Martin Walker - The Devil's Cave

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 gites 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.

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 aperos 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.’