Death on the Marais

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.

Claude watched with worried eyes, then checked his own weapon.

They sat in the car with the doors open, waiting and watching. Gradually, like an audience at a concert growing increasingly comfortable with their surroundings, the birds began to find their voices again. A pair of crows appeared, hovering for a few moments in harsh disagreement before touching down in the treetops; a flight of pigeons clattered to a rough landing lower down, ungainly and noisy; smaller birds appeared, too, their singing faint at first, until they grew confident that Rocco and Claude were not going to erupt from the car and ruin their newly regained tranquillity.

A flight of mosquitoes found Claude’s side of the car and buzzed around his head, and he swiped at them in vague irritation.

‘They don’t bother you,’ he said, glancing at Rocco. ‘Why’s that?’

Rocco shrugged. He’d lived with mosquitoes as big as seagulls once, but they’d always left him alone. Others had not been so lucky, and he’d assumed it was down to bodily chemistry. ‘They know bad karma when they see it.’

‘Karma? What’s that?’

‘For them, mostly a rolled-up newspaper.’

‘I hope she’s OK,’ said Claude at one point, shifting in his seat. ‘Francine, I mean. She’s a nice woman.’ He glanced at Rocco. ‘But you know that.’

Rocco nodded. ‘Nice enough.’ He wondered where she was, and prayed that not giving way to irrational panic and running through the marais like a madman had been the right decision to adopt. Time would tell. ‘She told me about her husband being killed in a factory accident.’

Claude raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? I didn’t know she’d been married.’ He pursed his lower lips. ‘How did I miss that?’

‘About eighteen months ago, she said.’

Claude turned and stared at him. ‘No way.’

‘Why no way?’

‘She’s lived here for over two years, that’s why — and alone. You must have misheard her.’ He turned away with a meaningful chuckle. ‘Not that I blame you. She’s a fine-looking woman. I mean, enough to turn any man’s head to mush.’

After sitting in silence for a few more minutes, Rocco got out of the car. Something about what Claude had said was disturbing him, but he couldn’t work out what it was. It wasn’t necessarily the conflict in the detail — that could be easily explained away: people got dates and times wrong for all manner of reasons, grief being a major one. But there was something else tugging at his subconscious, a related thought, and he couldn’t pin it down. Maybe some action might dislodge it.

‘I want to see inside the other lodge.’

‘Why? You think she might be in there?’ Claude joined him, easing cramped limbs.

‘Maybe.’ He hadn’t forgotten that they had found the back door open the first time he had come down here. It didn’t necessarily mean Francine would be there, but it was another obvious place to check. It was easier than sitting around doing nothing.

Claude nodded. ‘I’ll get the axe.’

‘No.’ Rocco stopped him. ‘We’ll check it out quietly first.’ He locked the car, then led the way past the first lodge, skirting the lake and stopping every now and then to listen. The birds had ceased their activity only momentarily, then, reassured that neither man was about to start blasting holes in the trees, took it up again.

‘You do a lot of that,’ said Claude at one point, as Rocco stared upwards, ears cocked for any unusual sounds, sifting through the normal and looking for the out of place. ‘For a city man.’

‘Do what?’

‘Sniffing the air, listening to the trees. I could hire you out in the shooting season — we’d make a fortune.’

Rocco continued walking. He was aware that his habit of tuning in to his surroundings, a hangover from his army days, seemed odd to other people. It had been the same among his colleagues in Paris. Entering buildings, walking silently along darkened alleyways or listening for the slightest indication of something out of place, he’d been more gun dog than human, alert for anything that did not fit. The habit had saved his life on two occasions and he wasn’t about to give it up as a cranky idea just yet.

They arrived at the second lodge and found it locked tight, front and back. They did separate tours of the building, studying the ground carefully for footprints, but found nothing obvious. If anyone had been here recently, they had left no obvious trace. So who had locked the door again?

‘Didier’. Claude read his mind. ‘He’s always around here; I bet he couldn’t resist getting a key copied so he could nose around whenever he felt like it.’

Rocco nodded. It made sense. ‘How do we get to Didier’s house?’

‘Follow me.’ Claude set off through the trees. On the way, they passed the third building Claude had referred to earlier. It was like something out of a children’s spooky comic, Rocco observed. Dark and dank, it had a drunken porch, broken shutters, and if there had once been any paint on the clapboard sides, it had long gone, leaving raw wood deep with cracks. The window glass had gone and the roof had the sad, sway-backed look of a neglected pony.

They continued until they reached the banks of a stream, and the tree-trunk bridge Rocco had seen before. Didier’s house was just visible on the far side.

They crossed the bridge. Rocco remembered what Claude had told him, but figured that he wouldn’t have crossed if he still thought the bridge was booby-trapped.

The front door stood half-open at a drunken angle. Rocco kicked it open all the way and drew his gun, then held up a hand to Claude and listened. Nothing. No sounds, nobody scurrying for cover, no furtive scuff of movement on the stairs.

He stepped across the threshold. The place hadn’t been touched since he and Claude had last been inside. The cellar door, he noticed, was still locked and the shoe he’d kicked against it was still there exactly as he’d left it.

He went through the kitchen drawers, looking for keys. Most were full of rubbish, crumpled bills, receipts and cuttings from newspapers jammed in on top of odd tools, random items of cutlery and endless tangles of string and wire.

Claude joined in. Moments later, as he moved an old coffee tin on a shelf to check behind it, they heard the dull rattle of metal. Claude upended the tin and a cluster of keys fell out.

Rocco grunted but said nothing. He was busy looking at some of the newspaper cuttings he’d found and very nearly ignored. They were dated over a number of years, culled from various papers or magazines. All were on the same subject.

Philippe Bayer-Berbier.

Most portrayed him in business mode, buying a company here, sealing a merger, appearing at a function with other business leaders and politicians, the urbane, charismatic and confident industrialist, comfortable among his kind. There seemed to be no specific reason for the cuttings and Rocco surmised that Didier, for reasons of his own, had been keeping a close eye on Berbier, watching his progress over the years. It was as much an unsettling light into Didier’s world as it was to Berbier’s, and he marvelled at the way two such different men had been joined over the years by their shared history right through to the present day.

Claude joined him and held up the keys from the coffee tin. They were shiny and well used. ‘None of these fit the cellar. In fact, they don’t look like they’d fit anything here.’

Rocco nodded and dropped the papers in the drawer. They told him only that Didier had an obsessive interest in Berbier. And that’s how it would look to a magistrate. It wasn’t a crime, nor did it prove that the men even knew each other. But to Rocco, it confirmed that there was still a connection, even after all this time. And that was enough to be going on with for the moment.

‘Let’s go.’ He led the way outside, with Claude scrambling to catch up with him.

‘What about the cellar? Francine-’

‘She’s not down there.’ He put his gun away.

‘How do you know? We haven’t even tried.’

‘I know, believe me.’ He didn’t bother explaining about the shoe. Right now, all he wanted to do was get back to searching for Francine before it was too late.

The second lodge was a smaller, rougher version of the big one, and looked to be more of a genuine weekend place than its neighbour. Claude went through the keys and eventually found one that worked. They slipped inside.

The search took even less time than the other lodge. No signs of expensive alcohol or dubious films, no toys or magazines, much less any kind of sound system. And no Francine. It seemed to be what it was built for, nothing more, nothing less.

Rocco stepped outside once they had searched the place thoroughly, and looked across the nearby lake with a feeling of increasing desperation, not helped by the apparent normality of the scenery around them. It was tranquil and motionless apart from a kingfisher flitting about on the far side, and one or two moorhens and coots stalking over the lily pads in search of bugs. Higher up in the branches, the smaller birds carried on their singing as usual, aware of, but more immune to, the events down at ground level.

Elsewhere, life carried on as usual. A droning noise sounded in the distance, probably a tractor, and a child’s cry drifted through the trees from the direction of the village. A cow bellowed, a cockerel hawed faintly. Normal noises in a normal world.

Then the droning noise stopped.

Moments later, so did the birdsong.