‘Are they linked?’
Claude tilted his head. ‘Not like they used to be. There’s a narrow stretch joining them up, but only the locals know about it. When I patrol out there, I use a Canadian.’ Rocco must have looked blank, because he added, ‘It’s a canoe; slides through weeds and other rubbish like a knife across butter. And it’s quiet. If anyone’s there who shouldn’t be, they don’t hear me coming. The best way along the valley by water is along the canal, which is further out.’
‘Still used?’ Rocco couldn’t recall seeing one, but he knew many of the country’s canals were still in use.
‘Sure. Some freight traffic, but it’s dying. Losing out to the big trucks. It’s near the station; you go over a bridge but it’s masked by trees so you wouldn’t know it was there.’
‘What about the village?’ As far as Rocco knew, his ‘patch’ was as deep and wide as his superiors chose to make it, and probably encompassed an area several hundred kilometres square; but his immediate interest was Poissons. He could hardly live here and not show an interest.
‘Not big. About a hundred houses, mostly stretched along the main street. A shop, church and school… and the cafe you know about. Most people here work on the land, the railway or at factories in Amiens. There are a dozen small farms, a couple are bigger ones, and lots of open country. We’re still in the horse era, here; there are a couple of tractors but that’s it. The farmers don’t have the money for mechanisation on a big scale.’ He sat down again and finished his coffee, his briefing done. ‘So, where are you from? Before Paris, I mean.’
‘Here and there. All over. The army, then the police; I moved around a lot.’
‘Indochina?’ The last big conflict the French army had been engaged in.
‘Yes.’ Rocco’s response was deliberately brief. He wasn’t ready to talk about it with strangers. It was best kept locked in a private box, waiting for the memories to dim and fade. He was still busy working out how to hurry that process along.
‘Married?’
‘Was, once. It didn’t work out.’ Something else he wasn’t ready to discuss. Emilie hadn’t been able to stand the stresses and strains of first, being an army wife waiting at home for his return from distant lands and conflicts, and second, the same sort of job, only closer at hand and just as unpredictable. In the end, she had left. ‘You?’
‘Was also. She died.’ Claude flicked a glance at a photo of two adults and two small girls in a frame on the wall. They were all smiling, but the photo looked several years old. ‘And the kids… well, they waited ’til they were old enough and buggered off to the city.’
‘You see them?’
‘Not much. We talk now and then — when I can track them down. But it’s another language these days.’ He shrugged. ‘They’re good girls — just different.’
They sat and looked through each other for a few seconds, accompanied by the ticking of a clock.
When the telephone jangled, it startled them both.
Claude scowled. ‘It hardly ever does that,’ he announced. ‘Except for my sister in Nantes. She likes to remind me of her latest dress size and the birthday of every child in the family. She thinks I’m made of money.’
He picked up the hand-piece and listened, and Lucas watched as he turned slowly pale.
‘OK. At once,’ he said softly. ‘I’ll be there. Yes, of course directly.’ He put the phone down and adjusted its position on the table, then looked at Lucas with a grave expression.
‘Your sister?’ said Rocco.
‘I wish. What I said about not having much crime here? I spoke too soon. That was Monsieur Paulais, the stationmaster. There’s a British military cemetery about a kilometre outside the village, close to the station. It’s alongside a wood.’ He gave a small shiver and stood up, pointing at the map on the wall. ‘It’s a nice spot. Very… peaceful as you would expect, for that kind of place. The gardener — an Englishman named John Cooke — arrived for work today and found a body in the cemetery.’
Rocco resisted the temptation to ask where else would you find them. ‘A visitor had a heart attack?’ He knew that many old soldiers and their families made pilgrimages to the battlefields of the two world wars. Understandably, some of the older ones from the conflict in 1918 were not in the best of health. The journey out here often found weaknesses otherwise left undiscovered.
‘No.’ Claude reached for his jacket on the back of the chair. ‘Not this one.’ He rubbed a hand across his face. ‘We may have need of your investigative skills sooner than I thought.’
Rocco’s senses prickled. He finished his coffee and stood up. ‘Why?’
‘The deceased is a woman and she’s wearing a Gestapo officer’s uniform.’
CHAPTER SIX
Rocco? Unorthodox. If they don’t walk, he brings them in under his arm.
The British War Graves cemetery of Poissons-les-Marais lay off the side of a dusty, rutted track which went on to bury itself in a stretch of thick woodland on the side of a hill. The cemetery consisted of a walled oblong roughly fifty metres by one hundred and fifty, dotted with military regularity by evergreens marking the boundary like silent sentinels. A long, low, brick-built construction in the style of a cloister stood at the near end, and a tall memorial cross pointing to the sky dominated the serried ranks of white marker stones which filled the cemetery grounds, surrounded by trimmed lawn and flower beds. A smaller brick structure stood in one corner, partially concealed by a privet hedge.
Rocco parked behind a grey Citroen 2CV van and climbed out of the car. The afternoon heat hung heavy over the wheat fields on either side of the track and a family of crows in the woods gave voice to the new arrivals, while a skylark sent out its call high in the air. Rocco tried to spot the small bird but gave up. He turned and flicked a practised eye over his surroundings. Vehicle access was bumpy but OK, so the mortuary wagon would be able to get up close. They were two hundred metres from the road, but since passing traffic was limited, there would be no problems with crowd control. Unlike the city, he reflected, where even a rumour of an unexplained death was sufficient to bring out the ghouls and freaks, eager to play their part in the drama.
Turning back towards the way they had come, he could just make out the church steeple in Poissons, rising above a range of trees surrounding a series of small lakes between the cemetery and the village. A line of poplars showed the location of the canal just north of the railway line, but there was no sign of boat traffic.
Following Claude’s directions, he had driven through the village and along a winding lane past an area called the marais — the marshlands — and down past the village railway station. This was little more than a small brick building on a raised platform. A simple striped barrier to stop traffic stood alongside the road, with a counterweight on one end to help the stationmaster lift and lower it.
To Rocco, more accustomed to city scenes, it was like another country. Narrow roads with no vehicles; clusters of houses but few people; cultivated land, clearly productive and well maintained, but no sign of workers.
Then he became aware of the smell.
‘God on a bicycle!’ Claude coughed as he joined Rocco by the front of the car. ‘What the hell is that?’