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

by Rachel Green

  Chapter 28

  Margot turned in the water, scanning around desperately. Where on earth had he gone? He wouldn’t have abandoned her, surely. She suddenly felt very alone.

  “Raul!” she cried out, even though she was now certain no one was there to hear.

  The moon was rising. Clouds on the horizon filtered its light to a pale milky glow spreading out across the empty sea. Margot could feel the energy seeping out of her, her feet starting to cramp, her hands gnarling up. She couldn’t stay out much longer. Unless Raul materialised soon she would have to swim back to the beach, though she wasn’t sure she could manage another one-and-a-half k, not on top of everything she’d already been through. She carried on treading water, yearning to see Carpe Diem appear over the next batch of waves, just like when she’d first encountered it. But it soon became obvious she was waiting in vain. Squealing in frustration, Margot set off back to shore.

  By some small miracle she made it. She trudged up the wet sand, legs as heavy as tree trunks, and dropped down next to the very same rock. She snapped off her bathing cap, hardly believing what had happened. Had she misjudged him? She thought back over the things they’d said in the past few days and tried to imagine a reason why he might have done this. She remembered how pissed off he’d been about the danger she was putting herself in, the risks she was taking, but it was hardly a reason to abandon her. Margot shook her head, refusing to believe it. There had to be another explanation.

  Whatever the reason, it was imperative she find the yacht. Her phone was still onboard, and without it she would have no way of listening to the bugE. But in the midst of her despair came an idea: if she could access a computer she could use the find-my-phone app. The idea came laced with trepidation, however. Margot tilted her head to look up at the cliff. The nearest computer was up there, in Enzo’s office.

  ***

  Margot ascended the staircases more slowly this time, feeling the strain on every step. The moon had come out from behind the clouds and she barely needed the light from the lanterns. She crossed the lawn and followed the path through the shrubbery, the tangled branches now an eerie sight. Again, she paused on the edge of the terrace, struck by a feeling of déjà vu. A light was on in the office. The time was 01:12.

  Margot crouched. From this angle she couldn’t quite see in. A window higher up was also lit and the hum of an extractor fan was coming from somewhere. A shadow moved inside; she thought she saw someone hurry down a staircase. Then lights went on in the trees behind her and Margot turned her head to hear a car starting around the front of the house. Quickly, she scrambled up the wooded slope. A fence barred the way, but it wasn’t high and she easily climbed over. Dropping down onto a footpath she immediately took cover in some bushes. She found herself on the edge of a gravel drive, ten metres away from the front porch where a familiar black Mercedes was parked.

  A few minutes passed before Enzo and Paolo came out of the house, stooping to get into the back of the car. A light went on at the top of the drive, and through the bushes Margot could see an electric gate opening. She ducked as the car drove by, and then watched it loop up and go out onto the road. When the gates closed behind it everything went quiet.

  Her mind raced. It was 01:30. There were bound to be others in the house, but this was her chance. She climbed back over the fence, eased her way down the wooded slope, and then ran across the terrace.

  The utility room window was just as she’d left it. Two minutes later Margot was sneaking into Enzo’s office for the second time that night. She switched on his computer without sitting down and logged into her Cloud account. The find-my-phone app was on a go-slow and it seemed to take forever to settle upon a location, but finally a little red circle appeared. Margot looked closely at the screen. According to the map, her phone was in the harbour at Nazaire, five kilometres away. What on earth was he doing there?

  She logged out, deleted the entry from the browser history, and then switched off the computer. After checking to make sure everything was exactly as she’d found it, Margot quietly left the office.

  She paused in the utility room, a basket of clean laundry catching her eye. If she was going to Nazaire on foot she would need some clothes. She pulled out a thin white jacket that looked like it would fit. Digging down further she found a pair of wide-leg trousers also in her size (when she looked at the label she was delighted to see they were both Isabel Marant. Far too tempting). She took off her wetsuit and stuffed it into a bag, and then put on the clothes and slipped on a pair of pumps she found on the shelf below.

  An escape from the front door was far too risky so she retraced her route back to the terrace. She scrambled up the wooded slope, climbed the fence, took a shortcut over a lawn to reach the electric gates. A big green button let her out onto the road, and then all that lay ahead of her was a ribbon of empty black tarmac. Margot stashed the bag with the wetsuit behind a rock and then set off in the direction of Nazaire.

  The road was steep in places, rising and falling as it wound its way along the coast. She jogged the downhill sections, dug in hard when the gradient turned uphill. The only time she had to pause was on the final stretch where the road rounded a promontory before snaking down into the harbour. Sweating and fatigued, Margot sat down on a rock. Perhaps two dozen buildings made up the settlement, the streets so dark and empty it looked like a plague had hit. A motley assortment of boats was moored up in the harbour, but she was too far away to tell if Carpe Diem was amongst them.

  Margot completed the final stretch at a more leisurely pace. She followed the access road into the harbour and set off along the jetty. A long line of boats stretched out along the boardwalk, and her heart rose in relief when she spotted Carpe Diem right at the end, its smooth white lines contrasting sharply with the tatty old fishing boats.

  But something was not right. Her sixth sense urged caution as she approached the stern. The mooring ropes were untidily secured as if they’d been done in a hurry. Margot switched on her penlight as she silently climbed aboard. Cushions were scattered across the floor in the deck salon; the lid on the under-seat storage locker had been opened. The doors to the companionway were ajar, and when Margot moved closer she saw that the wood on one side was splintered, the lock hanging loose. She peered down through the hatch, scanning with her penlight.

  “Raul?”

  Not a sound came back. The boat felt like part of its soul had been torn out.

  Margot descended through the companionway, dreading what she was about to find. A flick of the light-switch confirmed her worst fears – the boat had been ransacked. Books and cushions were strewn across the floor, the wall cupboards emptied. A bottle had been smashed on the table, the beautiful smooth oak horribly scratched. Margot moved quickly through to the guest suite and switched on the light – her eyes went straight to the bedside cabinet where the drawer had been upended. She dropped to her knees and searched for her phone, but it wasn’t there. She rocked back onto her haunches and closed her eyes in disbelief. What on earth had gone on here?

  The scene inside Raul’s cabin was even worse: they’d smashed his guitar, torn down his photos, slashed the bed linen. His beautiful boat was trashed, and it was all her fault. Margot wandered back into the salon, her mind awhirl. She had to call the police, own up to what she’d done, accept the consequences even though this time it would be more than just a slap on the wrist. She pinched shut her eyes and forced herself to think. She needed to calm down, pull together some kind of plan.

  Her mouth was horribly dry so she grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and gulped half of it down. Her thoughts began to clear. This was where her Cloud account had pinpointed her phone; there could be no mistake. And it had taken her less than an hour to get here from Enzo’s office so the phone can’t have been gone long. A thought pinged into her brain – she hadn’t checked the safe.

  She snapped a fingernail in her haste to lift up the seat on the navigator’s chair, punched in the combination
without even thinking. 1066. Would he have had time to hide it? When the green light came on, she snatched open the tiny door. And breathed in relief. There was her phone.

  Margot switched it on and opened the app. Surprisingly, two notifications immediately popped up. She tapped on the download button and held the phone to her ear: the first recording was timecoded at 01:08, the second at 01:38. The second file was five seconds long and consisted of some muffled sounds, a door being opened, taps on a keyboard … she groaned when she realised it was a recording of herself entering the office just a little while ago. The other recording was Enzo: a one-sided conversation, presumably speaking on the phone, but it revealed nothing.

  A noise came from outside. Cocking an ear, Margot heard the sound of footsteps on the boardwalk. Her eyes darted left and right; realising she’d got all the lights switched on she cursed. The yacht must have been standing out like a flare. She scurried around, flicking every switch, and then moved through the darkness to poke her head up through the companionway. And there she froze.

  A man was approaching purposefully along the jetty.

  Chapter 29

  The man spotted her and immediately broke into a run. Margot shot up the companionway and jumped onto one of the console seats. Her fingertips scanned the controls, desperately trying to bring life to the screen, but the slot where the ignition key should have been was empty. She thumped the console in frustration. Snatching a glance over her shoulder, she saw that the man was now only twenty metres away. There was only one option – swim for it.

  Margot ran for the bow. Even fully clothed she was confident she could outswim him, but as she crossed the deck she slipped on a skylight and fell heavily onto her side, catching her hip on something hard. Despite the pain, she quickly got back on her feet. She dashed for the guard wire, preparing to jump straight in, but the man was closing fast. He lunged for her leg and caught hold of an ankle, and they both went down. Margot flipped onto her back and kicked him hard in the face with the heel of her foot. As she scrambled away she dared to believe she might make it, but then something hard and heavy came crashing down on the back of her head and everything went dark.

  Long hazy seconds drifted by. When Margot came to her senses she found her arm being pulled, a tearing pain in her shoulder. After dragging her to the rear of the boat, the man lifted her up onto his shoulder and then carried her down to the boardwalk, her face swaying into the back of his trousers. The boards turned to concrete, then cobbles. The thought of what might be coming fired an urge to escape and Margot tried to free her arms, but pain cut through her wrists from where her hands had been bound. The fear she was about to be sick stopped her from crying out.

  They came to a halt, somewhere dark and clammy. Margot managed to raise her head high enough to see that they’d crossed a small courtyard and were outside a door. Her head hit the door jamb as the man clumsily carried her through. She bucked violently, but his grip was so tight it felt like her thighs were clamped in a vice.

  They moved through a series of darkened rooms and into a hallway that smelled of old furniture. All Margot could see were dark and dusty floorboards until they moved into a tight passage and down a narrow flight of stairs. The air grew cooler as they entered a room that was lit with bright white light. When the man released his grip, Margot slid down his back like a bag of meat and crumpled into a heap on a cold stone floor.

  “Margot?”

  Raul’s voice sharpened her senses. With her hands still bound it was a struggle to right herself, but with a determined effort Margot twisted herself into a seated position. The scene that confronted her was the stuff of nightmares: Raul tied to a chair, his face bloodied and beaten; and standing in front of him, two men looking at her with a mixture of curiosity and bemusement – the brothers, Enzo and Paolo Bellucci.

  ***

  The fog began to clear from Margot’s brain. The goon who’d brought her in had dropped her in a puddle and foul-smelling water was leaking in through the thin fabric of her trousers. Instinctively, she tried to scrabble to her feet, but the goon swooped in and lifted her into the air as if she were nothing more than a ragdoll. In the next moment, Margot was being held in a chair while someone tied her up with rope. She struggled, but they were far too strong.

  “Well, isn’t this a scene?” Enzo stepped forward, hands on his hips.

  Margot desperately tried to take it all in. She turned to her side where Raul was slumped pitifully in the chair, his shirt torn, his lips swollen. She could hardly bear to look at him.

  “I’m sorry, Margot,” he muttered wearily. “I didn’t—”

  “Zip it,” Enzo snapped. “You’ll speak only when I say you can speak. You got that?”

  Margot turned to their captor and observed the blood on his knuckles. Heat flashed through her and without even thinking she spat straight at him. “Bastard!”

  It missed his leg by a few centimetres, but Enzo’s face darkened. He clicked his fingers, and the next thing Margot registered was a blur of movement followed by a dizzying shot of pain in the back of her skull. She reeled, then turned her head to the goon who’d hit her. A heavyset man with a no.1 buzz cut – she recognised him instantly. Raul exploded into life and tried to buck his chair towards them, but the other man kicked him full in the chest, toppling him like a bowling pin. When they righted him, Raul looked totally done in.

  “Are we all settled now?”

  Enzo took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the blood from his knuckles. Beyond his shoulder, Margot spotted Paolo lurking in the shadows.

  “She was carrying this.” The goon with the buzz cut tossed a phone through the air. Margot betrayed herself with a look of alarm, and Enzo grinned as he caught it. He switched it on but didn’t get very far.

  “Looks like we’ll need your thumbprint.” He tossed the phone back to the goon. “There’s two ways of doing it, of course. You can either cooperate and unlock it for me, or I can have one of my boys fetch the snippers from the car.”

  She didn’t think he was bluffing.

  The goon lowered the phone behind the chair to where Margot’s hands were tied. She didn’t protest as he twisted her thumb and pressed it onto the home button. He handed the unlocked phone back to his boss and the basement stayed quiet while Enzo swiped through. Margot had hidden the app in an anonymous folder and it was unlikely he would find it without knowing what he was looking for. She kept her face straight, trying to give him no reason to suspect how valuable the phone was to her. She looked across at Raul, and his eyes slowly crept up to meet hers. Her heart went out to him.

  “I can see you’ve been reading up on me.”

  Enzo swiped back and forth through the screens. She hadn’t erased her browsing history but she’d been careful not to look up anything relating to the bugE. Seemingly satisfied, he tossed the phone back to the goon with the buzz cut who dropped it into his trouser pocket.

  “You’re an amateur. Why am I wasting my time on you?”

  “Is that why you tried to burn down my house?”

  Enzo didn’t react. “I had you checked out. You have no family. No one who’s going to mourn or miss you. I could kill you right now and no one would give a damn.”

  “So what’s stopping you?”

  “Why have you been spying on me? I’ve been trying to get it out of your friend here but he wasn’t in the mood for talking. Now you’ve shown up perhaps he’ll be a little more cooperative.”

  He approached her chair and leaned down, eyes on the same level. At a stretch, Margot reckoned she might just headbutt his nose, but she resisted the temptation.

  “Where have you been for the past few hours, huh? You weren’t at home. You weren’t on the yacht. And then all of a sudden you turn up here. So how did you know where to come?”

  Margot returned a steely-eyed look. At least he hadn’t recognised the clothes she was wearing. How ironic that she was sitting here in either his wife’s or his mistress’s high-end designer tr
ousers. The silence grew as Enzo stood waiting.

  “Well? Are either of you going to talk to me? I really wish you would. Because if you don’t, things will get very unpleasant.”

  Margot desperately tried to think of something to say, to find a way out of this, but her mind was still reeling. Enzo’s patience suddenly ran out and he stepped away.

  “Give me the hammer.” He clicked his fingers at the goon to his side who retrieved a claw hammer from the top of a packing crate. Enzo snatched it from him in his eagerness to get on.

  “Now here’s my dilemma: do I use this on you, hoping it’ll persuade your friend to talk, or do I use it on him hoping it’ll loosen your tongue? Which of you would crack soonest, I wonder?”

  His eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them. Margot had never felt so powerless. Despite the adrenaline coursing through her veins she was still at a loss. After a little deliberation, Enzo made up his mind and stepped over to Raul. Margot watched in alarm as the goons untied one of his hands and wrestled his arm flat against the arm of the chair. They secured it with tape while Enzo laid the hammer on top of his knuckles. Addressing Margot, he said,

  “Tell me what I want to know or this guy never plays the guitar again.”

  Margot very nearly cried out, but at the last moment held onto her emotions. Suddenly she saw with clarity what she needed to do. A cold hand wrapped around her heart as she looked back into Enzo’s eyes. “Go ahead.”

  “What?”

  “Hit him.”

  He grinned. “You’re bluffing.”

  “He means nothing to me.”

  “You expect me to fall for that old trick?”

  Margot held his stare. Despite his apparent self-assuredness Enzo wavered. He spent a long time thinking about his next move, and then stepped back towards Margot.

  “You know what, I believe you. Not that he means nothing to you but that you would have sat there and watched me mutilate him and still not said a word. There’s a coldness in you. I can feel it.”