen and saw it was Florence calling, so he pulled in to the side of the road to answer.

  ‘Bruno, I’m with Monsieur Crimson and he wants to invite us both to dinner if you are free. I have a babysitter. Here, he wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Bruno,’ came the familiar cheery voice. ‘I just got a call from the Vieux Logis, they have a cancellation and can do me a table for three in an hour. Can you join us? I want the three of us to put our heads together over an idea I’ve had.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you and I’ll see you there in an hour,’ Bruno said. ‘I just need to go home and change and look after the dog then I’ll head straight for Trémolat.’

  ‘Bring your puppy. The waiters will love spoiling him. See you there.’

  *

  They sat in the garden, beneath the plane trees whose leaves seemed almost to be growing as Bruno watched, surging with the energy of a Périgord springtime that was about to burst into summer. Whether indoors in winter or outside as the warmth came, it was the restaurant that Bruno would choose if it were to be the last meal of his life. He could only afford to dine here rarely, but always ordered the same menu du marché; whatever the chef had managed to acquire that day and assemble into a wonderfully balanced meal.

  There were always little amuse-bouches to begin, baby pizzas the size of eggcups or a morsel of boudin noir stuffed into a fig or something equally inventive. Then the meal took its usual course, a crème brûlée of foie gras or a chilled soup, and then some confection of fish, sometimes a ceviche of raw fish cooked in the acid of some exotic fruit rather than the usual lime juice. The meat could be rabbit or a small noix of l
amb, veal or venison, whatever the chef had to hand, but always with perfectly cooked vegetables. That was the difference between his own efforts and the meal of a professional chef, Bruno thought, the blending and balance of dishes and the arrival of each component at just the right moment.

  This evening’s pleasure was enhanced by the sight of Florence, seated between himself and Crimson, in a simply cut linen dress of pale blue which brought out the colour in her grey eyes. Her hair, which had been lifeless and dry when he had first met her at the truffle market in Ste Alvère, now shone with life and had been shaped to bring out her fine bones and slim neck. She looked around the gardens and eyed the ordered shapes of the topiary, the obelisks and spheres, with cool interest rather than open curiosity, as if she were accustomed to dine at a place such as this.

  ‘This dinner seems small thanks for your efforts in recovering my rugs and paintings, Bruno, and for your remarkable skills with a computer, Florence,’ said Crimson. ‘I wish you’d been on the team in my old job. Take a look at this document she cooked up, Bruno. That should smoke our quarry out.’

  He pushed an iPad across the table, and on its screen was what looked like a photocopy of an aged document from some official archive. It looked genuine down to the ancient typescript, the utilitarian grey of the official paper and the marks of little holes where papers had been pinned together. It looked like the contents page of a file, and Bruno recognized some of the words and acronyms – Neuvic, Valmy, FFI, FTP. Other names were new to him, and some words, DIGGER and ARCHER and WHEELWRIGHT, were in capital letters. He asked Crimson to explain.

  ‘The names are simple enough,’ Crimson replied. ‘Maurice Buckmaster was the head of SOE’s section F, which ran operations in France, and Gubbins was the Major-General in overall charge. The document refers to Buckmaster’s report to his boss on the Neuvic train, which makes it look as though London was much more involved in the whole business. The words in capital letters are the names of operational networks. DIGGER was one of the SOE networks active around here in 1944, run by a Frenchman called Jacques Poirier who joined the British army and was known as Captain Jack. He became friendly with Malraux and that document is supposed to be Poirier’s account of what happened to the money. You know the other acronyms, Francs-Tireurs et Partisans and so on?’

  ‘They look very convincing. Well done, Florence,’ Bruno said, nodding that he understood the terms. ‘But do these documents exist?’

  Crimson pursed his lips. ‘Some of them do, like the reports from Buckmaster and Poirier, but they haven’t been declassified yet. I know roughly what’s in them and there’s no smoking gun, as our American friends say. It’s fairly routine stuff, reporting rumours about the Neuvic money and saying there’s no confirmation. The fact is, we didn’t really want to know. What we’ve concocted here is just the contents page, but that should be enough to smoke Murcoing out. And Florence also cooked up a new email to Fullerton, with a copy to Murcoing, claiming to come from the Public Records Office as a notice that new files which Fullerton had requested have now been declassified. She copied their official format and it all looks very persuasive.’

  ‘So it does, but now that we have the bait how do you propose to draw Murcoing out into the open if he bites?’

  Crimson ran his fingers over his iPad and another document appeared that looked like an email. It was in serviceable French, but obviously written by a foreigner.

  ‘I set up a new email account with a fake name, and emailed Murcoing,’ Florence said, evidently proud of her work. There was a slight flush to her cheeks as if she were excited by her unexpected role in the venture.

  Bruno quickly read the email, which purported to come from a professional researcher in London who claimed to have done regular archive work for Fullerton at the Public Records Office. It said he’d been sorry to see news of Fullerton’s death in the British press, but Fullerton had earlier given him Murcoing’s address and the researcher wanted to know if Murcoing was still interested in the documents. Murcoing should know that much of the contents of the supposedly declassified files had been blacked out but the researcher had personal contacts who had given him the uncensored version. He was coming to France and would be happy to arrange a meeting, if Murcoing was able to pay the sum agreed with Fullerton.

  ‘We attached the faked contents page to the email,’ Crimson explained. ‘I’m rather proud of that last document, the one dated 1946 that claims to come from the British Embassy in Paris reporting a meeting with American and French government officials on the Neuvic affair.’

  As two black-clad waiters approached the table bearing plates, Crimson ran his fingers over his device and the documents disappeared. He slipped the iPad into a briefcase that rested against his chair. The sommelier arrived and refilled their glasses with the champagne Crimson had ordered, a Celebris from Gosset, one of the oldest of the champagne houses. Bruno had heard of it but never tasted it before. With just a faint hint of sweetness, it went perfectly with the scallops in beurre blanc.

  ‘So now we wait for Murcoing to log on to his emails and then to contact you at your fake email address,’ Bruno said. ‘And then you arrange a meeting. What do you suggest should happen then?’

  ‘I assume we can arrange the meeting at a place where you can organize a police ambush.’

  ‘We know he’s armed and dangerous and he’s already killed once. I don’t think you should be anywhere near the meeting place,’ Bruno replied firmly.

  ‘I hope you’re not planning to be involved yourself, Bruno,’ Florence said. ‘This is a job for a specialist police unit.’

  ‘Of course, you’re right,’ Bruno said. ‘What worries me is that we may be underestimating Murcoing. He’s no fool, and he must be suspicious of something like this falling so conveniently into his lap. I’m not sure he’ll just come waltzing to some prearranged meeting spot. If he takes the bait he’ll try to set up a meeting at a place he can control and he’ll certainly check it out beforehand for any sign of an ambush. That’s what I’d do. Still, we may be lucky. Filial piety may bring him to his grandfather’s funeral tomorrow, which would save us all a great deal of trouble.’

  The sommelier brought the decanter with the red wine Crimson had ordered, laying the cork beside it so Bruno could make out the stamped capital letters that spelled out Château Haut-Brion.

  ‘Le quatre-vingts-quatorze, Monsieur,’ murmured the sommelier, a man who had learned his art in the old school. Instead of pouring some wine for the customer to taste, he poured a tiny sip for himself and then sniffed and tasted it to pronounce it good before half-filling the three glasses.

  The ninety-four, thought Bruno, a wine made when he’d been dodging mortar bombs in Sarajevo, when Paul Murcoing had been a young teenager and Francis Fullerton had been attending funerals in New York of friends who had died of AIDS. Crimson had been doing whatever the interests of the British crown required and Florence had been at school amid the dying coalfields of northern France.

  Bruno’s eye was caught by a movement at the far side of the garden, where two diners had been hidden by the trees, and he was only a little surprised to see Gilles offering his arm to help Fabiola rise from her seat. The couple then strolled hand in hand from the garden and out into the night. Well, well, he thought, sniffing again at the wine and thinking that if Fabiola had been at school when it was made, Gilles had been darting across Sniper’s Alley in that same wretched Bosnian siege that he had known. Curious, the strength of the bond that such a shared experience could forge, and it left him confident that his dear friend Fabiola was in good hands.

  25

  Bruno was always proud of his town, but he felt an extra glow as he stood at the big wooden doors of St Denis’s church greeting the steady flow of mourners arriving for Murcoing’s funeral. Some he had expected, like his friend the Baron wearing his medals from the Algerian war, and Joe, Bruno’s predecessor as the town policeman. Joe wore in his lapel the small red rosette of the Légion d’Hon
neur, awarded for his boyhood exploits as a Resistance courier. Then came those inhabitants of the retirement home who could still walk; they always enjoyed a good funeral, if only to remind themselves their turn had not yet come. What Bruno had not expected was the turnout of youngsters. He assumed at first it was because of Florence, their favourite teacher, in the choir. Then he saw Rollo the headmaster bringing up the rear.

  ‘I thought it made a good teaching moment,’ Rollo said, shaking hands. He spoke over the slow, sad tolling of the church bell. ‘We held a special lesson this morning on the history of the local Resistance for the senior classes and then asked if any of them wanted to join me at the funeral. I’m proud of them, not one stayed behind.’

  Crimson murmured: ‘No reply from Murcoing yet,’ as he arrived with Brian Fullerton, followed by Monsieur Simpson, the retired English schoolteacher who had been called up in the closing weeks of the Second World War and thus counted as comrade-in-arms of the dead man. He was flanked by the only two other citizens of St Denis who could claim the honour, Jean-Pierre and Bachelot, one a veteran of the Gaullist Resistance and the other who had fought for the Communist FTP. After a lifetime of enmity which had made their families the Montagues and Capulets of St Denis, they had finally in old age and retirement become friends.

  Jacqueline arrived discreetly alone, rather than coming with the Mayor, who stood beside Bruno at the door to greet the mourners. Since he was to give the eulogy, the Mayor was wearing his sash of office and accepted with quiet dignity the murmured condolences on the death of Cécile. ‘Friday,’ he kept saying, again and again, as the old folk asked when her funeral would be.

  Joséphine and her sisters were already installed in the front row, Gilles sitting behind them, his notebook open to scribble details. Plain-clothes police were scattered throughout the congregation. More police were in the nearby cafés and J-J himself stood just inside the door of the Maison de la Presse, pretending to study the magazines. But of Paul and his sister there was no sign.