The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

even got checks on the Spanish border. Any ideas?’
    ‘We’re still watching his mum’s house in Bergerac and checking every day with his aunts,’ said Yveline. She looked exhausted, nothing like the fighting-fit athlete in the photos on her wall. ‘We’ll get him eventually when he runs out of cash. They’ve got to turn up somewhere.’
    ‘I’ve had a detective taking Paul’s photo around all the gay bars,’ said J-J. ‘A lot of people know him but he’s not popular. We followed a few leads and called on some old boyfriends, but no result.’
    ‘What about the
brocante
route?’ Bruno asked. Some of the antiques fairs had already begun, early in the season though it was. Bruno supposed that Murcoing could be raising cashby selling off some of the more portable items from his loot, jewellery and silver, either at the fairs or directly to antiques dealers.
    ‘We’ve visited the dodgy ones, at least the ones we know about, and we’ve had a cop looking at every
brocante
that’s advertised in the whole of southern France,’ J-J said. ‘We can’t afford to keep up this level of manpower much longer, so we need some new ideas.’
    ‘If he’s not on the road with the camper van then either he’s found a place to hole up or he’s already out of the country,’ said Yveline. ‘It would have taken him just four hours to get to Spain. I know we’ve got Interpol on this, but can’t we get the Spanish police to make more effort?’
    J-J looked at her, glanced at the stuffed toy on her computer and rolled his eyes at Bruno.
    ‘There’s no shortage of holiday homes all over southern France, places he could go looking, find one that’s empty and hole up there, just as he did at Fullerton’s place,’ said Bruno.
    ‘That’s where the manpower problem comes in. There’d be thousands of such places and we can’t just send a solitary cop to check out each one. This guy’s armed.’
    ‘Was there nothing on Fullerton’s laptop that might give us a lead?’ Bruno asked.
    J-J looked up sharply. ‘Fullerton’s laptop, where’s that?’
    ‘The Apple laptop that belonged to the murdered man, the one we found in the van in the Corrèze barn.’
    ‘
Putain
, now you tell me. I didn’t see any laptop.’ He leafed through his file and pulled out some papers stapled together. It looked like a long list and he ran his finger swiftly downeach page. ‘There’s nothing on the inventory about a computer. Where the hell is it?’
    Bruno remembered Brian Fullerton’s cry of triumph when he found his brother’s password for the laptop.
    ‘The brother must still have it’ he said.
    ‘Where is he now?’
    Bruno was pulling out his phone and looking up the number in the address book even as he answered. ‘Hôtel St Denis, I’m calling them now.’
    Fullerton was still checked in but had gone to church, he was told by Mauricette on the reception desk.
    ‘It’s my fault,’ Bruno said. ‘I should have made sure you knew about the laptop but I was just so pleased we’d found all the stolen goods.
Merde
, J-J, I’m sorry.’
    Yveline made a sound of disgust and shook her head.
    ‘It’s our fault as much as yours,’ said J-J. ‘I remember seeing that power cord on the desk in the study where the guns were. I should have made the connection.’
    ‘I’ll go to church and bring Fullerton out, get the computer and bring it back here,’ said Bruno, heading for the door.
    ‘These village coppers are all the same,’ he heard Yveline say as he left. ‘Bloody amateur night, the lot of them. God knows how we’ll explain this to the
juge d’instruction
.’
    Bruno almost ran down the steps of the Gendarmerie, heading for the Rue de Paris towards the church, when he heard the cheerful toot of a horn and managed to stop just before he had dashed into the path of Dougal’s daughter Kirsten on her Mobylette.
    ‘You want to look where you’re going, Bruno,’ she said. ‘You’d have done more damage to my bike than we’d have done to you.’
    ‘Sorry, something’s come up,’ he said, and suddenly thought: Dougal’s list. If Murcoing wanted to be sure of finding an empty holiday home, his sister would have seen the list. He strode after Kirsten, who was already turning into the offices of Delightful Dordogne.
    ‘Could you print me out your work list for this week?’ he asked. ‘I need to see which houses will be vacant, it’s about the burglaries.’
    ‘No problem, just give me a minute to turn