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

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 whyhe 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 Courrèges,
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 stillworking 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 Château?’
    ‘The