Death on the Marais (6 page)
He wondered who the woman was. Had been. And why she was dumped here. She certainly hadn’t died in this place. The clothing, with the exception of the hat,
had been in water; and he’d seen similar bloating to the skin on bodies pulled out of the Seine, which indicated that she had been immersed for a while. Then there was the uniform. Was it someone’s idea of making a point? If so, it was a grisly one. He deliberately hadn’t tried the pockets of her jacket yet, which might yet yield a clue; that would be best done with the forensics team in place, in case they found anything that might deteriorate rapidly and be lost as evidence.
‘Lucas!’
He turned. Claude was looking towards the main road where three vehicles – a black saloon and two chunky police vans, all with their roof lights flashing – were speeding towards the turn-off.
He walked to the entrance gate to meet them.
The man in charge was a cheerful-looking individual with a red face and a well-developed middle. He hopped from the car, followed by men from the other vehicles, and watched as Rocco approached.
‘Who are you?’ he queried. ‘This is the scene of an unexplained death.’
‘Good description,’ Rocco congratulated him. He took out his transfer orders and calling card. The officer read the details carefully, eyebrows lifting.
‘OK, that changes things, I grant you.’ He ducked his head. ‘Captain Eric Canet, Amiens
Préfecture
. We heard someone new was coming. My men are at your disposal, Inspector.’
‘I appreciate that.’ Rocco shook the captain’s hand, relieved that Canet wasn’t about to jump on his
soapbox over who had primary position. By rights, Rocco should have presented himself at the Amiens office prior to coming here, but he had seen no reason to do so until absolutely necessary. ‘My colleague is
Garde Champêtre
Lamotte, based in Poissons, and the other man is the cemetery gardener, John Cooke. He’s English.’ He gestured towards the monument. ‘The body is at the base of the cross, covered with a tarpaulin against the flies. There are no obvious signs showing how it got there, or even the cause of death … but I’ll leave that to you and your men to determine.’
‘Of course.’ Canet acknowledged the courtesy and flicked a signal to his men. They began to mark out a pathway from the gate to the monument, examining the ground as they went. ‘To be honest,’ he added softly, ‘rather you than me on this one. Is it true about the Gestapo uniform?’
‘Yes.’
‘God help us. That’s all we need, stirring up old memories. That’s always bad news.’ He paused and nodded towards the stone cross. ‘If you’ll excuse me?’
‘Help yourself.’
Canet set off in the wake of his men and disappeared behind the memorial. He reappeared two minutes later and walked back to join Rocco. He looked pale around the eyes, his sights fixed on the ground.
‘Holy Mother,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve seen some stuff in my time, but that …’
Rocco nodded. They all would have seen far worse
before, but the shock value in what lay beside the monument was the degree of contrasts: the bloated, stodgy skin of the dead woman against the black of the hated uniform.
Canet walked to the gate and spat onto the track, then wiped his lips. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured, and checked his watch, glancing towards the road.
‘You expecting somebody?’
Canet nodded. ‘You won’t have been made aware of it, but we’ve just inherited a new divisional
commissaire
, starting today. It’s part of this big reshuffle. He’s from Marseille.’ It was clear from Canet’s wry expression that he looked on the senior officer’s move to Picardie as an odd, not to say controversial one.
‘Know anything about him?’
‘No. I was on leave until today and came out here as soon as I got in. His holiness was doing an arse-kicking tour of the
sous-préfectures
this morning so I don’t even know his name, only that he’s ex-military from way back. But I do know he’ll have something to prove … which is why he’s on his way here to take charge of the investigation.’
‘Oh, joy.’ Rocco was dismayed.
Commissaires
didn’t usually involve themselves in such matters, limiting themselves instead to making announcements to the press and their superiors in the Interior Ministry about successful outcomes and an increase in performance statistics. He could foresee an argument looming; one he would probably lose.
Canet sniffed in agreement. ‘Well … I’m not surprised. This thing looks like being a touchy subject
– the Gestapo kit and all. It could make good headlines for him if it breaks quickly, bad if it doesn’t, in which case you’ll get responsibility.’
Rocco smiled. ‘Cynic.’
Canet shrugged fatalistically. ‘With good reason: I’ve seen it all before.’
Just then, the sound of car engines intruded on the quiet and both men turned. Two gleaming black saloons were approaching along the main road, moving at a sedate clip.
‘Shoulders back, stomachs in,’ said Canet, hitching up his trousers and stepping through the gate. ‘You ready for this?’
‘Not yet.’ Rocco had better things to do than tug his forelock for a bunch of self-important desk jockeys. He decided to take a tour of the outside perimeter of the cemetery instead. It might also offer a chance of getting upwind of the awful smell for a while. If standing on ceremony was important to the brass, they would wait. If not, they’d have to follow him and get their shoes dirty.
Rocco? A nobody … a rebel … reckless. Lacks any respect for authority.
Col François Massin – former brigade CO, Indochina campaign
Rocco turned left out of the gate, then left again, following the wall across the width of the cemetery. The ground here was rough but easy to read, where neither weeds, grass nor farmers’ crops had taken root, leaving a half-metre perimeter of hard ground to follow like a path. There were no signs of disturbance, no footprints to help him except a few paw prints, and lots of rabbit droppings; a dead thrush, half-eaten by maggots and, a yard into the field, the carcass of a larger bird – a wood pigeon dead on the wing, no doubt the random target of a farmer’s rifle.
He was pretty sure the narrow strip of ground here was much the same as the day the men who had built the wall had packed up and left. He walked on.
He reached the next corner near the tool shed,
where it looked as if access might be easy, and studied it carefully. Nothing. No marks on the wall to show anyone had climbed it, no traces of fabric caught on the rough brickwork. The ground below it was unmarked. Then, as he turned up the long stretch of wall abutting the wood at the top, he saw movement in the trees.
Rocco stopped and crouched as if examining the ground, all the while checking the tree line. Something or someone was up there, but he couldn’t see any detail. A flick of a branch, a change in the pattern of shadows, then it was gone.
He continued walking, head moving from side to side, and eventually reached the end of the wall where it butted up against the wood. The atmosphere here was still, densely packed with overgrowth, with not even the rustling of leaves on the branches to break the silence. He breathed deeply, sniffing the air, enjoying the raw smell.
He turned and followed the top wall across the width of the cemetery, the wood on his right shoulder. But he was no longer interested in the ground: he was already certain that whoever had dumped the body in the cemetery had gained access through the gate, not over the wall. Instead, he concentrated on listening to the silent mass of greenery to his right. It was thinner here, he noted, where selective trees had been felled or had fallen to nature. It allowed the air and light to penetrate, and there was a breeze, too, like a whispered conversation, the leaves and branches setting up a chaffing, clicking sound as if
discussing man’s intrusion on this quiet place.
It reminded him of a jungle he’d once come to know, also a place of whispered noises and shadows. His head began to ache and he shivered, mentally pushing away the flickering images trying to intrude. No time for that; never time for that. He breathed deeply until his mind was quiet and his inner vision began to clear, the pounding in his head gradually subsiding. His hands, though, were clammy. He wiped them on his coat and forced himself to concentrate.
One thing he’d learnt in Indochina was that among trees and vegetation, human smells stand out far more than they ever could in a city street. And if you had the nose and the patience, not to say the nerve, you could tell if a stranger was close by simply using your senses.
Especially one who smoked
Gitanes
and had the body odour of a dead badger.
He wondered what Didier Marthe had been doing among the trees, watching the cemetery. Was it coincidence? Was he scouring the wood for shells to break up and just happened to be here? Or did the scrap man have some other reason for skulking around?
By the time Rocco got back to the cemetery gate, the two black cars were parked fifty metres down the track, the doors hanging open. Three men in smart uniform were walking towards him, one tall man in particular leading the way. The others – drivers and gofers – stayed smoking and chatting among themselves, no
doubt glad to be rid of the brass for a few minutes.
The tall man, bearing the badges of a divisional
commissaire
, spoke to Canet, who turned and pointed a thumb towards Rocco.
The senior officer stood where he was, clearly waiting for Rocco to join them. Rocco held his ground. He was being stubborn and would probably regret it, but he was beyond jumping through hoops for uniforms with nothing better to do than step on other people’s feet. Instead, he turned away, running his eye over the cemetery boundaries, trying to read what had happened here. If the men – and he was only guessing it had to have been more than one – had brought the dead woman through the gate, any traces they had left, such as footprints, would be indistinguishable against the grass, especially now Cooke and everyone else had tramped back and forth.
The one thing he didn’t know for certain was how the woman had died. Only that water had been involved in some way, either before, during or after death.
A crunch of footsteps sounded on the track behind him. He turned to find the three newcomers metres away, with the tall officer in the lead. He looked less than happy, his body language stiff and foreboding.
In the split second that he saw the man’s face, Rocco felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. The features, although older and more lined, were instantly, shockingly familiar. The expression was just as aloof, the bearing as pompous as he remembered and he was transported back to 1954. In that brief
moment of realisation, of remembering, he saw that the officer remembered him, too.
Rocco steeled himself and wondered what malevolent twist of fate had sent this man here, to the same patch of soil as himself. Because when he had last set eyes on Colonel François Massin, the officer had been cowering in a foxhole in Indochina, screaming like a frightened girl.
Rocco? He shouldn’t be allowed out!
I’m totally innocent, I tell you … he had no right …!
Roni Ahkmoud – convicted serial killer and rapist – Clichy-Nanterre district
‘What are
you
doing here?’ There was no warmth in Massin’s greeting, no sign of even feigned familiarity, merely a frosty expression of disdain.
And of hesitation.
As well you bloody might,
thought Rocco,
you cowardly, high-born bastard
. Partly due to this man and his colleagues in the high command, a lot of good men had died in those far-off jungles and rice fields, victims of bloody battles and lethal mantraps. Others had been taken prisoner, only to emerge months later from captivity, broken and sick, ghostly versions of their former selves in body and spirit.
‘My job,’ he replied. ‘Investigating a murder.’
He wondered whether Massin remembered that Rocco had seen him in the foxhole, had witnessed his naked fear on display. Or had he managed to blank the entire incident from his mind?
He was surprised that his former CO had managed to migrate across to the Sûreté Nationale. What strings had he pulled to do that? No doubt friends of friends pulling strings in the invisible network of former colleagues encountered and nurtured in the elite French military academy of St Cyr. After being evacuated out from the battlefield in a state of pure funk, Massin must have seemed ripe for a career no more stressful than counting beans, far away from the sight of his former comrades – at least, the few who had survived – and indeed anyone else who might know what had happened. Yet here he was, resplendent in the uniform of a senior police officer, a pillar of the establishment.
‘Your job? Who says it was murder?’ The senior officer’s nose quivered as if he had just caught the first smell from the body. He looked away, momentarily distracted.
‘You got that?’ said Rocco abruptly. ‘That stink in the air? It’s called putrefaction. Decomposing tissue. It happens when a body has been in a warm place, or under ground or in water. The bugs and larvae begin attacking the tissue, laying eggs and eating their way inside. You might like to take a closer look … since you’re heading up the investigation.’
If Massin recognised the challenge, he ignored it. But a flicker of revulsion crossed his face. Or guilt,
thought Rocco. Maybe even lack of guts, given his track record. Give him five minutes near this place and he’d be away back down the road to his office like bald tyres on a skidpan.
‘I’m perfectly familiar with the aftermath of death,’ Massin replied stiffly. ‘What I want to know is, who ordered you here, to this region?’
Rocco shrugged eloquently, a gesture calculated to annoy the man. ‘Me? I’m merely following orders. Part of the latest barmy “initiative” cooked up by someone with too much time on his hands, who thought investigators should be out in the country slopping through cow shit instead of in the cities, solving major crimes.’
