Bruno felt a little shock of recognition and a renewed sense of his failure in an unresolved case whose memory could still occasionally trouble his nights. ‘Did he tell you the name of the French boy?’
‘No, never. But when we were at his place in London one evening he showed me some poems he had written. They were very intense, not to my taste. But there was one about listening to a lover speaking French.’
15
On his early-morning drive to Pamela’s house, Bruno considered with some care how to refer to his evening with Isabelle. As they saddled the horses he said lightly that he’d been summoned to ‘a working dinner with your favourite policewoman from Paris’. To his relief Pamela did not react. She was much more interested in his news that Crimson was expected to return to St Denis that day, that his belongings had been found and that the local burglaries would now cease.
‘That poor man, coming home to a ransacked house,’ she said. ‘Tell him to join us for dinner, Bruno.’
Invigorated by the ride and glowing from his shower, Bruno led Balzac on a leash through the temptations of the Saturday morning market. The young basset hound stopped first to sniff and then gulp down the scraps of paté and crusts of brioche, the offcuts of great hams and rinds of cheese that kindly stallholders tossed in his path. Finally Bruno thought, Enough. He scooped up his puppy to carry him past these well-meant offerings and fastened his leash to the leg of the chair opposite the one where Gilles was sitting. His laptop was open before him and all the day’s newspapers were piled alongside it. As Bruno turned to wave for his coffee at Mira-belle, the schoolgirl who earned pocket money as a waitress on Saturday mornings, Gilles began feeding Balzac chunks of his own croissant.
‘You’ll make him fat,’ Bruno said as he shook hands. ‘I’m going to have to stop bringing this dog to market. What’s the news from Paris?’
‘Not much, which is why I’m down here hoping for some more,’ said Gilles. ‘Is this guy Crimson arriving today?’
‘So I’m told, and we’ve found his stuff. The Police Nationale will be putting out a press release later today saying that all of Crimson’s belongings have been recovered. If you’re still running news on your website you can have the scoop. You’ll even beat Sud Ouest. We found them in a Corrèze barn belonging to the murdered English antiques dealer.’
‘When you say “We” does that mean you were present?’
‘Yes, but don’t say that. Let J-J take the credit.’ A coffee and croissant appeared in front of him and Bruno nodded his thanks to Mirabelle, one of Florence’s favourite pupils.
‘Let me tweet this first and then you can give me some more detail for the website.’
Twenty minutes and another coffee later, Bruno had made his rounds of the market. He climbed the steps to the upper square and gazed down on his town and his people. Farmers’ wives with shopping bags were coming out of the bank and teenage girls in market-day finery were giggling together by the bridge and deliberately not looking at the boys. Everything was normal and all was calm, except that there was an armed killer on the loose.
His cheerful mood evaporated as he considered what he might do if Paul Murcoing suddenly appeared on the bridge carrying his stolen guns. He was paid to protect St Denis. Reluctantly, because he preferred to do his job unarmed, Bruno descended the steps, walked across to the Mairie, up to his office and opened the safe. He took out his MAB 9-millimetre, stripped, cleaned and lightly oiled it and then carefully wiped the bullets before loading the magazine. It could take fifteen rounds, but like most former soldiers he left out one to loosen the spring and reduce the chances of jamming. He reassembled his weapon, checked the safety catch and strapped his holster around his waist. Feeling self-conscious at its unaccustomed weight, Bruno went back to complete his patrol and watch over the market. To his surprise, none of his friends and neighbours seemed to notice he was armed.
An hour later it was, however, the first thing Isabelle spotted when he responded to her phone call and arrived in his van at Crimson’s house. As he climbed out to greet her he could hear the distant sound of a helicopter and she called from the doorway: ‘Perfect timing, they’re on their way in and it’s good to see you with a gun again. That usually means matters are about to get interesting.’
She opened the front of her leather jacket so he could see her shoulder holster but then went down on one knee as Bruno opened the rear of the van and little Balzac leaped out and sprinted towards her. Ears almost as long as Balzac himself flapped like giant wings as he leaped into her arms, his tongue raking her neck and cheek. She laughed and hugged him, and then seemed to lose her balance and toppled onto her back, Balzac standing four-square on her chest to nuzzle at her face. Bruno felt himself grinning even as he thought how much he would miss her.
‘Don’t just stand there, help me up,’ she called from the ground, and laughing he stretched out a hand. The helicopter was much closer. She dusted herself down and watched Balzac follow his sniffing nose around the garden. Whether or not she missed him, Bruno thought, she’d certainly miss Balzac.
One of the men in overalls who had been with her on her first day at Crimson’s house was standing on the edge of the covered swimming pool, holding a red flare, its smoke giving the pilot the wind direction. The military helicopter flew past the house, turned and came back into the wind as it dropped. Bruno clamped his képi firmly to his head, noticing that it was a Fennec, one of the unarmed models used to transport senior officers. Balzac, who had darted into the shelter of Bruno’s legs when he saw the helicopter descend, now barked defiance as its rotors stilled. The door opened and the Brigadier, dressed in a suit and tie, groped with his foot for the little step bar attached to the skids and jumped down. He turned to help a rather older man in grey slacks, blazer and open-neck shirt.
Crimson was the only man Bruno knew who seemed to have his hair cut once a week. It was always of a perfect length and it never seemed to lose its parting, however strenuous the tennis or capricious the wind. At first, Bruno had thought it signified a touch of vanity, but now that he knew the man it seemed all of a piece with his self-possession and self-control.
‘Bruno,’ said the Brigadier, much more coldly than usual, reaching out for a curt handshake as Bruno’s arm came down from the salute. ‘I believe you know Monsieur Crimson.’
‘Bruno and I have been on first-name terms for years,’ said Crimson, in his grammatical but strongly-accented French. With careful courtesy he shook Isabelle’s hand before surprising Bruno with a kiss on both cheeks. They had been amicable acquaintances but hardly good friends. Perhaps he was trying to send a signal to the Brigadier. ‘I gather you’ve pulled off a remarkable bit of police work.’
‘You’ll need to check the hoard, but I brought this as a token of the eventual return of your goods,’ said Bruno, and handed to Crimson the wrapped parcel he had brought with him from the back of his van. He was conscious of the Brigadier glowering impatiently at him. Whatever credit he’d gained from solving the burglary did not seem to have impressed the Brigadier.
‘Let’s do this inside the house,’ Crimson said, and looked down to where Balzac was sniffing at his cavalry twill trousers. ‘And who’s this little fellow? You finally managed to replace dear Gigi?’
Inside his kitchen, he unwrapped the two Cotman water-colours, which Bruno had selected as the most portable and identifiable of the loot from the barn. He examined them both with deep satisfaction.
‘These were the wedding presents my wife and I gave each other over forty years ago. I can’t believe you pulled this off, Bruno. I’d been resigned to a long battle with the insurers and then when I landed at Paris, there was Vincent waiting for me with the good news and his helicopter. I can’t believe that you got my wine back.’
Bruno had never known the Brigadier’s first name, and from the way her eyes widened, nor had Isabelle.
‘I’ll want to see you at the Gendarmerie at five this afternoon, Bruno,’ the Brigadier said bris
kly. ‘I don’t think we need detain you or your dog further. As soon as Monsieur Crimson has unpacked his things, we’ll take the helicopter on to this place in the Corrèze so that he can check on the rest of his property and then we’ll arrange to have them shipped back here.’
Bruno replied with a crisp salute. His attempt at a dignified departure was undermined by Balzac, who was alternating his attentions between Isabelle’s black trainers and Crimson’s English brogues. Bruno finally had to bend and scoop Balzac into his arms to take his leave, aware of Isabelle’s averted eyes and the half-baffled, half-concerned look on Crimson’s face.
‘Ring me tomorrow because I owe you the best dinner in the Périgord,’ the Englishman called after him.
16
His holster back around his waist, Bruno was in his office at the Mairie, dealing with accumulated paperwork, when his phone rang. He put down the leasing contract for the big screen on which the council would project the open-air cinema on summer evenings and answered.
‘It’s Jacqueline Morgan and I’m not sure whether I’m in your jurisdiction but I thought I’d better tell you first. I’ve been burgled.’
She was in another commune, so technically a break-in at her house was none of his business, but with the local government reforms linking different communes together the demarcation lines were blurring fast. He could have ducked this job, he told himself as he drove through Les Eyzies on the way to her house. But her tale was intriguing, she had been helpful in sharing her expertise, and any friend of his Mayor deserved his best efforts. He parked behind her white BMW, pulled from the glove compartment a pair of latex gloves and a couple of evidence bags and knocked at the door.
The first thing he noticed was that Jacqueline had been to the hairdresser. The iron-grey curls he remembered had been tamed into soft waves and given subtle streaks of gold. She was wearing a well-cut dress that flattered her trim figure. On her feet were the usual trainers but a pair of court shoes stood by the door, as if she’d kicked them off on entering. At their first meeting, she had looked American, or at least she looked like his expectation of an American female academic. Now, despite the shoes, she looked French and ten years younger. When she presented him her cheek to be kissed he detected an attractive scent.
Jacqueline explained that she had spent the morning at the market in Sarlat and had then met the Mayor for lunch before he went on to the hospital. Bruno didn’t think she was the kind of woman who’d dress up to go shopping in the market, so she must have wanted to look her best for the lunch with the Mayor. He smiled to himself at the thought.
She’d then driven home to find no sign of forced entry. But the books and papers on her table were not quite where she had left them, and when she’d looked into the kitchen she found the back door open and one of the panes neatly removed. She had checked the rest of the house and a few small items of jewellery were missing from her bedroom, along with some silver, her TV set and laptop from downstairs.
She led him to the back and showed him the pane of broken glass on the kitchen floor, still mainly attached to a sheaf of greased newspaper. Automatically his hand went to the butt of his gun. That was the technique that had been used at Crimson’s house. Could this be Murcoing’s work again? Or perhaps somebody who wanted to make it look like Murcoing?
He told Jacqueline to stay inside and went out to check the garden and outbuildings. They were all clear but an army could have been hiding in the wooded slopes of the ridge that rose behind the house. Dirt roads led up through the woods, although he could see no other houses up there. About a kilometre back he had passed a duck and goose farm which seemed to be Jacqueline’s nearest neighbour. A burglar would have had no fear of being seen. The ground was too dry for prints but there were tyre tracks in the grass behind the house, out of sight of the road. Jacqueline parked her BMW at the side of the house.
Inside, the house was strangely tidy for a burglary. Usually drawers were pulled out and upended, mattresses shoved aside and often ripped and cupboards dragged away from walls. In the bedroom a rather fine wooden box, obviously for her jewels, had been tipped onto the bed. A charming nude sketch of a woman sitting on a bed, her shapely back to the painter, hung between the two windows. Even the least artistic thief would have thought that was worth money.
‘I haven’t touched anything since I found the house like this, except for some of the books and notes downstairs to see if anything was missing,’ she said. ‘The most important thing is the manuscript of my father’s memoirs. I have copies, of course, but not here in France, they’re …’
Bruno put a finger to his lips to signal for silence. He was not one to leap to conclusions but there was a possibility that Jacqueline’s burglars had been the kind of people who would also leave the house bugged. It was going to be a very interesting conversation with the Brigadier.
‘Are you insured against theft, Madame?’ he asked. She nodded, her eyes widening. ‘And the value of your stolen silver and jewels would be what in your estimate?’ He waved his hand upwards two or three times to encourage her to set the figure high.
‘Well over ten thousand euros,’ she said, catching his meaning. ‘Probably more, some of them were antiques, irreplaceable family heirlooms. The silver coffee pot is eighteenth-century American, and since my father was descended from Mary Robbins there’s a family legend that it was made by Paul Revere.’
Bruno looked at her blankly.
‘He was a silversmith in Boston, a famous revolutionary who carried the news of the British raid that started the War of Independence. There are poems about him that children learn in school, at least we did in my day. Mary Robbins married his son.’
Bruno nodded, thinking that would be useful for the plan that was forming in his mind. ‘Do you have a photo of this coffee pot?’
Jacqueline went to a two-drawer filing cabinet disguised as a wooden chest of drawers. He told her to wait and brought another set of gloves from his car. She put them on, muttering that the files seemed to have been searched, but finally gave him a postcard-sized print of a handsome coffee pot with a curved spout.
‘I had to do it for the insurance once I’d listed it as a special item,’ she said. ‘I put the value at ten thousand.’
‘And your laptop? How much would that be worth?’
‘Over a thousand. Both it and the TV were quite new.’
‘So altogether this could be up to twenty thousand euros in value that has been stolen? Perhaps we’d better see if anything has gone from the outbuildings before I call the Gendarmes.’ He steered her outside and into the garden at the rear.
‘You think I’m being bugged?’ she asked in a whisper.
He shrugged. ‘It’s possible. What about the material on your laptop? Do you have it all backed up?’
‘Yes, on the university mainframes, both in Paris and back in the States. It’s tiresome but I won’t have lost anything. But what are you thinking, is this some government operation, spying on me?’
‘I don’t know but we’ll do this by the book.’
After a vain search of the barn and shed Bruno led the way back into the house and called the Gendarmerie at St Denis, where Sergeant Jules was on the desk. Jacqueline’s house was roughly halfway between the gendarmeries in Montignac and St Denis, so he couldn’t be accused of deliberately calling in the Gendarmes he knew. Bruno explained the burglary and the value of the items stolen and stressed the news value of Paul Revere’s coffee pot. Most important, he added, was that the same method of entry had been used in the burglary of Monsieur Crimson, so that pointed to Paul Murcoing. That would get Yveline excited, Bruno thought.
He then went to his van and pulled out the cheap pay-as-you-go phone he’d bought in a previous case when Isabelle had wanted to contact him in a way that could not be traced. He used it to call Annette in Sarlat, and explained not only the burglary but also his suspicion that the real target of the thieves might have been Jacqueline’s papers. Could she make sure that t
he report of the burglary got special attention when the Procureur came back to the office on Monday? Once the Procureur listed the case as a délit, a serious crime, there would be a paper trail that would make any attempt at a cover-up very difficult.
‘This sounds intriguing, so let’s talk about it over dinner tonight,’ she said. ‘I’m with Yves at the house and he’s been shopping in the market to make that dinner he promised you. I already called Pamela and Fabiola.’
‘Is there enough for a couple more guests? My friend Gilles from Paris Match is in town and I think you’d like to meet Jacqueline.’
‘The more the merrier,’ Annette replied. ‘My place in Sarlat, about eight? And by the way, Bernard Ardouin has brought me in to help on the Fullerton murder, so I need to call to Sergeant Jules. I’ll just ask him if anything has come up, and that way the Procureur’s office will be informed.’
Bruno rang off, called Gilles to tell him about dinner and smiled to himself at the difference between the way the French judicial bureaucracy was supposed to work with its separate jurisdictions and checks and balances, and the way that in practice friendships and personal connections could cut through the red tape. He took a mischievous pleasure in the way that he, a village policeman, could play the system. But this time he would have to be particularly careful. Usually he could count on discreet support from the Brigadier and Isabelle. This time the politics made that problematic, and he’d hate to have either one of them as an enemy. The Brigadier could squash him like a bug.
Suddenly he looked at the cheap phone in his hand and cursed himself for a fool. Isabelle had the number. If she decided to track the phone records, his careful manoeuvring could be uncovered. So much for his moment of self-satisfaction! He’d have to buy another disposable phone as soon as he got back to town.
Why was he taking this risk? He barely knew Jacqueline. But he knew he wasn’t doing this for her but for his Mayor, to whom he owed just about everything that made his life rewarding: his home, his work and his place in St Denis. More than that, he had a visceral dislike of the way that agents of the French state often rode roughshod over the law. If the Brigadier, say, had staged Jacqueline’s burglary to protect the government from embarrassment, it stuck in his throat. He remembered the cross words he’d exchanged with Isabelle over the growing number of scandals piling up at the door of her Ministry. At least she was making arrangements to move to another job.
The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6) Page 14