Death on the Rive Nord lr-2

by Adrian Magson

  ‘A few. Why — weren’t you in on the sweep?’ Desmoulins had never thought much of Tourrain. The idea that he’d slid off when everyone else was busy came as no surprise.

  ‘I was at home, tucked up in bed, thank you.’ Tourrain wore a smug grin. ‘If you’re mug enough to get volunteered for lifting shitty illegals, that’s your problem.’

  ‘Really? That’s funny — I thought I saw you here just before the off.’

  ‘Not me.’ Tourrain turned and strolled away down the corridor, jingling coins. ‘Ask my girlfriend if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘I would,’ Desmoulins replied with feeling. ‘But she’s in your trouser pocket.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Rocco came to in total darkness. He was lying on his back, jammed against something hard. The air was icy and still, heavy with the smell of stale water. Something was dripping close by in a steady plunk-plunk rhythm, and he tried to process his scrambled thoughts through a pounding headache, to recognise the noise for what it was. The smell was oddly familiar but he couldn’t think why.

  He tried to pull his hands together, but they had been wrenched behind his back and tied with rope. He sighed and slumped back. Don’t panic. Think it through.

  He remembered being by the lock, facing Metz and Tourrain. Then Tourrain was running away and Metz came at him with his steel bar. Then the gun. Metz falling into the lock basin, a long way down and out of sight.

  Then blackness.

  He’d been suckered.

  He wasted a few seconds in self-recrimination, cursing himself for walking into a trap. He’d been so centred on Metz and Tourrain, he hadn’t thought that Lambert would have sent backup. Probably the guard from the front gate.

  Not that it mattered now. All that could wait. For now he had to get out of this place… wherever this place was.

  He felt a tremor go through his hands where they were braced against the angle of the floor and a wall. A distant rumble sounded, like a motor behind a wall, muffled and indistinct. He moved his fingers, feeling the surface. Metal with a rough texture. Paint? No, not paint. Too rough for that. It felt flaky, loose. He sniffed, absorbing the smell.

  Rust.

  Was he in the rear of a truck somewhere, or a storage unit? A truck would explain the vibration, but why the plunk of dripping water? Then a faint movement came and he felt his weight shifting as the floor tilted slightly. He tried instinctively to lean away from the direction gravity was pulling him, but then the movement stopped. A spiralling noise came next, followed by another shift of the floor, and the musty smell in the air was suddenly stronger, invading his nose and mouth so powerfully he could taste it.

  Suddenly Rocco knew where he was: he was on a boat. And very close by was another boat — the one which had just been manoeuvring and causing the vibration and movement of water.

  He was on the canal.

  He rolled over and scrambled to his knees, immediately bouncing his head painfully off a hard surface above him. He winced and sank down, fighting nausea. Not a good idea, he thought, when you’ve had one bang on the head, to go and give yourself another.

  He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. He was in total darkness, so he had to rely on his remaining senses to read his surroundings. Think. He could tell the space he was in was confined, both by the height and the absence of echo in the atmosphere. It could be a locker of some kind; most boats, where junk was dangerous to leave lying around, had them for stowage of equipment.

  He flexed his hands. His fingers were going numb. He felt for the ropes binding him, trying to assess what his captors had used. He tried to concentrate on the shape and texture. Standard thick rope… hemp, he guessed, and slightly oily to the touch. Not new, then. Did that mean the boat was old? A working vessel? Or one moored on the canal for renovation work? Old meant weak points and a chance to break free. Whatever. He was a prisoner for as long as Lambert wanted him unless he could get out.

  He sank back and used his hands to explore the floor. Metal — and flaky with rust, just as he’d thought. He scrabbled backwards until he fetched up against a wall. Also metal — and cold. So, an old vessel, not modern materials. He rolled over and scrabbled the other way, walking his fingers across the floor like twin spiders in a mating dance. Another wall. At a guess little more than his own body length from the first one.

  He turned at what he judged to be ninety degrees and scrabbled again, pushing himself backwards until he met another upright surface. This one was wood, with a hollow resonance. He rolled over and scrabbled away from it. This time his feet hit one upright and his shoulders another. His hands felt empty space.

  Rocco considered it. Instinct told him it couldn’t be a hole. Holes were wasteful on boats and served no useful purpose. He leant back and felt the upright against his shoulder, trying to picture the space where he might be lying. He inched up on to his knees and moved to where he could feel the upright with his hands. Metal. Cold and unforgiving, sloping away from him.

  Then he had it; he was in the bow, right up against the sharp angle where the bulkheads came together. It meant the wooden wall he’d come into contact with across the other side was either a wall or a door. Or both. Either way, it was the only way out.

  He shuffled back across the space until he felt himself against the wooden wall. Then he relaxed, thinking about what he could do. To kick through the wall might be possible — he had plenty to brace himself against. But it would be noisy. If any of Lambert’s men were around, they’d simply come back and knock him senseless. And with his hands tied he would be helpless to fend them off.

  He shut out those thoughts and listened. The spiralling noise he’d heard earlier had changed. It was now deeper in tone, and more of a gurgle, like water on the move through a narrow space.

  Then the floor shifted violently.

  At first he thought it was his imagination, the mind playing tricks on a brain denied light, perspective or shape. Then it came again, and he felt his body weight move, dragging his centre of gravity to one side — towards one of the bulkheads.

  Moments later it shifted back. Only now he felt as if the slope of the floor was going another way. Towards the front of the boat. With it came a louder gurgling noise.

  The boat was sinking.

  Rocco rolled onto his back and brought his knees up to his chest, bracing his hands on the floor. There was no time for niceties; if this boat was sinking, it was because someone had meant it to. Which meant there was unlikely to be anyone still on board. Just him.

  He kicked out with both feet, slamming them into the wooden surface as hard as he could. But there was a dull echo, which told him it was solid. Too solid. He tried again, winding himself up and imagining a point beyond the wall, to a space he wanted his feet to reach. He kicked again, this time slightly to one side, and thought he heard a small creak in the wood. Another kick produced a sharp splitting sound.

  He paused and gasped for air. The effort of using so much energy in a confined space was beginning to tell on him. He was cold and numb and his head was pounding through being hit and the lack of fresh air. But he had to carry on or die here.

  The floor shifted again, and this time the noise was all around him, as if the boat was flexing itself, ready to die. Rocco’s hands and buttocks felt suddenly icy cold, as if exposed to a bitter wind. He shook his head, trying to make sense if it. How could wind get in here, when he couldn’t get out? It took a few moments for his numbed brain to realise what was happening. It wasn’t cold air he could feel gathering around him.

  It was water. And it was coming in.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Rocco bit down on a feeling of panic. The water was seeping in through gaps in the panelling. Wooden panelling. And wood was weaker than the metal hull. He still had time if he could do enough damage to the wall and get out.

  Then a surge of water flooded around his hands and buttocks, the smell bitter and tainted with oil or diesel. The floor shifted aga
in. This time he felt it going down. The boat was now weighted with water and getting heavier by the second.

  With calm desperation, he changed tactics. He shuffled backwards until he could straighten his legs. Then he sat up and took several deep breaths and began to force his hands apart. Each movement produced an answering creak from the ropes binding his wrists. He wouldn’t be able to break them, but it might gain him an extra few millimetres of movement.

  He tried again, his muscles knotting against his clothing with the effort. Another surge of water flushed around his waist and covered the bindings. The boat was sinking faster. He tried to recall how deep Claude had said the canal was. Two metres? Three? Five? Whatever, if this continued, the air here would be forced out around the top of his prison, to be replaced by water. He would drown within minutes.

  Not in this lifetime, he thought angrily, and took a deep breath. He rolled until he was balanced on his upper back, supported by his forearms. Foul water sloshed around his face, oily and bitter. He blew out a gush of air, and at the same time pushed down with his wrists and jerked up with his knees.

  His bound wrists slid over his buttocks and came to rest behind his knees.

  And that, he thought grimly, was the easy bit.

  He breathed in again, then exhaled, sliding his wrists down the back of his legs and lifting his knees until the binding stopped at his heels. He pulled his knees up as far as they would go, but that was it. The shoes. Take off the shoes! He kicked them off and tried again as more water bubbled around his chest. He could feel himself lifting off the floor as a momentary weightlessness took over. Without touch, he couldn’t control the movements of his body; without friction, he could exert no pressure to help himself. For a split second the bindings stuck on his heels again and he bellowed aloud with frustration, no longer worried about who might be listening. The blood was pounding in his ears and he was experiencing a floating feeling that had nothing to do with buoyancy.

  With a final desperate push, he jerked his knees upwards and thrust downwards, his feet free of restriction.

  Splashing through the water, he groped at the panelling with his fingers until he found a vertical crack in the wood. It was too straight to be anything but a join. And joins were weaker than solid wood. He pushed against it but felt no give. Moving a few centimetres to one side, he tried again. This time he felt a small amount of movement. He ran his hands up to the top and felt the same.

  Time to go. He turned over in the water and put his hands on the bulkhead floor for purchase. His mouth was now barely out of the water. Lifting his head and taking a deep breath, he ducked down and braced himself on the floor, picturing the space beyond the panelling.

  The backwards double kick came with all the desperation and anger and the need to live that Rocco could muster. His bare feet hit the wooden panelling with the force of twin battering rams, and suddenly there was more water, this time surging around his head and spinning him around.

  He rolled over and pushed against the panelling. It began to give. Using his powerful hands like grabs, he tore at the wood like a mad thing, then launched himself forward, squeezing his shoulders through and into a narrow, jagged gap. His coat snagged momentarily on a projection, but tore free as he heaved himself through.

  Suddenly his hands were out of the water and into cold air.

  Gulping back the instinct to breathe in, he pushed towards a patch of grey shimmering up ahead. Bits of debris swirled around him and something curled round his leg. He kicked frantically, barely resisting panic. It was a length of rope. He doubled over and ripped at it with his hands until it dropped clear, then lunged forward again. His lungs, sore from breathing the foul air, were now in agony.

  Something heavy bumped against him. He pushed it away and felt rough material bisected with heavy stitching. What felt like a plastic bag moved against his face, cold and slimy. He brushed it off. Another, larger object bobbed alongside him, heavy and cumbersome. He pushed through and saw the patch of light growing bigger.

  Another kick and he surfaced, coughing and retching. He was in a long cabin lined with small, square windows covered in heavy curtains. The water was halfway up the walls of the cabin, which he could now see vaguely through the gloom, his eyes already accustomed to darkness. A clutter of debris: plastic cups, food containers, cigarette packets, pieces of fabric and torn paper, and the edge of what appeared to be the mattress off a bed.

  He was on the boat Nicole had shown him; the rotting hulk where the people from the truck had hidden. The atmosphere up here was stale and rancid, branded with the memory of unwashed bodies and damp clothing, of desperate men hiding until they could move on. But for Rocco it was almost sweet. He knew without being able to see that the ceiling and walls would be dirty yellow.

  Then he remembered something else Claude had told him about the canal just here: a fault line on the bottom full of soft sediment which could swallow the barge whole.

  He stilled the onset of panic, breathing raggedly. Still time to get out.

  At the far end lay some wooden steps and the door to the rear deck. He pushed gently on the floor of the cabin and floated towards freedom. But the sudden movement caused a wash to break against the cabin’s walls, the water slapping like a mocking handclap, daring him to rush. The boat yawed lazily, debris floating and bucking like small boats on a rough sea. Then something heavy brushed Rocco’s leg. Whatever it was seemed to take hold, unwilling to break contact, and he kicked against it, imagination burning unseen horrors into his brain. After everything down in the hull, it was too much to ignore. He had to look. He turned as a dark shape lifted out of the water and rolled slowly away from him, shedding water from a cold, grey face and sightless eyes and a bright-red shirt.

  The worker from the factory. Metz’s final victim.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  ‘If I didn’t know better, Inspector, I’d say you suffered from suicidal tendencies. Were you in the habit as a child of throwing yourself out of very tall trees?’

  Doctor Rizzotti dabbed at a cut on Rocco’s forehead, spreading a yellow-orange stain of iodine across the skin, then stood back with a smile to admire his handiwork. ‘Not bad, though I say it myself,’ he commented. ‘Although I’ve seen healthier-looking corpses after a Saturday-night bar brawl.’ He handed Rocco some tablets and a glass of water. ‘Take two of these now, then two every four hours. They’ll help with the headaches but not with being beaten up.’

  ‘You finished?’ Rocco stood up, swallowed two of the tablets dry and made for the door. His clothes had been swapped for clean ones, but still consisted of dark slacks and a black shirt. His English brogues were at the bottom of the canal, but he’d replaced them with an older pair.

  ‘Yes, off you go.’ Rizzotti shook his head. ‘Do come back soon. I must say, it makes a change from examining corpses. Not as much fun, but at least they lie still.’

  After surfacing out of the sinking boat, Rocco had walked to the nearest road and hitched a lift to Poissons, where he’d washed and changed out of his wet clothes. Then he’d got Claude to bring him to Amiens while a team had been called in to search the sunken barge and bring up the body of the factory worker. Lambert’s plan had been simple. Get rid of Rocco and the dead man by placing them both on the barge, then sink it in the deepest part of the canal and nobody would be any the wiser. If the bodies did surface later, it would be next to impossible to make a connection with the factory.

  ‘You should have called me,’ Claude had muttered, when he told him what had happened. ‘I would have helped. You think my work here takes all my time?’ He puffed his cheeks in mild exasperation. ‘Mother of God, you could have been killed twice over! Barbarians!’

  ‘You were looking after Nicole.’

  ‘Sure. But Jean-Mi kept telling me to get lost; said I was spoiling his fun and he could keep her perfectly safe without me hanging around like the angel of doom.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Some inlet off t
he canal the other side of Amiens. He wouldn’t tell me where exactly; said it was better that way. But I think I know where.’

  ‘Can you take me there? I need to speak to her.’

  ‘Sure, but only after you see a doctor.’ Claude eyed the cuts and bruises on his face. ‘You could be suffering from concussion.’

  He’d resisted, but in the end, to stop Claude’s nagging, it had been easier to let Rizzotti take a look at him. Fortunately, it had proven to be superficial, with no serious damage.

  He sat back while Claude drove out to the west of the town, where he negotiated a series of narrow roads until they arrived at the canal. A small inlet was concealed by a line of poplar trees, with Jean-Michel’s boat anchored at the far end. The former police officer saw them coming and waved. A shotgun was resting on the roof of the cabin.

  Claude turned off the engine and looked at Rocco. ‘You don’t look happy. This has nothing to do with what happened last night, does it?’

  ‘No. It doesn’t. At least, not directly.’

  ‘She’s been through a lot, that one.’

  ‘I know. But there’s something I need to ask her.’ He’d considered getting Alix to come with him, but decided against it. The presence of another woman might inhibit Nicole in some way, and he needed to hear her story without fear of hidden details.

  ‘OK. You know best. I’ll watch the approaches.’ Claude got out of the car and turned to survey the main canal. Rocco walked towards the boat, and Jean-Michel nodded towards the rear door, then wandered away to join his friend.

  ‘I need to know what happened,’ said Rocco, sitting down in the cabin across from Nicole. Massi was asleep in a bunk, wrapped in a blanket. The cabin was snug, warmed by a small but efficient log stove. ‘On that truck.’

  Nicole nodded, her hands clasped in front of her. She looked suddenly small, and no longer as physically confident. Yet there was a resolve about her, as if nothing was going to penetrate her armour. The soft murmur of Claude and Jean- Michel talking on the canal bank gave the boat an oddly leisurely atmosphere, yet Rocco felt anything but relaxed.