The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

Mirabelle to go with the veal. Then he told her how the day had unfolded from the moment Brian Fullerton had mentioned his brother’s farmhouse.
    ‘What worries me is the missing guns,’ he concluded over the cheese course. ‘From the brother, it’s clear that Francis was in the habit of using them, so it’s a reasonable guess that Paul had learned to fire them. He’s on the run with his sister, fleeing in a hurry from the place they thought was a refuge, and he’s armed and dangerous. I don’t envy the traffic cops who flag him down or whoever has to go in once he’s cornered.’
    ‘They’ll use the
Jaunes
,’ Isabelle said, referring to the
Gendarmes Mobiles
, their elite unit. ‘Nobody would shed many tears if Murcoing gets killed but there’ll be trouble if his sister getsshot as well. But that’s somebody else’s problem. For today, it’s a good result. It’s obvious that Murcoing is the murderer and Crimson gets his stuff back, along with a lot of other victims. I imagine the local insurance agents will be giving you a very special dinner.’
    Bruno was about to say that it could not be nearly as special as this evening when he remembered the sharp way she had said: ‘Those days are over,’ when he’d made some quip about her wearing his shirt as a dressing gown. And now she was off to some European job in Holland. There would be no more special missions for the Brigadier that sometimes brought her down to St Denis. Perhaps this was to be their last supper, her way of saying goodbye, taking the opportunity of a day when the blow would be softened by his professional success.
    ‘But that’s not the only reason I wanted to see you this evening,’ she said. Bruno braced himself, preparing his face to display a look of wry affection tinged with sadness. It wouldn’t even have to be faked. A part of him would always be in love with her vivacity and her fire.
    ‘I thought I’d better warn you there’s a buzz around the Ministry that there’s to be some kind of pre-election surprise. People are nervous. And St Denis seems to be caught up in it,’ she said, startling him. ‘Maybe you are, too. I’m not sure exactly what this political intrigue might be, but the Brigadier told me to ask you about Americans, and when he did I noticed your army file was open on his desk. I think that was why he was so quick to seize on Crimson’s burglary.’
    ‘I don’t understand. Crimson’s an Englishman.’ One part of his brain was thinking that this had to be about Jacqueline’s book and therefore implicated his Mayor, while another wasthinking that for once this was something he could not discuss with Isabelle. Her interest would be to protect the state; his would be to protect his Mayor.
    ‘English, Americans, two sides of the same coin.’ She waved his comment aside. ‘You know these old Gaullists, it’s always been an article of faith that there’s no difference between
les Anglo-Saxons
. And in intelligence at least, they’re probably right; the English tell the Americans everything. Just remember that as far as the Brigadier is concerned, you have no secrets. He’ll even know we’re together this evening.’
    ‘Did you tell him we were having dinner?’
    ‘No, but you remember in Bordeaux, after your phone was tapped and he gave you one of our secure ones? He can call up a screen that shows him where all of those phones are at any given time. And before you ask, yes, that means he knows when we’ve spent the night together.’
    Bruno felt himself blushing. ‘Is this rumour about an election surprise just in your Ministry?’
    She gave a wry smile. ‘You know Paris.’ She said it as if she’d been born and bred in the capital, when they both knew she’d been based there less than a year and had spent much of that time in hospitals.
    ‘Remember Gilles from
Paris Match
, the reporter I knew in Bosnia?’ Bruno asked. ‘He’s coming down here along with some British journalists. He said it was because of Crimson, but I wonder.’
    ‘Crimson is a good news story. Burglary solved, goods recovered, brilliant police work.’
    ‘If that’s all Gilles is planning on reporting. I know he loves the region but this is election time, political season. We bothknow he’s a good reporter; relentless when he’s after a story.’
    She nodded thoughtfully and took a sip of wine. ‘It’s strange that we never talked politics, you and I, nor was there much of it when I was based in