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

own place was known and so was Pamela’s, where he kept his horse. Too many people knew of his friendship with Stéphane and his farm was too near to the Junot place. He called Maurice Soulier, an elderly duck farmer who owed Bruno a favour. It was answered by his wife, Sabine, a motherly soul. Their children had long left home and she agreed at once.
    ‘Go down behind the altar to the vestry and wait there. I’ll come and fetch you.’
    He went back to the Gendarmerie and borrowed the keys to Jules’s private car, a well-maintained Renault Laguna. He drove to Father Sentout’s house, where he borrowed the key to the vestry from his housekeeper. He loaded the two women into the car and followed the back road past the cemetery, taking country lanes to the Soulier farm. Sabine was waiting for them with a pot of coffee and a plate of her home-made madeleines. Her husband came in from the barn to greet them. When Bruno asked for a place wherehe and the two guests could speak in private, Maurice showed them to the shaded terrace and left them alone. Humming happily to herself, evidently pleased at the thought of guests, Sabine went upstairs to make up the spare bed and lay out towels.
    ‘I’ve been a fool,’ Francette said dully. ‘It’s my fault that Dad’s dead and now I think Mum’s in danger as well as me.’
    ‘Start at the beginning,’ Bruno said. ‘What made you leave your job at the supermarket?’
    ‘I met this guy, a bit older than me but good-looking, you know?’ She described how he’d come to her checkout, chatted a little, and he asked her out. He picked her up after work in his sports car, took her to a dinner in Bergerac and then to a nightclub for dancing before driving her home.
    ‘He was really sweet, just kissed me on the cheek and asked to see me again. Next time he brought me flowers and he took me to a smart restaurant, white tablecloths and everything. He knew all about wines. Then we went to that big disco in Périgueux that the other girls used to talk about, but I’d never been there.’
    Bruno nodded sympathetically, suspecting that he knew already how this would turn out. A girl from a poor home who had never been taken out before was suddenly being treated like a princess. The next date had been a day trip to Bordeaux, where he’d taken her to an expensive hairdresser, bought her new clothes and lingerie that he chose for her, and then to a boutique hotel for the afternoon.
    ‘Léo was so kind, so sweet,’ she said. Bruno could imagine the contrast between the skilled seduction in the hotel roomand the clumsy, insistent fumblings of the boys of her own age from St Denis.
    ‘Was that his real name?’ he asked. No, she replied, it was her pet name for him. His real name was Lionel.
    Then he had taken her to Paris for the weekend, a hotel on the Quai Voltaire with a room overlooking the river. They had smoked a joint of the strongest dope she’d ever had and then made love until it was time to go to the famous Queen disco on the Champs Elysées.
    ‘There was this long line of people trying to get in, but one look at Léo and they opened the red velvet rope and we went straight in,’ she said, her voice wistful, still conveying her pride in that moment. And even in her low mood, Francette had the physical assurance and poise of a woman now aware of her own allure and sexual power. At the disco, she said, she had tried cocaine for the first time.
    They slept until late and then more shopping, until Léo took her to an exclusive party where there was more cocaine and endless champagne. Suddenly people were taking off their clothes and Léo was making love with another woman and a man and it seemed the natural thing to join in. She looked up at Bruno defiantly and said that she’d enjoyed it. Then there had been the week at a villa in St Tropez, more cocaine and more sex parties; in hotel suites and even on a yacht. When Léo offered her a job at the hotel, she’d taken it at once.
    Bruno felt a cold anger start to build, deep inside him, at hearing of Foucher’s cynical seduction of an inexperienced young woman, and one whom Bruno still recalled as a little girl.
    ‘I had no illusions about the job.’ There was a challenge in her voice, but she wouldn’t look at him while she spoke. Her mother sat in silence, listening with her eyes closed, one hand resting on Francette’s forearm. ‘My eyes were wide open and I’d have taken the job even without the thousand