The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

by Martin Walker

  *

  Back in St Denis after dropping the still silent Fabiola and collecting Balzac from the stables, Bruno called at the Mayor’s house only to find it empty and no Peugeot in the garage. He debated whether to drive to Jacqueline’s to see if the Mayor was there and decided against it. But he felt the urge to do something, anything, rather than sit and worry about Pamela and feed his sense of guilt. He called J-J and the automated voice told him to leave a message. Then he rang the incident room at the Bergerac station where the hunt for Murcoing was being coordinated and reported the empty houses to Inspector Jofflin. There was no news from the search of the campsites nor from the road patrols.

  He remembered he had to call Crimson to tell him of Pamela’s fall and to postpone the dinner he’d been planning. When he explained how he and Pamela had been looking for Paul Murcoing, Crimson interrupted: ‘Was that the chap who burgled me?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s now a murder suspect, either on the run or in hiding somewhere. That’s why we were searching the gîtes that were listed as empty.’

  ‘Do you have some way to smoke him out?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Bruno remembered that J-J had wondered whether Murcoing could be lured out of hiding into some kind of trap. Maybe his obsession with the Neuvic money could be used as bait. It was worth a try. He explained his thinking and then asked: ‘What kind of bait would we need?’

  ‘That’s simple,’ said Crimson. ‘You’d need some new documents being released from the archives that cast new light on it all, maybe giving the names of which Resistance leaders were authorized to control the money.’

  ‘You mean like some new documents from the SOE records, not yet declassified?’ Bruno asked.

  ‘Exactly,’ Crimson replied. ‘You wouldn’t even need real documents, just forge a couple of file references and a page of contents from an archive catalogue and a sample page, scan it and post it on an email message to Murcoing. I presume he’s got Internet access of some kind, if only through a phone.’

  ‘We’d have to send it to Murcoing in a way he’d believe it,’ Bruno said. ‘I’m not sure how we could do that. We know that Fullerton was equally fascinated by the Neuvic business. Maybe we could concoct a message to Fullerton about new documents with a copy to Murcoing. That might work.’

  ‘Let me think about this,’ Crimson replied. ‘I have one or two old friends who’re familiar with those archives, including the ones still sealed. We have our quarry, we need a trap, and I think I may be able to provide the bait. I’ll need someone here who’s good with computers. Who’s that woman teacher, the one who set up the computer system for the schoolkids?’

  Bruno gave him Florence’s phone number and then set off in search of the person who had best known the murdered man. He found Brian Fullerton at the Hôtel St Denis, sitting in the courtyard under the plane trees with his pipe and a glass of kir. A bowl of olives and an open laptop lay on the table before him. This was his own computer, he explained, and he was looking forward to replacing it with his brother’s once the police had finished with it. He made much of Balzac, who was always delighted to make a new friend, and offered Bruno a drink. Bruno joined him in a kir and when Brian asked how the search for Murcoing was progressing, Bruno simply shrugged.

  ‘I’m getting quite a sense of the guy from the emails,’ Brian said, gesturing with his pipe at the laptop.

  ‘But they’re on your brother’s machine,’ Bruno said, and then saw the small thumb drive fixed into a socket on the side of the device. ‘Ah, I see, you copied your brother’s stuff onto that.’

  ‘Not all of it, but the emails,’ Brian replied. ‘It’s going to be a hell of a job working out which parts of his stock are really his and which were stolen. Sorting out his will and his financial affairs will be difficult enough, so I thought I’d try to do some work on that while waiting for the body to be released. But instead, I’ve been going through the emails with Murcoing.’

  There was material in here for half a dozen police inquiries, he explained, including Murcoing’s role in helping buy some of Francis’s guns from some shady types running a bar in Toulouse. There were several long emails from Murcoing, recounting all his grandfather’s theories and suspicions about who got the money from the Neuvic train. The old man saw suspects everywhere, starting with Malraux and some Russian who was in the Maquis in the Limousin, and going on to claim some big insurance firm had been started with part of the loot. There was a long account of some impoverished mechanic from Cadouin who was suddenly able to buy three trucks as the war ended and set up a successful haulage firm.

  ‘Hard to tell what’s true, what contains a grain of truth and how much of it is pure invention,’ Brian concluded.

  ‘Did your brother have anything to contribute?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. He took it all very seriously.’ Brian lit his pipe and sat back as he began to explain that Francis had made several visits to the Public Records Office in Kew, just outside London, looking up the SOE archives. Many of them had been declassified and Francis had scanned photocopies into the computer and sent them off to Murcoing with a rough translation. There were desperate missives to London from Resistance chiefs about how broke they were and how they needed money to feed their men and help support their families.

  ‘But nothing more about the Neuvic train?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what Murcoing was really interested in, but my brother only found snippets in the SOE archives. But he told Murcoing that more files were scheduled to be declassified and he’d hired a researcher to keep an eye out for them. One of the last emails, setting up this last trip he made to France, said he’d gathered lots of new photocopies that he was bringing with him.’

  ‘We didn’t find those at your brother’s house,’ Bruno said, thinking that this could fit with Crimson’s idea for new documents to lure Murcoing out of hiding.

  ‘So Murcoing must have taken them,’ Brian replied. ‘He’s obviously obsessed with this Neuvic business. He has a list of names of Maquis types from the Groupe Valmy and other networks, people he claimed were suspects, or ones that he or his grandfather believed had got away with some of the loot. Lord knows there was enough money at stake. He gives their addresses, the names and addresses of their heirs, the family businesses and farms that suddenly had money to expand after the war. Two or three of his emails ended up with the phrase “They will pay for this!” But he doesn’t say whether he wants to denounce them or blackmail them or what.’

  ‘Could you collect those names for me and email them to me at my office?’ Bruno asked. ‘I’d like to check them against our list of burglaries. What was your brother’s reaction to this kind of thing?’

  ‘It didn’t seem to surprise him. But that was Francis, he was always an enthusiast. Even as a little boy he’d take up some hobby like stamps or aircraft recognition and hurl himself into it for weeks at a time, just like he did with Grandpa Freddy’s wartime career and this venture with Murcoing. We went to see his specialist when he was in one of those expensive treatment centres where they try to wean people off drugs, and he told us that Francis had an addictive personality.’

  ‘What about their personal relationship? Did Murcoing know about Francis’s affair with Yves or his liaisons with other men?’

  ‘Francis was emailing all sorts of different men in ways that made the sexual relationship pretty clear, but he was at pains to keep them all separate,’ Brian replied. ‘With Murcoing, I think there was much more devotion on Murcoing’s side. It reminded me a bit of that line from La Rochefoucauld, that in love there is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek. Murcoing was very much the one doing the kissing.’

  ‘I’m wondering if that could have been a motive for the murder,’ Bruno said. ‘Murcoing could have felt betrayed if or when he found that Francis was about to have a romantic holiday with another man.’

  ‘I’ve asked myself the same question. The relationship with Murcoing had lasted for a long time, according to the emails. T
hat was unusual for Francis. I used to wonder if Francis ever really loved anybody, except maybe his nephews and nieces, my children. It’s hard to tell, and even harder to match the charming little brother I knew with what he later became. He could be quite a monster when he was on drugs.’

  Brian called up the final exchange of emails and turned the laptop so Bruno could read.

  The last email from Francis had been sent on Monday and he’d arranged to meet Murcoing at his Corrèze farm ‘after the weekend’, presumably meaning this weekend. Francis had added that he was bringing a full load of furniture from England to be unloaded and would then return across the Channel with French furniture from the barn. Bruno worked out the timing. Today was Sunday. The email had been sent the previous Monday, and on the Tuesday Francis had taken the Chunnel train and called at Dougal’s to pay for the extra days’ lease and to pick up the keys.

  ‘So my brother would not have been expecting Murcoing when he suddenly showed up at the gîte. There could have been an angry scene,’ Brian said. ‘But I don’t understand how Murcoing knew that Francis planned to arrive early for a romantic interlude with this other man.’

  ‘His sister works for the rental agency,’ Bruno replied ‘She knew which gîtes were going to be occupied and when. And the name of the tenant is also listed for the relevant week so the cleaners and gardeners know who’ll be there. She’d certainly have recognized his name, since this affair with Murcoing had been going on for over a year, you say.’

  ‘Maybe even longer. Look at this.’ He scrolled back to the beginning of the chain of emails between the two men, the first one dated in September, over eighteen months earlier, and sent by Murcoing when Francis had returned to England after their affair had begun, or perhaps resumed. He pointed to a line in the rather rambling and passionate message.

  ‘I have often thought of you even before that magical reunion when I saw you at the fair in Monpazier,’ Bruno read, and wondered just how long it had been between the reunion and their previous meeting.

  That triggered a memory, something he had noted at the time and planned to follow up, but it had slipped his mind. It was to do with Valentoux and the night he had told Bruno about his daughter. Valentoux had been asking around the gay community for information about Paul Murcoing and had been told he was known as a mercenary youth.

  The conversation began to play back in Bruno’s head. They had been standing on the steps of his home because Yves had wanted a cigarette. Yves recalled that Francis Fullerton had recounted some story of being in this region and meeting a boy a decade or so ago. And then an image suddenly appeared in Bruno’s mind of the studio portrait of a sultry-looking Murcoing that had been on Francis Fullerton’s bedside table in Corrèze and of Yves mentioning a poem that Francis had written about a boy named Paul.

  Mon Dieu, he thought to himself, it’s the missing boy from Bergerac who gave the medical clinic a false name on that case I could never resolve, the one that kept me awake at nights. It will be in one of my first notebooks.

  He began to rise clumsily, jolting the table and startling Brian, who reached out to steady his drink. Bruno was thinking of the pile of cardboard boxes in his barn where he stored his old papers.

  ‘Sorry, I just remembered something,’ he said.

  ‘Is it to do with the case?’

  ‘Maybe, but it’s probably not that important, it’s just that there may be a connection with something that happened a long time ago.’

  ‘Can you tell me about it? Does it involve Francis?’ ‘I think it might, it happened about ten years ago. A group of English gays rented a gîte and invited some French boys back to their pool. But the fathers turned up as well and beat the hell out of them. I tried to sort it out but the English guys all left the area. The French boys were sent away on sudden holidays and everybody clammed up. There was one boy I could never track down, who may have been young Murcoing.’

  ‘Ten years ago, that’s just before Francis went to prison. And I recall that he did go on holiday not long before he was arrested. I don’t remember him being beaten up.’

  ‘Did your brother drive a Range Rover?’

  ‘No,’ Brian answered. ‘But his partner did, Sam Berenson, the one who died and left him the antiques business.’

  The names of the Englishmen had been on the rental agreement and on the car registration forms. Bruno was sure he’d have copied them down in his notebook.

  ‘Do you recall any poems on your brother’s laptop?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, he wrote a lot, poems, short stories. He even wrote a few songs when he was in New York, made a couple of CDs which I still have. I don’t know if his writings were all in his computer but they probably are. Why?’

  ‘Yves Valentoux told me the other day that he remembered Francis reciting a poem he’d written about a French boy. That may have been where all this started. I’m going to have to look out my old notebooks.’

  ‘That’s a shame, because I was just about to invite you to dinner, if you’re free, that is,’ said Brian. ‘I’ve had enough of going through these emails and the mess of my brother’s life.’

  ‘You’re very kind, but I have some horses to take care of and a friend who’s just gone into hospital. I may have to leave at any moment.’

  22

  It was Bruno’s day off, and after he’d phoned the hospital and Fabiola hoping in vain for some news of Pamela, he decided to plunge into activity rather than sit around worrying. He’d started by hunting through the cardboard boxes containing his old notebooks. Each box was sealed with sticky tape and numbered with years. Inside, wrapped in the plastic bags the dry cleaner used to protect Bruno’s uniforms, the notebooks were in rough chronological order. He found the relevant one, resisted the temptation to read it through and relive old events and cases, and checked on the names of the Englishmen he’d written down from their car insurance forms. One of them was Francis Fullerton and another was Samuel Berenson, the name of the older man whose home and business Francis had inherited.

  The only French name he found was Edouard Marty, the boy who’d disappeared to England before taking his place at university. While his notebook didn’t say so, Bruno was sure he remembered that it had been the university of Bordeaux. And he’d planned to study architecture. His parents had been old when he was born and Bruno knew the father had died and the mother had moved away to be with her sisters. He called the faculty of architecture, asked to speak to the director’s office, identified himself and explained that he was trying to trace a former student, Edouard Marty.

  ‘He’s still here,’ she said. ‘What are you after him for, speeding again in that new Jaguar of his?’

  Nothing like that, he replied with a laugh, just a routine inquiry about a possible witness. But what did she mean, that Edouard was still at the university?

  ‘He’s not teaching today, he’s only part-time,’ he was told, and then he was given the name and number of a company named Arch-Inter where Edouard Marty could be found, when he was not teaching a course on the history of interior design as an associate professor. Bruno searched for the company on his computer and found an elegant website, with the words Arch-Inter forking out to say Inter-national and Inter-iors. To his great surprise, it boasted offices in Bordeaux, Cannes, London and Los Angeles.

  The company offered services in architecture, interior design and furnishings in different traditions, from English country house and minimalist modern to French ancien régime or Empire. There were photographs of very grand-looking rooms furnished in various styles, each of them captioned in Russian and in English. It seemed to be a one-stop service for wealthy Russians, who would buy a house or apartment and have it filled by Arch-Inter in whichever style the client chose. How long, Bruno wondered, before they added Shanghai to their list of offices?

  Bruno clicked on the section titled About Us and saw that Francis Fullerton was listed as the London representative. He sat back, reflecting on the chain of circumstance that conn
ected the beating-up of some foreign gays a decade ago with this international company today. And what better outlet could there be for Fullerton’s haul of French and English antiques? This was clearly a much bigger and more lucrative operation than Bruno had assumed, and one that could throw up some alternative explanations for Fullerton’s murder.

  He phoned Bernard Ardouin, the juge d’instruction, who called up the website on his own computer as they spoke. Ardouin asked whether Bruno recognized as stolen any of the items in the photographs. No, he replied, but the art squad of the Police Nationale might do so, and the place to start would be to compare the website pictures with the photographs on Fullerton’s computer. Bruno explained the original connection between Fullerton and Edouard and asked whether Ardouin had any objections to Bruno’s driving to Bordeaux to interview the architect.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t do that yet,’ said Ardouin. ‘We don’t want to alert him before we’re sure stolen goods are involved. And as you say, this looks like a matter for the art squad rather than you, but all credit to you for opening up this lead. I’d better brief J-J and get him to print out those photographs on Fullerton’s laptop.’

  ‘Still no sign of Murcoing?’ Bruno asked.

  ‘Nothing from J-J or the Bergerac police and he’s not used his bank card. He’ll have to show his face at some point, it’s just a matter of time. I’ve asked J-J to have some plain-clothes types mixing discreetly with the crowd at the funeral tomorrow.’

  As he rang off, Bruno wasn’t so sure that finding Murcoing would be quite that simple. He shrugged. It was neither his patch nor his responsibility, and he had chores enough to occupy him. It was high time to resume his training session with Balzac, who was by now so accustomed to being hugged and caressed by every human he met that Bruno had some difficulty in getting him to associate achievement with reward.

  His special dog biscuits helped. Each month, Bruno mixed together a litre of milk, a bag of brown flour, an egg and a handful of brown sugar and added some salt. He cut a slice of fat from the ham that hung from the beam in his kitchen, fried it and then poured the fat into the mix along with a shredded clove of garlic. He then cut into tiny slices the crisp remnants of the ham. If he had any gravy left from one of his own meals, or any other useful leftovers, they went into the mix. If it was still too moist, he added breadcrumbs. Baked for thirty minutes in a hot oven, the biscuits had proved irresistible to his previous dog, Gigi, and now to Balzac. Lured by the scent, Balzac would come when called and had learned to approach Bruno from the left with one whistle tone and from the right with another.