Death at the Clos du Lac

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Claude was a dark bulk to one side of the pool door, calmly watching and listening. He was sitting with his back against the building, the Darne slung across his arms. Rocco squatted next to him. ‘Anything?’

‘Sure is. Any second now we’re going to be in the shit.’ He gestured behind him. ‘Just heard someone shouting about the pool house. I think they know we’re here.’

‘If they did, they’d be shooting. How many guards?’

‘I counted three, all armed, one with a sub-machine gun, the others with rifles and handguns. Didn’t see the woman patient. Saw the nurse — and your friend in the Peugeot. His car’s still out front.’

Rocco absorbed the news with pragmatism. The men inside were ready for war.

Moments later Godard’s two men appeared and slid up to join them.

‘They’d be good to have out behind the house,’ suggested Claude. ‘If anyone makes a break, it could be across the fields.’

Rocco nodded in agreement and the two officers slid away into the darkness.

Moments later they heard voices and a banging noise close by. It was the pool house door.

Rocco pictured the layout of the buildings. If the guards knew they were here and came piling out through the back door right beside them, it would be debatable who’d come off worse. They could avoid that by going in the long way round, but that would bring them up between the two buildings — and right under the noses of the guards. There were too many lights to do it that way without being spotted like dancers on a stage.

‘Have you tried the door?’ He recalled Dion saying that the door was never unlocked.

‘Just done it. You give the nod and we’re in.’

Suddenly all the lights in the pool house went on, flooding over their heads and across the garden. Rocco and Desmoulins ducked instinctively, hugging the building. Claude, revealed dressed in his hunting gear of soft jacket, trousers and high, laced-up boots, and looking like a bandit, pulled a face and lifted his gun.

Then came a piercing scream and the sound of glass shattering.

Mme Bessine. It had to be. Rocco stood up and took out his gun, nodding at Desmoulins and Claude. It had to be now.

‘Go!’

Claude grasped the door handle and pulled it open, while Rocco stepped through into the overheated chemical-ridden atmosphere of the therapy pool. They were in a small lobby with two doors. The one to the right was open, beyond which he caught a brief flash of startling blue from the pool, now brilliantly lit. The door directly ahead was closed, but the voices were coming from behind it, along with sounds of a struggle.

Rocco pointed at Desmoulins, then the door handle, then to Claude, with a motion for him to go through first. He thumbed his own chest and indicated the open door to the pool, then signalled for them to count to five before moving.

They got the message. Desmoulins took hold of the door handle, while Claude clicked his shotgun closed and stood ready to go through.

One. Rocco went through the connecting door and turned left, then left again. Two. He was by the main entrance. Three. A pane in the door had been shattered, with shards lying across the floor. Four. A trail of blood led away down a short passage to a doorway at the end marked Pump Room, where he could hear voices and a woman’s muffled cries.

Five. A bang signalled the inner door being slammed open by Desmoulins, and Claude’s voice telling everybody to stand still. The shotgun boomed and a woman screamed, followed by a thump. Then two figures came running from the pump room.

It was Dion followed by Jean-Pierre.

‘Stand still!’ Rocco shouted, although more as a warning to the others that he was here and not to come out shooting. Dion ran right at him, an animal snarl on her face, knocking his gun arm aside. Jean-Pierre took advantage of the situation to aim a shot at Rocco’s head. It went wide, the explosion deafening in the enclosed space, and took out a large chunk of plaster from the wall behind him.

Rocco ducked and brought round his own gun, trying for a snap shot, but Jean-Pierre was too quick. He dodged out of the short corridor and was gone, his footsteps fading into the night.

But Rocco still had Dion to deal with. She turned on him, trying to claw at his eyes, her face purple with rage. She began kicking out and shouting incoherently, a spray of spittle touching his cheeks.

Then suddenly she was gone, jerked clear by Desmoulins, who took her down to the end of the corridor. She turned and kicked him between the legs, then came the sound of a slap. Silence.

‘Sorry, Lucas,’ Desmoulins grunted. He was clutching himself and breathing quickly. Dion was lying on the floor, groaning. ‘Mother of God, that hurt.’

‘Where’s Bessine?’

‘In the pump room,’ said Claude, producing a length of cord, which he tossed to Desmoulins to tie up Dion. ‘They dropped her and ran.’

‘Watch our backs,’ Rocco told him. ‘I’ll go check on her.’

He stepped into the pump room. Véronique Bessine was slumped next to a square hole in the floor, about a metre deep. A flagstone with its underneath covered in dirt stood on its end nearby. The hole was just big enough to take a body, and once the flagstone was in place, it would have been easily missed.

Bessine was dressed in soiled underwear and a slip, and her body was bathed in sweat, one leg trembling. He knelt quickly by her side and pressed his ear to her mouth. She was breathing, but it was horribly light. He checked her pulse. At least she had one, but that, too, seemed worryingly weak. He took off his coat and wrapped her carefully in it, telling her that she was safe and that he was a policeman. He wasn’t sure if she heard him or not. Then he carried her through to the small lobby, where he lay her down against the wall.

Two shots rang out from somewhere in the main building, and elsewhere a car’s starter motor turned over with an urgent whine.

‘The Peugeot,’ said Claude calmly. ‘Won’t do him any good.’ He took out a jumble of leads and tossed them into the corner. ‘I disabled both cars.’

Rocco smiled and checked that Desmoulins was fit and ready. Dion, he noticed, was gone. ‘Where is she?’

‘I tied her up and put her in the hole,’ said Desmoulins. ‘A small taste of her own medicine.’

‘You sure she won’t get away?’

‘Not unless she’s Houdini’s daughter.’

‘Good. We set?’

They left the pool house, Rocco jogging across the car park, his shoulders twitching uncomfortably as he passed under a flare of light from a security lamp at one corner, the other two running across to the main entrance which was lit inside by a single light.

The Peugeot was empty, the driver’s door hanging open. The same with Dion’s Renault.

Rocco joined Claude and Desmoulins, waiting inside the entrance lobby. The house was silent, the marbled foyer deserted and inviting. Rocco held up a warning hand, remembering the feeling he’d had before of being watched from the landing. It was like a fairground shooting range; the moment they stepped into the open they’d be easy targets for anyone waiting up there.

He turned and looked around. A stout walking stick was leaning against one corner. He lifted it out, and with a signal for both men to stay back under cover, slid it across the foyer floor, before stepping back behind the shelter of the doorway.

A flash of movement came from up on the landing, and a figure dodged into the open and began shooting. The yammering bark of a sub-machine gun was deafening in the confined space, and plaster and brickwork showered around them and across the floor of the foyer, and a cloud of dust rose in the air. The moment it stopped, Claude and Desmoulins stepped forward in unison and fired a volley into the shadows at the top. The sound of the shots seemed puny in comparison — even the shotgun — and brought a shower of plaster, mouldings and wood splinters bouncing down the stairs towards them.

‘Merde,’ Claude muttered in frustration. ‘I thought we’d got him.’

Then a tall plant stand toppled out from the shadows, followed by the figure of a man. Both thumped to the floor, and the man’s sub-machine gun clattered down the stairs, tumbling over and over towards them, the overhead light flashing on the gleaming ugliness of the barrel.

‘Down!’ shouted Rocco.