Текст книги "Death on the Marais"

Автор книги: Adrian Magson

Соавторы: Adrian Magson
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

‘So she was here, then. The Berbier girl.’ Claude followed Rocco out of the lodge and kicked the door shut behind him. It bounced open again, trailing the ruined lock and splinters of wood. He let it swing.

‘I think we knew that.’ Rocco felt oddly deflated by the discovery, the piece of jewellery merely underlining the fact that, apart from the crate of forgotten groceries, they had still found no trace of Francine Thorin. But why was the crate left out here to spoil? A few items had been taken, but he didn’t think a random thief would have left anything behind: a prize of fresh supplies like that was simply too good to miss. No, if it was anyone, it would have been Didier, snatching whatever was easy to carry and wouldn’t spoil too quickly. A man on the run has no time to plan his menu.

‘They must have been put off,’ he said half-aloud.

‘Who?’

‘The guests for the latest party … the one this stuff was intended for. They must have heard the news and cancelled … or received a call telling them it was off.’ A murder in the area will do that, he thought sombrely. People aren’t keen on partying with a killer on the rampage.

‘I can’t believe it.’ Claude swept his arm around at the lodge with an expression of disgust. ‘All that inside … and happening right under our noses. And nobody in Poissons knew a thing.’

‘Someone did,’ Rocco corrected him. He switched off the torch and stared out across the marais. ‘Didier Marthe knew.’

‘Just him?’ Claude puffed out his lips in disbelief. ‘Yeah – you’re right. Something else I find baffling: that a worm like him had anything to do with this … this extravagance.’

‘You mean a nonentity having access to wealth?’ Rocco shook his head. ‘Half the crims in the world are nonentities on the outside. It’s what makes them so hard to spot.’ He nudged the crate with his foot. ‘Anyway, I doubt it was his money he was playing with. He was just the local fixer.’

‘You think he had partners?’

‘I’d bet my car on it.’ He thought he knew who that partner might be, but proving it would be the interesting bit. But that was his job. He looked around, a thought tugging at his subconscious: something wasn’t right about this scene. Then he realised.

The blue crate. A car.

‘She couldn’t have carried the crate all the way down here,’ he said softly. ‘And someone saw her driving. So where’s her car?’

They scoured the immediate area around the lodge. The ground was soft, which should have been ideal for finding traces of a car. But the surface had been laid with several layers of wood chippings and dried reeds, and other than a mess of indistinct footprints around the crate and the back door, there were no definite furrows to show the passage of a vehicle.

‘Hang on.’ Claude walked round to the front of the building, to where Rocco had left his car. He inspected the ground where the soil was harder, and looked up towards the nearest bed of reeds that led to the lake. He pointed and said dully, ‘Over there. The bastard drove her into the lake!’

They ran across to the reed bed. Most of the stronger reeds on the bank were more or less upright. But beyond that, it was clear that something heavy had ploughed right through into the murky water, chopping down the thinner vegetation and carving a trough through the soft mud. A blueish glimmer of metal caught the light just below the surface, and Rocco felt the hairs move on the back of his neck as he realised what he was looking at. It was the roof of a car, just visible through the murk.

‘What car did she drive?’

‘A Panhard,’ said Claude. ‘Duck-egg blue, I think. It probably drove like one, too. Don’t tell me—’

‘It’s here.’ Rocco turned and headed for his car.

‘Wait! Can’t we do something?’ Claude skidded down to the water’s edge, staring at the area where the car was sitting.

‘Like what?’ Rocco called back. There were no bubbles to indicate trapped air slowly escaping, no signs of life. If Francine was down there, she was beyond any help they could give. ‘There’s no point.’

‘How do you know that? You don’t!’ He made to step into the water.

Rocco stopped him. ‘Actually, I do,’ he said gently. ‘I’ve seen enough cars go in the Seine to know. And it’s been down there too long. No car is that waterproof, believe me.’ He gave Claude a look full of sympathy. ‘I’ll go to a phone and get a recovery team out here … drag it out to make sure.’

It was mid-afternoon before a police recovery unit complete with a diver had arrived and were winching the Panhard with agonising slowness out of the lake onto the bank. By that time both Rocco and Claude had had to restrain each other from going in the lake to investigate the contents of the car themselves. As it ground out of the water and reeds, a stream of near-black water sluiced out of the battered doors and windows, bringing with it a choking stench of mud, stagnant water and rotted vegetation topped off by a cloud of heavy blue smoke from the motor winch on the recovery truck.

The roof and door pillars of the car had caved in under the pressure of being hauled out, but the shell was still intact. The driver’s door had been left open, according to the diver, but he had found no trace of a body on the outside.

‘Could she have fallen out?’ said Rocco.

The diver shook his head and spat expertly into the water. ‘There’s no current down there; she wouldn’t have drifted anywhere.’

Even before the last of the water had drained away, Rocco and Claude were bending close by the car, disregarding the filth pouring over their shoes and staring at the interior with a shared feeling of dread.

It was empty.

‘Thank God,’ Claude whispered, and made a rapid sign of the cross. One or two of the police team echoed the gesture, while the others looked almost disappointed. Claude glanced at Rocco. ‘What now?’

‘We find her, wherever she is,’ Rocco said darkly. He stepped away from the vehicle, squelching through the muddy detritus and nodding his thanks to the team leader. ‘And when we find her, Didier’s going to wish he’d never set eyes on this place.’

It was a short walk through the trees to the Blue Pool, and Rocco led the way, his long stride soon leaving Claude behind. They were followed all the way by the stink of mud and the sound of the recovery team packing up their gear. It was probably a waste of time, Rocco decided, as they arrived at the edge of the sparkling clear water. But he had to be sure. He had seen too many examples of the blindingly obvious being ignored, only to find that it was obvious for a very good reason.

But the pool reflected silently back at them, cool and clear and empty.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

‘Why are we still here?’ said Claude. The last of the recovery unit had left, along with the few onlookers from the village. It had plunged the marais back into a heavy silence, punctuated only by the occasional plop of fish jumping and the clatter of wings as a bird took flight through the trees. It would take some time for the wildlife to regain its normal composure after the crackling roar of the winch and the babble of voices. But it was just a matter of waiting, as Rocco knew only too well.

‘She’s still here, that’s why. Francine.’ Saying her name sounded odd, even intimate. Rocco had changed into his new boots, squeezing the muddy water from his socks and putting them back on. It was uncomfortable but bearable. Then he’d checked his pistol, slipping out the magazine and working the mechanism two or three times before replacing it with a satisfying click. He had also pocketed two spare clips from the boot of his car, instinct telling him that if he had to use the weapon today, it would not be at close quarters, nor would it be convenient to pop back and seek replacement ammunition.

Claude watched with worried eyes, then checked his own weapon.

They sat in the car with the doors open, waiting and watching. Gradually, like an audience at a concert growing increasingly comfortable with their surroundings, the birds began to find their voices again. A pair of crows appeared, hovering for a few moments in harsh disagreement before touching down in the treetops; a flight of pigeons clattered to a rough landing lower down, ungainly and noisy; smaller birds appeared, too, their singing faint at first, until they grew confident that Rocco and Claude were not going to erupt from the car and ruin their newly regained tranquillity.

A flight of mosquitoes found Claude’s side of the car and buzzed around his head, and he swiped at them in vague irritation.

‘They don’t bother you,’ he said, glancing at Rocco. ‘Why’s that?’

Rocco shrugged. He’d lived with mosquitoes as big as seagulls once, but they’d always left him alone. Others had not been so lucky, and he’d assumed it was down to bodily chemistry. ‘They know bad karma when they see it.’

‘Karma? What’s that?’

‘For them, mostly a rolled-up newspaper.’

‘I hope she’s OK,’ said Claude at one point, shifting in his seat. ‘Francine, I mean. She’s a nice woman.’ He glanced at Rocco. ‘But you know that.’

Rocco nodded. ‘Nice enough.’ He wondered where she was, and prayed that not giving way to irrational panic and running through the marais like a madman had been the right decision to adopt. Time would tell. ‘She told me about her husband being killed in a factory accident.’

Claude raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? I didn’t know she’d been married.’ He pursed his lower lips. ‘How did I miss that?’

‘About eighteen months ago, she said.’

Claude turned and stared at him. ‘No way.’

‘Why no way?’

‘She’s lived here for over two years, that’s why – and alone. You must have misheard her.’ He turned away with a meaningful chuckle. ‘Not that I blame you. She’s a fine-looking woman. I mean, enough to turn any man’s head to mush.’

After sitting in silence for a few more minutes, Rocco got out of the car. Something about what Claude had said was disturbing him, but he couldn’t work out what it was. It wasn’t necessarily the conflict in the detail – that could be easily explained away: people got dates and times wrong for all manner of reasons, grief being a major one. But there was something else tugging at his subconscious, a related thought, and he couldn’t pin it down. Maybe some action might dislodge it.

‘I want to see inside the other lodge.’

‘Why? You think she might be in there?’ Claude joined him, easing cramped limbs.

‘Maybe.’ He hadn’t forgotten that they had found the back door open the first time he had come down here. It didn’t necessarily mean Francine would be there, but it was another obvious place to check. It was easier than sitting around doing nothing.

Claude nodded. ‘I’ll get the axe.’

‘No.’ Rocco stopped him. ‘We’ll check it out quietly first.’ He locked the car, then led the way past the first lodge, skirting the lake and stopping every now and then to listen. The birds had ceased their activity only momentarily, then, reassured that neither man was about to start blasting holes in the trees, took it up again.

‘You do a lot of that,’ said Claude at one point, as Rocco stared upwards, ears cocked for any unusual sounds, sifting through the normal and looking for the out of place. ‘For a city man.’

‘Do what?’

‘Sniffing the air, listening to the trees. I could hire you out in the shooting season – we’d make a fortune.’

Rocco continued walking. He was aware that his habit of tuning in to his surroundings, a hangover from his army days, seemed odd to other people. It had been the same among his colleagues in Paris. Entering buildings, walking silently along darkened alleyways or listening for the slightest indication of something out of place, he’d been more gun dog than human, alert for anything that did not fit. The habit had saved his life on two occasions and he wasn’t about to give it up as a cranky idea just yet.

They arrived at the second lodge and found it locked tight, front and back. They did separate tours of the building, studying the ground carefully for footprints, but found nothing obvious. If anyone had been here recently, they had left no obvious trace. So who had locked the door again?

‘Didier’. Claude read his mind. ‘He’s always around here; I bet he couldn’t resist getting a key copied so he could nose around whenever he felt like it.’

Rocco nodded. It made sense. ‘How do we get to Didier’s house?’

‘Follow me.’ Claude set off through the trees. On the way, they passed the third building Claude had referred to earlier. It was like something out of a children’s spooky comic, Rocco observed. Dark and dank, it had a drunken porch, broken shutters, and if there had once been any paint on the clapboard sides, it had long gone, leaving raw wood deep with cracks. The window glass had gone and the roof had the sad, sway-backed look of a neglected pony.

They continued until they reached the banks of a stream, and the tree-trunk bridge Rocco had seen before. Didier’s house was just visible on the far side.

They crossed the bridge. Rocco remembered what Claude had told him, but figured that he wouldn’t have crossed if he still thought the bridge was booby-trapped.

The front door stood half-open at a drunken angle. Rocco kicked it open all the way and drew his gun, then held up a hand to Claude and listened. Nothing. No sounds, nobody scurrying for cover, no furtive scuff of movement on the stairs.

He stepped across the threshold. The place hadn’t been touched since he and Claude had last been inside. The cellar door, he noticed, was still locked and the shoe he’d kicked against it was still there exactly as he’d left it.

He went through the kitchen drawers, looking for keys. Most were full of rubbish, crumpled bills, receipts and cuttings from newspapers jammed in on top of odd tools, random items of cutlery and endless tangles of string and wire.

Claude joined in. Moments later, as he moved an old coffee tin on a shelf to check behind it, they heard the dull rattle of metal. Claude upended the tin and a cluster of keys fell out.

Rocco grunted but said nothing. He was busy looking at some of the newspaper cuttings he’d found and very nearly ignored. They were dated over a number of years, culled from various papers or magazines. All were on the same subject.

Philippe Bayer-Berbier.

Most portrayed him in business mode, buying a company here, sealing a merger, appearing at a function with other business leaders and politicians, the urbane, charismatic and confident industrialist, comfortable among his kind. There seemed to be no specific reason for the cuttings and Rocco surmised that Didier, for reasons of his own, had been keeping a close eye on Berbier, watching his progress over the years. It was as much an unsettling light into Didier’s world as it was to Berbier’s, and he marvelled at the way two such different men had been joined over the years by their shared history right through to the present day.

Claude joined him and held up the keys from the coffee tin. They were shiny and well used. ‘None of these fit the cellar. In fact, they don’t look like they’d fit anything here.’

Rocco nodded and dropped the papers in the drawer. They told him only that Didier had an obsessive interest in Berbier. And that’s how it would look to a magistrate. It wasn’t a crime, nor did it prove that the men even knew each other. But to Rocco, it confirmed that there was still a connection, even after all this time. And that was enough to be going on with for the moment.

‘Let’s go.’ He led the way outside, with Claude scrambling to catch up with him.

‘What about the cellar? Francine—’

‘She’s not down there.’ He put his gun away.

‘How do you know? We haven’t even tried.’

‘I know, believe me.’ He didn’t bother explaining about the shoe. Right now, all he wanted to do was get back to searching for Francine before it was too late.

The second lodge was a smaller, rougher version of the big one, and looked to be more of a genuine weekend place than its neighbour. Claude went through the keys and eventually found one that worked. They slipped inside.

The search took even less time than the other lodge. No signs of expensive alcohol or dubious films, no toys or magazines, much less any kind of sound system. And no Francine. It seemed to be what it was built for, nothing more, nothing less.

Rocco stepped outside once they had searched the place thoroughly, and looked across the nearby lake with a feeling of increasing desperation, not helped by the apparent normality of the scenery around them. It was tranquil and motionless apart from a kingfisher flitting about on the far side, and one or two moorhens and coots stalking over the lily pads in search of bugs. Higher up in the branches, the smaller birds carried on their singing as usual, aware of, but more immune to, the events down at ground level.

Elsewhere, life carried on as usual. A droning noise sounded in the distance, probably a tractor, and a child’s cry drifted through the trees from the direction of the village. A cow bellowed, a cockerel hawed faintly. Normal noises in a normal world.

Then the droning noise stopped.

Moments later, so did the birdsong.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Commissaire Massin was in his office reading a report from one of his detectives and feeling a gradual surge of apprehension building in his gut. He’d just spoken to a Detective Bertrand in Rouen, following a briefing from Desmoulins, and was trying to work out what Rocco was up to. Desmoulins was either unaware or not saying, and Rocco himself was conveniently out of touch somewhere in Poissons, looking for a missing woman. Her disappearance was apparently out of character, but possibly tied in with a missing patient from Amiens hospital being sought for assault on a cleaner. Desmoulins had told him that Rocco had been sufficiently concerned as to leave immediately, briefing him on his way out to his car.

Desmoulins had also advised that the murdered photographer near Rouen was the same man who had taken the photo of the Resistance people during the war – the former owner of APP – and that the entire group had subsequently died at the hands of the Nazis in the camp known as Natzweiler-Struthof. Included in their number was one Didier Marthe … the same man now being sought for the assault and theft at the hospital.

Even more intriguing – not to say worrying – was that Rocco had identified another person photographed among the group shortly prior to their demise: a French SOE officer. If he was correct, then that man was also very much alive, and now known throughout France as a pillar of the establishment.

Philippe Bayer-Berbier.

Massin sat back and fingered his chin. He was aware of the concentration camp and its grim history, and how few, if any, Resistance people had come out alive. He wasn’t sure precisely how Berbier’s survival was connected with the murder of his daughter, Nathalie, but no doubt that would become clear in due course. If Rocco was allowed to take his investigation that far.

What he was struggling with was the request Rocco had passed to him via Desmoulins: to find out the nature of Berbier’s history with the SOE. Privately, he reckoned it would be a non-starter. Men like Berbier, even those who were known to have had a background in wartime subversion and sabotage, were rarely keen to allow those records to be made a matter of public detail. And a man like Berbier, who was acknowledged even by his supporters to have a somewhat shadowy history from the period immediately following the war, would be even less likely to allow it.

Rocco. The man was like a rough-trained bulldog: let him loose and he attacked anything and everything, secure in the knowledge that he was doing his job, no matter where it took him. It was useful at times, having a man like that, but it also generated enmity and bad feeling for those caught in any fallout. Like himself.

He turned and studied the one photograph he had decided to put up in his office. It showed him in police uniform, proud and determined following his award of a distinguished pass mark at the academy. It had not, over the years, led to the higher echelons of the service as he had envisaged, but he had not completely given up on progressing higher. There was still time.

He had another photograph, this one kept buried in his desk drawer. Also of him in uniform, this time in the distinctive Lizard pattern camouflage, and taken shortly after his arrival in Indochina aboard a French military flight. He’d been empowered with a single brief: to pursue action against the communist Viet Minh with all urgency and aggression. It had been his last photocall in military uniform and the memory of it still caused him moments of pain and humiliation. A humiliation renewed each and every time he saw or heard of Lucas Rocco.

It still surprised him that the former sergeant had given no indication of their shared history, either by expression or deed. Could he have forgotten that day on the front line? A day etched in Massin’s own mind as though with acid? He doubted it: men like Rocco did not forget easily. He shook his head, angrily dislodging the thoughts that brought shame to him in the still night hours and plagued many of his daytime moments, too. He turned instead to the investigation Rocco was pursuing.

Maybe, just maybe, if he could keep Rocco on a tight enough rein, a move higher up the ladder might be achieved riding on the back of a successful murder investigation. On the other hand, he recognised, it would be he who might end up with egg on his face if Rocco performed as usual, barging his way through people’s lives without due thought to the consequences. People like Philippe Bayer-Berbier, for example, he thought wryly, suppressing a shudder. God forbid that he should let Rocco go anywhere near that man again: Berbier possessed too many friends in high places and, no doubt, too many favours he could call in if he really wanted to kill somebody’s career stone dead, merely by lifting a telephone.

He swung back as his secretary poked her head round the door. He was going to allow Rocco a bit more rope. By all accounts the Rouen police were highly impressed by the unselfish help he had given them, and that could only reflect – had already reflected, via Bertrand’s commanding officer – on himself. Maybe this could serve his own needs after all. Especially if the case involved bringing in someone of note, which would run through the halls of the Ministry like wildfire and enhance everyone associated with it.

‘Sir?’ his secretary prompted him urgently, waving a hand. ‘Important call from Paris. Line one.’

Massin tried to remain calm. Most calls from Paris were important; they usually came from higher up the chain of command and required a sharp mind and sharper reactions to whatever news they brought. The only question was, would it be good news or bad?

‘Who is it?’ It had to be one of at least three senior staff members.

‘A Philippe Bayer-Berbier, sir. Shall I put him through?’