The Resistance Man

by Martin Walker

  “Paul gone,” she said, a phrase she repeated when he asked when he had gone, how long he had been there and who else had stayed.

  “His things, his possessions?” he asked. “Where are they?” He knew that when a policeman wanted to intimidate, he took out a notebook. Bruno fished in his jacket pocket for something to write with, remembering with a sinking feeling that he had left his pen in his car when checking the tattoo-parlor addresses on the map. The notebook was sufficient. Sullenly, she led the way downstairs to the cellar and pointed to two cardboard boxes.

  “Boss packed these when Paul gone. He leave Tuesday.”

  That was the day of Fullerton’s murder. He put the notebook away and opened the first box, full of unwashed clothes and a pair of dirty sheets. The second box contained shoes, toiletries, a small TV set, some books and what Bruno assumed were sex toys. They included leather manacles with straps, a battery-driven vibrator and what looked like clothespins in brass. He guessed they were nipple clamps. There was a small brown bottle with a label describing it as leather cleaner, which Bruno suspected was amyl nitrate, a drug that was sniffed and supposedly enhanced sexual pleasure. At the bottom was some mail. The biggest envelope had an English stamp and postmark, and inside was a printout of two crude photos that appeared to have been taken with a cell phone. One was of Yves Valentoux and Francis Fullerton standing together, eyes only for each other, at a bar. On a counter behind them was the kind of dimpled beer mug that you only found in English pubs. The second photo was in the same place and showed the two men kissing. Was this the trigger for Paul’s jealous rage? Who might have sent it, and with what motive?

  Most of the mail was junk, but he found an insurance form for the white van, a pharmacist’s receipt for eighty-three euros that had not yet been claimed back from the health insurance fund of the transport employees section of the Force Ouvrière trade union. Finally he found a bank statement that showed Paul with just over two thousand euros in his account. The address for the account was the bar.

  “No more,” said the woman, and made no objection when Bruno took the papers. She followed him upstairs, and by the time he opened the door to leave she was mopping the floor again. He suspected her boss would never learn of his visit. He left messages for both J-J and Jofflin to pass on Murcoing’s old address and to suggest that a visit to Marcel’s bar might produce some leads. Since he was in Bergerac, he looked up the address he had for Joséphine, Murcoing’s aunt. She worked with old people, Father Sentout had said. She lived not far from the first tattoo place he had visited, a crumbling neighborhood where the butchers advertised halal meat and several of the woman were veiled.

  Joséphine answered the door in a housecoat with a towel wrapped turban style around her head and flapping her hands in a way that suggested she was drying her nail polish.

  “I’ve come to give you fifty euros,” he said, showing the banknote.

  “I thought you’d pay me at the funeral tomorrow.”

  “I was nearby so I thought I’d deal with it now. You might be busy tomorrow. If you’ll just sign this receipt for two of your father’s old banknotes, one for the mairie and the other for the Resistance museum, I’ll be on my way.”

  She invited him in, offered a cup of coffee, and as her kettle boiled she glanced casually at the receipt he’d brought and pocketed the fifty euros. Bruno had drafted the receipt with care, saying that the sum was received “in return for two invalid banknotes of a thousand francs, dated 1940, said notes to be used for historical display only.” The space to be signed and dated by Joséphine identified her as representing the lawful heirs of Loïc Murcoing.

  She sat at the kitchen table to sign it and made no objection when he pulled out a chair and joined her, resting his arms on the slightly sticky waxed tablecloth. The kitchen looked as though it hadn’t been changed for decades. There were none of the usual fitted cupboards but racks of shelves for the plates and a small refrigerator that growled and wheezed. Joséphine wrote clumsily, as one not much accustomed to writing, and made the coffee, grinding the beans and then using a cafetière. The coffee was good, and he said so.

  “I’m never one to scrimp on a good cup of coffee,” she said, adding three lumps of sugar to her cup. “One of my only treats these days.”

  “Everybody in the family coming to the funeral?” he asked.

  She eyed him narrowly, her hand sliding down to the pocket of her housecoat as if to make sure the banknote was still there. “I’ll say this for you, you’re the first flic who didn’t push his way in and start asking where I was hiding Paul. And before you ask, I don’t know where he is, and my sisters don’t either. And nobody will be more surprised than me if he shows his face at the funeral and gets arrested.”

  “I heard he was living over a bar, a place called Proust, known to the customers as Marcel’s.”

  “You know more than the police around here then. He was supposed to have part ownership of that place, but I don’t know what came of it. Probably nothing, like most of Paul’s big ideas.” The words were harsh, but her tone was fond, Bruno noted.

  “He seems like a bright kid, from what I hear, someone who should be going places rather than just driving a van.”

  “His grandfather was so proud of him, always at the top of the class,” she said. “We all were when he passed his bac and went off to the university, first time anyone in our family ever did that. He was always too clever, but he was a sweet kid. Everybody liked him, even animals. He always had one in tow, a dog or a cat. He had a way with them. Stray dogs used to follow him home. He always wanted to keep them, but his father walked out soon after he was born, so there was no money.”

  “He did well to get to the university,” said Bruno.

  “Yeah, but that’s when it all went wrong. He was easily led astray, fell in with the wrong crowd, and that’s why he dropped out. I blame those damn drugs. He could really have made something of himself.”

  “What did he study?” Bruno was happy that she was talking; he still didn’t feel he knew much about Murcoing.

  “He was specializing in architecture. He could always draw beautifully, even as a little boy. Portraits, landscapes, he had a real gift. He drew one of me, and I didn’t even know he was watching me. It was so good I framed it, look.” She heaved herself to her feet, went into the sitting room and brought back a cheap plastic frame. The pencil sketch it contained was not simply recognizable as her, it conveyed something of the determination with which she had endured a hard and ill-paid life.

  “That’s very good.”

  “He was only fourteen when he did that. You ought to see his landscapes, ones he did when he was a bit older.” She gestured to the kitchen wall behind Bruno, and he turned to look at something that had not registered when he first glanced around the kitchen. Now he looked more carefully and saw a framed watercolor of a Bergerac street scene in autumn, leaves turning brown and the stone of the buildings merging with the gray sky. It felt sympathetic rather than gloomy, an attempt to find some beauty in a drab scene.

  “He could make a living at this.”

  “He made a few francs in the summer, doing sketches of tourists down by the statue of Cyrano, but they wanted quick caricatures, not the little portraits he liked to make. Come and look at this.”

  She led him back into the sitting room, dominated by an elderly three-piece suite of furniture around a TV set, and from the cupboard beneath the TV she drew a thick sheaf of paintings, sketches in pencil or chalk and some more watercolors. Bruno leafed through, thinking of the waste of talent that Paul’s life represented. There were a couple of scenes of Périgord villages and churches that he’d have been proud to own and some more fine portraits. He stopped at one that looked familiar, and he realized it was Édouard Marty as a grown man, perhaps in his late twenties. That meant it must have been done recently. There were three exquisite portraits of Francis Fullerton, one of him dozing in a summer hammock, another in a formal pose in a chair and a
third on a beachfront, hair ruffled by the wind. There was an intimacy about them, a depth of affectionate knowledge that suggested love.

  “He’s really gifted. I wouldn’t mind buying some of these from him, or from you maybe.” He pulled out a watercolor of a river scene and another of a Périgord village. “If I gave you the money, I know you’d see he got it eventually, right?”

  “In prison, you mean, once you round him up?” The moment of shared appreciation had gone, and Joséphine was back in her defensive stance.

  “I just like the paintings,” he said genuinely. Her glance softened.

  “He used to charge twenty, thirty euros down at the statue. Give me fifty, and you can have both.”

  23

  This time Bruno’s police uniform ensured that he was shown directly to Pamela’s room in the hospital. Fabiola’s phone call with the good news had reached him as he was leaving Bergerac. Pamela was awake and lucid. The scan had shown no lasting damage beyond a broken collarbone and two cracked ribs. All tubes and wires had been removed. She was sitting up with one arm in a sling, looking at an English newspaper with a pen in her good hand, when he poked his head around the open door. He gave her the overpriced flowers he’d bought at the hospital shop.

  “They’re lovely, Bruno, thank you,” she said, after returning his kiss. She tasted of toothpaste, and there was a scent of lavender he’d not known her to wear before. She filled in one of the clues in her crossword puzzle before continuing. “Fabiola was here earlier and told me about Bess. It’s very sad. I’ll miss her very much. But I know you had no choice.”

  “She was in great pain. It had to be done,” he said. He paused before speaking again. “When will they let you go home?” There was a rather battered metal vase on the cupboard. He filled it with water from the tap.

  “Maybe tomorrow, the doctor said, since Fabiola will be there to keep an eye on me. But why the uniform? Isn’t today your day off?”

  “Something came up on this murder case, so I had to go to Bergerac and look official.” He placed the flowers in the vase and turned back to her.

  “Bruno, really, you can’t just dump them in like that,” she said in mock reproof. “Bring the vase to me and hold it while I arrange them. Honestly, you men have no idea.” She began to arrange the mixed red and white roses with her good hand, making him strip some leaves and bend some of the stems to change their height.

  He was pleased to hear her sounding so normal and looking so much better than he’d expected. Fabiola must have brought in some makeup and the pretty white nightgown that he recognized. The newspaper was probably her idea too.

  “I hope these are tough enough for you.” Bruno laid a booklet of Sudoku puzzles on the bed beside her. Normally she raced through them almost as quickly as she could fill in the numbers.

  “Lovely, such a treat, but now I want to hear all about the murder case. Have you traced Murcoing yet?”

  No, but he now knew a lot more about the young man, and he explained his findings in Bergerac and the Arch-Inter connection.

  “So who would have sent Murcoing the photo of his lover kissing Yves?” Pamela asked. “Who might have had an interest in trying to drive him into a fit of jealous rage? And who would benefit from Fullerton’s death? It’s obvious, it must be the brother. He stands to inherit, after all.”

  Bruno shook his head. “Brian says his brother’s will leaves everything to his nieces and nephews, to be held in trust. He may be lying, but we can check that through the British police. Now that they have a death certificate, there’s no reason for the will to be secret. If Brian is lying about the will, then obviously he becomes the main suspect. But how would Brian or anybody else have known that Paul would be driven to kill just by that photograph? And we might never have known about the Corrèze farm if Brian hadn’t told us. It doesn’t hang together.”

  She nodded. “How certain are you that Murcoing is the killer?”

  He shrugged. “We can place him at the murder scene at about the relevant time, but mainly his running off is what feeds our suspicion. He had a romantic motive and maybe also a financial one, if he thought Fullerton was cheating him. Certainly Fullerton had a lot of money, and Paul seems to have been getting very little.”

  He’d switched both his phones to vibrate that morning before going to see Joséphine, and now the second, private one vibrated. He glanced at the screen, recognized from the number who was calling and said, “I have to take this.” He excused himself, heading into the corridor and out of earshot as he answered Isabelle.

  “Have you seen the Paris Match website?” she began, her voice neutral rather than angry. “Your friend Gilles is making news again.”

  “I haven’t seen it, but I think I know what it’s about.”

  “The brigadier knows you’re behind it. And there’s a rumor that there’s something coming in Le Monde.”

  “I don’t understand why he thinks I’m involved. Gilles talked directly to Jacqueline Morgan. Her book is finished, and she’s looking for publicity. I know she’s written something for Le Monde, but it’s up to them to decide what to do with it.”

  “Don’t be coy, Bruno, not with me. And I don’t care whether her story runs or not, but there are aspects of this that you don’t know. Can we meet?”

  “Did the brigadier tell you about the difference of opinion between him and me at our last meeting?”

  “Yes, and that’s partly why I need to talk with you.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Périgueux. I need to be discreet, so can I come to your place?”

  Bruno checked his watch. “All right, let’s say five this afternoon.”

  They hung up, and he went back to Pamela, who greeted him with a question. “Are you absolutely certain that your corpse is the man you think it is? The head was destroyed. How did the brother identify him?”

  “They’re doing a DNA test and the usual fingerprints. The dead man had served a prison term, so they’re on file. We’d have used dental records, but as you said, the head was smashed.”

  “But right now you’re assuming that your dead man is who you think he is and not the brother. Am I right? What if your corpse is the brother, and the man you think is the brother is in fact the crooked antiques dealer and also the murderer?”

  Pamela had been doing too many crossword puzzles, he thought. “If it’s the crooked antiques dealer who’s alive, why would he have led me to his hoard of stolen goods? And he had to assume that we’d check the fingerprints. That’s routine.”

  “Who called you?”

  “It was about Gilles. His piece on Jacqueline’s nuclear secrets is on the Paris Match website.”

  “Are you trying to avoid telling me that your caller was the person you refer to as my ‘favorite French policewoman’?”

  He nodded, feeling guilty and reminding himself that he should never underestimate Pamela’s powers of perception.

  “Will this Paris Match story mean trouble for you?” she asked.

  “Maybe, I don’t know. As long as the mayor stays in office, there’s not much anyone can do, beyond taking my special phone away, which I wouldn’t mind. Life was a lot simpler before the brigadier had me on speed dial.”

  “Presumably Isabelle wants to see you about it.”

  He nodded again and warily scanned Pamela’s face. She looked neither cross nor suspicious, simply thoughtful.

  “Have you looked into this Arch-Inter group you mentioned? If it has offices in California, it must be a big operation. Wouldn’t it have to fill in some type of customs form if it ships goods overseas?”

  “Yes, but not within Europe. Fullerton could bring in and take back truckloads of antiques to Italy or England with no problem. For Russia, he’d need a customs declaration, and for America they’d have to go by container, so there’d be records. The art squad can handle all that, they do it all the time.”

  “Pass me my laptop. Fabiola brought it.” She asked him to plug it in
to the wall socket and inserted the little plug that connected to the Internet through the cell-phone system. While she booted up, he took the opportunity to visit the men’s room, his uniform provoking the usual range of curious and worried glances.

  “This Arch-Inter firm is pretty big in the States,” she said when he returned, gesturing for him to look over her shoulder. “That’s quite a showroom they have in Santa Monica, and they’re promising regular new deliveries of English and European antiques. Hmm, I wonder…”

  She did a Google search for Companies House, London, accessed the website for the register of British companies and typed in “Arch-Inter.” Up came the name and a number. She tapped twice on the number and up came a list of documents filed by the company, each of which could be downloaded for one pound.

  “Here are the names of the directors of Arch-Inter. Surprise, surprise, look who we find.”

  Over her shoulder he read the names: Paul Murcoing, Brian Fullerton and Édouard Marty, all added to the board on the same date three years earlier. Francis Fullerton had been a director since the company was formed in 1986. There was another English-sounding name, Alan McAllister, which Bruno recognized from the California branch of Arch-Inter.

  “The plot thickens,” she said, sitting back and looking extraordinarily pleased with herself.

  “You should be doing my job.”

  “Too easy,” she replied with a grin. “And you might want to check whether Murcoing had a company credit card. If it’s attached to a British bank, he could have access to money that your systems aren’t tracking.”

  “Mon Dieu, we never thought of that.” He wondered how Pamela knew about such matters and then remembered her account of spending hours with lawyers and accountants, while sorting out her mother’s estate.

  “Now you need to get your juge d’instruction to check the annual reports to see just how much money the company is making,” she went on. “Above all he needs to find out how many shares each director owns. That’s how you can tell who’s really in charge.”