Death on the Rive Nord

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Rocco bit down on a feeling of panic. The water was seeping in through gaps in the panelling. Wooden panelling. And wood was weaker than the metal hull. He still had time if he could do enough damage to the wall and get out.

Then a surge of water flooded around his hands and buttocks, the smell bitter and tainted with oil or diesel. The floor shifted again. This time he felt it going down. The boat was now weighted with water and getting heavier by the second.

With calm desperation, he changed tactics. He shuffled backwards until he could straighten his legs. Then he sat up and took several deep breaths and began to force his hands apart. Each movement produced an answering creak from the ropes binding his wrists. He wouldn’t be able to break them, but it might gain him an extra few millimetres of movement.

He tried again, his muscles knotting against his clothing with the effort. Another surge of water flushed around his waist and covered the bindings. The boat was sinking faster. He tried to recall how deep Claude had said the canal was. Two metres? Three? Five? Whatever, if this continued, the air here would be forced out around the top of his prison, to be replaced by water. He would drown within minutes.

Not in this lifetime, he thought angrily, and took a deep breath. He rolled until he was balanced on his upper back, supported by his forearms. Foul water sloshed around his face, oily and bitter. He blew out a gush of air, and at the same time pushed down with his wrists and jerked up with his knees.

His bound wrists slid over his buttocks and came to rest behind his knees.

And that, he thought grimly, was the easy bit.

He breathed in again, then exhaled, sliding his wrists down the back of his legs and lifting his knees until the binding stopped at his heels. He pulled his knees up as far as they would go, but that was it. The shoes. Take off the shoes! He kicked them off and tried again as more water bubbled around his chest. He could feel himself lifting off the floor as a momentary weightlessness took over. Without touch, he couldn’t control the movements of his body; without friction, he could exert no pressure to help himself. For a split second the bindings stuck on his heels again and he bellowed aloud with frustration, no longer worried about who might be listening. The blood was pounding in his ears and he was experiencing a floating feeling that had nothing to do with buoyancy.

With a final desperate push, he jerked his knees upwards and thrust downwards, his feet free of restriction.

Splashing through the water, he groped at the panelling with his fingers until he found a vertical crack in the wood. It was too straight to be anything but a join. And joins were weaker than solid wood. He pushed against it but felt no give. Moving a few centimetres to one side, he tried again. This time he felt a small amount of movement. He ran his hands up to the top and felt the same.

Time to go. He turned over in the water and put his hands on the bulkhead floor for purchase. His mouth was now barely out of the water. Lifting his head and taking a deep breath, he ducked down and braced himself on the floor, picturing the space beyond the panelling.

The backwards double kick came with all the desperation and anger and the need to live that Rocco could muster. His bare feet hit the wooden panelling with the force of twin battering rams, and suddenly there was more water, this time surging around his head and spinning him around.

He rolled over and pushed against the panelling. It began to give. Using his powerful hands like grabs, he tore at the wood like a mad thing, then launched himself forward, squeezing his shoulders through and into a narrow, jagged gap. His coat snagged momentarily on a projection, but tore free as he heaved himself through.

Suddenly his hands were out of the water and into cold air.

Gulping back the instinct to breathe in, he pushed towards a patch of grey shimmering up ahead. Bits of debris swirled around him and something curled round his leg. He kicked frantically, barely resisting panic. It was a length of rope. He doubled over and ripped at it with his hands until it dropped clear, then lunged forward again. His lungs, sore from breathing the foul air, were now in agony.

Something heavy bumped against him. He pushed it away and felt rough material bisected with heavy stitching. What felt like a plastic bag moved against his face, cold and slimy. He brushed it off. Another, larger object bobbed alongside him, heavy and cumbersome. He pushed through and saw the patch of light growing bigger.

Another kick and he surfaced, coughing and retching. He was in a long cabin lined with small, square windows covered in heavy curtains. The water was halfway up the walls of the cabin, which he could now see vaguely through the gloom, his eyes already accustomed to darkness. A clutter of debris: plastic cups, food containers, cigarette packets, pieces of fabric and torn paper, and the edge of what appeared to be the mattress off a bed.

He was on the boat Nicole had shown him; the rotting hulk where the people from the truck had hidden. The atmosphere up here was stale and rancid, branded with the memory of unwashed bodies and damp clothing, of desperate men hiding until they could move on. But for Rocco it was almost sweet. He knew without being able to see that the ceiling and walls would be dirty yellow.

Then he remembered something else Claude had told him about the canal just here: a fault line on the bottom full of soft sediment which could swallow the barge whole.

He stilled the onset of panic, breathing raggedly. Still time to get out.

At the far end lay some wooden steps and the door to the rear deck. He pushed gently on the floor of the cabin and floated towards freedom. But the sudden movement caused a wash to break against the cabin’s walls, the water slapping like a mocking handclap, daring him to rush. The boat yawed lazily, debris floating and bucking like small boats on a rough sea. Then something heavy brushed Rocco’s leg. Whatever it was seemed to take hold, unwilling to break contact, and he kicked against it, imagination burning unseen horrors into his brain. After everything down in the hull, it was too much to ignore. He had to look. He turned as a dark shape lifted out of the water and rolled slowly away from him, shedding water from a cold, grey face and sightless eyes and a bright-red shirt.

The worker from the factory. Metz’s final victim.