Martin Walker - The Devil's Cave

Bruno stayed on watch, telling J-J how to cross the narrow causeway. Then he heard Sergeant Jules calling his name.

‘This is Bruno, I’m fine and it’s clear to advance,’ he shouted back, thinking how Jules must have groped his way in darkness along the length of the pipeline when he heard the gunshots, not knowing what he’d find.

‘Help Jules over the causeway and he can replace me on guard,’ he said to J-J, who was knee-deep in the lake and reaching for the girl.

‘I’ve got her.’ J-J hauled her ashore. She was spluttering and choking but at least she was alive.

‘Pull her out of the line of fire,’ Bruno said. ‘Over there to my right. Then guide Jules across.’

Jules came along the causeway, dragging a floating body. The current must have taken it to the rim. Once Jules replaced him at the tunnel entrance, Bruno flashed the torch onto the face. It was the Count. Bruno checked the neck for a pulse. It was feeble, but it was there.

‘How’s the girl?’ he asked J-J.

‘I can’t see and she won’t tell me.’ The girl was sobbing and gulping, close to hysterics.

‘Wait,’ said Bruno, and went to the small cave that Isabelle had shown him and came back with the candleholder and the lighter. Once he had the first candle alight he brought more and soon the cavern was bright.

‘Get the wet clothes off them or they’ll get hypothermia,’ he said, starting to strip the Count. He had one wound in his knee and a second high on his chest. There was a big exit wound at the back but the icy lake had slowed the bleeding. Bruno stuffed the hole with the Count’s shirt, wrung out his wet trousers and used them to hold the dressing in place. The Count’s belt had to do for a tourniquet on the knee. He took off his jacket to drape it over the Count, whose face was deathly white.

The girl was too gone in shock to resist as they stripped her. With her wet clothes off Bruno could find only a graze wound on her side, just below the ribs. He asked where she was hurt but got no reply, so he tried making reassuring noises in his broken English and repeating that he was from the police. In the candlelight he could see that her face had been badly beaten. One eye was closed, blood still seeped from her nose and she’d lost some teeth. They rubbed her dry with J-J’s sweater, then dressed her in Jules’s jacket and his oversized trousers.

‘What now?’ J-J asked.

‘You stay with the wounded. Jules goes back for the paramedics and I go forward,’ Bruno said, not knowing quite why he said it but feeling that he had to finish this. ‘I fired eight shots so I’ll need to reload from Jules’s magazine.’

He was reloading when there came a distant flurry of shots from the tunnel to the Gouffre, one of them a burst of automatic fire and another the boom of a shotgun. That had to be the Mobiles .

Then came shouting and the sound of running feet and a call of ‘Police, throw down your weapons.’

‘Police here and clear,’ Bruno called back. ‘Weapons down.’ He stood up, his gun on the ground beside him, raised his hands in the air and told the other two to follow suit. In the light of a dozen candles, it was clear they were unarmed, although they hardly looked like police with his and Jules’s uniforms now draped on the wounded.

‘Identify yourselves,’ came a voice from the tunnel, very close.

‘Commissaire Jalipeau, Police Nationale .’

‘Jules Ranquin, Sergeant, Gendarmerie Nationale .’

‘Bruno Courreges, Police Municipale , St Denis, plus two wounded who need urgent attention. One hostage, one gunman. Our weapons are down and our hands up. We are standing in clear view.’

The characteristic shape of a FAMAS assault rifle poked into view at knee level and then a double-barrelled shotgun at shoulder height. Two black-clad Gendarmes Mobiles with helmets and body armour stepped into the cave. A third followed them, a FAMAS slung by his side. He looked around the cave once and shouted back ‘Medics’. Then he turned to face them and introduced himself as they lowered their hands.

‘Capitaine Moravin, les Jaunes .’ He saluted J-J, and said, ‘ Monsieur le Commissaire , we have one dead gunman in the main cave. He came out of the tunnel shooting and ignored my order to drop his weapon. We also have one secured prisoner who was arrested outside the cave, name of Abouard, Lebanese. He’s claiming diplomatic immunity.’

‘Ignore it until you hear otherwise from me or the Procureur ,’ J-J said.

Two black-clad Gendarme medics came in, followed by Ahmed from the St Denis fire brigade.

‘The girl’s wounds are superficial, but she’s in shock and she doesn’t speak much French,’ Bruno said. ‘The Count’s a lot worse, two gunshots, knee and upper chest.’

The medics attended to the Count and Ahmed opened his shoulder case and began cleaning up the girl’s face.

‘Have you identified the dead gunman?’ J-J asked.

‘The ID card in his wallet says he’s called Foucher, but the shotgun blew his face away,’ said Moravin. ‘We’ll have to wait for fingerprints.’ He turned to the medics. ‘Have you got a stretcher coming?’

‘On its way, chef .’

The stretchers came with Albert the fire chief close behind, puffing a little from the trot up the tunnel. He shook hands all round, visibly relieved that none of those shot were people he knew.

‘Sorry you didn’t get to use the water hose,’ Bruno said as the first stretcher took the girl up the tunnel. Ahmed and one of the medics carried her as Moravin and his two Mobiles led the way back to the Gouffre. Another medic was still working on the Count. He had a mobile drip plugged into the Count’s arm and an oxygen mask on his face.

‘It might have saved a lot of trouble,’ Albert replied, taking off his helmet and wiping his brow. ‘The Mayor’s out in the main cave with the Baron and Father Sentout. Half the town’s waiting outside the Gouffre. Florence is there with her kids and your new puppy.’

Bruno grinned at the thought. ‘Has anybody relieved Fabiola at the Red Chateau?’

‘The Countess is on her way to hospital in Perigueux with Fabiola. Montsouris insisted on going along,’ Albert said. ‘Someone from the Minister of the Interior’s office has been on the phone with the Mayor, insisting on speaking to you as soon as you’re near a phone. And there’s a guy outside from Paris-Match , claims to be a friend of yours from Sarajevo.’

‘Right, we’d better go, if the Count is stabilized enough to move him,’ said Bruno. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked the medic.

‘Give me another few minutes,’ said the medic. ‘They’ll send a couple of guys back to help with the stretcher. Then we can go.’

Bruno nodded and turned back to gaze across the black stillness of the lake and at the dark mouth of the far tunnel. It had been four days since he’d first seen it but he knew he’d want to return, perhaps join one of the exploring clubs and see what other secrets these honeycombed hills contained.

‘Can’t be soon enough for me,’ said J-J. ‘It gives me the creeps, being underground like this and thinking of all that weight above us.’

Bruno turned back from the lake to J-J and Sergeant Jules. ‘After this, I think we all deserve a very large drink.’

As he spoke the last word, the sharp cracking sound of a distant explosion came from the far side of the lake followed by a long, swelling rumble. A rush of dust and air blasted from the tunnel that led back to the ruined chapel to send a surge of lake water over their feet. It extinguished most of the candles they had lit.

‘ Mon Dieu ,’ said J-J, looking at Sergeant Jules. ‘They’ve booby-trapped the tunnel where we came in, where you were waiting. Thank God you came and joined us.’