The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

had reached three, now four.
    To get to the back door she’d have to come past him, and he used a technique that somebody had once used on him in a rugby game and it had put him out of action and left him unable to speak. He’d never hit a woman but this would be better than shooting her. As Yvonne jumped down the last stairs and turned to face the back door Bruno put his entire weight into a punch that started at his knees and ended in the centre of her stomach, just below the rib cage. There was a great whoosh of air being expelled from her lungs and she bent over double and then fell as if she’d been poleaxed. The automatic pistol fell from her hand.
    The count was seven as he collected her gun and tucked it into the back of his waistband so there was no time to open the front door. The count was ten as he began leaping up the stairs as the first rock came in through the landing window.
    Bruno lay flat on the landing, pointing his gun down the stairs and planning to shoot Paul somewhere around his waist, to stop him but perhaps not kill him. He would have one clean shot at a moving target before Paul’s Sten began hosing the stairs with bullets.
    Then he heard the sound of a blow, a grunt and something clattering as it fell. Confused voices, shouting, protesting. Then came a burst of automatic fire from inside the study, shockingly loud.
    Then silence.
    ‘
C’est fini, c’est fini
,’ came a shout. ‘It’s over. I got him. Here’s the gun.’
    The study door was opened and the Sten gun, minus its magazine, was pushed out into the hall.
    ‘Can we come out now? This is Brian Fullerton. Murcoing is dead and we are all safe.’
    At that point Sergeant Jules pulled the second length of fishing line and a new clattering came as the bike toppled and the glass jug filled with teaspoons that had been resting on a chair was pulled down by the falling bike to tinkle against the door.
    ‘Françoise, secure the prisoner on the floor,’ Bruno called. ‘Then go out and get J-J and the sergeant, the doctor and a stretcher.’
    ‘She’s choking, it sounds very bad,’ Françoise said. ‘I’ve cuffed her.’ Her gun poised, she went to the front door, clambered over the bike and shouted for the others to come.
    ‘Come out one at a time with your hands up,’ Bruno called.
    Brian came first, looking defiantly around him, then Florence, her face drained and her hands and lips trembling, butshe looked unhurt. There were no bullet wounds in her hands or feet. Paul had been bluffing with that shot. Finally came Crimson, looking back into the study, from which drifted whiffs of cordite.
    ‘It’s clear,’ said Crimson.
    ‘What happened in there?’ Bruno asked. ‘Keep your hands up.’
    ‘I tripped him, grabbed the Sten and shot him,’ said Brian. ‘It was him or us.’
    ‘There was a shot earlier and a woman’s scream,’ said Bruno. ‘We thought he might have shot Florence.’
    ‘He fired into the ceiling and his sister did the screams,’ said Crimson. ‘It was a bit of theatre.’
    J-J was the first in the door, Fabiola on his heels, and then Sergeant Jules and the
Procureur
. Bruno pointed Fabiola to Yvonne, still straining for breath, rocking back and forward from her waist, her eyes wide with terror. The three hostages dropped their hands and Florence turned accusingly to Brian Fullerton.
    ‘You didn’t have to shoot him,’ she said. ‘He was helpless, spreadeagled on the floor. He’d dropped the gun.’
    ‘We’ll sort this out later,’ Bruno said, and told them all to get back as he looked into the study.
    Paul Murcoing lay in a spreading lake of blood. His handsome face was unmarked but a trail of bullet holes rose from his left hip, across his stomach and up his right chest. His eyes and mouth were open, with a look that might have been surprise.
    ‘Good result,’ said J-J, coming into the room, the others following. ‘Hostages all saved, the bad guy dead, the girl livesto go on trial. We charge her with kidnapping, resisting arrest.’
    ‘I think there might be another trial,’ said Bruno. He turned to Crimson. ‘Tell us what happened in there.’
    ‘They panicked when the first bike fell. Paul had sent his sister upstairs, he was worried about the landing window being vulnerable. Then he took a phone call and as he was speaking we heard her shouting and running downstairs and then nothing until the windows started breaking. That’s when Paul dropped the phone and ran