Death on the Marais

by Adrian Magson

  ‘Let’s just say he was in the woods looking for shells. Wouldn’t he have taken his van to haul them back in? No point making two trips.’

  ‘Of course, normally. But …’ Claude looked unsure, and for the first time it occurred to Rocco that the two men might be friends. Yet here he was assuming otherwise and relying on this man to help him.

  ‘Are you with me on this?’ he asked casually. ‘Because now’s the time if you want to bow out and go tend your roses. Is Marthe a friend of yours?’ It was rough, bordering on offensive, but he needed to know where they stood. Having Claude Lamotte working half-heartedly would only undermine his task.

  Claude looked offended. ‘Me and him – friends? That stunted little bigot? Christ, no. What made you think that?’ The denial had a natural ring of authenticity and Rocco breathed more easily.

  ‘Sorry. Just making sure. What’s his story, then? Is he married?’

  Claude puffed out his cheeks and inspected a small cannon shell lying on the table. ‘Not married, no. What sane woman would have him, with this lot? He arrived here about five years back, from somewhere further south. He’s openly communist and proud of it, but he’s no political brain. The only factor preventing him being a Trotskyite is he probably can’t spell it. He hates fascists, priests, Americans, the British, industrialists and Parisians … but not necessarily in that order. If he’s got any real friends, I’ve never met one, although he got pally for a while with a neighbour along the street. All in all, he keeps to himself, even when he’s in the café.’

  ‘No kidding.’ Rocco remembered the man’s bad breath. He studied the two artillery shells. ‘I bet he doesn’t get too many repeat visitors.’

  ‘Probably not.’ Claude put the cannon shell down with utmost care and looked at Rocco across the bench. ‘You think he’s involved in that woman’s death?’

  Rocco shook his head. ‘I’m a detective, not a medium. I just wanted to see where he lived, that’s all. A man’s home can tell you all manner of things, if you know how to look. Most of all, though, I’d still like to know what he was doing in the wood behind the cemetery.’

  ‘Coincidence?’

  Rocco turned and walked towards the stream and stared out at the trees. ‘Coincidence is a lame defence. You’d be amazed how often it crops up, though. What’s over there?’

  ‘The marais. The lakes. Take a straight line from here and it’s a short walk. We passed them on the way back, although they’re not easily visible from the road.’

  ‘Handy.’ Rocco walked along the stream to where a huge weathered tree trunk had been laid to form a rough footbridge across the stream. The top surface had been chopped flat, the axe marks clearly visible, and wide cracks ran the length of the trunk. He bent down and inspected the dirt at the end of the trunk.

  Claude said, ‘I wouldn’t step on there if I were you.’

  Something in his tone caught Rocco’s attention.

  ‘Why?’

  Claude looked faintly embarrassed. ‘I don’t know if it’s true, but four years ago, not long after he arrived, some boys coming back from fishing in the marais saw Didier putting something in those cracks. They used this as an unofficial short cut home.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He told them the bridge was booby-trapped. Anyone stepping on it would be blown to bits. They swore he wasn’t joking.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Me?’ Claude shrugged. ‘I looked into it, of course, him being a stranger still. But I couldn’t find anything. I thought he was having them on … you know, playing the mad, bad bastard just to keep them off his property.’

  ‘And was he?’

  ‘Not sure. About a month later, there was a hell of a bang in the middle of the night. When we got down here, we expected to find Didier in bits around the yard. Instead we found a young wild boar spread all over the bridge, blood and guts everywhere.’

  ‘What did Didier say?’

  ‘He claimed it must have picked up a grenade he’d been working on. I couldn’t prove otherwise, so had to let it drop. Since then, nobody’s been near the place.’

  Clever, thought Rocco. An effective way of Didier ensuring his privacy – unless he was as mad as a snake.

  As they walked back to the car, Claude waved a hand around at the yard. ‘So what does this tell you?’ he asked, as if clues were jumping off the ground to be counted. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Not much. Not yet.’ Rocco slid behind the wheel, eyes on the house. No movement, no sounds. Too quiet, though. ‘One thing I do know: he’s in there, watching us.’

  ‘What? But how? We came directly here.’ Claude looked ready to get out and go and beat on the door, but Rocco put out a restraining hand.

  ‘Bicycle. There are tracks leading off and on to the footbridge, and a half-smoked Gitanes – fairly fresh, if that’s not a contradiction. He came straight across from the road to the station, cutting out the loop. He must have just beat us.’ He started the engine. ‘Never mind. Now I know a bit more about him than I did ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘He has a back way into the marais, and whatever he was doing in the woods, he wasn’t out looking for shells.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Sgt Rocco? Solid … professional. Pity he hates officers. But hey, who doesn’t?

  Capt. Antoine Caspard – Gang Task Force – Paris Central

  As tired as he was after his busy introduction to Poissons, Rocco’s first night in his new lodgings was disturbed by a series of skittering and rolling noises in the attic above his head, and with tangled thoughts of Colonel François Massin, now divisional commissaire of police. The other tenants Mme Denis had warned him about were plainly unperturbed by the new arrival, and seemed to be playing football from one side of the attic to the other. It was only when he eventually leapt out of bed and charged up a narrow flight of steps into the loft space that he discovered the floor littered with dry walnuts. Of the fruit rats, there was no sign.

  He went back to bed, where Massin intruded against an unwelcome backdrop of shattered trees, ruptured earth and the cries of the wounded and dying. He turned on his face, trying to blot out the memory of that final battle, but the images remained crisp and vivid, leaving him bathed in perspiration, the sheets tangled around his body like snakes.

  Massin. The commanding officer had come up to the forward positions against orders, trailing two nervous adjutants, hands on their guns and alert for the first Viet Minh to hurl himself over the earthworks. Rocco, from his position near one of the guns, had watched the officer strutting about the lines in his immaculate uniform, by turn snapping at battle-weary troops like a teacher controlling recalcitrant children, then reassuring them about reinforcements and a change of tactics that they all knew would never come. Already all but surrounded by enemy forces, they were too exhausted to be astonished at the stupid self-importance of the man, most turning their backs as he approached, to avoid the embarrassment of eye contact.

  Seeing what he perceived as a gap in the defences, Massin had ordered more men forward, ignoring the more experienced NCOs who had seen it for what it was – a killing zone. Low down, with only one way in and one way out, it was overlooked by enemy positions, whose snipers had already notched up too many unwary sentries.

  An hour later, after a blizzard of fire, just three men came struggling back. The others had fallen victim to a heavy machine gun on a distant hill, no doubt smuggled into position under cover of a previous barrage.

  Shortly afterwards, they heard the opening barrage coming in as the Viet Minh began their final assault. The ground shook as the shells rained down on the inadequate dugouts housing the worn-out mix of French, Vietnamese and legionnaire defenders. Plumes of earth, bodies and material seemed to float in the air, each explosion creating another gap, another hole in the line. More men lost.

  Turning to help a mortar team which had lost a man to a sniper, Rocco saw Colonel Massin stumble out of a dugout, face white and
uniform dishevelled, staring around as if he could not understand the events that were unfolding. His mouth was working, but in the noise and confusion, his words went unheard. Another barrage came in, and Massin fell into a foxhole, where he lay screaming and kicking his legs, hands over his ears, his cries finally shrill enough to find a gap in the furore and reach the ears of the men on the defences. One of the nearest had turned his head and looked at him with mild detachment, then spat on the ground in disgust before turning to resume firing.

  Then the order came to get Massin out. Too big a trophy to risk him being captured, said the instruction; bring him out by whatever means possible.

  Rocco and two others were assigned to the task, along with Massin’s two adjutants. Under covering fire from the men on the front, they had moved on foot through the last known gap left towards the rear. As the small group moved out, the incoming barrage grew more intense, pounding the positions in a deadly, relentless drum roll. By the time they had covered a desperate, muscle-burning thousand metres, the barrage was beginning to fade. Another five hundred metres and it fell silent altogether, save for an occasional haunting gunshot.

  Rocco slept, his dreams vivid. Eventually, at eight, he pitched himself from his bed feeling like death, his head reeling. He put on some coffee, then walked around the large garden, head up and tasting the morning air. It was fresh and cool, completely free of his usual intake of petrol and other inner-city fumes, and he breathed deeply for the first time in years.

  A honking at the front of the house drew him to the front gate, where a grey Renault 2CV Fourgonnette stood in the middle of the lane. Mme Denis and two other women were standing by the rear doors. The driver, a lugubrious man in his sixties, waved a thumb towards the back. ‘Help yourself, Inspector – settle up at the end of the week.’

  Rocco went through the greeting rituals with Mme Denis and her companions and helped himself to a baguette. He studied the car, remembering Claude’s recommendation of its finer points. Somehow he couldn’t see himself even squeezing inside, let alone driving one. He ambled back to the kitchen, where the aroma of coffee was replacing that of dust and mouse droppings, and settled down at the table. Breaking off one end of the baguette, he chewed the still-warm bread with relish, chasing it down with a mouthful of coffee. Stretched his legs out and sighed.

  For the first time, Dien Bien Phu and everywhere since – even Clichy – seemed a long way away.

  By ten, nursing a mild headache, he was heading back towards the cemetery. On the way he stopped outside the co-op and went inside. He was greeted by a raft of pleasant smells. A pretty, dark-haired woman was serving, and nodded in reply to his general good morning. The three other customers all turned and murmured back, eyeing him at length without a flicker of embarrassment before going back to their shopping.

  Rocco forced a smile and waited; it was worse than being before a promotion panel. When the queue had gone, he selected some cheese, cooked meats and pickles. If he was going to live in the country, he might as well get used to country living, preferably without too much effort.

  The woman rang up his purchases and put them in a bag.

  ‘Having a moving-in party, Inspector?’ she said with a smile. He was surprised, expecting more reserve towards an outsider. In Paris, he would have been served with little or no exchange, treated like the stranger he was.

  ‘This is the first course,’ he replied, and handed her the money, instantly feeling out of place, an amateur. The truth was, he had come to prefer the larger city shops, where contact was minimal and the choice was endless and not open to comment. Here, the scrutiny felt almost intimate. ‘Perhaps you could recommend a main course?’ He wasn’t sure where that had come from, and began to look for a way out.

  ‘Chicken’s good,’ she replied, ‘and easy to cook.’ She took off a cotton serving glove and held out her hand. Her fingers were soft and cool, but with a firm grip. ‘Francine Thorin. Welcome to Poissons, Inspector. We don’t bite, you know, unless you’re an inspector of taxes. Then we just won’t serve you.’

  ‘Rocco,’ he said briefly, feeling the conversation getting beyond his control. He gestured towards the door and said, ‘Thanks. Sorry … I have to be going.’ He turned and walked out, face burning, and felt her smile boring into his back all the way out of the door.

  Back at the cemetery, he inspected the ground around the monument. There was no sign of John Cooke, and all traces of the body and the crime scene markers had been cleared away.

  He wasn’t expecting to discover anything new, but he sometimes found that going back to the scene once all the evidence had been cleared away opened up new lines of thought and insight. But not this time. If there was something there, he wasn’t seeing it.

  He walked up through the cemetery to where it abutted the wood, and hopped over the wall. Stepping cautiously into the trees, he negotiated a straggly wire fence half-buried in the undergrowth, recalling what Claude had said about the deadly contents of this place. He felt a shiver run up his legs at what might be lying in wait beneath his feet, and stood for a moment, absorbing the atmosphere, tuning in to the scenery around him. The breeze was lighter than yesterday, but there was still the rustling in the leaves, like whispering gossips, their words sibilant and foreign.

  No images today, though; no clamminess.

  He breathed easily and studied the ground. He was standing roughly where he had seen Didier Marthe yesterday. Over to his right, a patch of nettles lay crushed and bent. Further on, a section of ground cover had been disturbed, in clear contrast to the area immediately around it. Marthe had walked across here, trying to stay on open ground, where his traces would be less likely to show. No doubt the poacher he had once been … or maybe was still.

  Rocco followed the trail, stepping carefully in Marthe’s footsteps, not deviating from the route by a centimetre. Although much heavier than the scrap man, he figured he was reducing his odds of setting off anything if he trod the same path.

  At the edge of the wood, he found a large patch of what he thought looked like bluebell leaves, bent and broken, long past their prime. Nearby, on some disturbed soil, was a faint zigzag pattern too regular to be made by nature, and a thin line of flattened plants leading away towards the track.

  Bicycle tyres.

  He followed the marks out onto the track and walked down past the cemetery. There, the signs ran out.

  * * *

  By midday he was in Amiens, working his way through various levels of administration at the station, showing his credentials and transfer papers and trying to commit to memory the names of those he met. Most of the officers and civilian staff were cordial, with a few wary greetings, mostly among the other detectives manning their desks. He guessed that they had heard about him from Canet, who was out on a job, and were suspicious about his presence, a spy come to haunt them and report on their work. The air around them was a thick fug of cigarette smoke, reminding him of the office in Paris, except that the atmosphere here was quieter, less frenetic, less an air of tension and more of passive duty.

  He saw Perronnet in the first-floor corridor. The senior officer nodded cordially but made no comment, merely indicating a door further along. Rocco took the hint and went to the door. Knocked and entered.

  Massin was seated behind a large desk perusing the contents of a buff folder. The office was sparsely furnished: no certificates on the walls, no cups or medals, no testimonials or glitter from a successful career. Rocco gave him the benefit of the doubt: maybe he hadn’t had time to put them up yet. Still busy getting his feet under the desk and arse-kicking, as Canet had called it.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Massin stopped reading and stared at him. ‘You have any developments in your investigation?’

  Developments, thought Rocco irritably. We’ve barely begun, he wanted to say, but settled for a vague, ‘Nothing yet. I’m checking in, that’s all. Keeping the paper shufflers happy. And I want to see what the pathologist says about the body.’
>
  ‘Pathologist?’ Light glinted on Massin’s glasses. ‘This office doesn’t have that luxury. Not yet, anyway. I plan to change that.’ He nodded sideways. ‘The department, as such, is next door. I haven’t seen it myself yet.’ He closed the folder, his finger marking the page, and sat back. ‘You should do well to remember something, Inspector. There are ways of operating out here that do not translate well from the city.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Rocco had never liked the official use of cryptic talk when a direct order would work much better.

  ‘It means you cannot go round cracking heads or throwing people into meat wagons out here.’ Massin tapped the folder in his hand, and Rocco realised it was his personnel file, passed on from Clichy. ‘Your record seems to indicate you have form when it comes to using harsh methods.’

  Rocco sighed. He’d had just two complaints about excessive use of force in his career, both unsubstantiated. One against a child molester with a good lawyer, the other a pimp fond of using a razor on his girls’ faces. Neither charge had made it to court, but the rumour had clearly remained on his record like toxic mud. Massin must be aware of that.

  ‘I’ll try to mend my ways,’ he said flatly.

  ‘See you do.’ Massin winced slightly. ‘As I understand the situation, the “initiative” which put you out here places you in a unique position, Inspector Rocco. You have what amounts to a free hand in conducting investigations, no longer tied to the normal chains of command. That has not gone down well in certain parts of the justice system or the police. I hope you realise that.’