‘Can you wait while I make a call?’
Caspar nodded. ‘Sure. Make it quick, will you?’
Rocco went to the phone in an alcove at the rear of the cafe and checked his watch. Santer wouldn’t be at work now. He dialled the captain’s home number.
‘I’m with Caspar,’ he said, when Santer answered. ‘Can you tell me anything else about the killings down south?’
‘Like what? It’s only just come in. I already told you what we had.’
‘Were there any witnesses?’ He checked his watch. The local cops should have had time by now to trawl the locals for leads. All it needed was one sighting.
Santer caught on fast. ‘This sounds more than urgent. Isn’t he playing ball?’
‘He is, but I need something to get through to him. He either doesn’t believe or doesn’t want to believe Farek could be over here.’
‘Not surprised. He’ll know what the man’s capable of.’
‘There’s something else.’ Rocco described what Caspar had said about Bouhassa’s unique method of killing. ‘It might be missed at first sight. Tell them to inspect the throats for blood.’
‘Jesus,’ Santer muttered. ‘That’s sick. OK, I’ll call you back. Where are you?’
Rocco gave him the cafe number and walked back to the table.
Caspar was gone.
Rocco didn’t bother checking the toilets; Caspar would have had to pass by the telephone to get there. He went out into the street, but there was no sign of the man. He shouldn’t have left him alone; something must have spooked him.
As he went back inside to pay the bill, the waiter called him. He was holding the telephone receiver.
It was Santer.
‘You struck lucky. Nothing in Marseilles — it’s too big an area to have finished canvassing yet. But Chalon-sur-Saone is smaller. A flea bite. The local doctor remembers driving past the depot where the man Pichard was killed, and saw two men standing inside the doorway. Strangers, he said. One was wearing a pale djellaba. The doctor’s ex-military, did tours along the Med, so he knows.’
Rocco breathed deeply, heart thudding. ‘What about the victims?’
‘They both had severe burn and blast damage to the inside of the throat. They’ll have to open them up to confirm it, but it looks like Caspar was right. And the doctor in Chalon reckoned the man in the bed sheet is a cast-iron cert for a heart attack.’
‘Why?’
‘Fat, he said. Huge. And bald. Sound familiar?’
CHAPTER THIRTY
Back in Amiens the following morning, Rocco walked across the car park to the neighbouring building which housed the forensics department, and knocked on Dr Rizzotti’s door.
‘Ah, Inspector,’ the doctor greeted him. He reached into a drawer and produced a slip of card inside a plastic envelope. ‘I checked the clothing of that poor unfortunate you brought in from the canal.’ He dropped the envelope on the desk and angled his desk light so that Rocco could see the contents. ‘Not much, as you can see, but interesting. It looks like a map.’
Rocco studied it carefully. Rizzotti was right. It was a simple drawing done by what looked like ballpoint pen. The card was water damaged and stained, and the image slightly blurred. But it showed two parallel wavy lines, with a short line bisecting them at the right-hand end and an arrow pointing left. In between the wavy lines at the left-hand end was a drawing of what looked like a bullet with a cross alongside it.
‘Does it make any sense, Inspector?’
Rocco nodded. It made absolute sense. The drawing represented the canal and parapet, with directions for the carriers to follow, and the bullet shape was the barge where they were to stop. Simple graphics, no need for language. Clever.
‘Thanks, Doctor,’ he said. ‘You’d better keep that in the evidence box. The dead man’s a North African illegal. That’s all I know at the moment.’
‘Very well.’ Rizzotti put the envelope and card in his work tray, then noticed Rocco hadn’t moved. ‘Is there something else?’
‘Yes. Apart from death, what would happen if a gun fitted with a silencer was pushed down a man’s throat and the trigger pulled?’
Rizzotti’s mouth dropped open. ‘Inspector, I think you are seriously in need of a holiday.’ He sat back, however, and considered the question, pursing his lips and humming faintly.
‘The short answer would be best,’ Rocco prompted him, worried that the medical man was about to launch into a lengthy exposition on the various parts of the human body, most of which would go completely over his head.
‘Ah. I see. Very well, then. I suppose if the silencer was, say, in the region of at least fifteen centimetres, extending that from the gun barrel — a pistol, I take it?’ Rocco nodded. ‘Well, that would certainly be enough to place the end of the silencer down near the larynx. The trachea, or windpipe as you might know it, is a tube. It leads to the vital organs in the chest cavity. Quite simply, any normal gunshot would not only vaporise all the soft tissue through burning and the ripple effect of the gases, but depending on the angle of the gun barrel, the bullet would pass through one or more of the most vital organs and out through the body — probably the back.’ He looked at Rocco and lifted his eyebrows. ‘I presume you don’t want me to list the organs affected? There are rather a lot.’
‘Thanks. No need. What if it wasn’t a normal gunshot?’ He explained about the low propellant charge and the doctored hollow point shell allegedly preferred by Bouhassa.
Rizzotti shifted in his seat. ‘My God — that’s… incredible. Well, let me see. You’d still get the same burning, although a lower degree of blast and ripple. As for the bullet…’ He shrugged. ‘If it breaks up to the degree you suggest, then there’s every chance that the fragments would stay inside the body.’
‘So the cause of death wouldn’t be immediately obvious.’
‘Probably not. But there would be extensive…’ he searched for a word, and looked slightly apologetic ‘… let’s call it a blowback of blood and tissue. Some would undoubtedly escape as a fine mist, even over the person making the kill. But yes, it’s possible that a cursory or hasty examination would miss the cause of death, especially if the exterior evidence was cleaned up.’ He frowned at the idea of a fellow professional making such an error. ‘I could do you a schematic, if you like.’
‘Thanks, Doctor. I’ll let you know if I need it.’ He thanked Rizzotti for taking the photographs of the dead man, then made his escape. Back in the main office, he rang Caspar, and was surprised when the former undercover cop answered immediately.
‘Sorry about last night,’ said Caspar. ‘I had stuff to do.’
‘Not a problem. I think Farek’s here and he’s heading north.’ He explained about the initial results from the examination of the two dead criminals.
There was a lengthy silence, with a pinging noise on the line. Then Caspar said, ‘That’s… not good. What do you need from me?’
‘Can you ask around your contacts among the immigres? That’s where news will travel fastest. Find out if anyone’s seen him yet.’ It was a huge thing to ask but he was short of options. No longer on the force and not in the best frame of mind, from what Santer had said, Caspar wasn’t really geared up to get involved in this kind of thing anymore. But Rocco needed to know where the Algerian gang boss was, and this was the only man who could plug into the community network and reach that information.
To his surprise, Caspar agreed. ‘I’ll see what I can do. But don’t raise your hopes — it could lead to nothing.’ In spite of this caveat, he sounded almost cheerful, and Rocco wondered if it signalled a kind of desperation to stay in the game. A man like Caspar, working and living two lives — often simultaneously — was the type to devote himself exclusively to his work. He must have found letting go almost impossible to bear.
‘I won’t. And thanks.’ He hoped he wasn’t going to regret this.
‘What I said before about Farek,’ Caspar added. ‘Watch your back. If he sets his sights on you for any reason at all, you’d better find a deep hole to climb into. Because he won’t let up.’