The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)
fool.’
‘At least this way you have the option,’ said Crimson. ‘And it really is concealed.’
Reluctantly Bruno strapped it on, privately suspecting with a soldier’s superstition that this would probably ensure that Paul never made contact again. Crimson’s disposable phone rang.
‘Hello,’ he said, his English accent more evident than usual. A pause, but Bruno saw the little cogs on the cassette recorder moving. Josette turned away to make a call, presumably to start the trace.
‘Yes, I have a car, a rental, a white Peugeot, a two-o-seven.’ Crimson was speaking in English.
Another pause. ‘I’m at a hotel on the autoroute outside Périgueux, Francis told me he had a place nearby.
‘Yes, I have a map. Yes, I’ve found Les Eyzies. The public telephone outside the Post Office on the main street. How long will it take me to get there?’
Bruno felt frustrated hearing only one side of this conversation. Couldn’t they have rigged up some extra earphones?
‘You’ll call me there at one precisely. I understand.’
Another pause. ‘Francis promised me two thousand pounds. Let’s say twenty-five hundred euros.’
‘Very well, at one.’ He closed the phone.
‘Fifty seconds,’ said J-J looking at his watch. ‘That should be long enough to trace it. Josette?’
She held up a hand to silence him as she listened and scribbled on a notepad.
‘It came from a public phone booth outside the
Mairie
in Coux,’ she said, and turned back to speak into her phone. ‘We expect the next call at eleven to the public box outside La Poste in Les Eyzies. Can you set the trace up now? Thanks.’
‘Call Jofflin, tell him to get to Coux and then call in,’ said J-J. ‘Murcoing won’t still be there but this looks like the area.’
‘He might be watching the phone box, or Yvonne might be watching,’ said Bruno. ‘He’s not alone.’
‘We’ll be careful.’ J-J turned to Crimson. ‘We’ll follow you to Les Eyzies and we’ll park down the road but in line of sight. There’s a filling station on the corner we should be able to use. I want Bruno hiding on the floor of your car at the rear. I suspect Murcoing will have a second phone box arranged after Les Eyzies, one he can watch for any funny business. When you have the final rendezvous, or one that is not a phonebox, you hand the car over to Bruno. You’ll have to find a spot which is under cover. When Bruno drives off, stay under cover until you see my car and we’ll collect you. Make sure you can recognize it and keep talking so we can pick you up on the mike.’
‘You’ve done this before,’ Crimson said to J-J.
‘Kidnapping case a few years ago, we set up a similar tracking system for the plain-clothes guy who carried the ransom.’
‘And how did that turn out?’
‘The plain-clothes guy lived, took one bullet but got their pickup team. One of them led us to their safe house and the hostage team did the rest. We saved the kidnap victim.’
‘Don’t be so modest,
chef
,’ said Josette. ‘You were the one that took the bullet.’
‘And if I hadn’t been given the ankle holster, I’d be dead. Remember that.’ J-J looked at his watch. ‘Right, let’s run through the check-list. Radios, phones, tracker shoes, ankle gun, pen and notepad. Anything else?’
Josette checked her list. ‘A file for the documents he’s supposed to be carrying. Phone cards in case they need to use a call box.’ She looked at Bruno. ‘Don’t you need a leash for the dog?’
‘You’re not taking the dog along?’ J-J said.
‘I’ve got the leash in my back pocket. Paul Murcoing loves animals but was never allowed to have one as a kid. His aunt told me. This gives me an edge.’
J-J shook his head and rolled his eyes at Josette. ‘Let’s go.’
*
Bruno lay hunched and sweating under a blanket in the rear footwell of the Peugeot. Even with the passenger seat as farforward as it would go it was a squeeze, particularly with Balzac squirming on his chest. He had an open phone line with J-J as Crimson came back from the phone booth.
‘The next phone booth is at Campagne in fifteen minutes,’ he said, and drove back to the small roundabout by the Centenaire hotel and turned off on the Campagne road.
‘OK, we heard that,’ said J-J over the phone that Bruno held to his ear. ‘We’ll take the lower road past St Cirq so he won’t see you’re being followed. We can park at the place where they sell foie gras, we should still be
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