Death on the Rive Nord

by Adrian Magson

  Except that the canal near Poissons wasn’t a crowded city. How random could it be in such a quiet location?

  Rizzotti turned towards a side table and picked up a bundle of wet cloth which turned out to be the man’s trousers. They were dark green, with a rough weave and badly finished hems, and a cheap, woven leather belt. Rizzotti pointed to a ragged tear in one leg. ‘This piece of the trouser leg is missing.’ He tugged at some long strands of cloth. ‘The cloth wasn’t cut away – it was ripped by considerable force. It’s cheap material but tough and not easy to tear. It could have been recent, that’s all I’m saying.’ He looked apologetic, as if the lack of clear evidence was his failure and his alone.

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’ Rocco stood cogitating for a moment, running the facts through his mind but coming to no clear conclusion. ‘Do we run to a decent camera here?’

  ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘Can you take some photos of our mystery man? Headshots will do. I need a batch printed up for distribution.’

  Rizzotti glanced at the body. ‘I can do that, no problem. I’ll see if I can tidy up the face a little first.’

  ‘Good work, Doctor.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  He arrived back home in Poissons to find Claude waiting for him, pacing up and down impatiently, eager for the chase. Mme Denis, his immediate neighbour, elderly and grey-haired, was keeping watch from her garden. She waved cheerily, signalling all was well, but scowled at Claude. Rocco returned the smile, aware that petty rivalries here were a way of life and had to be managed carefully.

  ‘I think I know where our swimmer may have entered the water,’ the garde champêtre announced urgently, ignoring Mme Denis’s look. He jumped in the passenger seat before Rocco could kill the engine and stretched, showing an expanse of hairy belly. While Rocco was in Amiens talking to Rizzotti, he had instructed Claude to check the canal all the way back as far as the last lock on the other side of Poissons. If the dead man had been tipped in approximately where the barge owner had first noticed his vessel misbehaving, there might be signs on the banks or the towpath. Even dragging a body a short distance left some marks behind. All one had to do was look closely.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ll show you.’ He pointed back towards the village and gave Mme Denis a casual salute as they roared off. She frowned and stomped off into the house.

  Ten minutes later, Rocco stopped his car where Claude indicated. They were on an empty stretch of road bordering the canal, with fields undulating away on either side, empty save for a few cows chewing disconsolately on meagre tufts of grass. Claude got out and led the way through a wooden gate to a parapet which acted as a footbridge over the water. He pointed at a metal railing embedded in the concrete. Brownish stains showed on the metal and rough brickwork, and further down, a piece of cloth had been caught on a protruding bolt head.

  ‘I saw it by chance,’ Claude admitted. ‘If you were to tip a body over here,’ he demonstrated heaving a heavy load over the parapet just above the bolt head, ‘it might catch as it went down.’ He shrugged. ‘Of course, it might be nothing to do with the poor unfortunate—’

  ‘It is,’ said Rocco. Even from here he could see it was a match for the material of the dead man’s trousers. ‘The weight would be enough to rip the material. Well spotted.’

  While Rocco held him, Claude leant through the railing and managed to recover the scrap of cloth. Then Rocco went back to the car for his boots. They checked the canal for a hundred metres on both sides, studying the area close to the banks where reeds flourished and the current was at its most static. He was hoping to find something which might have been swept off the body as it moved along, but the water was too murky from the recent flow of rain running off from the fields. Whatever evidence might have been there had long gone, covered by a cloud of shifting silt. He returned to the area inside the gate, but found nothing of significance other than their own footprints in the soft ground. He was about to give up when he noticed a handful of torn grass stems lying to one side. Breaking a stick from the hedgerow, he bent and turned the grass over. There were brown stains on the underneath, where the rain had not penetrated and washed them clean.

  Dried blood.

  ‘Somebody ripped this up to wipe their hands.’ He stood back and studied the immediate area, and saw a stake with a white triangle on top lying crushed into the earth at the bottom of a long depression.

  ‘Looks like a vehicle parked here,’ said Claude. ‘Heavy one, too, like yours.’ He nodded at Rocco’s black Citroën Traction, where the front tyre had sunk into the soft, water-soaked soil.

  Rocco agreed. ‘Heavier, though. Bigger tyres, too. A truck.’ The tread of his car tyres had sunk by maybe six centimetres; this depression was considerably deeper and wider. He tugged at the stick, which had been broken in the middle and bore a faint zigzag pattern of a tyre across its surface. ‘Ever seen a marker like this before?’

  Claude shook his head. ‘It’s not official, I know that. And I’m pretty sure none of the locals would use anything like it. You think it’s relevant?’

  Rocco stood up. ‘Not sure. But if there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the years, if something looks out of place, it’s because it is. That makes it relevant.’

  ‘The Calypsoa sailed to Barcelona with a cargo of rope.’ Bouhassa heaved himself into the passenger seat of an old Renault van. Farek was at the wheel, waiting. The vehicle tilted under the fat man’s weight, the springs creaking in protest. He was breathing heavily and sweating profusely after walking just a hundred metres. He reached for a bottle of water under the seat and took a long drink. ‘After that she goes to Greece to pick up a cargo of cement, then heads for Lebanon.’

  ‘I don’t care what she carries or where she is supposed to be going,’ muttered Farek. ‘I want to know what passengers were on board and are they going to put into a port which isn’t on the list.’

  He was staring at a shabby, brick-built dock administration office overlooking Oran’s Vieux Port. Across from the building was the quayside with a line of weathered and rust-flaked vessels tied up in a row. A steady roar of motors battered the air as cranes and winches loaded and unloaded cargos, and men shouted a relay of instructions from the decks. A smell of diesel and motor oil overlaid with the rank stink of stale seawater drifted in through the Renault’s windows, and the shriek of seabirds scavenging for food echoed around the dockyard.

  Nobody paid Farek or Bouhassa any attention. Vans like this were commonplace and therefore unremarkable, entirely appropriate for this place. It was one of several Farek kept for moving around when he needed to pass unnoticed; anything cleaner or newer, such as the Mercedes, would have attracted too much attention for what he was about to do.

  ‘Why do you care?’ asked Bouhassa. He knew how his boss felt about his wife. She was little more than a convenience.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Yet you are going to all this trouble to find her.’

  Farek felt a prickle of irritation, but ignored it. Bouhassa was probably the only person in all of Oran who could voice such an opinion without immediate and violent retribution. They had been through much and in Farek’s eyes that counted for something. ‘She knows too much,’ he said softly after a few moments. ‘She has seen too much. Such a woman, in her anger, can be dangerous to us all.’

  Bouhassa shrugged. So, she was to be disposed of. Fine by him. He had never had relationships, had never seen the need. They were complications he could do without. He swilled water around his mouth for a few seconds, then swallowed noisily and belched. ‘The agent said there are no passengers apart from an engineer going to Greece. I saw the man – he is of no account. The agent also said his friend the police chief would not like questions being asked. I think maybe he has forgotten who you are.’

  Farek agreed. To use the local chief of police as a defence was a stupidity. Farek had been paying him for months, and controlled him absolutely. But it showed there had been a shift
of perceived power here in the city since the French left. It was a perception he would have to change. He checked his watch. Midday. Activity around the boats was already dropping off and men were heading away for somewhere cool to take their lunch, laughing and joking.

  ‘Is it still Selim?’ He knew most of the officials on the waterfront, but it had been a while since he’d needed to come down here in person. Normally his lieutenants dealt with the day-to-day movement of goods through the port and across the country’s borders. Selim was the senior agent, and ruled his fiefdom with official backing. It was the duality of things here that allowed the legitimate and non-legitimate movement of goods to carry on virtually side by side, unhindered as long as the due fees were paid.

  ‘Yes. He has grown rich and fat.’ If Bouhassa was aware of the irony in that statement, he didn’t show it.

  Farek knew all about Selim’s ‘administration’ charges on everything going through the port. The amount for shipments not covered by the correct paperwork was usually larger, to take account of officials also taking a slice for looking the other way, and depended on the value of the cargo. Selim’s take over the years was sufficient to have made him a wealthy man. ‘It has been this way for a long time,’ Farek murmured almost philosophically, before adding dryly, ‘maybe too long. Bring the gun.’ He climbed out of the van and approached the building with Bouhassa in tow. He felt no guilt at what he was about to do. Neither sadness nor regret. It was business.

  Personal business.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The grotto to St Paul lay at the top of a narrow track which wormed its way out of the square and up a hill overlooking the village of Poissons-les-Marais. Dominated by a statue of the Virgin and flanked by a trio of angels, the grotto – a man-made cave containing a stone bench, a plaque to the saint and two small apertures for votive candles – had once stood proud against the skyline. But over the years it had been allowed to merge into the trees and bushes surrounding it. Some villagers had suggested that to cut it back would transgress some unknown canonical law, no doubt punishable by a thunderbolt on the most important establishment in the village – the bar-tabac. Now, embraced by nature, it carried a presence more sinister than reverential, more covert than welcoming, and few people ever came here save a few kids from the village to smoke illicit cigarettes and indulge in inexpert fumblings which usually led nowhere interesting.

  Rocco liked the spot, which he’d discovered on his first tour of the village after being posted here. He thought the angels looked like bodyguards, with their wings half-folded but ready for action, their eyes staring out all-seeing at the world around them as if ready to vet passers-by for any potential threat. He came up here on occasion when he needed some thinking time away from the telephone and the demands of duty. Not every case could be solved by action, nor could it be analysed by staring at sheets of paper or reading criminal profile studies by eminent and usually long-dead psychologists with Germanic names.

  Like the case of the floater in the canal. Two days on and there had been no reports of anyone missing, no calls from factories in the area saying an employee had failed to report for work, and no hints from the local underworld of a ‘hit’. If anyone knew anything, they were keeping their heads down. It was now down to solid police work to see if they could find anyone with information that had not been disclosed to the authorities.

  The area outside the grotto was flat, overlooking the village like a viewing platform. From here he could just see his house, and the rooftops of the farms along the street. To his left was the church and the square and, just visible, a corner of the co-op’s front window. Beyond the village stood a line of poplars, tall and pointed, a marker boundary for the marais – the marshland – with its collection of lakes and streams and patches of bog which were reputed to be capable of swallowing a man whole.

  Rocco didn’t doubt it; he’d seen them at close quarters. Beyond the poplars, open countryside embraced the station and the local British military cemetery, before rolling away several kilometres into the distance, the early morning air crystal clear.

  He stamped his feet and blew on his hands. As peaceful as this place was, it was cold and raw, exposed to the winds now that the foliage had gone. He wished he’d brought gloves and thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat, uttering a groan, part pleasure, part pain. He’d endure it for a few more minutes, then get off to Amiens. He was merely putting off the inevitable, trying to dredge for ideas which might save him the trip.

  It took a few moments for him to realise that he was not alone.

  He turned and saw a young woman sitting inside the grotto. She was watching him with her hands braced on the bench and her feet tucked under her as if ready for flight. He hadn’t even glanced in the cave, accustomed to it being empty. She looked to be in her late twenties, and was dressed in a dark-blue coat and black shoes, with a plain, dark scarf covering her head. A curl of glossy, raven-black hair peeped out from the scarf, matching her eyes which were dark and bright and carried a familiar expression. He’d seen it often enough in others to recognise it immediately: she was frightened of him.

  He nodded, remaining where he was and wondering instinctively how she had got here. He hadn’t seen any strange vehicles on the road leading to the grotto. But then, he hadn’t been looking. She might have walked up or made her way here through the outskirts of the village. She certainly wasn’t from Poissons – he’d have remembered. And Mme Denis, the old romantic, would have mentioned her before now. Either that, or she would have conspired to make introductions if this woman was on the local ‘availables’ list.

  ‘Nice day,’ he said finally, and felt idiotic. Nice day? His voice seemed to break the spell. The woman relaxed slightly, lifting one slim hand to sweep back the curl of wayward hair. She wore rings, he noticed, and a thick bangle around her wrist. They looked expensive, as did the clothing. Definitely not from around here, then. Amiens, perhaps.

  ‘It’s beautiful here,’ she said. Her voice was soft, cultured. Yet he detected a nervousness in her throat as if she were unused to speaking.

  He glanced around as if seeing the place for the first time. ‘It’s my favourite spot. I come here to think, away from the bustling metropolis you see below you.’

  She smiled her appreciation of the humour. Her teeth were very white and even, and he realised for the first time that she had coffee-coloured skin. Whatever her initial fears had been, she seemed to be overcoming them. ‘Are they serious thoughts?’ she asked. ‘Is that why you come?’

  He felt his ears go red. ‘Hell, no. I’m too shallow for serious. I leave that to others.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true. Do you work here?’

  ‘No. In Amiens – an even bigger bustling metropolis. Are you visiting or just passing through?’ She seemed too exotic for this place, he decided, as if she had dropped out of nowhere. ‘Lucas Rocco, by the way,’ he added, stepping closer and putting out his hand.

  ‘I’m passing through,’ she confirmed. There was a slight hesitation before she took his hand, but her grip was firm and cool. ‘My name’s Nicole. I saw the hill and decided to come up for a look – and to think, also. It’s peaceful up here. Out of the way. I can see why you like it.’

  ‘It’s a pity you chose a busy day to come, though. Usually, there’s nobody around.’ He almost asked what she had to think about, but decided not to. Instead, he turned and surveyed the village, not wanting to crowd her. She hadn’t given her surname, but that was sensible enough; you could meet all manner of freaks in dark clothing standing near a deserted and windswept grotto. Thinking of dark, he saw movement down in the square and recognised the village priest bustling along, his black soutane flapping around his legs like the drooping wings of a wounded crow. He’d still not had the dubious pleasure of making the man of God’s acquaintance, and the priest, thankfully, had not made any overtures his way in a bid to add a new member to his flock. Rocco was relieved: he didn’t do churches unless a crime
had been committed in one. Indo-China had long ago caused him to lose faith in the power of God, but even so, rebuffing a priest was not something he would have enjoyed.

  He sensed the woman moving to join him, her footsteps swishing in the grass. With her came a soft hint of perfume. Something lemony, delicate.

  ‘You come from around here?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I’ve lived away … overseas. My grandmother was born near here, though. I wanted to see the area where she lived.’

  ‘Ah.’ Rocco didn’t have any family to speak of. Tracing or wondering about his roots was not a feeling he could share.

  Down in the village, a silver-grey car nosed into the square, the light glinting off the bonnet. Although distant, it looked big. He thought it might be a Mercedes. Couldn’t quite tell from here. Nice car if it was. Unusual in these parts; probably one of the bigger farmers passing through, or maybe a factory owner from near Amiens took a back road and lost his way.

  The woman gave a faint intake of breath. Rocco looked round. She was staring down at the square, mouth open and one hand clutching the front of her coat. This close, he could see how smooth her skin was. But beneath her eyes were deep shadows covered by a thin layer of make-up, and a faint tic of nerves was pulsing in her throat. Whatever the reason for her earlier expression of fear, there was now another one, also familiar. It was one of trauma, of troubles buried deep for the sake of appearances. But the look was always there if you knew what to look for.

  She caught him studying her and smiled brightly, reaching up to touch her jaw. ‘Sorry – it’s cold here. My teeth react badly.’