Death on the Rive Nord

by Adrian Magson

  Massin smiled thinly, probably grateful for the change of topic and atmosphere. ‘If we have, perhaps someone could let me know where we keep it, just in case.’

  ‘Perhaps that should be the new liaison officer’s job,’ suggested another man. ‘Acting as liaison between the driver and the cannon operator.’

  Massin looked less amused at this. He scowled. ‘The liaison officer has been introduced as an experiment,’ he said, ‘working on special cases. The idea arises from studies carried out in several countries, and would appear to have some merit. We have been chosen as a test bed, so I expect you to welcome the officer and give the matter your serious consideration.’

  ‘What sort of special cases?’ asked Captain Canet.

  ‘Sensitive ones. Serious domestic violence, criminal assault on females or minors, racial and religious bias … basically, anything uniformed officers may not have the expertise or time to deal with, and where we need to bring in other agencies to take over. That coordination will be the responsibility of the liaison officer.’ He looked around the room. ‘I will advise you of further details when they become known.’ He inclined his head towards Perronnet and added, ‘There are some important housekeeping matters to discuss. Commissaire Perronnet will talk to you about those.’

  There was a low groan among the crowd. ‘Housekeeping’ covered rosters, manning levels and special duties, none of which were good news for the grunts on the ground, and inevitably impacted on their days off. Their wives usually made their feelings known very quickly afterwards.

  As Massin left the room, he signalled to Rocco to follow him.

  On his way out, Rocco was intercepted at the door by Canet, who waved other men away out of earshot.

  ‘Lucas,’ the captain said quietly, ‘I still don’t know what’s between you two, and I don’t want to know. I’m guessing it relates to your time in Indo-China, you and him both. I also know he’ll have you on a spit if you let him.’ He frowned at the thought. ‘And that would be a hell of a waste. Just stay calm.’ He stepped out of Rocco’s way with a friendly nod.

  Rocco walked down the corridor to Massin’s office and closed the door behind him. Canet was right to warn him, but if Massin really wanted him gone, he’d find a way.

  ‘Do we have a problem?’ the commissaire asked, sitting behind his desk.

  ‘You tell me,’ said Rocco bluntly. He wondered if this was finally it; that Canet was going to be proved right and Massin had found a point of leverage to use against him in the issue of their brief history together. As Rocco’s commanding officer during the war in Indo-China, Colonel Massin had not exhibited the highest level of courage under fire, and had had to be accompanied out of danger by, among others, Rocco himself, then a sergeant. It had been clear from the moment they had met again that Massin still remembered him, although Rocco had no desire to act as a living reminder of his momentary weakness. Things happened in the heat of battle, and he’d seen too many good men falter to hold judgement over them. However, since finding himself reporting to Massin in his new posting, he’d been waiting for the hammer to fall and to discover himself on a transfer list to somewhere unpleasant, safely beyond Massin’s embarrassment.

  ‘With Tourrain. Did I detect some … tension between you?’

  Rocco wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. It seemed Massin was going to ignore the fact that he had implied Rocco’s involvement in the October 1961 riots, choosing instead to pick on a brief exchange of words between officers.

  ‘Put me in a room with a racist bigot,’ he said finally, remembering Canet’s advice, ‘and I suppose it pushes the wrong buttons.’

  ‘I see. Well, his views are well known, but that should not bother you.’

  ‘Doesn’t it bother you?’

  ‘Naturally. But that must not get in the way of the smooth running of this division. Tourrain and his like will be dealt with in due course.’ He stared hard at Rocco, challenging him to disagree. ‘Understood?’

  ‘As you wish.’ Rocco wondered where this was leading. It was a petty issue for a senior officer to pick on. There should have been far more pressing things to occupy Massin’s mind, such as the need for better forensics and pathology facilities, or improved police radio equipment for cars. Minor disagreements between officers under his command should have been a given, not a point of contention. Unless Massin was playing mind games and showing his superiority by dragging Rocco into his office in full view of everyone else.

  The phone on Massin’s desk rang, cutting off further talk. Massin made a motion for Rocco to stay, listening for a few moments and glancing at Rocco before replacing the receiver.

  ‘Trouble seems to follow you around like a rabid dog, doesn’t it?’ he muttered. ‘That was a message from your local rural policeman – Lamotte, is it? A body, thought to be male, has been discovered in the canal not far from Poissons. It was being dragged under a barge.’

  Rocco was relieved. It meant he could get out of this place before he said something he truly regretted. ‘Probably a drunk or a vagrant,’ he said, and turned to go.

  ‘I doubt it.’ Massin’s words stopped him. ‘The body is trapped underwater, but there was a rough description.’ He lifted an eyebrow. ‘You said you haven’t met any Algerians here yet, Inspector. I think that’s about to change.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In Es Sénia, Samir Farek left the building where his men were preparing to dispose of the dead taxi driver, Abdou. The body would be transported in an old packing crate and eventually found in a convenient alleyway in the old town. A robbery victim, sniffed over by dogs and rats. Unfortunate, but it happened all the time.

  ‘Find me the Calypsoa,’ he said, walking towards his Mercedes. ‘Find the agent who dealt with the addition of passengers on board. I want to know where the ship went from here and what stops it was due to make along the way.’

  Bouhassa shuffled heavily along beside him, djellaba flapping around his huge belly. He nodded and licked his lips. ‘The agent. Right. Then what?’

  ‘Then kill him, of course.’

  Later, at his home in Al Hamri, Farek walked through every room, feeding the anger that had begun when he returned from a lengthy business trip to Cyprus to find his wife gone. There was no trace of her here now, save for some clothing and a few cheap trinkets. The good jewellery was all gone, as was the emergency cash from his desk drawer.

  And the boy.

  She had left him. He couldn’t believe it.

  The place was so quiet. He found that strange until he remembered how she had always been playing music on the radio; mindless modern pap, mostly.

  He ended up in the bedroom, and standing breathing in the atmosphere of her perfume, found himself wondering whether she had ever soiled this place with another man.

  He shook off the idea and went to the living room, staring at the expensive furnishings, the leather and polished hardwood, the glistening floor tiles and rugs from Afghanistan, the magazines from Paris and New York which she had persuaded him to buy her.

  Felt the fury beginning to tip over as he thought about his generosity while ignoring the times he had gone with other women, soiled his own promises to her, threatened her very life for daring to question any decisions he made.

  He kicked out, sending a fragile coffee table spinning across the room, smashing an ornate mirror from Florence. They were nothing, merely trappings; he could buy a dozen, a hundred more like them if he chose.

  She had betrayed him. It was all he could see, all he could think about. Betrayed and made a fool of him in the eyes of the world. But she also knew too much, his whore of a wife. And in betraying him, she had brought about her own destruction.

  He picked up the telephone to call first his brother Lakhdar, in Paris, then Bouhassa. Because of her betrayal he was going to have to bring forward his plans. It was earlier than he would have liked, but maybe this was a sign from the gods.

  How did that saying go? Faire d’une pierre deux coups.
Yes, he liked that. It was strangely appropriate.

  Kill two birds with one stone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Rocco recognised the smell the moment he stepped from his car. It was one he’d encountered all too often whenever a ‘floater’ – often a misnomer but darkly descriptive – surfaced after a period underwater.

  He walked down a narrow footpath, where he found Claude Lamotte in conversation with two men in work clothes, breathing vapour and slapping gloved hands against the cold rolling off the canal. The call to Amiens had come from a café in the next village, where Claude, huddled in rubber boots and a heavy hunting jacket and wearing a cap with ear flaps jammed down over his head, had sent a messenger. His uniform shirt was just visible at the lapels, proving that he had, at least, made an effort to meet official dress requirements.

  ‘What have we got?’ asked Rocco.

  Claude pointed into the murky water at the barge’s stern, to where a bundle of dark-green cloth was visible just below the waterline. Further down was the outline of a bare foot, the skin dark and shrivelled. ‘The boatman said he felt it being dragged by something in the water. He thought it might be a submerged log or a dead cow.’ He met Rocco’s sceptical look with a shrug. ‘It happens, believe me. Cows are good at getting into the canal but not so clever at climbing out again. After a while they give up and drown.’ As a rural policeman, part of Lamotte’s job was monitoring the canal and other waterways in the area, which meant taking calls involving accidental deaths by drowning.

  ‘Hell of a surprise for him, then.’

  ‘He hooked the cloth and gave it a tug, but it was stuck. The clothing must have snagged on a loose rivet. The body surfaced briefly before going under again. Says he got a good look at it before it got dragged under again. It gave him a turn so he left it alone and called me. He’s had a few drinks since then, so I wouldn’t stand too close – and don’t light a cigarette; he’ll go up like a Roman candle.’

  Rocco nodded. The boatman was short, grubby and grizzled, with a tangle of grey beard and a head topped by a battered peaked cap. ‘I’ll pass, in that case. But I need to know where he’s come from and where he thinks he might have picked it up.’

  ‘Easy.’ Claude pointed along the canal, which ran straight for several hundred metres before bending away out of sight behind a line of poplar trees. ‘He set out from two kilometres away early this morning, this side of Poissons. It’s all straight from there, with no locks for a long way,’ he gestured behind them with his thumb, ‘and he reckons it was about half a kilometre back when he felt the barge’s nose coming round, like she’d grounded. Is a barge a ‘she’ or a ‘he’, d’you think?’

  ‘If she won’t do what you want,’ Rocco countered dryly, ‘what do you reckon?’ He studied the vessel, which was about fifteen metres long and sitting low in the water like a giant slug. It looked a brute of a workhorse, battered and scarred and weighed down with sacks of coal, and not the least bit feminine. ‘Would he have noticed it in a thing this size?’

  ‘Sure.’ Claude nodded. ‘Apparently they can tell by feel when a barge isn’t running right. He said it was pulling to one side.’

  Rocco took his word for it. His own experience with boats had been confined to jumping in and out of assault craft. He looked along the canal in the direction the barge was facing. It wasn’t an area he was yet familiar with. ‘Where does this lead?’

  ‘It’s part of the River Somme. It goes through Amiens and up to Abbeville.’

  ‘OK. Let’s get the body out of there. We can’t tell what happened until we see it properly. Make sure you hook the clothing.’

  Claude asked the boatman to get his boathook. But after much arguing, it was obvious the man was too unsteady on his feet to be of any help. Claude jumped on board and found the tool himself, then began tugging at the submerged body. After a few minutes, he managed to work the clothing free and carefully manoeuvre the corpse clear of whatever was holding it in to the bank. Rocco enlisted the help of the two bystanders to haul it dripping onto the towpath.

  ‘It’s been there a while,’ Rocco commented. The smell was immediate and rancid, driving the other men back more effectively than any police barrier might have done. Rocco, however, had seen it all before and was almost immune. Even so, he had to take a deep breath before making an examination. The body was bloated, straining against the clothing like an overstuffed andouille, the skin covered with a slimy film. He pulled a pair of orange rubber gloves from his pocket and slipped them on, a habit picked up from a member of the river police in Paris. Then he checked the pockets. He found a wallet in the jacket, empty save for a photo discoloured beyond recognition and a square of pulpy paper with faint traces of ink. It might have given a clue to the man’s origins, but fell apart as soon as he touched it.

  He turned his attention to the dead man’s face. He estimated his age at somewhere between thirty and forty years, but it was difficult to be sure, given the conditions. Even with the swollen, discoloured skin, he looked swarthy, with thick, rough-cut hair. Definitely of North African or maybe Spanish origin, though. He flipped the jacket open, but there were no labels to indicate where it might have been bought.

  It reminded him of another body that had been discovered near Poissons on his first day in the region. Then, it had been a young woman in the military cemetery outside Poissons, and equally difficult to age or identify.

  ‘He’s not local,’ said Claude emphatically.

  ‘You know that for sure?’

  Claude pointed at the man’s other foot, which was encased in a heavy leather sandal with a thick sole. ‘It’s too cold here for that footwear. It’s the sort of thing you see in the flea markets down south. Or in North Africa.’

  Rocco looked at him. He’d never thought of Claude having served overseas. On the other hand, conscription into the French army took men to strange places.

  ‘I did a tour there once,’ Claude explained. ‘Can’t say I was impressed.’ He flapped a hand in front of his face and cleared his throat. ‘What do we do with him? He’ll only get worse out here.’

  ‘Get a wagon out from Amiens. We’ll let Rizzotti take a look. I’ll follow it in.’ Rocco pulled off the gloves and dropped them by the body. He had a spare pair in the car.

  ‘And Capitaine Haddock?’ Claude nodded in the direction of the barge owner, who seemed to be sinking slowly into a gentle stupor and becoming detached from everything around him, even the cold.

  ‘Pour a couple of litres of coffee down his throat and take a statement. Then let him go.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we keep him around?’

  ‘He’s not going far in that thing, is he? And I doubt he ran the man down – not at speed, anyway.’

  ‘Stabbed to death. One thrust to the chest.’ Dr Rizzotti stepped back from the body on his examining table and coughed discreetly. In spite of the tang of chemicals in the room, even the doctor was looking slightly green around the eyes. ‘Dead when he went in, probably been that way for three to four days. The water in the canal would be very cold at this time of year, so it might have been longer.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘It’s a science. But for me, not a precise one, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Age?’ Rocco wanted more than his own guesswork, and wondered who had killed the man and when. At least Rizzotti’s conclusion ruled out a drunken tumble down the canal bank. Now all he had to do was find out who the man was, where he’d come from … and who had disliked him enough to stick a knife into his chest.

  ‘Mmm. Late thirties, something like that.’ Rizzotti touched the man’s bare chest, finger resting just beneath a three-centimetre stab wound. The skin was puckered and open like a pair of lips. ‘No scars that I can see apart from this wound.’ He lifted one of the hands. ‘As to what he was, a manual worker, I’d say; strong, blunt fingers and broken nails suggests agricultural – at least, was recently.’

  ‘Not a factory hand?’ There were several manufacturing plants in the area employing casual,
unskilled workers. If any one of them were missing a member of the workforce, it would be a quick step closer to solving the case.

  Rizzotti ruled it out. ‘No. There are three types of production around here: metal-working, which produces oil and swarf – sharp metal coils to you – which cut and stain the skin; assembly-line operations which leave the hands roughened but clean; and tyre factories which leave traces of rubber under the nails. I’d say this man’s been nowhere near any of those.’ He hesitated, which made Rocco look up.

  ‘There’s a but?’

  ‘The knife that killed him. I’m not really experienced enough to tell, but it was probably a double-sided, narrow blade with a good point.’

  ‘A hunting knife?’

  ‘Could be. But definitely not a kitchen knife, which would have a single-sided blade.’ He pointed at the wound. ‘This has been sliced on both sides.’

  ‘A dagger?’

  ‘Possibly. It narrows the field, but that’s all I can tell you. Sorry.’

  Rocco accepted his summation. Rizzotti had come a long way since they had first met. Initially defensive and reluctant to admit his lack of experience, being merely a local practitioner on loan to the police, he had slowly come to accept Rocco’s experience and suggestions and was now more forthcoming with his own views, right or wrong.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Rocco. ‘Can you check the inside of the clothing?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I mean inside the material. Slice it open; check for hidden papers.’

  ‘Am I looking for something specific?’

  ‘I’m only guessing, but if he came from further south, he might have papers hidden on him. It’s a trick common among illegals to prevent theft of personal documents.’

  ‘Good point. I’ll see to it.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Rocco was frustrated by the lack of clues. This man had died because of – what? An argument? Robbery? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Maybe that was a stretch, but he’d seen too many similar cases before in busy cities where, for want of turning a different corner, of taking an alternative route home, someone’s life might not have been cut short.