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

first arch of the bridge? That’s the deep channel. You’d be up to your neck or even deeper. You wouldn’t have the footing to drag it ashore.’
    More and more of the townsfolk were gathering on thebridge, craning their necks to watch the boat draw steadily nearer. Among them, camera at the ready, was Philippe Delaron from the photography shop, who doubled as the local correspondent for
Sud-Ouest
. Bruno groaned inwardly. A ghoulish newspaper photo of a corpse in a boat was not the image of St Denis that he or his Mayor would seek to portray.
    ‘It’s a punt,’ said Antoine, surprise in his voice. ‘I haven’t seen one of those in a long time. They used them for hunting wildfowl in the old days before they built the dams upriver, when we still had wetlands with the flooding every spring.’
    ‘Should we head for your campsite and get the canoe?’ Bruno was eager to do something.
    ‘Better wait and see if it gets through the current around the bridge,’ said Antoine, lighting a yellow cigarette, a Gitane
maïs
. Bruno had forgotten they still made them. ‘If it founders, there’s no point. And it might still get stuck on the sand-bank. If it doesn’t, I’ve got an idea. Follow me.’
    Antoine thrust his way back through the crowd and down the steep and narrow stone steps that led from the bridge to the quay where the annual fishing contests were held. Three fishermen sat on their folding stools, each watching his own float and casting the occasional sidelong glance to see if his neighbours were having better luck. None of them seemed to pay much attention to the crowd on the bridge.
    ‘Patrice, can you cast a line into that drifting boat and see if you can pull it into the bank?’ Antoine asked the first of the anglers.
    Patrice half-turned and eyed them sourly. He mumbled something through closed lips.
    ‘What was that?’ Bruno asked.
    Patrice opened his mouth and took out three wriggling maggots from where he’d kept them under his tongue. It was something Bruno had seen the Baron do when they went fishing. Maggots were sluggish in the chill of the morning and a devoted fisherman would put some in his mouth to get them warm and energetic enough to attract fish once they were on the hook. It was one of the reasons Bruno knew he’d never be a real angler.
    ‘I’ll lose my bait, could lose a hook and line,’ Patrice said, putting his maggots back into the old tobacco can where he kept his bait. He paused, squinting against the sun. ‘Is this your business, Bruno?’
    Bruno outlined the discovery to Patrice, a small, hunched man, married for forty years to a woman twice his size with a loud and penetrating voice to match. That probably explained the amount of time he spent fishing, Bruno thought.
    ‘I’d try it myself but you’re the best man with a rod and line,’ Bruno said. He had learned back in the army days that a little flattery was the easiest way to turn a reluctant conscript into an enthusiastic volunteer.
    Across the river, a white open-topped sports car with sweeping lines came fast around the corner of the medical centre to the bank where the caravans parked. It braked hard and stopped, wheels spitting up gravel. A fair-haired young man climbed out dressed as if for tennis in the 1930s. He wore a white sports shirt and cream trousers with a colourful belt, and ran towards the river bank shedding his shirt. He paused on the bank to remove his white tennis shoes.
    ‘The bugger’s mad,’ said Antoine, spitting out his cigarette. ‘He’s going to dive in.’
    Behind him another figure stepped gracefully from the car, a woman with remarkably long legs, dressed in black tights and what looked like a man’s white shirt, tightly belted with a black sash. Her face was pale and her hair covered in a black turban. The way she moved made Bruno think of a ballerina. She advanced to the bank beside the fair-haired man and they looked upriver as if trying to assess when the punt might be in reach. The man began wading into the shallows as Bruno called out to him to stop.
    Patrice had his line out of the water. He had removed his bait and float and was fixing his heaviest hook, looking up every few seconds to watch the speed of the punt’s approach.
    ‘I’m ready,’ he said. ‘Stand aside and don’t get behind me. This will be a hell of a cast.’
    Standing at the river bank, Bruno could see nothing of the dead woman. But something close to a metre tall and black was standing up