Death on the Rive Nord (37 page)
***
Rocco returned to the station after the café was secured and found the custody officer waiting for him. Alix was hovering in the background.
‘You said you wanted to question one of the illegals,’ the officer said. ‘We need to process him out of here.’
‘Right.’ With everything else that was happening, he’d forgotten about the man and his willingness to talk. He wasn’t sure what the worker could tell him, but as part of the investigation, he needed some corroborative evidence about what had happened on the truck. ‘Do we need an interpreter?’
‘No. His French is good.’
‘Does he have a name we can believe yet?’
The custody officer smiled. ‘Ali Dziri is the latest, but since he’s got it stencilled on his foot, we reckon that’s the real one.’
‘His foot?’
‘He claims his brother did it while he was asleep as a kid.’
Rocco signalled for Alix to follow and called Desmoulins. They followed the custody officer to a room in the basement, where the illegal worker was brought in and told to sit. He was in his late forties, grey-haired and shrunken by the elements and a hard life. He looked terrified but eager to talk in exchange for a sympathetic hearing.
‘Ali Dziri,’ said Rocco, towering over the man. ‘Is that your real name?’
Dziri nodded, eyes wide as he stared up at Rocco’s hardened gaze. Then he looked at Alix in confusion. He’d probably never seen a female cop before, Rocco guessed.
‘Better be, because if I find it’s not, you’re on the next
plane back.’ Rocco dragged up a chair and sat down. God he felt tired. He needed his bed and a good night’s sleep. ‘Tell us what you know.’
Dziri talked fluently and steadily, with no embellishments, for fifteen minutes. Rocco listened carefully and nodded when he finally stopped. It was enough. It matched up to what Nicole had told him.
Except for some important details.
‘Sounded genuine enough to me,’ Desmoulins commented, when the man had been taken back to his cell. ‘Hell of a thing, though, eh? What do you think?’
‘I think he was telling the truth.’
‘Me, too,’ Alix agreed, when he looked at her.
The journey had been just as Nicole had described, in all its awfulness. Cramped and lacking any degree of comfort, more suited to animals than humans. Maybe not even them. Only at the end, when they were on the truck heading north, did the details begin to differ. According to Dziri, Slimane had never brandished a knife, never mentioned being a slaughterman. He had simply been a vile bully and disrespectful of women. A bad man.
When he had slid through the darkness towards the woman, his intentions had been evident. But nobody had moved to defend her because they hadn’t had to. Slimane had attacked her … and died. In the dark, they couldn’t tell how, only that he’d stopped breathing. Maybe a heart attack – who knew? They had left him behind on the truck.
Rocco sighed, and wondered where the knife had come from. Maybe the man was an exceptional liar, and had helped Nicole but didn’t want to spoil his chances of staying in France by admitting it. Complicity in a death would
automatically bring a conviction, followed by deportation. On the other hand, plenty of men carried knives, for self-defence and through habit, to make themselves look big. But he couldn’t see this one doing it. Appearances, though, as he knew well, were deceptive.
He was conscious of a lack of resolve earlier, when he’d spoken to Nicole on the old barge. He should have pressed her then for more details. So why hadn’t he? He had no clear answer.
He was wondering what to do next when Claude’s friend, Jean-Michel, appeared in the doorway, accompanied by an officer from the front desk. He looked flustered.
‘Lucas, I’m sorry. She has gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘The young woman, Nicole. The rudder got tangled in some fishing line and I had to clear it. When I got back on the boat, she and the boy had gone. We were close to the road … I’m sorry.’ He almost squirmed with the embarrassment of having allowed her to leave.
Rocco stood up. He thought he knew where she might be. He told Jean-Michel not to worry, that he would deal with it. He asked Alix to follow him out to his car. This was a visit where he might need her presence to allay the fears of any women he met.
He drove quickly to the address Nicole had given him, filling in Alix with any missing details about Nicole’s story on the way. She listened in silence until he had finished.
‘You think she could still be in danger?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘Then why are we here?’
He had to admit that he wasn’t quite sure. Closing doors, perhaps; wrapping up loose ends. He pulled up outside a row
of three-storey houses broken up into apartments and they both got out.
It was beginning to get dark. A few children were in the street, oblivious to the cold and stretching out their last moments of play before bedtime. Several women watched from front doors, but there was no sign of men in cars, or anyone who looked out of place.
He knocked on the door of the house where Nicole had been staying. It opened to reveal a tall, elegant woman with smooth, black skin and a pretty face. She frowned when she saw Rocco, and looked surprised to see Alix’s uniform.
Rocco held up his badge. ‘Amina? My name’s Lucas Rocco. Is Nicole in?’
She shook her head. ‘No, sir. She came a short while ago, but she has gone now.’ Her voice was soft, the words carefully enunciated. The word ‘now’ sounded very final.
‘Can you tell me where she went?’
Another shake of her head.
Alix stepped forward and smiled. ‘Can we see her room? It’s very important.’
Amina moved aside, then led them down a passageway to the rear of the building. She opened a door. It revealed a single room with a small cooker, a table and a bed. There were no personal items, no clothing, only the hasty disarray of someone having once been here but now gone.
‘She said nothing to me for my own safety,’ Amina explained. ‘Only that she had to move on for Massi’s sake. I told her that it was all over the community that a man from her home city of Oran had been killed by police, and she said it did not concern her. But I know it did. She was relieved, I think. He was not a nice man.’
‘You knew her real name?’ said Rocco.
‘Yes. Massi told me one day. I said I would keep it as our secret, that I would not tell anyone else.’ She smiled at the memory, but her face was tinged with sadness.
‘We didn’t kill him,’ said Alix. ‘The police, I mean. You must have some idea where she might have gone.’
‘Back home, I think.’ Amina shrugged, adding, ‘She did not come here for the same reasons others do. Here was not where she felt good. It was an escape … a refuge.’
A logical assumption, thought Rocco. Back home she would be safe. No Farek, no threat, no fear. She could take up her life again. He moved around the room, checking the single wardrobe, a small cupboard and underneath the mattress on the bed. Nothing. She had left no more sign of her presence here than a sparrow.
‘She asked me to keep something,’ Amina said, watching him search. ‘I will get it.’ She disappeared along the passageway, returning moments later with something wrapped in cloth and tied with string.
Rocco took it, and knew instinctively what it was by the feel and weight. He untied the string and unwound the cloth. The object inside was black and metal, with a ribbed rubber handle and a needle-sharp point. A faint crust of brown had dried at the top of the blade beneath the guard.
‘She gave you this?’
Amina nodded, her eyes wide. ‘She said that she did not want it near Massi. That I should keep it until she asked for it.’ She gave an elegant lift of her shoulders. ‘She never did.’
‘Mr Dziri, I have another question for you.’ Rocco had driven straight back to the station. He didn’t bother trying to intimidate the man; he’d got beyond that and wanted confirmation of what he already suspected.
Dziri nodded, but said nothing.
‘When you made your journey to France, were you carrying a knife?’
Dziri looked up, startled. ‘No. No, I swear.’
‘Just Slimane, then?’
A frown this time. ‘Slimane? No. We were all searched before leaving Oran, and again before getting in the truck. They said anyone carrying weapons or drugs would be sent back.’ He slapped both hands together in a brushing motion. ‘Like that.’
‘What about the woman?’ asked Alix. ‘Did anyone search her?’ Dziri gave it some thought, then shook his head and sighed, the truth dawning. ‘No,’ he replied softly. ‘They did not.’ He shrugged. ‘She was a woman … it would not have been right.’
Alix was quiet on the way back upstairs, but glanced at Rocco as if expecting a comment. He had nothing to say. He was wondering how far Nicole and her son would travel; whether it would be somewhere new to begin again, or whether, as Amina had suggested, she would return to Oran. He thought maybe the latter.
‘She stabbed him.’ Alix spoke softly. ‘She stabbed Slimane!’ She sounded very sure of herself.
‘It looks that way,’ he agreed neutrally, unable to deny it. ‘But where did the knife come from?’
‘But Slimane was attacking
her
. You heard what happened. The man confirmed it. Slimane would have raped her, probably killed her to keep her quiet. It’s—’ She stopped as an officer appeared at the end of the corridor. He didn’t appear to notice them.
Rocco stopped walking, too. ‘I know. I know all that. But it wasn’t Slimane’s knife.’ Nicole had lied, about the nature
of the threat, the sequence of events – maybe all of it. Some might consider it a minor point, but he wondered what else she had lied about. To him. To everyone.
He should have asked her more questions. But would it have made any difference?
‘What are you going to do?’
He didn’t know. That was the problem. What could he do? ‘Make a report. File it.’
‘Will anyone read it?’
‘I’ve no idea. You know what paperwork is like; it gets lost in the system or overlooked.’ He rubbed his eyes, too tired to think. ‘In the meantime, I’m going home. I’m tired.’
‘Will you issue a warrant for her arrest?’
‘Probably not. There’s no proof. Nobody saw anything, not even our only witness.’ Rocco still wasn’t sure how far he could trust Alix’s discretion. She hadn’t spoken to anyone about his illicit visit to the Ecoboras place, and he hoped she would be as discreet about this as well. ‘You can report it if you wish.’
She didn’t reply, and they turned to go upstairs. Then she said. ‘Why would I do that? You’ve done your duty, and that’s good enough for me.’ She was silent after that, until they entered the main office. There was nobody about. ‘Where is that? Home, I mean.’
He told her and her face lit up. ‘Really? Poissons? I was going there tomorrow. May I come with you? There’s someone I have to visit.’
He shrugged. ‘Of course.’ Everyone and their dog seemed to know Poissons, he thought. Algerian gangsters and their thugs, new police recruits. ‘Anyone I know?’
‘Claude Lamotte. The
garde champêtre.
’
‘Christ. Claude? How do you know him?’
‘He’s my father.’
Rocco stared at her, trying to find a likeness. But there was none, save a faint familiar something around the eyes. The rest, he thought, was nothing like Claude’s solid figure, which was fortunate for her. If she had anything like the same character, though, she’d make a good cop. It prompted a thought.
‘Does he know?’
‘About me joining up?’ She shook her head. ‘I wanted to surprise him. If I’d told him what I was planning, then failed, he’d have been doubly disappointed.’ She shrugged. ‘A failed marriage is bad enough in a daughter, don’t you think?’
‘He’ll be pleased to see you. He’s been getting the house ready.’
Alix went to the locker room to get her things while Rocco waited. She came out again and he drove to Poissons. On the way, he stopped at the side of the road and turned off the engine. Sat there in the dark, thinking.
Alix looked at him. ‘You’re not going to get all romantic on me, are you?’
‘I have something to do,’ he said. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
She nodded. ‘OK.’ She didn’t ask what, simply reached out and turned on the car radio.
He liked that.
Rocco climbed out of the car, leaving behind the sombre tones of Georges Brassens singing about lovers on public benches.
The air outside was a shock after the warmth of the car, the atmosphere icier than ever as the coming winter began to drape itself over the landscape. Quiet, too, with that unique
winter hush that never happens in the city, no matter what time of day or night.
He climbed over the gate and walked onto the parapet over the canal, feeling his way. He didn’t need a flashlight out here, just his normal senses. He stood for a moment, listening to the faint gurgle of water against the banks, the flapping of reeds caught in the shifting current, a splash as some unseen night creature hurried away. Then he took the cloth bundle out of his coat pocket, unwrapped the familiar shape, careful of the sharp point.
A French commando dagger with a black finish. Lethal, deliberately sinister, a tool of a specialist’s trade. Nicole said Farek had brought one home, one he’d got from the army. It made sense. Farek hadn’t been in the commandos, but as an armourer he’d have had access to such weapons, most likely to sell on the black market.
He held it for a moment, feeling the delicate balance. A precision piece. Why had she left it behind?
Maybe because she no longer needed it.
He thought about it for a moment, the kind of circumstances that would make a thing like this necessary. Then he made a decision. He flicked it away, sending it spinning out over the water, round and round, unseen. He waited, heard a faint splash as it was swallowed by the night and the cold, cold water.
Then silence.
He turned and walked back to the car.
My grateful thanks to Sarah Sheehan, BA, solicitor at Keystone Law, for her assistance on French law. Any mistakes are mine through not paying attention.