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

thumping the bench. The boy stretched out a hand to stroke him and Balzac licked it.
    ‘We keep a spare key under the stone by the stage door, just in case the musicians arrive early and we can’t find my dad,’ the boy said, his eyes on the puppy. ‘I used that.’
    ‘Did your dad know about this?’
    ‘I asked him to open it,’ said Luc, standing beside Jean-Paul. ‘It was doing a favour for Uncle Philippe.’
    ‘I was there, too,’ said Mathieu, almost proudly. ‘They said they didn’t want to leave me out.’
    Bruno grinned at them. ‘At your age, I wouldn’t have wanted to be left out either. What did Uncle Philippe want you to do? Did he give you the black paint?’
    ‘He said it was washable and would soon clean off,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘It was just to make a story, to get more people coming to the cave.’
    ‘And you were the one with your dad’s cigarettes, Abdul,’ Bruno said. ‘You know you’re too young to smoke. You’ll never play good football if you start smoking.’
    ‘Will you tell my dad?’ Abdul asked, evidently far more worried about his father’s reaction than about Bruno’s questions.
    ‘Why not tell me all of it, and you can start by telling me where you got the goat’s head,’ Bruno replied.
    ‘But we didn’t,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘It was there already when we arrived and so was that funny painting on the wall. We had the candles and we’d already painted them, but we didn’t paint Our Lady. We went in with the candles and put themon the big stone and then we saw all the other stuff so we ran away.’
    Bruno nodded, as if he understood, but this was suddenly becoming much more complicated. If the boys hadn’t done this, who had?
    ‘When did you have your cigarette, Abdul?’ he asked.
    The boy looked across at his friends. They were all leaning forward now almost eagerly, clustering around the puppy who rolled happily between them. The shamefaced look on the boys’ faces when Bruno arrived had long since gone.
    ‘We all had a puff, when we crossed the lake, before we went into the chapel,’ said Luc. ‘Even Mathieu took a puff, although it was his first time.’
    ‘And what about the vodka bottle?’
    ‘Uncle Philippe gave it to us, but it was already empty,’ Luc answered.
    ‘And did he give you the candles, as well?’
    Luc nodded.
    ‘So Uncle Philippe gave you the candles and the paint and the vodka bottle and asked you to put them in Our Lady’s Chapel,’ Bruno asked, keeping his voice as light and casual as he could. ‘But when you got there, you saw that Our Lady had already been painted black and the goat’s head was already there, and that funny painting on the wall. Is that how it happened?’
    ‘Will you have to tell Uncle Philippe I told you?’ Luc asked. ‘I don’t want to get him into trouble. It was just so he could do a story to get more tourists coming.’
    ‘I understand,’ Bruno said. He turned to Jean-Paul. ‘Did your dad know you were borrowing the keys?’
    Jean-Paul looked at Luc and then at Abdul and Mathieu, and then looked down and mumbled, ‘I think so.’
    ‘Uncle Philippe said it was all arranged,’ Luc said.
    ‘Did he give you anything for doing it?’ Bruno asked, thinking that Delaron would have some explaining to do, to Bruno and to his editor back in Périgueux. A trick like this could probably put a very swift end to his embryonic career as a press photographer. ‘Or did he just buy you an ice cream and some bubblegum?’
    ‘He gave us five euros each.’
    Usually Bruno had a soft spot for Delaron, a good-natured and cheeky young man who was evidently bored running the family’s camera shop and taking wedding photos and studio portraits. From the snaps of rugby matches and school prize days in St Denis, he’d turned himself into an accomplished news photographer. But this manufacturing of reality was outrageous. And it smelt like a plot, with Marcel the cave manager behind it and quite probably Bruno’s friend the Baron, in the interests of bringing more trade to the cave and to St Denis. Even as he felt his irritation build into anger, Bruno realized that exposing this little scheme would primarily hurt the four boys.
    ‘So what happened when you saw the goat’s head and that Our Lady was already painted?’ Bruno asked.
    ‘We didn’t see it at first, we just had a torch,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘But I know where the switches are, so when Mathieu bumped into the goat’s head I turned the light