Death on the Marais ilr-1

by Adrian Magson

  There was no obvious sign of a telephone, he noted.

  Three doors opened off the room. One led into a sleeping area of sorts, made up with a single, unmade metal-framed bed with no sheets and shabby blankets, a wardrobe and matching sideboard on a bare wooden floor. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, a nipple of brown grease hanging from the thin glass. A second door led to a narrow stairway, but it was soon evident by the layer of dust on the treads that it hadn’t been used in years.

  The third door was locked, with a stone step just visible at the bottom. A cellar, Rocco guessed. He studied the lock. It was ancient but solid, and he decided to leave it. If there was anything down there worth seeing, he could come back another time.

  ‘You see this?’ Claude was standing by a small side table. Nailed to the wall above it was a bulletin board, the kind used by every police station, school and council office in the country. Among the various bills and notes pinned to it were several photographs, faded and discoloured by age and the toxic atmosphere of the room. Most looked like family groups, taken in the Thirties, judging by the style of clothing. But the one Claude was pointing at looked different. It wasn’t old, not in contrast to the others, which were faded and grimy, although the subject matter clearly was. It had been pinned on top of the others, where its size and freshness made it stand out.

  ‘Interesting,’ Rocco murmured.

  The photo showed a group of six men and one woman, huddled around a campfire. Their faces were gaunt, the expressions sombre and inward-looking. One man was turned away, his face blurred, but the others were staring into the camera. They all held rifles, and one or two had bandoliers of ammunition slung across their chests. The woman was holding a pistol in one hand and a dagger in the other.

  ‘Resistance fighters,’ said Claude. ‘ Maquisards. I’ve seen pictures like this before, but not often. It was taking a hell of a risk having your face recorded like that. The Germans would have paid good money for this kind of evidence.’

  Claude ran a fingertip across the faces, stopping on a thin individual sitting next to the woman. The man looked about forty years of age, although he might have been younger, and appeared to be leaning against the woman, with one hand resting on her knee. He wore a heavy jacket and a beret and, like the others, looked as if he had not eaten or washed in days.

  Claude tapped the man’s face. ‘Look who we’ve got here.’

  Rocco looked. Felt a jolt of recognition.

  It was Didier Marthe.

  ‘Did you know he was in the Resistance?’ said Rocco. He slid the photo into his pocket: it would be another line of enquiry to consider, although he didn’t hold out much hope of turning up anything useful. As Claude had said, the records of Resistance members were sketchy, and those in the know were inclined to be very secretive on the subject. In any case, it might not have any bearing on why someone had tried to kill the man.

  ‘I never heard him say anything.’ Claude shook his head in wonderment. ‘You occasionally hear of someone being involved — usually after their death. But it’s not something people talk about.’ He shrugged. ‘Those who do are usually the ones who like to suggest they were part of it, but weren’t, if you know what I mean.’

  Rocco nodded. It was the same with the Indochina campaign: those who had been there talked about it the least. He’d come across the braggarts himself. Sad, most of them, to be pitied for their pretence and their false lives. ‘It might explain where Didier got his knowledge of explosives.’

  ‘True. But so what? It’s just an old photo.’

  Claude was right; it was just an old photo. And unless he could come up with a plausible reason for Didier having plastic explosives and detonators in his home, he was making a puzzle where one did not exist.

  As they walked outside, he automatically checked for signs of a telephone wire running into the house. He couldn’t see one… but neither could he imagine Didier Marthe having many friends to chat with, either on the phone or face-to-face.

  Later that afternoon, he took a walk round the garden, trying to empty his mind of conflicting thoughts about the dead woman and the nearly dead Didier. Two events in such close proximity in Paris would have been unremarkable: murders and assaults with no obvious bearing on each other occurred in adjacent streets every day. It was the way of things in heavily populated areas. But out here in the middle of nowhere? It didn’t seem feasible.

  He stopped beneath an old cherry tree and took out the photo of Didier Marthe and his fellow Resistance members. He turned it over. There was nothing to identify the group: no names, location or date scribbled helpfully for him to pursue. But there was a small blue stamp, an ink mark in one corner, in the shape of a triangle. He peered more closely and was able to decipher three letters, one on each side of the triangle. APP. The developer’s name?

  He went back indoors and rang Amiens, asked to be put through to Massin. The commissaire came on and went immediately on the offensive.

  ‘Rocco, why are you involved with some idiot who wants to blow himself to bits? Your time is too valuable to waste on low-level misdemeanours.’ Clearly, the officer at the hospital had wasted no time spreading the word about Didier’s injury and Rocco’s presence at the hospital.

  ‘It might not be what it seems,’ explained Rocco, cutting him off short. He wanted Massin’s help, not to be tied up with pointless arguments about jurisdictions or the parameters of his work.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s true the wounded man was messing about with a grenade, but I think it had been booby-trapped with plastique.’ He took a deep breath and launched into his next statement before he could change his mind. ‘There might be a Maquis connection.’

  There was a long silence on the line, and Rocco could picture Massin sitting back and judging how ill-advised it could be to go trawling into the murky history of the wartime Resistance movement. Others had been drawn into it before when revenge killings occurred or old scores were settled. It was usually messy and unpleasant, with many of the people now in positions of power. Suddenly having their past deeds exposed to the harsh light of a modern-day murder investigation was something most of them wanted to avoid, and digging too deeply into them could threaten the future prospects of an unwary investigator.

  ‘How do you arrive at that conclusion?’

  Rocco explained about the photograph and its logo. ‘It looks as if Marthe might have been in one of the Resistance groups. The only link is the photo shop which processed the print, but I don’t have the resources or the leverage here to find it. I was hoping you could arrange a search.’

  ‘You want me to put my name behind it, you mean? You’ve got a nerve, Rocco.’ Massin sounded annoyed, but there was no way he could refuse the request without having a solid reason.

  Rocco pressed ahead before Massin could find one. ‘If someone is trying to kill this man, it could be something to do with his wartime activities. I’d rather stop it before he tries again and ends up killing a bunch of innocent villagers. Plastic explosive is hardly selective in its victims.’

  The potential headlines were evidently clear enough for Massin to imagine. Equally clear to him would be the dangers of digging into events which few people wanted to uncover. ‘All right,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Leave it with me. What about the other thing?’ He meant Paris and the Berbiers.

  ‘I’m making enquiries. There’s somebody local who might know what happened. I just have to winkle them out of the woodwork.’ It was as near a lie as Rocco had ever uttered. He didn’t know if anybody in Poissons was involved, but the suggestion might be enough to keep Massin off his back.

  He rang Claude. The garde champetre sounded groggy. Rocco guessed he’d been taking a nap.

  ‘How many suspicious deaths have there been in this area recently?’ he asked.

  ‘Suspicious? You mean murders? That’s easy: none. Why?’

  ‘And assaults? By that I mean anything beyond a bad-tempered punch-up?’

>   ‘Same answer. It hasn’t happened. Sorry to disappoint you, Lucas, but life out here isn’t like Paris. People argue, sure — even have lifelong feuds. But that’s all it is. The last sudden death we had was last year, but that was a hunting accident. A visitor got careless in the woods and ran into a charge of buckshot. It happens, unfortunately; and for the fascists in the anti-gun lobby, far too often.’

  Rocco was aware of the hunting and shooting argument: that many legal guns found their way into the hands of criminal elements, quite apart from the deaths caused in communities by accident or intent. ‘You don’t approve?’

  ‘No. I mean, there are idiots out there with guns, we know that. But if the bureaucrats got their way, they’d shut it down altogether. Christ, it’s un-French!’

  Rocco laughed. ‘Did anyone pursue the matter?’

  ‘No. There was a witness standing right next to the man who was killed. He didn’t see the shooter, but he said there was a big group of outsiders in the woods on a hunting weekend and it could have been any one of them. Whoever pulled the trigger probably didn’t even know what he’d done. The Amiens office declared it an accidental death due to not knowing the local terrain.’

  Rocco sighed. It looked as if Poissons-les-Marais possessed an almost surreal lack of crime, and the only occurrence which had come close was an accident. But that made recent events even more out of the ordinary. ‘OK. Just working a line of thought, that’s all.’ He was about to put down the phone when a random thought occurred to him. ‘Who was the witness to that shooting?’

  Claude gave a dry chuckle. ‘Funny you should ask. It was Didier Marthe.’

  Rocco was jerked awake two hours later by the phone. He shook his head and checked the time. Six o’clock. He was beginning to regret having the damned thing installed.

  ‘Rocco?’ A vaguely familiar voice came over the line. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Speaking.’ He swung his feet onto the floor. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Bernard Rizzotti — Amiens prefecture. You came to see me about the dead woman.’

  ‘So I did. What have you got?’

  ‘The results came in.’ Rizzotti sounded subdued. ‘It’s maybe not what you were hoping for, though.’

  ‘Go on.’ Rocco experienced a sinking feeling. This wasn’t going to be good.

  ‘She was clean. Alcohol, yes — a fair amount, in fact. But no drugs.’

  Rocco swore quietly. So, a simple accident: a young woman who’d had too much to drink went walking near water and fell in. It happened.

  But Rizzotti hadn’t finished speaking. ‘There’s something else. The deceased was pregnant.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Rocco flicked through the possibilities, wondering how that might tie in with Nathalie Berbier’s death. Depression at finding herself pregnant leading to excess drinking and a fatal stumble in the dark? An angry lover — perhaps married — furious at hearing the news and pushing her into a river to silence her? Or the lonely realisation that she had made a dreadful mistake… and seeing only one way out?

  ‘I’m certain. Without the body I can’t tell how far gone she may have been, but I can tell you it wasn’t physically obvious when I made my initial examination.’

  ‘I understand. So why tell me now?’

  ‘Well, because it changes things… her being pregnant.’

  ‘I see.’ It sounded like Rizzotti had a soft side. Rocco sensed that he wanted to say more, but was hesitant. ‘If there’s anything else, it goes no further.’

  A long pause, then Rizzotti said quietly, ‘This is not to be broadcast, you understand. I will deny all knowledge if you use my name in connection with this.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘When I first examined the stomach contents, there was some alcohol. But it was difficult to judge how much because it was mixed with a large quantity of clean water, as were the lungs.’

  Proof of drowning at least. Then Rocco stopped. ‘ Clean water? Not lake water?’

  ‘Clean-ish, I’d say. Either from a fast-running stream where there’s little or no pollution or silt… or near a source of natural water… say a spring.’

  Fresh water. As good as Evian. He recalled Claude’s words. The Blue Pool.

  Rizzotti was still speaking. ‘But to have fallen into water and been unable to get out would indicate a severe level of intoxication or the presence of a powerful narcotic, such as cannabis or heroin… maybe even one of the new synthetic drugs being manufactured in America. That would severely reduce a person’s ability to function normally — especially a young woman.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘The lab figures do not bear that out. They simply state the presence of a powerful sedative and the conclusion that the deceased consumed too many tablets in error, perhaps while intoxicated, and fell to her death in a stretch of water.’

  Rocco felt the air hum around him. ‘But you don’t agree.’

  ‘Most assuredly not.’ Rizzotti sounded almost angry yet resolute. ‘Her system showed signs of an excessive dose of barbiturates, that is undeniable. But to have reached the level stated would have required the digestion of a great many pills indeed. Yet I did not find any such residue in her stomach.’

  ‘Which means?’ Rocco sat up.

  ‘The reported figures are mistaken… or ill-founded.’

  ‘You mean they’ve been altered.’

  ‘I can’t say that for sure.’ Rizzotti was careful to avoid levelling any direct accusation towards the forensic laboratory.

  Rocco didn’t push it. He might need the doctor’s help later. Alienating him by backing him into a corner wouldn’t ensure that, not now he’d come out this far.

  ‘What’s your conclusion, Doctor?’

  ‘There is only one. If it wasn’t in her stomach — ingested normally, in other words — there is only one explanation for such a high dose of barbiturates: she must have been injected with it before she died.’

  A few seconds went by as if Rizzotti was aiming at the maximum effect. ‘This was no drunken accident, Inspector Rocco. I think that poor woman was murdered.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Tell me about this.’ Rocco dropped the photo of the Resistance group on Didier’s hospital bed the following morning. The scrap man had been placed in a single room with a view over some gardens, a facility Rocco thought was better treatment than he deserved.

  ‘Never seen it before,’ Didier Marthe muttered sourly. The response was too quick to be anything but instinctive, but he was staring at the print as if it might bite him. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘Pinned to the noticeboard in your kitchen. What’s that about — reliving old times?’ Rocco turned to stare out of the window. Experience had taught him that while facial expressions could be feigned, there was often more to be sensed from the way a person spoke, and the timbre of their voice.

  ‘You’ve been in my house? Bastard!’

  Didier lashed out angrily, sending the photo spinning across the room.

  ‘Calm down,’ Rocco warned him, bending to retrieve the snapshot, ‘before I sit on you. I’m pursuing a possible murder investigation, so yes, I went into your house. Anyway, the door was open after your little explosive episode.’ He slapped the photo back down on the bed where Didier couldn’t ignore it. ‘You can try suing me for trespass if you like, but I wouldn’t fancy your chances much.’

  ‘Murder?’ Didier instantly dropped the aggrieved expression and looked shifty instead. His eyes went back to the photo and lingered there in fascination. ‘I don’t know anything about any murder.’

  ‘Attempted, in your case. Somebody tried to kill you, didn’t they?’ Rocco dragged up a chair and sat down heavily. He needed at least a litre of coffee, but it would have to wait. ‘With the grenade.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was an old Mills, that’s all. British. It blew up. Unstable crap.’

  ‘Balls. It blew up because someone spiked it with plastique and a
detonator.’ Rocco leant forward, pinning Didier with his gaze.

  ‘You’re insane.’ Didier looked away, rubbing subconsciously at the stump of his arm.

  ‘They left it lying around for you to pick up. But you recognised the detonator or the explosive for what it was and tried to get rid of it. You weren’t quick enough.’

  ‘That’s a fancy imagination you’ve got there, Inspector. How would I know about plastique? I only deal with ammunition I find in the ground.’

  Rocco looked pointedly at the photo on the bed. ‘You were in the Resistance. That photo proves it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You’d know all about explosives, how they worked. Tell me I’m wrong.’ Didier said nothing, so Rocco pressed on. ‘I’m guessing someone doesn’t like you and they’ve decided to get even with you over something. Am I right?’

  ‘No.’ Another response that was too quick. ‘Go screw yourself.’

  ‘Wrong answer. There was a shooting accident last year in the woods. Guess who was standing next to the victim? You. A botched attempt on your life, was it? That didn’t work either. You must have more lives than a cat. Care to share with me who might be after you, Didier? Hopefully, before any innocents get caught up in this little vendetta.’

  ‘What’s going on here?’ It was the doctor Rocco had spoken to on the day he and Claude had brought Didier in for treatment. He was standing just inside the door, his expression chilly. ‘This is not permissible! Why are you interrogating this man?’

  Rocco sighed. He’d get no further now. Didier would duck behind medical protection. And if he pushed the doctor, Rocco would likely end up being hauled out of here by a couple of Massin’s men.