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

my type,’ Isabelle said. ‘How about you, J-J? Any of this sparking your interest?’
    ‘It sounds like a civil matter and I’ve got enough on my plate with real crimes,’ he said curtly. ‘We’re almost back at St Denis. Where do you want me to go from here?’
    They stopped at Pamela’s house to greet Hector and to pick up Balzac from where he’d been sleeping in the horse’s stall. The puppy seemed delighted at the reunion with Isabelle and nestled on her lap as they drove the back way past the cemetery to Bruno’s house.
    He left J-J and Isabelle sitting at the table on the terrace in the sunshine, watching Balzac explore his new home. Bruno took from his kitchen a small knife and bowl and went looking for lunch. He could never understand Pamela’s obsession with eradicating dandelions from her lawns; he presumed it was some odd British idiosyncrasy like its royal family and its warm beer. Everyone in France understood the pleasure of fresh young dandelion leaves in a salad, but Bruno went further. He looked for the tiny green buds of the future flowers, snipped them off until he had a couple of dozen and then added some leaves of fresh parsley. He went back into the kitchen to peel a few cloves of garlic and wash the white asparagus. Humming to himself with pleasure at entertaining his friends, he cut some slices from the big smoked ham that hung from the main roof beam. He put water on to boil for the asparagus and the tiny new potatoes, cracked a dozen of his own eggs into a bowl and took plates, glasses and cutlery out to the table where Isabelle and J-J were chatting about politics.
    He tossed a knob of butter into a large frying pan and turned on the gas, opened a bottle of Bergerac Sec and took it with a baguette of fresh bread and a bottle of Badoit, his favourite mineral water, out to the table. Back in the kitchen, the butter was starting to bubble and he added some crushedgarlic and the little
boutons de pissenlit
, the dandelion buds, and began stirring the eggs with a large fork. He seasoned the eggs with salt and pepper and turned back to the
boutons
. When he felt the little buds begin to soften under his spatula, he added the eggs and began to swirl them around the pan. He broke off briefly to stand the fresh asparagus in their special tall cylindrical pan that he’d found in a
brocante
; now they were ready for the boiling water.
    ‘Can I help?’ Isabelle asked, coming into the kitchen, Balzac at her heels, raising his nose to sniff the tantalizing new scents of a kitchen. ‘It’s so good to be back here, watching you cook. It’s even better with the sunshine and a dog at our feet. It feels like last summer.’
    Bruno threw her a smiling glance before starting to fold the omelette. Last summer had been that first, glorious rapture of their love affair before she had decided to pursue her career in Paris. He could never decide whether he wanted a clean and surgical end to it, or to go on with their thrilling but frustrating reunions on snatched weekends. Just to look at her was to know he could not give her up, although in the back of his mind he knew that her inevitable departure would leave him miserable and guilty at the sense of betraying the distant Pamela.
    ‘You can take this out to the table,’ he said, sliding the folded omelette into a large oval dish, and then tearing up the parsley leaves to sprinkle on top. Before she picked up the plates, Isabelle took his arm and turned him to her to kiss him gently on the lips. He felt her tongue tease him briefly before she broke off and picked up the dish.
    Bruno watched her go, still limping slightly, and turned back smiling to pour boiling water first into a saucepan for the potatoes and then into the asparagus pan. Congratulating himself that he’d put fresh sheets on the bed, he went out to enjoy his omelette.
    ‘I smell truffles, but I don’t see any,’ said J-J, fork in one hand and bread in the other. His wine glass was already empty. Bruno refilled it.
    ‘I left a small one in the egg box,’ Bruno replied. ‘Egg shells are porous so they absorb some of the flavour, not enough to overwhelm the
pissenlit
.’
    ‘It’s wonderful. The
boutons
make it taste like springtime,’ said Isabelle, and sipped at her wine.
    They finished the course in silence, Bruno delighted to see Isabelle follow J-J’s example and clean her plate with bread. J-J had been right: she needed feeding up. He went back to the kitchen and