The Resistance Man

by Martin Walker

  “I’m in the next valley, but I’ll get there as soon as I can,” she said. “Listen, Bruno, calm down. Call an ambulance right away. Above all, don’t move Pamela.”

  Feeling as if his mind was working slowly, he dialed 15, the number for medical emergencies, and found himself connected to Ahmed at the St. Denis fire station. They would be there within fifteen minutes.

  “What’s that screaming?” Ahmed asked, and when Bruno said it was her horse, he replied, “Shoot the poor animal.”

  As he trudged back toward Bess, he realized that no sign of life had come from the house. Nobody could have ignored the dreadful noise that Bess was making. His eyes filled with tears when he saw that Hector was standing over Pamela’s mare and tenderly nuzzling her, as if giving what comfort he could. Bess didn’t seem to notice. Her foreleg was still trapped inside the hole, and the rest of her leg lay at a brutal angle. Her entire weight must have pivoted on the trapped hoof and snapped all the delicate bones. There was no way Bess’s leg could be saved, and she was an old horse.

  Even if Murcoing and his sister were inside the house and would flee as soon as they heard gunfire, Bruno didn’t give a damn. He pulled his automatic from the holster on his belt and flicked off the safety catch. He slapped Hector’s rump to push him away, knelt beside Bess and tried in vain to still her tossing head. He could barely think with the noise as he looked at this faithful horse on whom he had learned to ride. He drew an imaginary X from right ear to left eye, and right eye to left ear.

  Bess suddenly seemed to be looking at him, and the thrashing of her head stopped for a moment. Aiming for the center of the X he put the muzzle close to her forehead to avoid any chance of a ricochet and fired twice into the skull. That was the rule; if the first shot failed to penetrate, the second one would. Bess’s great head jerked and then sank to the ground.

  The echo of the shots, so different from the sound of a shotgun, seemed to rock the air around him as he closed the safety catch, reholstered the weapon and went back to Pamela. He slipped the shotgun from his shoulder and took off his jacket to cover her. There was no movement on her face, no flickering of eyelids, but her hands were warm, her pulse still firm.

  He tried to remember how she had fallen. She had tumbled over Bess’s head, exactly as if turning a somersault. Thanks to the way she’d been galloping, her waist and knees had been bent and her head tucked low. That was the shape he remembered seeing as she turned through the air, rising almost slowly before she came down fast, her body still curved. Had she landed on her head or her back? He tried to remember. She had rolled once and again, then her limbs had gone loose and she’d sprawled. He closed his eyes and squeezed them tight, trying to conjure up the visual memory of her landing, but it had been too fast. The exact way she had hit the ground was not clear in his mind.

  A sound came from behind him. Hector, stepping slowly, was looking from Bess’s body to Bruno. He came another step, lowered his head and moved again, close to Bruno, shaking his head nervously. Bruno remained still until Hector brought his nostrils down to breathe on Bruno’s neck. Slowly, his hand stroking Hector’s neck, Bruno rose to his feet and mounted his horse.

  He turned Hector’s head away and trotted around the side of the isolated house to check the far side of the barn. It was open to the elements, with no wall and no door. Half a dozen campers could have parked inside, but there wasn’t a single one, just some scattered hay. As he completed the circuit, he heard the sound of the ambulance siren in the distance and checked his phone. All the hunters had now reported in. Each of the houses on Dougal’s list had been checked and pronounced empty. It had all been for nothing. He dismounted and led Hector back to Pamela’s still form.

  Fabiola arrived first, the horse van that was attached to Bruno’s Land Rover bouncing and jolting on the dirt track. She left the engine running, glanced at Bruno without speaking and went to Pamela, the medical bag she always kept close jerking as she ran. Kneeling, she checked for a pulse and then gently pulled back an eyelid. She opened her bag, took out an instrument and used it to peer into Pamela eyes, into her ears and then up her nose. Finally she ran her hands carefully over Pamela’s limbs and then stood as the ambulance came into view.

  “She’s concussed, unconscious, no sign of bleeding from the ears,” she said. “How did she land?”

  “I’m trying to remember, but all I can be sure of is that she was tucked in like a ball, as if somersaulting. She rolled once when she hit the ground and then again before she sprawled.”

  Fabiola glanced at the dead horse. “You took care of Bess? I thought I heard two shots.”

  “That was me.”

  Ahmed and Fabrice ran from the ambulance with a stretcher. Dr. Gelletreau heaved his bulk along behind, carrying a neck brace. He slowed to a walk as he recognized Fabiola.

  “I was nearby with the horse van,” she explained, and repeated what she had told Bruno. “We’ll need an X-ray and a scan, so that means we take her straight to Sarlat. I’ll go with her.”

  “I’ll come too,” said Bruno.

  “No, you won’t,” she said, in a tone so harsh that Bruno felt she was accusing him of doing more than enough damage already. He felt a savage sense of guilt. He should never have allowed Pamela to come with him. And it had all been pointless, his little glow of pride at thinking of Murcoing’s access to Dougal’s list now destroyed. If he’d been a better rider, perhaps he could have headed Pamela off before she reached the rabbit warren. He should have found the words to dissuade her from joining him on the search. At the least he should have realized that his slow, cautious searching of the deserted houses was leaving her bored and eager for a gallop. He’d been so focused on his task that he’d barely thought of her.

  Now as he watched Fabiola help Ahmed and Fabrice put the brace on Pamela’s back and head before gingerly edging her onto the stretcher, he felt a surge of something much deeper than concern flood through him as he pondered what Pamela meant to him. She had created a private world for herself with her pool and horses and tennis court and her own little community with Fabiola. And she had generously and without any demands shared it with him. There was always good food and a welcome, horses to ride, companionship and easy conversation, and above all that sensuous warmth and pleasure that she offered him in the privacy of her bed. There were many forms of love, Bruno reflected, but he had no doubt that many of the deepest and sweetest kinds were embodied for him in this woman who was now being placed in the back of the ambulance.

  Fabiola stared at him impassively from inside until Fabrice closed the rear doors. After the ambulance pulled away, Bruno took the saddle and bridle from Bess’s body and then called the vet to arrange for Bess’s removal. He unsaddled Hector, led him into the horse van and drove gingerly down over the rough field and onto the path that led to the road. As he reached it, his phone rang.

  “I’m at the hospital,” said the mayor, his voice hollow. “Cécile passed away peacefully this afternoon.” He hung up before Bruno could say a word.

  21

  There was no sign of the mayor’s Peugeot when Bruno pulled into the parking lot of the hospital just east of Sarlat. He asked for Pamela in the emergency wing and was told she’d been taken to the main hospital for X-rays. He found his way to the right department, and a tired-looking nurse told him to wait. He showed her his police ID, and she said she would try to find the doctor who had treated Pamela. A young man in a white coat soon arrived to say she was concussed and the X-rays had shown a broken collarbone. She had now been admitted at least for the night and was scheduled for a scan sometime the next day. If complications developed, she might have to be moved to Bordeaux.

  “Has she come around?”

  The young doctor told him no, adding that Fabiola was still with her. He gave Bruno the room number.

  Fabiola was sitting beside the bed where Pamela lay with an intravenous drip in her arm and a small tube feeding oxygen into her nostrils. Electrodes were attached to h
er temples, and more wires snaked under the hospital nightgown and onto her chest. Displays on the machines behind the bed showed bright lines dancing rhythmically. Her face was white, her lips pale, her neck and throat encased in a foam brace.

  “How serious is it?” he asked.

  “It’s always serious when someone’s unconscious, and the longer it lasts the more serious it is. It looks like there’s no cervical spine injury, but we’re watching for any buildup of intercranial pressure or any lesions. From the marks on the back of her helmet and riding jacket it looks like she landed partly on her head but mainly on her shoulders and back. You said she was rolling when she landed, which may have saved her from a broken neck. Were the two of you racing?”

  “No, she was galloping, but I wasn’t. I was some way behind her. It took twenty or thirty seconds to reach her, and she was completely still by the time I did. I’d been trying to get her to turn away from that house. It was Hector who spotted the rabbit warren, and I tried to shout a warning, but too late. I should never have allowed her to come with me.”

  “Probably not.” Fabiola turned her face away to look at the machines.

  He couldn’t tell if there was some medical duty she had to perform or if she couldn’t bear the sight of him. He knew from the look she had given him as the ambulance doors closed that Fabiola was furious with him and probably blamed him for Pamela’s fall. That was fair enough; he blamed himself. Was this the end of his friendship with Fabiola or an anger that would pass as Pamela recovered? He hadn’t really considered the prospect that Pamela might not recover fully. He’d assumed that since her neck was not broken and her limbs seemed to work she would wake up and be back to normal in a day or so. But what if it wasn’t so simple, or if she had suffered lasting brain damage or would eventually awaken with some change in her personality?

  He quelled the thought and looked around. There were three more beds in the room, two of them empty and someone lying still in the third, bandages wrapped so thickly around the head that Bruno could not tell if it was a man or a woman. There were no paintings, no TV set or radio in the room.

  “Are you planning to stay here?” he asked.

  “No, I’ll come back with you. I’m just giving the staff a bit of a break by being here, otherwise that nurse would have to be in and out. I’ll come back tomorrow to have a look at the scan results. They’ll tell us more. If she’s not awake by then…” She broke off and glanced at her watch.

  “Can I touch her?”

  Fabiola nodded. “Could be a good thing.”

  Bruno went to the far side of the bed, took Pamela’s hand and stroked it, thinking how odd it was to feel no returning pressure. Trying to avoid the wires and tubes, he bent forward to kiss her cheek, smelling the antiseptic wipes they had used on her.

  “What worries me is that she told me once that she’d fallen before and had been concussed,” Fabiola said. “Over dinner one evening she was explaining why she’d given up show jumping. She was thrown off when her horse shied at a fence, and she blacked out for a few minutes. A second time can make it much more serious.”

  “Can I come back with you tomorrow?” Bruno felt that dismaying sense of helplessness that a nonmedical person feels in a hospital, dependent on the staff for information, for reason to hope.

  “I’ll call you after we look at the scan, but I expect she should have surfaced by then, at least I’m hoping for that. We can go when you’re ready. I’ll tell the nurse and have a word with the doctor. They’re pretty good here.” She left the door open when she left the room.

  Bruno didn’t know if he was imagining things, but he thought he felt some movement of Pamela’s hand where it lay in his. He looked at her eyelids but there was no sign of any quivering. He told Fabiola when she returned, and she checked the screens on the machines.

  “Her pulse rate is up a little.” She lifted Pamela’s eyelids again, looked for a long moment. “No change.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “If the pupils are of different size, that’s a clue to look for brain damage. It doesn’t mean there is any; it’s just an indicator. And you want to see how the pupils react to light.”

  “You think there might be brain damage?” The words were out before Bruno could stop himself.

  Fabiola paused before she answered and turned to look him in the eye. “We’re at one of those unpleasant moments when doctors are as much in the dark as laymen. Until we see the scan, or until she recovers consciousness and we can start to assess her state, we don’t know what the outlook is going to be, and there’s not much point in speculating.

  “I know it was an accident, and I know how Pamela sometimes rides like a madwoman. But I’m not just a doctor; I’m her friend, and I’m human. Right now I’m furious with you and looking for someone to blame. So please just drive me home with the radio on and let’s not talk. There’s nothing more I can tell you.”

  Back in St. Denis after dropping off the still silent Fabiola and collecting Balzac from the stable, Bruno called at the mayor’s house. No one was at home. 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 checked his phone for the text messages from the hunters, none of whom had found any sign of Murcoing or a camper. 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 or from the road patrols.

  He called 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. They had thought perhaps his obsession with the Neuvic money could be used as bait. He explained this to Crimson and said, “Nothing’s been decided yet, but if we try it, what kind of bait could be used?”

  “What if some new documents were being released from the archives in London that cast new light on it all, maybe giving the names of which Resistance leaders were authorized to control the money?” Crimson said. “They’d have to come from SOE, Special Operations Executive, but you wouldn’t even need real documents. Just forge a couple of file references and a page of contents from an archive catalog and a sample page, scan it all and send an e-mail 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 Francis 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. 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 fussed over Balzac, who was always delighted to make a new friend, and offered Bruno a drink. Bruno j
oined 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 e-mails,” 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 e-mails,” 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 e-mails with Murcoing.”

  There was material in here for half a dozen police investigations, 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 e-mails from Murcoing, recounting all his grandfather’s theories and suspicions about who got the money from the Neuvic train. The old man had seen suspects everywhere, starting with Malraux and some Russian who was in the Maquis in the Limousin; he even claimed that 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 carting business.

  “It’s hard to tell what’s true, what contains a grain of truth and how much of it is pure invention,” Brian said.

  “Did your brother have anything to contribute?”

  “Yes, indeed. He took it all very seriously.” Brian relit 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 his 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.