The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

term, so they’re on file. We’d have used dental records but as you said, the head was smashed.’
    ‘But right now you’re assuming that your dead man is who you think he is and not the brother. Am I right? What if your corpse is the brother and the man you think is the brother is in fact the crooked antiques dealer and also the murderer?’
    Pamela had been doing too many crossword puzzles, he thought. ‘If it’s the crooked antiques dealer who’s alive, why would he have led me to his hoard of stolen goods? And he must assume that we’ll check the fingerprints. That’s routine.’
    ‘Who was it called you?’
    ‘It was about Gilles. His piece on Jacqueline’s nuclear secrets is on the
Paris Match
website.’
    ‘Are you trying to avoid telling me that your caller was the person you refer to as my favourite French policewoman?’
    He nodded, feeling guilty and reminding himself that he should never underestimate Pamela’s powers of perception.
    ‘Will this
Paris Match
story mean trouble for you?’ she asked.
    ‘Maybe, I don’t know. As long as the Mayor stays in office, there’s not much they can do, beyond taking my special phone away, and I wouldn’t mind that at all. Life was a lot simpler before the Brigadier had me on speed dial.’
    ‘Presumably Isabelle wants to see you about it.’
    He nodded again and warily scanned her face. She looked neither cross nor suspicious, simply thoughtful.
    ‘Have you looked into this Arch-Inter group you mentioned? If they have offices in California they must be a big operation. Wouldn’t they have to fill in some kind of customs form if they ship goods overseas?’
    ‘Not within Europe. Fullerton could bring in and take back vanloads of antiques to Italy or England with no problem. For Russia, he’d need a customs declaration, and for America they’d have to go by container, so there’d be records. The art squad can handle all that, they do it all the time.’
    ‘Pass me my laptop. Fabiola brought it.’ She asked him to plug it into the wall socket and inserted the little plug that connected to the Internet through the cellphone system. While she booted up, he took the opportunity to visit the men’s room, his uniform provoking the usual range of curious and worried glances.
    ‘This Arch-Inter firm is pretty big in the States,’ she said when he returned, gesturing for him to look over her shoulder. ‘That’s quite a showroom they have in Santa Monica and they’re promising regular new deliveries of English and European antiques. Hmm, I wonder …’
    She typed in a Google search for Companies House, London, accessed the website for the register of British companies and typed in Arch-Inter. Up came the name and a number. She tapped twice on the number and up came a list of documents filed by the company, each of which could be downloaded for one pound.
    ‘We don’t even need to pay. Here are the names of new directors added to the board. Surprise, surprise, look who we find.’
    Over her shoulder he read the names of the new directors, Paul Murcoing, Brian Fullerton and Edouard Marty, all added on the same date three years earlier. Francis Fullerton had been a director since the company was formed in 1996. There was another English-sounding name, Alan McAllister, which Bruno recognized from the California branch of Arch-Inter.
    ‘The plot thickens,’ she said, sitting back and looking extraordinarily pleased with herself.
    ‘You should be doing my job.’
    ‘Too easy,’ she replied with a grin. ‘And you might want to check whether Murcoing had a company credit card. If it’s attached to a British bank he could have access to money that your systems aren’t tracking.’
    ‘
Mon Dieu
, we never thought of that …’ He wondered how Pamela knew about such matters and then remembered her account of spending hours with lawyers and accountants, sorting out her mother’s estate.
    ‘Now you need to get your
juge d’instruction
to check the annual reports to see just how much money the company is making,’ she went on. ‘Above all he needs to check the share register and find out how many shares each director owns. That’s how you can tell who’s really in charge.’
    ‘With Fullerton dead, the question now is what happens to his shares. Presumably that’ll be in his will,’ Bruno said, reaching for his hat. ‘I have to go and see Ardouin, the
juge
, and then relate all this to J-J.’ He bent down and kissed her. ‘Did