The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

parked.
    Starting with the security guard, he called at building after building to show the photo from the print shop and ask if anyone knew the young man. Mostly he got apologetic shrugs,but at the office attached to the removals warehouse a woman in her forties with heavily made-up eyes, and showing a generous amount of cleavage, looked at the photo twice. Dark roots were just beginning to show in her bright blonde hair.
    ‘You’re not our local
flic
,’ she said. ‘What’s up with this guy?’
    ‘Routine,’ he said casually. ‘He could have been a witness to something and he was driving a van with an address at this ZI.’
    ‘Not any more, he isn’t,’ she said. Bruno suspected that her desire to show herself to be in the know had trumped her instinctive caution when talking to a policeman. ‘We had to let him go. When was he driving this van? Was it one of ours?’
    ‘No, it was another warehouse, but we’re checking everywhere to see if we can identify the guy. Do you know his name?’
    ‘Paul, handsome little Paul,’ she said. ‘We’ll have something in the personnel files. He was with us just under six months, driving the small vans. He wasn’t licensed for heavy goods.’
    ‘I only saw big trucks in the yard.’
    ‘Some customers don’t have much furniture. And then we’ve got a sideline business, storing antiques and stuff for the
brocante
dealers who come down here every year for the summer trade. That’s why we use the small vans.’
    ‘A nice lad, was he?’
    ‘A bit too nice, if you get my meaning. I rather fancied him at first, but I got the impression that women weren’t his preference.’
    Bruno deliberately let his eyes linger on the cleavage. ‘More fool him,’ he said.
    Smirking, the woman rose from behind the counter, turned and swayed into a rear office, her hips swivelling in the tightskirt of royal blue that matched her eye make-up. She came back bearing a slim file and a teasing expression. She put a blue-painted nail to her lips and said: ‘I’m not sure if I ought to let you see this …’
    ‘Well, if you really want to disturb your boss …’ he began. ‘But then we wouldn’t have our little secret, would we?’
    ‘You guys in uniform, you’re all the same.’ She tapped him on the chest with the file and then let him take it. There was a job application form and copies of an ID card and driving licence. Paul Murcoing, he read, age 28, and three different addresses listed for him in the six months he’d worked there, one in Belvès and two in Bergerac. The elusive connection came to Bruno at once: he’d last seen Paul in a photograph in the house of his dead grandfather, the old
Résistant
.
    She leaned forward on the counter, her hands together so her arms could squeeze the magnificent bosom into even greater prominence.
    ‘I suppose now you’d like me to make you a photocopy.’
    ‘What I’d like you to do could get us both arrested,’ said Bruno, by now thoroughly enjoying himself. And it was certainly getting him the information he wanted. ‘But a photocopy would be very kind.’ He paused. ‘My name’s Benoît.’
    ‘I’m Nicolle.’ As she went into the rear office, she turned and waved her blue-tipped fingers and said: ‘Be right back.’
    Bruno called J-J’s mobile and announced that he had a suspect. He gave Murcoing’s name and last known address, read out his aunt’s telephone number from his notebook and added: ‘According to one woman he worked with, there could be a gay connection.’
    ‘Hang on while I look him up in the records,’ said J-J.
    ‘Are you still questioning Valentoux?’
    J-J grunted assent, and then Nicolle returned with the photocopies. ‘Still warm,’ she said, handing them to Bruno. ‘Almost hot.’
    ‘
Très bien, Monsieur le Commissaire
,’ Bruno said into the phone. ‘Right away.’
    He clutched the photocopies, leaned forward to plant a kiss on Nicolle’s cheek and said: ‘Got to go, that was the boss. One last thing, did Paul have any friends here in the Zone?’
    ‘He might have had one, but like I said, he wasn’t interested in girls.’
    As he opened the door to leave, she called: ‘Hey, Benoît.’ He stopped, turned. ‘That was fun,’ she said, and blew him a kiss.

8
    At the first address Paul had listed on his personnel form, Bruno found an elderly North African woman in a headscarf with an imperfect command of French. A young man in a tracksuit with a shaven head and a large