Death on the Marais

CHAPTER FIVE

Rocco climbed in his Citroen and headed along the main street to the eastern end of the village, where the landlord of the bar had told him the garde champetre had a cottage. He had no guarantee of a warm reception, since the man might resent a city detective landing on his doorstep without warning, viewing him as a threat or an informer, possibly both. But as Michel Santer had suggested, it would be the simplest way of getting to grips with his new territory, and he wasn’t about to ignore good advice.

He reached the village boundary and found a rambling but tidy daub-and-wattle bungalow on a large plot of land. Most of the garden was laid to vegetables, the exception being a bed of dark-red roses in the front. At the side of the property stood a lean-to garage and a large chicken house, with vine creepers snaking everywhere, unchecked and gnarled with age.

He got out of the car and knocked on the front door. The noise echoed around the garden and filtered off into the fields, while back in the village, the church bell sounded thin and suitably soulful. He’d seen no sign of a priest yet, and hoped that would remain the case.

The door opened and Claude Lamotte smiled out at him.

‘I’m looking for the-’ Rocco began, before noticing Claude’s uniform trousers and shirt, complete with shoulder badges. ‘You’re the garde champetre? You didn’t say.’

‘You didn’t ask.’

Rocco felt a ruffle of irritation, sensing he’d lost a point or two. Instead of coming here and opening up relations on a genial, if slightly superior note, given his rank as an inspector, he realised this rural policeman had gently played him.

Claude peered past Rocco’s shoulder at the big black Citroen. ‘Yours or the department’s?’

‘Mine.’

‘Good choice. Discreet, underplayed — blends in well with the scenery.’ He grinned.

‘It’s a car,’ Rocco countered tersely. He had to concede, though, that the man was probably right. Back in Clichy, it wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow; out here, it was as subtle as a hearse at a wedding. Still, he wasn’t going to give in without a fight. ‘It does the job it was built for.’

‘Fair enough. Come in.’ Claude led the way into a smart but sparsely furnished living room, with a small kitchen off to one side. ‘You want coffee?’ A percolator was bubbling steadily on a small stove, filling the air with a heady aroma.

Rocco looked around the room, absorbing the atmosphere. There was a large dresser, a sideboard, a dining table and two leather armchairs. Few ornaments and no softness. A man’s room, he thought. No woman’s influence here, although there had been, once, evidenced by a piece of crochet-work in a frame on the wall. A large plastic-covered map of the area was tacked to another wall, and below it, on the sideboard, a pile of books and folders which Lucas recognised as the official detritus of a serving police officer.

‘Why not?’ His stomach rumbled, a leftover, he was sure, from Mme Denis’s brand of paint stripper. But since he was intent on getting to grips with the locals, including this man, who was to all intents a colleague, he could stand another cup.

Claude filled two cups and pushed sugar across the table. ‘Help yourself.’ He sat down and picked up his coffee. ‘So what can I do for you, Lucas?’

Rocco sat across from him and tasted his coffee. It was very good. ‘For a start, thank you for the information about Mme Denis. I’m now the tenant of the end house in Rue Danvillers. It doesn’t seem to have a name or number.’

Claude smiled. ‘It doesn’t need one. It’s already being called the cop house.’

‘No kidding.’ He noticed a black telephone sitting on a small side table. ‘I need a phone, though. There are too many big ears flapping at the cafe. Any ideas?’

Claude reached across and scooped up the handset and dialled a number from memory.

‘Dede? It’s Claude. I need a phone fitted yesterday. Police, yes. Hang on.’ He covered the mouthpiece and looked at Lucas. ‘My cousin, Dede. Can you run to a decent bottle of Armagnac?’

‘If they sell it at the co-op.’

‘They do.’ He gestured at the telephone and said softly, ‘Sorry — it’s the way things work here, but we don’t make the rules, right?’

Rocco suppressed a smile. Out in the middle of nowhere and he got a phone fitted with one call. In Clichy, it would have taken weeks, and threats of physical harm — and even then the job would have been botched.

‘Thank you,’ he said and sipped his coffee. ‘When can he do it?’

Claude went back to the phone. ‘No problem, Dede. When can-? Really? That’s superb, my friend. See you soon.’

He put down the phone and smiled triumphantly. ‘Tomorrow. He’s in the area. If you leave your door unlocked, he’ll do it on his way through. Leave a chalk mark on the floor where you want it fitted.’

‘I owe you one.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Claude agreed. He leant back in his chair. ‘So, to what do we owe the pleasure of this posting?’ He was clearly referring to Rocco’s presence in the area and saw the favour as having earned information in return.

‘Musical chairs,’ Rocco explained. ‘There’s been a shake-up of various departments and regions, and I’ve been sent out here as part of an exchange initiative. Someone else is sitting in my chair, another is sitting in his chair and so on. It’s nationwide.’

‘Sounds like bureaucracy. In my experience, such initiatives are an important man’s way of becoming even more important. But why you and why right here? Why not Amiens?’

‘Me? Well, if you listen to the politicians, I’ve come to bring order to the countryside: smite the robbers, murderers, thieves and philistines.’

‘Philistines. We don’t have many of those around here: the local priest sees to that.’

‘Then he and I have something in common.’

Claude sniffed. ‘You make it sound like a holy war.’

‘It is. And God help anyone who gets in my way.’ He smiled. ‘In the meantime, I thought I’d come and say hello.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘And get a briefing. Do you get any crime here at all?’

Claude puffed out his cheeks. ‘Well, we do, but what we call crime and what you call crime is not the same. You city people get cars stolen, our crims steal the odd chicken. You get riots and gang fights, we get the occasional punch-up over a game of bar billiards or somebody’s brand of politics. No offence, but none of that needs detective skills.’ He stood up and went over to the map on the wall. ‘Poissons sits in a shallow valley, and shares space with a river, a canal, and the marais, all to the south of here.’ He stabbed a finger on each in turn, ending on a large expanse coloured pale green. ‘The marais runs for about three kilometres along the valley, and about half a kilometre deep. Here in the village, it’s mostly a couple of lakes surrounded by trees, but further out to the west, there are four more lakes, all much more open.’

‘Are they linked?’

Claude tilted his head. ‘Not like they used to be. There’s a narrow stretch joining them up, but only the locals know about it. When I patrol out there, I use a Canadian.’ Rocco must have looked blank, because he added, ‘It’s a canoe; slides through weeds and other rubbish like a knife across butter. And it’s quiet. If anyone’s there who shouldn’t be, they don’t hear me coming. The best way along the valley by water is along the canal, which is further out.’

‘Still used?’ Rocco couldn’t recall seeing one, but he knew many of the country’s canals were still in use.

‘Sure. Some freight traffic, but it’s dying. Losing out to the big trucks. It’s near the station; you go over a bridge but it’s masked by trees so you wouldn’t know it was there.’

‘What about the village?’ As far as Rocco knew, his ‘patch’ was as deep and wide as his superiors chose to make it, and probably encompassed an area several hundred kilometres square; but his immediate interest was Poissons. He could hardly live here and not show an interest.

‘Not big. About a hundred houses, mostly stretched along the main street. A shop, church and school… and the cafe you know about. Most people here work on the land, the railway or at factories in Amiens. There are a dozen small farms, a couple are bigger ones, and lots of open country. We’re still in the horse era, here; there are a couple of tractors but that’s it. The farmers don’t have the money for mechanisation on a big scale.’ He sat down again and finished his coffee, his briefing done. ‘So, where are you from? Before Paris, I mean.’

‘Here and there. All over. The army, then the police; I moved around a lot.’

‘Indochina?’ The last big conflict the French army had been engaged in.

‘Yes.’ Rocco’s response was deliberately brief. He wasn’t ready to talk about it with strangers. It was best kept locked in a private box, waiting for the memories to dim and fade. He was still busy working out how to hurry that process along.

‘Married?’

‘Was, once. It didn’t work out.’ Something else he wasn’t ready to discuss. Emilie hadn’t been able to stand the stresses and strains of first, being an army wife waiting at home for his return from distant lands and conflicts, and second, the same sort of job, only closer at hand and just as unpredictable. In the end, she had left. ‘You?’

‘Was also. She died.’ Claude flicked a glance at a photo of two adults and two small girls in a frame on the wall. They were all smiling, but the photo looked several years old. ‘And the kids… well, they waited ’til they were old enough and buggered off to the city.’

‘You see them?’

‘Not much. We talk now and then — when I can track them down. But it’s another language these days.’ He shrugged. ‘They’re good girls — just different.’

They sat and looked through each other for a few seconds, accompanied by the ticking of a clock.

When the telephone jangled, it startled them both.

Claude scowled. ‘It hardly ever does that,’ he announced. ‘Except for my sister in Nantes. She likes to remind me of her latest dress size and the birthday of every child in the family. She thinks I’m made of money.’

He picked up the hand-piece and listened, and Lucas watched as he turned slowly pale.

‘OK. At once,’ he said softly. ‘I’ll be there. Yes, of course directly.’ He put the phone down and adjusted its position on the table, then looked at Lucas with a grave expression.

‘Your sister?’ said Rocco.

‘I wish. What I said about not having much crime here? I spoke too soon. That was Monsieur Paulais, the stationmaster. There’s a British military cemetery about a kilometre outside the village, close to the station. It’s alongside a wood.’ He gave a small shiver and stood up, pointing at the map on the wall. ‘It’s a nice spot. Very… peaceful as you would expect, for that kind of place. The gardener — an Englishman named John Cooke — arrived for work today and found a body in the cemetery.’

Rocco resisted the temptation to ask where else would you find them. ‘A visitor had a heart attack?’ He knew that many old soldiers and their families made pilgrimages to the battlefields of the two world wars. Understandably, some of the older ones from the conflict in 1918 were not in the best of health. The journey out here often found weaknesses otherwise left undiscovered.

‘No.’ Claude reached for his jacket on the back of the chair. ‘Not this one.’ He rubbed a hand across his face. ‘We may have need of your investigative skills sooner than I thought.’

Rocco’s senses prickled. He finished his coffee and stood up. ‘Why?’

‘The deceased is a woman and she’s wearing a Gestapo officer’s uniform.’