The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

said, taking out his notebook. ‘Do you know where he kept his papers, if there’s a will?’
    She shrugged and gave her number. ‘Nothing much to leave.’ She looked at her watch again. ‘I have to go. I’ll take whatever food he’s left.’ Through the open door they heard her rummaging in the small fridge and the food cupboard before she stomped down the narrow passage beside the garage that led to the street.
    ‘Not much sign of grief there,’ said Bruno, taking out his phone to call the medical centre. A doctor would have to certify death before Murcoing could be removed to the funeral parlour.
    ‘He didn’t have many visits from his family, except for Paul,’ the priest said. ‘All the sisters live down in Bergerac. Joséphine told me she works as a night nurse, so she probably sees more than enough of the old and sick.’
    ‘How sick was he? I haven’t seen him in the café for a while.’
    ‘He knew he was dying and he didn’t seem to mind,’ Father Sentout replied. ‘He had pneumonia but refused to go to hospital. That was the sickness we used to call the old man’s friend. It’s a peaceful passing, they just slip away.’
    ‘I remember seeing him coming out of church. Was he a regular?’
    ‘His wife dragged him along. After she died he didn’t come so often at first, but this place is close to the church so he’d come along for Mass; for the company as much as anything.’
    ‘Did he ever talk about the money?’ Bruno gestured at the open box on the bed and the banknote still held tightly in Murcoing’s dead hands.
    The priest paused, as if weighing his words in a way that made Bruno wonder whether there was some secret of the confessional that was being kept back.
    ‘Not directly, but he’d rail against the fat cats and the rich and complained of being cheated. It was just ramblings. I was never clear whether he reckoned his daughters had cheated him out of the money from the farm or it was something else.’
    ‘Is there something you can’t tell me?’
    Father Sentout shrugged. ‘Nothing directly linked to the money. I presume it’s from the Neuvic train. Don’t you know about it? The great train robbery by the Resistance?’
    Bruno shook his head, reminding the priest that he’d only been in St Denis for a little over a decade. He’d heard of it but not the details. These days, the priest explained, the story was more legend than anything else. A vast sum of money, said to be hundreds of millions, had been stolen from a train taking reserves from the Banque de France to the German naval garrison in Bordeaux. Despite various official inquiries, large amounts had never been accounted for, and local tradition had it that several Resistance leaders had after the war bought grand homes, started businesses and financed political careers.
    ‘If that was his share, he didn’t get much,’ the priest concluded, nodding at the banknotes on the bed. After the war there had been so many devaluations. Then in 1960 came DeGaulle’s currency reform; a new franc was launched, each worth a hundred of the old ones. ‘In reality, that thousand-franc banknote is today probably worth less than a euro, if it’s worth anything at all.’
    Bruno bent down to prise the note from the cold fingers. As he put it inside the box with the photographs, he heard footsteps in the corridor and Fabiola the doctor bustled into the small room. She was wearing a white medical coat of freshly pressed cotton and her dark hair was piled loosely atop her head. An intriguing scent came with her, a curious blend of antiseptic and perfume, overwhelming the stale air of the room. She kissed Bruno and shook hands with the priest, pulling out her stethoscope to examine the body.
    ‘He obviously didn’t take his medicine. Sometimes I wonder why we bother,’ she said, sorting through the small array of plastic jars from the pharmacy that stood by the bed. ‘He’s dead and there’s nothing suspicious. I’ll leave the certificate at the front desk of the clinic so you can pick it up. Meanwhile we’d better get him to the funeral home.’
    She stopped at the door and faced Bruno. ‘Is this going to stop you getting to the airport? I’ll be free by five so I can do it.’
    ‘It should be OK. If there’s a problem, I’ll call you,’ he replied. Pamela, the Englishwoman Bruno had been seeing since the previous autumn, was to land at the local airport of Bergerac just before six that evening and he was to