Death on the Marais (30 page)
He smiled grimly, remembering the man he’d shot, and the splash.
One down, three to go.
Rocco blasted out onto the main road and spun the wheel to the left, then trod with calm deliberation on the brakes and brought the Citroën to a stop. He didn’t much care where he went right now, as long as the men followed him and not Claude and Francine. He glanced back down the track and saw a black DS parked in the bushes to one side. It could only belong to the gunmen. He waited, anxious for signs that they were coming. If they weren’t, he’d have to head for the village and hope he could find the other two before the men caught up with them.
A figure burst into view from among the trees, running onto the track. A man in a suit. Rocco waited until he was sure the man had spotted him, then trod hard on the accelerator and took off for the station. He
drove as fast as he dared on the narrow road, intent on keeping a lead while still drawing the men after him. There was a long straight stretch of narrow road from the station down to where it intersected with the road to Amiens, and he knew that they would be able to see him all the way. If he didn’t turn on to the main road, they would know there was only one way for him to go: the cemetery.
He thought about Didier and where he might run. If the scrap man had any brains left, he must know that he was finished here. The police were after him for theft and assault; Rocco wanted him for kidnap; and now the four – or was it three? – men behind him wanted him for God knew what reason. But he had a good idea it was something to do with Berbier.
He saw the station crossing coming up fast. It wasn’t much, simply a weighted wooden pole to stop traffic when a train was approaching. Only now the pole lay in splinters on the ground, and nearby, a section of a car’s wing and a scattering of broken glass. Standing by the broken barrier and scratching his head was Paulais, the stationmaster.
The moment he recognised Rocco’s car, Paulais ran to the side of the road and pointed towards the cemetery, waving him through and shouting incomprehensibly as Rocco roared by.
Now Rocco knew for sure where Didier had gone. It would be the one place where he felt safe; the one place he believed no sane person would dare follow.
* * *
A white Renault with the driver’s door hanging open was skewed across the track twenty metres beyond the cemetery gate. Part of the right wing was missing and all the glass down that side had gone where Didier had collided with the crossing barrier.
Rocco stopped the car and climbed out, checking the cemetery and surrounding fields. He was almost certain the fugitive would have gone straight for the wood, but he had no desire to be proven wrong by getting himself shot in the back. He also wanted to make sure that there were no visitors inside, and that they and the gardener, Cooke, were in no danger.
He drew his gun and jumped over the gate, checking the rows of headstones. The covered walkway was deserted and the tool shed in the corner looked locked tight. There was no sign of Cooke. One thing less to worry about.
He stopped by the central cross where Nathalie Berbier’s body had been found, and turned to study the dense wood covering the hill at the far end of the cemetery. It looked dark and forbidding, and he was surprised at how quickly the daylight had slipped away. He checked his watch. Six o’clock. He’d been so busy with the hunt for Francine and the chase through the
marais
, he’d been unaware of time ticking by.
He breathed deeply and checked his gun. Took out a spare ammunition clip. Then he walked out of the cemetery and started up the track towards the wood. The ground here was deeply rutted and hard, and he stayed to one side, ready to throw himself down by the cemetery wall if Didier appeared. He realised that
he was still wearing the rubber boots; hardly the best gear for a manhunt, but he doubted it would matter much, not once he was among the trees. He tried telling himself that coming here alone was stupid, that he should wait for help to arrive from Amiens. But deep inside he knew it would take too long. If Didier got away from here, they’d never find him again. He heard a car engine and turned. The black DS had passed the station and was barrelling along the road towards the cemetery, kicking up a furious cloud of dust in its wake. It showed no signs of stopping for the main road.
Rocco now had no choice. Going back to lead them away was no longer an option. They would be on him before he could get back to the road, and even if he got that far, their car was far more powerful and would soon overhaul him in a chase.
He turned and jogged up the track into the trees, and whatever was waiting for him.
François Massin put down his phone with a trembling hand. He hadn’t been expecting the call from Berbier, still less had he been quick enough to deal with the man in the way he would have liked. But as the voice had dripped like acid into his ear, part cajoling, part threatening, laying out in carefully camouflaged terms what his future might be – would be if he wasn’t able to appreciate the ‘delicacy’ of the situation – he had begun to feel a deep anger building inside him.
He stood up and walked around his office, uncertain about what his immediate response should be. He had few friends in the senior ranks of the police service – mostly his fault, he acknowledged that, and there was little he could do about it now. But right now he could have done with some wise advice on how to
handle internal politics. Being threatened by the likes of Philippe Bayer-Berbier, even in the subtle, ‘friendly’ tones the man had employed, was something he had never faced before. Yet he was all too aware of the enormous power the man wielded among the ranks of senior policemen and politicians – men who could decide Massin’s fate at the snap of a finger. In a straight test of wills, he would be no match for that kind of influence.
He found himself standing before the photo of his younger self in uniform. So proud, he recalled his feelings at the time. So intense. And so determined to redeem himself and regain some of the self-respect he’d lost in the army.
And now this. He shook his head. He’d be an idiot to go up against Berbier, no matter what Rocco said the photo suggested. It would be professional suicide. He’d have no allies, no backing and would become a pariah with no fate but a lonely, humiliating resignation and a disappearance into obscurity.
It was not the ending he had envisaged for himself. And with that thought, he hated himself more than at any time in his life.
A knock sounded at his door. He straightened his shoulders and called, ‘Come in.’
It was Desmoulins, looking flushed. Captain Canet hovered behind him, face tense.
‘Urgent call from Poissons, sir,’ said Desmoulins. ‘Officer under threat. The missing woman has been found and there’s been gunfire … several armed men are in pursuit of Inspector Rocco.’
‘What?’ Massin stepped towards the two officers. ‘What men?’
‘That’s not clear, sir. One of them – the kidnapper – is Marthe, the man from the hospital. The caller said the others look like ex-military. Rocco’s been forced to go to ground in the local
marais
.’
Massin turned away in a moment of indecision. Ex-military men who were prepared to go up against the police? Impossible, surely. What if Rocco had stumbled on some kind of official operation? Careers could be fatally damaged if the wrong response was made. Yet if it was true, and the men were not part of the state, then it boded ill if it was allowed to go unchallenged. He glanced at the photo on the wall. He hadn’t done much to be proud of since those days. Now he was embroiled in a battle of wills with an enemy he could hardly see, let alone fight.
‘Sir?’ Canet prompted him. ‘The lads are ready to go. Your orders?’
Massin turned. Desmoulins had his service weapon strapped on and a bunch of car keys in his hand. Canet, too, was armed and looked ready for action, his eyes bright. Behind them in the corridor, he sensed the presence of others.
He nodded. Maybe this would be a new start. If not, he could deal with his future later.
‘You’d better get them moving, then, hadn’t you?’
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 Citroën’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.
