Death on the Marais

CHAPTER TWENTY

‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’

Massin sounded frosty, his voice snapping down the line like a whip. The phone had been ringing when Rocco got back home. It was nearly eleven and he had a feeling it might have been ringing for a while.

He gathered up the phone wire and walked through to the kitchen. While Massin continued ranting, he put on some water for coffee. If this went the way he was expecting, he might not get the opportunity later.

‘You break with protocol,’ Massin grated, ‘you cross boundaries without as much as a thought to other regions and you interrogate an important man like Bayer-Berbier — all without clearing it with this office first! Who gave you the authority? Did I say you could proceed outside this division? Did I?’

‘I couldn’t get hold of you in time,’ Rocco lied easily, and sat down to wait for the accusation that he and Claude had entered Nathalie Berbier’s flat without authority and against instructions. Massin had clearly been in receipt of a shit storm from the Interior Ministry, and was now passing it on down the line in time-honoured fashion.

‘Really? What was so urgent that you could break all the rules like this?’

‘Because the body was removed from the pathology room by order of a Paris magistrate before I had completed my investigation. It struck me as suspicious.’

‘You could still have gone through official channels.’

‘The local station wouldn’t have known anything about it. I needed to brace Berbier direct, not through a functionary with one hand on his arse and his eye on his career.’

A brief pause, then, ‘What did he say?’

Rocco noted the change in tone. It represented a slight shift in Massin’s response. Was the man going soft?

He relayed the brief conversation he’d had with Berbier. ‘It amounted to nothing. He didn’t confirm his daughter’s death — in fact he claimed he’d spoken to her the previous evening, which was bullshit. He’s either in denial or hiding something.’

‘Thank you for that expert analysis,’ said Massin dryly. ‘But has it not occurred to you that he might be grieving? Or that being interrogated by a member of the police was too much, too soon? He’s not a country farmer, you know.’

‘Yeah, that occurred to me,’ Rocco said. He got up to pour water into the percolator. ‘The fact is, if he was a local farmer I wouldn’t be having this problem. Berbier pulled strings and got his daughter’s body lifted out of a police establishment before my investigation even began. Farmers don’t get that privilege.’

A short silence, then, to Rocco’s surprise Massin said, ‘I agree. Even so, we operate with the consensus of the people. Don’t forget that. Some of them have powers we cannot dream of.’

‘Really? Damn. And there was I thinking we had a job to do and to hell with what the people thought.’ He still couldn’t work out what Massin was up to. After opening with angry bluster, the man was now sounding almost reasonable.

A door slammed not far from the other end of the phone, and Rocco heard Massin murmur a brief greeting, before the senior officer said, ‘You have your instructions, Inspector Rocco. See that you follow them.’

Rocco immediately knew what was up. Massin had someone close by, listening to his end of the call.

‘Are you telling me to back off?’ he asked carefully.

‘No. I merely suggest that from here on, you proceed with all appropriate attention to procedure. Do you understand me?’

The words were stiff with authority, yet Rocco detected a tone in Massin’s voice which allowed flexibility of interpretation. There was something else: Massin hadn’t mentioned Felix Faure.

‘What if my investigation should take me back to the city?’

‘Is that likely?’

Rocco thought about it. Massin wasn’t expressly forbidding him from going back to Paris, in spite of the clash with Berbier and the Ministry men. As convoluted as he knew the official mind could be, it sounded like a blind eye was being turned.

‘It’s looking possible.’

‘Explain.’

‘Berbier must have learnt about his daughter’s death within hours of her body turning up at Poissons military cemetery; otherwise, how could he have known to claim it? He might be an important figure, but it still takes time to get a senior magistrate to sign release papers for a possible murder victim.’

‘I see. Were there documents on the body?’

‘Not according to Rizzotti. She was simply a dead woman of indeterminate age. Someone must have told Berbier; someone who knew she was in the area. I intend to find out who that person is.’

‘Very well. I accept your explanation and expect to hear no further complaints.’

The phone clicked off and Rocco stood there, trying to figure out what was going on. The call had filled him with unease, but not for having been caught out trampling across regional boundaries or bracing an important figure in Parisian society about the death of his daughter. Either Massin had somehow put aside who Rocco was, along with their history, or he was setting him up for a fall. And that could only be to get rid of him. Except that it would be a messy way of stitching up a subordinate. He must know that Rocco wouldn’t simply curl up and go without making a fuss. So what was he up to?

He poured his coffee and took it through to get changed into fresh clothing. Whatever was going on, he still had a job to do. And worrying about the machinations of senior officers wasn’t going to help with his investigation. All the same, he was going to have to watch his back a lot more carefully than he had done so far.

The one thing he was now certain of more than anything was that Nathalie Bayer-Berbier’s death had not been an accident. There was too much of an undercurrent for that. And although he had no reason for suspecting her father’s involvement, other than being a grieving parent with the ability to pull strings, he knew he hadn’t even begun to unravel that knot in the proceedings.

He remembered that he hadn’t yet tried the number from Nathalie Berbier’s flat. There was no time like the present. He picked up the phone and dialled.

No reply.

He let it ring a dozen times, then replaced the receiver. Somewhere in the village of Poissons-les-Marais — or close to it — a phone with a direct connection to the dead woman had just been ringing.

All he had to do was find it.

He was just pulling on a clean shirt when the phone rang. It was Claude.

‘Lucas? I’m at Didier’s place. You’d better get down here.’

‘What’s up?’

‘He’s blown himself up.’

‘I’ll be right there.’ Rocco snatched his coat off the chair where he’d dropped it last night and ran out to the car. Minutes later, he pulled up fifty metres short of the yard where Didier lived and parked his car facing back the way he had come. If the bang that had hurt Didier looked like spreading, he might need to get away fast.

Claude must have heard the Citroen. He met Rocco at the corner of the house. He looked flustered and was shaking his head.

‘What happened?’ Rocco queried. He didn’t want to think about what Didier might have been tinkering with, or how close he might have been standing to the two enormous shells either side of his front door.

‘Not sure,’ replied Claude. ‘When I got here he was muttering about something being covered with mud. Maybe it was a grenade.’

‘He’s alive, then?’

‘Yes. He’s a tough bastard, but we’d better get him to hospital quick. Delsaire was here first and bandaged his arm, but he’s losing a lot of blood. I figured you’d be a faster driver than anyone else.’

A few villagers stood in a cluster near the front door, and moved aside as Rocco approached. Beyond them, the house appeared to be without windows, grubby curtains flapping through the holes where the glass had been, the worn shutters hanging drunkenly from the brickwork and adding to the building’s sorry look of neglect.

He pushed between the onlookers and looked down at a body lying on the ground. Didier was dressed in dirty blue overalls several sizes too big, making him look even smaller and wirier than ever. To Rocco’s amazement, he was calmly smoking a yellowed Gitanes and smiling at the crowd as if he was sunbathing. His right hand had gone, along with a good portion of his forearm, and the rest was wrapped in a bloody rag. An empty brandy bottle lay nearby, which accounted for his apparent air of calm.

Near the front door was a small heap of wet sandbags. The fabric was shredded and scorched on one side, with sand spilling onto soil coloured a vivid red. It was clear that Didier had used them as an emergency blast wall. Unfortunately, he hadn’t let go of the grenade quickly enough.

Not surprisingly, there was no sign of the hand.