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

and her father was half French and half Italian-Swiss. Hence the fondue.
    ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said, beaming at her. ‘I thought you’d been avoiding me for some reason.’
    ‘No, I’m not avoiding you,’ she said, leading the way into the kitchen. Other than her books, her open laptop and a large framed photograph of a village in a valley overwhelmed by mountains, the house looked exactly as it had when Pamela was renting it out in the summer. ‘I’m avoiding a question you want to ask me about private patients and I don’t intend to answer. So having got that out of the way, how are you?’
    ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘A bit worried about Madame Junot and trying to trace the identity of this dead woman we fished out of the river. And I spoke to Pamela. She’s planning on coming back, but not for long, just to see whether she can find some care for her mother here in St Denis.’
    Fabiola nodded, some of her dark hair falling from the loose bun in which she usually kept it. She pushed the lock behind her ear and began to open a bottle of white wine. Seeing Bruno trying to look at the label, she grinned at him and held up the bottle; one of his favourites, a Bergerac Sec from Clos d’Yvigne.
    ‘I know. Pamela rang me and asked what I thought and I told her it wasn’t a good idea. I’ve seen good people turn into depressives when they start taking care of a parent who’s become a vegetable. From what the doctor says, her mother can only get worse.’
    ‘You spoke to the doctor in Scotland?’ he asked, sitting at the kitchen table, already set for two, the frame and tiny candle holder for the fondue already in place. As well as the wine glass, there was a small liqueur glass at each setting and a bottle of some clear liquid. He turned it to read the label: Willisauer Kirsch. She must have planned to ask him in.
    ‘Sure, why not? The prognosis is not good. And the retirement home here isn’t equipped for patients in that condition. Her mother would be better off in a specialized home, if she can afford it,’ Fabiola said, pouring out the wine. She took a sip, put down the glass, yawned and stretched. There were black circles under her eyes, as if she had not been sleeping well. She reached for the pack of Gitanes on the table and lit one.
    ‘Are you OK?’ He’d only rarely seen her smoke before. ‘You seem a bit down.’
    ‘Are you surprised? Telling cancer patients they don’t have long to live. Abused wives who won’t make a formal complaint. Old people who are dead in everything except that they still breathe and eat and shit. And lots of hypochondriacs who want me to give them antibiotics for everything. If it wasn’t for the horses and my friends I’d go mad.’
    Bruno had never seen Fabiola in this mood before. He didn’t know what to say. She turned aside to the kitchen counter where Emmenthal and Gruyère had already been grated and a baguette of bread chopped into bite-sized chunks. She peeled some heads of garlic, chopped an onion very finely and put them all into the fondue pot.
    ‘I’m hungry, so I’m going to cheat,’ she said. ‘I should do this at table but it takes for ever.’ Instead, she put the pot on her kitchen stove, splashed in some of the white wine and a dash of the kirsch, added some pepper and mixed spice and began to stir.
    ‘All those depressing things you mentioned, is that all that’s getting you down?’
    ‘No,’ she said and paused. Then the words came out in a rush. ‘We had an incident at the shelter this afternoon, just before I got there, and the Gendarmes took ages to respond.’
    Bruno knew that Fabiola volunteered at a hostel in Bergerac for battered wives who had taken their children and left their husbands. She treated their cuts and bruises, checked on the health of the children and used her medical title to write letters to recommend that the mother be given social housing in a new town where the husbands would not easily find them.
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘One of the husbands found out where his wife was, burst in, smashed the place up, beat her senseless and took his kid. The usual story. Thing is, we’re supposed to have this panic button for the Gendarmes. They took twenty minutes to turn up and I could have walked to the Gendarmerie faster than that. I had to take the woman to hospital, but he’d really done a lot of damage to the shelter. And he’d belted the two volunteers who were there.’
    ‘Have they arrested him