Текст книги "Death on the Marais"

Автор книги: Adrian Magson

Соавторы: Adrian Magson
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CHAPTER TWELVE

Rocco? Impatient … eager … jumps in with both feet sometimes, but no fool.

Sous-Brigadier Gilles Nevalles – École Nationale de Police – Clermont-Ferrand

Rocco put the plate down. ‘Gone where? We haven’t finished the investigation …’

Rizzotti stuck out a hand and reclaimed his sandwiches before Rocco could pick them up again. ‘I’m aware of that, Inspector. But you’ll have to take it up with your superiors. The body was claimed by a representative of the family first thing this morning. They had a release signed by a magistrate in Paris and countersigned by Central Administration.’ He opened his hands again. ‘That’s all I can tell you.’

‘You’re kidding. How could anyone get a release signed so quickly?’ Rocco felt as if the ground had been swept from beneath his feet. Nobody but nobody moved this fast to take a body out of the system before a full investigation had been made. Not unless the examining pathologist – in this case a pretend pathologist – was either negligent or easily leant on. He decided to do a bit of leaning himself, pressing over Rizzotti until the medic back-pedalled in his chair like a kid on a toy bike.

‘I can’t help you, Inspector,’ he gabbled. ‘It came in, I made a preliminary inspection, it went out again. I deal in facts, and the fact is simply that the woman drowned.’ He reached out for the papers on his desk as if grasping a lifebelt and held up a single sheet. It showed an outline diagram of the human body, with notations at various points, presumably marks or cuts that Rocco hadn’t been able to see. ‘This was my initial inspection copy. As you can see, I found several marks – mostly small cuts or abrasions – but nothing specific or suspicious. Some mud around the face, which is usual in these cases, where the body may have become inverted in the water. There was a bruise on her neck, here’ – a cross had been placed on one side of the neck consistent with where Rocco had seen the mark – ‘but it was not serious enough to have killed her. At least,’ he smiled thinly and without humour, ‘not unless the person who administered it gave her the kiss of death.’

‘What?’

‘A love bite, Inspector. Not a bruise in the way you mean.’ He sat back, his features softening slightly. ‘I’m sorry you have had this taken away from you. I sympathise, really I do. What I can tell you is that the woman had a large amount of fresh water in her lungs and a considerable amount of alcohol in her stomach – possibly Martini, whisky – a mixture, anyway. There were also traces of drugs, but I have not yet had the results back.’ He lifted his shoulders. ‘In my opinion, she got drunk, fell into some water and was unable to extricate herself. It happens all the time.’

‘What kind of drugs?’

‘Well, I’m pretty certain we’re not talking about headache pills.’ He stood up and shot his cuffs self-importantly. ‘I think you need to find out where she was just prior to her death, Inspector. That will answer a lot more of your questions than any scientific evidence.’

‘Really? I thought science could provide all the answers.’ Rocco turned and walked out, then turned back. Something he’d forgotten: the clothing. ‘What about her uniform?’

‘Ah, yes. That we have retained. What about it?’

‘Did you check the label?’

The surgeon blinked. ‘I don’t follow.’

‘The tailor’s label. Every piece of clothing has one, even the cheapest backstreet T-shirt. It’s a trick we unscientific plods use to tell us where the clothes came from.’

‘I see. Of course – excuse me.’ Rizzotti sidestepped Rocco and left his office in a rush. He was gone several minutes. When he came back, he seemed rattled. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, but you were correct. There is one label, in an inside pocket. But not that of a tailor. It is Louis Pheron et Fils. Costumiers.’ He held out a piece of paper with the details written on. ‘I confess we … I … had not thought to check that. It was sewn inside a jacket pocket. We checked the clothes first thing for identification papers and personal items, of course, but found nothing.’

Rocco nodded and let Rizzotti stew. It might do him good. Pheron et Fils. He’d never heard of the name, but it told him something else about the dead woman: she had not been a member of a revivalist Gestapo club, come back to hoist a contemptuous finger at French sensitivities. Nor had hers been a genuine German body buried and preserved for the past 20 years and uncovered as part of some sick neo-Nazi plot. She had simply been a woman in fancy dress, probably attending a party where she had picked up the love bite. Tasteless, perhaps, even sick, given that particular uniform. But not a crime and not the first he had come across.

‘Was there anything else about the clothes that you did manage to notice?’

Rizzotti bristled, on the defensive, but Rocco was beyond caring. The man had been careless. ‘Such as?’

The hat, for one, he wanted to say. It was dry. How come, if she fell into water? But he decided to keep that to himself. ‘Anything in the pockets? Any marks on the clothing? Come on, you know what we “people” look for.’

Rizzotti’s eyes dulled as he trawled his memory. ‘There were no obvious tears or rips, if that’s what you mean. The fabric was worn around the hems and wrists, but that’s quite common. The pockets were empty.’ He shrugged. ‘There were some chalk marks here and there, but again, nothing especially helpful. The area in this region is full of chalk – she could have picked it up sitting on the ground or falling down a riverbank.’

Nothing helpful, then. Now all Rocco had to do was find out where she had been and how come she had been spirited away from this place so quickly and easily. If he did that, he might discover her identity.

‘How long has she been dead? Do you know that much?’

‘Not for certain. There are signs, but I am not skilled enough to tell for sure; it is not my area of expertise. They are making swift advances in scientific circles … in America and Germany – the British police, too. But without access to funds and better facilities …’ He stopped as if aware of sounding too critical.

‘So guess. You’re a doctor. One day, a week, a month?’

Rizzotti lifted his shoulders. ‘A guess? Three days, not more. There are …’ He hesitated.

‘Go on.’

‘I think the body was taken straight out of the water after death before being kept … somewhere.’

At last. This was getting somewhere. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘The level of deterioration is more advanced than that of someone drowned and left for any length of time in the water. I worked with an aid agency in the Congo once, after a flood. Many of the bodies retrieved were wrapped in sheeting and stored awaiting identification. This had similar signs.’

Rocco lifted an eyebrow. ‘See? You do have expertise – you just didn’t know it.’ If Rizzotti was right, the body had been kept somewhere before being dumped in the cemetery. And to be still wet, it must have been wrapped in plastic or heavy canvas. It might explain the smell and the slimy film on the skin.

He wondered how far he could push the doctor. He had already shown himself to be malleable by allowing the release of the body, and by Rocco himself. He had nothing to lose by pressing him further.

‘I need names,’ he said.

‘Names? What names?’

‘Don’t piss me off,’ warned Rocco. ‘The names on the release papers; the name of the dead woman.’

‘I don’t know. How would I know who she was? I told you, there were no identification—’

‘Maybe not. But someone must have known. How else would they have got the release papers prepared? Or is someone going around claiming unknown bodies for fun?’

Rizzotti’s mouth opened and closed in confusion. He looked dazed, like a guppy in a tank, thought Rocco. But he thought he knew why: it was probably the one question the doctor had been dreading.

He said nothing, waiting for the doctor’s conscience to tell him what to do. It was one of those moments when intimidating silence was far more effective than open threats.

‘The papers have already been sent to the main office,’ Rizzotti muttered finally, his voice dull, ‘awaiting transfer onto microfiche. We don’t have the facilities to duplicate them here. I’ll … have to see if I can get them back.’ He shrugged and looked beyond Rocco as if wishing himself far away from this suddenly cramped office.

Rocco sighed. Short of frogmarching the man across the yard and into the main building, it was the best he could hope for. ‘All right. I’ll wait to hear from you.’ He scribbled Claude’s phone number on his card. ‘Call that number and leave a message. I’ll call back.’ By the time that happened, he hoped to have his own phone installed and ready to use.

‘I can’t promise …’ Rizzotti began, then saw the look on Rocco’s face and appeared to think better of it. ‘Right. I’ll call you.’

‘If you don’t,’ Rocco growled. ‘I’ll come back. And you’ll have more than your sandwiches to worry about, I promise.’

Rocco returned to the main office and asked to see their collection of telephone directories. A beefy man in a tight shirt silently waved a ham sandwich towards a cupboard against one wall. After a few false starts, he found Pheron et Fils listed at an office in Malakoff in the south of Paris. He took a quiet corner desk away from the other staff and dialled the number. No reply.

He called Michel Santer.

‘Christ, you’re still alive, then?’ his former boss greeted him. ‘I’ve been fielding calls about you ever since yesterday. What are you trying to do, Rocco – get an early ticket out?’

‘What kind of calls?’

‘High-level ones – the kind I can’t ignore. A divisional commissaire named Massin was the first up. He sounded thoroughly pissed. Then a Captain Canet was on, talking about you and a female body in a Nazi uniform. I thought maybe you’d got into some weird stuff out there among the buttercups, but he put me straight. He was OK, actually, just sounding you out. And this morning, as I was about to enjoy my first coffee, another senior shirt named Perronnet bent my ear. Sounds to me like you’ve gone in with both feet first, same as usual, and upset the big boys. What’s going on?’

‘I’ll tell you some other time.’

‘Oh. Right. You’ve got company.’

‘Yes. What did the two seniors want?’

‘Background stuff, mostly. Where you’d come from, what you’d done – the usual crap-shovelling when someone wants to stick it to you and needs a personal, non-official edge. I told them you were a royal pain in the neck and couldn’t find your arse in the dark with a sniffer dog, and I was bloody glad to have got rid of you. Did I do right, Lucas?’

Rocco smiled. Santer never called him Lucas unless he was taking the rise. He also knew his former boss wouldn’t have said anything detrimental, but neither would he have over-buttered the bread. ‘Thanks. I appreciate it. Now I need a favour.’

‘Of course you do. And I’d like a longer penis, but I doubt that’ll happen, either. Go on.’

Rocco explained briefly about the body in the cemetery, and the tag in the uniform. ‘The manufacturer’s name is Pheron et Fils, costumiers – probably on the theatrical side. Can you check them out for me?’

He heard the scratching of pencil on paper. ‘OK, will do. I’ll send your replacement. He finally turned up this morning like a spare wheel on a horse and cart. He’s already got lost twice, so this should be just up his street. Anything else?’

‘Yes. Can you make sure he stays zipped about it? No written notes.’

There was a long pause. ‘Any particular reason for that?’

‘I’m not sure. The body’s already been released.’

‘Jesus, that was quick. How come?’

‘Somebody had the right paperwork.’

‘Where from?’

Rocco smiled. Santer was right up there with him. For a body to be released so quickly and with no questions, only the best papers would have sufficed. And those could only come from one source. ‘Paris. I don’t know the details, but I hope to get them.’

‘Good luck on that one. Who was the dead Nazi – de Gaulle’s favourite niece?’

‘As soon as I find out I’ll let you know.’

‘Do that.’ Santer hesitated. When he spoke again, it was in a low voice. ‘Watch your back, big man. When the big fish start taking notice of minnows, it’s time to look for a handy rock to hide under. I don’t know what you’re getting into, but it could get messy.’

The phone clicked and Santer was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Rocco? He’s a cop. Always will be.

When he’s not, he’s sweet.

Emilie Rocco – ex-wife

By the time he got back to Poissons, it was too late to do anything useful, so he drove to the house and parked the car. The day’s heat blanketed the front garden, oppressive and still, and he stood for a moment, enjoying the tranquillity. It was something he’d rarely found in Paris, where he had always been too close to others and their lives, too concerned with the next case on his list or the ones he had been forced by the pressure of work or political imperatives to consign to the backlog files.

He reached the front door and found a cardboard box on the step. A note was tucked inside the flap.

A man should eat. I hope you cook better than you grow tulips. The man installed your telephone already. You must be a Very Important Policeman.

Mme Denis was looking after his welfare. He glanced towards the hedge separating the two properties and made a mental note to slip some money for the food through her letterbox. He took the box inside. It contained the basics of survival which even he could live on: milk, butter, cheese, eggs, a knot of fresh-cut herbs which he guessed might be basil and coriander, a box of sugar cubes and a bottle of wine.

The phone was standard black, perched on top of a telephone directory. An official subscription form was tucked under the handset. The instrument looked worn with use, with a coil of wire long enough to reach anywhere in the house, and a number was written on a yellowed piece of card affixed to a slim tray in the base. Dédé had evidently used a spare model to jump the queue. Not that Rocco cared; at least he was connected. He picked up the handset and heard the welcoming burr down the line. Wondered for a moment who to call to test it out, then decided it could wait.

He made an omelette, which he could cook with his eyes shut, thanks to his ex-wife’s teaching, and listened for sounds of the fruit rats overhead. Silence. Maybe they’d gone out for the evening. Or they’d seen his gun and decided to find another home before he started blasting holes in the ceiling.

It reminded him that be hadn’t cleaned the weapon for a few days, so he hoisted it out of his coat pocket and laid it on the table for later. He had a cleaning kit in the car and would find it therapeutic to go through the familiar exercise. The gun was a MAB .38 with a seven-round magazine. He had used it just twice in the police, and one like it a few times in the army. There were moves afoot to equip the police with another more up-to-date model, but Rocco had got used to the feel of the MAB and couldn’t imagine using something else just because it was to be the new standard model.

As soon as the omelette was ready, he scooped it onto a plate and poured a glass of wine, and sat down to eat his first meal in his new home.

He came awake with a rush at four in the morning. There was a scurrying sound overhead, but he knew it wasn’t the fruit rats which had disturbed him. Neither was it a physical intruder. Something more insidious had reached a hand into his sleep and dragged him to the surface; some dark thought at the back of his mind, nudging him awake.

His throat was dry and raspy. He’d been lying on his back. He scrambled up and reached for a glass of water, draining it in one gulp, then sat back in the dark and waited for whatever had been swirling around in his head to settle and become clear, as he knew it soon would. It had been one of the reasons Emilie had finally left; one of many, at least. She had accused him of living the job to the exclusion of all other facets of their life, evidenced by him often shooting bolt upright in the middle of the night in a eureka moment, dreams morphing back into reality. Like now. Sometimes the moments led somewhere tangible, sometimes not. But the damage had been great enough to rob him of her patience, then finally, her love.

He shook his head and forced his mind back to the job in hand. The dead woman had to be someone: someone’s daughter, sister, maybe wife or mother. But whose? And someone important, if the paperwork to release the body was any indication. He would have to see whether Rizzotti showed some balls and came up with the names he needed. The bigger question was, where had she been prior to and immediately following her death? The wet clothing could be from any number of sources close by: the canal, the river or the lakes. But if Rizzotti was correct and his own instincts were right, the state of the body showed the drowning couldn’t have been in the last twenty-four hours. Alcohol and fresh water … and maybe drugs. A lethal combination. Yet not necessarily suspicious. It could have been a genuine accident: too much to drink, a few pills maybe, followed by a stroll too close to water.

Folly wasn’t necessarily murder.

Except that someone had discovered the body, but instead of alerting the authorities, had kept it for a while before placing it where it would eventually be discovered. Somebody with an acute lack of sensitivity.

The presence of alcohol raised a few questions. If a party guest goes missing – even one in a tasteless uniform – there would be questions asked. The police would be informed, the area searched, the family and friends expressing fear and loss, the usual incomprehension when someone – especially a woman – disappears. The area would be buzzing with rumour, gossip and innuendo.

Yet none of that had happened.

Either nobody cared … or they didn’t know. Or did they not want to know?

He lay back down, then sat up again when a rooster crowed nearby, the harsh, gurgling sound drifting on the air with the clarity and reach of a bugle. He checked his watch. Almost five-thirty; time had passed swiftly. He shrugged on some old, lightweight cotton trousers and a T-shirt, and a pair of battered gym shoes: his training gear. His chances of getting back to sleep were less than slim, so he opted instead for a workout run. It was his first in three weeks, but it would help shake out the cobwebs.

He went out into the lane and turned away from the village. No sense in scaring the neighbours; he didn’t expect too many of them had a training regime other than the hard, physical labour which made up their days. He worked his way up to a gentle trot, breathing deeply and swinging his arms as he made his way out into the open countryside. The birds were just beginning their chorus, and he nodded a salute to them as he passed by, an intruder in their midst, wincing at the pain in his knees and already wondering if this wasn’t a few steps too far.

At seven, warmed by his run and a simple breakfast of toasted bread and coffee, Rocco reached the marais, taking a track off the road leading to the station and the cemetery. Laid with a thin surface of aged and cracked tarmac, it meandered through a belt of tall poplars, skirting three small lakes and a vast, untamed stretch of reed beds, regularly dotted with notices saying FISHING – PRIVATE. The morning sun filtered through the branches of the trees and reflected in patterns off the water, giving the area a shimmering, unreal quality. Rocco felt the Citroën wheels dip each time he strayed off the tarmac, and his gut tilted at the idea that the ground here might swallow him and the car without warning at any moment.

He nosed the car into a large clearing with tyre tracks in the surface showing where other vehicles had turned to go back to the road. The end of the line for anything on four wheels.

He stopped with the nose pointing back along the track and killed the engine. Opened the door to let the air in. It smelt loamy, with a background scent of rotting vegetation and standing water. He got out and looked around.

A large wooden lodge dominated the clearing, standing proud of the trees behind it yet merging into the foliage as if camouflaged. It was plainly old, with peeling walls and weather-worn shutters over the windows, and a layer of soft moss on the shingle roof. A broad veranda ran the length of the front, with a wooden rail in the style of houses in the American Deep South. No rocking chairs, though, Rocco noted. No welcome mat, either.

He stepped onto the veranda and felt the rough planks flex beneath his weight. His footsteps made a hollow noise over the crawl space beneath, but the place had been built to last with seasoned hardwood – a wise move situated here in the marshes. He tried the front door, which had a shutter over the central panel, but it, too, was locked tight. He walked along the veranda to the end, and looked round the corner of the building. There was no garden to speak of and no fence – merely a patch of rough grass and weeds stretching back several paces to a reed bed. Beyond the reeds lay a large expanse of water, surrounded on all sides by trees, reeds and tangled underbrush. The nearest sign of life was a family of ducks about thirty metres away on the water, and the occasional plop of a fish jumping.

At the other end of the veranda he found the same scenery, with the addition of an overturned aluminium rowing boat lying just out of the reeds, a large barbecue bay and a metal rack which he guessed was for fishing rods. He hopped over the veranda rail and walked across the grass for a closer look at the boat. Worn and dented in places, the soft metal was scarred along the sides. There was no sign of an engine mounting, but he guessed that on a lake this size, oars were the best form of propulsion.

He turned to study the rear of the lodge. It boasted two large windows and a narrow door, all tightly shuttered. Whoever owned this place believed in security, and he wondered if the locals had a reputation for helping themselves when the owners were away.

It would be an ideal place for parties, he decided. Unusual, even slightly sinister, especially at night, but maybe that’s what gave it a special cachet among its visitors. What better place to let loose and have a fling without anyone overlooking you?

He returned to the front of the building, making a mental note to find out whose name the place was registered in. City folk, no doubt.

He stopped.

Claude Lamotte was standing by the front steps. His feet were planted solidly, his weight balanced, and he had a shotgun slung across one arm.

Rocco felt his throat go dry.

The twin barrels were pointing right at his midsection.