The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

She paused and they drove on in silence, Balzac resting quietly on her lap, quite content just to lie there and feel her hand stroking his back.
    ‘I don’t really know how to begin, because I know that as soon as I say this it really is over between us.’ Her voice didn’t sound like Isabelle at all, none of that energy and eagerness he knew so well. ‘There’ll be no more surprise reunions, no more fantasies of having you for a weekend in Paris. It’s final. You’ll never want to speak to me again.’
    He rounded a bend and saw her car parked by the hunters’shack, perhaps a hundred metres ahead. He had a sudden presentiment of what she might be about to say and felt a great hollowness begin to gather somewhere deep in his gut.
    ‘I have done something unforgivable,’ she said as he drew up beside her car. Her head was bowed and she seemed to be speaking to Balzac more than to him, or perhaps making her farewell to the puppy she had always called ‘ours’.
    ‘It was that night before the summit, the night before Gigi was shot, when we were together.’
    Bruno was sure of it now. Her voice seemed to be coming from a long distance away. He wasn’t sure that he could speak.
    ‘I got pregnant and I didn’t tell you.’ He heard her open the car door and felt her place Balzac gently on his lap but he couldn’t turn his head to look at her. ‘I had the abortion and never told you. I think I knew that you’d talk me out of it, or you’d try, and that was a conversation I couldn’t face.’
    Her hand touched his cheek and he felt the vehicle shift as her weight left it. ‘I know what this means to you. I’m sorry, Bruno.’
    He sat immobile, stunned, barely registering the way she limped to her car without looking back, unlocked it, climbed stiffly in and drove away. It was Balzac who brought him back to reality, clambering up the steering wheel to get close enough to lick Bruno’s chin before tumbling back onto his lap.

24
    ‘Why did you race off like that? I said I was sorry, that I knew it wasn’t your fault. Pamela told me all about it.’ Fabiola was breathing hard as she brought her mare to a halt beside Bruno.
    ‘It’s nothing to do with you. It’s me,’ he replied. ‘I had a bit of a shock today so I felt a need to clear my head with a gallop. I’m the one who should apologize.’
    ‘What shock? Pamela’s fine, as good as new.’
    ‘It’s not that. Forget it.’
    Even during the ride, Hector racing beneath him faster than they had ever gone together, the finality of Isabelle’s revelation still stunned him. There had been a new life and now there was not. It was not just the wind of his reckless ride that was blurring Bruno’s eyes. It would have been kinder of Isabelle never to have told him, but that was not her way.
    Fabiola eyed him curiously. ‘So if it’s not me you’re angry with, let’s not take it out on the horses. Can we go back more slowly? Victoria’s too old for a ride like that and I don’t think Balzac enjoyed it.’
    Bruno looked down to where the puppy was huddled up as deep inside the binoculars case as he could go, staring up at Bruno with wide eyes. He was being selfish, Bruno chided himself, and foolish to think that he could escape dealing withthis by pushing his horse and his own horsemanship to their limit. He turned Hector and began to walk him back along the forest ride, Fabiola falling in alongside but too wise to speak. He knew that some unpleasant nights lay ahead of him, failing to sleep or waking in the small hours and thinking of the way Isabelle had looked at the extra rooms he had built into his house and what the sight and reality of them would have done to her.
    But that was for the future. He had a job to do, a murderer to hunt down, a suspicion to pursue and friends like Fabiola to whom he owed more than this surly silence. At that moment, duty itself vibrated for his attention from the phone at his belt. He answered and heard J-J’s voice.
    ‘We found the stolen camper van, or at least the plates. Some Dutch tourist realized his own van had suddenly grown French plates, the ones we were looking for. It looks like Paul put the Dutch plates on his own van.’
    ‘Where was this?’
    ‘A campsite just outside Hendaye, down by the border. It looks like he got over into Spain. Or that’s what he wants us to think. Still, we’ve got the Spanish police alerted.’
    ‘Have you got anywhere with those wills yet?’
    ‘We have the