The Devil's Cave

by Martin Walker

  ‘Your turn now,’ said Fernand when he came back.

  Bruno shook his head. ‘There’s an overweight and rather older Commissaire of Police up there. I’d like to make sure he gets out safely. Then I think you might need help with the stretcher.’

  It was another hour before Bruno hauled himself out of the lake and into the vast and well-lit space of the Gouffre. Some of the light came from TV cameras, and some from the flashes of Philippe Delaron’s camera. The warmth was in the welcome that awaited: the Baron hugging him careless of the soaking water, and then Father Sentout and the Mayor, beaming at him with Balzac squirming in his arms.

  The Baron handed him one of the stone beakers from the cave, filled to the brim with cognac. Bruno took a deep draught, and then stripped off as the Baron handed him an enormous towel and led him to a heat-blower someone had erected. Albert and J-J were standing before it as if they never wanted to leave, the folds of their heavy towels blowing back with the force of the hot air. Sergeant Jules was sitting to one side, still enjoying the heated air, but even happier to have his wife beside him.

  ‘Putain, you had me worried for a while back there,’ said the Baron, gathering underwear and T-shirt and tracksuits and waiting to help Bruno dress.

  Bruno just grinned, feeling the warmth of the towel and the heater and the glow of the cognac. The Baron had been in the army; he knew the unwritten rules. It was good to see him again and to know that none of their recent arguments meant a damn thing.

  ‘I never doubted that you’d make it out of there,’ said the Mayor, ‘even after they told us it would take weeks to clear the tunnel.’

  More members of the rescue team, all in wetsuits, were plunging into the lake to help bring out the stretcher bearing the Count. They pushed Bruno and the others away from the hot-air blower and stood the stretcher before it while the doctor checked the Count again and attached another mobile drip.

  ‘He’s still with us, just, but I don’t think he’s going to make it. Is the helicopter ready?’ the doctor asked, stripping off his wetsuit. Another member of the rescue team confirmed that it was standing by, rotors turning.

  ‘Right, get those hot towels around him and we’ll run him out to the chopper.’ Within moments, they had gone. Bruno, J-J and Albert gathered back around the hot air, stone beakers in hand.

  ‘There’ll have to be an inquiry,’ J-J said. ‘One shot dead and another wounded, maybe dying. You know the procedure. It’ll be a formality but they’ll need all our written statements before Friday.’

  ‘Whoever runs the inquiry can go back into that cave themselves to look for my gun and the guns of the bastards who tried to kill us,’ said Bruno. ‘I don’t fancy making that swim again anytime soon. And I don’t think there’ll be much of an inquiry with no weapons evidence.’

  ‘Then they’ll adjourn the inquiry until they can retrieve the weapons,’ said J-J thoughtfully. ‘We could be suspended on full pay for months.’

  ‘Your new Procureur seemed the type to find a way round that.’

  ‘If he doesn’t my wife will probably shoot him first and then me,’ J-J said, in that mournful way that usually meant he was joking.

  Bruno looked around the cave. There was little damage from the blast except for the Dragon’s Teeth that had guarded the entrance to the tunnel. One of the great pillars had been tossed onto its side, crushing a rack of jugs that were slowly being transformed into stone. Beside it lay Foucher’s body under a blanket, on the spot where the blast of a Gendarme’s shotgun had felled him. Another pillar had rolled half into the lake, crushing a pedal-boat, and the third still stood, a fat, phallic sentinel above a secret underworld that Bruno knew he wanted to start exploring. He’d have to talk to Miko about joining a cave exploration club.

  But right now he wanted to go home, to feed his chickens and ride his horse and walk his dog and then to have a bowl of soup and sleep the clock round. He put down the towel and dressed in the garments the Baron had brought. As if it were a signal, the Mayor came forward and steered him to one of the TV cameras where he submitted to a brief interview on the dramas of the day.

  ‘Home?’ asked the Baron. Balzac was tucked into the crook of his arm and he handed the puppy to Bruno. ‘Dinner’s on me if you want it, but you look like you need some sleep. You’ll find quite a welcome outside.’

  ‘Home,’ Bruno agreed, relishing the soft rasp of Balzac’s tongue on his ear. He braced himself for whatever awaited in the open air. At first, he just stood and looked at the sky, amazed that it was still light, even more amazed at how blue it was. The evening sunlight looked unbelievably fresh and perfect after his hours underground. Then he saw the beaming faces and heard the welcoming shouts of his friends and neighbours. He shook hands and kissed cheeks all the way back to the Baron’s car. He paused to kneel down and kiss Florence’s twins, and then their mother, accepting an invitation to dinner the following evening.

  He’d just got his hand on the door of the Baron’s lovely old Citroën DS when he heard Ahmed calling his name and hurrying his way through the crowd.

  ‘We’ve got a call-out and it sounds like your place,’ he said, his mouth to Bruno’s ear and his voice low. ‘Maybe you’d better not go back until I get confirmation. I’ve got an engine on its way, should be there by now.’

  ‘You mean a fire? At my place?’ Bruno asked, seeing the answer in Ahmed’s eyes. He jumped into the car and told the Baron to drive like the wind, wondering how and why but already suspecting he knew the answer. He held Balzac tightly to him as he heard the sound of the siren behind him. Ahmed was following in the little command car. He turned to face forward, thinking of the house he’d built with his own hands, of his ducks and chickens and the garden he’d made, of the wine in the cellar and his books on the shelves.

  There were two fire engines at work when he arrived but only one was still jetting water onto the roof of the house. There were black scorch marks around the broken windows of the living room and kitchen and the entrance door had gone. His ducks and chickens were all right. The barn and his bedrooms had been spared.

  ‘It could be a lot worse. We were lucky somebody saw smoke from the road and called it in,’ said Ahmed, coming to stand at his shoulder. Raymond was with him, the crew captain of the second fire engine. ‘It was just the curtains in the kitchen. All the real damage is in the living room.’

  ‘How did it happen?’ Bruno asked.

  Raymond led him forward to the smashed window of the sitting room, the walls charred black and the furniture in smoking ruins.

  ‘That glass on the floor is not just from your window,’ said Raymond. ‘It’s a bottle, and you can smell the petrol as well as I can. Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail inside.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said the Baron. ‘What sort of sick bastard would do this?’

  ‘They tried the same in the kitchen but just hit the outside of the window frame,’ Raymond said.

  Raymond led Bruno round to the back and pointed to the petrol cap hanging loose from the side of Bruno’s elderly Land-Rover. He then gestured at the bottle tree where Bruno stored his empty wine bottles until it was time to fill them again from the annual hogshead he shared with the Baron.

  ‘It looks like they used your bottles, your petrol,’ Raymond said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It wasn’t a They,’ said Bruno. ‘It was a she. And I don’t think she’s finished yet.’ He turned to the Baron. ‘How fast can you get me to Pamela’s place? I think she’ll go for my horse next.’

  The Citroën DS was the car that had been fast enough, rugged enough and had the endurance to save Charles de Gaulle’s life twice from successive assassination attempts, as the Baron never tired of saying. But his car was now fifty years old and its legendary suspension groaned as the Baron hurled it down the lane from Bruno’s home. They hit the road into town with the speedometer touching eighty and still accelerating as they went past the Gendarmerie. The Baron had to slow for the roundabout but accelerated hard o
nto the old stone bridge across the river, the imperious klaxon blaring as other cars scattered and scurried to the side of the road.

  As they entered the long lane that led to Pamela’s house. Bruno scanned the horizon for a sign of smoke but saw none so far. And when they crested the rise, still accelerating so they briefly left the ground, he saw no sign of horse nor rider in the grounds around the old farmhouse. Above all, there was no flare of flame in the stables.

  He looked up towards the ridge and there was nothing. But then from the long forest ride he saw the flash of white as the mare came down through the trees at a gallop, the rider tall in the saddle, one arm held out and holding something that glinted in the sun.

  ‘That’s her,’ Bruno said.

  ‘Putain, it’s going to be close,’ the Baron said, ignoring the steam that was coming from the long bonnet of his car and the flaring red lights on his dashboard. ‘When I tell you, hit the handbrake as hard as you can.’

  Urged on by its rider, the white mare found a new burst of pace as it reached the level field that led to Pamela’s courtyard and the stables beyond. But the Baron held his speed as the DS hit the bump where the gravel drive began. He threw the car into the bend, ignoring the loud scrape that came from the wing brushing the gatepost. Understanding what his friend intended to do, Bruno released both seat belts. He tucked Balzac firmly into his shirt, buttoning him in.

  The white mare was in the courtyard, suddenly slowing as the rider released the reins. She held a lighter to the petrol-soaked rag in the mouth of the bottle and was reaching back her arm to throw.

  ‘Now,’ shouted the Baron, stabbing at his brakes.

  He threw the car into a four-wheel drift as Bruno hauled on the handbrake and the Baron hit the throttle a final time. The white mare was rearing on its hind legs. The bottle caught the light and Bruno could see the flame. With the shriek of an avenging fury Eugénie hurled it onto the car that was sliding into her path, blocking her way to her chosen target of Hector’s stable.

  Bruno grabbed the Baron’s arm and opened his door. Bracing a foot against the steering-wheel column he hauled his friend bodily out of the car. They fell and rolled together onto the sharp gravel of the courtyard as the car exploded behind them and they heard the piercing scream of an animal in mortal pain. Horse or woman, they could not tell which.

  It might have been both, from the great surge of fire that roared up from the stricken car to embrace and devour the mare and rider together. Erupting anew, the flames caught the white mane of the horse and the flaring darkness of Eugénie’s hair as both crumpled into the burning wreckage of the car.

  Epilogue

  Ironic, thought Bruno as the tiny bell tolled, that Athénaïs should be buried beside the Red Château’s family chapel where she’d gone through the Black Mass that had been the prelude to her death. Even more ironic that she would rest at arm’s length from her cousin, the Count, whose own grave had been dug alongside. At least Athénaïs had a respectable gathering of mourners. They were led by her grandmother in her wheelchair and by her teenage daughter from America, Marie-Françoise. The Red Countess looked desperately frail, but her eyes were dry and her grip on Marie-Françoise’s hand was firm. She kept her gaze fixed on Father Sentout as he spoke the Latin phrases she had requested for the funeral service.

  Her sister Héloïse sat hunched and muttering to one side, casting the occasional venomous glance at Bruno and J-J, each now formally absolved of fault by the Procureur’s inquiry into the shooting. It had established that Bruno’s shot had hit the Count in the knee and J-J’s had been the fatal bullet in the chest. Marie-Françoise had testified that the Count had fired first, after Bruno’s shout of ‘Police – drop your weapons.’ It had helped when the Gendarme medic told the inquiry that Bruno had insisted on trying the underground river once it was clear that the Count would certainly die unless he reached a hospital within the hour.

  It was Bruno’s second funeral in three days. There had been a smaller turnout for Louis Junot at the crematorium outside Périgueux; just his widow and Francette, and Bruno who had driven them there. At the last minute, the white Jaguar had driven up the gravel road and Béatrice stepped out to join them, stylish in black. She and Francette had exchanged a cool air kiss, and then Béatrice had stood apart and alone. She had left before Bruno could exchange a word.

  With the Count, Foucher and Eugénie all dead, the interrogation of Béatrice had been of critical importance as the Procureur, J-J and Bruno all tried to unravel the events and motives that had led to their deaths and those of Junot and Athénaïs. Béatrice had been accompanied by an expensive and protective Parisian lawyer, who seemed to have more than a professional relationship with his client, which came as no great surprise to Bruno. She had admitted taking part in the first Black Mass in the cave, with Athénaïs, Francette and Eugénie. It had been just an elaborate sexual game, she insisted, of the kind she’d known in her previous life in Paris. Foucher had played the role of the priest. Abouard the Lebanese and the Count had taken part, along with a couple of the Count’s business clients.

  Béatrice claimed no knowledge of the second Black Mass in the family chapel at the Red Château at which Athénaïs had died. But she knew that Athénaïs had been obsessed with her ancestor, the royal mistress, and equally obsessed with the Count. Bruno had asked if Béatrice could confirm that Athénaïs had believed she could win the Count’s affections with a love potion from the Black Mass, just as her ancestress had done.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Béatrice had replied. ‘She spoke about it all the time. It used to drive Eugénie crazy because as far as Eugénie was concerned, the Count was hers.’

  ‘Crazy enough to want to kill Athénaïs?’ the Procureur had asked.

  Béatrice had nodded decisively. She insisted she had not been present when Athénaïs had died, but she knew there had been a panic at the Red Château. She had seen the fire in the lagoon across the water and watched it flicker and die as the boat drifted out into the main stream and down the river. But she knew better than to ask questions of Foucher or the Count. It was only when she saw the newspaper that she realized the boat had carried the body of Athénaïs.

  ‘But even if the Count wanted Athénaïs dead, he also needed her body,’ the Procureur had objected. ‘Without it, he could not have inherited.’

  ‘The Count wasn’t there. He was with me that night. Foucher called him, panicking, and we got up and looked out of the window and saw the fire. The Count left in his car but then he had to drive to the bridge to cross the river. I dressed and went down to the river and saw the boat drifting away but the Count must have still been on the road. I know he was furious when I saw him the next day.’

  Bruno knew they might never be sure of the full truth. But the conclusion was that Eugénie had killed Athénaïs and then she and Foucher had put her body in the boat to dispose of it by fire. And then Foucher had tried to sink it or to recover the body when it floated to the bridge at St Denis.

  ‘Remember,’ Béatrice had concluded, ‘Athénaïs, Foucher and Eugénie were all stuffing themselves with coke.’

  ‘That’s speculation,’ the lawyer had said, and ended the interrogation. The Procureur was still deciding whether to charge her with withholding evidence and obstruction of justice.

  At this second funeral, Béatrice was dressed in the same black silk and veil and standing close beside the Baron. Had the Baron’s broken arm not been in a sling, Bruno suspected she’d have had her hand resting possessively on it. But they had not arrived here together. Bruno was aware Béatrice had suggested the Baron buy the Auberge St Philippon from the Red Countess. But the Baron knew as well as Bruno that there would be no more Defence Ministry events to boost the revenues. Maybe some professional hotelier could make a success of it, once the scandal had died down.

  Béatrice was a survivor, Bruno thought. If she couldn’t attach herself to the Baron, she’d find someone else. She seemed to have acquired the white Jaguar and her
lawyer was already demanding what Béatrice insisted was her share of the Auberge. She’d even talked to the Baron about reviving the project for the holiday village, but without the Count’s ability to raise money that idea seemed dead. All that was left were his debts, his hollow property companies and the profitable group of defence companies. Various bureaucrats and businessmen in Paris were arguing over their fate, now that the Lebanese arms deals had collapsed and Richard Abouard had taken advantage of his diplomatic immunity to return to Beirut. According to Isabelle, Abouard had stood to take a fat commission from steering the Lebanese contract to the Count.

  The disposal of the estate would be up to the Red Countess, or more likely, up to Marie-Françoise. The bruises on her face were fading. The girl had been transformed from a Californian teenager to heiress of one of the grand families of France and the lands and châteaux that went with it. She seemed to have forged a close friendship with Fabiola in the days when her grandmother was being nursed out of the tranquillized fog in which she’d been kept. Fabiola had arranged for the girl to have intensive tuition in French. She’d also driven her to Bordeaux to arrange for Marie-Françoise’s transfer to the university there, and to persuade the best dentist in the city to shift his schedule and start repairing the damage Fouchet’s gun butt had done to the girl’s mouth.

  The girl was a keen horsewoman, so Fabiola had brought her along on the evening rides. She had shyly avoiding looking at Bruno the first time, as if she remembered his stripping her in the cave to rub her dry and dress her in Sergeant Jules’s voluminous uniform. Balzac had overcome her hesitation, and the first time Bruno had seen her laugh was when she saw him tuck his puppy inside the binocular case as he mounted Hector. She now seemed fine, and had insisted Fabiola drive her to see Bruno’s burned house, where the builders were already at work to repair the damage. The insurance payment had been agreed in record time; the Mayor had made sure of that.

  Bruno wondered what role her American father would play in the inheritance. He looked a decent man, standing behind his daughter and looking solemnly at the coffin of his estranged wife. He was a few years older than Bruno, and seemed to have forged a friendship with Gilles, with whom at least he could speak English. Bruno knew from Gilles that the man was a moderately successful scriptwriter, and he was already talking of reviving Athénaïs’s film project on her ancestor, the Royal Mistress. Somehow, Bruno could not think Marie-Françoise would want her mother to be commemorated that way.