The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

anybody ever tell you that you’re as brainy as you’re beautiful?’
    ‘Never in quite this context, with me lying in bed and a man who ought to be much more grateful just about to don his hat and leave me to languish.’
    He kissed her again. ‘Close your eyes and think of justice.’
    *
    Delayed by his meeting with the
juge
and the need to brief J-J on the startling news that Paul Murcoing had been a director of Arch-Inter, Bruno collected Balzac and then drove to his home. He saw no sign of Isabelle’s rental car when he pulled onto his land. But seeming to know she was there, Balzac scooted from the back of the Land Rover and round the side of the house to the chicken coop where Isabelle was sitting on a tree stump in the late afternoon sun, watching the birds and smoking. She tossed her cigarette aside as Balzac leaped onto her lap and used his back legs to pedal his way up to lick her neck. Holding the puppy in both hands, she rose and offered the cheek Balzac was not monopolizing to be kissed.
    ‘You walked here?’ She was dressed like a hiker in walking boots and windcheater and somehow still managed to look chic. A light rucksack was on the ground beside her.
    ‘I parked at the hunter’s hide on the far side of the ridge and walked the trail. You should be impressed that I remembered the way.’
    ‘Why the discretion?’
    She gave a slow smile. ‘I could say I was thinking about your reputation or maybe I just fancied a gentle walk through the woods to see how my leg had recovered.’ She took a paper-wrapped bottle from the rucksack and passed it to him. ‘But I’m also bringing a message from the Brigadier along with this peace offering. He says you passed the test.’
    Did the Brigadier never stop playing games? He opened the tissue paper and found a bottle of Balvenie, the Brigadier’s favourite scotch. ‘It didn’t seem like a test to me.’
    ‘I know, he put me through a similar interview. The mood in Paris is poisonous right now with the election so close, people worried for their jobs, lots of documents being shredded, files being sanitized. It’s hard to know who to trust.’
    ‘That’s the life you chose, Isabelle.’
    She nodded. ‘It’s what I thought I wanted, what I still want, if only it weren’t so damn political all the time. It’s like living in Machiavelli’s kitchen. Anyway, it looks like I could be getting that European job. I’m on a shortlist of three and I’m the only candidate who speaks English and has experience of international liaison. I go up to The Hague for the formal interview on Friday morning. You ever been to Holland?’
    Bruno shook his head. He knew there were discount flights from the airports at Bordeaux and Bergerac.
    She gestured to his house. ‘I see you finally put the windows in the roof. Will you show me?’ She picked up Balzac to carry him with her.
    Bruno led the way inside, remembering how he had talked of his plan as they had lain in bed together, sharing that special territory of new lovers as they spoke of plans and dreams and explored possible futures together. Always practical, Isabelle had said he’d have to knock down walls to install stairs. So Bruno was shyly proud of the solution he’d found, to put the staircase into the small room he’d used as a study, fitting his desk and books beneath the stairs and not taking space from his sitting room. He was a little nervous of her reaction. When she climbed the stairs ahead of him, her limp was still noticeable.
    ‘It’s great, Bruno,’ she said, putting Balzac down to explore as she looked into the smaller room to the left and the much larger room to the right and then poked her head into the small shower room he’d inserted between them. They were still empty of furniture. She looked again into the smaller room.
    ‘The children’s room you always planned,’ she said. Her voice was flat.
    ‘That depends if there’s more than one, then they get the big room, or maybe both of them.’
    ‘Aren’t you planning to move up here yourself?’
    ‘Not yet, at least,’ he said. ‘There’s the painting to finish, blinds and curtains to choose. And I like that bedroom downstairs.’ He did not have to add that it was the bedroom that they had shared.
    ‘How will you get the beds up that staircase?’
    ‘I just have to get the mattresses up. The beds I can build myself.’
    She walked across to the window, opened it and looked out at the view across the steadily rising