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.
CHAPTER NINE
Rocco? He shouldn’t be allowed out!
I’m totally innocent, I tell you… he had no right…!
‘What are you doing here?’ There was no warmth in Massin’s greeting, no sign of even feigned familiarity, merely a frosty expression of disdain.
And of hesitation. As well you bloody might, thought Rocco, you cowardly, high-born bastard. Partly due to this man and his colleagues in the high command, a lot of good men had died in those far-off jungles and rice fields, victims of bloody battles and lethal mantraps. Others had been taken prisoner, only to emerge months later from captivity, broken and sick, ghostly versions of their former selves in body and spirit.
‘My job,’ he replied. ‘Investigating a murder.’
He wondered whether Massin remembered that Rocco had seen him in the foxhole, had witnessed his naked fear on display. Or had he managed to blank the entire incident from his mind?
He was surprised that his former CO had managed to migrate across to the Surete Nationale. What strings had he pulled to do that? No doubt friends of friends pulling strings in the invisible network of former colleagues encountered and nurtured in the elite French military academy of St Cyr. After being evacuated out from the battlefield in a state of pure funk, Massin must have seemed ripe for a career no more stressful than counting beans, far away from the sight of his former comrades — at least, the few who had survived — and indeed anyone else who might know what had happened. Yet here he was, resplendent in the uniform of a senior police officer, a pillar of the establishment.