The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6) by Martin Walker Read Free Book Online Page A

had been run by a series of temporary commanders, all of them women.
    The new one, Yveline Gerlache, had just arrived that week from Lorraine. So far, Bruno had met her only for a brief courtesycall and coffee at the
Mairie
. They were to have been guests at a dinner party thrown by the Mayor, but then his wife had been taken to hospital. Bruno reminded himself to organize a replacement dinner as she shook hands. In her late twenties and armed with a law degree, she had graduated the previous year from the officers’ training academy in Melun. Solidly built but with delicate features and unusually long eyelashes, her grip was as firm as a man’s. Beside her was Françoise, a Gendarme whom Bruno knew well. Ordinarily he’d have kissed her on both cheeks, but Françoise held back, offering him her hand.
    The lanky young male recruit was weighing himself down with a forensic bag, camera, screens and other equipment that he took from the rear of the van. He tried to add a roll of crime-scene tape to his burden and one of the screens slipped from beneath his arm. He glanced nervously at Yveline, who looked at Bruno and rolled her eyes.
    ‘You might not need all that,’ said Bruno. ‘The
Police Nationale
are sending a full forensics team. Their head of detectives is on his way. It seems that the dead man is a foreigner, an Englishman.’
    ‘So it’s too sensitive for us clodhoppers from the Gendarmes,’ Yveline said with a grin, but her eyes were not smiling.
    ‘And much too serious for a country bumpkin like me,’ Bruno replied, and told her what he had learned. She heard him out and then asked: ‘What’s their relationship? Gays?’
    Bruno shrugged. ‘I haven’t asked but I imagine so. The Englishman’s an antiques dealer. His French friend Valentoux is a theatre director. They were planning a holiday here together.’
    ‘A lovers’ quarrel?’
    ‘It’s possible. But there’s no blood on him and if he left Paris when he said he did the timing of his phone call suggests he wouldn’t have had time to kill the guy and then clean up. Autoroute and petrol receipts fit his story.’
    Yveline glanced across at Valentoux. He had at last put down his plastic bag and had a large white handkerchief pressed to his face.
    ‘He’s dead, sure enough,’ said Fabiola, shaking her head as she returned from the body. ‘As brutal a killing as I’ve ever seen. Jaw, teeth, cheekbones and skull all shattered by something cylindrical and almost certainly metal. An iron bar, maybe one of those things you need to change a car tyre. Time of death was probably between six and ten yesterday evening.’
    Bruno still had his gloves on, so he opened the small hatch at the side of the Ford where the spare wheel and tools were kept. Nothing seemed to be missing. Yveline had donned her own gloves and was looking in the back of Valentoux’s Clio. She looked at him and shook her head.
    ‘Still, our theatrical friend could have killed him last night, washed and changed and driven away and then given himself an alibi on the autoroute this morning,’ said Yveline.
    Bruno nodded thoughtfully, and was about to follow her determined stride back to the body when Fabiola caught his arm.
    ‘You’re going to be stuck here with the body until they take it to the forensics lab in Bergerac. That means you won’t be able to pick up Pamela at the airport. I’m meant to be off now so I can do it. Five o’clock, wasn’t that when her plane lands? But we’ll expect you for dinner.’

5
    Bruno knew he would not quickly forget the expression on Yves Valentoux’s face when J-J said he would be detained overnight at the Gendarmerie for questioning. He had cast a look of hopeless appeal at Bruno before Yveline pushed the Parisian into her van. Already devastated by the death of his lover, Valentoux was now being treated as the prime suspect on what Bruno thought was thin evidence. J-J had brushed aside Bruno’s discreet suggestion that he was being