Martin Walker - The Devil's Cave

‘You spoke to the doctor in Scotland?’ he asked, sitting at the kitchen table, already set for two, the frame and tiny candle holder for the fondue already in place. As well as the wine glass, there was a small liqueur glass at each setting and a bottle of some clear liquid. He turned it to read the label: Willisauer Kirsch. She must have planned to ask him in.

‘Sure, why not? The prognosis is not good. And the retirement home here isn’t equipped for patients in that condition. Her mother would be better off in a specialized home, if she can afford it,’ Fabiola said, pouring out the wine. She took a sip, put down the glass, yawned and stretched. There were black circles under her eyes, as if she had not been sleeping well. She reached for the pack of Gitanes on the table and lit one.

‘Are you OK?’ He’d only rarely seen her smoke before. ‘You seem a bit down.’

‘Are you surprised? Telling cancer patients they don’t have long to live. Abused wives who won’t make a formal complaint. Old people who are dead in everything except that they still breathe and eat and shit. And lots of hypochondriacs who want me to give them antibiotics for everything. If it wasn’t for the horses and my friends I’d go mad.’

Bruno had never seen Fabiola in this mood before. He didn’t know what to say. She turned aside to the kitchen counter where Emmenthal and Gruyere had already been grated and a baguette of bread chopped into bite-sized chunks. She peeled some heads of garlic, chopped an onion very finely and put them all into the fondue pot.

‘I’m hungry, so I’m going to cheat,’ she said. ‘I should do this at table but it takes for ever.’ Instead, she put the pot on her kitchen stove, splashed in some of the white wine and a dash of the kirsch, added some pepper and mixed spice and began to stir.

‘All those depressing things you mentioned, is that all that’s getting you down?’

‘No,’ she said and paused. Then the words came out in a rush. ‘We had an incident at the shelter this afternoon, just before I got there, and the Gendarmes took ages to respond.’

Bruno knew that Fabiola volunteered at a hostel in Bergerac for battered wives who had taken their children and left their husbands. She treated their cuts and bruises, checked on the health of the children and used her medical title to write letters to recommend that the mother be given social housing in a new town where the husbands would not easily find them.

‘What happened?’

‘One of the husbands found out where his wife was, burst in, smashed the place up, beat her senseless and took his kid. The usual story. Thing is, we’re supposed to have this panic button for the Gendarmes. They took twenty minutes to turn up and I could have walked to the Gendarmerie faster than that. I had to take the woman to hospital, but he’d really done a lot of damage to the shelter. And he’d belted the two volunteers who were there.’

‘Have they arrested him yet?’

‘By the time they got to his home, he’d gone, with the car and the kid. It’s not the first time, Bruno.’

She brought the bubbling fondue pot to the table, lit the candle beneath it and then brought the basket of bread and two side salads she’d prepared.

‘Not very authentic, the salads, but good for us,’ she said. She pushed a long, barbed fork toward him.

‘I put the bread on this, then dip it in the melted cheese, is that right?’ he asked. Cheese fondue was a first for him.

‘Try dipping the bread in the kirsch first, and then in the cheese,’ she said.

He followed her instructions, and chewed with pleasure. It was spicy, tasty and nourishing all at once. She grinned at his grunt of pleasure and then fed herself, each of them taking turns.

‘What did the Gendarmes say when you complained about how long they took to get to the hostel?’

‘That they were busy on another call. It’s what they always say, and we can’t disprove it.’

‘Is there a sympathetic woman on the town council?’

‘Two or three, the ones who finally got us the panic button. They’ll write to the head of the Gendarmes and to the Prefecture.’

‘Get them to write to all the local papers,’ he said. ‘And get Perigord-Bleu to come in and do a story and run one of their talk-shows on the issue. The Gendarmes hate that kind of publicity. And we’ve got a woman Minister of Justice now; your councillors should write to her, too. There’s nothing like a query from Paris to get the Gendarmes jumping.’

‘I wish we had you there in Bergerac.’ Like his own face, hers was flushed from the fondue. The scar on her cheek, the result of a mountaineering accident, stood out as a jagged red line against her pale skin. As if she sensed the direction of his eyes, she pulled something at the back of her bun, shook her head and her hair tumbled down, hiding her cheeks.

Bruno addressed himself to the kirsch glass and the fondue, then deliberately allowed his piece of bread to fall from the fork.

‘Sorry, clumsy, not used to this,’ he said, using his salad fork to fish into the fondue for his sunken bread. She watched him coolly as he ate it.

‘You can be a very transparent man,’ she said, turning her attention back to her fondue. ‘By the way, I rang my friend at pathology. Your mystery woman had been involved in an orgy, sperm front and rear from different men. They weren’t sure about the mouth because of the alcohol.’

He put down his fork, swallowing. ‘You certainly picked your time to impart that news,’ he said.

‘Yes, we toubibs can be famous for our lack of sensitivity. She’d also given birth at some point in the past. Keep on stirring your fondue, we don’t want it to set. And eat up, the crust at the bottom is the best bit.’

Bruno woke early the next morning in Pamela’s spare room, some delicacy restraining him from using her bed in her absence. He took the horses for a quick trot around the paddock, made sure there was hay in their stalls and then drove home in search of a clean shirt and underwear. There was one of each left. He fed his chickens and watered his vegetable garden and then bundled his laundry into a big plastic bag before driving into town. He left his dirty washing at the cleaners, paying the extra for Georgette to iron his shirts, before joining the usual customers at the counter in Fauquet’s cafe. He skimmed through Sud-Ouest while eating a croissant and enjoying the first coffee of the day.

‘Nothing new in the paper,’ said Roberte, a cheerful woman who ran the social security office at the Mairie and was his tennis partner in mixed doubles. ‘Just the interview with Antoine about how you and he picked her out of the river and then went searching the banks yesterday, but I’m sure you’ll have seen that.’

He hadn’t, and read the piece with rising irritation when he saw that Antoine had mentioned the Red Chateau as one of the possible launch sites for the punt. He couldn’t blame Antoine; it was a full page of free publicity for his canoe business and a good photograph of him standing by the big sign for his campsite. But Philippe Delaron was getting inventive in order to keep the story going. It was the headline that jarred — River Search for Devil Woman . The Mayor was not going to like that.

In his office, Bruno skimmed through his predictable post while waiting for the computer to fire up. Most of the envelopes contained brochures for the coming summer’s local music festivals, the usual string quartets playing in ancient churches or jazz ensembles in town squares. He typed in his password and opened his email, to find an announcement of new speed limits from the Prefecture and a characteristically curt message from Isabelle.