The Devil's Cave

by Martin Walker

  She shrugged, keeping her back to him. She was wearing a wrap-around apron, washed so often that the floral print had faded almost beyond recognition. Underneath she wore sagging woollen stockings and a long pullover that she had knitted herself with wool from their own sheep. There was no sign of a TV, far less a computer. A shelf on the wall opposite the window carried an elderly radio, what looked like a bible, a farmer’s almanac and a battered cookbook. There were no other books in sight, no newspapers or magazines. What a strange childhood Francette must have known, Bruno thought. How could she hope to fit in with school classmates who’d talk of the latest TV shows and pop songs?

  ‘Where’s Francette?’ he asked. ‘I hear she’s left the supermarket, got a new job.’

  Her mother’s back stiffened. ‘Is this what you came to ask?’

  ‘No, I came to ask about your being beaten. We had a complaint, an allegation. Domestic violence is a crime and Louis could go to prison.’ Out of the window, he could see her husband working on an old tractor at the entrance to the barn. ‘I can see from the way you wince that it’s true.’

  ‘No, I fell. I told you.’ Her head down, it was as if she were talking to the soup she was stirring. Bruno wondered why the house had been built uphill, just above the barn, open to the winter winds, when the barn could have provided shelter. The answer came almost as soon as his mind formed the question: the animals’ waste would have seeped downhill into the home. There were still a couple of farms up in these hills, older than the Junot place, where the animals still lived on the ground floor with the humans above, taking advantage of the warmth from the bodies of the livestock below.

  ‘He used to beat Francette, too, didn’t he?’ Bruno asked. ‘Is that why she left home?’

  Silence from the stove, but her shoulders seemed to sag a little more. Then he saw that the shoulders were shaking and she was trying to damp down some huge, racking sobs. He moved across to stand beside her and looked at her face, tears spilling down her cheeks.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she whispered. ‘Francette could get away. She has her life ahead of her. I have nowhere to go, even if I wanted to.’

  ‘There are places you can go, shelters in Bergerac and Sarlat,’ he said. ‘I can drive you there now.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ she said firmly, stooping to wipe her eyes on her apron. ‘He isn’t always like this. It’s just that everything has gone wrong, the subsidies and then the sheep dying and the bill from the vet that we can’t pay and now the tractor …’

  ‘This beating has to stop,’ Bruno said. He didn’t know what else he could say and he had the feeling that there was something she wasn’t telling him. Not for the first time, he thought how useful it would be to have a policewoman working alongside him.

  ‘Louis is not a bad man,’ she said, standing straight now and more sure of herself. ‘I know him better than anyone.’

  ‘Is he drunk when he beats you?’

  She shrugged, and then winced again, her hand going to her ribs. Whatever the outcome of his confrontation with her husband, Bruno resolved that he’d take her down to the clinic.

  ‘His own wine is all he can afford to drink and there’s little enough of that,’ she said, turning off the gas beneath the soup. ‘Nobody would drink it but him.’

  She turned to the rear wall where Bruno saw a haybox, something he used for long, slow cooking. But he remembered from his childhood, when he was taken in by cousins, that poor families used them because they could not afford the gas.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ he said. He put it on the counter alongside the stove, lifted the soup pan inside and then packed the extra hay on top and sealed the box. It would keep on cooking all day.

  ‘After I’ve spoken to Louis, I’m taking you down to the clinic,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Either you come with me, or I’ll have to arrest you for obstruction of justice and get a doctor to see you in the cells.’ Bruno was bluffing, but he was determined that she see a doctor, preferably Fabiola. She should be back by now from whatever private patient she was seeing.

  He lifted Louis’s shotgun down from the hooks that held it to the wall, opened the breech, held the barrel to the window and squinted. Never much of a gun, it had been badly cared for. The barrels were pitted and it had barely been cleaned since it was last used. There was no sheen of gun oil around the breech and trigger and the wood of the stock was dry. Bruno sighed and took it outside to lock it inside his van before heading down to see the owner.

  Outside, the sky had clouded over and the breeze that never really died up here on the high plateau had turned chill with a hint of rain in the air. A pair of goats gazed up at him before lowering their heads once more to the rough grass. He could see Louis bent over the front of the old Somua tractor, trying to get the engine to turn over with a starting handle. As he approached, Bruno could hear curses interspersed between the dry wheezing of the cylinders. He noticed a jug of wine on the floor beside the vehicle. The wood of the barn needed a coat of creosote and one of the hinges on the doors was hanging loose.

  ‘What in hell do you want?’ came the surly inquiry. Junot barely looked up from the tractor and his voice was slurred with drink.

  ‘I want to talk to you. We’ve had a formal complaint that you’re beating your wife, and it’s clear that she’s been hurt. Was it you?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is. It’s against the law. And where’s your daughter gone?’

  Junot stood up, throwing down the starting handle. He was a stocky figure of about Bruno’s height, heavy in the shoulders and with thick, well-muscled forearms. He glared at Bruno, his eyes red and his jaw clenching as if he was ready to fight.

  ‘Why don’t you leave us alone?’

  Bruno shook his head, keeping his eyes on Junot. ‘This is my job, Louis. I have to find out what’s going on. Where’s Francette? Or did you beat her up as well? Did you hurt her so badly that she left? Is that what happened?’

  Junot’s eyes narrowed and Bruno saw him shift his weight to his front foot and his left shoulder moved a fraction forward. Bruno knew the signs: Junot was going to throw a punch with his right fist.

  It came, slightly faster than Bruno had expected. As he ducked beneath the swing he saw Junot’s left coming from the other direction and his leg lifting for a kick. Bruno moved forward inside the left, caught the rising leg and jerked it upwards, sending Junot crashing onto his back. Junot rolled, clambered to his feet and was coming back at Bruno with the starting handle.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Louis. Put it down and there’s no harm done,’ Bruno said. ‘Otherwise you’re facing a prison term.’

  With a cry that began as a curse and became a desperate wail, Junot attacked, swinging the handle like a cutlass. Bruno stepped back out of range and then slammed a punch into Junot’s kidney as the momentum took the man around. Junot came full circle, the handle still in his hand, but Bruno was expecting him, stepped inside the swing and hit him hard just under the breastbone. It was a short punch but all of Bruno’s weight was behind the blow.

  Junot stopped as if he’d run into a wall. The handle dropped from his hand and he sank heavily to his knees, bending his head down and making retching sounds as he tried to suck air into his lungs.

  Bruno went across to the well, where a full bucket stood beside the stone rim. He carried it back to Junot and emptied the contents over the man’s head. He looked up and saw Junot’s wife standing at the door of her kitchen, a dishcloth twisting in her hands but her face impassive. At least, Bruno thought, she had not rushed to her husband’s defence. He’d taken a bruise or two from battered wives in the past. She turned and went back into the kitchen, closing the door behind her.

  Junot was half panting, half sobbing, but he seemed to be getting some air. He raised his head and a long trail of drool fell from his mouth. His eyes began to focus and he looked up at his house wi
th its closed door and then at Bruno.

  ‘Bastard,’ he said, and vomited.

  Bruno picked up the jug of wine and emptied it onto the ground. He could smell its sourness, as bitter as the sense of defeat that seemed almost to ooze from Junot. His farm and family falling apart around him, and now he gets knocked down on his own land and his wife doesn’t want to back him up. Bruno went back to the well and loosened the ratchet to send the bucket down to fill it again.

  ‘It’s not so easy when someone fights back,’ he said, coming back with the bucket and putting it down by Junot’s knees. ‘Least of all when you’ve been drinking all day.’

  Junot put his hands in the bucket and lapped from them, and then splashed water over his face.

  ‘What’s wrong with the tractor?’ Bruno asked.

  ‘Bugger won’t start.’

  ‘You checked the plugs?’

  Junot shrugged. Some rusty tools were piled into a plastic box that had once held ice cream. Bruno pulled out the only spanner but it didn’t fit. He went back to his van and came back with his own tool box, took out a can of lubricating oil and poured it onto the rust around the sparking plugs. He checked the wiring and then fitted his own ratchet wrench to remove the plugs. The first one took a couple of taps with the hammer but the others came out easily enough. They looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned for years, the gaps clogged with old carbon. He used his wire brush to clean them, put them back and then handed the starting handle to Junot, still kneeling by the bucket as he watched Bruno work.

  ‘Give her a try,’ Bruno said. Maybe Junot would open up enough to talk if something went right for him today. He lumbered to his feet, looking first at Bruno and then at the starting handle, squared his shoulders and inserted it into the hole at the base of the engine. He braced himself and turned it, getting a reluctant mechanical cough for his effort. He turned it again, the handle kicked in his hands and the engine roared into uneven life.

  ‘It must recognize your touch,’ Bruno said, speaking loudly over the sound of the engine.

  ‘I’ve known it since I were a lad, when my dad first got it,’ Junot said, climbing into the seat and driving it from the barn into the yard.

  ‘Can you give me a hand with the harrow?’ he asked as he jumped down. ‘I want to get the potatoes in today.’

  Bruno helped him push out the broad harrow with its eight discs, and they fixed it to the tow bar. Then Junot turned off the motor, leaned against the big side wheel and began to roll himself a thin cigarette.

  ‘You going to arrest me?’

  ‘You tell me. Are you beating her?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’ Junot lit his cigarette and squinted at Bruno through the smoke. ‘It was Francette. She disappeared one weekend, came back two days later with some fancy new clothes, new hairstyle, perfume. I never saw her look so good.’

  Junot shook his head, half-smiling at the memory, but then his face darkened. Bruno could almost see the frustration in the man, his pride in his daughter battling against his fears for her and his own shame at not being able to provide her with the clothes and life she craved.

  ‘She looked like a different girl, but it was more than that,’ Junot said, a harder note back in his voice. ‘She acted different, like she had stars in her eyes. But she wouldn’t say where she’d been or who paid for it all.’

  He fell silent. Bruno waited a long moment and asked, ‘What then?’

  ‘She went away for a whole week, not telling us. I was frantic, wanted to call you or the Gendarmes. But the wife said, no, we had to let her go, have a bit of fun. Brigitte and I had a row after that, and then Francette came back, more new clothes and one of those fancy bracelets and a little gold chain round her ankle. And then she said she’d be leaving home, and leaving her job at the supermarket. That rocked me. It’s the only money we’ve got coming in. I mean, we always knew she’d leave one day, but it’s been a bad couple of years and I didn’t know how we’d be able to cope. So then there was a row, a bloody big one, shouting across the table. She called me a useless old drunk.’

  ‘What did you call her?’

  ‘What do you think? She comes back after a weekend away, new clothes, new hairdo, jewellery. If it had been a regular boyfriend, someone we could meet, well that would be all right. But she wouldn’t say anything about him. I was frightened for her, Bruno. You hear things these days, about pimps and that. I was worried sick and I was drinking, so I said she was bloody well staying at home instead of going off like some cheap tart, and that’s when it all went wrong.’

  Bruno nodded encouragement, not wanting to break into Junot’s recollection.

  ‘I told her to go upstairs to her room, like I had when she was younger. She just laughed at me. So I went to give her a push up the stairs but she wouldn’t go and we were shouting and then she slapped me. So I clipped her round the ear, but it was worse than I’d meant and she went down and then Brigitte was pulling at me so I backhanded her and she went down as well, and banged her side against the table and her face on the chair.’

  He fell silent, looking at the ground by his feet. ‘Twenty years married and that was the first time I ever laid a hand on her, and I wish to God I hadn’t.’ He drew on his cigarette but it had gone out and was too short to relight. He tossed it away and looked up. ‘You going to arrest me?’ he repeated.

  ‘Just tell me what happened next.’

  ‘It was a proper mess, nosebleed and everything. I stopped the nosebleed, cleaned her up and carried her upstairs. When I came down, Francette was gone. I don’t know how but I thought I heard a car. That was the last we’ve heard of her. But if it was her fancy man, he must be local because I wasn’t that long upstairs.’

  ‘And that was the only time you hit Brigitte?’

  Junot nodded. ‘I wanted to take her down to the clinic to be looked at because there’s a hell of a bruise on her side and I know she’s in pain. But she wouldn’t go. She said if she went there’d be an inquiry and I’d go to prison.’

  ‘Let’s take this one step at a time, Louis. Brigitte is hurt and I’m going to take her down to the toubib,’ Bruno said, using the slang term for a doctor. ‘But in the meantime, you better get that tractor started again and get those potatoes in.’

  5

  As a child in the church orphanage, Bruno’s best friend had been the little terrier that belonged to the cook. So he had been distressed to hear in one of the sermons that he attended as part of each day’s Mass that animals had no souls. In his memory, he had been six, perhaps seven. Not long after that he had been released from the orphanage and dispatched to the noisy, undisciplined home of the woman he was told was his aunt. On his first night there he had cried, not for the orphanage nor for the chaos of the six other children he was told were his cousins, but for the loss of the little terrier. He couldn’t believe that it had no soul and that he would never see it again in this life or the next. His refusal to accept that sentence and the priestly authority from which it came was the first moment he had known that he was Bruno, a person who thought for himself and questioned whatever he was told.

  Now, as he greeted Hector and fed him his daily treat, he relished the horsy, oily smell of the saddle that he placed on Hector’s back. He listened to Hector crunching the carrot and rested his head against the welcoming warmth of the great neck. Since the shooting of his dog Gigi by Basque terrorists, Hector had become an emotional anchor for Bruno. As if by instinct at Bruno’s loss, Hector after Gigi’s death had drawn closer. He could never feel comfortable without an animal close to the centre of his life, a creature with intelligence and warmth in its eyes, with affection and trust in its greeting.

  Bruno felt an understanding with his horse and a sympathy that confirmed his childhood conviction that the priest and the Church were wrong. He seldom thought much about faith and he liked his religion to be traditional and simple. But of one thing he was convinced; if le Bon Dieu was half as wise and merciful as they said, then he
would want dogs and horses in heaven.

  He led Hector from the stable with Bess and Victoria ambling behind on the leading rein. It was rare for him to ride alone. Usually he rode with Pamela, who owned the house and stable and had taught him to ride. Still known to most of the town by her first nickname as the Mad Englishwoman, she had become a popular figure in St Denis, where people thought of her as Bruno’s girlfriend. Bruno would not have put it like that. He thought himself fortunate to be invited on occasion to share Pamela’s bed. But she had made it clear that after a failed marriage back in Britain, she had no desire for any permanent relationship. And now she was back in Scotland caring for her mother after two devastating strokes, and Bruno had no idea if or when she planned to return.

  Fabiola the doctor, Pamela’s tenant in one of the gîtes that she normally rented to tourists in the summer, usually accompanied the morning and evening rides. But when Bruno had taken Brigitte Junot to the clinic Fabiola had explained that she’d have to be on duty this evening since she’d missed the morning surgery.

  Bruno swung himself into the saddle and up the familiar lane from Pamela’s house toward the bridle path up to the ridge. Pamela’s two horses were a little older and slower, so Bruno guided Hector up the slope to the ridge at a gentle walk. Only once did his horse toss his head in a moment of impatience. Hector was accustomed to his evening gallop.

  At the town clinic, Fabiola had simply ignored Bruno’s inquiry about her absence in the morning, and steered Brigitte straight into the consulting room while Bruno was told to wait outside. After twenty minutes, Bruno had been summoned inside to be told that Junot’s wife had two cracked ribs, suffered in a fall she insisted was an accident, and in no circumstances would she testify against her husband. Fabiola had been cool and businesslike with Bruno, warm and sympathetic with Brigitte. But she had asked Bruno to make regular visits to the Junot farm to ensure that no such ‘accident’ took place in the future.