The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

briefcase and began reading phrases at random. ‘Arrested in Paris, May 1968, at a barricade on the Rue St Jacques while a student at the Sorbonne … arrested again August 1968 at the Democratic party convention in Chicago, received a broken jaw from a police baton …September of that year she takes up an exchange scholarship at University of California, Berkeley … December 1969, a delegate to the final convention of Students for a Democratic Society in Flint, Michigan, voted to wind up the SDS and reform into the Worker Student Alliance, a group closely associated with the violent extremists known as the Weathermen … Arrested again in May 1971 during a march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam war.’
    The Brigadier paused in his reading, looked up and took a sip at his drink. ‘Quite the little activist, this Jacqueline Morgan. A member of Redstockings, a radical women’s collective, and a contributor to a collective book titled
Our Bodies, Ourselves
. And she never gave up. Arrested again in 1985, this time in Britain, when she was staying at the women’s camp against American missiles at the Greenham Common airbase. She was arrested again that year during a demonstration over the miners’ strike but was released without charge. She was supposedly a visiting professor at the University of London at the time. I suspect this is when she came up on Crimson’s radar screen. Most recently she attended our own Green Party’s summer university last year, where she spoke as a member of the advisory board of Greenpeace in the United States. I have to hand it to her, she never stops.’
    He tossed the file onto his desk. ‘And now the radical Professor Morgan is connected to a British spymaster. If this were the Cold War, I’d suspect a honey trap and start looking for a Moscow connection. These days, who the hell knows?’
    ‘You know she was burgled today?’ Bruno asked. ‘Her laptop and documents were taken, along with some silver and jewellery to make it look genuine.’
    ‘It wasn’t us, but I hope you’ll understand that I can’t answer for all the less public arms of the French state, however much I may disapprove of what they do in the name of national security.’
    Bruno sipped at his drink, wondering what the Brigadier’s real agenda might be, but mainly thinking of the epic of Jacqueline’s life: May ’68, Vietnam, feminism, nuclear disarmament, Greenpeace. She’d plunged into the history of her time, and also made a distinguished career by writing some of that history. He did not feel surprised, rather a touch of admiration.
    ‘Why not say what it is you want to do?’ Bruno asked. ‘Are you trying to suppress her work or do you just hope to delay it until after the election?’
    ‘Why on earth would I want to do that? This is our history. The French public is entitled to know it.’
    Bruno sat back in his chair, completely baffled. He reached for his scotch, took a long sip and then looked thoughtfully at the portrait photograph of the President of the Republic that hung on the wall by the door.
    ‘You want him to lose the election,’ he said. The Brigadier shrugged, poured himself another drink and waved the bottle towards Bruno, who put his hand over his glass.
    ‘I couldn’t care less who wins the election, they’re all pretty much the same,’ the Brigadier replied. ‘But there’s something rotten in the entrails of the state, some of it in my own Ministry. You know what I’m talking about because I’m told you said much the same thing to Isabelle. Phone-tapping journalists and opposition leaders, burglaries, suitcases full of secret campaign funds, crooked deals, planted evidence, enemies listsand worse. That’s what I’m sick of. To save France from that requires a change of government.’
    ‘No, it doesn’t. It means we need a free press and a fair election.’ Bruno pushed the half-full glass of scotch back across the table, picked up his hat and walked out.
    *
    Bruno could see from the gate a spray of droplets raining on the young tomato plants, signalling that the Mayor had returned from hospital and was engaged in that most restful of chores, watering his garden. He turned at the sound of Bruno’s footsteps, offered him a friendly nod and then raised his eyebrows.
    ‘You look cross,’ he said, over the patter of spray on leaves. ‘Jacqueline called to tell me about the burglary. She also told me about dinner with your friends in Sarlat. It will be