The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

out.’
    ‘I tripped him,’ Brian interrupted. ‘That’s when I grabbed the Sten and shot him. I thought he might have another gun.’
    ‘How convenient for you that he’s dead,’ Bruno said. ‘Paul can take the blame for all of it, the thefts and the murder of your brother.’
    ‘You didn’t have to kill him,’ Florence repeated. ‘He’d fallen, lost the gun and you had him covered. I couldn’t believe it when you opened fire.’
    ‘He killed my brother and he would have killed us, too,’ Brian retorted angrily. ‘I was saving our lives.’
    ‘It didn’t look like that to me,’ said Crimson. ‘Florence is right. I won’t mourn for him but there was no need to shoot the man.’
    Brian ignored him and lifted his head defiantly. Bruno stared at him a moment, remembering what he’d learned about Brian’s flight times, and then addressed him.
    ‘When we met last Friday you told me you had just flown into Bergerac, hired a car and come straight to St Denis. Is that right?’
    ‘That’s right. I changed the flight the consulate had booked.’
    Now Bruno knew he was lying and everything fell into place, Brian’s attempt to sanitize his brother’s laptop, his false arrival date, his shooting of Paul even when he was helpless and unarmed. He felt he even understood Paul Murcoing’s phrase, ‘what he was doing to us’.
    ‘When did your brother tell you he was intending to marry Yves Valentoux?’ Bruno asked.
    ‘What, my brother marry?’ Brian scoffed. ‘He was gay.’
    ‘But he wanted a family. He wanted a child, he wanted a spouse and he had found a partner he loved and wanted to live with. He told you that, didn’t he?’
    ‘My brother had all sorts of wild ideas, adoption, fatherhood. His enthusiasms never lasted more than a week or two.’
    ‘This one did. Francis told you he was going to father a child and have it brought up by two friends of Yves who were already raising Yves’s daughter. And you realized that he would thus disinherit you and your children and leave the control of his company to strangers.’
    Brian glared at him, his fingers curling into fists, but Bruno carried on.
    ‘So with Paul and Edouard Marty, your fellow directors in Arch-Inter, you decided to take steps to ensure the company, not to mention the house in Chelsea and the Porsche, stayed in your hands.’
    ‘This is all bullshit, Bruno …’
    ‘Did you not know Edouard Marty was arrested yesterday and is telling us everything? How he picked you up at Bordeaux airport last Monday, drove you out to confront your brother …’
    Bruno was making it up as he went along but had never been more certain of anything.
    ‘You hated him, hated him because he was your mother’s favourite, because of all the money they spent on his debts and his rehabilitation, while you were the dutiful son, the hard worker. He was gay and you were straight. You gave them the grandchildren but he had all the love. He goes to prison but his old sugar-daddy dies and leaves him the house and the business. As your wife said, not bad for two years inside. Then his business took off and he had all the money. And all you had was a token shareholding and the hope that your children might inherit something, and then you learned that even that was going to be taken away from you.’
    Brian stared coldly at Bruno and said nothing.
    ‘We have Edouard’s testimony, we have your flight details, we have a speed camera that took your photo as you drove back in Edouard’s Jaguar and we’ll have your clothes, where I think we will find microscopic specks of your brother’s blood from when you beat him to death. And now you killed Paul so that he conveniently takes the blame for it all.’
    ‘Brian Fullerton,’ said J-J, and Bruno turned to listen. ‘You are under arrest for the murder of your brother, Francis …’
    Bruno felt a punch on his back, stumbled forward and the pistol that Yvonne had dropped and that he had stuffed into his waistband was wrenched from its place. For the second time that day the adrenalin flooded his body. Brian was pointing the weapon at him.
    ‘You think you’re so bloody clever but you’ve no idea what it was like. He was a monster. My parents had to sell their house to pay for the little queer’s treatment and what do you think there was left for me? I’m glad I did it …’
    There was a great clunk and Brian’s eyes went glassy, his knees buckled and he fell as Florence completed her