CHAPTER EIGHT
‘All hands on deck,’ Desmoulins murmured. ‘The bosses have landed.’
Rocco looked up from the case file he was working on to see Commissaire Massin striding along the glass- walled corridor running the length of the building, heading for the stairs to his office. Impeccable in his uniform, he was trailing behind him three men in dark suits, well coiffed and austere of face. Two looked neither right nor left, as if homing in on a target. The third man, a more leisurely three paces to the rear, ran a sharp look over the office, finally settling on Rocco and lingering a moment before flicking away. This man was tall and slim, with the athletic build and easy stride of a soldier.
Officials. Ministry men.
Rocco watched them go. No doubt Massin would put in an appearance later, showing off his terrain and his men, anxious to impress his visitors from the big city.
He knew Massin of old. The autocratic, ascetic and by-the-book police commissaire had been the same in the army in Indochina, when Rocco had witnessed him having a serious crisis of courage under fire. He hadn’t set eyes on the man since escorting him off the battlefield to safety, until fate had intervened several months ago. Rocco had found himself transferred out from Paris on a new policing ‘initiative’ to spread investigative facilities around the provinces.
From Clichy to Picardie had been quite a change, from gangs to… well, anything, strange crash sites on a country road being the latest. But as Rocco had discovered very quickly, crime here was the same animal as anywhere else. It sometimes came disguised as something different, but crime it remained.
Coinciding with his transfer to the Amiens region, Massin had turned up in his life once more. The atmosphere had been strained ever since, with Rocco fully expecting to be transferred out again at any moment. That it hadn’t happened yet was a minor miracle, and probably due to Massin needing a period of calm and playing a waiting game until Rocco tripped up and gave him the excuse he needed.
Surprisingly, Massin and his three visitors stayed upstairs out of sight, with instructions issued for them not to be disturbed. Deputy Commissaire Perronnet did a brief tour instead, checking shift details and ongoing tasks while skilfully avoiding answering any questions about the identity of the three men.
‘Bloody strange,’ said Desmoulins.
The comings and goings went on for the rest of the day. Massin and his visitors went out for a late lunch, returning at the end of the afternoon when the shifts were changing. They looked sombre in spite of the break, raising speculation among the officers and staff who watched them pass by.
‘Something’s going on,’ one of the desk sergeants professed knowingly. ‘The top kepis don’t act this secretive unless it’s going to be bad news for the troops.’
‘We could be in for a pay rise,’ Desmoulins countered. ‘Of course, I have been known to underestimate our esteemed superiors on numerous occasions before.’
Rocco continued working, using the period of calm to make sure his paperwork was in order. Joining in with the speculation was pointless; it broke down the barriers between the ranks in an entirely damaging way and encouraged rumour. But his cop’s nose was beginning to make him uneasy. The men were right; something was going on.
Then the identity of the military-looking man came to him in a flash. He was neither Interior Ministry nor police. Rocco had seen the man once, maybe twice before, but only in passing. Colonel Jean-Philippe Saint-Cloud eschewed any kind of publicity, but was always much closer to the public than many would have believed, moving among them and seen only by those who knew where to look. Never identified by the press or Government, he had one purpose in life and one only: to run a top-class protection squad.
He was, in name at least, the president’s chief bodyguard.
The three visitors and Massin were already in when Rocco arrived next morning. The atmosphere in the building was still tense, but Perronnet and Captain Canet were surprisingly calm, which gave Rocco a degree of confidence that nothing serious was about to happen. The brass had a way of channelling news without saying anything, so maybe the general feeling of suspicion had been misplaced.
He checked the overnight list of reports and early calls, and noted one from Claude Lamotte. A local vagrant known as Pantoufle had been reported missing by the priest of a village called Audelet, not far from Poissons and within Claude’s patch. The man had a regular circular route around the area, which took in Audelet village church each Friday. That was the day Father Maurice handed out parcels of bread and cheese to the needy. His failure to turn up was sufficiently unusual for the priest to have alerted Claude.
Rocco was about to pass the task back to Claude to deal with, when he happened to glance at the large wall map of the region, idly tracing the usual route taken by Pantoufle from Audelet through Poissons and around the other nearby hamlets until he fetched up again back at Audelet.
The route ran along the same stretch of road where they had found the blood and the tooth.
CHAPTER NINE
‘What do you know about this Pantoufle?’ Rocco was driving his black Citroen Traction, with Claude in the passenger seat fiddling with the radio. They were on their way to see Father Maurice in Audelet. Rocco had never met the priest, and had asked Claude to come along in case he needed the familiarity of a known face. He had little time for men of any cloth and felt uncomfortable in their presence, as if they were trying to read his soul. It was fanciful rubbish, he knew that, but he preferred not to encourage them.
‘He’s a clochard,’ Claude replied. ‘A tramp. Always has been, I think — or as long as anyone can remember, anyway. Some say he was wounded in 1918 by a shellburst, and lost his memory. He’s been wandering around the district ever since, sleeping in barns and under hedges. It’s not his real name, by the way.’
Pantoufle. Slipper. Rocco thought the name oddly appropriate for a tramp, a gentleman of the road. A hobo, as the Americans called them. A hobo in slippers. ‘What is his real name?’
‘Nobody knows. He popped up in the area about forty years ago, I gather. People asked his name, but he always went blank. I asked him myself once; it was like looking into an empty bottle. Nothing there. After a while, people gave up. Then some wag gave him the name Pantoufle because he always wore slippers, even on the road. Reckoned proper shoes hurt his feet. He must have gone through a few thousand pairs over the years. The name stuck. He’s genial enough and harmless, so they leave him alone.’
Rocco wondered if they were chasing a false line of enquiry. All the indications at the crash scene pointed to a serious injury or death. But add in the report of a missing person — a tramp — who frequented the very road where the crash had happened, and it was hard to ignore the possibility that the two might be connected. While he was certain that Massin would want him to concentrate on more serious issues, there was something about the information at the crash scene which had remained with him, as if it were trying to convey a message. The only way to get to the bottom of it was to clarify at least this aspect and prove that this particular person wasn’t involved.
‘About Alix,’ Claude continued after a while, sounding uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t mean to imply anything before — you know that, right? It’s just that… well, I worry about her. She’s not as tough as she makes out.’ He clamped his mouth shut and looked out the window at the passing greenery.
‘You have every right to worry,’ Rocco replied. ‘Let’s be honest, she’s what the Americans would call a hot dame. Of course, we’ll make sure you’re the first to know when we decide to get together.’
Claude’s head snapped round, his mouth open. ‘What?’
‘Calm down, you idiot. I’m kidding. Anyway, how do I know she won’t turn out to look like you in a few years?’ He shuddered. ‘That doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘Bloody cheek!’ Claude pretended to be disgruntled. ‘She looks like her mother, if you must know — and she
