The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

discreetly alone, rather than coming with the Mayor, who stood beside Bruno at the door to greet the mourners. Since he was to give the eulogy, the Mayor was wearing his sash of office and accepted with quiet dignity the murmured condolences on the death of Cécile. ‘Friday,’ he kept saying, again and again, as the old folk asked when her funeral would be.
    Joséphine and her sisters were already installed in the front row, Gilles sitting behind them, his notebook open to scribble details. Plain-clothes police were scattered throughout the congregation. More police were in the nearby cafés and J-J himself stood just inside the door of the
Maison de la Presse
, pretending to study the magazines. But of Paul and his sister there was no sign.
    From respect, Bruno was wearing the medal of the Croix de Guerre he had won in Bosnia, which he normally kept in a drawer at his home. He was in full-dress uniform, freshly pressed, and his boots and leather belt polished that morning. Philippe Delaron was taking photographs of the honour guard; eight soldiers and a junior officer from the garrison at Agen stood at ease in the churchyard. The officer looked at his watch.The Mayor looked at Bruno, who glanced across to J-J in the shadows of the shop and shrugged. It was time.
    ‘
Escadron, garde à vous
,’ the officer called. The troops came to attention and marched in pairs into the church, down the nave and as Bruno and the Mayor followed them, took their places at each side of the coffin. The futuristic shape of their FAMAS rifles looked oddly out of place amid the ancient stones. Murcoing lay in state before the altar, on which stood giant photographs of the young fighter he had been. The coffin was closed and on its lid rested his Resistance medal.
    The tolling bell had fallen silent and from his place before the choir, a schoolboy began to beat the slow, steady rhythm of a march on his drum. The choir began quietly and then with slowly increasing force to hum the familiar chords of the Resistance anthem,
le Chant des Partisans
. And then Florence’s pure soprano rang out high and clear throughout the church.
    ‘
Ami, entends-tu le vol noir des corbeaux sur nos plaines?
’ Friend, do you hear the dark flight of the crows across our land?
    Just a handful of words, a tune and some phrases made heavy by the weight of history. Yet as Bruno shifted his eyes from Florence to the coffin and the photographs of the young fighter behind it, he felt the tears begin to gather. He was not alone.
    He saw the eyes of the young officer glisten and Father Sentout weeping openly as Florence reached the line: ‘
Ce soir l’ennemi connaîtra le prix du sang et des larmes.
’ Tonight the enemy will learn the price of blood and tears.
    ‘Bring the guns from the haystacks, careful with the dynamite.’ Behind him he heard the quavering voices of the old people take up the words and then the full choir joined inwith, ‘
Si tu tombes, un ami sort de l’ombre à ta place.
’ If you fall, a friend will come from the shadows to take your place.
    It had all happened a lifetime ago, a generation before he had been born, and Bruno wondered why it moved him so. He suspected it was less the words and the music than the images they summoned in his head: jackboots marching through the Arc de Triomphe, De Gaulle speaking from London to pledge that France would fight on, General Leclerc’s Free French troops racing into Paris as young men like Loïc Murcoing fought against tanks with a handful of weapons in their own streets and villages. He thought of Joe, recounting how as a boy he’d watched as the collaborators of St Denis had been lined up on the bridge Bruno knew so well and shot so that their bodies crumpled into the timeless flow of the river below.
    But as Father Sentout began the Mass there was something else that stirred Bruno deeply, beyond these wartime pictures flickering in his mind. It was the presence around him of the folk of St Denis, young and old, conservatives and communists, men who had worn uniform and women who had kissed them farewell and waited for their return. It was this gathering to commemorate and to remember, to pay tribute to one of the last of the old men who had gone to the hills to take up arms against the invader, knowing that death would be the price of defeat. It was fitting, Bruno believed, that the young people were here, to understand what it had meant to France to be vanquished and occupied by