The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

by Martin Walker

  ‘No, but I know what I’ve read in the papers. And who knows how the election will turn out? If this lot get re-elected, there’ll be no change.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong. Even his own party is just looking for an excuse to get rid of this minister of the interior. He’s a liability. And this new super-agency he’s set up is a menace. That’s why I want Isabelle out of it before the shit hits the fan.’

  Bruno seldom talked national politics, partly because his interest was limited and partly because he reckoned there wasn’t that much difference between the parties. He remembered some graffiti he’d seen: ‘It doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.’ But he’d rather talk politics than talk about Isabelle. The wound was still fresh.

  ‘What worries me is that every time I raise it with her, she says she doesn’t want to come back here,’ J-J went on.

  ‘I think she means it,’ Bruno said, when it was plain that J-J was waiting for him to respond.

  ‘She’s under a lot of strain,’ said Josette from the driver’s seat. It was the first time she had spoken. ‘She was crying in the ladies’ room the other day. It’s not like her at all.’

  Bruno felt her cast an accusing glance at him in the rear-view mirror. He turned his eyes away to look at the countryside flashing by the autoroute. Josette had put the magnetized blue light on the roof and they were doing a hundred and eighty. At this speed, they’d be in Bordeaux in less than an hour.

  When they reached the Pont d’Aquitaine, the great bridge over the river, J-J made a courtesy call to his Police Nationale counterpart in the Gironde département to explain his presence in the city. The juge d’instruction had already telephoned, J-J was told, and if any assistance was required Bordeaux would be happy to help. Josette’s satnav system directed them to the plush suburb of Caudéran, and then to the most exclusive area of all where the gardens backed onto the Parc Bordelais. Bruno and J-J exchanged glances and J-J rubbed a finger and thumb together to signify the price of such a property as the Peugeot pulled up in the driveway of the distinctly grand maison de maître where Edouard lived and kept his showroom.

  ‘Very tax-efficient, home and showroom in one,’ grumbled J-J. ‘I dislike the little pédé already.’

  ‘Stop it, J-J,’ chided Josette. ‘You aren’t allowed to say that kind of thing anymore, not even you. You know I’m supposed to report it.’

  ‘See what I have to put up with?’ J-J sighed, and hauled himself out of the car and up the wide steps to the double doors. A discreet brass plaque on one of the columns that flanked the doors read Arch-Inter.

  ‘Commissaire Jalipeau and Chief of Police Courrèges to see Monsieur Marty,’ he announced, loud enough for the echoes to reverberate throughout the house, to the elegant young woman in black silk who answered the doorbell. Behind her, the hallway was uniformly white, the stairs, the tiles, the walls and woodwork and the single tall-backed wooden chair that was the only furniture.

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’ she asked, coldly.

  ‘Do you want an appointment with the inside of a jail cell, Mademoiselle?’

  ‘It’s alright, Clarisse,’ came a voice from the upper landing, and Edouard appeared. ‘May I help you, gentlemen?’

  ‘Where do you want to start being questioned, here or in my police HQ? Since I suspect you’ll end up in custody, it might save time if we went straight there.’

  ‘Let me see if I can help you here,’ Edouard replied calmly, descending the staircase as if making an entrance. He was wearing a black suit over a T-shirt so white that it gleamed. ‘I thought this had all been settled with your colleagues from the art squad.’

  ‘They’re not colleagues. They’re specialists who sip tea and make polite small-talk about Monet and Manet and money. I deal in murder and violence and that’s what I want to question you about.’

  Edouard led them into a large room, opposite the one to which Clarisse returned. It was again all in white except for a strikingly red chaise longue with chrome legs at one side of the fireplace and two very modern chrome and black leather chairs facing it. A block of polished steel sat between them to serve as a table and inside the large fireplace stood an African carving of a woman with row upon row of breasts descending the length of her torso. Above it hung a bizarre and multicoloured modern tapestry of jazzy abstract shapes from which hung festoons of blue and yellow fabric.

  ‘Where is your old boyfriend Paul Murcoing?’ J-J began.

  ‘I have no idea. I haven’t seen him for several weeks.’

  ‘Where were you last Tuesday afternoon and evening?’ J-J was referring to the time of Fullerton’s murder.

  ‘I think I was out of town with clients. It will be in my diary.’

  ‘Have you communicated with Paul in the last week in any way?’

  Edouard paused and examined his fingernails. ‘A couple of phone calls, perhaps, and some emails, all to do with business.’

  ‘You’ll have no objection to our going through your phone bills and emails?’ J-J’s aggressive delivery made it clear this was no question.

  ‘Perhaps I’d better discuss that with my lawyer.’

  ‘Discuss all you want, I’ve got an order from the juge.’ J-J waved the document he’d collected from Bernard Ardouin and turned to Bruno. ‘Call Josette in and tell her to get that computer from the secretary and have a look around for any more. Also she’s to bring down any mobile phones she finds.’

  ‘Don’t I know you?’ asked Edouard, studying Bruno.

  ‘The last time we met you were naked and your friends’ fathers had been beating the hell out of you. That was at the holiday home where you and Paul Murcoing and Francis Fullerton were first together.’

  Edouard nodded. ‘I remember. You pestered my parents and my school friends until you got bored and gave up.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ J-J said. ‘He never gives up. That’s why he’s here. But compared with me, he’s a pussy-cat. Now, about your little playmate Paul …’

  Bruno went outside to call in Josette from the car. She was scanning a list of numbers on the screen of her phone when Bruno passed on J-J’s instructions. She handed him the phone.

  ‘I just downloaded his phone records from France Télécom. There’s a lot of calls in the last week from a number that looks like a disposable phone and some more from public call boxes, paid for with one of those cards you can buy. J-J will recognize them if you give it to him.’

  She slipped on a pair of evidence gloves and went into the house and into Clarisse’s room. Bruno heard angry female voices as he handed J-J the phone.

  ‘You get a lot of calls from public phone boxes, do you?’ J-J inquired. ‘No, only in the last few days. I wonder who that could have been. Wouldn’t have been the man we’re hunting for murder, would it?’

  ‘I don’t know where Paul was calling from, but yes, he has called several times in recent days.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Business, the legal position of the company after the death of Monsieur Fullerton, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Did you discuss anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you know that we had put out public statements in the press and on TV saying we wanted urgently to interview him?’

  Edouard paused and then nodded his head.

  ‘And you want to tell me that that important little detail never came up in your business chats?’

  ‘I told him that he should go to a police station and offer to help you all he could. I cannot believe he’s a murderer, least of all that he killed Francis. They were very close.’

  ‘So you knew how to get in touch with him but decided against doing your duty as a law-abiding citizen and informing the police. You’re in big trouble, Edouard.’

  ‘I didn’t know where he was. He said he was moving around.’

  ‘I’m getting bored with this,’ J-J said, turning to Bruno. ‘Let’s take him back to the station, charge him with obst
ruction of justice, conspiracy. We’ll get around to the murder later. Get the handcuffs from the car and let the press office know we can offer everybody a nice picture of Edouard here being led out of his fancy house in chains.’

  ‘No need to rush things,’ Bruno said, and turned to Edouard, who was now looking alarmed. Bruno let the silence build as J-J thumbed through the phone records.

  ‘What did Paul use for money?’ Bruno finally asked. ‘Did you give him any?’

  ‘No, I didn’t see him so I gave him nothing. I don’t know what Paul did for money.’ Edouard was sweating and his immaculate T-shirt was starting to look rumpled at the neck.

  Bruno knew the signs. Soon there would be a little act of resistance, a token defiance to retain some shred of self-respect. Then Edouard would break and start to treat J-J as some father confessor whose approval he could win by telling everything he knew.

  ‘What company records do you keep here?’ Bruno went on.

  ‘Your art squad colleagues went through all the records.’ There it was, the moment of defiance. Now J-J would move in for the kill.

  ‘No, they didn’t,’ said J-J. ‘They didn’t put a freeze on your bank accounts and company credit cards, which is what I’m about to do. I want all chequebooks, statements and credit cards. Does Paul have a company credit card?’

  ‘Yes,’ Edouard said, as if suddenly eager to help. ‘I have the number on file, I can get it for you …’

  Josette came thumping down from the stairs carrying an expensive-looking weekend bag. She put it on the steel cube and began to pull out phones, an iPad and laptop. Edouard put a hand to his mouth and stared in disbelief at this lawful rifling of his life, as if finally understanding the sweeping investigative powers of the police backed with a signed order from a juge d’instruction.

  ‘This one’s a disposable,’ Josette said, holding up a cheap handset. ‘It was by the bed. Its memory goes back as far as the day after the murder and all the calls in and out are with the same number, that other disposable on the list. I bet it’s Murcoing’s.’

  ‘Putain, you really are in trouble,’ said J-J. He pulled a notepad from his briefcase and began copying down the times and dates of the various phone calls. ‘You’ve been in touch with him never less than twice a day. So where is Murcoing now?’

  ‘I don’t know, he never tells me. I really tried to persuade him to give himself up. He gets this way sometimes, single-minded, determined …’ Edouard’s shoulders heaved as if he were about to be sick, but instead he gave a sound that was half-cough and half-sob.

  ‘Has he been here, to this house?’

  ‘Not lately, not since this all this began.’ Edouard was wiping a handkerchief at his mouth, his brow, his neck.

  ‘Do you know how much money he’s pulled out on the company’s English credit card?’ Bruno asked. ‘We know about that.’

  Edouard swallowed and nodded. ‘I checked online this morning, it’s just over three thousand euros.’

  ‘Maybe we won’t freeze it just yet,’ said J-J. ‘If he tries to get more out and finds it’s frozen, he’ll suspect we’ve got Edouard. We’ll keep the phone line going as well, so long as Edouard can only answer in our presence and we tell him what to say.’

  He told Josette to set up a tracing system on the phone, then asked Edouard for the code required to open his iPad. Edouard shook his head and remained silent.

  J-J sighed and pulled out the attestation from the juge d’instruction and handed it to him. ‘See that, where it says electronic records? You’ve got no choice, Edouard. The law says so.’

  When Edouard stayed silent, J-J shrugged and said: ‘Give me your ID card.’

  Edouard took out his wallet and handed it across. J-J put it beside the iPad and said conversationally: ‘Over seventy per cent of people use four-digit codes for their PIN numbers that are taken from their birth date. Let’s try that.’

  He tapped four numbers but nothing happened. He tried another combination and the screen opened. Edouard stared at him as if witnessing some magical trick and then shook his head. He looked at J-J scrolling through various icons on the screen and seemed to reach a decision. Another little act of defiance, thought Bruno, another confession now due to come.

  ‘He said he keeps his phone turned off except that he calls me every day at eight in the morning and eight in the evening,’ Edouard burst out. ‘You can see that from the dialling logs.’

  ‘And do you have any little code between friends to say that all is well and the stupid police haven’t yet caught on?’ J-J asked.

  Edouard began to babble, as if he could not wait to tell them everything that he knew or suspected. But Bruno noted that everything he said was about Paul, not a word about himself, about Arch-Inter or even about Francis Fullerton. Maybe Edouard was made of sterner stuff, after all, giving up whatever he thought the police wanted to know. But perhaps there were other secrets still unspoken and still protected behind this flood of confession. Maybe it was time to push Edouard a bit harder.

  Bruno waited until Edouard stopped talking and then spoke thoughtfully, as though thinking aloud. ‘Why don’t we get the art squad back in here to have another crack at him? They’ll be really angry that they missed all this so they’ll drop the kid gloves this time. We’ve got enough to hold him so we might as well let them have some credit.’

  ‘I think we can bring in more than just the art squad,’ said J-J, swivelling the iPad so Bruno could see the images of naked boys on the screen. ‘This looks like a different kind of art to me. I’m disappointed in you, Edouard, I didn’t expect this. Tell me, Bruno, how old do you think these kids are? These two are under-age, I’ll take my oath. Josette, who runs the paedophile squad in Bordeaux these days? Is it still that old brute Pontin?’

  ‘It’s still him, chef, the last I heard.’ She rose and turned to look at the images. ‘Definitely under-age, I’d say.’

  ‘Inspector Pontin’s a legend in this business,’ J-J said conversationally, scrolling through more photos. ‘You’re going to have a very interesting time with him, Edouard. Oh dear, this little boy can’t be more than thirteen. Old Pontin won’t like these pictures at all. And you a professor at the university. Well, I think we can say your teaching career’s over. And do you have any idea what happens to paedos in prison?’

  Edouard had drawn up his legs and shrunk into a crouch on the chaise longue, his hands over his face.

  ‘Last chance, Edouard,’ said Bruno. ‘Maybe there’s some more help you can give us on finding Paul.’

  27

  Bruno had the Mayor’s formal permission to be late for work so that he could collect Pamela from hospital. Even so, he was outside the Moulin bakery when it opened at seven. In his Land Rover was a thermos flask with fresh coffee, in the cooler a half-bottle of champagne and some fresh-squeezed orange juice, butter and his own home-made blackcurrant jam. He bought three croissants, three pains au chocolat and a baguette, all still hot from the oven, handed them to Fabiola in the passenger seat and drove to the Sarlat hospital to give Pamela a special breakfast before taking her home.

  It had been the Mayor’s idea. When Bruno had called him late the previous afternoon from Bordeaux to say he was driving back to Périgueux with J-J and Edouard, their prisoner, the Mayor insisted on driving to Périgueux to collect him. When Fabiola had called Bruno’s mobile to say they could bring Pamela home the next day, the Mayor suggested Bruno should leave the town to police itself until Pamela was safely installed back in St Denis.

  The Mayor had taken him to Jacqueline’s for supper and found her on the phone, doing an interview with France-Inter on her article in Le Monde.

  ‘Just before the two of you returned, I had a rather more difficult call from Paris,’ Jacqueline said when she put down the phone. ‘It came from the minister of the interior, a deeply unpleasant man with whom I was foolish enough to have a fling some years ago. He asked if I was seeking to destroy his career.’

  ‘I don’t
see the connection,’ the Mayor said, looking startled and confused.

  ‘Our affair was not exactly secret, although he was married at the time. I’d met some of his political colleagues at dinner parties and receptions, you know how it is in Paris. And of course when they saw my name on the piece in Le Monde they assumed that he was somehow behind it and began wondering at his motives. He must have had some rather angry phone calls as a result, and hence his call to me.’

  ‘You must have seen that coming,’ said the Mayor.

  ‘Of course I did, which was an excellent reason for publishing the article. He was a charmer, of course, and very good-looking, but I found that I couldn’t stand his utter pomposity, which is why I ended the liaison. His subsequent political career has plunged him even further down in my estimation. He was a bully in private and he’s been a bully as minister. The man’s a disgrace. I won’t be at all embarrassed if this becomes public so long as it ends his political career.’

  Bruno exchanged looks with his Mayor and felt himself grinning. ‘You have been warned,’ he said.

  The Mayor looked fondly at Jacqueline and said: ‘I’ll take my chances.’

  After the meal, the Mayor had driven Bruno back to St Denis, saying he had something to discuss.

  ‘I don’t sleep there, you know,’ the Mayor said as they set out. ‘It wouldn’t feel right, certainly until Cécile’s funeral is over.’

  ‘And perhaps the election,’ Bruno replied, thinking of the impact on the voters of the Mayor embarking on an affair when his wife had just died.

  ‘Perhaps. But when you get to my age, Bruno, and you find yourself fascinated by a woman and feeling like a youngster again, that’s not something you can afford to ignore. I’d rather be with Jacqueline than get re-elected. To be in love again is like a gift.’

  ‘It always is, at any age.’ Bruno felt the Mayor take his eyes briefly from the road to glance at him as if about to speak, and was relieved when he didn’t. He didn’t want any conversation about Isabelle.