Death at the Clos du Lac

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Next morning, after a brisk early run down the lane and back to shake the cobwebs loose, Rocco arrived at the office to find Massin waiting for him. The commissaire flicked an imperious finger and led him upstairs to his office. He told Rocco to close the door before retreating to stand behind his desk.

‘Inspector Rocco, would you mind explaining why you were in Paris yesterday?’ Massin stared at him for a second before sitting down, his authority imposed. ‘Only I feel you may have forgotten that your transfer here last year means you no longer have to work the Clichy district. Or can they not cope without your valued assistance?’

‘I should have spoken to you first, I know,’ Rocco conceded mildly. He wondered how Massin had found out. ‘But I had a lead to follow up on and I didn’t want to leave it too long. You were out.’

‘Yes, I was. Part of the reason I was out was because I was having my ears chewed off by my superiors from the Ministry, due to an investigator under my control finding it impossible to follow orders.’ He tapped a rapid drumbeat on his desk, then said more evenly, ‘I hear you and Lamotte apprehended three men last night in the course of an armed robbery. Well done. Was it anything to do with the Clos du Lac business?’

‘Thank you. But no. They were gutter rats looking for an easy hit.’ He brought Massin up to date on his investigations into the sanitarium deaths, carefully omitting any mention of Rotenbourg and concentrating instead on the possibility that one of the inmates had been Stefan Devrye-Martin, who was supposed to have died in Thailand. ‘As soon as I have a photo, I’ll be able to prove it.’

‘I see. That could prove … awkward for someone to explain.’

‘Someone in the Ministry, certainly. It would have needed a signature to get him in there.’

‘In that case,’ Massin reached down and slid a brown envelope across his desk. It was addressed to Rocco. ‘I think this might be what you’re waiting for. I picked it up from the front desk.’

Rocco opened the envelope and slid out a large black and white print. It showed a fat man climbing out of a car. In the background was a flurry of pennants and bunting, and a crowd of people dressed in summer clothes. The man was grinning at somebody off to one side, a lock of hair damp with sweat clinging to his face as he heaved his corpulent body out of the passenger seat. Around his neck was a professional-looking camera.

Rocco handed over the photo. ‘That’s him.’ Stefan had lost a lot of weight since the picture was taken, and his hair was shorter. But there was no mistaking him: it was the man he’d talked to in the pool house.

‘And he’s supposed to be dead, you say.’

‘According to Captain Antain in Evreux. Blood poisoning following an accident.’

‘This is serious. Extremely serious.’ Massin placed the photo on the desk and took a turn around his office, lips pursed. Rocco knew instantly what he was thinking: Stefan had been hiding in a government facility; if his ‘death’ were true, then they were faced with what amounted to possible state-sponsored deception.

‘I’d like to sit on this for a while,’ Rocco said, giving Massin a way out of reporting this to his superiors. Instinct told him that if this went up the chain of command, it might disappear and never be mentioned again.

‘Why?’ Massin sounded unsure, no doubt weighing up his options to find the least damaging one.

‘I still think the death of the security guard, Paulus, is tied in with the murder at the Clos du Lac,’ he added. ‘It’s too coincidental that they died on the same night.’

‘How so?’ Massin sounded distracted.

‘Paulus either helped kill him and was then disposed of to keep him quiet, or he saw what was happening and the killer was forced to deal with him. The business about a crime of passion is a nonsense.’

Massin lifted his eyebrows. ‘Why? Do they not go in for that sort of thing around Poissons?’

It was the nearest Rocco had ever come to hearing Massin make a joke. ‘I’m sure they do,’ he replied dryly. ‘But crimes of passion in the countryside involve shotguns, axes or knives — maybe poison. Not nine-millimetre pistols. And Paulus was navy-trained; he wouldn’t have been easy to fool or overcome.’

Massin lifted his chin and stared at the ceiling. ‘So he was killed by someone he knew or trusted?’

‘I believe so.’

Massin looked down at the photo. ‘So where do you go from here? How does this “dead” man walking figure in all this?’

‘I think he might know more than he was letting on when I met him. According to nurse Dion, he didn’t always take his medicines and was in the habit of wandering the corridors at night, looking for anything he could pry into or steal. She described him as highly manipulative. I’d like to find him and see if he saw anything.’

What he didn’t say was something that would have had Massin flying into a panic: that if Stefan Devrye-Martin was hiding in the Clos du Lac with official connivance under an assumed name, who were the other patients whose names were not their own? And why were they being hidden?

‘Inspector Rocco?’

A call had been put through to Rocco’s desk. The caller was Pascal Rotenbourg.

‘Speaking. Thank you for calling, Mr Rotenbourg. I’m sorry to disturb you on what might be an irrelevant matter, but I wonder if you can answer a question for me?’

‘Of course. How may I help?’ The man sounded cultured, his voice calm and measured. Not normally the case, Rocco thought, when members of the public had messages to call the police and expected bad news.

‘Do you have any male family members, by any chance?’

A momentary hesitation, then, ‘I do, as a matter of fact. A younger brother. What is this about, Inspector?’

‘Could you tell me his name?’

‘Yes. It’s Simon.’