The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

in a kir and when Brian asked how the search for Murcoing was progressing, Bruno simply shrugged.
    ‘I’m getting quite a sense of the guy from the emails,’ Brian said, gesturing with his pipe at the laptop.
    ‘But they’re on your brother’s machine,’ Bruno said, and then saw the small thumb drive fixed into a socket on the side of the device. ‘Ah, I see, you copied your brother’s stuff onto that.’
    ‘Not all of it, but the emails,’ Brian replied. ‘It’s going to be a hell of a job working out which parts of his stock are really his and which were stolen. Sorting out his will and his financial affairs will be difficult enough, so I thought I’d try to do some work on that while waiting for the body to be released. But instead, I’ve been going through the emails with Murcoing.’
    There was material in here for half a dozen police inquiries, he explained, including Murcoing’s role in helping buy some of Francis’s guns from some shady types running a bar in Toulouse. There were several long emails from Murcoing, recounting all his grandfather’s theories and suspicions about who got the money from the Neuvic train. The old man saw suspects everywhere, starting with Malraux and some Russian who was in the Maquis in the Limousin, and going on to claim some big insurance firm had been started with part of the loot. There was a long account of some impoverished mechanic from Cadouin who was suddenly able to buy three trucks as the war ended and set up a successful haulage firm.
    ‘Hard to tell what’s true, what contains a grain of truth and how much of it is pure invention,’ Brian concluded.
    ‘Did your brother have anything to contribute?’
    ‘Yes, indeed. He took it all very seriously.’ Brian lit his pipe and sat back as he began to explain that Francis had madeseveral visits to the Public Records Office in Kew, just outside London, looking up the SOE archives. Many of them had been declassified and Francis had scanned photocopies into the computer and sent them off to Murcoing with a rough translation. There were desperate missives to London from Resistance chiefs about how broke they were and how they needed money to feed their men and help support their families.
    ‘But nothing more about the Neuvic train?’
    ‘Yes, that’s what Murcoing was really interested in, but my brother only found snippets in the SOE archives. But he told Murcoing that more files were scheduled to be declassified and he’d hired a researcher to keep an eye out for them. One of the last emails, setting up this last trip he made to France, said he’d gathered lots of new photocopies that he was bringing with him.’
    ‘We didn’t find those at your brother’s house,’ Bruno said, thinking that this could fit with Crimson’s idea for new documents to lure Murcoing out of hiding.
    ‘So Murcoing must have taken them,’ Brian replied. ‘He’s obviously obsessed with this Neuvic business. He has a list of names of Maquis types from the Groupe Valmy and other networks, people he claimed were suspects, or ones that he or his grandfather believed had got away with some of the loot. Lord knows there was enough money at stake. He gives their addresses, the names and addresses of their heirs, the family businesses and farms that suddenly had money to expand after the war. Two or three of his emails ended up with the phrase “They will pay for this!” But he doesn’t say whether he wants to denounce them or blackmail them or what.’
    ‘Could you collect those names for me and email them tome at my office?’ Bruno asked. ‘I’d like to check them against our list of burglaries. What was your brother’s reaction to this kind of thing?’
    ‘It didn’t seem to surprise him. But that was Francis, he was always an enthusiast. Even as a little boy he’d take up some hobby like stamps or aircraft recognition and hurl himself into it for weeks at a time, just like he did with Grandpa Freddy’s wartime career and this venture with Murcoing. We went to see his specialist when he was in one of those expensive treatment centres where they try to wean people off drugs, and he told us that Francis had an addictive personality.’
    ‘What about their personal relationship? Did Murcoing know about Francis’s affair with Yves or his liaisons with other men?’
    ‘Francis was emailing all sorts of different men in ways that made the sexual relationship pretty clear, but he was at pains to keep them all