Текст книги "Death on the Marais"

Автор книги: Adrian Magson

Соавторы: Adrian Magson
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CHAPTER FIVE

Rocco? Pushy … dogmatic … intuitive. He gets results.

Capt. Michel Santer – Clichy-Nanterre district

Rocco climbed in his Citroën and headed along the main street to the eastern end of the village, where the landlord of the bar had told him the garde champêtre had a cottage. He had no guarantee of a warm reception, since the man might resent a city detective landing on his doorstep without warning, viewing him as a threat or an informer, possibly both. But as Michel Santer had suggested, it would be the simplest way of getting to grips with his new territory, and he wasn’t about to ignore good advice.

He reached the village boundary and found a rambling but tidy daub-and-wattle bungalow on a large plot of land. Most of the garden was laid to vegetables, the exception being a bed of dark-red roses in the front. At the side of the property stood a lean-to garage and a large chicken house, with vine creepers snaking everywhere, unchecked and gnarled with age.

He got out of the car and knocked on the front door. The noise echoed around the garden and filtered off into the fields, while back in the village, the church bell sounded thin and suitably soulful. He’d seen no sign of a priest yet, and hoped that would remain the case.

The door opened and Claude Lamotte smiled out at him.

‘I’m looking for the—’ Rocco began, before noticing Claude’s uniform trousers and shirt, complete with shoulder badges. ‘You’re the garde champêtre? You didn’t say.’

‘You didn’t ask.’

Rocco felt a ruffle of irritation, sensing he’d lost a point or two. Instead of coming here and opening up relations on a genial, if slightly superior note, given his rank as an inspector, he realised this rural policeman had gently played him.

Claude peered past Rocco’s shoulder at the big black Citroën. ‘Yours or the department’s?’

‘Mine.’

‘Good choice. Discreet, underplayed – blends in well with the scenery.’ He grinned.

‘It’s a car,’ Rocco countered tersely. He had to concede, though, that the man was probably right. Back in Clichy, it wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow; out here, it was as subtle as a hearse at a wedding. Still, he wasn’t going to give in without a fight. ‘It does the job it was built for.’

‘Fair enough. Come in.’ Claude led the way into a smart but sparsely furnished living room, with a small kitchen off to one side. ‘You want coffee?’ A percolator was bubbling steadily on a small stove, filling the air with a heady aroma.

Rocco looked around the room, absorbing the atmosphere. There was a large dresser, a sideboard, a dining table and two leather armchairs. Few ornaments and no softness. A man’s room, he thought. No woman’s influence here, although there had been, once, evidenced by a piece of crochet-work in a frame on the wall. A large plastic-covered map of the area was tacked to another wall, and below it, on the sideboard, a pile of books and folders which Lucas recognised as the official detritus of a serving police officer.

‘Why not?’ His stomach rumbled, a leftover, he was sure, from Mme Denis’s brand of paint stripper. But since he was intent on getting to grips with the locals, including this man, who was to all intents a colleague, he could stand another cup.

Claude filled two cups and pushed sugar across the table. ‘Help yourself.’ He sat down and picked up his coffee. ‘So what can I do for you, Lucas?’

Rocco sat across from him and tasted his coffee. It was very good. ‘For a start, thank you for the information about Mme Denis. I’m now the tenant of the end house in Rue Danvillers. It doesn’t seem to have a name or number.’

Claude smiled. ‘It doesn’t need one. It’s already being called the cop house.’

‘No kidding.’ He noticed a black telephone sitting on a small side table. ‘I need a phone, though. There are too many big ears flapping at the café. Any ideas?’

Claude reached across and scooped up the handset and dialled a number from memory.

‘Dédé? It’s Claude. I need a phone fitted yesterday. Police, yes. Hang on.’ He covered the mouthpiece and looked at Lucas. ‘My cousin, Dédé. Can you run to a decent bottle of Armagnac?’

‘If they sell it at the co-op.’

‘They do.’ He gestured at the telephone and said softly, ‘Sorry – it’s the way things work here, but we don’t make the rules, right?’

Rocco suppressed a smile. Out in the middle of nowhere and he got a phone fitted with one call. In Clichy, it would have taken weeks, and threats of physical harm – and even then the job would have been botched.

‘Thank you,’ he said and sipped his coffee. ‘When can he do it?’

Claude went back to the phone. ‘No problem, Dédé. When can—? Really? That’s superb, my friend. See you soon.’

He put down the phone and smiled triumphantly. ‘Tomorrow. He’s in the area. If you leave your door unlocked, he’ll do it on his way through. Leave a chalk mark on the floor where you want it fitted.’

‘I owe you one.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Claude agreed. He leant back in his chair. ‘So, to what do we owe the pleasure of this posting?’ He was clearly referring to Rocco’s presence in the area and saw the favour as having earned information in return.

‘Musical chairs,’ Rocco explained. ‘There’s been a shake-up of various departments and regions, and I’ve been sent out here as part of an exchange initiative. Someone else is sitting in my chair, another is sitting in his chair and so on. It’s nationwide.’

‘Sounds like bureaucracy. In my experience, such initiatives are an important man’s way of becoming even more important. But why you and why right here? Why not Amiens?’

‘Me? Well, if you listen to the politicians, I’ve come to bring order to the countryside: smite the robbers, murderers, thieves and philistines.’

‘Philistines. We don’t have many of those around here: the local priest sees to that.’

‘Then he and I have something in common.’

Claude sniffed. ‘You make it sound like a holy war.’

‘It is. And God help anyone who gets in my way.’ He smiled. ‘In the meantime, I thought I’d come and say hello.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘And get a briefing. Do you get any crime here at all?’

Claude puffed out his cheeks. ‘Well, we do, but what we call crime and what you call crime is not the same. You city people get cars stolen, our crims steal the odd chicken. You get riots and gang fights, we get the occasional punch-up over a game of bar billiards or somebody’s brand of politics. No offence, but none of that needs detective skills.’ He stood up and went over to the map on the wall. ‘Poissons sits in a shallow valley, and shares space with a river, a canal, and the marais, all to the south of here.’ He stabbed a finger on each in turn, ending on a large expanse coloured pale green. ‘The marais runs for about three kilometres along the valley, and about half a kilometre deep. Here in the village, it’s mostly a couple of lakes surrounded by trees, but further out to the west, there are four more lakes, all much more open.’

‘Are they linked?’

Claude tilted his head. ‘Not like they used to be. There’s a narrow stretch joining them up, but only the locals know about it. When I patrol out there, I use a Canadian.’ Rocco must have looked blank, because he added, ‘It’s a canoe; slides through weeds and other rubbish like a knife across butter. And it’s quiet. If anyone’s there who shouldn’t be, they don’t hear me coming. The best way along the valley by water is along the canal, which is further out.’

‘Still used?’ Rocco couldn’t recall seeing one, but he knew many of the country’s canals were still in use.

‘Sure. Some freight traffic, but it’s dying. Losing out to the big trucks. It’s near the station; you go over a bridge but it’s masked by trees so you wouldn’t know it was there.’

‘What about the village?’ As far as Rocco knew, his ‘patch’ was as deep and wide as his superiors chose to make it, and probably encompassed an area several hundred kilometres square; but his immediate interest was Poissons. He could hardly live here and not show an interest.

‘Not big. About a hundred houses, mostly stretched along the main street. A shop, church and school … and the café you know about. Most people here work on the land, the railway or at factories in Amiens. There are a dozen small farms, a couple are bigger ones, and lots of open country. We’re still in the horse era, here; there are a couple of tractors but that’s it. The farmers don’t have the money for mechanisation on a big scale.’ He sat down again and finished his coffee, his briefing done. ‘So, where are you from? Before Paris, I mean.’

‘Here and there. All over. The army, then the police; I moved around a lot.’

‘Indochina?’ The last big conflict the French army had been engaged in.

‘Yes.’ Rocco’s response was deliberately brief. He wasn’t ready to talk about it with strangers. It was best kept locked in a private box, waiting for the memories to dim and fade. He was still busy working out how to hurry that process along.

‘Married?’

‘Was, once. It didn’t work out.’ Something else he wasn’t ready to discuss. Emilie hadn’t been able to stand the stresses and strains of first, being an army wife waiting at home for his return from distant lands and conflicts, and second, the same sort of job, only closer at hand and just as unpredictable. In the end, she had left. ‘You?’

‘Was also. She died.’ Claude flicked a glance at a photo of two adults and two small girls in a frame on the wall. They were all smiling, but the photo looked several years old. ‘And the kids … well, they waited ’til they were old enough and buggered off to the city.’

‘You see them?’

‘Not much. We talk now and then – when I can track them down. But it’s another language these days.’ He shrugged. ‘They’re good girls – just different.’

They sat and looked through each other for a few seconds, accompanied by the ticking of a clock.

When the telephone jangled, it startled them both.

Claude scowled. ‘It hardly ever does that,’ he announced. ‘Except for my sister in Nantes. She likes to remind me of her latest dress size and the birthday of every child in the family. She thinks I’m made of money.’

He picked up the hand-piece and listened, and Lucas watched as he turned slowly pale.

‘OK. At once,’ he said softly. ‘I’ll be there. Yes, of course directly.’ He put the phone down and adjusted its position on the table, then looked at Lucas with a grave expression.

‘Your sister?’ said Rocco.

‘I wish. What I said about not having much crime here? I spoke too soon. That was Monsieur Paulais, the stationmaster. There’s a British military cemetery about a kilometre outside the village, close to the station. It’s alongside a wood.’ He gave a small shiver and stood up, pointing at the map on the wall. ‘It’s a nice spot. Very … peaceful as you would expect, for that kind of place. The gardener – an Englishman named John Cooke – arrived for work today and found a body in the cemetery.’

Rocco resisted the temptation to ask where else would you find them. ‘A visitor had a heart attack?’ He knew that many old soldiers and their families made pilgrimages to the battlefields of the two world wars. Understandably, some of the older ones from the conflict in 1918 were not in the best of health. The journey out here often found weaknesses otherwise left undiscovered.

‘No.’ Claude reached for his jacket on the back of the chair. ‘Not this one.’ He rubbed a hand across his face. ‘We may have need of your investigative skills sooner than I thought.’

Rocco’s senses prickled. He finished his coffee and stood up. ‘Why?’

‘The deceased is a woman and she’s wearing a Gestapo officer’s uniform.’

CHAPTER SIX

Rocco? Unorthodox. If they don’t walk, he brings them in under his arm.

Lieut. Pierre Comorre – Custody & Records Office – Clichy-Nanterre district

The British War Graves cemetery of Poissons-les-Marais lay off the side of a dusty, rutted track which went on to bury itself in a stretch of thick woodland on the side of a hill. The cemetery consisted of a walled oblong roughly fifty metres by one hundred and fifty, dotted with military regularity by evergreens marking the boundary like silent sentinels. A long, low, brick-built construction in the style of a cloister stood at the near end, and a tall memorial cross pointing to the sky dominated the serried ranks of white marker stones which filled the cemetery grounds, surrounded by trimmed lawn and flower beds. A smaller brick structure stood in one corner, partially concealed by a privet hedge.

Rocco parked behind a grey Citroën 2CV van and climbed out of the car. The afternoon heat hung heavy over the wheat fields on either side of the track and a family of crows in the woods gave voice to the new arrivals, while a skylark sent out its call high in the air. Rocco tried to spot the small bird but gave up. He turned and flicked a practised eye over his surroundings. Vehicle access was bumpy but OK, so the mortuary wagon would be able to get up close. They were two hundred metres from the road, but since passing traffic was limited, there would be no problems with crowd control. Unlike the city, he reflected, where even a rumour of an unexplained death was sufficient to bring out the ghouls and freaks, eager to play their part in the drama.

Turning back towards the way they had come, he could just make out the church steeple in Poissons, rising above a range of trees surrounding a series of small lakes between the cemetery and the village. A line of poplars showed the location of the canal just north of the railway line, but there was no sign of boat traffic.

Following Claude’s directions, he had driven through the village and along a winding lane past an area called the marais – the marshlands – and down past the village railway station. This was little more than a small brick building on a raised platform. A simple striped barrier to stop traffic stood alongside the road, with a counterweight on one end to help the stationmaster lift and lower it.

To Rocco, more accustomed to city scenes, it was like another country. Narrow roads with no vehicles; clusters of houses but few people; cultivated land, clearly productive and well maintained, but no sign of workers.

Then he became aware of the smell.

‘God on a bicycle!’ Claude coughed as he joined Rocco by the front of the car. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘Death.’ To Rocco the aroma was all too familiar. Heavy and sickly, it hung in the air like a curtain, thick enough to taste. ‘Come on.’ He led the way into the cemetery and saw a man sitting at the far end of the cloister with his back against the wall. He looked unnaturally pale and was staring across the cemetery with a tight expression etched on his face. Probably trying not to breathe in, thought Rocco. It never works, no matter how hard you try.

‘John Cooke – the Englishman,’ whispered Claude, one hand clamped across his nose. ‘His French is so-so.’ He wagged his other hand in a see-saw fashion. ‘Actually, for an Englishman, not bad.’

Rocco strode along the walkway, his footsteps echoing around him, and watched as Cooke stood up to greet them. Up close, he was the quintessential Englishman: tall and thin, with blue-grey eyes and a neat moustache, fair hair. He wore dark-blue overall trousers and a check shirt, and had the wiry, sun-bronzed arms and face of an outdoor worker. Right now, however, the tan on his cheeks was struggling to stay in place.

‘Mister Cooke,’ Rocco said in English, and introduced himself. ‘Inspector Rocco. I understand you found a body.’

‘That’s right. Over there.’ Cooke looked surprised and relieved at hearing his own language. ‘Glad I don’t have to explain this in French. I could do it, of course, but … Anyway, come this way and I’ll show you.’ He set off out of the cloister and across the carefully tailored lawn, leaving the two policemen to follow. He walked like a soldier, Rocco noted, easy strides, back straight.

‘You speak English,’ muttered Claude, tapping Rocco’s arm. ‘You didn’t say.’

Rocco gave a ghost of a smile, remembering his surprise at finding Claude was the garde champêtre. ‘You didn’t ask.’

Cooke stopped alongside the giant stone cross set in the centre of the lawn. It had a stepped platform beneath an oblong base, and the main stone of the cross was inlaid with a bronze sword, the tip of which was running with verdigris.

Like green blood, Rocco thought sombrely.

Cooke gestured to the far side of the platform, and moved back to allow them to pass. ‘I hope you’ve got strong stomachs,’ he said. ‘It’s not pretty.’

Rocco stepped around the cross.

The woman was lying on the stone platform, arms flung wide, one leg bent beneath her. She had a dark, mottled tinge to her facial skin, which was bloated and pincushioned out of shape. Her pupils were milky-white, half-closed, and she could have been anywhere between twenty and sixty – it was impossible to be certain. Her hair was mousy, lank and crusted against her head in tangled snakes, and one cheek was pulled back in a cruel facsimile of a smile. But that was the only detail Rocco could determine immediately without a closer examination.

She was dressed, as Claude had said, in the stark black uniform jacket and skirt of a Gestapo officer, complete with a swastika armband, leather belt, shirt and tie. The collars of the jacket bore a twin lightning-bolt insignia and three pips, and the black forage cap lying by the woman’s side was decorated with white piping.

‘You found it like this when you came in?’ Rocco asked Cooke.

‘Yes. I had to call in at Peronne first thing this morning; I only got here twenty minutes ago.’

‘Can anyone confirm that?’

Cooke lifted an eyebrow. ‘What – you think I might have left her here? Bit obvious, isn’t it?’ When Rocco said nothing, he added dispiritedly, ‘No, I didn’t see anyone to speak to.’

‘And there was no one here when you arrived?’

‘No. The place is hardly Piccadilly Circus.’ He paused, apologetic. ‘That’s in London.’

‘I know where it is.’

‘Right. Of course. If we get any visitors, it’s usually not until after midday. Otherwise it’s just me and the chaps.’

‘Chaps?’

Cooke gestured vaguely towards the lines of white stones. ‘Them. Trouble is, they don’t talk much.’ He gave a thin smile.

English humour, thought Rocco.

‘When were you here last?’

Cooke thought about it. ‘Three days ago. I have to cover several other cemeteries; this one is the easiest to maintain, so I don’t come every day.’

Rocco bent to peer more closely at the woman’s face. No significant marks, although it was hard to tell with the lumpy state of the skin. But he noted what might have been a small bruise on the side of the woman’s neck. She wore a single silver-and-enamel earring in the shape of a yellow-and-white flower – it looked like a marguerite – in her left ear, but nothing in the right. The yellow centre showed sharp and bright in contrast to the body and the dark clothing.

He ran his fingertips across the skirt and jacket. The material was heavily creased and the fabric damp – in fact, worse, it was soaked through. Several white marks showed on the fabric and were repeated around the welts of the shoes, and tendrils of weed were dotted here and there on the clothing and wrapped around her legs like dark-green centipedes. Her black stockings were ripped and laddered, exposing the flesh underneath which bulged through the mesh like uncooked pork.

‘Did it rain here last night?’ he asked.

‘No. Hasn’t for days.’

‘What did you do after you found the body?’

‘I didn’t touch anything, if that’s what you mean. It was obvious she was dead, so I drove to the station and got Monsieur Paulais to call Claude. I think he also called the police in Amiens.’

Great, thought Rocco. It won’t be long before the circus gets here. He’d have liked more time to study the scene in peace, but that was no longer in his hands. He turned to Claude. ‘How long before they arrive?’

‘About an hour … thirty minutes if they’ve got nothing else on. Depends whether Monsieur Cooke mentioned the uniform.’

‘I told them.’ Cooke took up the conversation in French, his accent evident but not bad. ‘It seemed pretty important … I thought it might galvanise them into action a bit sooner.’

It would do that all right, thought Rocco. Finding a corpse dressed like Himmler’s sister is not the kind of thing you ignore, not in France. He lifted the forage hat, which was dry to the touch, and opened it. There was no name tag.

Claude looked glum. ‘If Paulais called the police, he’ll have called the press, too.’ He rubbed his thumb and fingers together. ‘Money. In these parts, this will be a big story.’

‘You think we get bodies in Gestapo uniform turning up every day in Paris?’ Rocco shook his head. ‘Where’s the closest stretch of water?’

‘To here?’ Claude jutted his chin back towards the village. ‘The canal, just the other side of the railway. After that, the lakes and the marais. Why?’

‘The clothing’s wet through. She was in water until very recently.’ He touched the skin of the dead woman’s leg. It was covered in a slimy film.

He turned his thoughts to what would be needed here, if it wasn’t already on the way. The full works, undoubtedly – forensics, scene of crime, mortuary service … and Lord knows who else would want to get in on this act, with that uniform. Poissons-les-Marais wouldn’t know what had hit it.

Claude read his mind. ‘This is going to get messy, isn’t it?’

‘Very. I hope you had a good night’s sleep, because this could be a long stretch of duty. You ready for it?’

‘Me?’ Claude looked surprised. ‘I’m a lowly garde champêtre – the regular cops won’t want me around.’

‘It won’t be up to them, though, will it?’

‘Really? What do – Ah.’ The light dawned. ‘Of course – this is your patch now.’

‘Too right. They sent me down here; I might as well do my job. So stick around.’