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

by gunfire, Bruno pushed at the central stone until it swivelled and opened the way into the dark silence of the crypt.

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    By shining each torch from the side, they were able to check that the crypt was clear before Bruno handed J-J his light. With one hand on the pistol he eased himself inside and down the stairs. He stood guard by the hole he remembered that led down to the cave. J-J and Sergeant Jules were large enough to need to struggle through the gap in the altar to join him. He shone his light down the next set of steps. It seemed clear. This time he descended with his back to the stairs, letting his rump slide from step to step as he kept the pistol at the ready. With his other hand, he held his torch as far to his side as he could, reckoning that anyone with a gun would aim for it.
    Once the others had followed him down, Bruno thought it was time for silence. He took off his boots, tied the laces together and hung them round his neck, advising the others to do the same. J-J wore slip-on shoes without laces, so he stuck them into his ample belt.
    ‘Watch out for stalagmites in the floor,’ Bruno whispered, feeling grit beneath his stockinged feet. Behind him, J-J was breathing loud enough to make Bruno want to shush him. J-J’s shadow, thrown by Sergeant Jules’s torch, loomed huge on the stone above Bruno’s head.
    This is folly, came a whispering at the back of Bruno’s mind. What could be more dangerous than going down a dark tunnel with an armed adversary waiting somewhere ahead? Bruno squashed the thought, telling himself that the Count probably had no gun. With the innocent girl at risk, there was no choice. Had the Count been alone, they could have pumped in tear gas from both ends until he crawled out, blinded and coughing and fighting for breath. They still could do that, came the insidious voice in his head. Tear gas wasn’t lethal. The girl was young, she’d recover fast enough. Nonsense, he told himself; the tunnels were so vast that the gas would dissipate.
    They were now in the long, smooth tunnel he thought of as the pipeline, where there would be no escape and a single bullet could go through one man and hit a second. Even a missed shot could ricochet and do damage. He turned off his torch and told J-J and Jules to do the same.
    Whispering to J-J to stay where he was, Bruno crept along the pipeline, every sense alert for any sound or glimmer of light from ahead. Crouching, he peered down its length. Even as he did so, the skin began to crawl on his scalp as he remembered that the pipeline ran both ways from here. He’d gone downhill to find Isabelle, but hadn’t bothered to explore uphill. There could be another exit, or it would make a fine spot for an ambush. He turned his head to look the other way but saw nothing. He’d have to leave Jules at this point, just in case he’d been wrong and the Count wasn’t heading for the Gouffre at all, but the other way. With Jules there, at least the one certain exit would be blocked.
    He crept down into the pipeline, waited and listened, then covered the lens of his torch with his hand so that only a faint glow emerged pinkly through his fingers. He whispered to J-J to follow him down. When Jules joined them, Bruno explained that the pipeline ran in both directions and Jules should wait at this junction. The old Gendarme at once handed J-J his torch.
    ‘If I’m staying still, I won’t need it,’ Jules said. ‘Anything that comes down from the right, I’ll shoot it. Anything that comes up from the left, I’ll challenge once and if it’s not you I’ll fire.’
    ‘If you go back up the steps a little and wait, you won’t have to challenge anybody. Just hit them on the head as they go by, but make sure it’s not me,’ said J-J.
    Reminding J-J to watch for stalagmites, Bruno set off in darkness, remembering his previous count of just over four hundred paces before he’d reached the lake where Isabelle was waiting. When he reached the first of the several dogleg corners, he waited for J-J and breathed into his ear, ‘Wait here while I get to the next bend. I’ll make a little click with my mouth when it’s safe to follow, and then we’ll do it again at the next corner.’
    Bruno felt a little tug of nostalgia for the troops he’d led in Bosnia. He’d trained them so hard they didn’t need this kind of briefing at every turn. He’d warned J-J how many steps they’d have to go, but every time the big detective joined him