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

ashore.
    ‘He said he ran to tell me and the train was just leavingwith him as I called you. So maybe three minutes ago, not much more.’
    Bruno ended the conversation and darted up the Rue de Paris, dodging between the market stalls and unloading trucks. He brushed aside the outstretched hands and proffered cheeks of the men and women he usually greeted twice each week on market days. He ducked under bales of cloth, dodged trolleys laden with fresh vegetables and skirted men carrying giant wheels of cheese on their heads as he made for the town square and the bridge. Just as he reached it his phone vibrated again and this time it was Pierrot, the town’s most dedicated fisherman.
    ‘You’re not going to believe what I’ve just seen in the river,’ he began.
    ‘A naked woman in a boat. I heard already. Where are you exactly?’
    ‘By the campsite, where the bank is high. There’s a bend in the river there and the trout—’
    ‘How fast is the river moving this boat?’ Bruno interrupted.
    ‘Five minutes and it will be at the bridge, maybe a bit more,’ Pierrot said. ‘It’s pretty waterlogged. One of those old flat-bottomed boats, haven’t seen one for years. Thing is, Bruno, she’s lying on her back, naked as a worm, arms outstretched. I think she’s dead.’
    ‘We’ll find out. Thanks, Pierrot,’ said Bruno, closing his phone as he reached the stone bridge. He looked upstream, blinking against the dazzle of the sun on water. There was no sign of a boat so he had a little time. He punched the auto-dial for the medical centre into his phone and asked for Fabiola.
    ‘She’s not on today,’ said Juliette at the reception desk. ‘Something about a private patient, which I never heard of before. I’ll put you through to Dr Gelletreau. He’s on call today.’
    ‘Don’t bother,’ said Bruno, talking as he walked briskly back to the church, ducking and weaving through the obstacle course of market stalls. ‘I don’t have time to talk. Just tell the doctor to get to the stone bridge where it looks like we might have a dead body floating downstream. I’ll meet him there.’
    He needed Antoine, with a canoe, and Antoine was in the choir. He slipped in through the small portal that was cut into the huge wooden doors, and was rocked by the sheer volume the choir was now generating, one half singing ‘See him!’ and the other half replying ‘Whom?’
    Just before Florence could soar into the solo, ‘O Lamb of God Most Holy’, Bruno strode forward to tap Father Sentout on the shoulder. The choir stopped raggedly, uncertain, but the organ notes swept on and Father Sentout opened his eyes, blinking in surprise at the sight of Bruno.
    ‘I’m sorry, Father, it’s an emergency,’ said Bruno, his voice loud to carry over the organ. ‘There could be a life at stake. I need Antoine most urgently.’
    The organ music stopped with a dying wheeze from the pipes.
    ‘You want my Jesus?’ the priest asked, uncertainly.
    Bruno swallowed hard, trying to comprehend the meaning of the question. Then he remembered that Antoine was singing the role of Jesus.
    ‘He’s a waterman and there’s a body floating down the river,’ Bruno said, speaking to the choir as much as to Father Sentout. ‘A woman, in a boat.’
    ‘I don’t have a canoe here,’ Antoine said, striding down from the apse and picking up a jacket from the front pew. A burly man, he had wide and powerful shoulders from a lifetime of paddling and manhandling canoes. ‘My canoes are all back at the campsite today.’
    ‘I’ll need you anyway,’ said Bruno. He led the way through the thickening market crowd and back to the river, suddenly aware that most of the choir seemed to be following, along with Father Sentout.
    Passers-by and some of the stallholders looked up at the swelling line behind Bruno and with the automatic curiosity that draws a crowd when they sense a drama unfolding they joined behind. Soon they were clustering at the side of the bridge as Bruno and Antoine spotted the half-sunken vessel tracing lazy circles as it drifted with the current.
    ‘It might get caught up on the sandbank,’ said Antoine. ‘Otherwise we’d best get down to my campsite and take out a canoe, tow it ashore.’
    ‘Could I wade into the river and catch it here?’ Bruno asked.
    ‘Better not,’ said Antoine, demonstrating why Bruno had been right to interrupt the choir and summon the boatman. ‘See that current where it comes through the