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

forward.’ He put his torch between his teeth and gingerly felt his way down. At the bottom, he turned his beam of light down the tunnel and the dust looked undisturbed as before. The light above him dimmed as Isabelle’s body filled most of the narrow stairway and he stood ready to help her down.
    ‘I’ve got you,’ he said, his hands on her waist as he lifted her down, surprised at the lightness of her.
    ‘I see what you mean about the dust,’ she said. ‘But remember your Sherlock Holmes: when all other possibilities have been exhausted, look at the one that remains, however unlikely.’
    She played her own torch on the dust on the steps and then at the dust beneath their feet and down the tunnel. She bent to examine it closer and picked up some of the dust. She rolled it between her fingers and brought it closer to examine it more carefully.
    ‘Animal hairs and fluff, probably carpet fluff,’ she said. ‘That’s the kind of dust you’d find when you empty a household vacuum cleaner, not the kind I’d expect in a rocky tunnel.’
    She scooped some of the dust near her into an evidence bag and asked Bruno to go further up the tunnel and do the same. He took some from about a metre further along and then some more from a few metres further.
    ‘They’re different,’ he said. ‘The further stuff is all rock and grit. And there are footprints and scuff marks in it, so the path has been used.’
    ‘So somebody thoughtfully covered their tracks in here andout,’ she said. ‘Apart from you and the Baron, who’d know about this?’
    ‘Resistance veterans, and whoever they told, I suppose. Now we know, why don’t we explore it the whole way?’
    ‘Won’t the guys at the cave mouth wonder where we are?’
    ‘You could go out and say I’m still searching. I walk along to the exit and you take my van and meet me at the cemetery in St Philippon. There’s a map in the door pocket.’
    ‘It makes more sense the other way round, for me as the specialist to continue searching and you take the van,’ she said. ‘You’re just trying to spare me the tunnel because of my leg. Stop treating me as an invalid.’
    He tried to object but she set off down the tunnel, calling over her shoulder, ‘You know it makes sense. Go, and I’ll see you there.’
    ‘You don’t know how long it is,’ he called after her.
    ‘I’ll find out. Just go.’
    Bruno still worried as he climbed back up the steep steps, replaced the trapdoor and covered it with grit again. Checking that he had the evidence bags and they were all labelled, he headed back the length of the cave to the entrance where Delaron and Marcel were waiting. He showed them the evidence bags and said the Inspector was still collecting stuff for forensics.
    ‘I’ll keep the key and come back to pick her up later,’ he said.
    ‘There’s a guy waiting to see you, a journalist, says he knows you from Bosnia,’ said Marcel. ‘He’s waiting in the snack bar.’
    ‘I don’t have much time now,’ Bruno said. ‘And I want a private word with Philippe.’
    He took the photographer out to the car park and opened the rear door of his van to see Balzac sitting tangled in the line from Bruno’s fishing rod and chewing energetically on one of the training shoes he used for rugby. He found himself grinning and sighing at the same time, and he tried to remember how long it had taken to train Gigi. He gave Balzac a quick pat and pulled Lemontin’s file from his briefcase.
    ‘After the trick you pulled with the kids, Philippe, I want to talk with you,’ he began, ‘and maybe I should include your editor in Bordeaux in the call. What do you say?’
    Delaron shrugged. ‘It was rather overtaken by events. There was a break-in and it looks like Satanists.’
    ‘That was lucky for you. Do you think your editor will see it that way? Or that people are going to trust you again? Do you think I should trust you in future?’
    ‘From the look of that file in your hand, I’d say you were going to give me a chance.’
    ‘Not quite,’ said Bruno. ‘I’m giving you a test.’ He removed the single page that showed the links between the companies behind the Thivion development and the one planned for St Denis.
    ‘You’ll need to do some research. Go to a place called Thivion and take some photos of what was supposed to be a new holiday village just like the one coming here. Their Mayor is pissed off with what happened to them and I don’t want it to happen to