Martin Walker - The Devil's Cave

‘You never saw any newspapers or listened to the TV or radio while you were there at the auberge?’

‘Some of the clients had TV in their bedrooms but all they wanted to have on was porn.’

‘Did you ever see your dad, or did he get in touch with you?’

Francette shook her head, and for the first time she took her mother’s hand. Now the story came in fits and starts. With hindsight, she now thought he’d been to the auberge the night after Bruno had brought her father to see her. It had been a doctors and nurses party that night and some of the clients had become frisky over dinner, so the nurses were all topless. There had been some commotion at one of the windows and some shouting. Beatrice had come back and said there’d been an intruder but it was all under control. At the time Francette had thought nothing of it, but looking back that must have been her father.

‘That’s why I’m responsible,’ she said, her voice dull. ‘He must have been so worked up after you brought him to see me that he crashed.’

This was not the time to tell her it had been no crash. ‘Did you know of any other disturbance on the evening of that day I brought him to the auberge to see you? I’m wondering if your dad might have come back.’

Francette shrugged. ‘Not that I heard of. But there was a big party that night, some guys down from Paris and they had their own security guards outside. We were all ordered to stay indoors.’

The security men from the defence Ministry had been at the entrance to the auberge. But on such a special occasion the Count would not have tolerated any more intrusions from Junot. What if Junot had been caught trying to break in at the rear? Could that have been sufficient motive to kill him? Or to beat him so badly they had to finish him and fake the accident? Lionel, or Leo as Francette knew him, was probably ruthless enough. Bruno had one more question.’Did you ever meet a girl called Eugenie, tall with dark hair?’

‘Could she have called herself Gina? She was with the Count at the party in Paris and again with him that night in the cave. She was really beautiful.’

‘Have you seen anyone from the hotel since you came back to your mother’s place?’

‘Leo came yesterday evening to ask when I was coming back. He brought flowers for Mum and was full of sympathy but he said I’d better get back to work soon. It was the way he said it, I got scared. After Mum told me about Tina in the boat, I knew we had to get away. And then this morning Richard came by in the car, just sat there and looked at the house. It was creepy.’

‘Richard has been staying at St Philippon?’ Bruno asked.

She nodded. ‘There and at the Red Chateau over the river. He’s a friend of the Count. I don’t like him. He’s the one who hit me when he couldn’t get it up.’

‘How did you get down here from the farm?’

‘We walked down through the woods and along the river. There’s one more thing, Bruno. You’re going to have to be careful, they’re really freaked about you. Leo kept asking me if you’d been to see me at home.’

‘That’s all right, don’t worry about me,’ he said, and asked her to write down a statement, exactly as she’d told it to him. He gave her the phone he’d just bought and put his own numbers onto speed-dial.

He left mother and daughter sitting silently, holding hands, and went in to explain to Sabine that Francette was being stalked by a violent ex-boyfriend. He asked for some writing paper and took it back to the terrace with his pen. As Francette began writing her statement he went to the duck barn for a word with Maurice.

‘I don’t think her ex-boyfriend will find her here, but if a white sports car turns up, call me straight away.’

‘I’ve got my shotgun,’ Maurice said. Bruno winced. He’d had enough trouble with Maurice’s shotgun over another matter when some animal rights activists had tried to liberate his ducks and geese. No guns, he insisted and left to buy another phone from a bemused Jolliot.

As he left the shop, his usual phone buzzed at his belt. It was Lemontin, to say that the signature to authorize the mortgage payments was that of the Red Countess, dated in May of the previous year. But her sister had claimed the Countess hadn’t had a lucid moment in years. Not only did this look like fraud; it meant his plan for the hotel to be used as collateral for St Denis’s investment in the Count’s project couldn’t work. The hotel was not the Count’s to pledge.

At the Gendarmerie, Sergeant Jules was visibly enjoying himself. Madame de la Gorce had sworn another statement saying Eugenie had been the one who told her that Bruno must have been the thief. In a second room, Foucher was insisting it was all a misunderstanding, while his drinking glass was now ready to be picked up by Yves from the forensic team for DNA analysis. The one problem was that Mademoiselle Ballotin was not at the Red Chateau and nobody seemed to know where she was.

‘If her name’s Eugenie, then that last message Foucher sent when you stopped him was to her,’ Jules said, holding up one of the phones that lay on the desk before him. ‘One word: flee. And here’s the bonus,’ he went on, holding up a plastic bag that contained a breathalyser unit. ‘The driver of a white Jaguar, one Richard Abouard, Lebanese passport, booked for speeding on the Perigueux road, passed his breathalyser test, but here it is. Yves will pick it up with the drinking glass.’

‘Excellent,’ said Bruno. ‘Is the Procureur still here? Or J-J?’

‘J-J is here taking statements. The Procureur has gone to brief the Prefect and the Mayor went with him. That inspector you know from Bergerac is leading the search team at the hotel. The forensic team linked Junot’s death to a truck there and J-J said something about the same truck being caught by a camera at the dechetterie .’

‘Anybody called for a lawyer?’

‘Once he’d given his statement Foucher was free to leave, but he’s waiting for the old lady. If we can bring Eugenie in, J-J says to hold them both on charges of making false statements.’

‘And the old lady’s giving a new statement without a lawyer present?’ Bruno asked in disbelief.

‘First thing he did, J-J got her to sign the release saying she didn’t need a lawyer. She said her grandson would take care of everything.’

‘So it’s all under control,’ Bruno said, thinking of the renewed chaos that would follow the delivery of Francette’s statement that linked Foucher and the Count directly to the death of Athenais.

Then his phone vibrated, and with some premonition that everything was about to go wrong he saw that it was Gilles.

‘We missed her,’ Gilles said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What happened?’

‘It’s my fault, I didn’t brief our guys in California properly,’ the reporter said. His Hollywood correspondent had tracked down the girl’s father in Santa Barbara and learned that she was at McGill University in Montreal. But he told the father that Athenais was dead, and once the reporter left the father called his daughter to pass on the bad news. By the time the correspondent from New York got to her address in Montreal, she’d already left. Her flatmate said that she’d contacted international directory inquiries to get the number for the Red Chateau and called there for details about her mother’s death. She was already on a plane to Paris by the time the reporter reached Montreal.

‘Do you know who she talked to at the Red Chateau?’ Bruno asked.

‘The flatmate said she talked to some male relative, an uncle or cousin. Apparently he was really surprised to hear from her because he didn’t know her mother had had a child, but he said she should come to France and he’d take care of the ticket. I’m really sorry, Bruno, but we can pick her up when she gets here.’