Death on the Marais ilr-1

by Adrian Magson

  Rocco parked behind a grey Citroen 2CV van and climbed out of the car. The afternoon heat hung heavy over the wheat fields on either side of the track and a family of crows in the woods gave voice to the new arrivals, while a skylark sent out its call high in the air. Rocco tried to spot the small bird but gave up. He turned and flicked a practised eye over his surroundings. Vehicle access was bumpy but OK, so the mortuary wagon would be able to get up close. They were two hundred metres from the road, but since passing traffic was limited, there would be no problems with crowd control. Unlike the city, he reflected, where even a rumour of an unexplained death was sufficient to bring out the ghouls and freaks, eager to play their part in the drama.

  Turning back towards the way they had come, he could just make out the church steeple in Poissons, rising above a range of trees surrounding a series of small lakes between the cemetery and the village. A line of poplars showed the location of the canal just north of the railway line, but there was no sign of boat traffic.

  Following Claude’s directions, he had driven through the village and along a winding lane past an area called the marais — the marshlands — and down past the village railway station. This was little more than a small brick building on a raised platform. A simple striped barrier to stop traffic stood alongside the road, with a counterweight on one end to help the stationmaster lift and lower it.

  To Rocco, more accustomed to city scenes, it was like another country. Narrow roads with no vehicles; clusters of houses but few people; cultivated land, clearly productive and well maintained, but no sign of workers.

  Then he became aware of the smell.

  ‘God on a bicycle!’ Claude coughed as he joined Rocco by the front of the car. ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘Death.’ To Rocco the aroma was all too familiar. Heavy and sickly, it hung in the air like a curtain, thick enough to taste. ‘Come on.’ He led the way into the cemetery and saw a man sitting at the far end of the cloister with his back against the wall. He looked unnaturally pale and was staring across the cemetery with a tight expression etched on his face. Probably trying not to breathe in, thought Rocco. It never works, no matter how hard you try.

  ‘John Cooke — the Englishman,’ whispered Claude, one hand clamped across his nose. ‘His French is so-so.’ He wagged his other hand in a see-saw fashion. ‘Actually, for an Englishman, not bad.’

  Rocco strode along the walkway, his footsteps echoing around him, and watched as Cooke stood up to greet them. Up close, he was the quintessential Englishman: tall and thin, with blue-grey eyes and a neat moustache, fair hair. He wore dark-blue overall trousers and a check shirt, and had the wiry, sun-bronzed arms and face of an outdoor worker. Right now, however, the tan on his cheeks was struggling to stay in place.

  ‘Mister Cooke,’ Rocco said in English, and introduced himself. ‘Inspector Rocco. I understand you found a body.’

  ‘That’s right. Over there.’ Cooke looked surprised and relieved at hearing his own language. ‘Glad I don’t have to explain this in French. I could do it, of course, but… Anyway, come this way and I’ll show you.’ He set off out of the cloister and across the carefully tailored lawn, leaving the two policemen to follow. He walked like a soldier, Rocco noted, easy strides, back straight.

  ‘You speak English,’ muttered Claude, tapping Rocco’s arm. ‘You didn’t say.’

  Rocco gave a ghost of a smile, remembering his surprise at finding Claude was the garde champetre. ‘You didn’t ask.’

  Cooke stopped alongside the giant stone cross set in the centre of the lawn. It had a stepped platform beneath an oblong base, and the main stone of the cross was inlaid with a bronze sword, the tip of which was running with verdigris.

  Like green blood, Rocco thought sombrely.

  Cooke gestured to the far side of the platform, and moved back to allow them to pass. ‘I hope you’ve got strong stomachs,’ he said. ‘It’s not pretty.’

  Rocco stepped around the cross.

  The woman was lying on the stone platform, arms flung wide, one leg bent beneath her. She had a dark, mottled tinge to her facial skin, which was bloated and pincushioned out of shape. Her pupils were milky-white, half-closed, and she could have been anywhere between twenty and sixty — it was impossible to be certain. Her hair was mousy, lank and crusted against her head in tangled snakes, and one cheek was pulled back in a cruel facsimile of a smile. But that was the only detail Rocco could determine immediately without a closer examination.

  She was dressed, as Claude had said, in the stark black uniform jacket and skirt of a Gestapo officer, complete with a swastika armband, leather belt, shirt and tie. The collars of the jacket bore a twin lightning-bolt insignia and three pips, and the black forage cap lying by the woman’s side was decorated with white piping.

  ‘You found it like this when you came in?’ Rocco asked Cooke.

  ‘Yes. I had to call in at Peronne first thing this morning; I only got here twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘Can anyone confirm that?’

  Cooke lifted an eyebrow. ‘What — you think I might have left her here? Bit obvious, isn’t it?’ When Rocco said nothing, he added dispiritedly, ‘No, I didn’t see anyone to speak to.’

  ‘And there was no one here when you arrived?’

  ‘No. The place is hardly Piccadilly Circus.’ He paused, apologetic. ‘That’s in London.’

  ‘I know where it is.’

  ‘Right. Of course. If we get any visitors, it’s usually not until after midday. Otherwise it’s just me and the chaps.’

  ‘Chaps?’

  Cooke gestured vaguely towards the lines of white stones. ‘Them. Trouble is, they don’t talk much.’ He gave a thin smile.

  English humour, thought Rocco.

  ‘When were you here last?’

  Cooke thought about it. ‘Three days ago. I have to cover several other cemeteries; this one is the easiest to maintain, so I don’t come every day.’

  Rocco bent to peer more closely at the woman’s face. No significant marks, although it was hard to tell with the lumpy state of the skin. But he noted what might have been a small bruise on the side of the woman’s neck. She wore a single silver-and-enamel earring in the shape of a yellow-and-white flower — it looked like a marguerite — in her left ear, but nothing in the right. The yellow centre showed sharp and bright in contrast to the body and the dark clothing.

  He ran his fingertips across the skirt and jacket. The material was heavily creased and the fabric damp — in fact, worse, it was soaked through. Several white marks showed on the fabric and were repeated around the welts of the shoes, and tendrils of weed were dotted here and there on the clothing and wrapped around her legs like dark-green centipedes. Her black stockings were ripped and laddered, exposing the flesh underneath which bulged through the mesh like uncooked pork.

  ‘Did it rain here last night?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Hasn’t for days.’

  ‘What did you do after you found the body?’

  ‘I didn’t touch anything, if that’s what you mean. It was obvious she was dead, so I drove to the station and got Monsieur Paulais to call Claude. I think he also called the police in Amiens.’

  Great, thought Rocco. It won’t be long before the circus gets here. He’d have liked more time to study the scene in peace, but that was no longer in his hands. He turned to Claude. ‘How long before they arrive?’

  ‘About an hour… thirty minutes if they’ve got nothing else on. Depends whether Monsieur Cooke mentioned the uniform.’

  ‘I told them.’ Cooke took up the conversation in French, his accent evident but not bad. ‘It seemed pretty important… I thought it might galvanise them into action a bit sooner.’

  It would do that all right, thought Rocco. Finding a corpse dressed like Himmler’s sister is not the kind of thing you ignore, not in France. He lifted the forage hat, which was dry to the touch, and opened it. There was no name tag.

  Claude looked glum. ‘If Paulais call
ed the police, he’ll have called the press, too.’ He rubbed his thumb and fingers together. ‘Money. In these parts, this will be a big story.’

  ‘You think we get bodies in Gestapo uniform turning up every day in Paris?’ Rocco shook his head. ‘Where’s the closest stretch of water?’

  ‘To here?’ Claude jutted his chin back towards the village. ‘The canal, just the other side of the railway. After that, the lakes and the marais. Why?’

  ‘The clothing’s wet through. She was in water until very recently.’ He touched the skin of the dead woman’s leg. It was covered in a slimy film.

  He turned his thoughts to what would be needed here, if it wasn’t already on the way. The full works, undoubtedly — forensics, scene of crime, mortuary service… and Lord knows who else would want to get in on this act, with that uniform. Poissons-les-Marais wouldn’t know what had hit it.

  Claude read his mind. ‘This is going to get messy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very. I hope you had a good night’s sleep, because this could be a long stretch of duty. You ready for it?’

  ‘Me?’ Claude looked surprised. ‘I’m a lowly garde champetre — the regular cops won’t want me around.’

  ‘It won’t be up to them, though, will it?’

  ‘Really? What do — Ah.’ The light dawned. ‘Of course — this is your patch now.’

  ‘Too right. They sent me down here; I might as well do my job. So stick around.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Rocco? Big and scary. A bit nuts. Women seem to like him, though, lucky bastard.

  Capt. Michel Santer — Clichy-Nanterre district

  ‘Monsieur Paulais says we can use the station waiting room if we need to.’

  Claude had driven off earlier in Rocco’s car to speak to the stationmaster. He had returned immediately with the news. ‘As I thought: he called the papers as well as the regional radio news channels. He’s already dressed in his best uniform, hoping to get interviewed.’

  ‘He’s welcome to it,’ said Rocco. ‘Can you put up a barrier across the lane? The last thing we need is the press trampling all over the scene.’

  ‘We could leave your car parked sideways across. They’d have to drive onto the fields to get past.’

  ‘That won’t stop them, will it?’

  ‘Not until Duchamel, the farmer who owns these fields, sees them flattening his crops; then he’ll come and shoot their tyres out. Anything for a bit of sport. I can arrange it, if you like.’ He looked positively eager at the idea.

  ‘Stop it. You’ll be selling tickets next.’

  ‘Hey, not a bad thought. By the way, you should get yourself something more practical than the Traction. Nice car, but not good for driving over these tracks. Too low for one thing: you’ll wreck the suspension within a week.’

  Rocco hadn’t thought much about the kind of terrain he’d be covering until he arrived. City streets were either good or bad, and you took them at your own risk. But at least you went with the knowledge that they were usually passable. As he’d already seen here, anything less than a metalled road was little better than a cart track.

  ‘What do you drive?’ He hadn’t seen a car at Claude’s house, although there had been a building big enough to house one.

  ‘2CV Fourgonnette. Amazing vehicle.’ Claude looked enthusiastic. ‘I once saw a farmer overturn one in a field. Then he and his son flipped it back over and away he went.’ He dropped his lower lip. ‘A bit rippled here and there, I grant you, but as good as new.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll keep this for now.’

  ‘Your funeral.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Rocco looked up towards the wood behind the cemetery. ‘Where does the track lead?’

  ‘Nowhere much. Only the farmers go up there, to their fields.’

  ‘And the wood? Or is it just a wood?’

  ‘Christ, no. You don’t want to go in there. It’s an old ammo dump, full of shells, bombs and grenades. You step on the wrong thing and baff! — you lose a leg. Or worse.’ He gestured towards his groin with a grim chopping motion.

  ‘Wasn’t it cleared?’

  ‘No. The commune kept asking, but there was never the money or the men — the experts. One suggestion was to lob in a couple of mortar shells and stand well back.’ He grinned. ‘That would have been worth seeing.’

  ‘It didn’t fly?’

  ‘No. It was vetoed on grounds of insanity. And despoiling the countryside.’ He spat on the ground. ‘Like they worry about that kind of thing.’

  Rocco paced back and forth, returning to study the ground between the cemetery gate and the monument where the body lay. He’d already taken a stroll around the inside of the cemetery while Claude was away, and had seen nothing helpful: no clues revealing how the dead woman had got here, no telltale tracks, no arrows pointing to the guilty party. He stared at the hump of the body, now covered by a tarpaulin Cooke had got from the tool shed, the brick structure in the far corner of the plot. The forensics boys weren’t going to be happy, but it was better than allowing the legions of flies waiting to get in on the act to begin feeding, especially with this heat.

  He wondered who the woman was. Had been. And why she was dumped here. She certainly hadn’t died in this place. The clothing, with the exception of the hat, had been in water; and he’d seen similar bloating to the skin on bodies pulled out of the Seine, which indicated that she had been immersed for a while. Then there was the uniform. Was it someone’s idea of making a point? If so, it was a grisly one. He deliberately hadn’t tried the pockets of her jacket yet, which might yet yield a clue; that would be best done with the forensics team in place, in case they found anything that might deteriorate rapidly and be lost as evidence.

  ‘Lucas!’

  He turned. Claude was looking towards the main road where three vehicles — a black saloon and two chunky police vans, all with their roof lights flashing — were speeding towards the turn-off.

  He walked to the entrance gate to meet them.

  The man in charge was a cheerful-looking individual with a red face and a well-developed middle. He hopped from the car, followed by men from the other vehicles, and watched as Rocco approached.

  ‘Who are you?’ he queried. ‘This is the scene of an unexplained death.’

  ‘Good description,’ Rocco congratulated him. He took out his transfer orders and calling card. The officer read the details carefully, eyebrows lifting.

  ‘OK, that changes things, I grant you.’ He ducked his head. ‘Captain Eric Canet, Amiens Prefecture. We heard someone new was coming. My men are at your disposal, Inspector.’

  ‘I appreciate that.’ Rocco shook the captain’s hand, relieved that Canet wasn’t about to jump on his soapbox over who had primary position. By rights, Rocco should have presented himself at the Amiens office prior to coming here, but he had seen no reason to do so until absolutely necessary. ‘My colleague is Garde Champetre Lamotte, based in Poissons, and the other man is the cemetery gardener, John Cooke. He’s English.’ He gestured towards the monument. ‘The body is at the base of the cross, covered with a tarpaulin against the flies. There are no obvious signs showing how it got there, or even the cause of death… but I’ll leave that to you and your men to determine.’

  ‘Of course.’ Canet acknowledged the courtesy and flicked a signal to his men. They began to mark out a pathway from the gate to the monument, examining the ground as they went. ‘To be honest,’ he added softly, ‘rather you than me on this one. Is it true about the Gestapo uniform?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘God help us. That’s all we need, stirring up old memories. That’s always bad news.’ He paused and nodded towards the stone cross. ‘If you’ll excuse me?’

  ‘Help yourself.’

  Canet set off in the wake of his men and disappeared behind the memorial. He reappeared two minutes later and walked back to join Rocco. He looked pale around the eyes, his sights fixed on the ground.

  ‘Holy Mother,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve
seen some stuff in my time, but that…’

  Rocco nodded. They all would have seen far worse before, but the shock value in what lay beside the monument was the degree of contrasts: the bloated, stodgy skin of the dead woman against the black of the hated uniform.

  Canet walked to the gate and spat onto the track, then wiped his lips. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured, and checked his watch, glancing towards the road.

  ‘You expecting somebody?’

  Canet nodded. ‘You won’t have been made aware of it, but we’ve just inherited a new divisional commissaire, starting today. It’s part of this big reshuffle. He’s from Marseille.’ It was clear from Canet’s wry expression that he looked on the senior officer’s move to Picardie as an odd, not to say controversial one.

  ‘Know anything about him?’

  ‘No. I was on leave until today and came out here as soon as I got in. His holiness was doing an arse-kicking tour of the sous-prefectures this morning so I don’t even know his name, only that he’s ex-military from way back. But I do know he’ll have something to prove… which is why he’s on his way here to take charge of the investigation.’

  ‘Oh, joy.’ Rocco was dismayed. Commissaires didn’t usually involve themselves in such matters, limiting themselves instead to making announcements to the press and their superiors in the Interior Ministry about successful outcomes and an increase in performance statistics. He could foresee an argument looming; one he would probably lose.

  Canet sniffed in agreement. ‘Well… I’m not surprised. This thing looks like being a touchy subject — the Gestapo kit and all. It could make good headlines for him if it breaks quickly, bad if it doesn’t, in which case you’ll get responsibility.’

  Rocco smiled. ‘Cynic.’

  Canet shrugged fatalistically. ‘With good reason: I’ve seen it all before.’

  Just then, the sound of car engines intruded on the quiet and both men turned. Two gleaming black saloons were approaching along the main road, moving at a sedate clip.