Death on the Marais (29 page)
‘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?’
‘We’ve got company,’ said Rocco. He stepped away from the lodge, instantly on the alert, glancing towards where he had left the car.
‘How do you know that?’
Rocco pointed upwards. ‘Hear that?’ Everything was silent: the trees, the lakes, the undergrowth; even the breeze seemed to have shut down its whisper, leaving the air muggy and still.
Claude nodded. ‘Damn. I hadn’t noticed. I’m getting slow.’ He followed Rocco’s glance. ‘What do we do?’
‘We go and see who it is.’ Rocco walked back along the path. It could be nothing, maybe a local come to fish. If so, no problem. If it was anyone else, he wanted to see them before they saw him.
As they neared the final bend in the path before
reaching the main lodge, they heard a rumble of male voices filtering through the trees, followed by a short, sharp whistle. Then silence.
Rocco felt his scalp move. Whoever the new arrivals were, they had a communication system going. At a guess, they’d arrived at the front of the lodge and found his car. The whistle had been a warning to keep their eyes open.
That automatically left out anyone from the village or the police.
When the lodge came into view, Rocco knelt down behind some reeds and motioned for Claude to do the same. The voices had stopped, but the men must still be close by.
A man appeared at the rear corner of the building. He was heavily built, with cropped, black hair and wore a dark suit, white shirt and tie, and was carrying a gun. He moved cautiously, sticking close to the wall of the lodge as if listening for noises inside. He tried the rear door and found it open, then flattened himself against the wall. He gave a low whistle. Moments later he was joined by a second man from the other side of the lodge, similarly dressed and also armed. They communicated in a series of hand signals before slipping inside. A bark of laughter from the front of the building indicated at least two more men present.
Rocco recognised the tactic: the men at the front were a distraction while the other two checked the place out.
‘Are they cops?’ whispered Claude.
‘Not the kind I’m used to,’ said Rocco. ‘Cops would go straight in.’
‘So who, then?’
‘City boys looking for Didier is my guess. Come on.’ He eased away, leading Claude back down the path deeper into the
marais
.
Rocco didn’t like the odds.
An unknown number of men, two of them armed and acting as if they had been trained in the military. If they were after Didier as he suspected and looking to settle a score, all well and good. He probably deserved everything he had coming. But there was still no sign of Francine, and if the men were up to no good and stumbled on them here in the
marais
, they might not be keen on having any witnesses to their activities.
He and Claude reached the second lodge and waited behind its cover. The minutes ticked by, the silence hanging like a blanket around them, stuffy and threatening. Then a stick cracked not far away, followed by a faint splash and a man swearing. Rocco eased back. It confirmed what he’d thought: clumsy feet in this environment meant city folk not used to walking on soft, unforgiving ground. One of the men had stepped on a branch, then off the path into water.
A white oval appeared above the undergrowth. A man’s face. He was standing on the path thirty metres away, studying the smaller lodge. He had one hand held out, warning those behind him to hold back.
For Rocco it was enough. They couldn’t stay here.
The men were constrained by the single path, and evidently cautious about moving forward too quickly. They had probably been briefed about Didier’s background and prickly nature, but would soon move forward.
He and Claude retreated further along the path to the ruined building. Once over the bridge leading to Didier’s house and the village, they could get to a phone and summon reinforcements. Facing one armed man, maybe even two, might have been feasible for him and Claude, given that they were familiar with the area. Going up against four would be idiotic, and Rocco had no desire to go down in the annals of police history as a brave but dead fool.
As they slipped past the ruined lodge and headed for the bridge, Rocco heard a noise. He stopped, a hand on Claude’s shoulder. A cat? Kids squealing? It sounded ghostly, a half-cry out of keeping with the surroundings.
Claude had heard it, too. ‘Christ, what is that?’ he whispered.
‘It’s coming from in there.’ Rocco pointed towards the ruin. Did they have time to investigate or would the four men bypass the second lodge and come pounding along the path? He shook off his concerns. It didn’t matter; they were here to find Francine, and this was the one place they hadn’t yet looked.
‘Come on.’ He moved through the tangle of undergrowth and up to the front door, drawing his gun. The wood looked worm-eaten and rotten and smelt of mildew, and it didn’t look as though anyone
had been here in years. This was a waste of time …
He heard the noise again, this time close by.
He stepped through the doorway, feet crunching on wind-blown debris and rotten wood. It felt as if the whole building was trembling under his weight, and he wondered how safe the roof was. He looked around the room. It was a time capsule, rotting into the floorboards and decaying where it stood. An armchair had sunk like melting ice cream, its fabric tattered and faded to a uniform dull grey and trailing on the floor; a dining table had tilted drunkenly on one corner and a cupboard door hung off its hinges, revealing a bare interior covered with rodent droppings and layers of accumulated dirt.
Rocco moved across the room to a door at the back. It led to what had once been a small kitchen. More rotting wood and peeling walls, and the wreckage of a table and chairs, but with one difference: a pathway had been trodden through the clutter from the back door to a filthy square of colourless carpet near the side wall. Amid all the nature-inspired mess, it looked too out of place, too deliberate.
He signalled for Claude to keep an eye on the front of the building, then bent and flipped back the carpet.
Underneath was a trapdoor. A metal handle was recessed neatly into the wood.
Rocco pocketed his gun and heaved the trapdoor open, flooding the darkness below with light and revealing a nightmarish scene.
Francine Thorin lay staring up at him with bulging
eyes, her hands lashed above her head to a thick wooden support post set in the earthen floor. A rough gag had been taped across her mouth, and she was making the high keening sound they had heard earlier, and rocking backwards and forwards, her entire body shaking with terror.
‘Thank God!’ Francine gasped as Rocco tore away the gag and binding. She sagged against him, tears flooding down her face at the realisation that she was finally safe, her fingers digging into his arms in desperation. ‘That man … he was going to kill me …!’
‘Shush now,’ Rocco whispered, gently touching a finger to her lips to stop her signalling their presence to the men out in the
marais
. Her face was bruised, with cuts on her skin where she must have been dragged into the hole, and her hair was a tangle of dirt and cobwebs. He didn’t like to think of what she had suffered alone down here in the dark, not knowing whether the man who had taken her would ever come back or not. ‘You’re safe now. But we must get you away from here.’
She nodded, deep in shock, eyes locked on his as she gripped him even tighter. He smelt her perfume, soft and fragrant in contrast to the musky smell of the grim surroundings, and held her for a moment, dispensing with the normal advice of keeping a distance from crime victims. Above anything in the manuals, she needed contact and the reassurance of closeness, not official distance.
He turned and whistled softly to Claude, who appeared above them. His jaw dropped when he saw Francine, then he recovered quickly and grinned with relief.
‘Christ on a pony! Here – reach up.’ He bent and took Francine’s hand, and hauled her out of the hole as if she weighed nothing. He turned to Rocco. ‘We’d better move. They’ll be here any second. I think they’ve picked up our tracks along the path.’
Rocco heaved himself out of the hole and made for the back door, pulling Francine after him. Once outside, he checked the path to the front and was shocked to hear voices close by. They’d left it too late; the men must have given the second lodge a miss. There was no time to get Francine to the bridge without being seen. She was only able to move slowly, her legs still cramped from her confinement.
He drew his gun and flicked off the safety. Time to set up some delaying tactics.
He caught a movement from the corner of his eye among the trees to the side of the lodge, and spun round. One of the men must have circled around to the side. He brought up his gun, finger tightening on
the trigger, and was shocked to see Didier Marthe’s face staring back at him. The scrap man was dressed in brown hunting clothes and carrying a shotgun. He looked pale and drawn, his face smeared with dirt.
For a brief second Didier wavered, staring at the three of them in desperation, especially, it seemed, at Rocco, then Francine. Rocco got ready to open fire. Then a man’s voice intruded, approaching along the path at the front of the ruined building.
In a flash, Didier turned and was gone.
Rocco turned to Claude. ‘Get her across the bridge and don’t look back. Call Massin or Detective Desmoulins in Amiens and get a squad out here on the double.’
‘Why, what are you going to do?’ protested Claude. ‘There are too many—’
‘Don’t argue – there’s no time.’ Rocco turned and ran after Didier, heading away from the bridge and deeper into the
marais
, crashing noisily through a tangle of dry reeds. Behind him he heard a shout from the men on the path. He didn’t stop to see if they were following.
He was counting on them doing just that.
There was no sign of Didier. The scrawny little man had moved like a greased pig, helped by his familiarity with the terrain and the colour of his clothing blending in with the vegetation.
Rocco drove on, pushing through the undergrowth and praying he wouldn’t stumble into a bog or become entangled in the patches of brambles snaking
everywhere. He heard a crashing sound behind him and men calling to each other. The pursuers had been caught off guard for a moment, but if they were fit and quick, they would lose no time in regaining the initiative.
He saw a clear patch through the trees ahead and veered towards it, calculating that he was now heading back in the general direction of the main lodge. Less bothered with catching up with Didier than he was drawing the men away from Claude and Francine, he put on a burst of speed.
Suddenly a stretch of water covered with a layer of scum appeared in front of him. He swerved to go round it, then moved back in the direction where Didier had gone. More sounds of pursuit came from behind him, and he realised that one of the men was getting close, the noise of his progress through the undergrowth coming uncomfortably near. He could even hear the other man’s harsh breathing, but was comforted by the knowledge that while running, he couldn’t shoot with any accuracy.
He felt one boot sink into soft earth. He staggered, dragging against the pull of muddy soil around his ankle, and saw a dull blackness reflecting back at him under a layer of coarse weed.
A bog!
He tore his foot free, nearly losing the boot, but managed to stumble away towards another clear patch to his right. It put him back on course for the main lodge. If he could reach his car …
A shot rang out, startling in its loudness and clipping a branch from a tree near his head.
Damn – they weren’t
messing
. He was tempted to ignore it. Stopping to fight would be stupid: he was outnumbered and too big a target, and he had the feeling these men had all seen action; they would not be put off by one policeman with a gun. Better to get away somewhere safe and hope Claude managed to call up reinforcements before it was too late. Even so, they had to learn that he wasn’t going to run for ever or give up too easily.
He stopped and turned, dropping to one knee to reduce the target, and sighted on the gunman charging through the brush thirty metres behind him. He took a breath and fired twice, and saw the shoulder of the man’s jacket jump as a shot struck home. The man was knocked sideways and there was a loud splash as he fell into the bog.
Rocco turned and continued running as two shots came in quick succession from further back in the trees, losing themselves harmlessly among the branches overhead. Undisciplined, he decided; they might have been trained once, but their discipline had gone. Indiscriminate shooting like that could only threaten their own men while giving away the shooter’s position. A volley of shouts came as the others raced to cut him off, but found their progress impeded by the sheer perversity and tangle of nature in the raw.
Rocco was tiring fast and getting short of breath, the effort of pushing through this terrain far more wearing than trotting along a level road. He had few illusions about what might happen; there were three of them and one of him. Much more of this and the outcome would be short, sharp and fatal.
Moments later he burst through a hanging veil of thin branches and was relieved to see the lodge and his car right in front of him. Snatching his keys from his pocket, he ran to the driver’s door, fumbling the key into the lock with a trembling hand and trying not to shoot himself in the process.
He threw himself behind the wheel and started the car, tramping on the accelerator. The heavy car responded instantly, leaping forward and fishtailing across the clearing … but heading straight for the lake as the steering wheel spun out of his hand.
He grappled with the wheel as a shot pinged off the bodywork. Then desperation enabled him to regain control of the wheel just in time. He slewed the car around at the last second and headed at full speed for the track back to the road. In the rear-view mirror, he saw three men emerge from the trees and run after him.
