The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

ridges, fields and woodlandsand not another house or road in sight. Then she turned, leaned against the sill and looked carefully around the big room as if furnishing it in her mind. He wondered if she was thinking of what might have been, but she pushed herself off from the windowsill, flashed him a determined smile and headed down the stairs, speaking over her shoulder.
    ‘I’ve got something for you as well.’
    Balzac was too small to get down the stairs without tripping over his ears so Bruno scooped him up and followed her. Outside, she went back to her rucksack and pulled out a stiff cardboard envelope and handed it to him.
    ‘It was her we were interested in, not just Crimson,’ she explained as Bruno pulled out a grainy surveillance photo of Jacqueline taken at a hotel entrance. She was with a tall and slender man with a thick head of flowing white hair, a man instantly recognizable to anyone who read French newspapers. The next photo showed the two of them embracing in the shadows of an entrance courtyard to what looked like a very plush apartment building.
    ‘That’s your boss,’ Bruno said, finally realizing why anything to do with Jacqueline could set off alarm bells in Paris.
    ‘That was before he became a minister, five or six years ago when he was still mayor of Orléans and she was teaching at the Sorbonne. The building is where he kept a discreet
pied-
à-
terre
on a fancy street behind the Parc Monceau.’
    ‘Did the RG get photos like this of everybody?’ he asked. The
Renseignements Généraux
had been famous for their voluminous files on the left-wing parties, but he wasn’t so very surprised that they had been keeping an eye on fast-rising politicians of all stripes.
    Isabelle shrugged. ‘Who knows if they were watching her or him? Does it matter? They both turn out to be people of interest, particularly now.’
    Bruno was trying to work out the political implications. ‘So now your Minister is worried that Jacqueline’s book might rebound on him and he takes the blame if they lose the election?’
    ‘That’s why he needs to find someone else to take the rap. That’s one of the first laws of politics,’ Isabelle replied. ‘And if the blame somehow falls onto the Americans or the British and their shadowy secret services trying to manipulate our elections and blacken the names of our patriotic politicians … I don’t need to spell out the rest, do I?’
    She took the cardboard folder and the photos back from Bruno. ‘You understand that I can’t leave these with you. I’d better go. Will you walk back to the car with me, you and Balzac?’
    He printed some names on a page of his notebook and gave it to her, explaining the results of the web search at Companies House. ‘We need to see a copy of the will Fullerton made in England. J-J is trying to get them through the usual channels. If you can find out faster through your Scotland Yard connection, it may help. And I’d like to hear if anything is known about these people, directors of this Arch-Inter company.’
    ‘I thought you already had your suspect, this Paul Murcoing who’s one of the directors. Or are you following one of your hunches?’
    ‘Never leave potentially useful information unchecked – isn’t that what you used to tell me?’
    She shouldered her rucksack and began to walk around hischicken coop to pick up the track into the woods. Bruno saw her grimace and her limp was suddenly more apparent. He caught her up, took her arm and turned her round and steered her towards his Land Rover.
    ‘I’m getting a bit pressed for time,’ he lied. ‘I’d better drive you back to your car.’
    She gave him a sharp look but agreed, saying: ‘I’ve something to tell you, and it might be easier to tell you in the car when I don’t have to look you in the eye.’
    ‘If you want to tell me that it’s all over between you and me, I’ve been expecting it,’ he said, carefully keeping his voice neutral. ‘We’ve both known long enough that there’s no future for us. You’re not coming back to Périgord, even if you give up the career in Paris.’
    To get to her car by road would mean driving two long sides of a triangle, so he was taking the short cut along the bridle way and the hunters’ track. It meant driving slowly but they would still be there in a fraction of the time and this was not a conversation that he wanted to prolong.
    ‘We’ve lived with that,’ she said. ‘This is something else.’