The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

Balzac when he went up to their fence to make friends.
    Bruno smiled wryly to himself as Balzac, looking puzzled at his harsh welcome, scuttled back to his master’s side. They continued to follow the route he’d been given. As he turned up the gravel path that led to the woods where the rendezvouswould take place, Bruno wondered whether that might be an omen for his own reception. What might he expect from this encounter? He went through the traditional soldier’s catechism; he either secured his objective of persuading Paul to give himself up, in which case there were no worries, or he didn’t. If he failed, either he’d walk away free, in which case there were no worries, or he wouldn’t. If he did not walk away free, either he would not take a bullet, in which case, no worries. If he was shot, he’d either recover which meant no worries, or he wouldn’t, in which latter case he wouldn’t be able to worry.
    The crude fatalism cheered him a little, but that was not the calculus that had sent him trudging up this winding slope in the hot sun. Bruno’s knowledge of Paul Murcoing had gone beyond the crude caricature of a violent gay psychopath who had butchered his lover. Bruno saw him as a human being, close to his sister and his grandfather, and as an accomplished artist who refused to do cheap sketches for cash and preferred more serious works. Paul possessed an easy charm that worked on women as well as men, and on dogs too, Bruno recalled. He had volunteered at a hospice for the dying. And just like his grandfather, he was obsessed with discovering the truth about the Neuvic train. Bruno could not make all this fit with the simplistic category of killer. Paul must know the game could not go on much longer and he had his sister to think of.
    Up to Bruno’s left was a hill topped by a water tower and a mast for cellphones. Was that the flash of sunlight on binoculars he saw? It would be a perfect location to track Bruno as he walked to the rendezvous and keep watch for any suspicious cars. Ten more minutes took him along the dirt track andBruno started the climb through the woods to the enormous clearing which had been turned into a motocross circuit.
    As he looked at the plunges and humps and muddied curves of the circuit, he felt certain that Paul would be using one of the motorbikes designed for such tracks. It would take him cross-country and through woods in a way that would laugh off any pursuit. Why hadn’t he thought of that and advised J-J to have some
motards
on standby? He checked his watch; it had taken him twenty-five minutes and he’d gone at least two kilometres, probably maximum range for the tracker. The trees would cut that even further.
    Jofflin’s car would be the closer of the two. There was no other discreet place nearby for J-J to park and no proper roads, only dirt tracks that would challenge even his own Land Rover. This was an area Bruno knew. He’d hunted here, ridden over the land on horseback with Fabiola and Pamela and even come looking for mushrooms with the Baron. The nearest road in the other direction was three or four kilometres away and J-J’s car could not handle the rough forest tracks. Bruno would have to assume he was on his own.
    He got to the concrete stand and waited, Crimson’s disposable phone in his hand. This would be the difficult moment, when Paul would be expecting the English accent that he already recognized and which Bruno could not possibly hope to impersonate.
    The phone rang and he put it to his ear and began working his mouth as though saying ‘Hello’ again and again but keeping silent. He heard a male voice speaking English and carried on miming his response. He took the phone from his ear, looked at it, shook it, returned it to his ear and began once moremiming his ‘Hello.’ Faking a bad connection was his only chance.
    Across the clearing perhaps two hundred metres away he saw a flash of movement through the woods. Then he saw it again, further along through the trees, and realized it was someone on a mountain bike, wearing a cycling helmet and shorts. Very clever, he thought. Nobody could catch a mountain bike in these woods and they could avoid all the roads. And cyclists were so common that they could probably risk the Gendarme patrols, and go cross-country again if they had to.
    There was a sound behind him and he turned to see another mountain bike, the rider in helmet, shorts and a long-sleeved cycling vest in green, coming