Fletcher stood up, his face grey. He’d seen bodies before, in varying states of disrepair. But this was different. Unexpected. ‘What do we do?’
‘We get rid, what do you think?’ Tasker whistled for the two bottle throwers to come and help, and stood back as they wormed their way beneath the truck. They untangled the dead man’s limbs until the body flopped onto the stubby grass.
‘He must have been on the verge,’ said Calloway, remembering. He glanced at Fletcher. ‘Didn’t you see him?’
‘Of course I bloody didn’t.’ Fletcher lit another cigarette. ‘I was busy at the time, remember? Didn’t you clock him?’
‘No. I thought I caught something in the background, but I couldn’t make out what it was.’ He bent and stared at the body. ‘Looks like a tramp, poor bastard.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Smells like one, too. Maybe he died out here in the cold and you were unlucky enough to hit him.’
‘Makes no odds what he is or what he did,’ Tasker muttered coldly. ‘He’s dead. Someone might miss him.’ He gestured at the truck and said, ‘Get him in there and cover him up good. We’ll find a place to dispose of him later.’
‘Why not in the trees?’ said Fletcher. ‘Nobody’d look, not out here.’
‘We don’t know that. We’ll take him with us. We’ve got to torch the truck anyway; we can do both together. Then let’s get out of here. I need some breakfast and a strong drink to warm me up.’ He turned and scanned the bleak horizon, city eyes oblivious to the farmer and his horse low down against the colourless backdrop, seeing only stretches of cold, featureless fields rolling into the distance with no obvious buildings, few hedges or trees and fewer signs of life. ‘Fucking Nora. Who’d want to live out here?’
CHAPTER TWO
The dull pounding in Lucas Rocco’s head gradually moved outwards, morphing from a foggy background noise in a sludgy dream to the more identifiable sound of someone hitting his front door with what sounded like a sledgehammer.
He swung out of bed, instinctively snatching up his MAB 38 on the way. If it was the local priest finally come to welcome him into his flock, he’d simply put a few rounds through the wood before going back to sleep. Just in case it was Mme Denis next door, he yanked the door open with the gun behind his back.
‘Do you know it’s gone ten in the morning?’ It was the stocky figure of Claude Lamotte, the local garde champetre for the village of Poissons-les-Marais and the surrounding district. ‘You’re not on holiday, are you?’ He raised heavy eyebrows at the sight of Rocco in his shorts, his muscular chest covered in goosebumps. ‘Christ, that’s a sight a man could do without.’
Rocco stood aside and beckoned him inside with the gun, squinting at the grey light of a December morning. ‘Very funny. What do you want?’
‘Coffee and a bite to eat, first,’ said Claude. He brushed past and dropped a fresh baguette on the table, then headed for the sink and began filling a saucepan with water. ‘Some of us have been up since dawn, you know that?’ He put the water on the boil, then turned and looked at the gun as Rocco slumped into a chair. ‘You weren’t about to end it all, were you? Only I’d hate to interrupt a man in his hour of despair.’ He bent and peered closely into Rocco’s face. ‘You do look like crap, though.’
‘You should see it from my side. I was on a stake-out most of the night.’ He put down the gun and rubbed his eyes. They felt full of grit and the view was hazy, like looking through muslin.
‘Really? Sounds like fun. Any results?’
‘No. A no-show. We had information about tobacco smuggling but I think it was a decoy. When I catch up with the so-called informant, I’m going to shoot off his toes one by one.’ He looked at the baguette. ‘Is that mine?’ The baker came round every morning in a battered old 2CV, and if Rocco was out, left it by the door in a plastic box.
‘It is. No longer warm, but fresh and too good to waste.’ Claude tore off one end and took a bite with great relish. ‘Superbe. Best bit of the loaf. You want the other end?’ Before Rocco could answer, he looked around expectantly. ‘You got any butter in this place?’
Rocco waved a hand. ‘Cupboard, top shelf. Help yourself but please do it quietly.’
‘Okay. You want coffee?’
‘Why not? Now you’ve ruined my sleep I might as well get dressed. Excuse me.’ He got up and wandered through to the bathroom. By the time he had dressed and come back, Claude had made coffee and smeared thick butter on slices of baguette, and was sprinkling a layer of cocoa powder over his. He sighed in expectation. ‘This is the way to start the day.’ He took a huge bite and coughed as he inhaled some of the powder, then winked in enjoyment. ‘Takes me right back.’
Rocco sat down and picked up a slice of bread, ignoring the cocoa powder. ‘You country cretins have some disgusting habits.’
Claude dunked his bread in his coffee. ‘That’s the trouble with you fancy city-bred cops — you’ve forgotten how to enjoy yourselves. All croissants and china cups, that’s your trouble. This, my friend, is one of life’s unique pleasures. You should enjoy it while you can.’
‘If I was twelve, I would.’ Rocco took a mouthful of coffee and swallowed. At least Claude knew how to make a wake-up drink. He felt his synapses respond to the jolt of caffeine and shook himself. ‘To what do I owe this debatable pleasure, anyway? Have you lost your way home?’
‘Not quite.’ Claude put down his bread and brushed crumbs from his hands. ‘I had a call this morning from a farmer who works a couple of fields about six kilometres from here, towards Bray. Name’s Simeon. He was calling from a cafe where he’d gone to take a medicinal drink. Seems he had a nasty shock. He claims he saw a truck ram a car this morning on an open stretch of road out near his fields. Then two men jumped out of a ditch and opened fire on it with handguns.’ He picked up his bread and took another bite. ‘How about that?’
Rocco stared at him. ‘Have you been drinking paraffin?’
‘No. I’m serious.’ Claude held out a hand. ‘See — steady as a rock.’ As Rocco made to get up, reaching for his gun, he added pragmatically, ‘There’s nothing to see. They’ve all gone — car, truck and men. We’ll go out in a while. You want more coffee?’
Rocco sank back onto his chair. As he’d learnt in the past few months since being posted here, there was world time and there was Poissons time. And trying to bring the two together usually gave him a headache.
‘Go on, then. I think I’m going to need it.’
‘An army truck?’ Lucas Rocco tried to imagine what any military vehicle would be doing out here on a deserted road in the middle of open farmland. There was a small barracks in Amiens, but it was used for shipping local army conscripts in and out, and relied almost exclusively on the station for its troop movements.
‘Yes. Small and stubby — not one of the big ones. But it was going fast. It smashed right into the car, as clear as day. Deliberately, I swear it.’ The farmer, a weather-beaten stick of a man named Simeon, dressed in heavy trousers and large rubber boots, pushed his cap to the back of his head and eyed Rocco with caution, as if awed by the sight of a man just over two metres in height with shoulders to match. Or maybe it was the all-black clothing and shoes; black in these parts was usually the prerogative of the old or the Church. Rocco, however, was clearly no priest.
‘And it happened here?’
‘That’s right.’ Sensing a willing if unusual audience, Simeon settled his feet apart and got ready to tell his story all over again. ‘Right here.’ He pointed at the section of road where they were standing, a little-used stretch of straight and surprisingly wide tarmac recently made redundant by a new section of road built three kilometres away under a local government regeneration scheme. ‘I saw it with my own eyes.’
You’d have had trouble seeing it with anyone else’s, Rocco wanted to say, still dulled by lack of sleep in spite of Claude’s industrial-strength coffee. He forced himself to concentrate. ‘Where were you when you saw this crash happen?’