The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

noted empty bottles in a box and dirty glasses in the sink.
    He kneeled down to look at the bottles. In two of them, the dregs were still moist. One was a Château Kirwan, 2005, and the other was Haut-Brion, 2001. He checked his notebook. They could have come from Crimson’s cellar. In the dining room, some strips of wallpaper hung down forlornly and a large brown patch of damp covered part of the ceiling. His eye was drawn by an exquisite small oil painting of a young woman in eighteenth-century dress on a swing.
    ‘School of Watteau, I believe,’ said Brian. ‘Were it a real Watteau it would be worth more than the whole place.’
    Upstairs, the towels in the bathroom were damp and the floor of the shower was still wet. In one bedroom they found female underclothes and pair of discarded tights. In the other a pair of men’s dirty socks were balled beneath the bed. Both beds had been left unmade.
    ‘Looks like they left in a hurry,’ said Brian. ‘Maybe they were in a panic after I called.’
    ‘Have you looked in the barns?’ Bruno asked the
flic
. He said no, adding that they were locked. Bruno asked Brian if he remembered the codes for the keys.
    ‘Gloria,’ he said triumphantly, and laughed. ‘G for the geranium pot, L for the ladder, O for the orangerie, which is what we called the little glass lean-to at the back, R for the rake in the tool-shed, I for the iron seat that came from an old tractor, and the last A is for that artichoke pot hanging on the wall.’
    He lifted the terracotta artichoke from its hook to reveal a big iron key and a smaller one that looked like a Yale. Bruno and the
flic
followed him to the single-storey barn. He used the big key to open a large but partly broken wooden door. Behind it lay a much more solid metal door which he opened with the Yale. He flicked on an inside light, a fluorescent strip that flickered and buzzed before suddenly blazing into stark life.
    Cases of wine were stacked against the far wall. In front of them were heaped rugs, rolled up and tied with lengths of orange plastic string. Alongside stood paintings wrapped loosely in canvas. Bruno went back to his van for the file of photos of Crimson’s possessions. The first painting he uncovered was a thickly-painted scene from a window, dominated by a flapping curtain and overlooking a dismal garden with dirty brick houses in the background. It was marked in Crimson’s file as a Bratby, valued at eight thousand euros, and Bruno saw the artist’s signature in the bottom corner. To make sure, he unwrapped the next canvas and unveiled two rather gloomy watercolours of beach scenes, beautifully framed. Each was recorded in Crimson’s photos, and listed as John Sell Cotman. They were valued at five thousand euros for the pair.
    ‘No doubt about it, these are stolen goods,’ he said, rising and showing the photos to the
flic
. ‘They were stolen from a house in my commune at the beginning of this week.’
    ‘You mean my brother was up to his old tricks?’ Brian asked.
    ‘Not as far as these paintings were concerned. He was still in England when these were stolen,’ Bruno said. ‘But for the rest, I don’t know. Let’s look in the other barn.’
    It was locked, so in search for the keys Fullerton led them to the tool-shed and the orangerie in vain before going to the back of the house where an aluminium ladder lay propped lengthwise against a wall. He bent down at one end and slid a key from the hollow of one of the legs, held it up with a grin and the three of them trooped to the large barn. This had two wide wooden doors, each about two metres high. They were locked with a chain and a padlock. The key fitted and turned easily and they hauled the two doors open to reveal a tall white van. On its side were painted blue letters reading Chauffage-France with an address in the industrial zone of Belvès. Its rear doors were open and the interior was stacked high with furniture, mainly tall wooden dressers, each protected from its neighbour by blankets.
    ‘Bingo,’ Bruno breathed to himself. On the floor of the van by the open doors were four heavy iron tubes, each about a metre long, held together by elasticized bands with hooks at each end.
    ‘Any idea what these might be?’ he asked, pointing at the tubes. He wondered whether he might have found the murder weapon.
    ‘Rollers,’ said Brian, lighting the pipe he’d been filling. ‘It’s how they move heavy furniture, sliding them along on