Death on the Marais

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

‘We’ve got company,’ said Rocco. He stepped away from the lodge, instantly on the alert, glancing towards where he had left the car.

‘How do you know that?’

Rocco pointed upwards. ‘Hear that?’ Everything was silent: the trees, the lakes, the undergrowth; even the breeze seemed to have shut down its whisper, leaving the air muggy and still.

Claude nodded. ‘Damn. I hadn’t noticed. I’m getting slow.’ He followed Rocco’s glance. ‘What do we do?’

‘We go and see who it is.’ Rocco walked back along the path. It could be nothing, maybe a local come to fish. If so, no problem. If it was anyone else, he wanted to see them before they saw him.

As they neared the final bend in the path before reaching the main lodge, they heard a rumble of male voices filtering through the trees, followed by a short, sharp whistle. Then silence.

Rocco felt his scalp move. Whoever the new arrivals were, they had a communication system going. At a guess, they’d arrived at the front of the lodge and found his car. The whistle had been a warning to keep their eyes open.

That automatically left out anyone from the village or the police.

When the lodge came into view, Rocco knelt down behind some reeds and motioned for Claude to do the same. The voices had stopped, but the men must still be close by.

A man appeared at the rear corner of the building. He was heavily built, with cropped, black hair and wore a dark suit, white shirt and tie, and was carrying a gun. He moved cautiously, sticking close to the wall of the lodge as if listening for noises inside. He tried the rear door and found it open, then flattened himself against the wall. He gave a low whistle. Moments later he was joined by a second man from the other side of the lodge, similarly dressed and also armed. They communicated in a series of hand signals before slipping inside. A bark of laughter from the front of the building indicated at least two more men present.

Rocco recognised the tactic: the men at the front were a distraction while the other two checked the place out.

‘Are they cops?’ whispered Claude.

‘Not the kind I’m used to,’ said Rocco. ‘Cops would go straight in.’

‘So who, then?’

‘City boys looking for Didier is my guess. Come on.’ He eased away, leading Claude back down the path deeper into the marais.

Rocco didn’t like the odds.

An unknown number of men, two of them armed and acting as if they had been trained in the military. If they were after Didier as he suspected and looking to settle a score, all well and good. He probably deserved everything he had coming. But there was still no sign of Francine, and if the men were up to no good and stumbled on them here in the marais, they might not be keen on having any witnesses to their activities.

He and Claude reached the second lodge and waited behind its cover. The minutes ticked by, the silence hanging like a blanket around them, stuffy and threatening. Then a stick cracked not far away, followed by a faint splash and a man swearing. Rocco eased back. It confirmed what he’d thought: clumsy feet in this environment meant city folk not used to walking on soft, unforgiving ground. One of the men had stepped on a branch, then off the path into water.

A white oval appeared above the undergrowth. A man’s face. He was standing on the path thirty metres away, studying the smaller lodge. He had one hand held out, warning those behind him to hold back.

For Rocco it was enough. They couldn’t stay here. The men were constrained by the single path, and evidently cautious about moving forward too quickly. They had probably been briefed about Didier’s background and prickly nature, but would soon move forward.

He and Claude retreated further along the path to the ruined building. Once over the bridge leading to Didier’s house and the village, they could get to a phone and summon reinforcements. Facing one armed man, maybe even two, might have been feasible for him and Claude, given that they were familiar with the area. Going up against four would be idiotic, and Rocco had no desire to go down in the annals of police history as a brave but dead fool.

As they slipped past the ruined lodge and headed for the bridge, Rocco heard a noise. He stopped, a hand on Claude’s shoulder. A cat? Kids squealing? It sounded ghostly, a half-cry out of keeping with the surroundings.

Claude had heard it, too. ‘Christ, what is that?’ he whispered.

‘It’s coming from in there.’ Rocco pointed towards the ruin. Did they have time to investigate or would the four men bypass the second lodge and come pounding along the path? He shook off his concerns. It didn’t matter; they were here to find Francine, and this was the one place they hadn’t yet looked.

‘Come on.’ He moved through the tangle of undergrowth and up to the front door, drawing his gun. The wood looked worm-eaten and rotten and smelt of mildew, and it didn’t look as though anyone had been here in years. This was a waste of time…

He heard the noise again, this time close by.

He stepped through the doorway, feet crunching on wind-blown debris and rotten wood. It felt as if the whole building was trembling under his weight, and he wondered how safe the roof was. He looked around the room. It was a time capsule, rotting into the floorboards and decaying where it stood. An armchair had sunk like melting ice cream, its fabric tattered and faded to a uniform dull grey and trailing on the floor; a dining table had tilted drunkenly on one corner and a cupboard door hung off its hinges, revealing a bare interior covered with rodent droppings and layers of accumulated dirt.

Rocco moved across the room to a door at the back. It led to what had once been a small kitchen. More rotting wood and peeling walls, and the wreckage of a table and chairs, but with one difference: a pathway had been trodden through the clutter from the back door to a filthy square of colourless carpet near the side wall. Amid all the nature-inspired mess, it looked too out of place, too deliberate.

He signalled for Claude to keep an eye on the front of the building, then bent and flipped back the carpet.

Underneath was a trapdoor. A metal handle was recessed neatly into the wood.

Rocco pocketed his gun and heaved the trapdoor open, flooding the darkness below with light and revealing a nightmarish scene.

Francine Thorin lay staring up at him with bulging eyes, her hands lashed above her head to a thick wooden support post set in the earthen floor. A rough gag had been taped across her mouth, and she was making the high keening sound they had heard earlier, and rocking backwards and forwards, her entire body shaking with terror.