attempt will mean everyone will be expected to be in attendance. If we are given the green light, I don’t need to tell you that every potential hazard will be investigated in advance.’
‘By “hazard”, you mean threat.’
‘Yes. Colonel Saint-Cloud and his staff are checking a list of known agitators, and this will be circulated to all offices in the region. But I’m sure you know which groups they include.’
Rocco nodded. Take your pick. OAS. Resistance veterans. Military men. Communists. Government conspirators. Police. Students. Algerians. The CIA. The British. The favoured list among conspiracy nuts was endless. Even NATO had taken a crack, so rumour had it, a temper tantrum in response to de Gaulle’s decision to withdraw French military facilities from the organisation. Rocco didn’t believe that one, if only because it would have required a full council meeting and de Gaulle’s signature to assassinate himself. He doubted even Le Grand Charles was capable of that level of arrogance.
‘What do you want me to do?’ He still couldn’t figure out why Massin had told him all this. Somehow he doubted this was an occasion for covering his back.
‘You may need to assist in preventing anything happening. As you know, Saint-Cloud runs a very small group, albeit very effective in what it does do. But while he is away checking routes and itineraries, he cannot do his main job, which is to oversee closely the protection of the president.’ He rearranged the already immaculate pencil. ‘It would be a disaster if anything were to happen in this region.’
Rocco nearly laughed at the outrageousness of the build-up. So Massin was covering his back after all. He asked, ‘Why me?’
Massin hesitated before answering, a flicker of something approaching doubt on his face. Then he said, ‘Because Colonel Saint-Cloud suggested it. He asked for names and selected you. His own team is stretched very thin, so he is having to use whatever facilities he can. Meet him here tomorrow at nine for a briefing.’
‘I’ve never been called a facility before,’ Rocco murmured dryly. ‘But I’ll do what I can.’ Short, he thought, of deliberately throwing myself in the way of a bullet, anyway.
Massin’s eyes were hooded when he looked up. ‘I’m delighted to hear it. I trust you will not let me down. You hear me?’
Home in Poissons earlier than usual, Rocco called in at the co-op store for some meat for dinner. Mme Drolet, the owner, fluttered her eyelashes and hurried round the end of the counter on high heels to join him, bringing with her a rush of perfume and powder.
‘I’ve got some nice cutlets,’ she suggested breathlessly. ‘Very filling for a big man like you.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, wondering if she spoke to Delsaire, the plumber, this way. He’d met Madame Delsaire, who looked the sort to eat thistles for breakfast. ‘I’ll just take some minced beef.’
‘Don’t you know how to cook cutlets?’ She reached up and patted her hair, which was frozen in some kind of unmoving, shimmering beehive. ‘I could pop down and do them for you, if you like.’
‘There’s no need-’
‘It’s really no problem. I’m nearly done here. Just give me fifteen minutes to freshen up.’
If she was any fresher, Rocco decided, she’d be as crisp as a newly peeled endive. He pointed at a piece of beef under the glass and said, ‘That minced would be fine. Really.’
She gave him a half smile, one eyebrow curving upwards. ‘There’s no need to be frightened, Inspector… I was only offering to cook, you know.’ She picked up the beef and fed it through the mincer, turning the handle with what seemed unnecessary vigour, and he wondered whether she had eaten any husbands in the past.
At the house he rented down the lane from the village square, he found some eggs in a basket on the front step. Mme Denis, his neighbour, making sure he was well stocked with the basics in life. Some days it was vegetables, others it was fruit. Today eggs.
He glanced through the fence separating their properties and caught a fleeting glimpse of the old lady ducking indoors, and smiled. She habitually wore an apron over a grey dress, and a triangle of headscarf pinned over her head. It was her uniform, her and others of her age; a sign of cleanliness, hard work and a lack of show. She was an independent old bird, and had become fiercely protective of the flic living next door. Her defensiveness had even included flinging hot tisane in a man’s face when he’d threatened her with a gun, saving Rocco’s life in the process.
‘You think because I’m old I’m a charity case?’ she had once asked him, eyes flashing dangerously behind thick glasses. Rocco had just offered to take her out for a meal in return for all her kindness since he’d arrived in the village. Big mistake. ‘You are a welcome guest here, Inspector,’ she’d explained primly. ‘We look after our guests.’
‘In that case,’ he’d replied, ‘feel free to go out on the town and get drunk and disorderly, and I’ll make sure they drop any charges.’
She’d giggled and told him she would hold him to it.
The interior of the house was cold. He lit the fire and fixed dinner, then rang Claude to check if there were any developments from Father Maurice. There were none. Wherever Pantoufle had disappeared to, it was not looking good.
He did a stint at the ancient hand pump out in the garden. It was reluctant to draw water, a sure sign that the cold in the atmosphere was reaching freezing levels once more. He’d already had to set a fire around it to loosen the ice more than once, and would no doubt have to do so again. The laying of pipes in the road outside had been completed and covered over, but there the work had stopped, nobody knew why.
Back indoors, the fouines — fruit rats — were skittering back and forth in the loft as if excited by his return. They seemed oblivious to the drop in temperature and intent on playing their nightly games instead of hibernating. Rocco had become used to them, finding their presence oddly comforting. He still wasn’t sure who was the guest and who the host here, but so far, the relationship had worked well.
And in his experience, there were far worse rats in the world to deal with.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Up close, Rocco thought Colonel Jean-Philippe Saint-Cloud, formerly Lt Colonel of the 1er Regiment Etranger de Parachutistes — 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment — looked older than his walk or demeanour showed. He had sallow skin, but still possessed the build and apparent vitality of a younger man. His neat moustache and haircut en brosse were clear visual clues to his military background, as were the neat double-breasted suit and highly polished shoes, and the tie knot as tight and hard as a nut.
He was waiting for Rocco at the front desk, staring into the middle distance and ignoring the gaggle of overnight miscreants gathered for logging or release, depending on their offences. He turned and led Rocco without greeting through the office, where the daily briefing was being conducted by Commissaire Perronnet and Captain Canet. Numerous pairs of eyes swivelled to follow as Rocco and the security chief passed down the corridor, which made Rocco question how discreet his involvement with Saint-Cloud was going to be.
‘Sit down, Inspector.’ Saint-Cloud led the way into an empty office and closed the door. ‘Thank you for being so prompt.’ His voice was calm, with the quiet confidence of a man accustomed to his authority. He sat and crossed his legs, his movements economic and controlled. He put Rocco in mind of an attack dog he’d once seen in a scrapyard: not the slavering, snarling beast most commonly imagined, but a quiet, almost serene animal with quite possibly the most evil eyes he’d ever seen.
Rocco sat and waited. This was probably one of the most powerful men in the land. But it wasn’t through any position in the chain of command, rather his close association with the president. In fact, there was rumoured to be only one man closer, and that was the main physical bodyguard himself, Paul Comiti, a man sworn to protect de Gaulle to the death.
Saint-Cloud, however, was the organiser, the bureaucrat with quiet muscle, always behind the scenes, pulling strings, making arrangements. To him fell the task of keeping the president’s visits and sorties as minutely planned and as secure as possible. At the point of contact with the public, however, it was down to Comiti’s small team of men to catch the bullet.
So far, they had succeeded in their job against many expectations and attempts.
