Текст книги "Death on the Rive Nord"

Автор книги: Adrian Magson

Соавторы: Adrian Magson
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CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The operation kicked off at 23.00 hours precisely, with a fleet of vehicles spreading out from various locations around the town, carrying uniformed officers, detectives and personnel from the Immigration Service.

Massin oversaw the details like a military campaign, marshalling men and vehicles by the clock, mindful that his division would be under scrutiny from various quarters, both as soon as the first factory was breached and in the aftermath once the press, unions and other political bodies got word of events.

Rocco watched as the station yard emptied and men went about their tasks, and was impressed by Massin’s command of detail. But then, he reminded himself, the former army CO had been through the elite military academy of Saint-Cyr, where organisation and strategy were high on the curriculum for officers with ambition. If you could plan a battle, making a sweep through a few factories should be child’s play.

Desmoulins wandered across to where Rocco was eyeing a large chart on the wall of the briefing room. The chart showed the layout of three factory sites to be searched. They were mostly small operations employing unskilled staff, ranging from food production to assembly works. But that was the secret: unskilled staff on low wages working long hours. Nobody would be surprised by such places working throughout the night to fulfil desperately needed orders.

Each suspected building had been placed under surveillance during the late afternoon to monitor activity and identify any vehicles arriving or leaving, and to gauge what was going on inside. When the search teams got a signal from an officer on watch, they would go straight in and close down the site. Buses would be on hand to take away anyone suspected of not having the correct documentation, along with those running the factory.

‘I seem to have got left behind,’ said Desmoulins cheerfully. ‘What about you?’

Rocco shrugged. He’d been careful not to get himself assigned to any particular group, staying well back when personnel were being selected. Evidently he wasn’t the only one. He wondered how he could get the detective out of the way without being too obvious. What he was planning depended on all the noise and distraction being focused elsewhere. He didn’t need witnesses.

‘You’ll never manage by yourself, you know,’ Desmoulins murmured. He had a knowing expression on his face. ‘And it’ll take too long for your mate Lamotte to get here from Poissons. Besides,’ he puffed out his barrel chest and flexed his arms, which were already straining the fabric of his shirt, ‘I’m way stronger.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Rocco, although he did.

‘Sure you do. You’re going over the wire, aren’t you? Into the Ecoboras place.’ He waited for Rocco to say something, then added, ‘I would if it was me. With all the shit and shouting going on elsewhere, who’d notice one man popping over a little fence?’

Rocco gave it some thought. He liked Desmoulins and had found him a reliable and genial character. The detective was a good thinker and seemed well above the petty politics going on in this place. For most of his working life, he’d found it hard to put personal trust above the professional kind customary among colleagues sharing a dangerous occupation. Somehow it always seemed easier not to put too much in anyone. He sighed. Maybe it was about time he broke the habit.

‘What are you suggesting?’ he said finally.

‘Easy.’ Desmoulins grinned. ‘You know the army assault courses and the high wall, where someone always had to be the base man?’

Rocco nodded, knowing what was coming.

‘Well, that was me. Every time.’ He looked Rocco up and down, assessing his size and weight. ‘I could punt you over, no problem. You probably wouldn’t even touch metal.’ He turned away and grabbed his coat, picked up a flashlight. ‘Your car or mine?’

Ten minutes later, they were crossing the second set of lock gates which Demai had shown them, and jumping down the other side. The thunder of water roared in Rocco’s ears and the spray rose once again to touch his face with icy fingers. Behind him the town was hidden under a familiar layer of cold mist, and only the occasional sound of vehicles drifted through the night air.

He rounded the curve of the canal, stepping carefully until he saw the first glare of floodlights. This close to the factory, a faint hum carried through the air. Rocco stopped and watched for movement, looking obliquely at the shadows and eyeing the water for signs of boats. Nothing moved. The surface of the canal was still, like black ice. He signalled to Desmoulins and continued until they were close to the security fence, then stepped off the towpath into an area of deep shadow where the lights couldn’t penetrate. From here, there was a good view of the gate in the fence. It was shut and padlocked.

He turned and moved along the rear of the factory, ducking beneath the level of the bank to avoid the glare of the lights. When he came to another block of shadow, he stood up and pressed close to the metal fence, studying the outwards curve of the bars at the top. They were designed to prevent access over the top, since few people wanted to risk catching their clothing on the spikes, and most lacked the strength to haul themselves up by armpower alone.

Rocco took off his coat and tossed it on top of the fence. Desmoulins braced himself and cupped his hands, then nodded for Rocco to step into the stirrup. The moment Rocco did so, he huffed briefly, then heaved upwards, using his weightlifter’s shoulders to power Rocco upwards with almost childish ease. With a kick of his leg, Rocco rolled over the top curve of the fence and dropped down on the far side, pulling his coat with him. Scanning the building to make sure there were no signs of movement, he jogged across to a collection of large rubbish bins, where he settled down to catch his breath. When he looked back, Desmoulins had dropped out of sight.

In a house barely a kilometre away, Nicole Farek went to the telephone in the hallway and waited to make sure nobody was listening. She had been out during the day, listening among the mothers and grandmothers gathered near the schools, shops and nurseries in the town, eager to catch any gossip spreading among the immigrant community. With Massi beside her, it had been simple to blend with the groups, another mother trying to make her way in a strange world. Most of the talk had been about the shortage of good job opportunities and housing, the difficulties in getting an education for them and their children, and the increasing numbers of other new arrivals which were making a strained situation even worse. But there had been an undercurrent, too, and Nicole had soon caught the familiar name.

Farek.

He was here, in France. The news had travelled fast, rippling out through the Algerian community and spreading by word of mouth, the way bad news always does. Farek the gangster was here. He had come from Oran to bring the clans together. Not everyone understood what that meant exactly, but there was a sense in the air that it might not be good.

For families it spelt the worst kind of news. Life was already hard here; you didn’t need to see the newspapers to know that. You could pick it up in the street by reading the faces of the women struggling to make ends meet. Many of the men, however, especially the young, had a different agenda. They wanted change and they wanted it now. Not for them the slow grind of manual work, the gradual improvement over a lifetime. Coming here had promised so much, they didn’t want to wait.

Someone like Samir Farek could provide that change.

It was their right.

Nicole felt a tug of fear in her chest and reached for the telephone. It wouldn’t take long for Farek to find her now. Someone, somewhere would hear something and talk. And she couldn’t kid herself that people weren’t already wondering who she was, this lone woman with a small boy, who’d appeared out of the pipeline. By far the biggest threat was the men who had travelled with her. They were right here, too. Living, working, sleeping, talking. Desperate for a way to earn money.

And if one way to do that was the promise of a reward for finding a woman and a boy, they would remember her in an instant.

She dialled the number from memory.

The phone was picked up. A man’s voice, official and brusque. She asked to speak to Inspector Rocco.

‘Rocco? He’s not here. Call back tomorrow.’

‘Is he at home?’ She remembered the village, Poissons, where they had met. He’d said he lived there. How difficult would it be to find a policeman in a small place like that?

‘I can’t give you that information. Tomorrow.’

She felt like screaming with frustration at the bland response.

Tomorrow, then. She would find him. First she had to get back to Massi, then get ready to move.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The atmosphere closed around Rocco as he became accustomed to the sounds and smells of the factory site. Looking through a narrow gap above his head, he saw bats darting to and fro, their jagged movements touching the edges of the security lights. Elsewhere he heard scurrying movements on the ground as other night creatures took opportunity where it presented itself.

He’d moved along the back of the building earlier, looking for a hiding place, and found one of the rubbish skips near the front corner covered with a plastic tarpaulin. It was almost full of cardboard packaging and offcuts of cladding used on the exterior of the factory, and he guessed it was ready for collection. It smelt of plastic and paint thinner, but gave him a good view of the gate and security cabin.

He’d slipped inside and made himself a gap, then settled down to wait and listen.

After a while he dozed, the effects of the paint thinner and the warm air of his own breathing captured beneath the tarpaulin acting as a soporific. His mind whirled with images, the way it often did when in the thick of an investigation: of Nicole, tall and smooth-skinned and strong; of Massin, hell-bent on being his nemesis; of Caspar, the tortured undercover cop; of the cold canal and the rotting hulk where men had slept, dreaming of a rescue from desperation and the chance of a better life.

He came awake as a breeze shook the plastic above his head. It made a sharp, crackling sound, amplified in the metal frame of the skip. He peered under the edge of the tarpaulin, careful not to disturb the rubbish around him. Looking towards the front, he could just see the security guard in his cabin. He looked as if he were half asleep.

Something wasn’t right, and it took him a moment to realise what it was.

All he could hear was silence. No machinery, no voices, none of the sounds of activity that he’d heard when he followed Demai along here the previous night. Just the faint hum of the heating system coming from a vent on the wall some way above his hiding place.

He climbed out of the skip and padded along the rear of the factory, stopping to test a fire door on the way. It was locked, as he’d expected. The same with the access door to the delivery bay. He bent and listened at a gap in the roller door, but there was no light, no sound.

The place was deserted.

Fifteen minutes later, he and Desmoulins were back at the station, and it was soon clear when the teams began drifting back, empty-handed and disconsolate, that the rest of the night’s activities had been a failure.

‘It’s a bloody disaster!’ Captain Canet, whose uniformed men had been the main thrust of the sweep, was prowling the corridors, quietly furious. ‘How can they all have so conveniently shut down on the same night?’ His mood was echoed by a number of others. All their concerted efforts had netted was just two men, working late at a small vegetable processing plant. And they had only been discovered because they happened to turn the wrong corner at the wrong moment and walked smack into a group of disgruntled officers who demanded to see their papers. They had none and were arrested. It was a small but bitter victory.

Massin dismissed the men and called all senior officers and detectives into his office, where he rounded on them the moment the door was closed.

‘This is unbelievable!’ he snapped, his eyes flaring with anger. ‘How did this happen? Someone please tell me!’

Canet took a deep breath. ‘Someone warned them,’ he said, aware that the question was rhetorical, but wanting to voice the unspeakable anyway. He glanced at his colleagues. ‘Someone deliberately put the word out that we were coming. A simple leak would not have caused them all to shut up shop on the same night.’

‘Who?’ Massin stared around the room. He wasn’t expecting an answer, but the meaning was clear: he wanted a name, sooner or later. Someone had to pay for the failure of what should have been a straightforward operation.

Rocco thought back to the briefing. It had to have been from that point on. Instinct had him placing his money on Tourrain, although he was trying not to give way to prejudice about the man’s racist leanings. But the detective had been looking a little too quietly pleased with himself, as if he knew something nobody else did. For an officer about to go on a sweep, which was pretty much standard police work, he should have been no more affected at the prospect of trawling through factories at the dead of night for illegal workers than the next man. Yet his expression had been oddly animated.

Unfortunately, Rocco knew that there was no way of proving it without an admission from the detective himself or one of the men organising the workers.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The phone ringing kicked Rocco out of a troubled sleep. He pushed back the blankets, wincing at the chill in the air of his bedroom. He hadn’t used the wood burner for a couple of days and the house was like a cold store. Much more of this and even the fouines up in the attic would leave home in search of warmer premises.

He groped for the handset, his head like cotton wool. ‘Yes.’ It was all he could think of to say. He glanced at his watch. Six o’clock. Jesus, no wonder he felt light-headed. Probably Massin calling another council of war to pursue the leak in the building. He’d have been hugely embarrassed by the operation’s failure, especially if the other regions had been successful, and he’d be looking to collect a scalp somehow to show the men at the Ministry.

Rocco almost felt sorry for him.

He stood up and grabbed his coat off the chair where he’d left it last night, shrugged it around his shoulders and trailed the phone and wire through to the kitchen. Coffee. He needed coffee.

It was Desmoulins, sounding tired. ‘Lucas, you need to get in here.’

‘What’s up?’

‘You went to speak to Gondrand the other day, right? About a car you’d seen – a Peugeot?’

‘What about it?’ Nicole’s 403. It seemed a long time ago now. Ancient history, almost.

‘Gondrand’s been hit. The car lot’s been destroyed. They reckon it was a firebomb.’

‘How bad?’

‘The old man’s dead.’

The Gondrand car lot looked like a war zone. A heavy pall of smoke hung over the area around what had once been Victor Gondrand’s pride and joy, and the smell of burning rubber choked the atmosphere from a good kilometre away. As Rocco climbed out of his car he saw smouldering pennants hanging from their support wires and heard the tortured groan of overheated metal and the crackle of burning plastic echoing in the bitter morning air. Firemen in shiny helmets and heavy boots were dousing the smouldering remains of vehicles, but the heat from the burnt hulks was considerable, made worse by occasional flashes of renewed fire as the heat found remnants of fuel and oil in the tanks and engine blocks.

A group of children watched the proceedings in silence, jumping at each pop of fuel. They were wrapped in heavy coats and zip-up suede boots, and Rocco could only assume they had been sent out to watch the excitement by their parents. Go watch the big fire, kids. Give us some peace.

Desmoulins was talking to a fireman. Rocco walked across to join them and shook hands. ‘Early start. What happened?’

The fireman rubbed a grimy cheek. ‘Looks like someone used petrol bombs – Molotov cocktails – to set it all off.’ He nodded towards the watching children. ‘One of the kids over there said he couldn’t sleep. He was drawing pictures on his bedroom window and saw some men drive up in a car. They got out with a box and lobbed burning bottles in among the cars. They were parked close together, so it wouldn’t have taken much to spread quickly. You ask me, someone didn’t want anything to survive.’

‘And Gondrand?’

Desmoulins looked grim and pointed at what was left of the office building. ‘Victor’s in there. It’s still too hot to get him out. We haven’t been able to get hold of Michel.’

Rocco thought about the time. ‘Was Victor working early or late?’

‘He was a work freak. Stayed late, started early, didn’t have much in the way of hobbies or interests. They must have known he was in there, though. The lights would’ve been on.’

Lucas looked at the children and wondered if they had seen anything else useful. In his experience, kids often had better recall than adults, images sticking in their minds but lasting only a short while before the temptation to colour the facts began to take over. He walked over and stood looking down at them.

‘Which one of you saw it happen?’ he said. There were nine of them, ranging from a five-year-old to a girl in her early teens. They all stared at Rocco with wide eyes, and one of the little girls began to whimper.

Rocco sighed and sat down on the ground before them. He’d heard it diminished the threat of a grown-up and brought you down to their level, which they could deal with more easily.

‘I did.’ It was a small boy on the extreme edge of the group. He was shrouded in a large coat with big, blue buttons, and his skinny legs were sunk into an oversized pair of brown, suede ankle boots with a zip running up the front.

Rocco nodded. ‘That’s good. What’s your name?’

‘Rémi.’

‘Rémi. That’s a good name. My father’s name was Rémi.’ It wasn’t, but Rocco was after quick results, not a comparison of family history.

The boy seemed unimpressed. He shivered in the cold and said in a rush, ‘Some men drove up in a black Peugeot and got out. They had a crate of bottles. Then one of the men lit matches and they started throwing the bottles at the cars.’ He sniffed loudly and added, ‘I won’t get into trouble telling you, will I?’

Rocco smiled. ‘No. You won’t get into trouble. You’re very good at noticing things. Can you tell me what any of the men looked like? Were they tall, short, thin, fat … stuff like that?’

‘They were Arabs,’ said the boy fiercely. Then he turned and ran across the road to a house with a green front door and disappeared inside. The door slammed shut.

Rocco looked at the rest of them. ‘Anyone else see the men like Rémi did?’

They shook their heads and looked bored.

Rocco stood up and looked round for a uniformed officer. He needed someone to speak to Rémi’s parents, and for men to canvass the houses for any other witnesses.

But first he needed to speak with Michel Gondrand.

He collected Desmoulins and got him to drive to Gondrand’s home address. It turned out to be an impressive three-storey house in a village several miles out of Amiens. The drive held a Mercedes and a trailer with a powerboat standing in front of a two-car garage. Behind the garage was a large greenhouse, and beyond that a wooden summer house with a large dovecote crowning the shingle roof. The garden was extensive and laid with flower beds and a selection of trees and bushes. Rocco couldn’t picture Michel as the gardening sort, but maybe he was doing the car dealer an injustice.

He walked up the steps to the front door and rang the bell. No answer. He tried the door. Locked tight.

He looked at Desmoulins. ‘Is Gondrand married?’ It was a family-size home, but you never could tell. Checked his watch. Still only seven-fifteen. It was early for a no-answer, especially with the car in the drive.

‘Married, yes. No kids, though.’ Desmoulins lifted an eyebrow. This didn’t look good.

They walked round the side of the house to a rear door. It was open and led into a kitchen and large utility room complete with every possible convenience. It seemed that whatever Mrs Gondrand might have lacked in a husband with little charm, she had everything else in her life.

Except life itself.

A blonde woman Rocco assumed was Mrs Michel Gondrand lay on her face in a pool of blood by the sink unit. She wore a blue dressing gown which was hitched up around slim thighs, as if she had been flung forward with some force. A blue slipper with a quilted motif hung from one foot, while its twin lay near the door to a hallway. Rocco bent and checked her pulse, but knew by the amount of blood on the floor that she was beyond help. He looked for the source of the blood and saw a hole in the back of her neck, beneath her hair. A small-calibre gunshot, but still deadly.

He stood back, reading the scene and picturing the sequence of events. The gunman had come through the back door. He’d surprised Mrs Gondrand and pushed her to the floor, then shot her once. Callous. Wasting no time.

Desmoulins went out of the door into the hallway. He was back moments later.

‘Through in the study,’ he said grimly. ‘Michel. Another head shot.’

Rocco went through and found himself in a room decorated like something out of a magazine editor’s idea of a man’s study, complete with leather chairs, a desk and lots of books. A drinks table near the door held an impressive array of bottles and crystal glasses, with a mixer flask and ice bucket.

Michel Gondrand was lying behind the desk in a foetal position, knees close to his chest and one arm curled round his head. An entry wound just behind his right ear was messy with blood and white bone matter. He was dressed in trousers and shoes and looked ready for work.

Rocco walked carefully around the room, checking out the furniture. Barring the bodies, everything looked normal, although he had no idea what normal was in this household. He pulled open the middle drawer of the desk and found an envelope full of money lying in clear view of anyone who might have been looking for cash. In addition, Gondrand still wore a Breitling watch on his wrist and some expensive-looking cufflinks.

He touched Gondrand’s neck. Cold. Death had occurred hours ago.

If robbery wasn’t the motive here, what was?

‘Get a team in here,’ said Rocco. He picked up a slim, leather address book and flicked through it while Desmoulins got on the phone. The book contained lots of addresses and telephone numbers, some business, others private. A few numbers, he noted, had neither names nor addresses, and were identified only by initials. He handed the book to Desmoulins. ‘Take a look through that when you get a moment, will you? See if you can identify anyone.’

Rocco left him to it and toured the house, checking the other rooms. The car business must have been doing well. The Gondrands had lived in some style, with no shortage of expensive furnishings and lots of gadgets. Michel evidently played golf, and with the powerboat out front, enjoyed his toys, too.

Everywhere was clean, tidy, and showed no signs of having been disturbed. Whoever had killed the Gondrands had come in, done what they had to do and left again. In, out, focused. No distractions. Professional. The word in this context depressed the hell out of him.

The bathroom held almost as many toiletries for men as it did for women: cologne, aftershave, hair oil and other creams Rocco had never seen before. Vanity, thy name was Michel Gondrand.

The master bedroom overlooked the garage. He looked outside, caught a glimpse through the window of the garage interior, and the gleaming wing of a car. It looked sporty. Another of Michel’s playthings or Mrs Gondrand’s runaround?

Then he turned and saw the safe.

It was sunk into the floor in the corner, half-hidden beneath a washing basket. He nudged the basket to one side and tried the handle of the safe. The door swung upwards, revealing a pile of documents and more cash in paper bands.

He skimmed through the documents. They were mostly deeds referring to three plots of land on the outskirts of Amiens. There were no details of the locations, just plot numbers and official references. He doubted they would yield much, but the family lawyer would no doubt make sense of them. There was, however, one unexpected item: a colour photograph. It showed a plot of muddy ground with what were the footings of a large development and piles of building materials scattered around. In the background a group of men were in conversation, either unaware or uninterested in the camera taking the photo.

On the back of the photograph someone had scribbled: Ecoboras SA.

Back downstairs, he found Desmoulins checking out the drawers in the kitchen.

The detective shook his head. ‘Nothing yet. Just family stuff. You find anything?’

Rocco nodded and waved the deeds and the photograph. The paperwork included details of Gondrand’s legal adviser. He’d give him a call. ‘Some stuff I need to look at.’

‘Great. We finished here? The others will be here anytime.’

The wail of a siren was already approaching and Rocco didn’t want to stay here any longer than it took to hand over to the officer in charge. There were too many things going on and he was beginning to feel as if he was floating with tiredness. He could tell by the way Desmoulins was squinting that he was feeling the same. And that was no state in which to try solving a bizarre series of events like these. First the body in the canal; then the Gondrand car lot being very comprehensively firebombed with the old man inside; now the younger Gondrand and his wife shot dead. Executed.

He couldn’t work it out. Where the hell had this come from? A competitor, jealous of their success? Or someone who felt cheated on a deal? That was a possibility, if what Desmoulins had said about the younger Gondrand was right. The competitor angle didn’t really fly, though; there were no other dealers of a comparable size in the area, just a few small garages trading in the occasional used vehicle. Times were tough everywhere and there hadn’t exactly been an explosion of wealth in the region. But that raised an interesting question: had Gondrand really managed to live so well just on the sale of cars – and on a shared income with his father? Or had he enjoyed another source of revenue?

Then a cold feeling ran down his back.

Samir Farek, gangster, killer and angry husband … was here in France, on the trail of his wife. That same wife – Nicole – had bought her car from none other than Michel Gondrand.