The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

whatever rendezvous he nominates and bring him in. I wear a tracker in my shoes so you know where I am. You can have cars and a helicopter on standby somewhere close in case we need reinforcements.’
    ‘This is a job for the
Jaunes
, not for you. They’re trained for this.’
    ‘It has to be one man, someone who knows him.’
    ‘You don’t know him.’
    ‘I know enough about him and his family to have a chance of talking him into giving himself up. With the
Jaunes
a shootout is just about guaranteed. Let’s find Crimson and see if he’s heard from Murcoing. He should be inside, fighting his way to the bar to get a drink.’
    They found the Englishman squeezed into a corner by the window that overlooked the river Vézère, trying to rescue Florence from the admiring attentions of the young officer who had led the guard of honour. J-J used his bulk to clear some space around them, introduced himself to the officer and asked him to give them some privacy. With the sensitive antennae of a lifetime in politics, the Mayor realized that something important was happening and suddenly appeared alongside Bruno just as he was explaining that Murcoing had swallowed the bait.
    ‘We won’t know if he’s contacted us until we can get to a computer and check that email address I set up,’ Florence said. ‘I’ve got my laptop in my bag.’
    The Mayor led the way to his own spacious office, which to Bruno’s knowledge had never yet been polluted by the presenceof a computer. Florence sat down at his desk and fired up her machine.
    ‘Don’t you need a plug or something?’ the Mayor asked.
    Florence gave him a maternal look and shook her head before turning back to open the emails. ‘He’s sent something. He wants a phone number to reach you,’ she told Crimson.
    ‘We’d better buy you a disposable,’ Bruno said. ‘He’s going to be expecting to hear an Englishman and someone who knows what he’s talking about.’
    ‘Can you find out where he sent the email from?’ J-J asked.
    ‘Not discreetly and we don’t want him to know we’re looking. But you should have experts with the equipment to track it.’
    ‘The first thing I have to do now is call the
juge d’instruction
and tell him what’s happening,’ said J-J. ‘He’s in charge of this inquiry.’
    ‘But it isn’t just an inquiry any more. It’s a manhunt,’ said Bruno. ‘And we have some time. When Crimson answers that email and gives Murcoing the phone number, we have to say that he’s just arrived in France, let’s say in Paris, coming in from London on the Eurostar train. It will take him some time to get down here so there’ll be no meeting until tomorrow. And Murcoing will need time to arrange the right place for a rendezvous.’
    Crimson let out a short, excited laugh. ‘I’m almost beginning to enjoy this.’

26
    ‘The English are mad,’ said J-J as his aide Josette powered the big Peugeot up the road to the autoroute that led to Bordeaux. ‘Did you hear him? Saying he was enjoying himself. We won’t even be there in time for lunch.’
    Bruno had persuaded J-J to make a last appeal to the
juge d’instruction
on the need to interview Edouard Marty, even though the art squad had reported they could find nothing questionable in his accounts. Bruno was convinced that Edouard must know something more than the bland statement he’d given to the art squad. Yes, he was a director of the company that Francis Fullerton had founded, he had claimed, but he was a very minor shareholder and he was concerned solely with the interior design side of the company and specialized in modern and minimalist design. He had nothing to do with the antiques. And his work for Arch-Inter was simply a sideline to his own architecture practice and his teaching at the university.
    But that left out the connection from a decade ago, when Paul Murcoing and Edouard Marty had been the boys at the swimming pool. The link between Fullerton, Paul and Edouard had to be important. An old friend from his youth, with whom he remained connected in Fullerton’s crooked business, wassomeone to whom a man on the run could turn for help or money or transport.
    ‘How do you want to handle the questioning?’ Bruno asked. He knew from experience that J-J was a relentless interrogator, and while his sheer bulk could intimidate most suspects he also had a subtle sense of the psychology and timing of the art of questioning. ‘Shall we do it the usual way, you play the