The Resistance Man
Page 17
An hour later Bruno arrived at the gendarmerie, summoned by a message on his phone from J-J.
“We know Murcoing’s sister rented a camper, but we can’t find it,” said J-J, averting his eyes from the little red monkey that still sat atop Yveline’s computer. “One of the Bergerac cops was trawling through every ad on the Internet and came up with a guy in Issigeac who rented it to her. We’re checking every campsite, and the motards are checking every camper on the roads. We’ve even mounted checks at the Spanish border. Any ideas?”
“We’re still watching his mother’s house in Bergerac and checking every day with his aunts,” said Yveline. She looked exhausted, nothing like the fighting-fit athlete in the photos on her wall. “We’ll get him eventually when he runs out of cash. They’ve got to turn up somewhere.”
“I’ve had a detective taking Paul’s photo around to all the gay bars in the region,” said J-J. “A lot of people know him. He’s not popular. We followed a few leads and called on some old boyfriends, but no luck so far.”
“What about the brocantes?” Bruno asked. Some of the antiques fairs had already begun, early in the season though it was. Bruno supposed that Murcoing could be raising cash by selling off some of the more portable items from his loot, jewelry and silver, either at the fairs or directly to antiques dealers.
“We’ve visited the ones we’ve had suspicions about, and we’ve had a cop looking at every antiques fair that’s going on in the whole of southern France,” J-J said. “We can’t afford to keep up this level of manpower much longer, so we need some new ideas.”
“If he’s not on the road in the camper, then either he’s found a place to hole up or he’s already out of the country,” said Yveline. “It would have taken him just four hours to get to Spain. I know we’ve got Interpol on this, but can’t we get the Spanish police to make more of an effort?”
J-J looked at her, glanced at the stuffed toy on her computer and rolled his eyes at Bruno.
“There’s no shortage of vacation homes all over southern France. He could have found one that’s empty and holed up there, just as he did at Fullerton’s place,” said Bruno.
“There are thousands of such places, and we can’t send a cop to check out each one. Plus we think this guy’s armed.”
“Was there nothing on Fullerton’s laptop that might give us a lead?” Bruno asked.
J-J looked up sharply. “Fullerton’s laptop, where’s that?”
“The Apple laptop that belonged to the murdered man, the one we found in the van in the Corrèze barn.”
“Putain, now you tell me. I didn’t see any laptop.” He leafed through his file and pulled out some papers stapled together. It was a long list. He ran his finger down each page. “There’s nothing on the inventory about a computer. Where the hell is it?”
Bruno remembered Brian Fullerton’s cry of triumph when he found his brother’s password for the laptop.
“Fullerton’s brother must still have it,” he said.
“Where is he now?”
Bruno was pulling out his phone and looking up the number in its address book even as he answered. “Hôtel St. Denis? I’m calling now.”
Fullerton was still checked in but had gone to church, he was told by Mauricette at reception.
“It’s my fault,” Bruno said. “I should have made sure you knew about the laptop, but I was just distracted by finding the stolen goods. Merde, J-J, I’m sorry.”
Yveline made a sound of disgust and shook her head.
“It’s our fault as much as yours,” said J-J. “I remember seeing a power cord on the desk in the study where the guns were. I should have made the connection.”
“I’ll go to church and get Fullerton out. I’ll come back with the computer,” said Bruno, heading for the door.
“These village coppers are all the same,” he heard Yveline say as he left. “Amateurs, all of them. God knows how we’ll explain this to the juge d’instruction.”
Bruno almost ran down the steps of the gendarmerie, heading for the rue de Paris and the church, when he heard the cheerful toot of a horn and managed to stop just before he had dashed into the path of Dougal’s daughter Kirsten on her Mobylette.
“You better look where you’re going, Bruno,” she said. “You’d have done more damage to my bike than I’d have done to you.”
“Sorry, something’s come up,” he said, and she drove off. Suddenly a thought came to him. If Murcoing wanted to be sure of finding an empty holiday home, his sister would have known of one from Dougal’s list. He ran down the street to the offices of Delightful Dordogne, hoping to find Kirsten. Sure enough, she was there.
“Could you print me out your work list for this week?” he asked her. “I need to see which houses will be vacant; it’s about the burglaries.”
“No problem, just give me a minute to turn on the computer,” she replied, taking off her helmet and shaking out her white-blond hair.
“I’ll be back in five minutes.” This time he looked both ways before he crossed the road and headed for the twelfth-century church of St. Louis that dominated this part of the town. Built in an age of faith to hold hundreds, today it could count only a handful of worshippers, who seemed to be outnumbered by the choir. Father Sentout’s sonorous voice was stressing the importance of these weeks after Easter in the lives of the faithful and rolled on undeterred by Bruno’s entry. From habit rather than devotion, Bruno dipped a knee and crossed himself, then moved discreetly to the shadow of a pillar and looked for Fullerton. He spotted him in the center of an empty row of chairs, kneeling and apparently in prayer, and waited until Fullerton resumed his seat.
“Sorry to disturb you, but the chief of detectives for the region wants to see you, and we also need to check your brother’s computer,” he whispered.
“Can’t it wait?”
“Sorry, no. My colleagues are making a fuss about your taking it.”
Fullerton sighed at Bruno’s words but nodded agreement, and the two men crept as quietly as they could along the row and out of the church. Father Sentout ignored their movement, and the rest of the congregation seemed too intent on his sermon to notice, or perhaps they were simply asleep.
“Sorry to have caused a problem. Once I had the password and got in, I couldn’t wait to find out what was on the hard drive,” Fullerton said. “I didn’t think you’d need it right away; you all seemed so caught up in the stolen goods. Anyway, I hope you’ll be pleased with my progress.”
As they walked to the hotel, Brian explained that he’d found a long trail of e-mails between his brother and Paul, some about brocante sales, some personal and a lot about their shared interest in the history of the local Resistance and the Neuvic robbery. There were also exchanges of e-mails with other men, including Yves. Francis Fullerton had kept a separate file for his travel reservations and expenses, and each of his many trips to France had been carefully itemized with dates and hotel costs. It was pretty clear from the exchanges with Paul about which houses would be empty, Fullerton explained, that his brother had been up to his old tricks with stolen goods again. And there were hundreds of photos of furniture on the hard drive, each one labeled with a reference number for the house it came from.
“Will you give me a receipt for it, since I want to be sure to get it back?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll wait here, and you can bring it down.”
He returned within two minutes, and Bruno handed him a receipt torn from his notebook. Fullerton said the magistrates were hoping to release the body on Tuesday, and he had tentatively booked a cremation for Wednesday. They parted, and Fullerton ducked back into the church.
Armed with Dougal’s list and the laptop, Bruno reentered the room where J-J and Yveline were comparing photos of items of furniture against the inventory of the barn. He put the laptop on the desk, scribbled down the password and explained how Dougal’s list showed the vacation homes that Paul Murcoing and his sister would know to be empty.
“It’s a total of twenty-two houses, but I know some of these addresses, and they’re close to a town or to neighbors who would spot people coming and going. There are maybe fifteen that are remote enough to give Murcoing the security he’d need. One of them is Crimson’s house, so that cuts it down to fourteen.”
J-J looked at Yveline, who pursed her lips and said, “We can’t do fourteen simultaneous raids, not without bringing in mobiles from all over France. Three at a time is the best we could do, and that would mean getting an extra squad from Bordeaux.”
She picked up the little red monkey from the top of her computer and began to pace the room. As if talking to herself she went on: “Then we’d have to get approval from the juge d’instruction, and that would mean helicopters, thorough reconnaissance, warnings through a bullhorn. Each squad could do a maximum of two hits a day, and you can’t keep that kind of activity quiet, so it would be all over the local radio. And what if they’re moving around from place to place?”
Yveline replaced the monkey on top of the computer and glared from one man to the other. “It’s not going to work, is it?”
J-J cleared his throat and said, “She’s got a point, Bruno. We’d have to bring in the juge.”
“What about sending out police in plain clothes, with a pair of binoculars to see if there’s any movement at the house or maybe spot the camper?”
“I’m not sending anybody poking around in range of the houses,” said J-J. “This guy is armed and dangerous. What we need is to set some kind of trap, something that would tempt him out. Still, I like the idea of taking a careful look at these places. You’re the local man, Bruno; get me some big maps and mark down each house, see if you can locate a likely place nearby where you could stay in cover and watch. Meanwhile, Yveline and I will have a look at the laptop.”
An idea was forming in Bruno’s head, a way to take a discreet look at each of the houses without needing the elite mobiles squads from the gendarmes. Armed to the teeth and encased in body armor, they were trained for terrorist and hostage situations; they’d blunder all over an unfamiliar countryside. But he had friends who knew the area. Moreover, it was hunting season. He began making a mental list of the friends he could trust enough to call out on a job like this.
“I’ve got to do a report for the procureur on that burglary yesterday, the one with the American coffeepot,” Yveline said, giving Bruno a suspicious look. “I don’t suppose you’d know why his office seems to be taking a special interest in it.”
He was about to respond with a sharp comment that it was because whoever broke in used the same method as in the Crimson burglary but restrained himself. She was a young woman, nervous at this first job in command, and she was evidently under strain. Older and wiser people had helped him when he was making the inevitable mistakes that came with a lack of experience. He should do the same for her.
“I don’t really know,” he replied from the doorway. “I’m off to pick up a sheaf of maps from my office. If you want some advice from a village policeman, I’d get ready for a few calls from the local papers about the value of this coffeepot. And I’d look up the name of Paul Revere, who’s supposed to have made it.”
20
Hector picked his way down the steep bridle trail through the woods until Bruno reined in his horse at a place where there was a break in the trees and he had a clear view of the isolated house below. Pamela was on her mount beside him. For once the binoculars case was being used for its proper purpose rather than as a way to carry Balzac while on horseback. He took out the heavy Second World War binoculars that had belonged to Pamela’s father and brought the house into focus. The shutters were all closed, the cover was still on the swimming pool, and there was no sign of heat from the chimney. A tarpaulin was snugly tied down on the woodpile, covered in last autumn’s leaves and bird droppings. There was a barn, but its door wasn’t high enough to accommodate a camper. He scratched it off his list.
“It’s empty,” he said to Pamela, settling his shotgun back more comfortably on its strap around his shoulder. He was dressed as a hunter: camouflage jacket, brown trousers and a brown woolen cap instead of the usual riding helmet. If he had to dismount and search on foot, he had to look the part. “Give me a moment to check with the others.”
He pulled out his phone to scroll through the text messages. There was one from the baron to say that the first house he’d been assigned was certainly empty, and similar texts from Stéphane, Maurice and Raoul. Bruno had been confident that his friends, experienced hunters who had tramped over these valleys for years and knew each fold of ground, represented the most natural and least obtrusive means of checking the rental homes on Dougal’s list. He acknowledged each message and sent a query to his other hunter friends as to their progress.
He knew this was a long shot. There were many rentals not on Dougal’s list, and Paul Murcoing might be smart enough to have worked out that the police would make the connection between his sister and Dougal’s spreadsheet. But at least Bruno felt he was doing something positive in this increasingly frustrating hunt for Fullerton’s murderer. He put his phone away, checked that his handgun was still on safety and spoke to Pamela in a low voice.
“If we head across the field below and up the next ridge, we should be able to see the third house.”
“Good, I could do with a canter and so could Bess. These woodland trails can get tiresome.”
Bruno decided not to point out to Pamela that she had insisted on joining him, suggesting that two people out riding would look much less suspicious than one, and nobody would ever mistake her for a policewoman. She was probably right, but her presence made him nervous. There was an outside chance that this mission could be dangerous, and a small voice in the back of Bruno’s head murmured that he was putting her at risk because of his own pride, his desire to show Yveline that with his friends and local knowledge he could achieve results that her gendarmes couldn’t.
He flicked the reins, and Hector walked on until the woods gave way to moorland. At the prospect of an open field Bruno’s horse tossed his head and moved smoothly into his stride.
Bruno looked at the house before he dismounted, but the place remained still, no flicker of sunlight reflecting from some lens in one of the upstairs rooms, no empty bottles or garbage bags outside the kitchen door. They rode on, making their way up the ridge and then skirting some woods and hedges before getting to the long arm of woodland that slanted down toward the next house on the list, promising good cover. There was no trail, and the undergrowth was thick, so he went forward on foot, then pulled himself up on a couple of low-lying branches until he had a clear view of the isolated house. He checked carefully with the binoculars but saw no sign of habitation. The barn was big enough to take a camper, but he couldn’t see its doors from this side. The dirt lane up to the house was thick with weeds that looked unbroken by any passing wheels. He walked back to Pamela and the horses.
“You go on ahead along this ridge. There’s a firebreak through the forest that leads toward that hunters’ shack where we had a picnic, remember? I’ll meet you there. We can look at one more house, and that’s it for today.”
“I remember the hunters’ shack, but what are you going to do?”
“I need to take a look at the barn doors on the other side, see if they’re big enough for the van. Don’t worry, I won’t get close.”
“If it’s safe enough for you, it’s safe enough for me. Besides, I’m getting bored. Let’s go.”
Pamela put her heels into Bess’s side and cantered down the hill, gathering speed as she headed directly for the house. Quickly he mounted and chased after her until he was alongside and she could see him gesture to his left. He was indicating he wanted to stay on the high ground, but she thought he was inviting her to race. She bent forward in the saddle to urge Bess to go faster.
“No, no,” he shouted, feeling a sense of alarm as he tried to catch up with her to head her off. “Go left, up the slope.”
Bruno’s heart was in his mouth. If Murcoing was hiding inside, a burst from his Sten gun could be lethal at that range. Cursing, Bruno took Hector on a tight rein down the hill after her, conscious of the gun bouncing on his hip. He hoped it was covered by the hunting jacket he wore. Suddenly his horse jerked to one side, surprising him. Bruno looked down and saw Hector had sidestepped to avoid a fold in the ground, the grass scratched away at one side. Then he saw the holes and realized they were riding into a rabbit warren.
Before he could shout a warning he heard a scream. He looked up to see Pamela tumbling through the air and her horse sprawling, one foreleg still trapped in one of the dozens of holes made by the rabbits.
Skirting the holes, he rode as fast as he dared to where Pamela lay, dreading what he might find as he jumped down from the saddle and bent over her still form, trying to block out the hideous screeching from her stricken mare. He felt the pulse at her neck, and it was still beating. He didn’t dare to move her, fearing a broken neck. Her limbs were lying straight, and when he pinched the tendon above her knee her lower leg twitched. The spinal column was still functioning.
He fumbled for his phone and called Fabiola, who was supposed to be waiting for them with the horse van near the next house they were to check. Bruno told her what had happened and where he was.