Death on the Rive Nord

by Adrian Magson

  Maurat was tall, like his mother, and skeletal in build, with a mournful face showing a two-day stubble. His clothes were dusty and creased, and a small strip of packaging tape was clinging to one knee. He blinked at the two men and a tremor crossed his face. ‘What? Who are you and what do you want?’

  ‘Armand? Who’s there?’ It was his mother calling from a bedroom at the back of the bungalow.

  ‘We can talk here in front of your mother or out in the car,’ said Rocco matter-of-factly. ‘Your choice.’

  Maurat hesitated, then sighed, the spirit draining out of him like air from a punctured balloon. He looked tired and worn, as if he had been under severe stress for too long. He turned his head and spoke out of the corner of his mouth, eyes never leaving Rocco. ‘S’OK, Maman … just someone from the depot. I’m going out for a bit.’

  He stepped outside and walked along the street, then stopped and looked at Rocco. ‘Who are you? Cops? Customs?’

  Rocco loomed over him, crowding close. ‘Luckily for you, neither,’ he said softly. ‘Let’s just say we’re not good news.’ He grabbed Maurat’s arm and walked him to the Citroën and pushed him into the front passenger seat, then climbed in beside him. Desmoulins sat in the back.

  ‘Made any stops near a canal recently?’ said Rocco. He held up a finger. ‘A warning: don’t lie to me. I can smell liars.’ To reinforce the message, he reached into his coat pocket and took out his gun. He made a play of checking the magazine, making sure Maurat could see the shells. The clicks of the mechanism were unnaturally loud in the car, the smell of gun oil heavy and sweet. He looked back at Desmoulins and said, ‘Did you bring the silencer?’

  ‘Sorry. We need a new one … after that last job. I’ve got a cushion here in the back, though. Works a treat if you do it right.’

  ‘Jesus – what—?’ Maurat jumped in his seat and tried to bolt, scrabbling for the door handle. Rocco grabbed him by the arm, forcing him to turn his head. His face was full of grooves and angles under the reflected street lights, and was now beaded with sweat. ‘Christ, who are you …?’

  Rocco ran one hand round the rim of the steering wheel. It made a soft, abrasive sound in the silence. Then he flexed his fingers, all the while staring into Maurat’s eyes. He allowed the seconds to tick by, and the driver blinked several times, eyes darting from one man to the other. The silence eventually had the unnerving effect Rocco had intended. His primeval look, someone had once called it.

  ‘Yes. Yes, all right?’ Maurat said. ‘I’ve been past the canal – a canal. So what?’ Close up, his breath stank of drink … and something else. Rocco recognised the sweet tang of weed. It explained Maurat’s erratic trip around town: he’d been looking for something to calm his nerves.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why?’ Rocco spoke softly. ‘You initially said the canal. There’s more than one around here, but you know which one we mean, don’t you? What were you doing there? It’s not your usual route … and I know you didn’t stop for a pee.’ He reached into the man’s shirt pocket and found a ragged-looking joint, pinched at both ends. He stuffed it back. ‘Silly. That’s a jail term already.’

  ‘Hey – you put that there!’ But the protest lacked conviction.

  Rocco reached under the dashboard and produced a white triangle, flipped it into the man’s lap. The wood was muddied and split, where it had been crushed by a heavy weight. ‘You know what this is? I’m willing to bet that the pattern on there will match your truck tyres exactly.’

  ‘Actually, there are scientific ways of proving it, now,’ added Desmoulins, for good measure.

  Maurat looked stunned and shook his head, mouth working desperately. ‘I … can’t,’ he said softly.

  ‘Can’t what, Armand?’ Desmoulins leant over from the back seat and placed a heavy hand on the driver’s shoulder, making him flinch visibly. ‘Can’t what?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. They’ll come after me … or my mother. I thought you were them – when she called me at work … and then at the café.’

  Word had travelled fast.

  ‘How do you know we’re not?’ said Rocco.

  Maurat almost laughed. It didn’t quite come off. ‘Because if you were, I’d be dead. So would she.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re fucking cops, aren’t you?’

  Rocco nodded and put the gun away. ‘Fair enough. Is that why you went for a drive earlier, to that café – because you thought “they” were after you and needed a boost?’

  Maurat stared at him. ‘I needed some stuff, that’s all.’ He looked sickened. ‘Is that what this is about – me using drugs?’

  ‘No. We’re not interested in your mucky little habits. We want to know who “they” are.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Maurat’s face crumpled with worry. ‘On my mother’s life. I’ve only ever seen the one face. I don’t contact him; he calls me. I don’t even know his name.’ He looked imploringly at both men in turn. ‘Honest.’

  ‘Then why so jumpy?’ Rocco asked. ‘If he’s just a name.’

  ‘I can’t … it’s too dangerous.’

  ‘Who’s to tell?’ said Rocco. ‘There’s only us here. And we can provide protection for you and your mother, away from here.’ He switched on the car radio, an act of normality which he knew would come across to Maurat as anything but normal, under the circumstances. He was right. It took a while, but in the end, Maurat gave in.

  ‘All right,’ he said quickly. ‘But you can’t say where you got the information, right, or I’m a dead man.’

  ‘Of course. Not a word.’ He switched off the radio and waited.

  ‘It was a couple of months back,’ the truck driver said without enthusiasm. ‘I travel all over, but mostly around the north and centre of the country, delivering car parts and small stuff like that. Anyway, this guy came up to me one day in a service area just outside Paris. After a bit of chat, he says he has a business proposition. He’d pay me double my normal rate if I picked up some parcels down south, near Dijon, and took them to Amiens.’ Maurat looked up. ‘I told him I wasn’t interested – I guessed they might be drugs or stuff from the Med. But he told me they were just more car parts, like the ones I was already carrying. Only they were cheap copies which he could sell to distributors and make a killing.’

  ‘And were they?’

  ‘Yeah. Straight up. I looked. I cut a small hole in the side and made it look like damage in transit. They were bits of leather seat parts for luxury cars … some dashboard trim and armrests, things like that. Good quality, too, they looked.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘So I did the job, got the money up front, and a bonus. Two weeks later, I was in the same service area, and he was there. Same again, he said – some spare parts from down south.’ He breathed heavily and shifted in his seat. ‘I did four trips in all, easy money. Then a week ago, he rang me at home. Said he had some urgent parcels with a higher payment.’ Maurat’s eyes looked like deep pools in the street lights, haunted and regretful. ‘He wasn’t asking this time, though. It was like suddenly I had no choice.’

  ‘What kind of parcels?’ Rocco asked.

  Maurat shook his head and sighed again. ‘I knew it wasn’t car parts – not with the money he was offering. I tried to tell him no. Said I wasn’t interested and he could go find someone else.’

  Rocco saw it all. Maurat had been drawn in like a fish on a line, and duped all the way. ‘Is that when he told you that the load you’d carried on the last trip wasn’t car parts?’

  Maurat and Desmoulins both stared at him.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the truck driver. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I’m a cop. I’m paid to know these things.’

  ‘He said they’d been full of drugs … and a couple of illegals from Morocco. He said he’d got photos of me loading the boxes, and a couple showing me looking inside one of them. It was a set-up – a guy at the depot near Dijon said a box had split open and showed what was inside. Of cou
rse, I looked, didn’t I? Didn’t know there was a camera, waiting to catch me out.’ He looked almost affronted at the trick played on him.

  ‘And the special parcels?’ Rocco prompted him.

  ‘People,’ said Maurat simply. ‘He wanted me to pick up people.’

  ‘More illegals.’

  ‘Well, they certainly weren’t day trippers on an excursion, were they? From North Africa, he said. Arabs who couldn’t get papers.’

  Rocco nodded. Under the terms of independence the previous year, Algerians were free to move between France and their homeland, to take full advantage of all that had to offer. It wasn’t without its problems, and created some antagonism towards them. But for many it had worked very well. Other North African nationals had seen this and tried entering the country illegally, posing as Algerians. This had soon created a situation where unscrupulous gangs could ‘assist’ those illegals … for a payment.

  ‘How did they get in the country?’ queried Desmoulins.

  ‘No idea. All I know is, I had to drive down to Chalonsur-Saône – that’s actually south of Dijon – leave my truck unlocked at a depot for an hour, then go back and pick it up. The illegals would be hidden inside the normal cargo. The contact paid me up front as usual … said if anything went wrong, he’d cover the fine. If it went well, I’d be paid a bonus.’

  ‘How many were there?’

  ‘Eight, they told me – all men. To begin with, anyway.’

  ‘To begin with?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Maurat looked through the windscreen, clearly rerunning the events in his mind. ‘I was told eight, but when I stopped to drop them off near the marker, only seven got out. Number eight was still in the back. Dead.’

  Rocco gave a sigh. As simple as that. But there was one detail he needed to confirm what he already knew. ‘Was it natural causes?’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Maurat snorted. ‘He might have been sick, but that’s not what killed him. I saw it when I picked him up to get him off my truck. Blood all over the place. Took me ages to clean up the shit they’d left before I dared use the truck again. One of the others must’ve done it; had some sort of argument and let him have it, I suppose.’

  ‘Done what?’ He needed the detail to clinch it.

  Maurat shivered suddenly. ‘Poor bastard had been stabbed to death. After travelling all that way, too. Didn’t do him much good, did it?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ‘Do you know where these men were heading?’ asked Rocco.

  ‘No idea,’ said Maurat. His voice carried the flat ring of truth. ‘I was told to drop them off at a marker post and tell them to cross the canal to the north bank and turn left. After that, they were on their own. I figured someone was waiting for them on the other side, staying out of sight.’

  ‘Why out there? There’s nothing but fields.’

  ‘Christ, how would I know? I was given the post number and told not to miss it – or else.’

  ‘So what do you think was to happen to them once you’d dropped them off?’

  ‘Like I said, someone must have been waiting.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  Maurat shrugged. ‘Makes sense, doesn’t it? Why dump illegals at a precise spot like that unless it was for a reason? Factory work, most like … that’s what they’re doing everywhere else. I’ve seen them all over. Slaves, they are – and nothing they can do, else they’ll be shipped straight back.’ He seemed content to ignore the irony of his own involvement in the business.

  Factory work. Rocco thought back to Tourrain’s savage comments about Algerians working in factories. He’d taken it for a purely racist rant generated by the common belief that foreigners were taking French jobs at below-market rates. What he hadn’t considered was the possibility that the workers might be illegals and not necessarily from Algeria. With no records and no paperwork to worry about, it must have been very tempting for employers facing ever-higher costs to take the occasional ‘blank’ face onto the workforce. But surely someone would find out and let word slip? It didn’t take much for people to feel a growing resentment when it came to having a job snatched away from them. He wondered how much Tourrain knew about the business and decided it would be interesting to have a chat with him later.

  ‘Did you hear from this man afterwards? Someone would have noticed if they only got seven people.’

  ‘Yeah, I did,’ Maurat muttered tiredly. ‘He contacted me. I told him the eighth bloke was dead when I found him, and I’d dumped him down the embankment. I had to, in case anyone searched the lorry. Got blood all over me.’

  ‘What was his reaction?’

  ‘He was pissed, wasn’t he? Threatened to report me to the cops and show them the photos he’d taken. Then he calmed down. That’s when he told me another one had gone missing as well.’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘Yes. This one was different, though.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I bloody knew I was right. I knew it.’ Maurat sounded bitter. ‘He reckoned only six men arrived at the factory. Six men.’ He looked at Rocco expectantly, as if he would know precisely what he was talking about.

  ‘So?’

  ‘The seventh was a woman.’

  ‘You saw her?’ Probably the wife of one of the illegals, but maybe not.

  ‘Not clearly – it was too dark. But I guessed when she jumped down. She was carrying a heavy bundle.’

  ‘Describe your contact,’ said Rocco. There really wasn’t much more this man could tell him.

  ‘Late thirties, glasses, looks fit … smart suit and flash car. Like any other business type – but scarier. Hard-looking. He’d got this aura, like he couldn’t be touched.’

  A face swam unbidden into Rocco’s head. Lambert? Could it really be the same man or was he grasping at straws? But the more he thought about it, the more certain he became. He hadn’t seen Lambert wearing glasses, but maybe the man was vain enough not to wear them too often. In any case, as he’d found in the past, such props were easy to get hold of and career criminals knew that, simple as they were, they were sufficient to make identification by witnesses difficult if not impossible.

  ‘What kind of car?’

  ‘A cream DS 19.’

  ‘What did the man at Chalon look like?’

  Maurat shrugged. ‘Medium height, bit of a gut, always wore overalls and one of those American John Deere caps. That’s a make of tractor. He had a Harley flag on the wall of the depot. Reckon he thought it made him look American.’ He snorted in derision. ‘The depot, in case you’re interested, is a small place on the road to Autun, west of the town centre. It’s an agricultural supply depot but they trade in more than farm machinery and fertiliser, if you get my meaning. I never got the man’s name.’

  Rocco guessed he was lying about that bit, but let it slide. For reasons he’d never truly understood, criminals were often happy to give descriptions of contacts but stopped short of actually naming them, as if it was a line they simply couldn’t cross. He started the car.

  Maurat gave him a scowl. ‘Hey – where are you going?’

  ‘Not me – we. I’m taking you into custody for your own safety.’

  ‘What? You can’t do that!’ Maurat looked at Desmoulins for support but the detective merely shrugged.

  ‘You’re part of a pipeline running people into the country,’ he explained pointedly, as if to a child. ‘You said it yourself: if you talk they’ll kill you.’ He puffed out his lips. Moron.

  ‘You’ve got five minutes to convince your mother to go and stay with friends,’ said Rocco. ‘Then we’re leaving.’ He hadn’t yet figured out how this was going to go down with Massin; pulling in a man from another district without the knowledge of the local cops was not approved procedure. But he’d face that problem in the morning. Leaving Maurat home and free could only end up with one of two outcomes: Maurat dead or on the run.

  Maurat seemed genuinely stunned, as if the threat he might be under had so far been i
maginary. Then the full realisation began to hit him. ‘Christ … I didn’t think.’

  As he reached for the door handle, Rocco touched his arm. ‘Try to run and I’ll shoot you in the leg. You haven’t got much time.’

  He waited until Maurat had scuttled away into the darkness and Desmoulins joined him in the front seat, then drove up to the driver’s house and stopped right outside.

  Five minutes later, they watched as the old lady hobbled out of the front door and down the path, shaking her head. She was carrying a large bag. As she reached the pavement, she turned and gave them a stiff-armed, clenched fist salute, then stamped off along the street.

  ‘Nice,’ said Desmoulins. ‘Very nice. We deal with such a sophisticated clientele.’

  As soon as Maurat joined them, Rocco headed back to Amiens, mulling over what the driver had told them. If what he’d said was true, it meant Lambert – or someone like him – was bringing in illegals to work on the cheap. No papers, no insurance, no tax, no records. And plenty of cheap replacements if anything went wrong. As he’d also said, it was happening all over, and was probably the tip of the iceberg.

  What it didn’t explain was why one of the men had been killed in the truck, and why one of them – a woman – had disappeared before reaching their destination.

  By the time they got back to Amiens and booked Maurat into a cell, it was too late to do anything productive, so Rocco decided to call it a night. His plan the following morning was to brief Massin about Maurat’s story, so that the commissaire could organise an investigation of the pipeline and smooth any ruffled feathers with the Saint-Quentin police. He also wanted to take a walk along the canal where the body had been discovered. That might yet yield up some fresh ideas about what had happened there.

  As it turned out, the canal walk was more imminent than he’d planned.

  Just as he was turning to leave the station car park, the young night duty officer jogged out and tapped on the side window.