Death on the Marais ilr-1

by Adrian Magson

  He made an omelette, which he could cook with his eyes shut, thanks to his ex-wife’s teaching, and listened for sounds of the fruit rats overhead. Silence. Maybe they’d gone out for the evening. Or they’d seen his gun and decided to find another home before he started blasting holes in the ceiling.

  It reminded him that be hadn’t cleaned the weapon for a few days, so he hoisted it out of his coat pocket and laid it on the table for later. He had a cleaning kit in the car and would find it therapeutic to go through the familiar exercise. The gun was a MAB. 38 with a seven-round magazine. He had used it just twice in the police, and one like it a few times in the army. There were moves afoot to equip the police with another more up-to-date model, but Rocco had got used to the feel of the MAB and couldn’t imagine using something else just because it was to be the new standard model.

  As soon as the omelette was ready, he scooped it onto a plate and poured a glass of wine, and sat down to eat his first meal in his new home.

  He came awake with a rush at four in the morning. There was a scurrying sound overhead, but he knew it wasn’t the fruit rats which had disturbed him. Neither was it a physical intruder. Something more insidious had reached a hand into his sleep and dragged him to the surface; some dark thought at the back of his mind, nudging him awake.

  His throat was dry and raspy. He’d been lying on his back. He scrambled up and reached for a glass of water, draining it in one gulp, then sat back in the dark and waited for whatever had been swirling around in his head to settle and become clear, as he knew it soon would. It had been one of the reasons Emilie had finally left; one of many, at least. She had accused him of living the job to the exclusion of all other facets of their life, evidenced by him often shooting bolt upright in the middle of the night in a eureka moment, dreams morphing back into reality. Like now. Sometimes the moments led somewhere tangible, sometimes not. But the damage had been great enough to rob him of her patience, then finally, her love.

  He shook his head and forced his mind back to the job in hand. The dead woman had to be someone: someone’s daughter, sister, maybe wife or mother. But whose? And someone important, if the paperwork to release the body was any indication. He would have to see whether Rizzotti showed some balls and came up with the names he needed. The bigger question was, where had she been prior to and immediately following her death? The wet clothing could be from any number of sources close by: the canal, the river or the lakes. But if Rizzotti was correct and his own instincts were right, the state of the body showed the drowning couldn’t have been in the last twenty-four hours. Alcohol and fresh water… and maybe drugs. A lethal combination. Yet not necessarily suspicious. It could have been a genuine accident: too much to drink, a few pills maybe, followed by a stroll too close to water.

  Folly wasn’t necessarily murder.

  Except that someone had discovered the body, but instead of alerting the authorities, had kept it for a while before placing it where it would eventually be discovered. Somebody with an acute lack of sensitivity.

  The presence of alcohol raised a few questions. If a party guest goes missing — even one in a tasteless uniform — there would be questions asked. The police would be informed, the area searched, the family and friends expressing fear and loss, the usual incomprehension when someone — especially a woman — disappears. The area would be buzzing with rumour, gossip and innuendo.

  Yet none of that had happened.

  Either nobody cared… or they didn’t know. Or did they not want to know?

  He lay back down, then sat up again when a rooster crowed nearby, the harsh, gurgling sound drifting on the air with the clarity and reach of a bugle. He checked his watch. Almost five-thirty; time had passed swiftly. He shrugged on some old, lightweight cotton trousers and a T-shirt, and a pair of battered gym shoes: his training gear. His chances of getting back to sleep were less than slim, so he opted instead for a workout run. It was his first in three weeks, but it would help shake out the cobwebs.

  He went out into the lane and turned away from the village. No sense in scaring the neighbours; he didn’t expect too many of them had a training regime other than the hard, physical labour which made up their days. He worked his way up to a gentle trot, breathing deeply and swinging his arms as he made his way out into the open countryside. The birds were just beginning their chorus, and he nodded a salute to them as he passed by, an intruder in their midst, wincing at the pain in his knees and already wondering if this wasn’t a few steps too far.

  At seven, warmed by his run and a simple breakfast of toasted bread and coffee, Rocco reached the marais, taking a track off the road leading to the station and the cemetery. Laid with a thin surface of aged and cracked tarmac, it meandered through a belt of tall poplars, skirting three small lakes and a vast, untamed stretch of reed beds, regularly dotted with notices saying FISHING — PRIVATE. The morning sun filtered through the branches of the trees and reflected in patterns off the water, giving the area a shimmering, unreal quality. Rocco felt the Citroen wheels dip each time he strayed off the tarmac, and his gut tilted at the idea that the ground here might swallow him and the car without warning at any moment.

  He nosed the car into a large clearing with tyre tracks in the surface showing where other vehicles had turned to go back to the road. The end of the line for anything on four wheels.

  He stopped with the nose pointing back along the track and killed the engine. Opened the door to let the air in. It smelt loamy, with a background scent of rotting vegetation and standing water. He got out and looked around.

  A large wooden lodge dominated the clearing, standing proud of the trees behind it yet merging into the foliage as if camouflaged. It was plainly old, with peeling walls and weather-worn shutters over the windows, and a layer of soft moss on the shingle roof. A broad veranda ran the length of the front, with a wooden rail in the style of houses in the American Deep South. No rocking chairs, though, Rocco noted. No welcome mat, either.

  He stepped onto the veranda and felt the rough planks flex beneath his weight. His footsteps made a hollow noise over the crawl space beneath, but the place had been built to last with seasoned hardwood — a wise move situated here in the marshes. He tried the front door, which had a shutter over the central panel, but it, too, was locked tight. He walked along the veranda to the end, and looked round the corner of the building. There was no garden to speak of and no fence — merely a patch of rough grass and weeds stretching back several paces to a reed bed. Beyond the reeds lay a large expanse of water, surrounded on all sides by trees, reeds and tangled underbrush. The nearest sign of life was a family of ducks about thirty metres away on the water, and the occasional plop of a fish jumping.

  At the other end of the veranda he found the same scenery, with the addition of an overturned aluminium rowing boat lying just out of the reeds, a large barbecue bay and a metal rack which he guessed was for fishing rods. He hopped over the veranda rail and walked across the grass for a closer look at the boat. Worn and dented in places, the soft metal was scarred along the sides. There was no sign of an engine mounting, but he guessed that on a lake this size, oars were the best form of propulsion.

  He turned to study the rear of the lodge. It boasted two large windows and a narrow door, all tightly shuttered. Whoever owned this place believed in security, and he wondered if the locals had a reputation for helping themselves when the owners were away.

  It would be an ideal place for parties, he decided. Unusual, even slightly sinister, especially at night, but maybe that’s what gave it a special cachet among its visitors. What better place to let loose and have a fling without anyone overlooking you?

  He returned to the front of the building, making a mental note to find out whose name the place was registered in. City folk, no doubt.

  He stopped.

  Claude Lamotte was standing by the front steps. His feet were planted solidly, his weight balanced, and he had a shotgun slung across one arm.

  Rocco fel
t his throat go dry.

  The twin barrels were pointing right at his midsection.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Rocco? I barely remember the man.

  Not one of our best, in my opinion.

  Francois Massin — former brigade CO Indochina campaign — now divisional commissaire, Picardie

  ‘Taking a chance, bringing that thing in here,’ said Claude genially, nodding back at the car. ‘Ground’s very soft off the road. Swallow a man whole in the wrong places.’

  The shotgun barrels hadn’t wavered and Rocco felt the muscles in his gut contract. The idea of it going off even accidentally at this range didn’t bear thinking about. He tried to ignore it.

  Very carefully, he slid a hand into his coat pocket and felt the reassuring heaviness of the MAB.

  ‘So I gathered,’ he said. He moved across the front of the house as if to study a poster wrapped around one of the heavy wooden uprights. The move was to take him out of the line of fire, but when he stopped and looked back, Claude had turned with him. ‘Could you point that thing somewhere else?’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ Claude moved his hand and the gun broke. He extracted two red cartridges. ‘I was out hunting rabbits. You get used to walking around locked and ready to go in this place.’ A harsh sound broke the silence, and Claude glanced up into the trees behind the lodge. He inserted one of the cartridges, flicked the barrels up again. They locked into place with an efficient click, and he sighted at a crow sitting in the uppermost branches. Then he lowered it without firing.

  By the time the barrel swung down again, Rocco had his gun pointed towards Claude through the fabric of his coat.

  He still wasn’t sure about Lamotte. He was local, after all, and knew everyone and probably everything: which way was up, which was down; the good, the bad and the plain indifferent. He was genial, too, and appeared to have accepted Rocco’s arrival with genuine ease. Many would have been grudging at the very least, downright resentful at most. It didn’t mean he was up to anything, but Rocco had spent too many years learning not to take anyone at face value or to drop his guard too quickly.

  As he stood there, wondering whether Claude was going to break the shotgun again, he detected the smell of the oil he’d used last night to clean the MAB, the aroma set off by the warmth of his hand. It had been relaxing, he remembered, and he’d taken his time, dismantling the weapon piece by piece, the movements practised and smooth.

  The metallic aroma, coupled with the sunlight through the trees, the thick, green carpet of reeds and the enforced silence after the clicking of the shotgun, reminded him of a long time ago. The close atmosphere of the jungle rushed in on him like a train, filling his head with images of the thick canopy, the narrow trails with their booby traps and their brightly coloured flowers, the darting flight of small birds and the sudden heave of soil and greenery as someone stepped on a mine or snagged a tripwire.

  ‘You all right?’ Claude broke the gun and stepped towards him. ‘You look like shit, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  Rocco shook his head. ‘I’m fine. Had a bad night, that’s all.’

  ‘You should try walking instead of running in the morning.’ He grinned at Rocco’s look of surprise.

  ‘Someone saw me?’ He could have sworn there had been nobody about. So much for a cop’s eyesight.

  ‘Someone will always see you. It’s the way things are around here. You in training for anything special?’

  ‘No. I got used to it in the army, then at the police academy. It helps me think. That’s the theory, anyway. I should do it more often.’ He gestured towards the poster on the upright. It was advertising a tag wrestling match two weeks ago. ‘I thought this stuff had gone out of fashion.’ He watched Claude out of the corner of his eye, his hand still on his gun.

  ‘In Paris, maybe. Out here, though, they still have a taste for dramatic combat and the occasional spot of blood. Modern-day gladiators minus the lions.’ The poster showed a ludicrously muscular man in a flowing cape, wrestling costume and a full head mask, eyes glinting through holes cut in the black fabric. He appeared to be snarling at the camera, but might easily have been yawning. ‘Him especially. Shadow Angel… man of mystery.’ He read out the banner line in a dramatic hiss and smiled, eyes crinkling around the edges. ‘That’s what they’re already calling you in the village: Shadow Angel.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You dress like an undertaker, you’re built like a brick shithouse and nobody knows who the hell you are… only that you look as if you’re about to give them a kicking.’ He shrugged. ‘Not their fault — they’ve seen too many bad flic flicks.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll try not to disappoint them.’ Rocco nodded at the house. ‘Who’s the owner?’

  ‘No idea. The mayor might know: he collects the local taxes. I heard it’s a businessman from Paris, uses it for fishing and hunting parties at weekends. Brings his friends down to show what fun we ignorant peasants have in the marais.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘Beats me why they come here, though. Hardly St Tropez, is it?’

  ‘There aren’t any photographers here scouting for Bardot skinny-dipping, that’s why. Much more private.’

  ‘I suppose. It’s closer to Paris than the Med, too. And people around here mind their own business. Most of the time.’

  Weekend parties, thought Rocco. A brief rush of excitement for the idle rich with too much time on their hands and not enough ways to fill it. Hell, why not? They paid their taxes, they were entitled. The same thing happened in reverse in Paris: people drifted in for a weekend of fun and frolics away from the faces they knew back home. Nobody got hurt, nobody knew. Well, mostly. Unless you bumped into your next-door neighbour doing the same thing.

  Claude was watching him closely. ‘You think the dead woman was here?’

  ‘Most likely. She wasn’t local, was she?’

  ‘No. She wasn’t. How do we find out who she was?’

  ‘No idea. Not yet. But we will, sooner or later.’ He related what Rizzotti had told him, then stepped away from the lodge and gestured at the marais. ‘Can anyone fish here?’

  ‘Sure. If they have a permit.’

  ‘And do they?’

  ‘Mostly, yes. Apart from a few kids.’

  ‘Are there other places like this?’

  ‘Sure. Come on, I’ll show you. Watch where you walk, though, in those shoes. Tread where I tread.’

  Claude set off past the lake, heading further into the trees. Rocco found the going difficult, his soles slipping on the reeds and grassy undergrowth. It was possible to imagine someone hurrying through here and stumbling. It would be so easy to skid off the track and into the nearest stretch of water.

  Why did he imagine someone hurrying? The thought bothered him, but instinct told him he was right. Whatever had occurred hadn’t been right here, but maybe not far off. All he had to do was find the place. Then the rest would become clear.

  His coattails snagged on a cluster of thorns and he stopped to work them loose. He felt the soft ground shift underfoot as he twisted his body, the heavy air settling around him, with only the squelch of Claude’s footsteps to break the silence. He was reminded of the other oppressive landscape. Back then, though, he’d been dressed appropriately, because the landscape and those who lived in it had learnt to fight back with lethal force.

  He shook off the thoughts and watched Claude, dressed in semi-hunting gear, in his element and easing through the vegetation with barely a whisper. He needed to get some appropriate clothing of his own, if he was to stay here any length of time.

  Shadow Angel. Christ, if Santer ever found out, he’d wet himself.

  Skirting more reeds around a second, smaller lake, and watching for Claude’s indications about soft ground and patches of dark mud, Rocco spotted another lodge. This was smaller than the first, but built in the same style. It was also locked and shuttered and weather-worn, standing on a smaller patch of ground, but plainly designed for the same function.

&n
bsp; ‘Does the same person own this?’

  ‘I don’t think so — I believe it’s a dentist from Lille, but I’ve never seen him.’

  Claude wandered off and inspected the front door, then disappeared round to the rear. Seconds later he was back, gesturing to Rocco to follow.

  Rocco went after him and rounded the corner of the building. The back door stood open, and a clear trail of damp footprints showed just inside the door.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Rocco? Relentless… doesn’t give up.

  Sgt R Desbordes — Contreband Task Force — Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur

  ‘Not mine,’ Claude said. ‘Recent, though.’ He lifted one boot to show Rocco the sole. It was heavily moulded with a zigzag design, whereas the footprints on the floor were smooth with no discernible pattern.

  Rocco moved past him and listened. If someone was inside, they were keeping very quiet. A random intruder from the village, come to see what they could lift? Or the owner, spooked by hearing their voices? If so, how had they got here? There were no signs of transport other than Rocco’s Citroen, nowhere else to park nearby.

  He pulled out his gun and motioned for Claude to stay where he was.

  Searching the place didn’t take long. The downstairs was one big room, with a tiny enclosed lobby at the front door. The main room had a kitchen area at one end, with a basic sink and drainer, a two-hob Calor gas cooker and a bar for serving or preparing food. The room was clean and tidy, although well beyond the first flush of newness, and the air held a faint tang of bleach. Rocco checked a pedal bin near the sink; it was empty. An open stairway ran up the rear wall and disappeared into a large hatchway in the ceiling. It was difficult to see much detail because of the shutters, but Rocco got the general layout.