The Resistance Man

by Martin Walker

  He held up his hands in mock surrender, smiled and said: “I’m on your side, you know that.”

  “It doesn’t sound like it, Bruno.” Her eyes narrowed. “Is this part of J-J’s plan to get me back to Périgueux?”

  “No, you’d hate it,” he replied. “I can’t see you spending a couple of years waiting to take over J-J’s job when he retires,” he went on, wondering how to take the heat out of the conversation. He tried to make a joke of it. “You’d be forced into a lot more tedious dinners with the prefect and you’d probably have to take up golf.”

  “So why did you bring this up? This is my career you’re talking about.” She turned away. “God, I hate being manipulated.”

  “Why did I bring it up? Because I care for you and because I’m worried about your becoming a political football, that’s why.”

  Her back was toward him, shoulders rigid. Bruno knew Isabelle well enough to be sure that apologies would not work; she was not the sort of woman to be easily mollified. She insisted on straight talking, and he was in a mood to provide it.

  “I don’t know what your connection is to this new organization, but there’s something in your ministry that’s starting to stink. It doesn’t matter whether you’re part of it or not. The mud sticks.”

  She turned again to face him, still challenging but less fierce. “How come you’re suddenly an expert on the election, let alone the internal politics at the ministry?”

  Bruno had never been clear which particular section of the sprawling ministry employed the brigadier’s team. It seemed to occupy some vague middle ground between Defense and Interior and the DGSE, the foreign intelligence service.

  “I don’t have to be an expert. You’re attached to the minister’s private office,” he said. “If the government changes, you’ll be assigned elsewhere. The new minister will want his own people.”

  “That’s just an administrative convenience. I’m a serving police officer with the rank of capitaine. Nothing will change that.”

  “They can always assign you to traffic management in some cold, gray département up on the Belgian border.”

  She stopped herself from making a quick rejoinder, as if debating internally whether to say more. “Funny you should say that. I might get reassigned soon, even a little farther north than the Belgian border. I’ve applied for another job.”

  Bruno raised an eyebrow. “Anything you can tell me about?”

  “Eurojust, the judicial coordination office of the European Commission based in The Hague. If it comes off, I’ll be getting a promotion to commandant.” She paused and looked back the length of the garden toward the house. “It’s a four-year assignment.” She let a silence build again as if expecting Bruno to comment. “The brigadier suggested I apply.”

  “Good for him,” Bruno said, and meant it. He had wondered whether the brigadier, a ruthless operative and consummate political survivor, was the kind of boss who would take care of his staff.

  “I don’t expect he’ll go down with the ship.” She had taken his arm as if the brief row had never happened and somehow they were walking amicably together again. “Apart from your murder, what else is happening down here? And how’s our puppy?”

  “Balzac is fine, but I really need more time to train him. And there is something else—have you ever heard of the Neuvic train robbery?”

  “A Resistance thing in the war? I heard somebody gossiping about it when I was stationed in Périgueux.”

  “A couple of the old banknotes turned up on the deathbed of an old résistant. I have to organize his funeral. If there’s anything in your files at the ministry, I’d be interested.”

  7

  Bruno wanted to check the list of burglary victims against the owners who used Dougal’s rental agency to find tenants for the months when their houses would otherwise stand vacant. A retired businessman from Glasgow, Dougal had started Delightful Dordogne out of boredom after his first year of inactivity and had now become one of the leading employers in St. Denis. The business employed his two daughters and their husbands, one French and one Dutch. His first grandchild was already spending his summer vacation helping Dougal keep track of the bookings.

  “I’ve been expecting you since I heard about Fullerton’s murder on the radio,” Dougal began. “I suppose that’s what you’re investigating.”

  Bruno nodded. “Did you ever meet him, or was the rental arranged by phone and Internet?”

  “I certainly met him. He called me Monday and asked if he could take the place a couple of days early. It was empty that week, and he seemed like a nice-enough fellow, so I agreed.”

  “Very trusting.”

  Dougal shrugged. “It’s the way I do business. He’d already paid for the original booking with a bank transfer. I’ve made you a copy so you’ll have his bank details.”

  “Did you see him at all?”

  “Yes, he came to the office here the day before yesterday just after five to pick up the keys and paid for the extra days in cash. You can see where I marked it.”

  Dougal led Bruno to the giant wall chart. It dominated the large, airy room in the old public laundry that he had rescued from ruin and converted into offices. The houses he rented were listed from top to bottom on the chart, and from left to right were columns for each of the weeks of the season. Crimson’s name was not among them, although Bruno noted that the other burglary victims were listed along with the gîte where Fullerton’s body had been found. Bruno ran his finger along the right line and saw Fullerton’s name with a tick in the small box beside it to show the rent had been paid and another to show the cleaning had been done and sheets and towels installed and the swimming pool prepared. There was a small hand-drawn arrow pointing to the current week and a scribbled note that said: “Three days paid.”

  “I used to keep this on the computer as a spreadsheet,” said Dougal. “But then I put it up on the wall so that the cleaners and other maintenance people could see when they were assigned to each property.”

  “So anybody who worked here could see at a glance when a house would be available for rent, which meant the owners were away?”

  “That’s so. You must be thinking that was how the burglars chose their victims, but most of my people have been with me for some time. I know them pretty well and trust the ones working for me now. Still, I can print out a list of all the employees if you want.”

  Bruno said he needed that and then a thought struck him. “What if an owner doesn’t want to rent out his house but still needs a cleaner or gardener or pool maintenance? Do you offer that as a separate service?”

  “We do, mainly for the pool maintenance. There aren’t many takers for the cleaners and gardeners. Most people have their own connections because it’s cheaper. They pay cash, whereas we have to pay the social charges for our employees. It damn near doubles the overall wage bill.”

  “Is Monsieur Crimson one of your clients? His house is not on the list.”

  Dougal led Bruno around his desk to another wall with another chart that listed the separate pool and garden and cleaning services and pointed to Crimson’s name.

  “He comes to us for pool and garden work. He used to have cleaning as well but then Gaëlle realized she could do better on her own than working for me. We always make our people work Saturday mornings because that’s the changeover day for most rentals. She said she wanted the weekends off.”

  One of his daughters, Kirsten, brought in two cups of coffee from the espresso machine in the kitchen as Dougal called up the Crimson file on his computer. Bruno greeted her, asked after the children and then copied down the names and contact details of the gardener and the pool-maintenance man.

  “Any of your staff that you have doubts about?” Bruno asked when Kirsten had gone.

  “Not anymore. One or two turned out to be unsatisfactory in the early days, but we weeded them out. We do take on some part-timers at peak periods but usually people we’ve used in the past. I’ll add their names to
the list.”

  “Could anybody else come in here off the street and look at the charts?”

  “It’s possible. We get a number of casual visitors, salesmen mainly or people trying to rent out their houses, and we use this as a waiting room if I’m busy elsewhere. But if they don’t know our system, I’m not sure whether someone off the street would be able to read the charts in the way you mean.”

  Bruno gathered his printouts, thanked Dougal for his time and walked to the post office to look at the delivery rosters. Jean-Louis, the deputy manager, checked who had done the routes that would have covered Crimson’s house and the gîte where Fullerton had been murdered.

  “Pierre and Pascal,” he said, looking out of his office window to the yard where the yellow postal vans were parked. “They’re both on break now, so you can see them on the porch. We aren’t allowed to smoke in the building anymore, so that’s where they take their breaks.”

  Pierre had made no deliveries to Crimson’s house on the relevant days and recalled seeing nothing of interest. But Pascal had delivered a letter and a couple of circulars to Fullerton’s gîte two days earlier.

  “I was on the late shift,” he said, his Gitane bobbing from his lips as he spoke. “Must have been late afternoon, sometime around five o’clock. It’s a long driveway, and as I was driving back I had to stop and reverse because of the chauffagiste. He was in a big white van, and he had trouble getting by me. That’s how I saw the sign.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Chauffage-France or France-Chauffage. I’m thinking of putting in central heating, so I remembered the address. It was in Belvès, in a zone industrielle, and I thought I might ask them for an estimate, see if they’re any cheaper than the ones around here.”

  “Did you get a look at who was in the van? One person or two?”

  “Just the driver, a youngish guy, I think, but I didn’t really notice. I was trying to be sure I didn’t take my own van so far over I’d end up in the ditch. The funny thing was, when I looked up the firm in the phone book I couldn’t find any listing for a heating firm in Belvès.”

  “Could have been a new one, not in the phone book yet.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Pascal, glancing at his watch. “So I looked it up on the master list we keep in the office that has all the new subscribers, and there was nothing on there either.”

  Pascal looked across to the yard where his friend Pierre was already loading boxes of letters into the back of his van. “My break is over,” he said, rising. “Got to go. It’s not the place where they had that murder, is it? They said on the radio it was up by St. Chamassy.”

  “There might be a connection. We’ll check it out and may have to come back and take a statement from you. Did you see anybody at the house, or was there a car parked when you dropped off the mail?”

  “Not that I remember. There might have been a vehicle, but I can’t be sure.” He shook his head.

  “Do you remember anything about the driver of the van, what he was wearing?”

  “The usual blue overalls.” Pascal shut his eyes as he tried to remember. “One sleeve was rolled up, and he had a tattoo on his arm, very striking with thick stripes. It was like an abstract design, not the usual mermaid or anchor. When we slowed down to squeeze the two vans past one another, I got a good look at it. His arm was resting on the rim of the door, and we were so close we were almost touching.”

  “What about the van?”

  “It was one of those extra-tall Renaults they use for moving furniture, big enough for people to stand up inside.”

  “You said white. What color was the sign?”

  “It was in blue letters, pretty big. I could read it easily. It had the Belvès postal code. There was a phone number too, but I didn’t write it down.”

  Back in his office at the mairie, Bruno called his counterpart in Belvès to ask what he knew of the industrial zone where the heating firm was supposed to be based. Bruno learned that it contained two construction companies, two warehouses, a commercial laundry and a firm that specialized in handmade staircases, but no heating company.

  “What’s in the warehouses?” he asked. One stored goods for a local chain of do-it-yourself stores and the other was run by a moving company that parked its big trucks in the zone’s secure parking lot.

  Bruno opened his phone directory and looked through the yellow pages for sign makers. The fourth one he tried, in Bergerac, had the previous month made two truck signs for a company called Chauffage-France, with an address in Belvès. The customer, a young man, had paid cash and said his name was Lebrun. The address he gave was the alleged workshop in the industrial zone.

  “Had you seen him before?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t mind seeing him again,” said the woman on the other end of the phone. “He was a good-looking guy.”

  “So you’d know him if you saw him again?” Bruno asked.

  “Sure. And if I need to jog my memory we’ve got him on tape. We’ve got security cameras now, for the insurance. You could come and see for yourself. What’s he done, this guy?”

  Bruno evaded the question, but within the hour he was at the sign shop, part of a modern printing company that also did photocopies, business cards, posters and advertisements for billboards. The entire operation seemed to run on computers, and the manager had prepared for him a plastic folder with several frames already printed from the security camera tapes. He also e-mailed copies to Bruno’s office computer so Bruno could forward them to J-J and the gendarmes.

  They showed a young man in his twenties wearing dark blue overalls and a dark baseball cap that shadowed part of his face. The nose was clear enough, although the mouth and jaw were obscured by a mustache and small beard. There was one clear shot of his features, when a banknote slipped from his hand to the floor. The girl at the desk must have said something because he looked up smiling, almost flirtatious. Bruno was sure he’d seen that face before.

  “Who was the woman I talked to on the phone?” he asked the manager. He was steered to a girl with spiked hair and a nose ring. He showed her the photo to check that it was the mysterious Monsieur Lebrun that she remembered.

  “Do you remember what you said that made him smile?” he asked.

  She laughed. “I asked him if he always threw money at girls’ feet and he gave me this sexy smile and said it helped him see their legs better. I was sure he was going to say something else, maybe ask me out. But then he bit his lip, paid his bill and left quickly. It was a bit odd, that’s why I remembered him.”

  Armed with the printouts of the photos, Bruno pondered his next move as he returned to his van. He could go through the rogues’ gallery, the books of photos of people who had been arrested, although he assumed J-J’s team would be doing that. If the guy had used the ZI address and postcode, he was probably familiar with it. He started the van and headed for the old hilltop bastide of Belvès.

  He always enjoyed visiting the bastides, those fortified towns built in the Middle Ages along the shifting frontier between the French parts of the region and the lands held by the English. Built on grid patterns around a central market square, with a church at one corner that could act as a fortress, they still dotted the region. Together with the caves along the valley with their prehistoric art, their Roman ruins and Renaissance châteaux, the bastides were a constant and satisfying reminder to Bruno that he and everyone else who lived around St. Denis were part of an endless stream of history. He also relished the irony that while the bastides had been built to defend and reinforce the power structures of the Middle Ages, they had in fact helped to erode the feudal system. As incentives to get the peasants to move to these towns, where kings and barons hoped to make money from taxing the markets, they were offered freedom from serfdom. Along with the power of the English longbow and the crossbow to decimate the charges of the feudal knights in armor, the bastides had undermined the social and political order that the knights were dying to defend. That was of
ten the way with political solutions, Bruno reflected: they produced dismayingly unexpected results.

  Perched on its hilltop and still clustered around its central square, Belvès boasted a fine market and an antiques fair where Isabelle had bought Bruno a dining chair he loved. He smiled to himself at the memory of her purchase as he circled the old town and headed for the zone industrielle below. He paused only to make a courtesy call to the local municipal policeman, who said that Bruno was most welcome on his turf, and would he have time for a p’tit apéro after his visit? Bruno accepted the invitation with pleasure.

  The zone was part of the urban sprawl that in Bruno’s view defaced more and more of the countryside he loved. There was always a giant supermarket, a do-it-yourself discount store, huge furniture and sports shops and a discount gas station. Behind this commercial center stood vast warehouses and small factories, each a single story high and built with vinyl siding and cheap metal roofs. The industrial zone had a sliding metal gate, which opened automatically once the security guard saw the police van. There were cameras on the roof of the guard’s kiosk, dotted around the buildings and on tall lighting poles that could illuminate the parking lot where the giant moving trucks were parked.

  The security guard did not recognize the young man in the photo. Bruno then called at building after building. Mostly he got apologetic shrugs, but at the office attached to the movers a woman in her forties with heavily made-up eyes, showing a generous amount of cleavage, lingered on the photo twice.

  “You’re not our local flic,” she said. “What’s up with this guy?”

  “Routine,” he said casually. “He could have been a witness to something, and he was driving a van with an address at this ZI.”

  “Not anymore, he isn’t,” she said. Bruno suspected that her desire to show she had information he wanted had trumped her instinctive caution when talking to a policeman. “We had to let him go. When was he driving this van? Was it one of ours?”

  “No, it was another warehouse, but we’re checking everywhere to see if we can identify the guy. Do you know his name?”