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

looked like waxed cloth attached to the splinters, perhaps from a tarpaulin.
    Once the Gendarmes learned that Junot had been drunk, they weren’t going to expend much time or effort trying to work out how it had happened or whether another car had been involved. Bruno called Fabiola over and showed her the threads before he broke off a splinter with a thread attached and put it in an evidence bag.
    ‘Junot wasn’t wearing anything like that,’ she said.
    ‘What do you make of it, Ahmed?’ he asked the veteran fireman, who had climbed back up to the road and was now supervising the winching up of the burnt-out wreck that had been Junot’s bike.
    Ahmed studied the scene, looked at the broken glass and the shattered fence and shrugged. ‘Maybe he comes round the corner, sees the car, swerves but hits it and breaks the headlights, bounces off and over the edge just as the car smashed the fence down.’
    ‘So why didn’t the car go over as well? And if he hit the car, he’d be on the road, not going over the cliff with his bike.’
    ‘You could be right; it’s a tough one. Can we leave you to notify next-of-kin and arrange for the
Mairie
to get that fence fixed? We’ll take the body straight to the funeral home.’
    ‘I can’t work it out, either,’ said Albert as they drove off. ‘There’s no way a motorbike could have caused that much damage to the fence. That accident doesn’t make sense.’
    ‘In that case, I’m going to ask for an autopsy,’ said Fabiola. ‘There’s something odd about that corpse. If I didn’t know the neck was broken I’d have said he died of a massive cerebrovascular accident, a stroke.’
    ‘An autopsy for a drunk driver?’ said Albert. ‘They won’t like that. Not over a weekend.’
    ‘You don’t like the way the accident looked and I don’t like the way the corpse smelled and Bruno doesn’t like the strange threads where the fence was broken,’ Fabiola said firmly. ‘That’s enough for me. So don’t take the body to the funeral home, take it directly to the lab in Bergerac, on my responsibility.’

23
    Bruno had to admire Béatrice. Here he was for the third time in as many days, with each visit so far starting with her being friendly and concluding in tension, and she was still smiling at him and saying ‘Welcome’ as if she meant it.
    ‘Civilian clothes,’ she said, her eyes twinkling. ‘So at last is this your long-promised social call?’
    ‘I wish it were, Madame. I need to see Francette and to take her away on urgent compassionate grounds. There has been a road accident and her father is dead. I thought she’d want to go and comfort her mother, who has not yet been told.’
    ‘The poor girl, of course she must have some time off to see to her mother,’ said Béatrice, looking suddenly maternal. She told the black-suited receptionist to find Francette and bring her down to the office. The girl on duty was not Cécile but might have been; they looked so much alike they were almost interchangeable.
    Francette’s face was impassive as she heard the news, but her lip and cheek were swollen as if she had fallen badly, or perhaps it was toothache. Her eyes were red and lacked their usual liveliness. Had she somehow heard of his death already?
    ‘Was he drunk?’ was her only question when Brunodescribed the crash. Hoping to give her some comfort, he said her father had died at once of a broken neck.
    ‘I don’t know if he had been drinking. Certainly he was sober when I last saw him,’ Bruno said. ‘I thought I’d come and tell you myself, and then if you’re willing I’ll drive you back to the farm. Your mother hasn’t yet been told the news and I think she’d want to have you there.’
    Francette looked at Béatrice, who nodded and moved to embrace her, but Francette stiffened and said she’d need to pack an overnight bag. She left quickly, her head held determinedly high and her shoulders stiff.
    ‘She seemed down even before I told her the news,’ Bruno said to Béatrice.
    ‘One of the guests was rude to her last night, blamed her for tripping and spilling something as she waited on his table. It was his own fault. He pushed his chair back suddenly and she fell. It can become tiresome, having to accept that the customer is always right, even when he isn’t. Can I offer you a coffee or a drink while you wait?’
    He shook his head and Béatrice excused herself. The car park had been almost empty and he noticed that all the room