Death on the Marais ilr-1 Read online

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Rocco felt chilled. Stepping into the trees had been like walking into one of the giant cold rooms used by meat wholesalers in Les Halles, in Paris. Thirty paces into the wood had taken him out of the light and into a world of shadows and shifting vegetation. He stood still and waited. As long as he stayed low on the slope and off the skyline, and wasn’t silhouetted against the outside, he should be safe. He shivered, in spite of his coat, and sank to his knees, listening for the faintest sound of movement, of anything alien.

  The quiet here was almost crypt-like. Barely a whisper penetrated from the outside, and if the men approaching up the track were still in their car, he couldn’t hear the engine. He realised the advantage Didier would have in this landscape. The scrap man would be in his element: he knew the terrain like the back of his hand. To anyone else, it was a hostile environment.

  Something hard and unyielding was digging into Rocco’s left knee. He shifted his weight and looked down. A shape too uniform to be natural lay half-buried in the leaves and weeds. He shrank back, his gut going cold as he made out the familiar nose of a large artillery shell. He had no idea of the size, only that it had probably been designed to take out an enemy fortification or bury the occupants of a trench where they stood.

  He lifted his knee and backed away, his thigh and back muscles protesting at having to move so slowly and carefully, stepping from one clear spot to another. It was all a gamble, he knew; God alone knew what he was treading on here. Most of the stuff had probably been buried deep, but over the years had risen gradually to the surface as the trees and vegetation grew and the elements flushed through, breaking up the surface soil and allowing the subsoil to yield up its deadly secrets.

  The harsh whine of an engine penetrated the wood as it tore up the track at speed. The DS driver was making no attempt at subtlety, and Rocco heard a hollow crump as the Citroen’s soft suspension bottomed in one of the many deep ruts.

  He stayed where he was, breathing easily, confident that he couldn’t be seen — at least, not by the gunmen. The thought made him want to spin round and search the immediate area for signs of Didier, but he resisted it. If the men came charging in here, they would be moving from light into shadow, fuelled by adrenalin and the desire to take him out as quickly as possible. Their vision would be slow to adjust and their control diminished, giving him ample time to identify the threat and move away.

  As it would Didier.

  As if on cue, a crackle came from deep in the wood to his rear. Rocco turned his head slowly, and was immediately rushed back to a time and place where every bush harboured an enemy, where sudden movement was to invite a rattle of automatic fire or a tripwire-linked explosion. He swallowed, his mouth dry, and felt a familiar tremble in his calves. For him, it had always been the legs, he remembered. For some men in the moments immediately before battle, it had been the hands shaking or the eyes flickering uncontrollably. For others it had been dark humour and dry laughter. Each had covered their own minor betrayals by gripping their weapons tighter, by thrusting their hands under their arms or simply by shutting their eyes and mouths and praying. In his case he had waited it out, because sooner or later it had always stopped.

  A car door slammed and a voice drifted up from the track. The engine fell silent. Rocco watched the light, aware that somewhere behind him Didier would be doing the same.

  Then he saw a flicker of movement and a dark shape appeared. A man with a handgun, head swinging from one side to the other, unaware or simply uncaring of the danger he was in. Another appeared nearby, further down the track. But this one was cooler, perhaps more experienced. One second he was there, the next he had melted to the ground.

  Rocco didn’t wait for the third man. If he stayed here, with Didier behind him and others coming at him from the track, he’d be trapped, especially having to take time to study the ground before every step.

  He began moving in a monkey crawl, edging back down the slope towards the cemetery. He was counting on Didier having moved higher, where he would feel in control looking down on the newcomers. Rocco instinctively preferred being closer to the cemetery boundary where the going might be easier and where he could track movement against the skyline.

  A shot rang out and he dropped to the ground. A sharp voice shouted a query, followed by a brief reply, then silence. Shooting at shadows, he decided. City rats nervous at finding themselves out of their own environment, in an alien world of shifting light.

  He took advantage of their confusion to move, this time across the side of the slope. Then he waited, resting and watching the trees where he thought Didier might be hiding.

  For the next twenty minutes he followed the progress of the three men from the car as they blundered their way through the trees. Occasionally they would call to each other, checking their positions with a hollow laugh or a brief acknowledgement, their locations pinpointed by the snap of a branch or the scrape of fabric on the thorny underbrush.

  Another shot, followed by two more, this time higher up. Two voices were raised in query, one in alarm, and Rocco realised he’d lost track of the third man. He must have penetrated the trees further up the slope, trying to catch Didier unawares.

  He crabbed sideways, knowing the two other men were not far away. Then a shape appeared barely ten metres from his own position. The figure was moving fast across the slope with little regard for danger, crashing noisily through the undergrowth. Not Didier, Rocco decided, but one of the gunmen, responding to the shots by circling across the lower slope to move up behind where he thought Didier’s position might be. The man hurdled a tangle of briar, then stepped onto a fallen tree trunk and jumped down the other side.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The explosion came the moment the man landed. Rocco felt the shockwave brush his cheek, followed by a flash, then a billowing gust of debris burst upwards, shaking the leaves and branches high in the trees and raining down again with a rattle. It was like being caught in a monsoon, the vegetation trembling under the onslaught and drowning out nearly all other sounds.

  Except for the man screaming.

  It began as a long, high-pitched cry, cutting through the trees and sending shivers down Rocco’s back. Amid the screaming was a gabble of words, distorted and meaningless, and he knew by the choking noises which followed that the man had taken the force of the blast in his belly and legs. He was again taken back to the jungles of South-East Asia and other explosions, other damaged men in similar circumstances.

  Then came a single gunshot. The screaming stopped.

  Didier. Two to go.

  Rocco heard movement to the right of where the man had fallen, and a branch snapped. A sapling swayed, drawing an immediate shot from the left, followed by a shout of triumph. He knew what that signified, too: Didier was play-acting the inept fugitive, waiting for the men to come to him and drawing them across dangerous terrain.

  The two remaining followers called out from their respective positions, and Rocco saw one of them move from behind a tree. After the fate of his colleague, the man stepped forward with a new awareness, checking the ground carefully in front of him. Every now and then, he whispered the fallen man’s name. ‘Marc! You OK? Marc!’

  For a second, as the man moved steadily closer towards the scene of the explosion, Rocco wanted to tell him not to bother. That his colleague was dead. But he knew it was futile. If Didier was waiting, then he already had the man in his sights and nothing Rocco could do would save him.

  Then the last man appeared higher up the slope. He glanced down and located his colleague, signalling his presence with a faint whistle before turning to check the area around him.

  Rocco froze, aware that he was out of cover. All the man had to do was look his way and he would certainly see him. Even as the thought occurred, the gunman’s gaze swept across Rocco’s position before moving on. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then the man’s head snapped back, processing the image he had seen. Wi
th startling speed, he turned and opened fire.

  Rocco was already sliding sideways into cover, praying he didn’t trigger an explosion. He felt the first shot brush his cheek. Another clipped a branch close to his shoulder, showering him with splinters. He swore and landed in a briar, feeling the thorns slicing his face. Something sharp dug hard into his ribs and he continued rolling, knowing that the man lower down the slope would have seen the movement and would be tracking him.

  He couldn’t stay here. He forced himself upright and brought up his gun, counting on the element of surprise. He ignored the stinging in his face and the stabbing pain in his side, and saw the nearest man turning towards him. His colleague was a shadow in the background, also moving round to get his own sighting.

  Rocco fired first, triggering shots as fast as he could, then threw himself towards a patch of clear ground behind a tree. As he did so, he heard a scream of pain, and looked up to see the man he’d fired at staring down at his leg. Instead of a bullet wound, however, a sharpened stake was protruding from his thigh and blood was pumping from the wound.

  A Didier Marthe booby trap.

  Two shots crashed out. The wounded man was punched sideways into the undergrowth, his jacket shredded. His colleague, realising his danger, turned and fired blindly into the trees before throwing himself into a patch of sweet nettles.

  A split second after he landed, a huge explosion shook the ground, stripping the nearest trees and showering Rocco with debris. It set off another explosion, then a third and fourth, each one crawling across the slope like some malevolent being.

  It was a deadly chain reaction. All Rocco could do was cover his head and hug the ground, aware that the course of the explosions would have no pattern, no rhyme or reason. Whatever horrors lay mouldering beneath this part of the wood from the Great War over forty years before were evidently delicate enough to have been set off by the violent movement of the earth and the battering shockwaves of the first blast.

  He heard a tree coming down, followed by another, the crash of their fall preceded by a tearing noise as their upper foliage ripped through the trees around them, the fractured roots unable to hold them upright. It was as if nature itself had decided to join in the fight. The ground shook with the concussion, then a heavy branch landed just a hand’s reach from Rocco’s head, and a shower of leaves and small branches carpeted his back.

  Then utter silence fell. Or had he gone deaf?

  Rocco shook his head and spat out leaves and dirt. He looked up cautiously and lifted his gun. A few leaves fluttered gently to the ground, a faint ‘tick’ marking each landing, and a distant drone of car engines being driven hard drifted across the landscape.

  The cavalry. Lights, but no sirens. Someone, he thought vaguely, knew what he was doing. Sirens often spooked criminals into precipitate action, doing things they hadn’t planned. A restrained but obvious approach in force, however, looked far more sinister and inevitable.

  He breathed a sigh of relief and rested his head on his forearms. Then he heard the rustle of someone moving away through the trees.

  Didier.

  He slid out from his position and moved up the slope towards the man he’d shot at, and found him covered by a fallen tree. His upper body was shredded and bloody, and it was impossible to tell if any of Rocco’s shots had hit home first. The sharpened stake had pierced his inner thigh, although it hadn’t killed him. What had done the damage was the enormous shotgun wound in his side, exposing ribs and belly, where Didier had caught him side-on. He moved past the body to check on the other man.

  The last gunman was staring up at him from the edge of a crater in the bed of sweet nettles, eyes wide in shock. His lips moved soundlessly, the words unformed. Both legs were gone just below the knees and he was losing blood fast from the femoral arteries. Rocco knelt by his side, careful not to put too much weight on any one spot. He used the tip of his gun barrel to flick the man’s jacket open and check for secondary weapons. There were none. As he dropped the jacket back, the man whispered something.

  ‘Help… me!’

  It was Berbier’s driver.

  Down the track, the approaching vehicles switched on their sirens to muddy the air and intimidate. The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ moment, some cop drivers called it. They must have seen or heard the explosions and decided that the time for subtlety was past.

  Rocco hadn’t got much time. Even if this man didn’t die of shock in the next few minutes, he would soon be beyond reach of anyone, sheltered by a screen of medical and judicial barriers. Either that or he would simply disappear, spirited away where he wouldn’t be able to answer awkward questions.

  ‘We need to talk,’ said Rocco, and slapped the man twice on the cheek to draw him out of his shock. It wasn’t likely to meet any approved police interrogation standards, but if the man had had his way, Rocco would now be dead or dying in his place. He needed answers. And this was the only man who could provide them.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  A trolley clanked somewhere along the corridor of Amiens central hospital, and footsteps squeaked as a nurse hurried by in rubber-soled shoes. A telephone rang and a man’s voice rose in query followed by laughter. Someone coughed noisily.

  The usual noises. Unusual circumstances.

  Rocco lay back on a bed and breathed deeply while a nurse applied a dressing to his ribs with cool hands. He wanted to sleep, but knew that was delayed shock. Sleep was a luxury for later.

  ‘You were lucky,’ the nurse commented cheerfully. ‘It took off a chunk of flesh and nicked a couple of ribs. A bit to the side and we’d have been laying you out downstairs alongside the others.’

  He grunted but said nothing. He hadn’t realised he’d been shot, mistaking the pain in his side for having collided with something solid. His mother had been right after all: no pain, no sense.

  Berbier’s driver hadn’t been so lucky; he had talked long enough, but died just as help arrived. With two of his friends also dead and the man Rocco had shot at missing in the marais, it had been a costly exercise for whoever had sent them.

  Maybe the fourth man would surface one day, Rocco mused, a nasty surprise for some unlucky fisherman sitting quietly by the lakeside.

  There was no sign of Didier, although one of the cops who was a hunter had found traces of blood on the far edge of the wood. It didn’t prove Didier had been seriously wounded but it might be enough to slow him down and come to someone’s attention. Rocco wasn’t going to hold his breath on that one.

  He had called out a warning when help had arrived, knowing he could easily end up the innocent casualty of a trigger-happy cop if he wasn’t careful. He waited for them to come to him, feeling their way carefully over the ground, checking for more traps and lethal ordnance. It had taken twenty minutes, and he’d used the time to rest and lay still, studying the canopy overhead and thinking about what the driver, named Andre, had told him. He’d felt unaccountably tired, as if he’d run a marathon, and had closed his eyes for a moment.

  Sensing movement after what seemed a long time later, he’d looked round to find Captain Canet staring down at him.

  ‘You did all this?’ Canet looked aghast at the carnage all around. ‘It’s a war zone!’

  ‘Sweet Jesus.’ It was Rene Desmoulins, peering over the officer’s shoulder and holding his pistol in a meaty fist. He looked disappointed. ‘You couldn’t find it in you to wait for us, then?’

  As soon as he was able to convince them to let him go, Rocco drove back to Poissons to find Claude, who told him that Francine was in Amiens hospital.

  ‘She’s in a mess — suffering from shock,’ he said, eyeing Rocco’s ruined clothing and bloodied face. ‘When we got across the bridge into the village, I asked her what had happened but she became hysterical. I couldn’t get a word out of her. Luckily Thierry’s wife used to be a midwife, so she was able to calm her down with something. Thierry took her off to Amiens. You must have just missed her. You OK? You look like shit.’
The words came out in a gabble, propelled by a mix of shock and relief.

  Rocco nodded. ‘Thanks for the encouragement.’ He felt as if he’d been trampled by an elephant, but at least he was still on his feet.

  ‘Sounds like you might have some questions to answer,’ said Claude, when Rocco filled him in on what had happened. ‘The big kepis don’t like unexplained massacres, especially when the press gets to hear about it. It makes them nervous, having to explain why some hotshot investigator from Paris blows up half the countryside. It’s bad for the tourist industry.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was one.’ Rocco was busy thinking about Francine and her incarceration. She must have surprised Didier at the lodge while delivering the groceries, and he’d panicked and locked her away where she wouldn’t be found. At least he hadn’t buried her in one of the marshes or dumped her inside her car in the lake.

  Claude shook his head and sniffed. ‘That’s the problem with newcomers — they always bring their shit with them.’

  Rocco drove home, where he washed and changed into fresh clothes. News about the source of the explosions, which had been heard all over the village, had filtered through the community, and Mme Denis fussed around, scooping up Rocco’s coat, shirt and trousers and pronouncing the first two salvageable, but the trousers beyond all help.

  He waited for her to brush the coat into a semblance of something civilised, then asked Claude to take him back to Amiens.

  Claude looked doubtful. ‘Are you up to it? It’s late. Where are we going?’

  ‘I want to interview Francine.’

  ‘Interview? After what she’s been through?’

  Rocco tossed him the keys. ‘Don’t ask.’

  It was already dark by the time they arrived at the hospital. The press had received a briefing from Massin about the explosions in Poissons, and although it was deliberately short on detail, it contained enough salient facts for them to put out an early story the following day. Unfortunately, it hadn’t kept them away for long, and they were already back clamouring at the entrance for late developments and the identities of the dead gunmen.