Martin Walker - The Devil's Cave

‘Where’s Francette?’ he asked. ‘I hear she’s left the supermarket, got a new job.’

Her mother’s back stiffened. ‘Is this what you came to ask?’

‘No, I came to ask about your being beaten. We had a complaint, an allegation. Domestic violence is a crime and Louis could go to prison.’ Out of the window, he could see her husband working on an old tractor at the entrance to the barn. ‘I can see from the way you wince that it’s true.’

‘No, I fell. I told you.’ Her head down, it was as if she were talking to the soup she was stirring. Bruno wondered why the house had been built uphill, just above the barn, open to the winter winds, when the barn could have provided shelter. The answer came almost as soon as his mind formed the question: the animals’ waste would have seeped downhill into the home. There were still a couple of farms up in these hills, older than the Junot place, where the animals still lived on the ground floor with the humans above, taking advantage of the warmth from the bodies of the livestock below.

‘He used to beat Francette, too, didn’t he?’ Bruno asked. ‘Is that why she left home?’

Silence from the stove, but her shoulders seemed to sag a little more. Then he saw that the shoulders were shaking and she was trying to damp down some huge, racking sobs. He moved across to stand beside her and looked at her face, tears spilling down her cheeks.

‘You don’t understand,’ she whispered. ‘Francette could get away. She has her life ahead of her. I have nowhere to go, even if I wanted to.’

‘There are places you can go, shelters in Bergerac and Sarlat,’ he said. ‘I can drive you there now.’

‘I don’t want to,’ she said firmly, stooping to wipe her eyes on her apron. ‘He isn’t always like this. It’s just that everything has gone wrong, the subsidies and then the sheep dying and the bill from the vet that we can’t pay and now the tractor …’

‘This beating has to stop,’ Bruno said. He didn’t know what else he could say and he had the feeling that there was something she wasn’t telling him. Not for the first time, he thought how useful it would be to have a policewoman working alongside him.

‘Louis is not a bad man,’ she said, standing straight now and more sure of herself. ‘I know him better than anyone.’

‘Is he drunk when he beats you?’

She shrugged, and then winced again, her hand going to her ribs. Whatever the outcome of his confrontation with her husband, Bruno resolved that he’d take her down to the clinic.

‘His own wine is all he can afford to drink and there’s little enough of that,’ she said, turning off the gas beneath the soup. ‘Nobody would drink it but him.’

She turned to the rear wall where Bruno saw a haybox, something he used for long, slow cooking. But he remembered from his childhood, when he was taken in by cousins, that poor families used them because they could not afford the gas.

‘I’ll get it,’ he said. He put it on the counter alongside the stove, lifted the soup pan inside and then packed the extra hay on top and sealed the box. It would keep on cooking all day.

‘After I’ve spoken to Louis, I’m taking you down to the clinic,’ he said.

‘I’ll be all right.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Either you come with me, or I’ll have to arrest you for obstruction of justice and get a doctor to see you in the cells.’ Bruno was bluffing, but he was determined that she see a doctor, preferably Fabiola. She should be back by now from whatever private patient she was seeing.

He lifted Louis’s shotgun down from the hooks that held it to the wall, opened the breech, held the barrel to the window and squinted. Never much of a gun, it had been badly cared for. The barrels were pitted and it had barely been cleaned since it was last used. There was no sheen of gun oil around the breech and trigger and the wood of the stock was dry. Bruno sighed and took it outside to lock it inside his van before heading down to see the owner.

Outside, the sky had clouded over and the breeze that never really died up here on the high plateau had turned chill with a hint of rain in the air. A pair of goats gazed up at him before lowering their heads once more to the rough grass. He could see Louis bent over the front of the old Somua tractor, trying to get the engine to turn over with a starting handle. As he approached, Bruno could hear curses interspersed between the dry wheezing of the cylinders. He noticed a jug of wine on the floor beside the vehicle. The wood of the barn needed a coat of creosote and one of the hinges on the doors was hanging loose.

‘What in hell do you want?’ came the surly inquiry. Junot barely looked up from the tractor and his voice was slurred with drink.

‘I want to talk to you. We’ve had a formal complaint that you’re beating your wife, and it’s clear that she’s been hurt. Was it you?’

‘None of your business.’

‘I’m afraid it is. It’s against the law. And where’s your daughter gone?’

Junot stood up, throwing down the starting handle. He was a stocky figure of about Bruno’s height, heavy in the shoulders and with thick, well-muscled forearms. He glared at Bruno, his eyes red and his jaw clenching as if he was ready to fight.

‘Why don’t you leave us alone?’

Bruno shook his head, keeping his eyes on Junot. ‘This is my job, Louis. I have to find out what’s going on. Where’s Francette? Or did you beat her up as well? Did you hurt her so badly that she left? Is that what happened?’

Junot’s eyes narrowed and Bruno saw him shift his weight to his front foot and his left shoulder moved a fraction forward. Bruno knew the signs: Junot was going to throw a punch with his right fist.

It came, slightly faster than Bruno had expected. As he ducked beneath the swing he saw Junot’s left coming from the other direction and his leg lifting for a kick. Bruno moved forward inside the left, caught the rising leg and jerked it upwards, sending Junot crashing onto his back. Junot rolled, clambered to his feet and was coming back at Bruno with the starting handle.

‘Don’t be a fool, Louis. Put it down and there’s no harm done,’ Bruno said. ‘Otherwise you’re facing a prison term.’

With a cry that began as a curse and became a desperate wail, Junot attacked, swinging the handle like a cutlass. Bruno stepped back out of range and then slammed a punch into Junot’s kidney as the momentum took the man around. Junot came full circle, the handle still in his hand, but Bruno was expecting him, stepped inside the swing and hit him hard just under the breastbone. It was a short punch but all of Bruno’s weight was behind the blow.

Junot stopped as if he’d run into a wall. The handle dropped from his hand and he sank heavily to his knees, bending his head down and making retching sounds as he tried to suck air into his lungs.

Bruno went across to the well, where a full bucket stood beside the stone rim. He carried it back to Junot and emptied the contents over the man’s head. He looked up and saw Junot’s wife standing at the door of her kitchen, a dishcloth twisting in her hands but her face impassive. At least, Bruno thought, she had not rushed to her husband’s defence. He’d taken a bruise or two from battered wives in the past. She turned and went back into the kitchen, closing the door behind her.

Junot was half panting, half sobbing, but he seemed to be getting some air. He raised his head and a long trail of drool fell from his mouth. His eyes began to focus and he looked up at his house with its closed door and then at Bruno.

‘Bastard,’ he said, and vomited.

Bruno picked up the jug of wine and emptied it onto the ground. He could smell its sourness, as bitter as the sense of defeat that seemed almost to ooze from Junot. His farm and family falling apart around him, and now he gets knocked down on his own land and his wife doesn’t want to back him up. Bruno went back to the well and loosened the ratchet to send the bucket down to fill it again.