Death at the Clos du Lac

CHAPTER TEN

The moped was lying upside down in a ditch, just as Hervé had described. Rocco squatted down beside it and noted the worn tyres and scarred paintwork of the frame and mudguards. It had long ago experienced its first flush of newness, yet in this area even old machines like this had a value. Then he noticed the panniers, almost masked by an overgrowth of grass and weeds at the bottom of the ditch. He slid down further and hauled at the wheels until he could wrestle it up the short bank and lay it down on the grass for a closer inspection.

Alix undid the straps on the uppermost pannier and took out a net with a folding handle and a fishing rod composed of several short pieces with interlocking joints. Last came a box with dried bait on one side and a selection of hooks, weights and floats on the other.

‘Looks like somebody had a bad day’s fishing,’ she suggested.

‘If he did,’ Rocco replied, ‘it would have ended up in the lake or river, not out here.’ He lifted the moped so that Alix could get at the other pannier, which revealed a flask but nothing else.

Alix used her handkerchief to lift it out, then opened the top and sniffed at the contents. ‘Coffee, with something else. Could be brandy. It’s still warm.’

Rocco lowered the moped and stood back. He didn’t know about the bike, but why on earth would someone dump a perfectly good set of fishing equipment — especially in an area renowned for its fishing enthusiasts?

He walked over to the entrance to the field and climbed the gate, jumping down on the other side. ‘Where does this lead?’ he asked Alix. He’d never had cause to come here, and had only a vague idea of their location on the map.

Alix pointed to the right. ‘Poissons that way, about four kilometres, and a road to Amiens the other, about three. This lane is hardly used ever since the Clos du Lac pretty much stopped people going down it, other than a few older locals and farmers with fields further along.’

‘So somebody could have come from the Clos on the moped, and met up here with a waiting car?’

She nodded and joined him on the lane. Rocco walked fifty metres one way, towards Poissons, scanning the verge. The grass was long, but untouched, and he soon gave up. It was evident that nothing had stopped here in a long time.

‘Here’s something.’ Alix was standing just a few metres beyond the gate, where the verge was wider, beneath the shade of a crab-apple tree. Rocco walked back and stood alongside her.

Twin tyre tracks showed clearly in the grass, with the stems flattened or bent, and at one point there was a deep rut where a patch of softer ground had given way beneath the vehicle’s weight. Rocco felt the soil underneath with his fingertips. There was a definite tyre-tread pattern here, and he guessed it was from a car or small van rather than a truck. Whether the details would be enough for Dr Rizzotti to make anything of, he wasn’t sure. But it was a start. Somebody had been here just before or just after a murder had been committed. And that spelt opportunity. All he had to do now was find motive and who might have benefitted.

He stood up and walked across the road, trying to read the scene from a distance. If the driver had been careful, he could have driven down from the direction of the road leading to Amiens and left his car here where it wouldn’t have been noticed, then used the moped, perhaps slung in the back of a van, to travel the short distance to the Clos du Lac. After completion of his task, he could have ridden the moped back here, disposed of it in the ditch, then driven calmly away, with nobody any the wiser other than hearing engine noises in the night.