The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

sentence in return for testifying against the burglars. Then they could report dozens or even hundreds of burglaries to have been solved.This made their success rate look good on annual reports, which was what Paris wanted, and it led to bonuses and promotions. But it usually meant that few of the stolen items were returned to their owners. Bruno thought there should be a better way, and he’d suggested to the local insurance brokers that they ask their clients to provide photos of their more valuable items to improve the chances of tracking them down. Few bothered to do so.
    But Bruno knew this house and was sure such photos would be on file. It was a small
gentilhommerie
, the estate agents’ term for a building that was smaller than a manor house but bigger than the usual farmhouses of the region. Dating from the eighteenth century, it had an ornate entrance with stone pillars supporting a porch, two sets of French windows on each side of the entrance and five mansard windows on the upper storey. Stone urns for flowers, still empty at this time of year, flanked the French windows and each of the mansards had been topped with a stone pineapple, the sign of the handiwork of Carlos, one of the best of the local builders. The house had been impeccably restored, using old tiles on the new roof, and the old stucco had been chipped away from the façade to reveal the honey-coloured stone beneath. The drive was lined with fruit trees and rose bushes flanked the vegetable garden. At the rear, Bruno recalled, was a swimming pool and a stone terrace with a fine view across the ridges that sloped down to the river Vézère.
    Bruno had been invited here twice for garden parties and another time for dinner. He had met the British owner, Jack Crimson, at the tennis club where the retired civil servant played gentle games of mixed doubles. He always signed up totake part in the annual tennis tournament, offered some gift for the prizes and made a generous donation each year for the children’s tennis team. An affable man, always well dressed and with thick grey hair, Crimson spoke decent French. A little plump, but with the build of a man who’d been an athlete in his youth, he served excellent wines and threw an enjoyable party that had been Bruno’s introduction to a deceptively potent English drink that they called Pimm’s. He arrived each summer in a stately old Jaguar. When Bruno had seen that the house was filled with rare books, paintings and antiques, he had persuaded Crimson to take photos of them all for registration at the insurance office.
    ‘Ç
a va
, Bruno? I heard your van coming up the drive,’ said Gaëlle, greeting him from the front door. ‘They got in through the back and took the lot, all the good furniture, the rugs and paintings. They left the books. And they cut the phone line so I had to call the
Mairie
on my mobile.’
    ‘Were all the shutters closed when you arrived?’ he asked.
    Gaëlle, a homely and competent widow in her fifties, nodded. ‘I opened them myself to air the rooms. I always do. It’s what Monsieur Crimson wants.’
    She led him round the side of the house to the rear door, where the wooden shutter on a French window had been forced open. One of the small windowpanes had been broken by a professional; some glue had been smeared on the glass, a folded newspaper attached and then punched to make little noise and a clear break. The same technique had been used at the earlier burglaries. Inside, darker patches on the walls showed where paintings had hung.
    ‘This was the dining room,’ Gaëlle said. ‘You can’t tell, nowthe furniture’s gone. He had some lovely old paintings of food, game birds and old-fashioned pots full of vegetables. They don’t seem to have taken anything from upstairs.’
    ‘I hope you haven’t been using that,’ he said, pointing at the feather duster she was holding. ‘They might have left fingerprints.’
    ‘I know, I watch those crime shows on TV. I just like to carry it.’
    ‘Have you called Monsieur Crimson?’
    ‘I phoned his number in England right after I called the
Mairie
, but I just heard some recorded English and then that beep, so I left a message. He’ll call me back when he gets it.’
    Bruno took a note of Crimson’s number and established that Gaëlle, who came twice a week to clean, had last been at the house four days earlier. He went from room to room with his notebook, relying on Gaëlle’s memory for the missing