Body on the Rocks: Crime in the south of France (Madame Renard Investigates Book 1)

by Rachel Green

  Margot sat down on her little settee and patted the space beside her. “You will stay the night, won’t you? I’ve made up the spare bed.”

  Pierre sank heavily into the cushions and rubbed his eyes. “I’d give anything for a good night’s sleep.”

  She retrieved her Gitanes from the table and offered him one. Pierre resisted, but then caved in. “You’re such a bad influence.”

  “Where would we be without bad influences?”

  Margot struck a match.

  They talked about old times. It was nice to catch up, but she couldn’t stop her mind coming back to the reason that had prompted his visit.

  “So who was he?”

  Pierre was in the middle of drawing on his cigarette and seemed in no rush to reply. He held the smoke in his lungs while he stared into the air, and then released it slowly as he put down his glass. He lowered the volume on the record player.

  “We’ve made three arrests. We can’t say for certain which of them delivered the fatal blow but they’ll all be prosecuted for murder.”

  “Which gang were they in?”

  “They had no affiliations. They were just hired guns. They’d been sent to the hotel to teach the owner a lesson.”

  “Have they shown any remorse?”

  Pierre shook his head. “They were just kids. One nineteen and two eighteen-year-olds. They hadn’t even bothered to get rid of their weapons; they’d just stashed them under their beds. We’ve matched them for DNA and fingerprints.”

  Margot took a long draw on her cigarette and for a while they smoked without talking. Was this meant to bring closure? The funeral the first step and now catching his killers the final full stop? She wasn’t sure she would ever be able to think of it that way. It was hard to see how justice had been done. Twenty or so years in prison a fair exchange for the loss of her husband? She didn’t think so. She’d often wondered what she would do if she ever came face to face with his killers. Some small part of her was even disappointed they’d been found; in her wilder moments she’d entertained ideas of tracking them down herself, hunting them through the backstreets of Paris, doing unto them what they’d done to Hugo. She had a wry smile to herself. Perhaps a career in the judiciary wouldn’t have suited her after all.

  Pierre had gone quiet and when Margot looked up she was surprised to find he’d got quite emotional. He was rubbing his forehead, head angled away, shielding his eyes.

  “Pierre?” She leaned in, a hand on his forearm.

  “I never should have left him. I was his partner and I let him get killed.”

  “Hush now. There’s nothing you could have done.”

  “But if I’d stayed—”

  “Then you would have got killed as well. And then there would be two grieving widows. Not to mention one little baby, missing her father.”

  “I know.” He let out a small sob. The emotion quickly tumbled out of him and he took a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and noisily blew his nose. “I’m sorry. I’m tired, that’s all.”

  “You mustn’t blame yourself. Hugo knew the risks. There’s no reason for you to feel guilty.”

  Margot wrapped her arms around him and pulled his face onto her shoulder. When he was feeling better, he took her hands in his own and gripped them tight. “He was one of a kind, Margot.”

  Margot blinked back tears. “The best.”

  ***

  They finished off the second bottle of champagne with dinner and then Margot opened the Muscat. Leaving the plates unwashed, they went back to the sitting room where the heat from the log-burner had turned the air into a thick smoky fug. Pierre was beginning to wilt in the heat so he moved the armchair closer to the front door where there was a draught. Margot kicked off her shoes and lay down on the settee, the Muscat having gone straight to her head. When she briefly closed her eyes, the room carried on turning.

  “The washing up!” Pierre declared, rising abruptly to his feet.

  “Leave it,” Margot replied. “I’ll do it in the morning.”

  He gave a silly little snicker and flopped back down in the chair. When Margot looked across, she could see he was pie-eyed. She smiled as she tossed him the packet of Gitanes.

  “Here – a present from your bad influence.”

  “You really are the worst.”

  “Don’t ever forget it.”

  She stared up at the ceiling, sad and content. It seemed such a long time since she’d last let her hair down like this; ages since she’d got so drunk. “Oh, I do miss this.”

  “Then we’ll have to come down more often,” Pierre said with enthusiasm. “I’ll bring Camille and Noémie. We can go for walks along the beach. You can show us the galleries. It’ll be fun.”

  “That would be nice,” Margot said, though knew it would never happen. Camille had never been part of their little gang. She would never countenance them sitting around drinking and smoking like this.

  “So tell me, Margot – how are you getting on with your new life?”

  “Truthfully?”

  “Truthfully.”

  Margot propped her head with a cushion and reached for her cigarette where she’d left it smouldering in a groove on the ashtray. She filled her lungs with smoky, overheated air and sighed melancholically.

  “Oh, Pierre. Sometimes I’m so bored I think I’m going out of my mind.”

  “Then come back.”

  Was it really that easy? With all the memories she’d dumped there? Probably not. And, if she was being honest with herself, did she really miss it that much? Trade deep blue skies and sparkling Mediterranean sunshine for drizzle and pollution? She couldn’t survive without heat. It had always been a mystery to her why ancient people had chosen to live in colder climes when places like southern Europe existed. But equally, she couldn’t just stay here and wither away. “I need to do something useful with my life.”

  “So go back to being a lawyer?”

  “Too dull.”

  “Then re-train.”

  “As what?”

  He shrugged. “You’ve always liked fashion.”

  Margot regarded him from the tops of her eyes. “I’m fifty years old next year.”

  “So?”

  “Women start to become invisible as that age.”

  He smirked. “Not to a sixty-year-old.”

  Margot threw a cushion at him. Her aim was poor and it hit the radiator instead.

  “Trust me, Margot – you don’t look fifty. You don’t even look forty.”

  “Yes, I do. And I’m getting fat, look—” She lifted the hem of her top and pinched an inch of flab from her belly. “I drink too much, I eat too much … I’m turning into a fat old widow who lives by the sea.”

  “Margot – you’re not old and you’re not fat. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  Margot sighed theatrically. He didn’t understand. Men of his age had no idea what it felt like to age as a woman. The irony was she used to love wearing a bikini, revelled in the sense of empowerment it gave her – a swing of her hips could reduce many a man to a salivating schoolboy.

  Pierre had retrieved the cushion from the floor and tucked it behind his head. Eyes blissfully closed, he looked like he was about to doze off. Margot let the frustration fizzle out of her and then ground the stub of her cigarette into the ashtray. Booze always had this effect upon her; she really must cut down. No more than five bottles of wine a week, starting from tomorrow. Or maybe next week.

  The LP came to the end of the track and the needle started to jump so she got up and turned off the record player. The heat was starting to irritate her now so she closed the vents on the log-burner and opened the door to the stairs. It was late, and Pierre had to go back tomorrow. She gazed fondly down at him, snoozing so peacefully.

  “I’ll make some coffee,” she said softly.

  His eyelids sleepily rose up. “No more Muscat?” he bemoaned.

  Margot smiled as she took away his glass. Sweet child. “No more Muscat.”

/>   She kissed him on the forehead and then went to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee.

  When she returned, Pierre had perked up a little and had gone back to perusing Hugo’s record collection. Margot set the coffee tray down on the table and poured out two cups.

  “It’s not completely uneventful down here,” she said. “Something horrible happened the other day.”

  Pierre cast a glance over his shoulder. “Oh. What was that?”

  “Two bodies were found, one of them just outside the harbour.”

  “A boating accident?”

  “Sort of. They were migrants, probably coming over from north Africa.”

  “Ah,” Pierre said and took a cup from the tray. He went back to his armchair and settled into the cushions with a knowing nod of his head. “I see.”

  Margot disliked the assumption he appeared to be making and regarded him in consternation. She put down her cup. “That makes their deaths no less important.”

  “Of course not. I didn’t—”

  “One of them was only a boy, six or seven years old.”

  “That’s tragic.”

  “Just imagine how his mother will feel, assuming she even finds out.”

  Pierre put down his own cup and shifted to the edge of his seat. “I’m sorry, Margot. I didn’t mean to appear insensitive.”

  “I know. It’s just that people can be so judgemental. To hear some of the locals talk you’d think they deserved to die. It’s the people who put them on the boats we should be mad at.”

  “Of course,” Pierre said, and leaned back again. “Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do. They know the risks and they just keep coming. It’s been going on for decades, centuries even.”

  “But people make money out of it. It makes me so angry.”

  “They broke up a smuggling ring only last month. They were charging eight thousand euros for a crossing.”

  “That’s obscene.”

  “And many of them end up trapped in unpaid labour. But all it needs is someone with a boat. There’s a never-ending supply of people willing to pay.”

  Margot had a sip of her coffee. She wasn’t naïve. Everything that Pierre had said was obviously true, but it wasn’t always right to look at the bigger picture. Every death was an individual, not a statistic. They each had a life of their own, hopes and ambitions, dreams and desires, no matter what their background. No doubt the little boy had dreamed of one day becoming a footballer, playing for his favourite team, just like most boys of that age.

  “They’re saying he drowned at sea and got washed up on the beach,” Margot said, “but it doesn’t add up to me.”

  “How so?”

  “All he had on when they found him was a pair of football shorts. Then when I went for a swim on Saturday I found the matching shirt. It was hidden behind a rock in the cove.”

  “You’re sure it was his?”

  “It was too much of a coincidence not to be.”

  “Did you hand it in?”

  “Yes, though the gendarme I spoke to wasn’t very helpful.”

  “I’m sure they’ll do their best.”

  “Hmm,” Margot said, unconvinced. She set down her cup again. “What I don’t understand is how the shirt got to be in the cove when his body was found a kilometre away.”

  “Presumably it came off when he was in the water.”

  “How?”

  “He could have fallen out of the boat, someone grabbed him, the shirt got pulled off … Any number of things.”

  “But the cove is north of the harbour. And surely the boat would have been coming up from the south.”

  Pierre nodded thoughtfully, unable to come up with an answer.

  “Besides, the place where I found it was too high for it to have been washed up. The tide wouldn’t go in that far.”

  “So what do you think happened?”

  “I think that at some point he was on the beach. Alive. And he wouldn’t have taken the shirt off and just left it there – you can imagine how much a football shirt would mean to a boy of that age.”

  Pierre nodded, seeming to agree.

  “There’s more to it than what the gendarmerie would like to believe. If they’d simply drowned and got washed up there would have been cuts on their bodies from the rocks.”

  “And were there?”

  “Not from what I could see. A post-mortem would reveal it, of course.”

  “Have they ordered one?”

  “I doubt it.”

  Pierre breathed in deeply through his nose. “If they think the cause of death was obvious they probably won’t bother. What’s also unusual is for smugglers to operate this far up the coast, I will say that. Normally they choose somewhere remote, down on the coast of Spain or the Balearics.”

  Margot nodded and looked into his eyes, then shuffled forward so she could reach his forearm. “Do you think you could look into it for me? Keep an eye on what’s happening.”

  Pierre pulled a face. “It’s not really my—”

  “Please, Pierre. I really don’t want to speak to that gendarme again. He’s such an oaf.”

  Pierre gave it some thought and then finally conceded a small nod. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Margot smiled.

  He drained his coffee cup and then got to his feet. “But right now I have to go to bed. Otherwise I may just fall asleep in your chair.” He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “Goodnight, Margot.”

  “Goodnight, Pierre.”

  Margot stayed up for a little while longer. Whatever happened she wasn’t going to let it rest. Everyone deserved justice.

  Chapter 5

  Pierre was late getting up and when he did finally appear at the bottom of the stairs he was grey-faced and hunched-up, complaining of a headache. Margot brewed a fresh pot of coffee and laid out some cheese and apricots for breakfast, but the sight of it turned his stomach and she had to eat alone in the courtyard. She couldn’t help feeling guilty: she rarely got hangovers, no matter how much she drank. It was one of the things her friends hated about her.

  She made him a packed lunch and then took him to the station in a taxi. They hugged goodbye on the platform. Margot made him promise to come back and visit in a few weeks and he said he would, though she knew it was a promise he was unlikely to keep. She walked back to town in a sullen mood.

  By the time she got there the beach was busy. To make matters worse, it was a school holiday and the place was crowded with families. She skirted the beach via the concrete walkway and then took the steps down to the headland path. Happily, the cove was still deserted. She stripped down to her swimsuit and then launched herself into the water.

  She swam with vigour, pushing on through the pain when her calves started to burn. All she could think about was Hugo’s killers – the three young men hacking him to death in that alley. He’d lost his life and she’d lost a husband simply because he’d strayed into a gang dispute. The futility of it made her blood boil.

  Lost in thought, she failed to keep track of time. When she did pause to look up, she found she’d swum out much further than she normally would. Not only could she see the lighthouse on the tip of Cap Béar, but a good stretch of the coastline beyond. Looking back to shore, the rocky beach seemed very far away. She trod water, feeling a creep of anxiety, realising she’d strayed a little too far out of her comfort zone. The current out here was strong, and a keen breeze had brought on a swell, making her rise and fall uncomfortably. She began to feel nauseous, and had to work hard with her arms to keep her face above water.

  And although there were no clouds in the sky Margot’s world suddenly went dark. Confused, she turned her head just in time to see the bright white lines of a sailboat loom up out of nowhere. Her brain seized. The boat was heading straight for her; she was caught like a rabbit in the headlights. The smooth clean hull rose up on the crest of a wave, its sail snapping in the wind, looking certain to come crashing down on top of her. Margot snatched a
breath and dived as quickly as she could.

  Adrenaline brought new life to her limbs and she swam hard, but the boat was moving at considerable speed and the undertow pulled her with it. Flipped onto her back, Margot was horrified to see the underside of the boat passing just metres over her head. The eddying water sucked her back up and she was tossed like a ragdoll into the foaming maelstrom of its wake. Stunned and confused, Margot kicked away. As soon as she was out of danger she glared at the stern of the rapidly receding vessel.

  “You idiot!” she yelled, and tried to wave a fist.

  At the helm, the man at the wheel showed no sign of having heard. His back to her, he leaned with the boat as it rolled on through the water, oblivious to the tragedy he’d nearly just caused. The last thing that registered in Margot’s brain before she headed back to shore was the name on the backboard: Carpe Diem.

  ***

  Margot hauled herself up onto the rocks, exhausted and confused. Plonking herself down on the small strip of shingle, she tore off her bathing cap and coughed seawater from her lungs. Unbelievable! Those overgrown boys with their ridiculous playthings. Her mind reeled as she glared back at the sea – the yacht was now just a blurry shape, disappearing into shimmering haze. She hissed through her teeth. The lunatic could have killed her!

  Margot retrieved her swimming bag and hurriedly towelled herself down. She started to put on her clothes, half a mind to go and report him to the harbourmaster, but then told herself to slow down. She took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to let it spoil her day. People like that weren’t worth it.

  She gulped some water from her drinking bottle and then finished getting dressed. After tying up her swimming bag, she climbed up onto the rocks. Her eyes roved the scene before her, searching for the place where she’d found the football shirt. She probably should have taken a photo, compiled a proper record, if not for the police then at least for her own peace of mind. She identified what she thought was the spot and estimated it to be a good ten metres in from the shingle. Its height was at least a metre above the level of the sea. There was never much of a tide here; the marks on the rocks confirmed that the water never went in that far, just as she’d suspected. Freak weather events aside, there was no way the shirt could have washed up there.