Death at the Clos du Lac

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

Delombre stopped and looked back as the blast of a shotgun shattered the night. A flash of flame with an orange tail curved gently through the air. It burned brightly for a few moments, then came more gunshots before the flame was swallowed by the dark.

He swore quietly. They’d fooled the guard with a silly trick to get him to show himself. But it had worked. A kid could have done better.

He turned and increased his pace as much as he dared, aware that they couldn’t be far behind. The ground softened beneath his feet, and a squelching noise sounded as he felt the sucking action on the soles of his shoes. He veered left, keeping the lake to his right. One foot sank deep, and a spray of water flew into his face, momentarily blinding him. He tasted iron on his tongue, brackish and foul, and spat it out, a layer of grit coating his lips. He veered right, trying hard to breathe more easily. This was taking too much out of him. Fitter than most men half his age, he could run almost any distance without stopping. But this terrain was killing him.

He saw the gleam of water and moved left, then left again. He was going back towards the sanitarium, and realised that the lake here was jagged in its outline, and he’d somehow stumbled onto a small promontory, and was now in danger of being boxed in.

He stretched himself and pushed harder, his lungs beginning to ache and his leg muscles screaming at him to stop, to rest. But he couldn’t. He powered on, and found the lay of the land beginning to pull him back to the right, away from his pursuers.

He was going to make it!

A shot sizzled through the air in front of him.

‘Give it up, Delombre. There’s no way out.’

Rocco.

Delombre stopped, floundering now, bewildered by this crazy terrain, the mud, the water and the dark … and the man who wouldn’t give up. Then he saw movement, a patch of paleness as a figure appeared in the corner of his eye.

He turned and fired three times, back once more on the Legion’s commando training ground, shooting at targets, the hot sun on the Gulf of Tadjoura, in Djibouti, baking his shoulders through his shirt and the instructors screaming out their orders to both lead and confuse.

But this was no training ground, and Delombre realised that there would be no end to the day and a shared truck ride back to camp for cold drinks.

This was for real.

He heard another shout, but didn’t recognise the voice. Rocco had outplayed him, bringing other men with him. Men who’d been prepared to come into the night after him.

He moved backwards away from them. He could outrun them. They were only police, not former men of the Legion like him. Then one foot sank deep into soft mud and he lost his balance, pitching over on his back. He scrambled up immediately, feeling the softness beneath him and the wetness soaking into his clothing. He dragged his leg out of the ooze, and felt his shoe come loose. In panic, he dropped his gun. He scrabbled around and by a small miracle, found it again. Brushing it against his body to clean off the filth that caked it, he made his way further to his right, feeling the pull of reeds and long grass clutching at his legs. He sobbed in frustration, cursing softly, determined not to let it stop him.

Then he realised the men were no longer following. He paused and looked back. He thought he could see them, indistinct shapes in the gloom, watching and waiting, and he wondered what they were planning. One of them shouted, but he couldn’t make it out above the sucking noise around him, and the sudden splashing of cold water that seemed to be up around his thighs. Just then the ground lurched beneath him and his waist felt cold and wet.

He was sinking.

‘Can you see him?’ said Rocco.

‘No.’ Desmoulins cleared his throat and spat out a mouthful of dirty water where he’d fallen, gulping in whatever had risen to greet him. Rocco had reached down and hauled him upright, before pushing on towards the frantic splashing noise coming from near the lake.

‘Stop,’ warned Claude. ‘Don’t go any further.’

‘What’s up?’ Rocco thought he saw a movement, but it could have been his imagination or marsh mist or a swarm of mosquitoes. The quality of darkness here was confusing.

‘He’s in the mud swamp.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a soft bog — a mudflat covered in a few inches of black water. It’s fed by the lake and a couple of springs, but it never drains off. It’s pure mud, like soft chocolate.’ His voice sounded flat, dull, as if imparting something that had no good end. ‘Even cows have gone missing in there. Not a trace of them ever found.’

‘Bastards!’ Delombre’s voice floated out of the darkness, and more splashing echoed across the lake, less frantic now than before. Gunfire split the night as a volley of shots echoed across the water.

The three men ducked, although none of the shots came near. They didn’t return fire.

‘Can’t we do something?’ said Desmoulins. ‘I know he’s a killer, but …’

‘No.’ Claude’s tone was final. ‘He’s too far out. Believe me, you go out there and we’ll lose you, too.’

‘What are his odds?’ said Rocco. He was breathing deeply, like the others, and stank of mud and rotted vegetation.

The splashing stopped. Seconds later there was a renewed burst, but weaker now. Then silence.

‘Not good.’ Claude’s voice was pragmatic. ‘We won’t know until morning — maybe not even then. This place doesn’t often give back what it takes.’

Out on the mudflat, Delombre had given way to utter exhaustion. He tossed away his gun. It was no use to him now; all his shells were gone and his enemies were out of sight and beyond reach. He hoped he’d managed to take at least one of them with him with that last volley, and that it was Rocco. Bloody man.

The watery ooze was now up to his chest, its relentless sucking power drawing him deeper and deeper, the more he struggled. Something moved against his leg, wriggling frantically, then was gone. He began to shiver, goosebumps rising on his upper chest and shoulders, but it wasn’t the cold. A gentle pressure was gripping him, and he could feel the wetness moving inexorably upwards towards his neck and face, claiming him centimetre by centimetre.

He coughed as the foul stench of mud filled his nostrils, and tried one last time to lift his legs, to push himself up from whatever certain horror lay beneath.

But it was no good. He was too tired.

He sighed. It shouldn’t end like this. Not for him. But there were some things you couldn’t control.

With a final defiant curse at the fates, he emptied his lungs of air, then lifted his arms and made his body go rigid, and allowed himself to sink smoothly beneath the surface.