Rocco and the Price of Lies

by Adrian Magson

  The ginger cat was sitting on the floor waiting for him. Its tail swished happily and it gave a soft mew of pleasure.

  Caspar whispered, ‘Sorry, cat, but I have to go.’ As he hoisted himself onto the sill and slipped through, his jacket caught on the latch and the window banged shut behind him. It sounded horribly loud in the small room and a voice called out, followed by heavy footsteps hurrying along the corridor.

  Caspar ducked away and hoped the cat would be all right. Seconds later he was jumping over a fence into an adjacent lot and making his way back to his car.

  Ten minutes after that he stopped at a café and downed a quick brandy and coffee. He wasn’t sure which was better for his frayed nerves, but he didn’t care. He’d made it out, albeit just in time, but at least he hadn’t been caught. He had to tell Rocco what he’d found. He checked the time and was surprised at how quickly the hours had gone by. It was early afternoon. He tried calling him but the switchboard operator at Amiens said the inspector was out and wasn’t expected back until five.

  ‘If you leave a number, sir, I’ll get the inspector to call you as soon as he can.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Caspar told him. ‘I’ll catch up with him later.’

  He went back to his car and headed north. His fiancée, Lucille, was out of town for a couple of days visiting her niece who’d just given birth, so he had time to spare. And he could do with a change of scenery.

  And what he’d found was better relayed face-to-face than by telephone.

  Back in the comfort of his city office, Laurent Vauquelin dialled a number in Ivry with shaking fingers. This was going too far, he knew, and could only end badly. But so would going against Serban, who was turning into something of a monster before his very eyes. From small-time criminal with self-set limitations whom he’d managed to keep clear of the law by skilful means, the Romanian was morphing into the kind of gangster Vauquelin was more accustomed to defending. They, too, had started out small, building their base street by street, extending their reach and scope until suddenly they had a territory, a turf, with everything that entailed, including men at their command and a burning need to make their mark on the world and repel all comers, police included. Few of them lasted long. If the competition didn’t get them, their own greed and arrogance making them think they were unstoppable usually did.

  He stopped in mid-dial. He’d already decided against mentioning the cop he’d seen in the restaurant. On the way back to his office he’d recalled where they’d met. A quick flick through his files had confirmed the man’s name. Casparon. A deep-cover officer no doubt buried for extensive periods in the underworld, ferreting out information on the gangs operating in Paris. If Serban thought he was under surveillance there was no telling how he’d react, and Vauquelin didn’t want to be caught in the blast.

  The fact was Serban was moving too fast. He’d seen it before when criminals overstretched their capabilities and came to believe themselves untouchable. Their arrogant self-belief invariably took down others with them in the fallout, the collateral damage of another’s ambition. But how do you stop a runaway train? And what would Serban’s response be if he tried to stop him anyway? The thought made Vauquelin feel sick. He continued dialling. Get this over and done with, that was all he had to do. Then get out of the city for a while.

  ‘Yes?’ The hated voice, soft and bland, like a king on his throne.

  ‘I got the address you wanted. It’s on its way round to you by courier.’ He was wishing he could get out of fulfilling this obligation but it was far too late. With luck, maybe Serban’s men would get caught going after Rocco and blow their boss out of the water. The thought gave him a small measure of satisfaction. Let Serban try taking him on as his defence counsel then.

  For once he managed to put the phone down before Serban did, and felt a small measure of triumph at that.

  Thirty-five

  The track from the road to Petissier’s house was narrow and deserted. The grass verge on each side brushing the wheels of the Citroën demonstrated the lack of regular traffic. Drivers coming down this way were either lost or here by invitation.

  It was a peaceful haven in a pleasant setting, Rocco concluded. After driving through many kilometres of undulating fields dotted with small villages and an occasional farming cooperative depot, he reached a lake in a hollow. Through the surrounding trees, he counted two, maybe three large properties, each with its own fenced-off space. A rich man’s paradise, secluded enough to guarantee privacy.

  Petissier’s house was the first one he came to. He opened the gate and drove up to the main building, twin porthole windows in the roof like eyes observing his approach. No uniformed officer on watch this time, simply a strip of police tape across the front door, one end flapping vaguely in the slight breeze. As he got out of the car, a squat figure in a leather jacket emerged from behind an outbuilding at the back, adjacent to a double garage. As the man approached, he jingled a bunch of keys in one hand. He looked to be in his early fifties, with short-cropped hair and a military bearing.

  ‘Inspector Rocco?’ he queried. ‘You’re here to inspect the house, sir.’

  ‘That’s right. Who are you?’

  ‘Officer Hubert, Abbeville station.’ They shook hands. ‘I’m sorry about the informal clothes, sir, but I’m supposed to be on sick leave. Walking wounded, you might say. They drafted me in to come down because of a severe shortage of staff. They said to leave you to it.’ He smiled and held up the keys, selecting one. ‘This is to the front door, the others are to the back and side doors and the outbuildings. When you’re done, if you could close the door behind you and leave the keys on the bench in the shed over there, I’ll pick them up later.’

  ‘Thanks. Do you know anything of what happened here?’

  ‘Only what I heard at the station, sir. They said the judge lost it and tried to kill himself.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t condemn anyone who’s that desperate; you never know what goes on in people’s lives, do you? But they reckon he’d used dirty money, so we shouldn’t feel too cut up about it, eh?’ He nodded towards the shed. ‘Before he went, he had a big burn-up behind the shed. Paperwork, they reckon. It’s all gone now, though. Anyone’s guess what that was all about.’ He added heavily, with a tug of cynicism at the corner of his mouth, ‘Guilty conscience, perhaps?’

  Rocco didn’t comment. He’d thought he’d detected a smell of smoke in the air, but assumed it was from a farmer nearby. He was surprised it had hung around this long.

  With a brief wave Hubert stumped away to a powerful-looking motorbike leaning against the garage wall. He put on a crash helmet and kicked the engine into life, then headed off down the drive, the engine noise echoing around the house and trees in a crackling farewell and growling up the narrow road out of earshot.

  Inside, the house was cool and smelled of furniture polish and something infinitely less pleasant: death. The shutters had been left hanging half-open, no doubt by the emergency team and police, letting in just enough light to see. Rocco did a walk-through first to get a sense of the place. From the hallway he checked a long galley-style kitchen with a tiled floor and heavy wooden cupboards, then moved to a large living room followed by a dining room and a study overlooking the lake and gardens at the back.

  To Rocco, each room had the familiar feel of a space that had been well-searched by the police, with drawers not quite closed and, in the study especially, a few scattered papers lying about.

  A rich man’s house, Rocco thought. Expensive tastes. It was stylishly furnished but somehow lacking in feel, as if rarely lived in. A place for display rather than comfort.

  He returned to the living room, where a now familiar picture was propped against one wall. It was ‘The Toilette of Esther’byChassériau, and looked somehow diminished down on the floor. A hook on the wall above showed where it had been hung, and he wondered who had moved it. Petissier himself, possibly. From regret or guilt? Or maybe both at being found out?

 
There was a signature, he noted, at bottom right, but it was indecipherable and too short for the artist’s full name. If it was meant to be Chassériau, maybe he’d run out of paint. He studied the painting from a few paces away, then compared it with the photo Dreycourt had given him. Interesting.

  He looked at an array of family photographs around the room. Dreycourt had been right about one thing: Petissier’s late wife had looked nothing like Esther. Not that she’d been in the back row when it came to looks, but a strong chin and a direct, unsmiling stare gave her an unforgiving, though handsome, look. He wondered if she had approved of her husband’s choice of art or whether she had died before he’d made the purchase. It couldn’t have been easy for an older companion or wife, living with a picture of a beautiful young woman with a come-on look and no clothes to conceal her youthfulness.

  He walked through to the study and made a rapid search of the desk. It contained nothing useful and he decided that whatever else Petissier had done here, he hadn’t left anything behind that might come back to haunt him or his family.

  More photos were dotted about on the desk, walls and side table, set in silver frames. Rocco checked them through, then looked again. Most were collegiate group shots, taken at functions or with neutral backdrops, in which Petissier held the centre spot, the successful man among his peers. Rocco recognised one or two faces from government circles or the judiciary. Then he stopped, seeing one familiar face in particular, and checked again. It appeared more than once, and one photograph showed the two men on board a yacht, dressed in casual shirts with their arms about each other’s shoulders, waving champagne glasses at the camera. Petissier was grinning.

  And so was Maître Laurent Vauquelin.

  Rocco walked out to the shed with a leaden feeling in his stomach. He found a brick-built firepit behind it, leaking a trail of smoke and fine ash which danced on a breeze from the lake. He leaned over the pit. The bricks of the wall were surprisingly warm, and all that was left of the fire at the bottom was a dry, grey soup, leaving no trace of anything which could have been useful.

  A metal container stood on the ground nearby. He sniffed at the open neck but already knew what it would be. Petrol.

  He went back to the house and found the phone. There was a notepad alongside it, containing local and useful numbers, including the police station. He dialled the number and identified himself, and asked to be put through to the investigating officer.

  ‘Captain Souchay,’ said a voice. ‘Can I help you, Inspector? Sorry there’s nobody down there to help you but we’ve had a bastard of a gastric epidemic tear through here like Attila the Hun and it’s left us really short-handed. Did you get the keys all right? I left word at your office about where you’d find them.’

  ‘Yes, thanks. Your man Hubert gave them to me.’

  ‘Say that again?’

  ‘Officer Hubert.’ Rocco sensed instantly that something was wrong. ‘Short, thick-set, fifty-ish? Rides a big motorbike.’

  There was a brief silence, then Souchay said, ‘Sorry, Inspector, but like I said, there’s nobody been assigned from here to hand over the keys because we don’t have the manpower. Furthermore, we don’t have anyone called Hubert at this station.’

  Rocco felt his skin go cold. ‘So who did you assign to search the building?’

  ‘We didn’t. After the body was removed, we were instructed to seal the place and leave it be. We thought you’d be the one doing the searching.’

  Thirty-six

  Rocco headed towards Mers-les-Bains. It was less than twenty minutes away and he needed to check something out. He was cursing himself under his breath. He’d been fooled by an expert. Whoever the man calling himself Hubert really was, he’d been cool and confident, adapting to Rocco’s arrival with a convincing explanation and getting out of there as quickly as possible. He’d done a good job of clearing out any paperwork from Petissier’s desk and torching it, reducing it to a fine dust just in time.

  Who the hell was he? There had been a definite military air about the man, and he’d been well-prepared, even knowing Rocco was due to visit and that there was a sickness epidemic at the Abbeville police station. That took either inside knowledge or thorough and clever preparation. A professional, in other words.

  He’d known several former soldiers who had worked for criminal gangs in the past. They had a good work ethic, followed orders to the letter and weren’t afraid of facing up to trouble if it came along. But something about Hubert had been different. He’d clearly been sent to obliterate all trace of embarrassing papers that might surface and reveal a criminal connection. But it was a clean-up operation on whose behalf? The state’s … or somebody else’s?

  He realised, with frustration, that he’d probably never know.

  He used his radio to contact the Mers-les-Bains station to see if they still had an officer on duty at Gambon’s house. They didn’t, but the duty officer promised to send someone down there with a key immediately.

  When Rocco arrived, a young woman gardienne was standing outside the front door. He got her to open up and walked through to the living room where he’d seen the painting and the photographs. He checked the photographs one by one. Nothing. Then he looked through the drawers where he’d found the photo albums, this time paying close attention to each page.

  There were no fewer than five photos featuring Maître Vauquelin. Three had been taken at what looked like official functions, while two were at more relaxed events, showing that Gambon and Vauquelin were acquainted by more than professional contact.

  He closed the books after taking out the two last photographs, which he placed in his pocket along with the one he’d retrieved from Petissier’s study.

  He thanked the policewoman for her time, left her to lock up and drove back to Amiens. On the way he got through to Dreycourt.

  ‘Hello, Lucas. What’s new?’

  ‘I need you to check a couple of things at Bourdelet’s house. I don’t have time to get there right now.’

  ‘Sure. Is it urgent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’ll certainly help if I can. But I should tell you that I’ve just been ordered to step down from this investigation. The call came from the Ministry ten minutes ago. I’m surprised they haven’t got to you yet.’

  ‘I’ve been keeping a low profile.’

  ‘Clever man. Anyway, I’ll do what I can. What is it?’

  Rocco told him and Dreycourt agreed without question, although he sounded intrigued.

  By the time Rocco got back to Amiens, Dreycourt had an answer for him. ‘You’ve got a good eye, Lucas,’ the expert said. ‘To be honest, I’d missed it completely.’ Rocco thought he sounded almost disappointed. ‘I checked the painting and you were right: there’s a flower all right. It’s small and almost hidden, but definitely not a feature of the original. I’ve checked the other copies and the same flower is present on those, too.’

  At least he wasn’t calling them forgeries any longer, Rocco noted. The change of certainty about Cezard’s guilt must have been tough to accept. ‘What about the signatures?’

  ‘Deliberately vague – and nothing like the originals. He was clever; he deliberately made sure they could not be classified as fakes – at least, not by anyone who knew what they were doing.’

  Rocco placed the photos of all three paintings on his desk side by side. Each one, now he knew where to look, contained a tiny white marguerite daisy in the bottom right-hand corner, a easily-missed detail on the floor, as if the flower had been dropped or cast aside in a moment of boredom by the subject of the paintings.

  ‘What about the photos in his sideboard at home?’

  ‘Got those, too. I took the liberty of acquiring three in all. Who’d have thought, eh? Bourdelet and Vauquelin, like best friends. Do you want them?’

  Rocco felt a rush of relief. He might never get to use them if the Ministry closed him down, but it was proof of some kind of connection. ‘Thank you. Could you send them to Am
iens?’

  ‘Will do. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Talk to the artist and connect all the links.’

  First, he tried calling Caspar. He didn’t expect to find him at home and there was no answer.

  He called Cezard’s number but that, too, rang and rang. He put the phone down and sat back in his chair. He felt exhausted and he knew he had very little time left to work this case before the Ministry pulled the plug and demanded a report. Right now, that report would play into their hands because it would contain nothing but suspicion and speculation, an absence of solid evidence the like of which had sunk many a case over the years.

  Dr Rizzotti appeared, clutching a sheaf of papers. Dressed in a white coat, the pathologist stopped by Rocco’s desk and peered at him as if studying a piece of evidence in his laboratory. ‘I had a corpse come in this morning,’ he said casually. ‘Drunk as a skunk moped rider in his seventies. He was kicked out of a café in the town centre for calling into question the morals of the owner’s wife. He went off the road straight into the canal. Got his foot tangled in the pedal and was dragged down. Hell of a way to go. Still, he probably didn’t know much about it. I suppose being that drunk has its benefits.’

  Rocco tried a smile. ‘Your point being?’

  ‘You look worse than he does.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘In fact, if I put you into a drawer alongside him, the undertaker would probably take the wrong body. Go home, for God’s sake. You’ve been pushing it a bit, haven’t you?’ He leaned forward. ‘It’s that Bourdelet thing, isn’t it?’