The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

representative. He sat back, reflecting on the chain of circumstance that connected the beating-up of some foreign gays a decade ago withthis international company today. And what better outlet could there be for Fullerton’s haul of French and English antiques? This was clearly a much bigger and more lucrative operation than Bruno had assumed, and one that could throw up some alternative explanations for Fullerton’s murder.
    He phoned Bernard Ardouin, the
juge d’instruction
, who called up the website on his own computer as they spoke. Ardouin asked whether Bruno recognized as stolen any of the items in the photographs. No, he replied, but the art squad of the
Police Nationale
might do so, and the place to start would be to compare the website pictures with the photographs on Fullerton’s computer. Bruno explained the original connection between Fullerton and Edouard and asked whether Ardouin had any objections to Bruno’s driving to Bordeaux to interview the architect.
    ‘I’d rather you didn’t do that yet,’ said Ardouin. ‘We don’t want to alert him before we’re sure stolen goods are involved. And as you say, this looks like a matter for the art squad rather than you, but all credit to you for opening up this lead. I’d better brief J-J and get him to print out those photographs on Fullerton’s laptop.’
    ‘Still no sign of Murcoing?’ Bruno asked.
    ‘Nothing from J-J or the Bergerac police and he’s not used his bank card. He’ll have to show his face at some point, it’s just a matter of time. I’ve asked J-J to have some plain-clothes types mixing discreetly with the crowd at the funeral tomorrow.’
    As he rang off, Bruno wasn’t so sure that finding Murcoing would be quite that simple. He shrugged. It was neither his patch nor his responsibility, and he had chores enough to occupy him. It was high time to resume his training sessionwith Balzac, who was by now so accustomed to being hugged and caressed by every human he met that Bruno had some difficulty in getting him to associate achievement with reward.
    His special dog biscuits helped. Each month, Bruno mixed together a litre of milk, a bag of brown flour, an egg and a handful of brown sugar and added some salt. He cut a slice of fat from the ham that hung from the beam in his kitchen, fried it and then poured the fat into the mix along with a shredded clove of garlic. He then cut into tiny slices the crisp remnants of the ham. If he had any gravy left from one of his own meals, or any other useful leftovers, they went into the mix. If it was still too moist, he added breadcrumbs. Baked for thirty minutes in a hot oven, the biscuits had proved irresistible to his previous dog, Gigi, and now to Balzac. Lured by the scent, Balzac would come when called and had learned to approach Bruno from the left with one whistle tone and from the right with another.
    It was when he’d ended the training session with a grooming session and was cleaning Balzac’s ears that he’d been reminded of one avenue he had not tried. It was the identifying tattoo inside Balzac’s ear that did it.
    Bruno went into his study and pulled out the phone book, turned to
Tatouages
in the
pages jaunes
and found two tattooing parlours in Bergerac. He checked his watch, donned his uniform and headed into town, where he’d be in time to catch Pascal at the Post Office taking his mid-morning break. He dropped off Balzac in Hector’s stable and armed with Paul Murcoing’s photograph and the sketch Pascal drew from memory of the tattoo on the arm of the driver of the white van, he drove to Bergerac. Stopping to buy diesel, he made theobligatory courtesy call to Inspector Jofflin to say he’d be coming onto Jofflin’s turf and might have a lead on Murcoing. To Bruno’s relief, he was passed to voicemail and left a message without having to explain his hunch.
    At the first parlour, a place in a run-down part of town that seemed to specialize in gothic images, he drew a blank. The second place was just off the old town, not far from the river, in a street where flower shops alternated with bio food stores, hairdressers and vegetarian restaurants. Ahead of him two women, one with a severe crew cut, were strolling hand in hand. The shop window of the tattoo parlour was dominated by a dramatic collage composed of posters advertising local concerts. Inside, a shaven-headed man in black leather pants and a matching waistcoat, his arms and chest covered in ornate and