The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)
Page 29
‘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 follow-through after the forehand drive had slammed her precious laptop into his temple. The sheer metallic case cracked open and components and letters from the keyboard tinkled to the floor.
‘Thank you,’ Bruno said, his legs still trembling and his mouth dry. Painfully, he swallowed and bent to collect the pistol that had fallen from Brian’s hand. ‘We’ll get you a new computer.’
Florence let out a great sob, threw down the wrecked computer, put her hands to her face and crumpled into Bruno’s arms.
‘Can you please take me home to my children?’ she asked him as J-J handcuffed the unconscious man.
Bruno led her out, leaving J-J and the rest of them to clear up, complete the paperwork and file the charges. He settled her in the passenger seat of his Land Rover and called the Mayor.
‘It’s over. Paul is dead, shot by Brian Fullerton, who has now been charged with the murder of his brother. No hostages hurt. I’m taking Florence home to her children. If Paris calls, tell them it’s all ended well. If Pamela calls, tell her I’m on my way. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Bruno rang off, feeling a great wave of tiredness that slowed him as he climbed behind the wheel and set off back to St Denis. He thought of Yves and the way he’d spoken of his daughter, Odile. He thought of the murdered Francis Fullerton and his yearning to be a father. He felt himself groping to understand these deep and potent tides of parenthood and family, the waves of ancestry and succession that tied past and present together.
He looked at Florence, aching to be back with her children, and he thought of the risks he had taken that evening. And he wondered if he’d ever have stepped into such danger if Isabelle had still been carrying his child.
Acknowledgements
This is a work of fiction and all characters, places and institutions are inventions, except for the historical facts cited below.
The Resistance train robbery at Neuvic in July 1944 took place exactly as described here, and the haul was 2,280 million francs. The final months of the war were a period of sharp inflation, so comparative values are difficult to establish, but the exchange rate calculated for the US Federal Reserve by the US Embassy in Paris in 1945 suggests that the sum taken was around 300 million euros in today’s money, or $400 million. See: www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/rfd/1946/47/rfd47.pdf
In financial terms, it was by far the greatest train robbery of all time. In suggesting that this was five times the national budget for education, I used the best detailed analysis of the French state budget for 1946, which can be found online at: www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/pop_0032-4663_1947_num_2_4_1873
I am grateful to my friend Jean-Jacques Gillot, an eminent local historian and co-author of Résistants du Périgord, an authoritative encyclopaedia of the Resistance in Périgord, for his invaluable researches into the Neuvic affair. He generously shared his archives with me, including those of the Paix et Liberté movement, a shadowy anti-Communist group with access to police archives which was set up after the war to monitor the French left, apparently with clandestine US support. M. Gillot is also the author of the best account of the fate of the Neuvic money, Le partage des milliards de la Résistance, and of Doublemètre, an enthralling account of the Resistance leader Orlov, almost certainly a Soviet spy, who suddenly became exceedingly wealthy after the war. So did many others, including André Malraux, and despite repeated official inquiries, the fate of much of the Neuvic money remains unknown.
The use of the Marshall Plan slush-funds to finance US intelligence operations in Europe after the war is a matter of historical record. My own book, The Cold War: A History (London and New York, 1993), covers much of the ground. Preventing a Communist takeover in France and Italy after 1945, when the Communists were the largest and best-organized of all political parties, was a top priority for the US and Britain. George F. Kennan, the career US diplomat whose famous Long Telegram from Moscow in 1946 sketched out the grand strategy of containment that was to guide US policy throughout the Cold War, argued for US military intervention if the Commun
ists looked like winning power through elections.
My account of Jacqueline’s researches into secret US assistance to the French nuclear programme after 1970 is historically accurate, thanks to the work of my colleagues at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. Their Cold War research centre has assembled an extraordinary archive of documents and astute analysis which illuminates much of the secret history of modern times. Some of the documents I cite on French dependence on US nuclear technology may be consulted at: www.digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113232, www.digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/112388 and www.digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113238f
In the last of these selected documents, the transcript at a Pentagon meeting on 5 September 1973, with Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and future national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, Dr Kissinger notes that ‘the real quid pro quo is the basic orientation of French policy’.
The interpretation of the likely impact of such revelations on French politics is my own invention for fictional purposes.
The brunochiefofpolice.com website has had several queries about some of the foods mentioned in the Bruno novels. The splendid Tomme d’Audrix cheese and the aillou are indeed made by my friend Stéphane Bounichou, who can be found in the markets of Le Bugue on Tuesday and Saturday mornings, Le Buisson on Fridays and St Cyprien on Sundays. Mail order is possible in some European countries. He can be reached via: www.facebook.com/pages/Fromagerie-Le-Ptit-Jean-De-Mai/171737676196647?sk=info
Like Bruno, I am torn between trumpeting the excellence of the wines of Bergerac and particularly of the Pécharmants, and worrying that greater renown might make them too expensive to afford. For the moment, they remain very reasonably priced and details of some of my favourites may be found on Bruno’s website. The magnificent wines of Château de Tire-gand, particularly the grands millésimes of 2005 and 2009, can be found at: www.chateau-de-tiregand.com/index1.html
I am grateful to the Dordogne tourist board for their enthusiastic support for Bruno’s adventures. They are offering to provide by post a book of vouchers for reduced admission to the Lascaux cave and many other caves, castles, gardens and tourist attractions in the region to any reader who sends their name and address to: bruno.perigord.tourisme@orange.fr
As always, the real heroes of the Bruno books are the astute and kindly people of the Périgord and the wonderful paysage and way of life they have crafted over the centuries. It is a privilege to live among them and to share it. Once again I must ask forgiveness from my friend and tennis partner Pierrot, our local policeman whose genial personality and wisdom first inspired the Bruno stories, for covering his placid and law-abiding countryside with fictional corpses.
Bruno would not be Bruno without Jane and Caroline Wood in Britain and Jonathan Segal in New York, and without Anna von Planta and Ruth Geiger in Zurich. My wife Julia and our daughters Kate and Fanny have always been the first to read each new Bruno and have been as perceptive as they are supportive. The food in the Bruno novels owes just about everything to Julia, Pierrot, Raymond the retired gendarme and my other friends and neighbours. Much of this book has been written with Benson, our basset hound, sitting or more often sleeping at my feet until I take him out for a walk and a p’tit apéro with Raymond or the Baron or Joe my neighbour, and often with all three.