Death at the Clos du Lac

by Adrian Magson

  He circled the block and approached the house along the rear alleyway, counting off the windows. He was mostly in shadow cast by the brick walls and outhouses at the rear of each property. He saw a single moth-eaten dog but no people.

  The back gate to 12 bis was ajar. He paused and listened, thinking he heard a rumble of voices from inside. Problem one: Devrye-Martin had company. Problem two: he didn’t have time to hang around before someone noticed him. In a place like this, strangers stood out and were likely to be challenged.

  He made a decision based on his training. Once on target, never go back. It was a simple maxim and had worked well enough for him in the past.

  He pushed through the gate and walked up a cracked concrete path in a festering pit of a yard, and used his shoulder to nudge open the rear door. He was in a kitchen, the atmosphere rank with the smell of greasy food and cigarette smoke. A trace of gas lingered in the air, and he saw a blue canister beneath a cheap stove, with a rubber tube connected to two burners.

  The voices were louder, coming from the next room. An older man was arguing about not having enough money, and another one – younger – was saying he wanted in on the business or he’d drop a few words to the police. Thieves falling out by the sounds of it, but Delombre didn’t care. It might even play into his hands.

  He crossed the kitchen, the soles of his shoes making a sticky sound on the filthy linoleum floor, and stepped through the doorway. He was in a living room. Two men. Stefan Devrye-Martin, fat and pallid as a large boudin blanc, rifling urgently through a box of photos on a table, and a younger man, leaning against a wall nearby, sucking on a cigarette. He was rail-thin and dressed in cheap trousers and a crumpled leather jacket. Probably a cheap street thug – or Devrye-Martin’s boyfriend.

  The youth saw him first and nearly swallowed his cigarette. But he was quick to recover. He jumped forward, whipping out a cut-throat razor from his jacket pocket and pushing Stefan aside for a clear field of fight.

  ‘Oh, please,’ Delombre muttered tiredly. He pulled his hand out from the hole he’d made in the bottom of the cardboard box. He was holding a small pistol fitted with a home-made suppressor. The youth was barely three feet away from him when he pressed the trigger. The .22 calibre bullet made a spiteful snapping noise as it left the gun, like breaking a stick to feed a fire. It hit the youth low in the left eye, killing him instantly. Delombre stepped aside as the body’s momentum carried it forward, and watched as it slumped to the floor, a tremor going through the frame before going quite still.

  ‘Damn, that was neat,’ he said softly, and looked at Stefan, cowering against the table. ‘I constantly surprise myself, you know? But the kid was quick, I’ll give him that. Close friend of yours?’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Stefan whispered, eyes fastened on the gun. Then he looked at the dead youth. ‘Why did you have to do that?’

  ‘Sorry. Bit of a habit of mine. Something to do with a wretched childhood, I expect.’ Delombre blew away a wisp of smoke coming from the suppressor, like a modern-day cowboy, and smiled. ‘So, what are we up to here, then, Stefan?’ He moved closer to the table and picked up a handful of photos, flicking them to the floor one by one and humming tunelessly. ‘Not quite my thing, I have to say. Poor composition, lousy lighting and altogether a bit cheap. Your mummy must be very proud of you.’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ Stefan was breathing in short, forced bursts, his face beaded with sweat. He had dropped the photos he’d been sorting through and was now clutching his chest with a pudgy hand, screwing up his cheap, stained T-shirt.

  ‘Actually, it’s not. You and your sort can burn in hell for all I care. Which, by the way, is a fate you’ll be meeting sooner than you’d probably anticipated. Although,’ he reached out to touch Stefan’s face with the tip of the suppressor, ‘you’ve been there already, haven’t you? On paper, at least. Neat, I have to say. I might have to try that myself one day.’

  ‘What?’ Stefan winced. He tried to back away from the gun but there was nowhere to go. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Blood poisoning in Thailand, wasn’t it? Usually, you get septicaemia out there and you’re dead meat. Must have been one of those miracles the Church likes to talk about. Never seen one myself, but there’s always hope. What did Rocco want?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Rocco, the irritating country cop. What did he want?’

  ‘He—nothing. He was asking questions.’

  ‘About what?’ Delombre had gone very still. It made him look all the more dangerous.

  ‘Things.’

  ‘What sort of things? And just so you know, you take too long over this and I’ll start shooting holes in your fat bits. And let’s face it, I can hardly miss from here, even with my eyes closed, can I?’

  Stefan swallowed hard. ‘He was… he wanted to know about the other people in the Clos du Lac. It’s a sanitarium.’

  ‘Thank you. I know what it is. What did you tell him?’

  Stefan shrugged. ‘What could I tell him? I didn’t know who they were any more than they knew me. It was all kept confidential. Anyway, I was on drugs most of the time.’

  ‘Liar. Get your tongue cut out.’ Delombre chanted the words softly, slowly. Menacing.

  ‘I’m not, I’m—’

  ‘OK, now let’s backtrack. That’s polite talk for this is your final chance, you pustule.’ Delombre placed the tip of the suppressor against Stefan’s ample stomach and pushed. It went in quite a long way, and Stefan yelped but didn’t move. ‘Now, I know there’s a technical school of thought that says if one pulls the trigger of a gun with a fat pervert on the end, the gun will explode. It’s something to do with blowback or reverse concussion – I’m not really that interested. But it means I ruin a perfectly serviceable little gun – and my hand in the process, which would seriously annoy me. Or you go pop like a giant crème caramel.’ He gave a stab with the gun. ‘Are you a betting man?’

  ‘OK… OK.’ Stefan held up a hand. ‘Rocco wanted to know who the others were. He was threatening to expose me, so I told him what I knew.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘You know who they are.’ Stefan looked sick, his voice low.

  ‘I know, but I so love to hear your voice, daddy.’ Another prod of the gun. ‘Who?’

  ‘I told him… Betriano and Rotenbourg. But not the others—’ Stefan went very still, and his eyes opened wide, as if a switch had been flicked in his head. ‘It’s you!’ he whispered, going paler than ever.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Delombre murmured. ‘The fat man knows something.’

  ‘It’s you!’ Stefan repeated, looking horrified. Delombre blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You. The therapy pool… your voice… I recognise – it was you who killed Simon.’

  ‘Ah. That.’ Delombre understood. ‘So I did. But how did you know? Weren’t you all comatose on drugs?’

  ‘No. I was outside… your voices carried.’ Stefan coughed heavily, his breathing suddenly louder, and slid sideways to sit on a chair. ‘You forced him into that harness and lowered him. I heard him choking.’

  ‘Yes, so did I – and I probably had a much better view than you, too. Did you like my handiwork?’ He took the gun out of Stefan’s stomach and peered along the barrel, one eye shut, swivelling to aim at the central light bulb. ‘I like to be inventive, you see. It’s my small attempt to elevate a fairly mundane action to the level of art.’ He smiled coldly. ‘With you, sadly, I have neither the time nor the inclination. Still, one does what one can.’ He bent and peered in mock concern at Stefan’s face. ‘You really don’t look good, do you know that? Heart trouble, I suspect. Ah, well, we all have to go sometime.’

  With that he stepped back alongside the cardboard box and pushed his free hand into the top. He produced a litre bottle of liquid and flipped open the lid.

  The smell of gasoline permeated the room.

  ‘What are you doing with that?’ Stefan’s mouth went slack and he glanced t
owards the kitchen door in desperation.

  In response, Delombre flicked the bottle and a tiny drop of gasoline hit the centre of Stefan’s chest, spreading out through the material.

  ‘God, I’m getting better at this. Did you know,’ he said conversationally, ‘that this is the easiest way to get bits of cork out of the neck of a bottle? None of that gross sticking in a finger, or fiddling with a corkscrew. Just flick it.’ He went to do it again.

  ‘Stop. Wait!’

  ‘No, really. A wine waiter in London showed me how. Amazing. I mean, what do they know about wine, huh? Bunch of cretins.’ He flicked again, and another wet blob hit Stefan’s body. ‘You should have stayed where we put you after you left the Clos du Lac. You’d be OK now. But you had to go off and do your own thing, didn’t you? Back to the business you know so well.’ Then, as he stepped forward to repeat the process, Stefan gave a loud gasp and sank back, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.

  Delombre stopped. He hadn’t been so far off the truth. The fat man was having a massive heart attack.

  ‘Oops,’ he said. ‘Silly me. Bit too much pressure there, I think. Never mind.’ He recapped the bottle and replaced it in the box, then checked the fat man’s throat for a pulse.

  Nothing. Damn, that was quick.

  He immediately became all business. Leaving everything in the room as it was, he unscrewed the suppressor and wiped the gun clean. Then he placed the gun in Stefan’s hand and adjusted the fat man’s chair to align it slightly with the dead youth’s body. He was reluctant to lose the gun, which was a handy little hideaway weapon, but it had served its purpose. He could get another easily enough.

  ‘Such a shame,’ he breathed, studying the layout of the bodies, ‘when friends fall out.’

  Next he carried the box through to the kitchen and placed a saucepan on one of the burners. He poured a measure of gasoline into the saucepan, taking care not to spill any, then turned on the gas and carefully lit a match, touching the flame to the burner. He stepped back to review his handiwork one last time, then turned on the second burner, but without lighting it.

  Then he picked up the box and the bottle of gasoline, and quietly let himself out.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Back in Amiens, Rocco rang Sous-Brigadier Godard and thanked him for the use of his men.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Godard assured him. ‘Always happy to have an excuse for a training exercise. And my men don’t much like Ministry gorillas so it made their day. Will there be any comeback?’

  ‘I doubt it. If there is, blame me.’

  He put down the phone just as Rizzotti appeared at the door. The doctor looked tired, but pleased with himself.

  ‘Milk,’ he said without preamble, and handed Rocco a lab report. ‘Heavy on the cream, apparently. Dangerous, too much of it.’

  Rocco stared at him, his thoughts clicking slowly into place. Lab reports? Then he had it: of course, Drucker’s house. The powerful smell of bleach.

  ‘So it wasn’t blood?’

  ‘Not a trace. The lab technician decided to check the empty bleach bottles first and noticed the smell of sour milk. He rang me before he started testing, just to show off. He was correct: cow’s milk, crusted around the base, probably where – Drucker, was it? – had placed one of the bottles on the floor while cleaning up.’ He shrugged. ‘I’d have used neat bleach, too, had it been me. The smell of stale milk never goes away – especially in summer.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s good work.’

  Rizzotti fluttered his eyebrows. ‘Well, we try to please.’ He turned and walked away, whistling happily.

  Rocco sat down and stared at the report. So Drucker was still alive.

  * * *

  It was early evening by the time Rocco left the station. He’d written up a report on what Stefan had told him and left it on Massin’s desk. Even he could see that much of it was supposition and would be open to demolition by those involved: a secretive government-backed safe house hiding two damaged embassy personnel, a faked dead man – no, two faked dead men, one of them a high-profile gangster, the other running from a sex scandal – and a Ministry spy who’d threatened to blow the lid off high-level official wrongdoings in international trade negotiations? It was surely the stuff of fiction, and he could already hear the arguments. He couldn’t see himself getting much headway out of the gangster’s presence at Clos du Lac, or even the injured and traumatised embassy personnel. Both would be dismissed as being there in the interests of the state and of justice. But Stefan’s presence and the death of Rotenbourg would certainly cause severe ripples in the Interior Ministry, especially if he could prove that ISD personnel were involved. And if Stefan was prepared to make a statement, it would add considerable weight to the argument.

  He’d rung Michel Santer with the name Delombre, and asked if his security contact, Bobo, could find out anything about the man.

  ‘What am I?’ Santer had muttered, ‘your private investigator? This is going to cost me, you know.’ But he’d murmured the man’s name as he scribbled a note. ‘OK, Delombre. I’ll see what I can get.’

  ‘He’s probably ISD,’ said Rocco, ‘so be careful.’

  ‘Thanks, Rocco. Now you tell me. Anyway, I’m always careful; you’re the one with the death wish. I’ll call you as soon as I can.’

  Rocco hoped he was quick. He’d managed to stay out of Massin’s way while compiling his report. But he knew it wouldn’t be long before the commissaire might bow to official pressure from on high and pull him off the investigation. The only way to prevent that was by presenting him with a solid collection of evidence that couldn’t be ignored or swept under the carpet by Levignier or whoever was controlling him.

  Thoughts about the sanitarium made him decide to swing by the Clos du Lac. Seeing the place once more might prompt some useful ideas. As he’d found in the past, revisiting the scene of a crime, even long afterwards, sometimes acted as a kind of conduit to clarity of mind. And right now he needed all the clarity he could get.

  * * *

  There were three cars in the car park this time. A good sign. As Rocco climbed out of the Citroën, he noticed a figure standing in a covered gap between the main building and the poolhouse, watching him. It was a man, dressed in a dark suit.

  Rocco nodded but got no response. The man turned and walked out of sight.

  Rocco went into the lobby and tried the door. It was locked, but through the glass panel he saw an imposing figure approaching across the foyer.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ A man stood blocking the entrance. He was almost as tall as Rocco but wider, and dressed in a dark suit, with short-cropped hair and signs of a fading tan.

  Rocco recognised professional security personnel when he saw them, and wondered if the man and his colleague were more of Levignier’s attack dogs.

  He decided to keep his approach formal, and held out his card. If this was the way they wanted to play it, he’d go along with it. But only so far. ‘I’m looking for Miss Dion. Police Inspector Rocco.’

  The man glanced at the card without much interest. ‘She’s busy.’

  Rocco sighed. ‘I’m sure she is. But she will see me.’

  The man was adamant. ‘She won’t. You’ll have to make an appointment.’

  He began closing the door when footsteps sounded on the tiled floor behind him.

  ‘That’s all right, Jean-Pierre,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘I’ll deal with this.’

  It was Inès Dion.

  Jean-Pierre stepped aside, but didn’t move far. He turned and glared at Rocco, his hands crossed in front of him. It was a stance meant to intimidate, showing off the width of his shoulders and the bulge of a weapon beneath his jacket. It wasn’t subtle or even professional, but to anyone other than Rocco, it would have been effective.

  Rocco ignored him and looked at Inès. She looked surprisingly fresh, with a focused look about her that had been absent the last time he saw her. She wasn’t exactly smiling, however.

&nb
sp; ‘You’re looking well,’ he said.

  ‘I received new orders,’ she said without blinking. ‘Shape up or lose my job. I decided that falling apart wasn’t going to bring André back, as much as I would like it, so I decided I might as well carry on.’

  ‘So this place isn’t closing?’

  ‘Evidently not. In fact, we’re expecting two new arrivals today. Private paying customers.’ She stole a glance at her watch. ‘The first of a handful, I think.’ She gave a brittle smile. ‘The Clos du Lac is still open for business.’

  ‘Private or government?’ He nodded at Jean-Pierre. ‘Why the gorilla with the gun?’

  She shrugged. ‘The rules are the same: we aren’t told who the patients are, and we don’t ask. There are private clinics in Switzerland operating in exactly the same way with expert security. Rich people demand the best.’

  The response came across as practised, almost automatic, and he wondered if she wasn’t just using the rule book to hold herself together. Looking closely, he could see the strain in her eyes still, like a dark shadow lurking in the depths. He’d known plenty of cops who’d looked the same; on the brink of cracking up after a particularly stressful time, they’d sought safety in ritual, in the rules. It was easier that way. He’d probably done it himself, too, after Indochina, and must have been a pain in the neck to those who knew him. People like Emilie, his wife, for instance. Now ex-wife. She’d stuck it for as long as she could, even after he’d joined the police. Finally, with a comment about exchanging one set of dangers for another, she’d left. It happened.

  ‘What happened to Drucker?’