The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

slowly down the slope from the woods towards him. The cyclist stopped, perhaps thirty metres away, feet on the ground but poised to pedal swiftly away. From a waist pouch, the cyclist took an automatic pistol and pointed it at Bruno. It was big and flat, an automatic, probably the Browning.
    No matter how good his training or how thoroughly he had tried to think through this moment, Bruno learned anew that there was nothing quite like the adrenalin shock of a gun being aimed at him. He told himself that the vest was designed to stop a nine-millimetre round and tried to repress the thought that an untrained shooter usually fired high and there was no vest to protect his head.
    The file in one hand, the phone in the other, Bruno ignored the tremor in his legs and raised his hands above his head as Balzac wagged his tail and trotted up to the bike to sniff at the cyclist’s feet.
    The second cyclist came out of the woods to Bruno’s rightand paused, perhaps twenty metres away. He took off a small backpack and removed a slim black weapon, its magazine sticking out sideways from the barrel. Bruno recognized the Sten gun. After he’d learned that it was missing from Fuller-ton’s collection, Bruno had looked it up. Thirty-two rounds, nine-millimetre bullets, a tendency to rise when fired and very prone to jam. The cyclist held the butt in his right hand, finger on the trigger, and his left hand on the magazine. That meant he didn’t know the gun well. Holding it there meant pressure on the magazine which could alter the angle at which the bullets were fed into the chamber and cause a jam.
    ‘It’s not him,’ shouted the first cyclist, the one holding the automatic. It was a female voice. ‘I know this guy, he’s a cop from St Denis. It’s a trap.’
    ‘
Bonjour Yvonne, bonjour Paul
,’ Bruno said, his arms still high and his eyes fixed on the gun that threatened him. He was conscious that his voice was a notch or two higher than usual and there was a chill lump of fear in his belly. ‘I’ve come to ask you to give yourselves up before anybody gets hurt.’
    ‘Did you see any cars, anybody else following him?’ Paul asked his sister. His face was covered in a fashionable stubble. The sleeve of his cycling vest had ridden up enough for Bruno to see the beginning of the Maori warrior tattoo.
    ‘No, but it’s got to be a trap.’
    ‘The bikes are a good idea,’ said Bruno, straining to keep his voice calm even though his throat was dry. He settled back on his heels to stop the quivering in his legs. ‘Even if there were any cars, you can get away again. I’m hoping you won’t do that. There are no charges against Yvonne. Think of her future.’
    ‘Go back up the hill and keep watch,’ Paul told his sister.He pulled back the bolt to cock the Sten, holding it steady and aiming low. Bruno’s heart thumped as he realized that he was now one pull of the trigger away from all thirty-two rounds of the magazine hitting him in less than three seconds. ‘You expect me to believe that you came just to tell me to give up? Have you got the documents?’
    As Yvonne stood on her pedals to cycle back up the hill, Balzac trotted across to Paul and made a friendly bark of greeting. Paul ignored him, not taking his eyes away from Bruno for a moment.
    ‘There are no documents, Paul. We cooked up that page as bait to get a chance to talk to you. I knew about your grandfather’s war record, about the Neuvic train, about his suspicions.’ The words came out in a rush and he knew that he was not sounding persuasive, even to himself.
    ‘They aren’t suspicions. He spent half his life trying to find out what happened to that money. What about the contents page you sent me from the archive? Was that faked too?’
    ‘Not entirely,’ he said, straining his ears for the sound of a helicopter or even a car engine for some indication that he was not alone facing a submachine gun. He had seen the way the bullets could stitch their way up a human body. ‘Most of the documents exist, they’re just not declassified yet. But I’m told they don’t provide much evidence for your theories. The British really didn’t know what happened to the Neuvic money.’
    ‘You’ll have heard that from Crimson, the guy the papers call the spymaster. So he’s in on this as well.’
    Paul’s voice was even, not carrying any tone of anger or frustration. Bruno hoped he would stay this calm.
    ‘Crimson got involved when you burgled his