The Devil's Cave: A Bruno Courrèges Investigation (Bruno Chief of Police 5)

device for chopping vegetables. Usually he enjoyed this routine, joking and jollying the stallholders into seeing reason. But this morning he was brisk and even curt, startling some of them into grumbles and wry jokes about Satan’s influence on the market of St Denis.
    Feeling harassed and slightly ashamed of himself, and worried that events were accelerating out of control, he ran up the
Mairie
steps to his office and made his call. As he expected, the clerk in the
Procureur
’s office said he’d have to call him back and couldn’t it wait? He groaned as he opened his computer to find dozens of accumulated emails waiting. Quickly, he scanned them to see what could not get the clerk’s treatment of waiting until Monday. But one address made him pause. It was from someone calling themselves
Prévertlady
on a Hotmail account. It had to be Isabelle. Jacques Prévert was the author of the book of poems she had sent him. The message was a simple mobile phone number, not one she’d ever used before, with the words ‘Borrow someone’s phone’.
    He went down to the market and asked Stéphane, busy serving at his cheese stall, and was handed his phone without question, although his friend gave a pointed look to the phone at Bruno’s belt. He called the number and recognized Isabelle’s voice saying simply ‘
Allo
’.
    ‘This is Stéphane’s phone,’ he said, walking down the steps from the bridge to the privacy of the river bank.
    ‘Mine is a prepaid from FNAC, bought yesterday. You should get one, just in case. Listen, Bruno, this is getting very tricky. The Defence Ministry is trying to find out who’s behind these inquiries into the Count, saying there’s a big contract with the Lebanese military at risk. We know it’s true because we got a routine request to provide security for their defence minister, who’s apparently coming in to sign it. The Count’s companies have been doing fifty million a year and more in foreign sales and nobody wants to upset that.’
    ‘Have they been on to you?’
    ‘Not yet, but they have been on to the Brigadier and he asked me to find out what you think you’re playing at – his words. And he wasn’t talking about that charade your priest staged in the cave.’
    Bruno explained that this was no longer a possible fraud case, but that the
Procureur
had opened dossiers on two probable murders. Briefly, he described Junot’s crash and the injection marks.
    ‘It’s out of my hands now,’ he said. ‘J-J’s forensic guys are probably going to require a search of that hotel where we got turned away, so I hope there’s no plans for the minister to hold a signing celebration.’
    ‘You should have told me this before.’ Her voice was tightening. ‘We need to know this.’
    ‘It only began to come together last night.’
    ‘Is there anything that points to the two guys with the Count in those glossy photos I printed out?’
    ‘Not yet,’ he said.
    ‘The Ballotin girl in the glossy photos, the one calling herself a nurse, it turns out she isn’t. No record of a diploma. And here’s some more news. The second time Béatrice was arrested, so was the Ballotin girl. Same time, same place, same profession.’
    ‘I’m not surprised,’ he replied. ‘But what I can’t work out is the motive for all this. It can’t be inheritance – Athénaïs has a daughter who’ll be the heir.’
    ‘Only if she lives to inherit. Where is she now?’ As she spoke, his own phone on his belt began to vibrate.
    ‘At college in Canada,
Paris-Match
tracked her down.’ Could Isabelle be serious, that a teenage girl was now at risk?
    ‘The Count’s short of money. If this Lebanese deal doesn’t come off, he’s in real trouble: bankruptcy, lawsuits, he may even be looking at a prison term. The only thing that could save him then would be to borrow more money using the family estate as collateral. We’ve been on this phone long enough. Get yourself a throwaway and send the number to the email I used to contact you.’
    His own phone had stopped ringing but the call had come from J-J. He’d expected this. Yves must have finished the forensic study and J-J would be preparing a search. He called him back.
    ‘Bruno Courrèges?’ J-J said, his voice curiously formal, as though someone official were listening in. ‘You are required to meet me at the Gendarmerie in thirty minutes. And consider yourself under suspension pending investigation. Your Mayor has been informed.’
    He