Death on the Marais

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The street was silent apart from the chirruping of house martins, with that deserted ambiance found only in exclusive neighbourhoods in the middle of a working afternoon. The kerbs either side were peppered with a democratic selection of dog turds and expensive cars, the former awaiting the unwary, the bumpers of the latter kissing gently in true Parisian fashion.

‘You sure this is a wise move?’ said Claude, not for the first time. ‘Berbier’s a powerful man. You could end up with your balls in a vice at the drop of a phone call.’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘Go through channels. Amiens. Massin. I know you don’t like him, but he could clear the way for you — maybe get the locals in Paris to approach Berbier instead. That would take the heat off you.’

‘It would also take days while they’re all bending over touching their toes. Whoever killed Nathalie Berbier is getting further away. The more time we lose, the harder it will be to nail them.’

Claude was right, though: he was taking a risk coming here. Not checking in with the local prefecture first was a no-no, a breach of rules and etiquette. Even approaching the Bayer-Berbier family direct could have all manner of repercussions. But he figured he had the element of surprise on his side and that would be to his advantage, where going through channels would not. If he left it to the locals, they wouldn’t even get this far: the Bayer-Berbier name alone would be sufficient to put the block on any questions, the matter consigned for ever upstairs amid a welter of obstructive paperwork.

He climbed out and walked along the street. He wasn’t expecting any obstacles, but his dark coat and air of confidence would help him pass muster from anyone watching the area. If that failed, he might have to use more direct means. He scanned the house numbers set in blue plaques on the gateposts as he went, eyeing the interior of the courtyards where gleaming limousines stood waiting to whisk their owners on the next journey into the capital. The traffic noise from a nearby intersection was a muted buzz over the rooftops, a comforting reminder of activity after the rural quiet of Poissons-les-Marais.

He glanced back at the end of the street. He’d told Claude to stay on the move. Any longer than ten minutes in the same spot and a local patrol would be along to give the driver the once-over. With no rational explanation for being in the area, it would be inconvenient for both of them if they were pulled in.

He found the number and a bell push alongside an entryphone. There were no identifying marks but he would soon find out if he’d got the right place.

‘Yes?’ an elderly woman’s voice squawked from the speaker grill.

‘Monsieur Berbier, please.’ A phone call twenty minutes ago had elicited the fact that Philippe Bayer-Berbier, industrialist, war hero, diplomat and friend of politicians throughout the land, was at home. The small lie about who the call was from had been easy, made simpler by cutting it short mid-sentence. Phone lines were occasionally unreliable in Paris, even in these exclusive quarters, and nobody gave an interrupted call much thought.

‘Who wants him?’

The sharp response wasn’t quite what Rocco had expected, but he guessed it might have something to do with the death of a daughter of the house. Some normally mild-mannered people dropped completely out of character when faced with the death of a loved one.

‘Police.’

The entryphone beeped once and there was a click as the gate locks disengaged.

He stepped into a courtyard paved with cobbles. In the centre stood a dried-up fountain with a bronze cherub pointing a chubby finger towards the sky. A thin veil of green mould covered everything as if the sun rarely shone here, and the overall effect was sombre and melancholy. The only relief was a gleaming Citroen DS sitting low at rest on the far side of the fountain. A stocky young man in a dark suit was rubbing the rear window with a duster, his other hand hovering by the front of his jacket. He watched Rocco cross the yard but made no move to intercept him.

Rocco spotted a recess leading into the building. Nothing so common as a front door, he thought, and wondered what had led to this architectural oddity. As he walked towards it, an elderly woman emerged. She was grey and stick-thin and looked as if a light breeze would pick her up and send her spinning away over the rooftops like a discarded paper tissue. Her skin was sickly white and mottled with age spots, her hair done in an elaborate perm which he was ready to bet was done once a week in an expensive salon off Boulevard Haussmann.

‘What do you want with my son?’ she demanded, gaze fixed on him like a bird of prey spotting a particularly juicy target. There was nothing frail or sickly about her eyes, he noted. Like twin coals in the dark.

‘I’m afraid,’ he said politely, ‘that I can only discuss that with him.’

‘What is your authority?’ Her cheeks flushed red at his response, her annoyance clearly lurking just beneath the surface.

‘That, too, is something I need only reveal to Monsieur Berbier.’ He deliberately left off the Bayer part of the name to annoy her further. He had little time for the grandes dames of the city, who thought themselves above the law and able to parry questions from simple plodders like him by sheer force of personality or, when that failed, a bit of judicious name-dropping.

She blew out her cheeks in frustration, then shrugged and beckoned him to follow. Rocco trailed her slowly up a flight of tiled stairs, her hand grasping an elaborate handrail and her asthmatic breathing loud and wheezing in the confined space. She was wearing a pair of faded and threadbare slippers, with baggy stockings bunched around spindly ankles. He caught a distinct tang of expensive perfume. Not that he was any expert; he used to buy perfume for Emilie, back in the days when it was still an acceptable negotiating tactic for the hours spent at work instead of home, but the numerous scents seemed to him to be simply a variation on a theme.

When she arrived on the first landing, the old woman turned and put her face close to his.

‘My son is under a great deal of stress at the moment,’ she muttered savagely, her breath as sour as old milk. ‘Matters of state, of course. Important matters. I don’t want him upset further.’

‘Well, I’ll try, of course.’ He wondered if ‘matters of state’ was the new expression among the elite to cover a sudden death in the family. If so, they probably had an expression for the deceased being found wearing a Gestapo uniform and pumped full of drugs and alcohol, too.

‘See to it, otherwise I will speak to my friend, the depute, and have you removed. He can do it, too. Like that!’ She clicked her fingers with a sharp snap.

Rocco was debating whether to use a hip throw on the old woman or simply kick her down the stairs, when they were interrupted by a deep voice echoing down the stairwell.

‘Maman!’

He looked up and saw a man standing on the bend of the stairs, peering down at them. The face was familiar: it was Bayer-Berbier. He was tall and elegant in a pear-shaped way, dressed in an immaculate grey suit and a white shirt. Rocco guessed him to be in his sixties. He had the short, stiff brosse style of hair affected by Frenchmen of an ex-military background, and the steel-grey eyes behind frameless glasses were cold and unemotional.

The old woman made a huffing noise and beat a retreat through a doorway, muttering something uncomplimentary as she went and hawking deep in her throat.

‘My apologies,’ said the man, coming down to meet Rocco. He held out his hand. ‘My mother believes it is her duty to intercept all callers — my mail, too. She is concerned about my safety. Last week she placed some documents from my office into the fire because she thought the paper might be contaminated with germs.’

‘I hope they weren’t valuable.’

‘They weren’t, fortunately. But it took me three hours and a lot of telephone calls to make sure of that. How may I assist you?’ His gaze was intense and Rocco had the feeling the comments about the man’s mother were merely a smokescreen to break the ice and lower barriers. It was executed smoothly, man to man, equals for the moment in spite of their undoubtedly different stations in life.

‘I have to talk to you about your daughter, Nathalie,’ he said carefully, reminding himself that this man was so high up the food chain, he was probably accustomed to dealing with officials via his lawyer. Not that he could have faced the kind of discussion Rocco was going to have with him too often.

‘Do you have some identification?’ Berbier held out a hand.

No questioning of the subject matter, thought Rocco. No frown, no doubt in the voice, the way most normal people would react when a policeman came calling. Iced water in his veins. He wondered at the ‘war hero’ tag which had followed Berbier around. A glorious but secret period operating with the SOE, he recalled reading somewhere; keen to fight the Germans, Berbier — a captain at the time — had found his way to London and joined the Special Operations Executive, parachuting back into France to help the underground fight. The detail remained clouded but the myth grew stronger as his prominence increased.

He produced his card and handed it over.

Berbier studied it, rubbing a thumb across the printed surface. It was a gesture Rocco had seen before: a tactile check among those who cared about such things, feeling for embossed letters. A faint lift of the Berbier eyebrows might have been a show of approval.

‘It is refreshing to see,’ he said, ‘that there are still those who take their work seriously. Were you with the military?’

Rocco nodded. ‘Once. A long time ago.’

It was all Berbier seemed to need: Rocco was a policeman, therefore not a civilian, a man with credentials, therefore not a peasant. He slid the card into a top pocket. ‘So. How could my daughter be of interest to you? A parking infraction, maybe? A traffic offence? She is sometimes a little careless about these things. You know how it is with the young, I’m sure.’

Rocco felt his breath go still. Was this man playing him or was he in denial? His daughter had been found dead, he’d claimed the body, yet here he was acting as if she were in an adjacent room, alive and well.

‘None of that,’ he replied, his mind racing ahead. ‘When did you last see her?’

Berbier shrugged, pushing out a thin lower lip. ‘I can’t recall precisely. Last week? Yes, last week. She has her own apartment in the fifteenth arrondissement — off Avenue de Felix Fau-’ He stopped as if he had said too much, then recovered. ‘We do not live in each other’s pockets, Inspector Rocco. She is young, pursuing her own career… her own life.’

‘Of course. May I ask what she does?’

‘She works in fashion.’ Berbier’s eyes glittered, and Rocco felt the balance tip in the air like a tangible force, as if a decision had been reached. ‘Tell me, on whose authority are you here, Inspector?’

‘My own.’ Rocco stared back steadily. He’d faced men like this before. They were powerful, confident and usually arrogant. They could, in the usual order of things, break a man like him with a simple phone call. ‘I’m investigating the death of a woman in a village called Poissons-les-Marais, in Picardie. Her body was discovered in a military cemetery and was taken to the station in Amiens, where it was released on the orders of a senior magistrate.’

‘And how does that affect me?’

‘The body was released to this address.’

The sound of firm footsteps echoed from the bottom of the stairs. The chauffeur, Rocco was willing to bet, coming in response to some unseen signal. Berbier said nothing, his face blank. Then he took Rocco’s card from his pocket and studied it again. ‘This does not give your prefecture. If you are asking questions about some place in — Picardie, was it? — you do not have any jurisdiction in Paris.’

‘I have jurisdiction wherever a crime has been committed,’ Rocco replied softly, ‘and wherever my investigations may lead.’ He was treading on thin ice and knew it; like stepping without care in the marais. But thin ice had never stopped him in the past.

Berbier indicated the stairway. ‘You have made a mistake. Please leave.’

‘A mistake? Are you saying your daughter was not reported dead and her body shipped back here?’

‘She couldn’t have been. I spoke to my daughter only last night.’

‘But you said earlier that you’d last seen her a week ago.’

If he’d been caught out in a lie, it didn’t faze Berbier one bit. He nodded. ‘I was being precise, Inspector. I last saw her a week ago. But I spoke to her last night.’ He waved a thin hand. ‘It was only a minute or two… just a brief hello and goodnight.’

He’s lying. Rocco was stunned by the ease of Berbier’s words. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Don’t be impertinent.’ Berbier looked as if he could spit fire. ‘I will be reporting this matter immediately to the highest authority. How dare you come here with this ridiculous story? You will be lucky if you escape with your job and your freedom.’ With that, he turned and walked back up the stairs, ramrod straight.

If that’s his idea of grief, thought Rocco, left with no option but to make his way back down to ground level, thank God I’m not part of this family.

The chauffeur had stepped back outside and was waiting for him. The duster was gone and the man was standing squarely in his way, hands loosely clasped in front of him. He looked solid and tanned. Resolute. A man not to trifle with. Probably ex-para and full of spit, thought Rocco. Thinks himself unbeatable.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ he said softly, advancing on the chauffeur without hesitation. ‘You’ll end up breathing through a tube.’

The chauffeur wavered… then stepped aside at the last second.

As Rocco stepped through the gate onto the street, he came face-to-face with two men. They were dressed in smart suits and had just stepped out of a black Citroen DS. Neither looked as tough as the chauffeur, but one was holding up an Interior Ministry badge, which trumped toughness any day.

‘Inspector Rocco?’ the man said.

‘Yes,’ Rocco replied. ‘What do you want?’ He knew what they were here for; Berbier must have called them the moment he’d shown up.

The man ignored the question and held out his hand palm upward. Rocco took out his wallet and showed him his badge. ‘You realise,’ said the man stiffly, giving it a careful examination, ‘that you are outside your jurisdiction?’

‘That’s what Berbier thought, too,’ said Rocco. ‘I’m investigating a possible murder in Picardie. The victim lived here. That gives me jurisdiction.’

‘That’s not reason enough. There are channels, as you well know. Procedures. If we had every policeman running all over the country on a whim, there would be chaos.’

‘And,’ put in the second man with a show of teeth, ‘we can’t have that.’

Rocco took a deep breath. They were taking the piss, daring him to tell them where to go. The frightening thing was, he could see that they were absolutely serious. Official machines.

‘You should read your latest bulletins,’ he suggested. ‘I’ve been given a roaming brief as part of a nationwide policing plan. Are you saying the Interior Ministry doesn’t like the idea?’ He kept his voice level: losing his temper with these men would be like fighting fog. Best try and use their own regulations and decisions against them.

‘Enough.’ The man handed back Rocco’s wallet with a sour look. ‘You say “possible” murder. Does that mean you’re not sure? Do you have any proof which you can bring before a magistrate?’

Rocco sighed. The fight against bureaucracy was all about detail.

‘You want to see my case notes?’

‘Answer the question.’

‘I have no proof. Yet.’

‘Really? Yet you thought you could waste time by driving all the way here from — where is it you’re from?’

‘Poissons-les-Marais. It’s a nice place, full of people who pay your wages. I doubt you’d know it.’

‘You’re right. I don’t. Wherever it is, you’d best get back there. You’re wasting your time here. Police time.’ The man looked superior. ‘I suggest you find something important to occupy your life, Rocco. Trying to catch the eye of people above your pay grade is not for the likes of you.’

The man was being deliberately insulting. Rocco contemplated wiping that supercilious expression off his face, but a grain of sense held him back. It was probably what they were hoping for: drive Rocco into a confrontation and it would give them an ideal excuse to rope him in and take him off the street. These two had not happened along here by accident; they were following orders. There could only be one reason for that: to derail his investigation.

A movement out of the corner of his eye broke his concentration. Another car had turned into the street and ghosted to a stop twenty metres away. Three stocky men in dark-blue kit and jump boots climbed out and stood watching. He recognised the uniforms. They were members of the CRS — Compagnies Republicaines de Securite — the unit charged with crowd control and head banging. One of them was spinning a short wooden baton into the air and catching it without looking, the smack of wood against flesh a clear warning.

Rocco turned back to the man in the suit. ‘You’re quite an offensive little prick, aren’t you?’ he said amiably. ‘You must love telling your kids what you do when you get home at night. Must give you a real sense of pride, following orders from people like Berbier. Thank Christ you’re not a real cop: you’d make me ashamed to share the same badge.’

He stepped round the two men and walked down the street. The three CRS men stood their ground, then one of them looked past Rocco and his eyes flickered in disappointment.

Rocco felt just as disappointed when they stepped aside.