Once the others had followed him down, Bruno thought it was time for silence. He took off his boots, tied the laces together and hung them round his neck, advising the others to do the same. J-J wore slip-on shoes without laces, so he stuck them into his ample belt.
‘Watch out for stalagmites in the floor,’ Bruno whispered, feeling grit beneath his stockinged feet. Behind him, J-J was breathing loud enough to make Bruno want to shush him. J-J’s shadow, thrown by Sergeant Jules’s torch, loomed huge on the stone above Bruno’s head.
This is folly, came a whispering at the back of Bruno’s mind. What could be more dangerous than going down a dark tunnel with an armed adversary waiting somewhere ahead? Bruno squashed the thought, telling himself that the Count probably had no gun. With the innocent girl at risk, there was no choice. Had the Count been alone, they could have pumped in tear gas from both ends until he crawled out, blinded and coughing and fighting for breath. They still could do that, came the insidious voice in his head. Tear gas wasn’t lethal. The girl was young, she’d recover fast enough. Nonsense, he told himself; the tunnels were so vast that the gas would dissipate.
They were now in the long, smooth tunnel he thought of as the pipeline, where there would be no escape and a single bullet could go through one man and hit a second. Even a missed shot could ricochet and do damage. He turned off his torch and told J-J and Jules to do the same.
Whispering to J-J to stay where he was, Bruno crept along the pipeline, every sense alert for any sound or glimmer of light from ahead. Crouching, he peered down its length. Even as he did so, the skin began to crawl on his scalp as he remembered that the pipeline ran both ways from here. He’d gone downhill to find Isabelle, but hadn’t bothered to explore uphill. There could be another exit, or it would make a fine spot for an ambush. He turned his head to look the other way but saw nothing. He’d have to leave Jules at this point, just in case he’d been wrong and the Count wasn’t heading for the Gouffre at all, but the other way. With Jules there, at least the one certain exit would be blocked.
He crept down into the pipeline, waited and listened, then covered the lens of his torch with his hand so that only a faint glow emerged pinkly through his fingers. He whispered to J-J to follow him down. When Jules joined them, Bruno explained that the pipeline ran in both directions and Jules should wait at this junction. The old Gendarme at once handed J-J his torch.
‘If I’m staying still, I won’t need it,’ Jules said. ‘Anything that comes down from the right, I’ll shoot it. Anything that comes up from the left, I’ll challenge once and if it’s not you I’ll fire.’
‘If you go back up the steps a little and wait, you won’t have to challenge anybody. Just hit them on the head as they go by, but make sure it’s not me,’ said J-J.
Reminding J-J to watch for stalagmites, Bruno set off in darkness, remembering his previous count of just over four hundred paces before he’d reached the lake where Isabelle was waiting. When he reached the first of the several dogleg corners, he waited for J-J and breathed into his ear, ‘Wait here while I get to the next bend. I’ll make a little click with my mouth when it’s safe to follow, and then we’ll do it again at the next corner.’
Bruno felt a little tug of nostalgia for the troops he’d led in Bosnia. He’d trained them so hard they didn’t need this kind of briefing at every turn. He’d warned J-J how many steps they’d have to go, but every time the big detective joined him his breathing was ragged. Even so he never once faltered. It took guts to do this for the first time in the dark. Whatever they pay us, thought Bruno, it isn’t enough, and he set off silently again down to the next bend in the pipeline.
He had counted three hundred and five when his foot felt something strange and sharp as he was about to put his weight on it. He stepped back and knelt down, feeling with his hand. It was a small ring, attached to a tiny bar that felt like metal. An earring. Perhaps the girl had dropped it as a signal, or the Count had left it as a trap, something he’d hear if it was kicked aside. He slipped it into his pocket, paused to listen and then moved on.
He heard the sound of water a few paces sooner than he’d expected. He dropped into a crouch, put the gun into the belt at his back and moved cautiously forward on feet and fingertips, keeping low in case a shot came, and trusting that the noise of water would cover any sounds of his movement. He could smell the water now, a freshness in the air. He waited at the final bend until J-J caught up.
‘We’re at the lake,’ Bruno whispered into J-J’s ear. ‘I’ll go in low and then light my torch. I’ll have my eyes closed and if he’s there it should blind him but he’ll probably fire anyway. You then come round this bend and if you see him, shoot. I’ll have rolled to a new position and I’ll be shooting, too. Ready?’
Bruno felt him nod. He squeezed J-J’s shoulder and dropped down again to creep forward. His elbow just brushed the wall so that he’d know when the pipeline opened out onto the rocky beach beside the lake. When he reached it, he stopped, crept back a few metres and put his boots back on, tying double knots. He’d need firm footing. Then he went through the army drill that he’d done so often it was second nature.
ROWAS was the acronym: Rules of engagement, Objective, Weapons, Ammo, Support. The rule was fire if fired upon. The objective was to save the girl and arrest the Count. He was carrying a PAMAS G1, which meant no safety catch but a double-action trigger on the first round. He had fifteen shots in the magazine. Support was J-J with Sergeant Jules as back-up, and be aware of possible friendlies coming from the other end.
Then he rehearsed in his mind how it would be. He’d be full-length on the floor, his left arm stretched out high and to one side, holding the torch, the gun in the other. His eyes would be squeezed shut. He’d turn on the light, take a count of two and lay the torch on the floor. Then he’d roll to his right and open his eyes and be ready to shoot. He’d take three points of aim: one, straight ahead, to the tunnel that led to the Gouffre; two, hard left, to the little causeway beside the waterfall; and three, hard right.
He felt in his pockets for one of the paper tissues he usually carried, tore off half, soaked it in his mouth and put it into one ear. Then he repeated the process for the other ear. Gunshots in an enclosed space like this from the nine-millimetre he was carrying could rupture eardrums.
He took three deep breaths, stretched out, closed his eyes, raised his arm and turned the torch on, feeling the sudden flare even through his closed eyelids.
‘Police,’ he shouted. ‘Drop your weapons.’
He laid the torch down and rolled, his eyes opening and his gun straight ahead. He heard the crack and saw the flare of a gunshot from his left, the direction of the causeway, and he was already switching aim. His first shot came at the same instant as the second shot from the causeway.
Tap-tap, high-low, he fired two shots and rolled. Another shot came, this time from straight across the small lake. There was a second shooter. He fired two more shots, low-high, and rolled again. No more shots from the causeway and a splash as something fell into the lake.
Then silence. The shadows on the walls and the reflections from the lake were swinging crazily as his torch rolled on the ground. He felt J-J emerge behind him, the damn fool.
‘Get back,’ he urged him. ‘Second shooter.’
‘Halt, police,’ he shouted and rolled again. There was something stretched out at the mouth of the far tunnel. He took aim. ‘Stay where you are. This is the police.’
‘Hello?’ came a plaintive voice, female, not French.
‘Marie-Francoise, is it you?’ he called, in his bad English. ‘I am police.’ Could she hear him with her eardrums blasted?
‘Oui, oui, Marie-Francoise,’ she called back. ‘Non tirez, don’t shoot.’
‘Is it you only?’ he called, his gun pointing at the shape in the tunnel across the lake that was waving an arm. His eyes swept left and right, scanning the lump in the lake for movement. It splashed, feebly.
‘Oui, oui,
alone,’ came the girl’s voice. It sounded strained and he heard a cry. She spoke again, ‘Je suis seule.’
‘Not move,’ he shouted, not knowing whether to believe her. Merde, but that other shot had sounded different and the flare of it had felt different, as if it came from a different place.
There was only one way to find out if there was a second shooter. He rose fast to his full height, turned on his torch and then dived hard to his left, landing on the torch to smother the light as a shot came. Then a second.
He turned the light off as the girl screamed and two more shots came from behind him, J-J’s revolver. Putain. Bruno rolled back and swept his legs like a scythe, sweeping J-J’s feet from under him. ‘Stay down,’ he shouted over J-J’s curses and rolled back.
He closed his eyes and thought it through. He had two options. He could get J-J to blast fire across at the tunnel while he sprinted over the causeway, dropped and fired from the side, catching the shooter in a crossfire. That would work but it would probably kill the girl. Or he could creep into the water and try to use the floating body for cover. But he didn’t know how deep it was. If he had to swim one-handed he’d splash and be an easy target. And he’d still have to try not to shoot the girl.
The third option was to wait, to send J-J back up the tunnel to the chapel and then get the Mobiles to come in from the other end. J-J could come back down the tunnel with a couple of gas masks and they could throw in the tear gas. That should work but it would take an hour or two. And whoever it was in the lake would die of hypothermia even if they hadn’t bled to death. There were no good choices.
He heard the sound of scuffling from across the lake followed by a muffled shout from the girl and then two fast shots. In the flashes he saw two figures struggling. That made five shots fired by the second shooter, he told himself as one of the figures jumped or fell into the lake. There was another shot, that made six, and Bruno heard another scream, muffled by splashing and then footsteps running away.
He fired twice into the tunnel across the lake, shouted to J-J to stay back, turned on his torch and ran at a crouch across the causeway, firing two more shots into the tunnel. That made eight shots he’d fired, seven left. Now he was spread-eagled at the mouth of the tunnel that led to the Gouffre, shining the beam of light down its emptiness. He called back to J-J to get the girl out of the lake and see how badly she was shot.
Bruno stayed on watch, telling J-J how to cross the narrow causeway. Then he heard Sergeant Jules calling his name.
‘This is Bruno, I’m fine and it’s clear to advance,’ he shouted back, thinking how Jules must have groped his way in darkness along the length of the pipeline when he heard the gunshots, not knowing what he’d find.
‘Help Jules over the causeway and he can replace me on guard,’ he said to J-J, who was knee-deep in the lake and reaching for the girl.
‘I’ve got her.’ J-J hauled her ashore. She was spluttering and choking but at least she was alive.
‘Pull her out of the line of fire,’ Bruno said. ‘Over there to my right. Then guide Jules across.’
Jules came along the causeway, dragging a floating body. The current must have taken it to the rim. Once Jules replaced him at the tunnel entrance, Bruno flashed the torch onto the face. It was the Count. Bruno checked the neck for a pulse. It was feeble, but it was there.
‘How’s the girl?’ he asked J-J.
‘I can’t see and she won’t tell me.’ The girl was sobbing and gulping, close to hysterics.
‘Wait,’ said Bruno, and went to the small cave that Isabelle had shown him and came back with the candleholder and the lighter. Once he had the first candle alight he brought more and soon the cavern was bright.
‘Get the wet clothes off them or they’ll get hypothermia,’ he said, starting to strip the Count. He had one wound in his knee and a second high on his chest. There was a big exit wound at the back but the icy lake had slowed the bleeding. Bruno stuffed the hole with the Count’s shirt, wrung out his wet trousers and used them to hold the dressing in place. The Count’s belt had to do for a tourniquet on the knee. He took off his jacket to drape it over the Count, whose face was deathly white.
The girl was too gone in shock to resist as they stripped her. With her wet clothes off Bruno could find only a graze wound on her side, just below the ribs. He asked where she was hurt but got no reply, so he tried making reassuring noises in his broken English and repeating that he was from the police. In the candlelight he could see that her face had been badly beaten. One eye was closed, blood still seeped from her nose and she’d lost some teeth. They rubbed her dry with J-J’s sweater, then dressed her in Jules’s jacket and his oversized trousers.
‘What now?’ J-J asked.
‘You stay with the wounded. Jules goes back for the paramedics and I go forward,’ Bruno said, not knowing quite why he said it but feeling that he had to finish this. ‘I fired eight shots so I’ll need to reload from Jules’s magazine.’
He was reloading when there came a distant flurry of shots from the tunnel to the Gouffre, one of them a burst of automatic fire and another the boom of a shotgun. That had to be the Mobiles.
Then came shouting and the sound of running feet and a call of ‘Police, throw down your weapons.’
‘Police here and clear,’ Bruno called back. ‘Weapons down.’ He stood up, his gun on the ground beside him, raised his hands in the air and told the other two to follow suit. In the light of a dozen candles, it was clear they were unarmed, although they hardly looked like police with his and Jules’s uniforms now draped on the wounded.
‘Identify yourselves,’ came a voice from the tunnel, very close.
‘Commissaire Jalipeau, Police Nationale.’
‘Jules Ranquin, Sergeant, Gendarmerie Nationale.’
‘Bruno Courreges, Police Municipale, St Denis, plus two wounded who need urgent attention. One hostage, one gunman. Our weapons are down and our hands up. We are standing in clear view.’
The characteristic shape of a FAMAS assault rifle poked into view at knee level and then a double-barrelled shotgun at shoulder height. Two black-clad Gendarmes Mobiles with helmets and body armour stepped into the cave. A third followed them, a FAMAS slung by his side. He looked around the cave once and shouted back ‘Medics’. Then he turned to face them and introduced himself as they lowered their hands.
‘Capitaine Moravin, les Jaunes.’ He saluted J-J, and said, ‘Monsieur le Commissaire, we have one dead gunman in the main cave. He came out of the tunnel shooting and ignored my order to drop his weapon. We also have one secured prisoner who was arrested outside the cave, name of Abouard, Lebanese. He’s claiming diplomatic immunity.’
‘Ignore it until you hear otherwise from me or the Procureur,’ J-J said.
Two black-clad Gendarme medics came in, followed by Ahmed from the St Denis fire brigade.
‘The girl’s wounds are superficial, but she’s in shock and she doesn’t speak much French,’ Bruno said. ‘The Count’s a lot worse, two gunshots, knee and upper chest.’
The medics attended to the Count and Ahmed opened his shoulder case and began cleaning up the girl’s face.
‘Have you identified the dead gunman?’ J-J asked.
‘The ID card in his wallet says he’s called Foucher, but the shotgun blew his face away,’ said Moravin. ‘We’ll have to wait for fingerprints.’ He turned to the medics. ‘Have you got a stretcher coming?’
‘On its way, chef.’
The stretchers came with Albert the fire chief close behind, puffing a little from the trot up the tunnel. He shook hands all round, visibly relieved that none of those shot were people he knew.
‘Sorry you didn’t get to use the water hose,’ Bruno said as the first stretcher took the girl up the tunnel. Ahmed and one of the medics carried her as Moravin and his two Mobiles led the way back to the Gouffre. Another medic was still working on the Count. He had a mobile drip plugged into the Count’s arm and an oxygen mask on his face.
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br /> ‘It might have saved a lot of trouble,’ Albert replied, taking off his helmet and wiping his brow. ‘The Mayor’s out in the main cave with the Baron and Father Sentout. Half the town’s waiting outside the Gouffre. Florence is there with her kids and your new puppy.’
Bruno grinned at the thought. ‘Has anybody relieved Fabiola at the Red Chateau?’
‘The Countess is on her way to hospital in Perigueux with Fabiola. Montsouris insisted on going along,’ Albert said. ‘Someone from the Minister of the Interior’s office has been on the phone with the Mayor, insisting on speaking to you as soon as you’re near a phone. And there’s a guy outside from Paris-Match, claims to be a friend of yours from Sarajevo.’
‘Right, we’d better go, if the Count is stabilized enough to move him,’ said Bruno. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked the medic.
‘Give me another few minutes,’ said the medic. ‘They’ll send a couple of guys back to help with the stretcher. Then we can go.’
Bruno nodded and turned back to gaze across the black stillness of the lake and at the dark mouth of the far tunnel. It had been four days since he’d first seen it but he knew he’d want to return, perhaps join one of the exploring clubs and see what other secrets these honeycombed hills contained.
‘Can’t be soon enough for me,’ said J-J. ‘It gives me the creeps, being underground like this and thinking of all that weight above us.’
Bruno turned back from the lake to J-J and Sergeant Jules. ‘After this, I think we all deserve a very large drink.’
As he spoke the last word, the sharp cracking sound of a distant explosion came from the far side of the lake followed by a long, swelling rumble. A rush of dust and air blasted from the tunnel that led back to the ruined chapel to send a surge of lake water over their feet. It extinguished most of the candles they had lit.
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