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

after they smelt Hassan smoking them. Smells like apple pie. But once the novelty wore off, it was just Hassan. I can’t think when I last sold a pack to anyone else.’
    Hassan lived in the nearby village of St Chamassy, where he worked for Electricité de France as a travelling maintenance man. His route would take him past the Café des Sports on most days.
    ‘I’m trying to remember how old his kids are,’ Bruno said.
    ‘Just the little girls and the one boy at the
collège
here, Abdul,’ Karim said, a touch of alarm in his voice. ‘Is there a problem, Bruno?’
    He shook his head. ‘Just routine inquiries. I presume the boy is a football fan.’
    ‘Mad about it, plays on the school team. Are you sure this isn’t trouble?’
    Karim was obviously worried, and something in his tone made Rashida turn to look at her husband.
    ‘He could have been involved in some larking about, nothing that will need more than a good talking-to if it does turn out to involve him,’ Bruno replied. ‘Don’t worry about it, and don’t say a word to Hassan.’
    Bruno took his plastic evidence bags and headed for the
collège
. It was almost noon, when classes ended for lunch. Bythe time he parked, the courtyard was thronged with adolescents jostling to get to the dining hall. Bruno turned left to a row of two-storey buildings in faded white stucco. These were the subsidized apartments for the teachers, one of which housed Florence and her twins. Rollo had excused her from the rota of supervising the school lunches so she could pick up her children from the
maternelle
and feed them before dropping them back at the crèche.
    A flustered Florence answered the door holding a wooden spoon. She leaned forward so he could kiss her cheeks in greeting.
    ‘Bruno, I’m afraid you’ve come when it’s feeding time at the zoo,’ she joked.
    ‘I know, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t urgent.’
    With a glance at the mirror, hanging on a hook that Bruno had affixed when she was moving in, Florence invited him in to the kitchen. The twins broke off from squabbling over the flavours of their yogurts and shouted a welcome to Bruno.
    ‘
Bonjour
, Dora,
bonjour
Daniel,’ he said, bending to kiss each of them on their upturned brows.
    ‘They’ve almost finished,’ Florence said. ‘Would you like something? A coffee, perhaps a sandwich? I was about to make myself a quick
tartine
.’
    ‘I’m fine, thanks. I’ll be lunching later but go ahead and eat. It’s just that I need your help about one of the kids, the El Ghoumari boy from St Chamassy. Do you know him?’
    ‘Nice youngster, he’s in my junior science class. What’s your interest?’ Her tone was guarded and her face neutral. It reminded him of her closed and formal way when they’dfirst met. He’d been investigating fraud at the Ste Alvère truffle market where she was working. He had no doubt that despite their friendship her first loyalty would be to her pupils.
    ‘It’s not official, otherwise I’d have gone to Rollo,’ he said. ‘I think the boy might have been larking about. I just want to know who his best friends are so I can clear something up. It’s nothing serious, at least not for the boy.’
    Florence looked at him dubiously.
    ‘You’ll have to tell me more than that,’ she said. The children, aware of a sudden tension, kept their big eyes switching from Bruno to their mother as they spooned in their yogurts.
    Bruno explained about the cave, and his suspicion that it had been kids playing at re-enacting what they had read in the papers, probably spurred on by a grown-up with an interest in keeping the Satanist story going.
    ‘It’s not something that can get them into trouble, it’s just that I need to know what’s going on,’ he said. ‘So if the best friend turns out to be Jean-Paul whose dad runs the cave, I’d like to go and talk to the father. If I go through Rollo, it starts to get official.’
    ‘Your uniform makes it official, Bruno.’
    ‘I don’t like things being official, not when kids are involved,’ he said. ‘You know that.’
    She turned from piling plates and yogurt pots to look him in the eye.
    ‘Will you let me be there when you talk to them?’ she asked. He nodded, and watched her as she considered what to do.
    ‘Jean-Paul is a friend of his. And so is Luc Delaron, Philippe’snephew,’ she said, standing to take a butter dish and a fat sausage from the refrigerator. The bread board was already