Death on the Marais (2 page)

‘Now there’s a blessing.’ Lucas paused, did a double take. ‘He hit a live
grenade
?’ It made him wonder if there was, after all, some truth to the slanderous rumours about country folk circulated among his former colleagues, who rarely, if ever, ventured outside the city limits. ‘Tell me you’re kidding.’

‘Unbelievable, but true. World War Two, British, I think it was. He doesn’t usually bother with them – they’re too small and not worth the effort. He prefers artillery shells, the bigger the better. And bombs like this one.’

‘You make it sound like a full-time job.’

‘It is. The last big one he found was next to the school eighteen months ago. He’d just finished clearing the ground around it and went to get some lifting gear when it blew up. Knocked him flat on his arse and
blew the roof off the schoolhouse. Luckily, the kids were on holiday.’

‘For him, too.’

‘Not the way he saw it. All that metal, fragmented to hell; he got totally tanked and cried for three whole days.’

Rocco grunted. No wonder the scrap man was so interested in this find. Large, oblong and rounded, it had a hefty hexagon nut at the end protruding from the ground. The casing was covered in a thick scale of rust, no doubt through being buried in the chalky soil of the Poissons-les-Marais churchyard with only the ancient village dead for company. Quite how such a monster had lain overlooked for so long was a mystery, although he knew these things worked their way to the surface from time to time, like pebbles in the garden.

‘Lucas Rocco,’ murmured Claude, stretching out the words and pronouncing Lucas the American way, with the ‘s’. ‘You’re not from these parts, are you?’

‘I’m relieved you can tell.’ Rocco wondered how long the dissection would go on for. Probably days, given the fact that so little else seemed to happen here.

‘Easy. You don’t look shifty enough.’

‘What have people here got to be shifty about?’

‘Everything. Nothing. Living and dying, mostly.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

‘You’ll be looking for somewhere to doss down, I suppose?’

Rocco decided he might get to like this man – if
he didn’t have to arrest him for something first.

‘I might. Are you the local psychic, or a letting agent?’

‘If I was either, I’d die of boredom. You’ve seen the café?’

‘I have. Not my thing.’ His recommended billet above the
bar-tabac
, where he’d just stopped to check out the facilities, was too public, and the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke too invasive, for his tastes; he’d lodged in too many similar fleapits over the years to look on them with affection. It was at best a stopgap until he found something better; somewhere he could call his own space while he considered what the hell he was supposed to be doing out here.

‘Go see Mme Denis, down Rue Danvillers.’ Claude tilted his head towards a lane running off at an angle from the village square. ‘Last but one on the left. She has the keys to an empty house down there. Plenty of room to park the cop machine, too.’ He grinned knowingly. ‘In your line of work, you’ll feel right at home.’

‘Why?’

‘A man was murdered there years ago.’

CHAPTER TWO

Rocco? Arrogant and disrespectful
.

Lieut. André Thomas – head of administration and accounts, Clichy-Nanterre district

‘Say again?’ Rocco stared him down, his voice a growl, and the grin faded quickly.

‘Only kidding. It’s a nice place. Peaceful.’

Then the crowd moved and the man named Didier Marthe was in front of them. No doubt aware that he’d lost his audience’s attention in favour of the new arrival, he stared belligerently up into Rocco’s face, craning his head with difficulty.

‘What are you doing here,
flic
?’ he demanded, cigarette bobbing angrily. ‘We’ve done nothing wrong. It’s a bomb, that’s all. Not a drama; not an arrestable offence … unless you go around locking up explosive devices these days?’ He turned and sniggered at the crowd, seeking support against the outsider, the cop. ‘They turn up all the time, these things, like turds on
a sheep farm. The whole area was one big munitions dump back in forty-four, and what wasn’t stored here was dropped like bird shit by the British as they scuttled back to England.’

‘Easy, Didier,’ murmured Claude. ‘He’s a newcomer. Show some respect, huh?’

‘Respect?’ Didier spat on the ground, easing the gobbet around the cigarette. ‘He’ll have to earn it like everyone else!’

Rocco stood his ground, although he was trying not to gag. It wasn’t the little man’s aggressive demeanour, nor even the potentially deadly object sitting just a few feet away which bothered him: rather, Didier’s breath, which was toxic enough to kill a chicken at ten paces. A mixture of
vin de pays
, cheap tobacco and several other unnameable substances, it wafted out in a vicious cloud whenever he spoke, enveloping anyone within range in its evil embrace.

‘We’d best call the
gendarmes
,’ Monsieur Thierry called out anxiously. ‘Before it goes off and flattens the village.’ He looked in a state of shock, staring in awe at the spot where his shovel had hit the casing with some force. A silvery scar was clearly visible where the rust had been chipped away.

‘What?’ Didier spun round in horror, and Rocco could guess why. The fire brigade was the first force called on in emergencies, but the local brigade probably wasn’t equipped to deal with explosives. The
gendarmes
, while less popular – and likely viewed by cynics as expendable – would keep whatever they dealt with as evidence. ‘Why let those thieving maggots
get their hands on it?’ Didier turned back to Rocco, including him in his contempt and huffing out a fresh wave of halitosis.

Rocco fought to hold on to his breakfast. The idea that this man might take a hammer to the thing simply to prevent the police from confiscating it was frightening. But short of surrounding it with armed guards or decking him, he couldn’t think of any way of preventing it.

‘What do you say, Inspector?’ The question came from Thierry, looking to officialdom for support – probably a rarity in these parts, Rocco guessed. Anyone representing the government or its agencies would clearly be viewed with hostility and caution.

He shrugged, wondering what made them think he was an expert on bomb disposal. Then it hit him: if anything went wrong, blame the
flic
. It was probably an English bomb, made in Coventry or some such hellhole, and since the English were probably no more popular in these parts than the police, what could be more fitting? Barely twenty years since the end of the last global conflict centred on France, the debris of two wars was just as fresh in people’s minds as it was in the ground beneath their feet.

He was about to suggest evacuating the immediate area and calling in the
gendarmes
, as Monsieur Thierry had suggested, when a man pushed through the crowd. He was dressed in filthy overalls and carried a canvas tool bag.

‘Philippe Delsaire,’ Claude informed Rocco helpfully. ‘He’s what passes as a plumber in these parts.
Also farms a small plot outside the village. Gambler, too.’ He rubbed his fingertips together. ‘Not a bad plumber or farmer, but lousy at cards.’ He grinned knowingly.

Everyone watched as Delsaire stared hard at the object. Then he stepped forward with a large wrench, and without warning, gave the hexagon nut a resounding thwack.

In spite of his doubts about the object being a bomb, Rocco felt his testicles shrink and witnessed fleeting images of his past life go by at speed. A collective groan testified to others sharing this same life-death experience. Even the mad bomb-basher, Didier, looked fleetingly alarmed, while Thierry crossed himself and muttered something obscene.

The newcomer struck the object again. But instead of the expected flash and monumental explosion that should have sent Poissons-les-Marais into orbit like a space rocket, the nut simply fell off, and out onto the grass glugged a stream of rust-coloured water.

Delsaire smiled and tossed the wrench into his tool bag.

‘Water container,’ he said simply. ‘A prototype. Only seen a couple of them in my time. The design never caught on.’ He pointed to where the water was bubbling out. ‘With only one hole you can’t get a steady flow, see? Probably fell off a lorry and got buried.’

As Delsaire walked away, whistling, Didier glared around, daring anyone to say a word. Then he calmly scuttled forward and claimed the container as his property.

The crowd left him to it, some looking almost disappointed that a discarded water tank wasn’t about to reduce them and their village to microscopic dust particles.

Rocco was about to return to his car when Claude stopped him.

‘So what’s a city detective doing out here?’ he asked. ‘We’re just a pimple on a cow’s arse. It’s not like there’s any real crime – nobody’s got anything worth stealing. And certainly nothing to trouble an
inspecteur
.’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Rocco truthfully. ‘They haven’t told me.’ Captain Santer, his boss, had merely presented him with his new orders, an accommodation warrant and directions, and told him to go and investigate cowpats until further notice. All part of a new nationwide initiative, he had explained vaguely, a small grinding of a very large wheel in the Fifth Republic’s efforts to modernise its police force. So far, Rocco judged, going by what he’d seen, as initiatives went, it was a case of wait and see.

‘There must be a reason, though.’ Claude was gently insistent, like a friendly dog with a bone, teasing out the goodness.

‘Why?’

‘There’s a reason for everything.’

‘Ah. You’re a philosopher as well as a psychic.’

‘No. Just that I know how the official mind works.’

‘Lucky you. When you’ve got a minute, perhaps you can fill me in.’ He nodded. ‘Thanks for the tip about the house.’

CHAPTER THREE

Rouen, Haute-Normandie

Ishmael Poudric rubbed his eyes and glanced along the hallway towards the front of his house. Someone was at the door. Lowering the large pendulum eyeglass which old age and too many hours spent poring over photographs had rendered necessary, he checked the clock on the wall of his study. Nine o’clock. Who could be calling at this hour? Time was no longer a medium he allowed to control his life the way it once had, but at his age it was a commodity too valuable to waste. A glance at the window confirmed that darkness had fallen without him noticing.

The knock was repeated. It sounded urgent. Maybe his son, Etienne … a problem with the business. No. He would have called first.

He stood up with a grimace, bones protesting,
and eased away from a desk cluttered with the results of years of his work: the negatives, slippery and undisciplined, like small children; the cardboard mounts for slides; the photo prints in black and white, some aged and fading, others bright and new.

He opened the front door and was surprised to find a woman smiling at him. She was dressed smartly and conventionally enough, even if, to Poudric, she looked a little plainer than any woman should do. Pallid, almost, as if illness or circumstance had drained all the colour from her skin. She appeared to be in her middle years, although he had long ceased to be any kind of judge when it came to the ages of women.

‘Can I help you?’ he queried politely. After a lifetime of service behind a camera and a shop counter, it was a difficult habit to break.

The woman held out a cutting from a magazine. He recognised it immediately. It was from a history journal about the building of an archive for a university library, by one Ishmael Poudric, photographer, once of Poitiers in Aquitaine, now retired to Saint-Martin just outside Rouen.

‘I read about you,’ the woman said. ‘You’re building a photo library about the Resistance movement.’

‘That’s correct, madam – but it’s very late …’

‘I know – and I apologise for the discourtesy,’ the woman said hurriedly. ‘My name is Agnès. Agnès Carre. I’m a student of Modern History, and was wondering if you could help me?’ She delved into a pocket and produced a slim envelope. ‘I will pay you for your time.’

‘To do what?’ Poudric was surprised. There were not many offers of money these days, now he had given up his photography business – well, other than favours for a few friends now and then. And this project he was working on was out of love, not financial gain. With younger photographers out there, armed with the latest technology and new ideas, his skills as a snapper were fast becoming outmoded.

‘I’m looking for some photos for a thesis I’m writing.’ Agnès smiled tiredly and brushed back a stray hair. ‘Can I come in and explain?’

Ten minutes later, his curiosity satisfied and the envelope containing the money lying invitingly on his desk, Poudric was delving through a long photo file box, flicking aside index cards and humming, a habit he had never quite managed to lose. His visitor was sitting quietly, nursing a cup of tea he had prepared for her.

‘Ah.’ He stopped and lifted out a print and its negative, both encased in a thin protective sleeve. ‘I think this is the one.’ He turned from his desk and showed her the print.

She took it carefully, holding it between her fingers, the way he had, and tilted it to the light. The snap showed a group of people, all dressed in rough, working-style clothing. Six men and one woman. They were huddled around a fire in the open, expressions sombre, most of them facing the camera. The men were armed with rifles, some with bandoliers of ammunition across their chests. The woman sat at one end of the group, a pistol in one hand and a knife in
the other. The man next to her had a hand on her knee. With its dark tones and grim connotations, the scene pulsed with atmosphere.

‘I took that,’ Poudric explained, remembering the occasion with unusual clarity, ‘one evening near Poitiers. I had worked hard to gain the confidence of this group and persuaded them to sit for posterity.’ He gave a faint smile. ‘This particular group was communist in its affiliations, but they were brave people, all fighting for what they thought was right. To be frank, it was risky having this done – for them far more than me – but when one is faced with history in the making, you take whatever opportunity comes along. And there were damn few weddings or celebrations requiring my expertise at the time.’ He chuckled dryly at the memory.