Martin Walker - The Devil's Cave

‘I don’t have a canoe here,’ Antoine said, striding down from the apse and picking up a jacket from the front pew. A burly man, he had wide and powerful shoulders from a lifetime of paddling and manhandling canoes. ‘My canoes are all back at the campsite today.’

‘I’ll need you anyway,’ said Bruno. He led the way through the thickening market crowd and back to the river, suddenly aware that most of the choir seemed to be following, along with Father Sentout.

Passers-by and some of the stallholders looked up at the swelling line behind Bruno and with the automatic curiosity that draws a crowd when they sense a drama unfolding they joined behind. Soon they were clustering at the side of the bridge as Bruno and Antoine spotted the half-sunken vessel tracing lazy circles as it drifted with the current.

‘It might get caught up on the sandbank,’ said Antoine. ‘Otherwise we’d best get down to my campsite and take out a canoe, tow it ashore.’

‘Could I wade into the river and catch it here?’ Bruno asked.

‘Better not,’ said Antoine, demonstrating why Bruno had been right to interrupt the choir and summon the boatman. ‘See that current where it comes through the first arch of the bridge? That’s the deep channel. You’d be up to your neck or even deeper. You wouldn’t have the footing to drag it ashore.’

More and more of the townsfolk were gathering on the bridge, craning their necks to watch the boat draw steadily nearer. Among them, camera at the ready, was Philippe Delaron from the photography shop, who doubled as the local correspondent for Sud-Ouest . Bruno groaned inwardly. A ghoulish newspaper photo of a corpse in a boat was not the image of St Denis that he or his Mayor would seek to portray.

‘It’s a punt,’ said Antoine, surprise in his voice. ‘I haven’t seen one of those in a long time. They used them for hunting wildfowl in the old days before they built the dams upriver, when we still had wetlands with the flooding every spring.’

‘Should we head for your campsite and get the canoe?’ Bruno was eager to do something.

‘Better wait and see if it gets through the current around the bridge,’ said Antoine, lighting a yellow cigarette, a Gitane mais . Bruno had forgotten they still made them. ‘If it founders, there’s no point. And it might still get stuck on the sand-bank. If it doesn’t, I’ve got an idea. Follow me.’

Antoine thrust his way back through the crowd and down the steep and narrow stone steps that led from the bridge to the quay where the annual fishing contests were held. Three fishermen sat on their folding stools, each watching his own float and casting the occasional sidelong glance to see if his neighbours were having better luck. None of them seemed to pay much attention to the crowd on the bridge.

‘Patrice, can you cast a line into that drifting boat and see if you can pull it into the bank?’ Antoine asked the first of the anglers.

Patrice half-turned and eyed them sourly. He mumbled something through closed lips.

‘What was that?’ Bruno asked.

Patrice opened his mouth and took out three wriggling maggots from where he’d kept them under his tongue. It was something Bruno had seen the Baron do when they went fishing. Maggots were sluggish in the chill of the morning and a devoted fisherman would put some in his mouth to get them warm and energetic enough to attract fish once they were on the hook. It was one of the reasons Bruno knew he’d never be a real angler.

‘I’ll lose my bait, could lose a hook and line,’ Patrice said, putting his maggots back into the old tobacco can where he kept his bait. He paused, squinting against the sun. ‘Is this your business, Bruno?’

Bruno outlined the discovery to Patrice, a small, hunched man, married for forty years to a woman twice his size with a loud and penetrating voice to match. That probably explained the amount of time he spent fishing, Bruno thought.

‘I’d try it myself but you’re the best man with a rod and line,’ Bruno said. He had learned back in the army days that a little flattery was the easiest way to turn a reluctant conscript into an enthusiastic volunteer.

Across the river, a white open-topped sports car with sweeping lines came fast around the corner of the medical centre to the bank where the caravans parked. It braked hard and stopped, wheels spitting up gravel. A fair-haired young man climbed out dressed as if for tennis in the 1930s. He wore a white sports shirt and cream trousers with a colourful belt, and ran towards the river bank shedding his shirt. He paused on the bank to remove his white tennis shoes.

‘The bugger’s mad,’ said Antoine, spitting out his cigarette. ‘He’s going to dive in.’

Behind him another figure stepped gracefully from the car, a woman with remarkably long legs, dressed in black tights and what looked like a man’s white shirt, tightly belted with a black sash. Her face was pale and her hair covered in a black turban. The way she moved made Bruno think of a ballerina. She advanced to the bank beside the fair-haired man and they looked upriver as if trying to assess when the punt might be in reach. The man began wading into the shallows as Bruno called out to him to stop.

Patrice had his line out of the water. He had removed his bait and float and was fixing his heaviest hook, looking up every few seconds to watch the speed of the punt’s approach.

‘I’m ready,’ he said. ‘Stand aside and don’t get behind me. This will be a hell of a cast.’

Standing at the river bank, Bruno could see nothing of the dead woman. But something close to a metre tall and black was standing up in the punt, almost like a very short mast. Antoine shrugged when Bruno asked him what it might be.

The punt’s corner seemed to catch on the edge of the sand-bank and it slowed and turned as if heading for the far bank. Bruno heard cheers and whistles coming from the crowd on the bridge as the young man plunged deeper, assuming that the shallows ran all the way to the sandbank. They didn’t, and he sank beneath the surface, then rose, shaking his head and striking out for the punt in a powerful crawl.

But some eddy or wayward current caught the vessel and pushed it free of the sandbank and into the deeper, faster current where it begin drifting toward Bruno’s side of the bank. Patrice tensed, lifted his rod over his head and cast high and far. Bruno watched as the line snaked out and the hook and sinker landed just on the far side of the punt, and held.

‘Got it,’ breathed Patrice.

The man in the water suddenly stopped. He must have reached the sandbank. He stood and staggered across it to where the punt was fast moving out of his reach and launched himself into a desperate, flailing dive almost as if he wanted to land inside the punt itself. One hand landed hard on the flat rear corner and the punt rocked, shipping water.

‘The stupid bastard’s gong to sink it,’ said Antoine.

As the punt tipped towards him, Bruno caught a glimpse of the woman, her fair hair glinting gold in the sun, her arms outstretched and her head lolling as the vessel rolled. Something else inside the boat flashed a bright reflection, possibly a bottle. There seemed to be some marking, perhaps a large tattoo, on the woman’s torso. Whatever stumpy mast had been rising from the boat had now fallen.

The swimmer sank beneath the water, his hand slipping from the wood. Patrice gently began to apply pressure to guide the punt towards him. But like some whale leaping from the sea the swimmer launched himself up again for a final, despairing effort. Again his hand just touched the side but once more his grip failed and the punt rocked even more as he plunged back down into the river.

The woman on the far bank strode back to the car, started the engine and swiftly turned the car so it was heading out again. She left the motor running as she climbed out, taking a towel from the back seat, and hurried down to the bank to help the swimmer.