‘We?’
Sébastien’s eyes were moist as he looked up, and Rocco saw the pain of the memory written on his face. But there was something else, too: a look of disbelief, as if realising that something completely innocent had caught up with him.
‘You said “we”,’ Rocco repeated.
Eliane had also seen the look on her father’s face, and stood up, her face flushed. ‘Will someone tell me what’s going on? Pa? Lucas?’ She looked at Claude but he shook his head.
‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘I’m a simple rural cop. This is all well over my head.’
Sébastien shifted in his chair. ‘I let Laurent have them,’ he said at last, with evident reluctance.
‘So what?’ Eliane queried. ‘I wish he wasn’t but he’s your agent, isn’t he?’
He nodded. ‘I told him about the gallery owner backing out of the deal and he offered to go after him in the courts, but I didn’t want that. Later on, he said he might be able to find buyers for them. It probably wouldn’t bring in what had been originally promised, but it would be better than having them lying around gathering dust.’ He looked at Rocco. ‘I know what you’re going to ask: who did he sell them to? He never told me.’
Eliane was looking at Rocco with dawning realisation and, he thought, a hint of accusation. ‘You know, don’t you?’
‘Yes. There were three high-profile buyers involved: Secretary of State Bourdelet bought the Gérard, assize judge Jules Petissier bought the Chassériau and former head of the Sûreté Nationale, Jean-Marie Gambon, bought the Boucher. There was no obvious criminal intent, apart from in one case, but that doesn’t involve your father.’
Sébastien swore softly, eyes closing. Eliane’s mouth opened but no words came out for several seconds. Rocco could see the names registering in her mind, and one by one the identities of the buyers hit home.
‘But … Bourdelet’s dead,’ she said softly. ‘And Gambon, too, isn’t that right? I heard it on the news.’
‘And Petissier, too,’ said Rocco. He didn’t want to be unkind, but he needed to explain to Sébastien what had happened, that he wasn’t to blame for how the paintings had been used. He turned over the letters. ‘Each man bought them purely to show off to their friends and families. There’s no crime in doing that, but they did so using stolen or criminal money. Each one received one of these blackmail letters, and shortly afterwards took their own lives. They must have known for certain that had they lived they would have gone to jail in disgrace.’
Eliane was staring down at the letters, flicking through them. She dropped them back on the table. ‘But who sent these?’ she said. ‘It wasn’t Pa – he couldn’t do something like this. Tell him, Pa!’
Rocco said, ‘I know it wasn’t your father. The only thing we’re certain of is that whoever’s behind the letters used a Paris criminal contact to deliver them. It had to be someone who was acquainted with all three men. Someone who knew their backgrounds, their foibles and weaknesses … and who knew how they had got their money. A friend, in other words, or at least an acquaintance who knew how to get close.’ He produced two more photographs and laid them on the table. Petissier and Gambon, pictured with their friend, Maître Laurent Vauquelin. ‘These are two of the men. You’ll recognise one of the faces. Bourdelet has similar photographs in his home.’
‘Vauquelin?’ Eliane’s voice was a whisper. She looked at her father, then Rocco. ‘My God, I knew I didn’t like the repulsive man! But why?’
‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ said Rocco.
‘I know why.’ Sébastien spoke quietly. He was looking at his daughter with an expression of regret. ‘Lucas is right: Laurent knew all three men from various meetings and conferences over the years. He cultivated prominent people by instinct, the way some people cultivate flowers. If they were potentially useful, he made a point of getting to know them, to get inside their inner circle. But these three … He told me they’d betrayed him, cutting him off after the allegations that he was involved with criminals and had manufactured evidence against certain police officers to win cases.’
Rocco could believe it. After what he’d heard from Santer, Vauquelin must have been highly resentful of the men who’d failed to leap to his defence, adding to his loss of prestige. It could have been enough for him to decide to get revenge in any way he could. And having found out their secrets he’d plunged the knife in deep.
‘So it wasn’t just for the money?’ Claude asked.
‘No,’ said Rocco. ‘If he couldn’t get money, he was happy to settle for their humiliation and ruin.’
‘He was drunk when he told me,’ Sébastien said softly, as if in a trance. ‘He’d arrived in a terrible state and demanded more alcohol.’ He shrugged. ‘I tried to put him off and said he’d be better off sinking a litre of strong coffee instead because he’d probably kill himself on the local roads if he got any worse. He wouldn’t have it; he was very emotional and angry and I was getting worried. Eliane was due back home at any time and I didn’t want him in that state when she was here. When it was obvious he wasn’t going anywhere willingly, I gave him some brandy, hoping he’d fall asleep.’
‘It didn’t work?’
‘Quite the opposite. He became almost hysterical, raging against all the people who’d abandoned him and swearing he’d get his own back in the end.’ He waved a hand. ‘I didn’t realise he’d do it this way.’
‘All the people?’ said Rocco. ‘There were more?’
‘That’s the impression I got, but maybe he was just sounding off. He did mention some names but I’d never heard of them and forgot them immediately.’
‘Are there other paintings out there?’ Claude asked.
‘A few, yes. Maybe half a dozen. I sent him a batch to see if he could find buyers.’
‘Do you have any receipts for them?’
‘I’m afraid not. I was never very good with that kind of thing.’ He looked worried. ‘Is that a problem?’
‘Probably not. Has Vauquelin ever said what he did with the paintings?’
‘No. I always trusted him to do the right thing. Clearly I shouldn’t have been so gullible.’ He paused, then, as if finding a glimmer of hope, said, ‘They’ve all got the marguerite on them, though. That should count for something, shouldn’t it?’
Rocco nodded. ‘It should kill off any suggestions that you produced them for reasons of fraud.’
He wondered if this was what had got Yuri Serban involved. The promise of a long-term source of income from people in authority who’d got their hands dirty must have appealed to the gang leader on a financial level. More than anything, though, he would have liked the idea of having such powerful people in his pocket and terrified that he could drop the axe on them and expose their little secrets. To a gangster with ambitions it would have seemed like a dream come true.
‘What do I say if Laurent calls me?’ Sébastien queried. He lit another cheroot, his hand shaking, as the full implications of what he’d got involved it hit home.
‘Nothing. For you it’s business as usual. Tell him we’re nowhere with the investigation and leave it at that.’
Thirty-eight
Rocco headed off first, leaving Claude to reassure Sébastien and Eliane that everything would work out. He couldn’t make any firm promises based solely on Sébastien’s word that he hadn’t known what had been done with his paintings, no matter what Dreycourt might believe. Only a court case would determine that, although he was certain any report he made would carry enough weight to clear Sébastien’s name completely.
A flicker of movement in his mirror showed a large truck coming up fast behind him. He paid it little attention at first, because the narrow road away from the château towards Amiens was twisting and dipping, and even in the Citroën he had to take it easy in case he got too close to the edge.
Moments later the truck loomed larger in the mirror, and he realised it was the vehicle he’d seen parked outside the café in Poissons. World Wa
r Two vintage, he guessed, one of many still being used for commercial purposes. It was moving at speed with no regard for the conditions, the driver no doubt eager to get past him and on to his next delivery.
Rocco put his foot down and pulled away. He knew that he would be shortly approaching a series of bends, and even this idiot driver would have to slow right down or risk losing traction.
The truck caught up with him again, charging up to within a couple of metres of his rear bumper, the engine roaring and a cloud of dark exhaust smoke billowing out from the side. The truck had something fitted to its radiator. Trying to look in his mirror, as he navigated the sharp bends, Rocco recognised it as a heavy-duty winch wrapped in chain, with what looked like a railway sleeper fitted across.
Rocco felt a stab of concern. This didn’t seem like a mad driver adhering to a tight schedule, more like someone using deliberate scare tactics. Had he followed him from Poissons and waited near Cezard’s château for him to come out again? If so, why?
He gripped the wheel as he came to the first bend, and the truck nosed up even closer, following him into the curve without dropping back. Whoever the driver was, he knew how to handle the giant vehicle. Rocco put his foot down hard as he exited the bend, but the truck didn’t fall back. Rocco waved a hand out of the window to tell the driver to back off, but all he got in return was a loud blast of the horn.
Two hundred metres ahead a tractor was backing slowly out of a field, a heavy plough on the back already well out onto the road. Rocco leaned on the horn and tapped the brakes, looking to see if he had enough room to squeeze past. It was enough for his speed to drop but the truck’s didn’t. The tractor driver looked up and saw them coming. He reacted rapidly, changing into forward gear and pulling back into the field as Rocco flashed by just centimetres from the curved blades of the plough.
He felt his teeth snap together as his car was slammed in the rear. The collision sent a shockwave through the Citroën’s bodywork, and the rear window blew out in fragments under the stress. He saw his rear bumper spin away into a ditch, the chrome catching the light, and the spare wheel cover flew off and bounced down the road.
With the window gone, the noise was intense. He could see in his side mirror that the driver was grinning like a maniac and mouthing something, his face alive with animosity and evil intent.
A clattering noise started up from the Citroën’s rear end, and Rocco felt the car beginning to drift as he went around a long bend. It should have been easy to negotiate but the ramming must have done some damage to the frame. If he couldn’t rely on being able to steer through even simple corners, he was in real trouble.
There were more bends ahead, with a three-metre drop into fields on one side and a ditch and high bank on the other. Neither offered a chance of escape. Rocco tried one last time to get away, changing down a gear and pushing his foot to the floor. The engine responded, the nose of the big car drifting slightly to one side. He corrected the drift with a slight nudge of the wheel, then he was into the first corner and hoping that whatever was wrong with the steering would hold good for a few more moments. The tyres shrieked in protest before catching the rough edge of the road. It was hard to keep from drifting across the grass verge towards the drop-off. He managed to get the nose back into line just in time to hit the straight. But it was a mere fifty metres or so to the next bend and he realised that, at this speed, he probably wasn’t going to make it.
Then the engine spluttered and lost power. He stamped on the accelerator and the engine picked up with a whine, before spluttering again. It was all the truck behind needed. It rear-ended the Citroën, but this time with less of an impact, and Rocco realised the driver was going to force him off the road at the next bend, where the road was edged on the outside by a long drop-off into trees.
Rocco aimed for the inside of the bend, hoping to get launched up the bank on that side. He might bury the nose into the dirt, but it was better than sailing off into the potentially deadly trees waiting for him on the opposite side.
The driver didn’t give him a choice. He rammed the Citroën again, the truck’s engine howling in Rocco’s ears. Rocco thought he could feel its heat on the back of his neck, like a tiger about to pounce. The Citroën took off, becoming suddenly weightless, a loud clunk echoing from the front as the wheels dropped. But the Citroën was too heavy to be airborne for long, too indelicately balanced for any kind of flight. It began to slew sideways under its own weight, and Rocco let go of the wheel and dived along the seat to get out from behind the rigid steering column. It was too late to try for the doors and, even if he got out, the car might land on top of him. All he could hope for was that the body shell wouldn’t collapse around him if the car went into a roll.
His world went crazy, surrounded by breaking glass, violent shaking and battering and a hundred and one punches to the body as he was thrown around the inside of the vehicle. The doors were wrenched open as the car hit the ground, and he punched his hand down the back of the seat cushion, gripping the framework to keep himself from being thrown out. He could taste blood in his mouth and feel stabs of pain from a dozen points of impact all over his body. His chest hurt and he felt one leg being wrenched violently sideways.
Then silence.
Thirty-nine
It didn’t last long. He shook his head and heard a ticking noise from the engine. Or maybe it was one of the wheels spinning. At least he could still hear, surely a good sign. He felt a tickle on his forehead and wiped it away. His hand came away smeared with blood. He struggled against the tilt of the seat cushion and realised that the car had somehow landed on its left side hard against one tree, the other side propped up by a smaller trunk and tilted off the ground. He sniffed the air. Another good sign. He could smell: the warm aroma of pine trees.
And petrol.
Damn it. The fumes were strong and sharp, invading the interior of the car. He fought against panic. He couldn’t tell how close it was but any fuel spillage in a car crash was bad news.
He reached for the radio. Dead. Like he’d be if he didn’t get out of here. He twisted his body, seeking a way out, his knee and back protesting and his head spinning. The taste of blood filled his mouth and he spat it out. He looked to his left. The tree was a giant, its gnarled trunk invading the compartment as if trying to get at him. The door was gone, ripped away, leaving the hinges like broken teeth. But there was no room to get out past the tree. He looked right and up. That door was still on, but only just, wrenched back and leaving him with a good view up the slope towards the road. The car must have spun in mid-air.
Pity Citroëns weren’t made to fly, he thought dreamily, his vision beginning to fade. He could have been out of here without a scratch otherwise, up and over the trees. He felt almost drunk and shook his head. Not drunk. Concussed. Mustn’t go to sleep. Keep the head clear and try to find a way out. Get to a hospital. Find the truck driver who ruined his car and kill him, very slowly. Bury the body.
Someone was approaching. A figure was scrambling down the bank. A man in a jacket, a cap on his head pulled low. Rocco didn’t recognise him, couldn’t see him clearly enough. Just a figure, a stranger. Hopefully a helpful one.
The man leaned over the open doorway and studied Rocco for a moment. He was unshaven, ordinary-looking. Rocco tried to speak but his mouth wouldn’t work. Useless being a cop if I can’t speak, he thought, and felt a laugh beginning to well up. It stopped in his throat and he thought he was choking. He spat out more blood and took a deep breath, determined not to give in to whatever it was that was taking over his body. The idea of a slow death had never appealed to him. Far better a soldier’s passing: quick, painless – or, at least, as painless as possible – followed by a quick drop into nothing. Blackness. Bugles, drums, goodbye.
‘You’re in a mess, aren’t you?’ the newcomer said, almost chattily. He sounded amused. He was making no attempt to reach in and help Rocco out, but leaned against the side of the car, looking down with no apparent c
oncern. He even had a smile edging the side of his mouth. ‘A bit shaky on the wheel back there, weren’t you? You really shouldn’t drink in the morning, Rocco. Here, have another one on me.’ He produced a bottle of whisky and poured half the contents into the inside of the car, splashing Rocco’s face and chest.
Rocco lifted a hand to shield his eyes and coughed against the harsh taste as some of it entered his mouth.
‘Nothing better for a pick-me-up, I always think,’ the man continued. ‘Don’t feel bad – you won’t be the first drunken cop they find killed himself driving too fast.’
Then he produced a cigarette and a lighter, and lit up, puffing smoke into the air, throwing his head back for a moment to survey the road above.
‘Don’t light up here, you maniac – there’s petrol everywhere!’ Rocco wanted to shout. But although the thought was there the words wouldn’t come. What the hell was wrong with his mouth? Why couldn’t he speak? He tried to shift himself, to get his legs underneath him and push upwards. But he had no strength and he couldn’t even feel his right leg. Damn, that’s bad.
The man noticed him moving and said, ‘No, please. Don’t stand up. We’re all friends here.’ He grinned. ‘Well, this is a fine way to end a great career for a bastard flic, isn’t it? But that’s the way of the world, right? You do your best, work hard, become a regular pillar of the community – not my community, mind you, because there we hate your guts – but there’s always a payback waiting just round the corner.’ He sniggered. ‘Or in this case, right here, on the corner.’ He waved a hand to indicate the road behind him. ‘You have to admit, Rocco, that was a seriously good piece of driving, wasn’t it? Not by you – you were rubbish, let’s be honest. But what do you expect when you drive around boozed up on whisky in a heap of old junk like this? No, I have to say I couldn’t have judged it any finer if I’d tried. Bam – right up the arse and you were off like a rocket. Or should I say a Sputnik? Into orbit … well, for all of three seconds, then you crash-landed like a sack of old scrap metal. Cop down.’ He made a trumpet sound, a parody of the dernière sonnerie, the last post.
Rocco and the Price of Lies Page 24