Death on the Rive Nord

CHAPTER FIFTY

You’re a popular guy,’ said the gunman, listening as the phone rang for the second time. He smirked at the two men now sitting where he’d ordered them on the floor by the bed. Their guns were across the other side of the room out of reach. He looked at Mme Denis, who was still sitting up on the bed glaring at him. ‘You. Old lady. Go bring me the telephone. And don’t say you can’t; I know it will stretch all the way in here.’

He made no attempt to help as Mme Denis eased herself with difficulty off the bed, wincing with pain. Still holding the mug of tisane, she shuffled slowly past him, favouring one hip and hissing something uncomplimentary in what Rocco was sure might be old Breton. The man sneered and moved aside just enough to keep her in his line of sight, but with one eye on the two policemen.

Rocco tensed himself ready to move, but the gunman was too careful. He looked like a professional, accustomed to what he was doing. And French, Rocco surmised, by his colouring and accent, drafted in for the job.

The gunman grinned maliciously at Rocco as Mme Denis reappeared in the doorway, holding the telephone.

‘You tangled with the wrong man, Rocco,’ he said. ‘Getting cosy with Farek’s wife was the worst thing you could have done. He’ll be here within thirty minutes, I guarantee. He’s going to have fun with you and your friends; him and his pet gorilla, Bouhassa.’ He looked at Mme Denis and gestured for her to pass him the telephone.

She thrust it at him. But before his fingers could take hold, she dropped it on his foot and hurled the cup of hot tisane in his face.

The man howled with pain and swung his gun wildly, trying to hit her and intimidate the two men into keeping still. But Mme Denis had moved quickly to one side, leaving the way clear for Rocco and Claude to do something.

Rocco was already moving. He didn’t waste time standing up, but rolled frantically across the room, pushing Claude away to add to his own momentum and to prevent the gunman having a sitting target. As soon as his fingers closed around the butt of his MAB 38, he rolled onto his back and aimed instinctively at the doorway, triggering two shots in quick succession. The bullets slammed into the gunman, throwing him back through the opening into the kitchen.

In the deathly silence that followed, as Rocco and Claude got to their feet, Mme Denis looked sombrely at the mug on the floor, now broken in several pieces.

‘I hope you’re not going to ask me to pay for that,’ she said.

By the time Rocco returned to Amiens, leaving a team to clear away the body of the gunman, it was close to noon. Massin had already launched a sweep for Farek and his men and sent urgent bulletins to neighbouring forces and the Interior Ministry, alerting them to the sequence of events. Rocco had been reluctant to leave Mme Denis, but she had shooed him away, showing remarkable tenacity in spite of her experiences. The last he had seen of her, she had Claude shadowing her every move and was getting ready to tell her story to her cronies in Poissons.

Massin met Rocco in the corridor outside the main office, where search teams were being directed by Captain Canet to go through the town visiting the known haunts of Algerians with criminal connections. Several pairs of eyes turned his way through the glass, some admiring, some curious, most expressing sympathy for a fellow officer who had just been forced to shoot a man dead.

Massin explained about the janitor, Yekhlef, and his role as a major leak of information from the station. ‘He’s in a cell and his family is in protective custody,’ he announced. ‘The truck driver, Maurat, too. There’s no saying who this man Farek won’t go after, from what I hear.’ He gestured towards his office, and when they were both inside, said, ‘Where is the woman and her child?’

Rocco hadn’t been looking forward to this; hiding the truth from Massin was a precautionary measure, but he was well aware that it would be looked on as insubordination at the very least if he refused to reveal Nicole’s whereabouts. But as proven already by the janitor’s arrest, any information shared around here was not guaranteed to remain secret.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ he said honestly. ‘She’s on the move with someone looking after her.’ He waited to see if Massin would insist on more information.

To his surprise, the commissaire nodded. ‘Fair enough. A good precaution to take, under the circumstances.’ He paused and looked slightly pained. ‘I have to ask this question, Inspector, simply because it will be asked of me by someone higher up the chain of command. And please consider your answer carefully. Are you having any kind of relationship with the Farek woman?’

‘No. I’m not.’ Rocco had expected the question, and was relieved at not having to lie. On top of everything else, it was a pressure he didn’t need.

Massin looked satisfied. ‘Well, that’s something. But tell me, is this really all about a man trying to get his wife back? My assumption is she will hardly be delighted to see him, in any case.’

‘No. She won’t,’ said Rocco. Massin behaved as if he had a broomstick up his backside a lot of the time, and seemed too concerned with not displeasing his bosses in the Interior Ministry, but he was no fool. Somehow he had managed to arrive at the same conclusion as Rocco himself: that there was something at the heart of the Farek business which was not entirely to do with a gangster chasing his runaway wife.

Massin reached into a folder on his desk and took out a slim leather booklet. Rocco recognised the address book he’d found in Michel Gondrand’s house.

‘While you were otherwise engaged yesterday, Desmoulins and some other officers went through this, checking for anything familiar which might tie in to anyone with a grudge against Michel Gondrand. They discovered nothing of significance until a reference was found to a bank deposit box here in Amiens.’ He took a piece of paper from the folder and slid it across the desk. It recorded all the recent visits made by Gondrand to the deposit box vault. He gave a wisp of a smile. ‘It seems Gondrand made an unusually high number of visits to the bank, sometimes twice a day. Fortunately, the manager was only too willing to help us in our enquiries, as Gondrand was a particularly unpleasant individual. His arrogance has not helped him, but it has helped us.’ He slid another piece of paper across to Rocco. ‘A record of regular payments made to someone you know.’

Rocco checked the paper, which listed account numbers, dates, sums of money… and the name of the recipient account holder.

Alain Tourrain.

It was damning — if as yet unexplained — evidence against a fellow police officer. To be receiving payments of any kind from a local businessman was bad enough; to be in receipt of payments from a car dealer who had lived an expensive lifestyle and who was now dead of a gunshot wound was a whole new level of suspicious behaviour.

‘You haven’t arrested him, have you?’ he asked.

‘Not yet. There hasn’t been time. But we will. Why do you ask?’

Rocco couldn’t quite explain even to himself, but now they had confirmation that the janitor hadn’t been the sole leak of information here, someone else had to be. And the prime candidate was Tourrain. The only question that puzzled him was that Yekhlef seemed to be in thrall solely to Farek — but Farek had only arrived in the past forty-eight hours. If Tourrain had been receiving payments from Gondrand for many, many months, was it possible he was also being paid by someone else? But payments for what? And from whom?

‘Can you let him run for a while?’ he replied. ‘I’ve got an idea.’

Massin huffed undecidedly for a few seconds, then nodded. ‘Very well. But I will hold you responsible if he goes missing. What is this idea of yours?’

‘Can we risk the anger of the mayor and everyone else, and announce another sweep for illegal workers? Only this time, instead of the whole town, we’ll let Tourrain know that it’s to two or three specific sites.’

Massin lifted an eyebrow. ‘I see. So if we find the named sites shut down, we’ll know it’s him. And what will you be doing?’ Then he sighed. ‘Perhaps it would be better if I do not know.’

‘Perhaps it would.’