Death on the Marais (8 page)

Massin. The commanding officer had come up to the forward positions against orders, trailing two nervous adjutants, hands on their guns and alert for the first Viet Minh to hurl himself over the earthworks. Rocco, from his position near one of the guns, had watched the officer strutting about the lines in his immaculate uniform, by turn snapping at battle-weary troops like a teacher controlling recalcitrant children, then reassuring them about reinforcements and a change of tactics that they all knew would never come. Already all but surrounded by enemy forces, they were too exhausted to be astonished at the stupid self-importance of the man, most turning their backs as he approached, to avoid the embarrassment of eye contact.

Seeing what he perceived as a gap in the defences, Massin had ordered more men forward, ignoring the more experienced NCOs who had seen it for what it was – a killing zone. Low down, with only one way in and one way out, it was overlooked by enemy positions, whose snipers had already notched up too many unwary sentries.

An hour later, after a blizzard of fire, just three men came struggling back. The others had fallen victim to a heavy machine gun on a distant hill, no doubt smuggled into position under cover of a previous barrage.

Shortly afterwards, they heard the opening barrage coming in as the Viet Minh began their final assault. The ground shook as the shells rained down on the inadequate dugouts housing the worn-out mix of French, Vietnamese and legionnaire defenders. Plumes of earth, bodies and material seemed to float in the air, each explosion creating another gap, another hole in the line. More men lost.

Turning to help a mortar team which had lost a man to a sniper, Rocco saw Colonel Massin stumble out of a dugout, face white and uniform dishevelled, staring around as if he could not understand the events that were unfolding. His mouth was working, but in the noise and confusion, his words went unheard. Another barrage came in, and Massin fell into a foxhole, where he lay screaming and kicking his legs, hands over his ears, his cries finally shrill enough to find a gap in the furore and reach the ears of the men on the defences. One of the nearest had turned his head and looked at him with mild detachment, then spat on the ground in disgust before turning to resume firing.

Then the order came to get Massin out. Too big a trophy to risk him being captured, said the instruction; bring him out by whatever means possible.

Rocco and two others were assigned to the task, along with Massin’s two adjutants. Under covering fire from the men on the front, they had moved on foot through the last known gap left towards the rear. As the small group moved out, the incoming
barrage grew more intense, pounding the positions in a deadly, relentless drum roll. By the time they had covered a desperate, muscle-burning thousand metres, the barrage was beginning to fade. Another five hundred metres and it fell silent altogether, save for an occasional haunting gunshot.

Rocco slept, his dreams vivid. Eventually, at eight, he pitched himself from his bed feeling like death, his head reeling. He put on some coffee, then walked around the large garden, head up and tasting the morning air. It was fresh and cool, completely free of his usual intake of petrol and other inner-city fumes, and he breathed deeply for the first time in years.

A honking at the front of the house drew him to the front gate, where a grey Renault 2CV Fourgonnette stood in the middle of the lane. Mme Denis and two other women were standing by the rear doors. The driver, a lugubrious man in his sixties, waved a thumb towards the back. ‘Help yourself, Inspector – settle up at the end of the week.’

Rocco went through the greeting rituals with Mme Denis and her companions and helped himself to a baguette. He studied the car, remembering Claude’s recommendation of its finer points. Somehow he couldn’t see himself even squeezing inside, let alone driving one. He ambled back to the kitchen, where the aroma of coffee was replacing that of dust and mouse droppings, and settled down at the table. Breaking off one end of the baguette, he chewed the still-warm
bread with relish, chasing it down with a mouthful of coffee. Stretched his legs out and sighed.

For the first time, Dien Bien Phu and everywhere since – even Clichy – seemed a long way away.

By ten, nursing a mild headache, he was heading back towards the cemetery. On the way he stopped outside the co-op and went inside. He was greeted by a raft of pleasant smells. A pretty, dark-haired woman was serving, and nodded in reply to his general good morning. The three other customers all turned and murmured back, eyeing him at length without a flicker of embarrassment before going back to their shopping.

Rocco forced a smile and waited; it was worse than being before a promotion panel. When the queue had gone, he selected some cheese, cooked meats and pickles. If he was going to live in the country, he might as well get used to country living, preferably without too much effort.

The woman rang up his purchases and put them in a bag.

‘Having a moving-in party, Inspector?’ she said with a smile. He was surprised, expecting more reserve towards an outsider. In Paris, he would have been served with little or no exchange, treated like the stranger he was.

‘This is the first course,’ he replied, and handed her the money, instantly feeling out of place, an amateur. The truth was, he had come to prefer the larger city shops, where contact was minimal and the choice was
endless and not open to comment. Here, the scrutiny felt almost intimate. ‘Perhaps you could recommend a main course?’ He wasn’t sure where that had come from, and began to look for a way out.

‘Chicken’s good,’ she replied, ‘and easy to cook.’ She took off a cotton serving glove and held out her hand. Her fingers were soft and cool, but with a firm grip. ‘Francine Thorin. Welcome to Poissons, Inspector. We don’t bite, you know, unless you’re an inspector of taxes. Then we just won’t serve you.’

‘Rocco,’ he said briefly, feeling the conversation getting beyond his control. He gestured towards the door and said, ‘Thanks. Sorry … I have to be going.’ He turned and walked out, face burning, and felt her smile boring into his back all the way out of the door.

Back at the cemetery, he inspected the ground around the monument. There was no sign of John Cooke, and all traces of the body and the crime scene markers had been cleared away.

He wasn’t expecting to discover anything new, but he sometimes found that going back to the scene once all the evidence had been cleared away opened up new lines of thought and insight. But not this time. If there was something there, he wasn’t seeing it.

He walked up through the cemetery to where it abutted the wood, and hopped over the wall. Stepping cautiously into the trees, he negotiated a straggly wire fence half-buried in the undergrowth, recalling what Claude had said about the deadly contents of this place. He felt a shiver run up his legs at what might be lying in wait beneath his feet, and stood
for a moment, absorbing the atmosphere, tuning in to the scenery around him. The breeze was lighter than yesterday, but there was still the rustling in the leaves, like whispering gossips, their words sibilant and foreign.

No images today, though; no clamminess.

He breathed easily and studied the ground. He was standing roughly where he had seen Didier Marthe yesterday. Over to his right, a patch of nettles lay crushed and bent. Further on, a section of ground cover had been disturbed, in clear contrast to the area immediately around it. Marthe had walked across here, trying to stay on open ground, where his traces would be less likely to show. No doubt the poacher he had once been … or maybe was still.

Rocco followed the trail, stepping carefully in Marthe’s footsteps, not deviating from the route by a centimetre. Although much heavier than the scrap man, he figured he was reducing his odds of setting off anything if he trod the same path.

At the edge of the wood, he found a large patch of what he thought looked like bluebell leaves, bent and broken, long past their prime. Nearby, on some disturbed soil, was a faint zigzag pattern too regular to be made by nature, and a thin line of flattened plants leading away towards the track.

Bicycle tyres.

He followed the marks out onto the track and walked down past the cemetery. There, the signs ran out.

* * *

By midday he was in Amiens, working his way through various levels of administration at the station, showing his credentials and transfer papers and trying to commit to memory the names of those he met. Most of the officers and civilian staff were cordial, with a few wary greetings, mostly among the other detectives manning their desks. He guessed that they had heard about him from Canet, who was out on a job, and were suspicious about his presence, a spy come to haunt them and report on their work. The air around them was a thick fug of cigarette smoke, reminding him of the office in Paris, except that the atmosphere here was quieter, less frenetic, less an air of tension and more of passive duty.

He saw Perronnet in the first-floor corridor. The senior officer nodded cordially but made no comment, merely indicating a door further along. Rocco took the hint and went to the door. Knocked and entered.

Massin was seated behind a large desk perusing the contents of a buff folder. The office was sparsely furnished: no certificates on the walls, no cups or medals, no testimonials or glitter from a successful career. Rocco gave him the benefit of the doubt: maybe he hadn’t had time to put them up yet. Still busy getting his feet under the desk and arse-kicking, as Canet had called it.

‘Can I help you?’ Massin stopped reading and stared at him. ‘You have any developments in your investigation?’

Developments, thought Rocco irritably. We’ve barely begun, he wanted to say, but settled for a vague,
‘Nothing yet. I’m checking in, that’s all. Keeping the paper shufflers happy. And I want to see what the pathologist says about the body.’

‘Pathologist?’ Light glinted on Massin’s glasses. ‘This office doesn’t have that luxury. Not yet, anyway. I plan to change that.’ He nodded sideways. ‘The department, as such, is next door. I haven’t seen it myself yet.’ He closed the folder, his finger marking the page, and sat back. ‘You should do well to remember something, Inspector. There are ways of operating out here that do not translate well from the city.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Rocco had never liked the official use of cryptic talk when a direct order would work much better.

‘It means you cannot go round cracking heads or throwing people into meat wagons out here.’ Massin tapped the folder in his hand, and Rocco realised it was his personnel file, passed on from Clichy. ‘Your record seems to indicate you have form when it comes to using harsh methods.’

Rocco sighed. He’d had just two complaints about excessive use of force in his career, both unsubstantiated. One against a child molester with a good lawyer, the other a pimp fond of using a razor on his girls’ faces. Neither charge had made it to court, but the rumour had clearly remained on his record like toxic mud. Massin must be aware of that.

‘I’ll try to mend my ways,’ he said flatly.

‘See you do.’ Massin winced slightly. ‘As I understand the situation, the “initiative” which put you out here places you in a unique position, Inspector Rocco.
You have what amounts to a free hand in conducting investigations, no longer tied to the normal chains of command. That has not gone down well in certain parts of the justice system or the police. I hope you realise that.’

‘I didn’t ask for it.’

‘Maybe so. But you’ve got it. Just make sure you don’t get too freewheeling in your methods. Keep me informed of your findings.’ Massin went back to his papers, a deliberately curt dismissal.

Rocco turned and left, annoyed by the man’s arrogance but relieved to be out of his way. He had the feeling it was as close as he was going to get to being given the nod to carry on.

He walked across to a grey, single-storey block next door, where whatever passed for the pathology and forensics team did their work. He took the opportunity to take a few deep breaths: the combination of cleaners, chemicals and death in the busy Paris mortuaries was a smell he had never entirely got used to, and he doubted it would be any different here.

A sign hanging on the door advised callers that it was closed for lunch. No difference there, then. Rocco toed the door open and flipped the sign over. Lunch could bloody wait.

He was in a small corridor with doors leading off. All were closed, except for the first one spilling light and the rustling of paper, followed by a thumping noise. Rocco stopped in the doorway and waited.

The room was a small, cluttered office, holding a single desk, some filing cabinets and several
wallcharts. A man in a white coat was working at the desk, desultorily marshalling a few scraps of paper and imprinting them with a rubber stamp. The air was surprisingly fresh, with only the faintest smell of chemicals to indicate what went on in the building.

‘We’re closed, can’t you read?’ the man said without looking up. He had a wisp of mousy hair, thin wire spectacles and looked far too pale, as if he spent too much time here among the corpses and chemicals. A plate of sandwiches sat at his elbow.

‘You’ve just opened again,’ said Rocco, and flipped his calling card onto the desk. ‘Are you the pathology person?’

The man read the card without touching it, then looked up at his visitor. He didn’t appear surprised, although he looked faintly startled by Rocco’s height. Rocco got the feeling someone in the detective office had buzzed ahead of his arrival.

‘I’m a doctor, actually. Bernard Rizzotti.’ The man stood up and lifted his chin, but without offering his hand. ‘We don’t run to a pathologist; I’m on attachment only. However, I can tell you that I completed a preliminary examination of your … um … deceased. Interesting case, from the point of view of the uniform, but pleasantly straightforward, I’m relieved to say.’

‘Glad you approve,’ said Rocco dryly. ‘Cause of death?’