The Devil's Cave

by Martin Walker

  Bruno had driven Brigitte home, where Junot was waiting at the farmhouse door. He came down to help his wife out of the passenger seat and lead her inside. A long stretch of land alongside the vegetable garden had been ploughed and tilled. The potatoes had been planted. Bruno followed them inside, and saw that Junot had cleaned the kitchen and set the dinner table for two without wine glasses. A jug of water stood on the table, alongside a small jam jar containing some freshly picked wildflowers. Bruno went to his van, took Junot’s shotgun from the back, and hung it again on the pegs on the wall. ‘You’d better have a hunting licence for my next visit,’ he said. Then he left them alone.

  He thought he had done the right thing in taking Brigitte back and Fabiola had seemed to agree, but Bruno wished he could have talked to her at greater length. He trusted his own instincts but he had come to rely on Fabiola’s professional judgement when it came to medical and family matters. Her disappearing with some vague reference to a private patient was quite out of character, so Bruno sought another explanation. He wondered if some mutual friend had developed an illness too grave to be made public. It couldn’t be the Mayor; he had seen him that morning. What of those tests on the Mayor’s wife? Or Sergeant Jules at the Gendarmerie, whose rubicund face always seemed just a few more p’tit apéros away from a coronary. He grimaced; this was foolishness. Fabiola would tell him when she was ready.

  Where the trees began to thicken into a forest, Bruno slowed the horses and dismounted. A wide firebreak was cut into the trees. Its smooth turf reminded Bruno of the fairways he’d encountered on those days when the Baron had tried to teach him to play golf. It had become a favourite spot for a brisk gallop. Today he could see a solitary rider standing silhouetted in the notch the firebreak made on the horizon, perhaps a kilometre away. He undid the leading reins from Bess and Victoria before climbing back into the saddle. Now the horses could go at their own speed, and Hector lengthened his stride into the run along the ridge that he enjoyed so much. The solitary rider had gone. It was at this time of evening, even more than when night fell and Bruno retired to his solitary bed, that he most missed Pamela.

  She had taught him to ride, organized the birthday gift of Hector and become a trusted friend as well as a lover. For almost all of his life, in the orphanage and then in the military, he had been in masculine surroundings. Women were placed in convenient categories: wife and mother, nun and teacher, colleague and sister, lover. But women had never been friends before. Indeed, he remembered nodding in agreement when some rugby club sage had suggested that friendship between the sexes was impossible: the sexual current would always flow. So it did, he thought, and so it must. But just because he found Fabiola attractive, or because he was privileged to spend some of his nights with Pamela, that didn’t mean that there was no friendship. He liked them, enjoyed spending time with them and their shared responsibility for the horses. Above all, he trusted them, in the way that he trusted the Mayor and the Baron, some old army friends and a handful of men in the town.

  Now the gathering speed of Hector’s run through the firebreak blew from his mind all thoughts of anything save the gallop and the sense of Hector’s power beneath him. With the drumming of the hoofs and the wind in his face, Bruno felt wonderfully alive and knew that he was laughing aloud as he passed a small clearing and caught, from the corner of his eye, a glimpse of another rider on a white horse.

  It took something from his pleasure, his assumption that he was alone with a horse he adored in woods that he knew. He was being foolish; his communion with nature did not require solitude and the woods were big enough for everyone. Still, slowing Hector to a canter and then to a trot as the end of the turf approached, he felt the real world start to intrude once more. Once stopped, he checked his phone and saw that he’d missed a call from Pamela. As he waited for Bess and Victoria to amble up the ride towards them, Bruno returned her call.

  ‘How is your mother?’ he began, after they exchanged greetings.

  ‘Not much change. My aunt insists that she recognizes us, but I doubt it. She seems to react the same way whoever comes into her room, the doctor or a nurse or even the cleaner. Anyway, I’m going to have to make a decision, because the doctor says she’s stabilized now and she’ll have to leave the hospital.’

  Her mother would need full-time care. Pamela had looked at various homes in Britain but the only ones that she deemed tolerable were alarmingly expensive, so costly that they would devour the value of her mother’s house and her savings within a few years. Bringing her to France might be an option, but Pamela had no illusions about the emotional drain it would be to keep a comatose mother at home. They had talked it through on the phone before; there were no good options.

  Bruno told Pamela of the ride, of the horses, and of the strange appearance of the dead woman in the punt, the pentagram and the candles and the bottle.

  ‘What was the brand?’ Pamela asked at once. ‘The vodka.’

  ‘I didn’t notice and it’s gone to the lab now to be tested for prints and probably contents. Why?’

  ‘If it’s a rare brand, it might give you a lead. I don’t know, it just struck me as possibly important.’ She broke off. ‘Listen, Bruno, I’m going to have to come back, maybe next week, for a few days to do some admin and find out if it’s going to be possible to cope with my mother at home. Maybe I can find a young school-leaver who can combine some cleaning with keeping an eye on Mother, like babysitting, to give me a break.’

  ‘You know what the minimum wage is here, and then you can almost double it for the social charges,’ Bruno said. ‘But I’ll ask around.’

  Pamela rang off, and Bruno saw that Bess and Victoria, who had done this ride with Pamela a thousand times, had reached the end of the firebreak and had now turned round and begun to trot back. He put the phone into its holster and urged Hector into a trot, pondering the impact the arrival of Pamela’s mother might have on their affair. At that moment he spotted a white horse being led by a tall woman emerging from the small clearing. It was presumably the same horse he had seen from the corner of his eye.

  ‘Can you hear me this time?’ came a woman’s voice. She was standing at the far side of the horse, and as she spoke she removed her black riding cap and pulled something at the back of her neck to release a great rush of dark, glossy hair that fell over her shoulders. She stepped forward, and he heard the clicking of spurs on her riding boots. Pamela had taught him never to wear them; his horse should work with him through trust rather than fear. It took him a moment to recognize the woman from the white sports car. Her name came to him: Eugénie.

  ‘Yes, I hear you,’ he said, stopping. ‘But I didn’t know you’d spoken before. Can I help?’

  ‘My horse started limping. I think maybe he has something caught in his shoe.’ She spoke like a Parisian but there was some regional accent underneath it that he couldn’t identify, perhaps Alsace or somewhere near the Swiss border. Without the sunglasses, her eyes were dark brown. With her raven-black hair he’d have expected an olive complexion, something of the south. Instead she had the light skin of a blonde.

  Bruno dismounted, tying Hector’s reins loosely around the nearest tree, and fixing the leading rein to Victoria and Bess. The two mares ambled across to Eugénie’s horse, which whinnied in greeting. She looked lame, favouring a foreleg.

  ‘Do you know your horse well?’ he asked her when his horses were secure. ‘Have you looked at her foot?’

  ‘It’s only the second time I’ve ridden her and she won’t let me look at it.’

  The horse didn’t look temperamental. A mare, she was smaller and looked a lot older than Hector. She seemed calm in the company of Bess and Victoria. Bruno approached her through them, trailing his hand across Bess’s flanks. The white mare let him stroke her nose and he began whispering to her as he’d seen Pamela do to a strange horse. Finally he knelt and felt the foreleg. There was no swelling so he picked up the foot to examine the shoe and found that it was hanging sligh
tly loose, two of the nails gone and others on their way. He didn’t see how Eugénie could have ridden it without noticing it, or hearing it. He took a small all-purpose tool from the pouch on his belt and unfolded the pliers, pulled out the remaining nails and handed the woman the horseshoe.

  ‘I’d walk her home if I were you,’ he said. Some might have called Eugénie beautiful, her complexion a perfect ivory and her features classic. But there was a lack of animation or perhaps too much self-control in her face. He would like to see her laugh, or be excited by something. ‘And she’ll need to see a maréchal before you ride her again.’

  ‘You know your horses, Monsieur le chef de police,’ she said, making no move to leave nor to comfort her horse. ‘You must be an expert, from the speed you were going when you raced past me.’

  ‘I’m a beginner,’ he laughed. ‘I only started riding last year, but I’ve had a great teacher and a wonderful horse. This is Hector. He’s the expert, not me.’

  He expected her to say, ‘Hello, Hector,’ or to make some friendly overture or even to thank him. Instead, after a brief pause to consider what he had said and while keeping her features immobile, she asked, ‘Where do I find this maréchal?’

  He raised his eyebrows. Any horsewoman should know that. ‘In the phone book, under c for chevaux. There’s one in Sarlat and another in Bergerac, or try the stables at Meyrals. There’s an old stable hand called Victor who knows a lot more about horses and horseshoes than most blacksmiths.’

  She gave neither acknowledgement nor thanks, and her face remained impassive. And again there was the pause before she spoke.

  ‘Is there any news about the woman in the boat? Has she been identified yet?’ she asked.

  Bruno shrugged. ‘Not that I’ve heard. We’re waiting for the pathologist’s report. But she’s not on any of the lists of missing persons in this Département.’

  ‘I thought you could identify everybody these days, with teeth and fingerprints and DNA.’

  ‘Sure, if you simply want to confirm someone’s identity and you have their dental records and the DNA of a relative. But if you have no reference to go on, as in this case, then it’s very slow and uncertain. If we’re lucky, her fingerprints may be on file somewhere. Otherwise, we may never identify her.’

  ‘So what you need would be a national data base of DNA and dentistry, then you could identify anyone.’

  ‘In theory, yes, if the computer program worked and if the dentists never misfiled their records and the courts didn’t condemn it as a breach of human rights.’ He spoke lightly, trying to be jocular, conscious of a slight sense of challenge in trying to provoke some life into her face. He did not succeed.

  ‘What about those markings on the body?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps they could help identify her.’

  ‘If they had been tattoos, you could be right. But they were temporary markings.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘You must have heard the radio, that business about Satanism.’

  ‘No, I didn’t hear the radio. But I talked to the reporter and said it seemed far-fetched. It doesn’t seem to have stopped him.’

  ‘You don’t take it seriously?’

  ‘Death is always serious, but I don’t know what the devil has to do with it.’

  ‘Your local priest sounded rather alarmed, according to what I heard on the radio. And he seemed to know what he was talking about.’

  ‘So he should. He’s a priest,’ Bruno said. ‘Getting alarmed about the devil is part of his job description.’

  She considered this. ‘You mean like that line from Voltaire – “God will pardon me; it’s his profession.”’

  Bruno smiled. ‘That sounds about right, but I didn’t know it came from Voltaire.’

  ‘These clever sayings usually do,’ she said with a sudden and unexpected smile. It felt to Bruno like a reward. ‘That’s why I always say Voltaire when I don’t really know.’ She fell silent, but the smile lingered on her lips and she waited, as if expecting him to say something.

  ‘Are you living down here or just visiting?’ he asked. He remembered that Foucher had called her his partner. She wore no wedding ring, just a curiously shaped black band in some dull metal that seemed to curl sinuously up her index finger like a tiny snake. Her eyes followed his glance and she shifted her grip on her horse’s bridle.

  ‘Visiting, but I might end up staying some time,’ she said. Again there was that short pause, as if waiting for a translation, before her reply.

  ‘The Mayor told me about the plans for a holiday village,’ he said, aware that his probing was clumsy and that she’d realize he was simply trying to prolong the conversation. ‘That’s a big piece of land to put together.’

  She said nothing, didn’t even shrug. ‘I must be getting back. Among other things, there’s an old lady I have to look after.’

  Bruno’s thoughts went back to his phone conversation with Pamela. Perhaps this woman would know something useful about caring for the elderly.

  ‘Do you do it yourself or do you hire specialists?’ he asked.

  ‘I do it. I had a very wise …’ She paused, as if choosing the next word with care. ‘A very wise guardian who said I would grow too tall to be a dancer, so he made sure I trained as a nurse.’

  This time there was a hint of another expression on her face; the faintest tightening of the mouth and a lowering of eyebrows. It passed as quickly as the dappling of sunlight through the hesitant leaves of springtime. She turned, leading the horse back through the clearing to the bridle path that led down to the river. ‘Au revoir.’

  He wanted to ask her if she still danced and how far she had pursued it, but instead he watched her go, hearing her spurs catch and click, thinking he should have advised her to remove them while she walked through the wood.

  6

  Bruno had risen early, fed his chickens and been for a run through the woods behind his home, knowing the paths too well to be distracted by the mists that rose from the river at this time of year. It was at times like this that he most missed Gigi, the way the dog had trotted beside him and then darted away to follow some new scent, before finding his way back to rejoin Bruno for the final sprint along the ridge back to the house. He would have to find another dog. But Gigi had come from a litter of the Mayor’s hunting hound, and she was now too old for breeding. He would wait until he found a puppy from a strain he knew that he could raise and train himself.

  He stopped at the newest of the town’s five boulangeries, a place with an artificial windmill that had become popular partly because it was the only bakery with its own car park. The other reason was Louise, the baker’s attractive wife, who pursed her lips to blow Bruno a kiss as she staggered back into the shop carrying a tray filled with fresh loaves. He waved back and stood in line, greeting the others who were waiting, and bought three croissants and a baguette. They were still warm when he parked at Antoine’s camping site where he could smell fresh coffee.

  ‘Thanks for doing this,’ Bruno said as Antoine pushed a cup of coffee across the bar towards him followed by a jar of apricot jam made by his wife, Josette.

  ‘He’s looking forward to it,’ Josette said, coming in from the kitchen with butter and hot milk. ‘He always likes doing a trip down the river at the start of the season, to see how the banks and currents have shifted.’

  ‘And I’m just as curious as you about where our mystery woman could have gone into the river,’ Antoine said, tearing his croissant in half to dip it in his coffee. ‘Any news about her, who she might have been?’

  His mouth full of croissant, Bruno shook his head. ‘Still waiting for the autopsy,’ he said, swallowing. ‘By the way, do you remember anything about that bottle in the punt?’

  ‘Vodka, some Russian writing, can’t say I remember.’ He turned and looked at the bottles lined up on the shelves above his bar. ‘It looked like the Smirnoff I sell.’ Bruno made a mental note to check if the forensic team had followed up.

  They loaded a canoe
onto the trailer and climbed into the van for the drive upriver to Montignac, nearly thirty kilometres away and the farthest point from which the punt could have drifted in the time the woman had been dead. Antoine reckoned it had been put into the water much closer to St Denis, but it was best to be sure. Bruno assumed that the woman had been alive when she got into the punt and took her lethal cocktail of pills and vodka, so time of death might not be the most reliable guide to her embarkation point.

  The morning was still fresh when they donned life jackets and put the canoe into the water, while Josette drove the van back to the campsite. Antoine settled at the stern, sending Bruno to the bow, and baited the row of hooks before fixing his fishing line to a bracket beside him. Then he put an unopened bottle of Bergerac Sec into a string bag, tied the bag to the boat and lowered the wine into the water to keep cool. There was no one else on the river as they paddled downstream, pausing to look at each boathouse and landing stage. Most of them were still padlocked from the winter, and they saw no signs of recent footprints or launchings.

  Bruno thought he knew his river reasonably well, but it was the road and pathways he knew far better than this special viewpoint from the water. The trailing fronds of the willows cast a dappled light before being overtaken by the sudden darkness cast from the majestic oaks and chestnut trees. The river could seem black and still as night one moment and as clear as glass the next before frothing into ripples over the sudden shallows. The current was steady, a little slower than walking pace, speeding as the river turned into a curve before slowing into a deceptive stillness that seemed so perfect Bruno hardly wanted to disturb the surface with his paddle. The rhythm of his paddling was almost soporific, and even as he tried to focus on each possible landing, his thoughts kept drifting.