Death on the Marais

by Adrian Magson

  He read the préfecture telephone number off the sheet and was about to dial when there was a knock at the door. It was his driver.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘An update from the Ministry, sir. The duty operator in Amiens says a woman has disappeared in Poissons-les-Marais. A local shopkeeper.’

  ‘So?’ Berbier’s mind was still on Massin, deciding what approach to take. Senior policemen could be arrogant and unpredictable, especially those with something to prove. He had little regard for the man, but he would still have to be careful not to overplay his hand.

  His driver shuffled his feet and continued, ‘The investigator Rocco was present when the call came in and left the office the moment he heard. He seemed unusually concerned, they said.’

  Berbier put down the phone, a ripple of tension fluttering through him. He would call Massin later. For now, this took precedence. He had arranged for an intercept of information passing through the Amiens office for this very possibility. If Rocco was on the move, he wanted to know about it. Why the inspector should be unduly concerned about a shopkeeper disappearing he couldn’t fathom, and nor should it matter. But anything related to Poissons-les-Marais or his daughter’s death had been flagged for his attention. And Rocco was undeniably part of that.

  He made a quick decision. Things were coming to a head; he could feel it in his bones. ‘Get some men over there and find out what’s going on. You know who to look for.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The man nodded and left.

  Berbier sat down behind his desk and steepled his hands in thought. There was still time, if he played it right, to derail Rocco’s further interference. He set about mentally composing his phone call to Massin.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Rocco skidded the Citroën into the marais at speed, the tyres throwing up dirt and gravel and sending up a mad scramble of birds from the trees as the engine blasted the silence apart. Alongside him, Claude closed his eyes and held on tight, muttering what might have been a prayer to the god of all travellers.

  In spite of telling himself that Francine’s absence might be purely innocent, a part of Rocco’s brain was telling him that there was only one place where she might be – and not entirely of her own free will.

  He felt the front wheels skating on soft earth as they approached the main lodge along the narrow track. With just a few centimetres of solid ground on either side, he had little room for error. But now was not the time for caution. If his fears were correct, everything depended on getting to the lodge as fast as possible. He felt the steering wheel twitch as the ground tried to suck in the front offside tyre, and a flurry of black mud sprayed into the air and plastered itself across the windscreen. He switched on the wipers but they merely smeared the mixture across the glass, rendering the ground ahead barely visible. Rocco thrust his head out of the window and watched the ground by the front wheel, conscious that at this speed, if he made a mistake and hit wet soil, they would plough right off the track and into the nearest stretch of unforgiving ooze.

  Then they were into the turning circle in front of the lodge. Rocco stamped on the brakes, sending the heavy car into a sideways drift and spraying debris across the front of the building. They finally lurched to a stop within arm’s reach of the veranda.

  He turned off the engine and leapt from the car. He was carrying the axe from Francine’s garage. The front door was locked and solid, as before, and he already knew by the feel that the axe would make little impression. He hurried round the side of the building, checking the shutters for weaknesses, signalling Claude to do the same the other way.

  They met at the rear of the building.

  A familiar blue crate of groceries lay spilt on the ground near the back door.

  When Rocco last saw it in the co-op, it had been nearly full. But not now. A box of sugar lumps lay on the ground, with a line of ants helping themselves to the contents through a tear in the soft cardboard. Flies and wasps were feasting on a ripped bag of apples and a bunch of grapes, the fruit already turning soft and brown in the heat, and a carton of milk had ballooned and burst open. A furious army of smaller insects was taking full advantage of the bounty, a moving carpet of black dots in the spreading yellow film.

  He prodded at the back door. It was shuttered, like the front, but seemed less solid. Taking a step back, he swung the axe, putting the full weight of his shoulders behind it, and felt the blade bite deep into the wood of the shutter. Glass burst and tinkled to the floor. He swung again immediately, aiming at where the lock should be, and felt the blade hit metal. Another swing and the shutter sagged in the middle. When he ripped the axe free again, one corner came away, bits of paint flaking off like confetti. A final blow and the shutter disintegrated, showering them both with wood splinters.

  ‘Shit,’ muttered Claude, impressed. ‘Next time I need some wood chopping, I’ll give you a call.’

  Rocco kicked the door in and dropped the axe. He drew his pistol and cocked it.

  ‘You ready?’ he said. Claude nodded, eyes glittering with determination. He had produced his own automatic pistol and was holding it steady with both hands.

  They stepped into a kitchen bright with daylight reflecting through the ruined door, off tiled walls above expensive work surfaces and a stainless steel sink. A large wood-burning cooker stood against one wall, with cupboards full of crockery, glasses and pans nearby. The floor was covered in heavy-duty matting of the kind Rocco had once seen in a private yacht club bar, and everything looked clean and untouched.

  He stepped across the kitchen to a doorway leading to the main part of the lodge. A quick scan of the room and he went through, going down on one knee and sweeping the room with his pistol. Claude followed, moving to the other side of the doorway.

  The room was a large single space, scattered with cane sofas and chairs, all liberally covered with soft cushions and throws. The polished hardwood floor was draped with expensive rugs, and a pair of large, elaborate oil lamps with fluted chimneys dominated the room. The walls below the windows were lined with cupboards.

  ‘Jesus,’ breathed Claude in admiration. ‘How the hell did they get all this stuff in without anyone seeing it?’

  ‘At night, probably,’ said Rocco. He pointed to an open stairway across the room. There was no light, and it looked dark. Too dark. He motioned Claude to stay where he was and moved back into the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards. Seconds later he found a supply of candles and two torches that worked. He went back into the main room and tossed one to Claude.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ he said softly. ‘You stay down here in case anything happens.’

  Claude’s eyes were huge in the reflected torchlight. ‘Like what?’

  ‘You’ll know, believe me. If anything does, get outside and wait – but make sure it’s not me before you start shooting.’

  Claude nodded and moved across to the side of the stairway, where he merged into the gloom.

  Rocco had done this before several times, moving into darkened rooms and up ill-lit stairways. The main threat was to the lead man. It never got any easier and nobody had ever been able to convince him that taking it slowly was any safer than going in at a mad rush with gritted teeth and a blood-curdling battle cry. He took a deep breath, checked that Claude was ready, then switched on the torch and charged ahead, legs propelling him up the open stairs.

  He emerged into another large area like the one below, and swung the torch in an arc. There was absolute silence apart from his own breathing. His heart was thumping and he wondered what it would take to get him back to a peak of fitness. A short flight of stairs shouldn’t be this stressful. He breathed deeply and called down to Claude, who came up to join him, adding his light to the room.

  At first glance, it resembled an open-plan office divided by low screens. The difference was, each space contained a low, single bed and cabinet, and a small oil lamp. Small rugs covered the wooden floor, and the beds were spread with thick duvets and heavy, plumped pill
ows. The air was scented with pine. Across the room, above the kitchen area, were two open doorways with reed curtains. Rocco checked and found they were toilets with showers and small hand basins. Bottles of liquid soap and hair products stood in steel racks, and at floor level, small cabinets opened to reveal thick bath towels and pre-packed slippers, toothbrushes, combs and toothpaste.

  ‘All mod cons,’ he said. Whoever had furnished this place had decided that the guests should not go without the basics.

  ‘You can say that again.’ Claude had opened one of the bedside cabinets. Inside was a selection of porn magazines, tubes of jelly and a basket of sex toys. The last time Rocco had seen such a display was when he helped bust a brothel masquerading as a private gaming club in Clichy.

  Clearly, guests here did not mind sharing even their closest and most intimate leisure time with their colleagues. Maybe it was part of the attraction.

  Back downstairs, they checked the cupboards built into the walls. One was a well-stocked drinks cabinet full of expensive spirits and liqueurs; another housed a top-of-the-range Danish Bang & Olufsen radio and sound system wired to speakers dotted strategically around the walls. Others held a large supply of books, records, board games and – to complete the collection – a film projector and an extensive library of pornographic movies.

  Rocco tilted his head. ‘You hear that?’

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘Precisely. You could slaughter a pig in here and nobody would hear a thing. The place is soundproofed. Just right for noisy parties. Doesn’t attract any attention if things get out of hand.’ As Rocco’s torch played across the cupboard, he caught a tiny glitter of colour at the base. An object was wedged in the gap between a rug on the floor and the framework. He bent down for a closer look.

  It was a yellow-and-white earring in the shape of a marguerite.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  ‘So she was here, then. The Berbier girl.’ Claude followed Rocco out of the lodge and kicked the door shut behind him. It bounced open again, trailing the ruined lock and splinters of wood. He let it swing.

  ‘I think we knew that.’ Rocco felt oddly deflated by the discovery, the piece of jewellery merely underlining the fact that, apart from the crate of forgotten groceries, they had still found no trace of Francine Thorin. But why was the crate left out here to spoil? A few items had been taken, but he didn’t think a random thief would have left anything behind: a prize of fresh supplies like that was simply too good to miss. No, if it was anyone, it would have been Didier, snatching whatever was easy to carry and wouldn’t spoil too quickly. A man on the run has no time to plan his menu.

  ‘They must have been put off,’ he said half-aloud.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The guests for the latest party … the one this stuff was intended for. They must have heard the news and cancelled … or received a call telling them it was off.’ A murder in the area will do that, he thought sombrely. People aren’t keen on partying with a killer on the rampage.

  ‘I can’t believe it.’ Claude swept his arm around at the lodge with an expression of disgust. ‘All that inside … and happening right under our noses. And nobody in Poissons knew a thing.’

  ‘Someone did,’ Rocco corrected him. He switched off the torch and stared out across the marais. ‘Didier Marthe knew.’

  ‘Just him?’ Claude puffed out his lips in disbelief. ‘Yeah – you’re right. Something else I find baffling: that a worm like him had anything to do with this … this extravagance.’

  ‘You mean a nonentity having access to wealth?’ Rocco shook his head. ‘Half the crims in the world are nonentities on the outside. It’s what makes them so hard to spot.’ He nudged the crate with his foot. ‘Anyway, I doubt it was his money he was playing with. He was just the local fixer.’

  ‘You think he had partners?’

  ‘I’d bet my car on it.’ He thought he knew who that partner might be, but proving it would be the interesting bit. But that was his job. He looked around, a thought tugging at his subconscious: something wasn’t right about this scene. Then he realised.

  The blue crate. A car.

  ‘She couldn’t have carried the crate all the way down here,’ he said softly. ‘And someone saw her driving. So where’s her car?’

  They scoured the immediate area around the lodge. The ground was soft, which should have been ideal for finding traces of a car. But the surface had been laid with several layers of wood chippings and dried reeds, and other than a mess of indistinct footprints around the crate and the back door, there were no definite furrows to show the passage of a vehicle.

  ‘Hang on.’ Claude walked round to the front of the building, to where Rocco had left his car. He inspected the ground where the soil was harder, and looked up towards the nearest bed of reeds that led to the lake. He pointed and said dully, ‘Over there. The bastard drove her into the lake!’

  They ran across to the reed bed. Most of the stronger reeds on the bank were more or less upright. But beyond that, it was clear that something heavy had ploughed right through into the murky water, chopping down the thinner vegetation and carving a trough through the soft mud. A blueish glimmer of metal caught the light just below the surface, and Rocco felt the hairs move on the back of his neck as he realised what he was looking at. It was the roof of a car, just visible through the murk.

  ‘What car did she drive?’

  ‘A Panhard,’ said Claude. ‘Duck-egg blue, I think. It probably drove like one, too. Don’t tell me—’

  ‘It’s here.’ Rocco turned and headed for his car.

  ‘Wait! Can’t we do something?’ Claude skidded down to the water’s edge, staring at the area where the car was sitting.

  ‘Like what?’ Rocco called back. There were no bubbles to indicate trapped air slowly escaping, no signs of life. If Francine was down there, she was beyond any help they could give. ‘There’s no point.’

  ‘How do you know that? You don’t!’ He made to step into the water.

  Rocco stopped him. ‘Actually, I do,’ he said gently. ‘I’ve seen enough cars go in the Seine to know. And it’s been down there too long. No car is that waterproof, believe me.’ He gave Claude a look full of sympathy. ‘I’ll go to a phone and get a recovery team out here … drag it out to make sure.’

  It was mid-afternoon before a police recovery unit complete with a diver had arrived and were winching the Panhard with agonising slowness out of the lake onto the bank. By that time both Rocco and Claude had had to restrain each other from going in the lake to investigate the contents of the car themselves. As it ground out of the water and reeds, a stream of near-black water sluiced out of the battered doors and windows, bringing with it a choking stench of mud, stagnant water and rotted vegetation topped off by a cloud of heavy blue smoke from the motor winch on the recovery truck.

  The roof and door pillars of the car had caved in under the pressure of being hauled out, but the shell was still intact. The driver’s door had been left open, according to the diver, but he had found no trace of a body on the outside.

  ‘Could she have fallen out?’ said Rocco.

  The diver shook his head and spat expertly into the water. ‘There’s no current down there; she wouldn’t have drifted anywhere.’

  Even before the last of the water had drained away, Rocco and Claude were bending close by the car, disregarding the filth pouring over their shoes and staring at the interior with a shared feeling of dread.

  It was empty.

  ‘Thank God,’ Claude whispered, and made a rapid sign of the cross. One or two of the police team echoed the gesture, while the others looked almost disappointed. Claude glanced at Rocco. ‘What now?’

  ‘We find her, wherever she is,’ Rocco said darkly. He stepped away from the vehicle, squelching through the muddy detritus and nodding his thanks to the team leader. ‘And when we find her, Didier’s going to wish he’d never set eyes on this place.’

  It was a short walk through the trees to t
he Blue Pool, and Rocco led the way, his long stride soon leaving Claude behind. They were followed all the way by the stink of mud and the sound of the recovery team packing up their gear. It was probably a waste of time, Rocco decided, as they arrived at the edge of the sparkling clear water. But he had to be sure. He had seen too many examples of the blindingly obvious being ignored, only to find that it was obvious for a very good reason.

  But the pool reflected silently back at them, cool and clear and empty.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘Why are we still here?’ said Claude. The last of the recovery unit had left, along with the few onlookers from the village. It had plunged the marais back into a heavy silence, punctuated only by the occasional plop of fish jumping and the clatter of wings as a bird took flight through the trees. It would take some time for the wildlife to regain its normal composure after the crackling roar of the winch and the babble of voices. But it was just a matter of waiting, as Rocco knew only too well.

  ‘She’s still here, that’s why. Francine.’ Saying her name sounded odd, even intimate. Rocco had changed into his new boots, squeezing the muddy water from his socks and putting them back on. It was uncomfortable but bearable. Then he’d checked his pistol, slipping out the magazine and working the mechanism two or three times before replacing it with a satisfying click. He had also pocketed two spare clips from the boot of his car, instinct telling him that if he had to use the weapon today, it would not be at close quarters, nor would it be convenient to pop back and seek replacement ammunition.