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

anus. I’d say she had indulged in some pretty energetic sexual activity before she died, but there are no bruises on the wrists and shoulders so I doubt it was coerced.’
    ‘So you don’t see it as a suspicious death?’ Bruno asked. The woman’s pubis had been carefully trimmed into the neatest of triangles.
    ‘Obviously it’s mysterious, but suspicious … I don’t know. That item I put away for the pathologists, I found it inside her vagina. I’ve no idea what it is,’ said Gelletreau. ‘Frankly, looking at the vodka bottle my best guess would be suicide, a very demonstrative way to go for a probably disturbed woman. That in itself would not be unusual. People quite often dress up in strange ways or strip naked to commit suicide. We’ll have to see what the toxicology says but I’d be surprised if they don’t find a lot of alcohol and barbiturates …’ He broke off, muttering ‘That reminds me.’ He bent down to rummage in his medical bag and came out with a shiny metal tool that Bruno recognized from ear examinations.
    ‘No needle tracks so I rather discounted drugs,’ the doctor said, bending down over the body. But instead of inserting the device into her ear, he poked it up a nostril and squinted inside.
    ‘Aha,’ he said. He tried but failed to lever his heavy form up again. Bruno gave him a hand and hauled Gelletreau to his feet.
    ‘Signs of very heavy cocaine use. The septum is almost destroyed,’ he said. ‘A pity. She must have been a good-looking woman. I’d put her age at no more than forty.’
    Bruno nodded. There was little sign of wrinkles nor of ageing at her neck. Her legs were long and shapely, with no sag to her thighs or buttocks. Her waist was well defined and the breasts generous.
    ‘Are those stretch marks signs that she had given birth?’ Bruno asked.
    ‘I’d say so, but we’ll need the autopsy to be sure.’
    United in an unspoken sense of sadness and of waste, the three men fell silent as they gazed down at the body, robbed in death of any sexual allure. But the painted shape on her trunk disturbed Bruno.
    ‘What about that marking?’ he asked. He could see now that it was no tattoo, more something that had been daubed on her belly, a vaguely familiar shape.
    ‘It’s a pentagram, some kind of mystic symbol,’ said Gelletreau. ‘And it’s no tattoo, it was drawn with something like a magic marker. It’s waterproof, whatever it was. I don’t know what those two black candles are doing in there. Nor that.’ He pointed to a sodden and shapeless mass in the bottom of the punt.
    ‘It’s a cockerel,’ said Antoine, poking at it with a stick. ‘And there’s its head, over there at the far end of the punt. Somebody must have cut it off.’
    Bruno bent down to look at some charred sticks floating on what little water was left in the boat and sniffed, catching that whiff of paraffin again.
    ‘Do you think somebody tried to light a fire here?’ he asked. ‘And what’s that dark patch down where the water’s almost gone?’
    All three men knelt to peer at the bottom of the punt, just in front of the dead woman’s feet. As the water drained, they saw that the dark patch was simply charred wood and the burning had gone quite deep. There were some more sticks scattered around the bottom of the punt, some of them so thick they were almost logs. Right in the middle of the burntpatch was a long crack where the last of the water was now draining away.
    ‘Somebody tried to light a fire, but the wood was so old it cracked and water came in and put the fire out,’ Bruno said, thinking aloud. ‘That’s why I smelt paraffin.’
    ‘Bloody stupid, setting a fire in a wooden boat and not putting a stone or something underneath,’ said Antoine. ‘It was bound to burn through.’
    ‘Like a Viking funeral that went wrong, only with black candles and a dead cockerel,’ said Gelletreau. ‘Funny stuff, this. I don’t like it at all. The sooner we get a proper autopsy the better.’
    Bruno nodded, went back to where he had left his trousers and used his mobile phone to call J-J, the chief of detectives at national police headquarters in Périgueux. He was told to leave a message and then went through to the switchboard to report a mysterious death, adding that the doctor had requested an autopsy. That would mean taking the dead woman to the pathology lab in Bergerac.
    ‘I’d better wait here,’ he said. ‘You two can go about your business, but thanks to