The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

the parachute drops that went to Groupe Valmy.’
    He stood up again, looked around the room and shook his head. ‘All those bookshelves, full of stuff he gathered, but Francis never managed to find one of the original banknotes before. I wonder where he got it?’
    ‘Did your brother ever mention anyone called Murcoing?’ Bruno asked. ‘Paul Murcoing, a young man. And an old
Résistant
called Loïc, his grandfather and one of the original Groupe Valmy members?’
    ‘No, but I’ll bet you’ll find stuff about him in those files. Take a look in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, that’s where he kept his photos. They’ll all be in alphabetic order.’
    Bruno looked under M and found a file labelled Murcoing (Valmy). Inside it were three decent portrait shots of the old man standing by a modern Neuvic road sign. There were also copies of the 1944-vintage photos of the Groupe Valmy that Bruno had seen in the dead man’s box of treasures. But there was no file for Paul Murcoing.
    Brian went back to the laptop, trying to guess passwords while Bruno searched the rest of the house. He examined thecontents of the freezer section of the fridge, the cisterns for the WCs, looked under tables and on the tops of bathroom cupboards. Finally, taking a last look around the bedroom where he’d found the dirty socks, his eye fell on a framed photo on one of the bedside tables. There were Paul and Francis, arms around each other’s shoulders, grinning for the camera while sitting at some café table in the sun. They were drinking what looked like Ricard and between them two cigarettes smouldered on an ashtray marked Dubonnet.
    ‘I found the password,’ came Brian’s triumphant shout from below. ‘It was taped to the back of another drawer. He used
Neuvic1944
. He was obsessed with that damn train robbery.’
    Bruno turned to go downstairs to see what the laptop might reveal but his eye was caught by a second framed photo on the other bedside table. A moody portrait of Paul Murcoing half-smiling, something deliberately seductive in his eyes, was inscribed:
Pour mon très cher Francis, Je t’embrasse, Paul.

14
    The village of Paunat was one of Bruno’s favourite places, a classic ensemble of old Périgord houses tumbling down a hillside to the stream and dominated by an austere Benedictine abbey. Seated at a table for two on the terrace of the restaurant, Isabelle and Bruno kept glancing up to admire its floodlit wall as the twilight deepened. Once J-J and Bernard Ardouin had arrived at Francis’s farmhouse with the forensics team, Bruno had been able to leave and drive Brian back to his hotel. Isabelle had called to invite him to what she called a working dinner, saying she needed to get all the details before the Brigadier arrived with Crimson next day.
    ‘You can pick somewhere discreet, if you’re worried about word getting back to your Englishwoman that I’m back in town,’ she had said, in a half-mocking, half-teasing tone.
    Given the speed at which local gossip moved around St Denis, Pamela probably already knew. He’d called her earlier from the Corrèze to explain that he wouldn’t be able to exercise the horses that evening but that he’d join her at seven the next day for the morning ride. The truth was that there was no restaurant within thirty kilometres where he could guarantee discretion.
    For once, Isabelle had ditched her usual black and waswearing a starched white shirt that showed off her cruise-ship tan, over a pleated skirt that flared enticingly as she turned to wave at him after climbing out of her rented car. When he’d admired the way it looked on her, she’d told him proudly that it was a Fortuny, bought at a vintage clothing shop in Paris.
    ‘I’ll take the menu with the
coquilles St Jacques
and then the
blanquette de veau
,’ she said, looking appreciatively at the large blackboard with the day’s menu that had been placed by their table. ‘A bottle of Perrier and whatever wine you think most suitable. And then tell me all about what happened today and you can also explain why you didn’t bring our puppy along.’
    ‘Balzac still has some house-training to learn before I’d dare let him loose on a restaurant,’ he replied, while trying to choose between the veal and the partridge. Finally he ordered the same dishes that Isabelle had chosen, along with a glass each of the restaurant’s Bergerac Sec to go with the scallops and a half bottle of La Jaubertie’s Cuvée