The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

the screens on the machines.
    ‘Her pulse rate is up a little.’ She lifted Pamela’s eyelids again, looked for a long moment. ‘No change.’
    ‘What are you looking for?’
    ‘If the pupils are of different size, that’s a clue to look for brain damage. It doesn’t mean there is any, it’s just an indicator. And you want to see how the pupils react to light.’
    ‘You think there might be brain damage?’ The words were out before Bruno could stop himself.
    Fabiola paused before she answered and turned to look him in the eye. ‘We’re at one of those unpleasant moments when doctors are as much in the dark as you. Until we see the scan, or until she recovers consciousness and we can start to assess her state, we don’t know what the outlook is going to be and there’s not much point in speculating.
    ‘I know it was an accident and I know how Pamela sometimes rides like a mad thing. But I’m not just a doctor, I’m her friend and I’m human. Right now I’m furious with you and looking for someone to blame. So please just drive me home with the radio on and let’s not talk. There’s nothing more I can tell you.’
    *
    Back in St Denis after dropping the still silent Fabiola and collecting Balzac from the stables, Bruno called at the Mayor’s house only to find it empty and no Peugeot in the garage. He debated whether to drive to Jacqueline’s to see if the Mayor was there and decided against it. But he felt the urge to do something, anything, rather than sit and worry about Pamela and feed his sense of guilt. He called J-J and the automated voice told him to leave a message. Then he rang the incident room at the Bergerac station where the hunt for Murcoing was being coordinated and reported the empty houses to Inspector Jofflin. There was no news from the search of the campsites nor from the road patrols.
    He remembered he had to call Crimson to tell him of Pamela’s fall and to postpone the dinner he’d been planning. When he explained how he and Pamela had been looking for Paul Murcoing, Crimson interrupted: ‘Was that the chap who burgled me?’
    ‘Yes, but he’s now a murder suspect, either on the run or in hiding somewhere. That’s why we were searching the
gîtes
that were listed as empty.’
    ‘Do you have some way to smoke him out?’
    ‘Maybe.’ Bruno remembered that J-J had wondered whether Murcoing could be lured out of hiding into some kind of trap. Maybe his obsession with the Neuvic money could be used as bait. It was worth a try. He explained his thinking and then asked: ‘What kind of bait would we need?’
    ‘That’s simple,’ said Crimson. ‘You’d need some new documents being released from the archives that cast new light on it all, maybe giving the names of which Resistance leaders were authorized to control the money.’
    ‘You mean like some new documents from the SOE records, not yet declassified?’ Bruno asked.
    ‘Exactly,’ Crimson replied. ‘You wouldn’t even need real documents, just forge a couple of file references and a page of contents from an archive catalogue and a sample page, scan it and post it on an email message to Murcoing. I presume he’s got Internet access of some kind, if only through a phone.’
    ‘We’d have to send it to Murcoing in a way he’d believe it,’ Bruno said. ‘I’m not sure how we could do that. We know that Fullerton was equally fascinated by the Neuvic business. Maybe we could concoct a message to Fullerton about new documents with a copy to Murcoing. That might work.’
    ‘Let me think about this,’ Crimson replied. ‘I have one or two old friends who’re familiar with those archives, including the ones still sealed. We have our quarry, we need a trap, and I think I may be able to provide the bait. I’ll need someone here who’s good with computers. Who’s that woman teacher, the one who set up the computer system for the schoolkids?’
    Bruno gave him Florence’s phone number and then set off in search of the person who had best known the murdered man. He found Brian Fullerton at the Hôtel St Denis, sitting in the courtyard under the plane trees with his pipe and a glass of kir. A bowl of olives and an open laptop lay on the table before him. This was his own computer, he explained, and he was looking forward to replacing it with his brother’s once the police had finished with it. He made much of Balzac, who was always delighted to make a new friend, and offered Bruno a drink. Bruno joined him