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.
‘Shoulders back, stomachs in,’ said Canet, hitching up his trousers and stepping through the gate. ‘You ready for this?’
‘Not yet.’ Rocco had better things to do than tug his forelock for a bunch of self-important desk jockeys. He decided to take a tour of the outside perimeter of the cemetery instead. It might also offer a chance of getting upwind of the awful smell for a while. If standing on ceremony was important to the brass, they would wait. If not, they’d have to follow him and get their shoes dirty.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rocco? A nobody… a rebel… reckless. Lacks any respect for authority.
Rocco turned left out of the gate, then left again, following the wall across the width of the cemetery. The ground here was rough but easy to read, where neither weeds, grass nor farmers’ crops had taken root, leaving a half-metre perimeter of hard ground to follow like a path. There were no signs of disturbance, no footprints to help him except a few paw prints, and lots of rabbit droppings; a dead thrush, half-eaten by maggots and, a yard into the field, the carcass of a larger bird — a wood pigeon dead on the wing, no doubt the random target of a farmer’s rifle.
He was pretty sure the narrow strip of ground here was much the same as the day the men who had built the wall had packed up and left. He walked on.
He reached the next corner near the tool shed, where it looked as if access might be easy, and studied it carefully. Nothing. No marks on the wall to show anyone had climbed it, no traces of fabric caught on the rough brickwork. The ground below it was unmarked. Then, as he turned up the long stretch of wall abutting the wood at the top, he saw movement in the trees.
Rocco stopped and crouched as if examining the ground, all the while checking the tree line. Something or someone was up there, but he couldn’t see any detail. A flick of a branch, a change in the pattern of shadows, then it was gone.
He continued walking, head moving from side to side, and eventually reached the end of the wall where it butted up against the wood. The atmosphere here was still, densely packed with overgrowth, with not even the rustling of leaves on the branches to break the silence. He breathed deeply, sniffing the air, enjoying the raw smell.
He turned and followed the top wall across the width of the cemetery, the wood on his right shoulder. But he was no longer interested in the ground: he was already certain that whoever had dumped the body in the cemetery had gained access through the gate, not over the wall. Instead, he concentrated on listening to the silent mass of greenery to his right. It was thinner here, he noted, where selective trees had been felled or had fallen to nature. It allowed the air and light to penetrate, and there was a breeze, too, like a whispered conversation, the leaves and branches setting up a chaffing, clicking sound as if discussing man’s intrusion on this quiet place.
It reminded him of a jungle he’d once come to know, also a place of whispered noises and shadows. His head began to ache and he shivered, mentally pushing away the flickering images trying to intrude. No time for that; never time for that. He breathed deeply until his mind was quiet and his inner vision began to clear, the pounding in his head gradually subsiding. His hands, though, were clammy. He wiped them on his coat and forced himself to concentrate.
One thing he’d learnt in Indochina was that among trees and vegetation, human smells stand out far more than they ever could in a city street. And if you had the nose and the patience, not to say the nerve, you could tell if a stranger was close by simply using your senses.
Especially one who smoked Gitanes and had the body odour of a dead badger.
He wondered what Didier Marthe had been doing among the trees, watching the cemetery. Was it coincidence? Was he scouring the wood for shells to break up and just happened to be here? Or did the scrap man have some other reason for skulking around?
By the time Rocco got back to the cemetery gate, the two black cars were parked fifty metres down the track, the doors hanging open. Three men in smart uniform were walking towards him, one tall man in particular leading the way. The others — drivers and gofers — stayed smoking and chatting among themselves, no doubt glad to be rid of the brass for a few minutes.
The tall man, bearing the badges of a divisional commissaire, spoke to Canet, who turned and pointed a thumb towards Rocco.
The senior officer stood where he was, clearly waiting for Rocco to join them. Rocco held his ground. He was being stubborn and would probably regret it, but he was beyond jumping through hoops for uniforms with nothing better to do than step on other people’s feet. Instead, he turned away, running his eye over the cemetery boundaries, trying to read what had happened here. If the men — and he was only guessing it had to have been more than one — had brought the dead woman through the gate, any traces they had left, such as footprints, would be indistinguishable against the grass, especially now Cooke and everyone else had tramped back and forth.
The one thing he didn’t know for certain was how the woman had died. Only that water had been involved in some way, either before, during or after death.
A crunch of footsteps sounded on the track behind him. He turned to find the three newcomers metres away, with the tall officer in the lead. He looked less than happy, his body language stiff and foreboding.
In the split second that he saw the man’s face, Rocco felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. The features, although older and more lined, were instantly, shockingly familiar. The expression was just as aloof, the bearing as pompous as he remembered and he was transported back to 1954. In that brief moment of realisation, of remembering, he saw that the officer remembered him, too.
Rocco steeled himself and wondered what malevolent twist of fate had sent this man here, to the same patch of soil as himself. Because when he had last set eyes on Colonel Francois Massin, the officer had been cowering in a foxhole in Indochina, screaming like a frightened girl.
