here to harm you. It must be nice to have people looking after you in this way.’
They stared at each other, both blinking at a skittering sound overhead. And suddenly, the moment, if there had been one, was gone.
‘Where is your car?’ He hadn’t seen the Peugeot outside; he’d have remembered it too easily.
‘In the first shed. It was just big enough. I thought… maybe it would be less embarrassing for you if I was discreet.’
The shed. One of two he never used. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘So what made you come?’
She explained about the gossip she’d picked up, how the gangster known among the Algerian community as ‘Farek’ was on his way and looking for his runaway wife and child. How word would have gone out to look for a woman and boy travelling alone.
‘Someone will have already spoken, I’m certain,’ she explained. ‘Maybe even one of the men I travelled with. I couldn’t take the chance of staying with Amina and putting her in danger.’ She shrugged, turning her cup slowly on the tabletop. ‘Actually, I didn’t know where else to go. When we met up on the hill, you made this place sound so remote, so… safe.’
Rocco reached for the phone and dialled Claude’s number. Poissons might be safe normally, but he wasn’t betting on it remaining so for long. He’d known other fugitives who had tried hiding in remote locations, only to have a face appear like a long-forgotten bad memory and bring the past hurtling back at them.
‘It’s Lucas,’ he said when Claude answered. ‘I need your help.’
‘Of course. I’ll come now.’ Just like that. No questions, no arguments.
‘The local garde, Claude Lamotte,’ Rocco explained to Nicole. ‘He’s a good man. If a strange duck flies over the village, he’ll know immediately.’
They waited until the familiar clatter of a 2CV stopped outside, followed by the tinny slamming of a door. Rocco let him in.
‘Evening.’ Claude nodded at Nicole and shook hands. He seemed unsurprised to see her here and Rocco guessed that word had already got out. Rocco the resident cop has a female visitor. Watch this space.
‘Nicole Farek,’ said Rocco, ‘Claude Lamotte.’
‘Farek? Ah, of course.’ Claude demonstrating that he was a man of the world and knew what was what. He looked longingly at the percolator, so Rocco poured him a cup, adding a generous measure of cognac. Then he explained about Samir Farek’s journey from Oran and the likelihood that the gang leader would pitch up in the area before very long.
‘You really think he will find this place?’ Claude looked doubtful. ‘How?’
‘Because he has a network of people looking,’ said Nicole. ‘It is Samir’s way: he frightens simple people into doing what he says and they dare not disobey. Eventually, someone in the Algerian community will talk… about me, about Massi — about anyone they think is unusual. There are not too many single women with a small boy arriving in this area. I should have thought more carefully before coming here. I’m sorry.’
‘Forget it,’ said Rocco. ‘You didn’t have many options.’ He glanced at Claude and said, ‘Can you keep an eye out for unknown vehicles in the area? We might not get much warning of their arrival. It could mean long hours.’
Claude grinned. ‘Suits me. Anything’s better than housework.’ He finished his coffee and explained, ‘My daughter’s coming home for a visit. Well, one of them, anyway. She was married the last I heard, but,’ he puffed out his lips, ‘now she is not. So, I am making the house into a home again… or trying, anyway.’ He shrugged casually but Rocco sensed an undercurrent of excitement beneath the show of detachment. Claude, a widower, rarely spoke about his daughters, who had both left home to make their own lives.
Claude nodded at them both. ‘I’d better be going.’ Then made his way out.
The hum of a vehicle engine dragged Rocco out of a light sleep. He was in the back of the Citroen on the drive, wrapped in a blanket. After the warmth of the house and meal, it was like ducking under a cold shower. But there was too much to lose by assuming Farek wouldn’t come. If he didn’t turn up tonight he would do so tomorrow or the night after that.
He slid low in the seat as the side-wash of headlights brushed across the house, the sheds and the interior of the car, chasing shadows into the darkness. They were approaching from the square by the co-op. He peered at his watch. Two o’clock. Beyond his house lay nothing but fields for several kilometres until you hit the village of Danvillers. Who the hell drove from Poissons to Danvillers at this time of night?
He slid the MAB 38 from his pocket and waited for the car to slow. It was travelling at a measured pace, but that didn’t mean it was Farek. The engine sounded powerful. It drifted by without stopping, tyres crunching on soil washed off the slope across the road by the last rain. Rocco lifted his head and caught a glimpse of two men against the reflected aura of the headlights. Neither looked towards the house.
He ducked out of the car and quietly shut the door, then crouched down, waiting. If they had dropped a man further down the lane, he wouldn’t be long in coming for a closer look.
Fifteen minutes later he was still waiting and feeling foolish.
He stood up, bones protesting, and returned to the house, where Nicole was waiting at the kitchen table. She was barefoot and seemed unperturbed by the chill settling on the room now the fire had died down. Her coat was wrapped tightly around her, but he couldn’t help but imagine that she wore very little underneath.
It was an unsettling thought. He went up to the attic to join the fruit rats, closing the door firmly behind him.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Morning brought a renewed cold snap and a layer of frost on the garden. Rocco was wide awake at six and went out to set fire to the pump. It involved packing straw around the base where it came out of the ground, then lighting it to melt the ice in the pipe. He was watched by a wide-eyed Massi from the safety of the kitchen. He took the filled jug indoors, then told Nicole to lock the door behind him and stay inside.
‘Where are you going?’ She touched his arm and he realised that the coming of day with its cold, clear light had filled her with a renewed sense of fear. She was right to worry; this house was no fortress and would be easy to penetrate by a determined attacker.
‘Just taking a look,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t go far.’ He checked his gun and stepped outside. It was cold and clear, with an unusual clarity to the air. He walked out of the front gate and looked to his right towards the village. The lane was empty, scarred by the trench where the new water pipes had been laid but not yet covered. An elderly lady appeared down near the square, carrying a small milk churn and wrapped against the chill in an enormous, black overcoat. To his left, the direction the car had driven earlier, the lane disappeared into open countryside.
He walked past the front of the orchard, eyeing the trees. They were rarely cultivated, and full of fruit in summer, a haven for fat, lazy insects and greedy birds. Now there was nothing moving, as if the cold had beaten down every living thing. Even the grass was flat, the long, frost-covered blades now curved downwards under the weight of winter’s approach.
He stepped off the lane and listened, his antennae tingling.
Not a sound.
He swivelled, wondering if he’d somehow lost touch with the usual sounds of a Poissons morning: a cock crowing, a cow bellowing to be milked, the clatter of an early tractor chugging out to the fields to collect a herd, the chatter and cheeping of birds in the trees.
But there was none of that.
He walked back through the gate and checked the rear garden, where it butted onto a field rarely used and given over to weeds and wild flowers. If there was anything moving out there, it was being very careful not to be seen. He scanned the field all the way across, mentally dividing it into sections and checking each one, as he’d been trained in the army when searching for snipers. He was looking for signs of a recent passage made through the icy grass, where it would show darker against the pale grey.
Nothing.
