The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

there wasn’t a single one, just some scattered, ancient hay. As he completed the circuit, he heard the sound of the ambulance siren in the distance and checked his phone. All the hunters had now reported in. Each of the houses on Dougal’s list had been checked and pronounced empty. It had all been for nothing. He dismounted and led Hector back to Pamela’s still form.
    Fabiola arrived first, the horse van that was attached to Bruno’s Land Rover bouncing and jolting on the dirt track. Sheleft the engine running, glanced at Bruno without speaking and went to Pamela, the medical bag she always kept close jerking as she ran. Kneeling, she checked for a pulse and then gently pulled back an eyelid. She opened her bag, took out an instrument and used it to peer into Pamela’s eyes, into her ears and then up her nose. Finally she ran her hands carefully over Pamela’s limbs and then stood as the ambulance came into view.
    ‘She’s concussed, unconscious, no sign of bleeding from the ears,’ she said. ‘How did she land?’
    ‘I’m trying to remember, but all I can be sure of is that she was tucked in like a ball, as if somersaulting. She rolled once when she hit the ground and then again before she sprawled.’
    Fabiola glanced at the dead horse. ‘You took care of Bess? I thought I heard two shots.’
    ‘That was me.’
    Ahmed and Fabrice ran from the ambulance with a stretcher. Doctor Gelletreau heaved his bulk along behind, carrying a neck brace. He slowed to a walk as he recognized Fabiola.
    ‘I was nearby with the horse van,’ she explained, and repeated what she had told Bruno. ‘We’ll need an X-ray and a scan so that means we take her straight to Sarlat. I’ll go with her,’ she concluded.
    ‘I’ll come, too,’ said Bruno.
    ‘No, you won’t,’ she said, in a tone so harsh that Bruno felt she was accusing him of doing more than enough damage already. He felt a savage sense of guilt. He should never have allowed Pamela to come with him. And it had all been pointless, his little glow of pride at thinking of his quarry’s accessto Dougal’s list now destroyed. If he’d been a better rider, perhaps he could have headed Pamela off before she reached the rabbit warren. He should have found the words to dissuade her from joining him on the search. At the least he should have realized that his slow, cautious searching of the deserted houses was leaving her bored and eager for a gallop. He’d been so focused on his task that he’d barely thought of her at all.
    And now as he watched Fabiola help Ahmed and Fabrice put the brace on Pamela’s back and head before gingerly edging her onto the stretcher, he felt a surge of something much deeper than concern flood through him as he pondered what Pamela meant to him. She had created a private world for herself with her pool and horses and tennis court and her own little community with Fabiola. And she had generously and without any demands shared it with him. There was always good food and a welcome, horses to ride, companionship and easy conversation, and above all that sensuous warmth and pleasure that she offered him in the privacy of her bed. There were many forms of love, Bruno reflected, but he had no doubt that many of the deepest and sweetest kinds were embodied for him in this woman who was now being placed in the back of the ambulance.
    Fabiola stared at him impassively from the bench inside until Fabrice closed the rear doors. After it pulled away, Bruno with difficulty took the saddle and bridle from Bess’s body and then called the vet to arrange for Bess’s removal. He unsaddled Hector, led him into the horse van and drove gingerly down over the rough field and onto the track that led to the road. As he reached it, his phone rang.
    ‘I’m at the hospital,’ said the Mayor, his voice hollow. ‘Cécile passed away peacefully this afternoon.’ He hung up before Bruno could say a word.

21
    There was no sign of the Mayor’s Peugeot when Bruno pulled into the parking lot of the hospital just east of Sarlat. He asked for Pamela in the emergency wing and was told she’d been taken to the main hospital for X-rays. He found his way to the right department and a tired-looking nurse told him to wait. He showed her his police ID. Again she told him to wait but this time added that she’d fetch a doctor. A young man in a white coat arrived to say she was concussed and the X-rays had shown a broken collarbone. Pamela had now been admitted