The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

stay in St Denis with her friends and her horses and never have to see her ex-husband again.
    ‘So this is a very good day,’ Pamela declared, and turned to Bruno. ‘And now I want to hear all about this murder.’
    ‘You mean that under English law someone can bequeath their property to anyone they like? In France it has to go to the family heirs.’
    ‘Yes, I know, it’s part of your
Code Napoléon
. But come on, let’s hear about the murder.’
    The bare facts were easily told. But it was hard to describe the growing scepticism of Yveline the new Gendarme and J-J. Valentoux had gazed at them helplessly when they asked him to prove he had not killed Fullerton the previous day. The man was clearly in shock, still stunned by the sight of his friend so brutally killed and now aghast at the further stress of hostile questioning. He had insisted that he’d been at home in his Paris apartment overlooking the Buttes Chaumont on the previous evening, reading the manuscript of a new play. He had no visitors, had seen nobody and so could not prove that he had not driven down to St Denis, murdered the Englishman, driven back to Paris and then returned in the morning to establish an alibi. He was taken to the Gendarmerie for questioning and detained overnight under
garde
à
vue
.
    ‘If it’s not him, we have nothing, no clue, no motive, no idea of a suspect,’ J-J said. Bruno replied that short of fingerprints or DNA evidence, they could not even be sure the dead man was Francis Fullerton. J-J had nonetheless asked Bruno to call the British consulate in Bordeaux while he sent a query to the British police through the usual informal channels.
    ‘Two gays, they have a quarrel, crime of passion,’ J-J sniffed. ‘That’s the working hypothesis, although I suppose whatever trendy young magistrate gets the case will say I’m prejudiced.’
    ‘Not if Yveline says it first,’ Bruno grinned. ‘Anyway, you are prejudiced. We both know that.’
    ‘That goes for most cops my age,’ J-J grumbled.
    The only new piece of evidence came from the dead man’s trouser pocket; two paper receipts that Bruno had missed in his initial search. Fullerton had twice on the previous day filled his van with diesel, once in Calais and then from a station at the shopping centre outside Périgueux. J-J had sent a detective to check the tapes from the latter’s security camera. Since the receipt gave the time of purchase, it was a simple matter to wind back the tapes, and the man filling his van was wearing the same clothes as Fullerton and looked sufficiently like him for a preliminary identification. After filling his van, he had gone to the air pump to check his tyres and had opened the rear doors, revealing that the van had been full of furniture.
    ‘So that’s the second mystery, apart from the murder,’ Bruno said over the smoked salmon. ‘What happened to the furniture? Did he deliver it somewhere before he picked up the keys to the
gîte
or was it stolen by his attacker? And why did he arrive a day early? Valentoux seemed certain that they had arranged to meet today, and Fullerton had said he’d get an early train through the tunnel and planned to arrive here early afternoon today.’
    ‘And he has no alibi that could show he’d been in Paris yesterday evening?’ Pamela asked.
    Bruno shook his head. ‘He was racking his brains trying to remember, but he’d been at home since the late afternoon. We asked if he’d had food delivered, gone out for a drink, had a phone call – anything.’
    ‘What about his mobile phone?’ Fabiola asked. ‘Can’t you find out from that where he was?’
    ‘Yes, but if he was trying to fabricate an alibi he could have left the phone at his apartment in Paris and still come down here to commit the murder. At least he gave us Fullerton’s cellphone number and we’re trying to trace its movements, but there was no sign of it in his van or in the suitcase we found in the house.’
    ‘Are you sure they were a gay couple?’ Pamela asked.
    ‘Valentoux confirmed that when he was being interrogated.’
    Bruno did not mention the tension that had arisen with J-J and Yveline when Bruno had argued there was too little evidence to hold Valentoux for questioning. There had been another row when Bruno learned that Yveline had delayed sending a fax to the
Procureur
, the public prosecutor, until after his office had closed. Under French law, once a crime had been committed,