He nodded, remaining where he was and wondering instinctively how she had got here. He hadn’t seen any strange vehicles on the road leading to the grotto. But then, he hadn’t been looking. She might have walked up or made her way here through the outskirts of the village. She certainly wasn’t from Poissons – he’d have remembered. And Mme Denis, the old romantic, would have mentioned her before now. Either that, or she would have conspired
to make introductions if this woman was on the local ‘availables’ list.
‘Nice day,’ he said finally, and felt idiotic.
Nice day
? His voice seemed to break the spell. The woman relaxed slightly, lifting one slim hand to sweep back the curl of wayward hair. She wore rings, he noticed, and a thick bangle around her wrist. They looked expensive, as did the clothing. Definitely not from around here, then. Amiens, perhaps.
‘It’s beautiful here,’ she said. Her voice was soft, cultured. Yet he detected a nervousness in her throat as if she were unused to speaking.
He glanced around as if seeing the place for the first time. ‘It’s my favourite spot. I come here to think, away from the bustling metropolis you see below you.’
She smiled her appreciation of the humour. Her teeth were very white and even, and he realised for the first time that she had coffee-coloured skin. Whatever her initial fears had been, she seemed to be overcoming them. ‘Are they serious thoughts?’ she asked. ‘Is that why you come?’
He felt his ears go red. ‘Hell, no. I’m too shallow for serious. I leave that to others.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true. Do you work here?’
‘No. In Amiens – an even bigger bustling metropolis. Are you visiting or just passing through?’ She seemed too exotic for this place, he decided, as if she had dropped out of nowhere. ‘Lucas Rocco, by the way,’ he added, stepping closer and putting out his hand.
‘I’m passing through,’ she confirmed. There was a slight hesitation before she took his hand, but her grip was firm and cool. ‘My name’s Nicole. I saw the hill and decided to come
up for a look – and to think, also. It’s peaceful up here. Out of the way. I can see why you like it.’
‘It’s a pity you chose a busy day to come, though. Usually, there’s nobody around.’ He almost asked what she had to think about, but decided not to. Instead, he turned and surveyed the village, not wanting to crowd her. She hadn’t given her surname, but that was sensible enough; you could meet all manner of freaks in dark clothing standing near a deserted and windswept grotto. Thinking of dark, he saw movement down in the square and recognised the village priest bustling along, his black soutane flapping around his legs like the drooping wings of a wounded crow. He’d still not had the dubious pleasure of making the man of God’s acquaintance, and the priest, thankfully, had not made any overtures his way in a bid to add a new member to his flock. Rocco was relieved: he didn’t do churches unless a crime had been committed in one. Indo-China had long ago caused him to lose faith in the power of God, but even so, rebuffing a priest was not something he would have enjoyed.
He sensed the woman moving to join him, her footsteps swishing in the grass. With her came a soft hint of perfume. Something lemony, delicate.
‘You come from around here?’ he asked.
‘No. I’ve lived away … overseas. My grandmother was born near here, though. I wanted to see the area where she lived.’
‘Ah.’ Rocco didn’t have any family to speak of. Tracing or wondering about his roots was not a feeling he could share.
Down in the village, a silver-grey car nosed into the square, the light glinting off the bonnet. Although distant, it looked big. He thought it might be a Mercedes. Couldn’t quite tell from here. Nice car if it was. Unusual in these parts; probably
one of the bigger farmers passing through, or maybe a factory owner from near Amiens took a back road and lost his way.
The woman gave a faint intake of breath. Rocco looked round. She was staring down at the square, mouth open and one hand clutching the front of her coat. This close, he could see how smooth her skin was. But beneath her eyes were deep shadows covered by a thin layer of make-up, and a faint tic of nerves was pulsing in her throat. Whatever the reason for her earlier expression of fear, there was now another one, also familiar. It was one of trauma, of troubles buried deep for the sake of appearances. But the look was always there if you knew what to look for.
She caught him studying her and smiled brightly, reaching up to touch her jaw. ‘Sorry – it’s cold here. My teeth react badly.’
He turned back to watch the car, distracted by the unusual in this backwater village. It crawled in slow motion across the square, then went out of sight before reappearing by the co-op. It stopped, facing back the way it had come. A man climbed out and disappeared from view, walking towards the shop door.
‘What do you do here?’ she asked casually. Her voice moved away as she stepped back towards the cave and the pathway out of the grotto.
Rocco hesitated for a moment before replying, eyes still on the car. ‘I’m a cop,’ he said, and wondered if it might scare her off, knowing what he did. It was usually a conversation-stopper, anyway, but not one he deliberately avoided. ‘What’s your story?’
There was no answer.
When he looked round, the woman was gone.
Rocco took a direct route down the hill, his shoes skidding on the unofficial path worn by generations of kids sliding down across the chalky soil. He was puzzled by the young woman’s sudden disappearance. He came out on the road leading down to the square, half-expecting to see her walking down the hill towards him. Instead, he saw a cream-coloured Peugeot 403 driving away. It had the local
département
licence plates, he noticed, and a sticker in the back window advertising last year’s 14
th
July gala in Amiens.
The driver was a woman wearing a headscarf.
He walked home, mulling over what had been, on the surface at least, a banal conversation, a pleasant but uneventful meeting between strangers willing to idle away a few minutes. Yet Rocco had an ear for the unusual, just as a music teacher might have an ear for an instrument slightly out of tune. He couldn’t think of what it was specifically, only that something in what the woman had said had
sounded off. And why had she taken off so abruptly?
He checked his watch as he entered the house. It was gone nine. Time to find out if anything about the dead man had come in overnight. First, though, he wanted to check something else. He picked up the telephone and got through to detective Desmoulins, and gave him instructions, saying he would be in later. After that, he rang Claude, Poisson’s font of all local knowledge, rumour or fact. Sometimes asking questions on your own doorstep led to the blindingly obvious.
‘You know anyone around here who owns a cream Peugeot four-O-three?’ he asked. ‘About four years old?’
‘Plenty of those,’ Claude replied, and Rocco’s spirits sank. The English had a saying about the impossibility of looking for a needle in a haystack, and he realised this was a fine example. ‘Not a bad car in its day,’ Claude continued knowledgeably, ‘but a bit underpowered and corners like a pregnant hippo. I borrowed one once; put me off for life. Why do you ask?’
Rocco made up some vague explanation and rang off before Claude could grill him further. Admitting that he was trying to find out the identity of an attractive stranger he’d spoken to at the grotto would be like taking out an advert in the local paper. If he thought there was a possibility of romance in the air, Claude would lay waste to the entire region.
He drove to Amiens and found Detective Desmoulins pinning up a black and white photograph of the dead man on the office noticeboard. A stack of copies stood on a table nearby, ready for distribution to the duty patrols. He picked one up
and studied it. Rizzotti had done a good job; the man’s face looked puffy, but no more than it might have done after a heavy Saturday-night drinking session.
Desmoulins waved a bunch of car registration documents at him. ‘I checked the local registrations, and that car was sold three months ago to a dealer for cash in a house clearance. The previous owner was deceased, no family. There’s been no re-registration of ownership since, so I was just checking the latest batch received to see if anything new had come in.’
‘Which dealer?’
‘Moteurs Gondrand on the Abbeville Road. It’s the biggest in the area … but count your fingers if you speak to Michel, the son.’ He looked hopeful. ‘Want me to have a quiet word? I know Victor, the old man. He’s a bit dodgy, too, but he knows what’s good for him.’
Rocco shook his head. He couldn’t justify taking up the detective’s valuable time on a matter of idle curiosity. If Massin found out, he’d have both their kidneys on a plate, and he had no intention of giving the officer that pleasure. ‘No. I’d rather get a team organised to start trawling factories and foreign residents with copies of the photo to see if we can identify the body from the canal.’
‘Right. I’ll speak to Captain Canet and ask him if he can assign some of his boys to it. You think the dead guy came from Amiens?’
‘I doubt it. But we have to start somewhere.’ He explained about the sandal being unusual footwear for the region, and the details uncovered at the canal pointing towards the body having been dumped off the parapet after being taken from a truck or a car. ‘It’s thin, I know, but we work with what we’ve got, right?’
‘Sure thing.’
‘Can you handle the briefing to Canet and his men?’ He should have done it himself, but Desmoulins was good at his job and needed the exposure.
‘Will do.’ Desmoulins frowned. ‘Whoever dumped the body must have stopped for a few minutes at least. Somebody might have seen the vehicle.’
‘Long shot, but a good point. I’ll deal with that.’ He was thinking about Claude and his contacts throughout the area. The uniforms, as well intentioned and effective as they were, would find making progress outside the town very difficult. Viewing visiting policemen with suspicion did not help unlock people’s memories or their willingness to help. The
garde champêtre
, however, was already part of the community and would be more likely to turn up something useful.
Desmoulins pursed his lips. ‘I’ll get a bunch of men on it around town. It shouldn’t take too long to cover all the usual places.’ He grinned sharply. ‘I could put Tourrain on it; that would spoil his day.’
‘Good idea – if you want the job done badly.’
He rang Claude and put him on asking around for any sightings of a truck or van over the nights prior to the body being pulled from the canal, especially along the road near the parapet. It was, as he’d said to Desmoulins, a long shot, but worth a try.
Rocco headed out on the Abbeville road and soon arrived at the Gondrand dealership, an oasis of brightness in a drab line of houses and small businesses. It stood on an extensive patch of gravelled ground with a small office building at one end and streamers fluttering from poles like a circus event. There were some two dozen cars of every description on view, and the impression Rocco got was that Gondrand had taken the American high-volume approach to car sales, with lots of glitz and gleaming paintwork to draw in the customers.
Inside the front office a man in a dark blazer was leafing through a calendar showing smiling women in scant costumes, his feet up on the desk. When he saw Rocco, he tossed the calendar to one side, patently beyond embarrassment, and stood up without haste. He eyed Rocco’s clothes with a commercial gleam in his eye and a professional smile sliding into place.
The younger Gondrand, Rocco decided. He was close-shaven, skin shiny and soft-looking. Pampered.
‘Your father in?’ Rocco asked.
‘Maybe. Who’s asking?’
‘Police.’
‘Right.’ The gleam disappeared and a blank mask dropped down in its place. ‘Well, I’m in charge of day-to-day operations here. What’s it about, Sergeant …?’
‘Inspector. And your father would be fine.’
Gondrand nodded and seemed about to argue, but turned and went through a door at the end of the room. He returned seconds later, visibly annoyed, with an older and fleshier version of himself in tow.
‘Inspector Rocco, isn’t it?’ said Victor Gondrand. He beckoned Rocco to follow him inside and gave his son a steely look, closing the door firmly and indicating a visitor’s chair. The office was small and neat, with little clutter, the domain, Rocco decided, of a professional businessman. And no girlie calendars.
‘How do you know my name?’ queried Rocco.
Victor smiled. ‘It’s good manners, Inspector. It’s not a huge town, so it makes sense to at least know who I might be dealing with, especially a business like ours.’ He sat down, but not behind his desk. Instead, he dragged up a second visitor’s chair and sat near Rocco. ‘What can I do for you? I take it you don’t want to buy a car.’ He glanced out through a small window looking out on the front of the lot, where Rocco’s Citroën was parked.
Rocco decided that this was one Gondrand he might get to like. ‘I’m looking for the driver of a Peugeot four-O-three,’ he explained, and listed the details.
Gondrand made a note on a pad from his desk. ‘Is the driver in trouble? The car’s not stolen, I can be certain of that. We don’t handle that stuff.’
Rocco didn’t argue. He was enough of a cynic to know that not every car on the road had a valid history, and it was too easy for dealers like Gondrand to let details ‘slip’ here and there for the sake of a quick deal. ‘I’m following up an enquiry, that’s all.’
‘No problem. Would you like coffee, a drink, maybe?’ Gondrand stood up and nodded towards a percolator in the corner, with a tray of drinks alongside.
Rocco was surprised. ‘You can check right now?’
‘Of course. Business is good, Inspector, but not so good I can’t keep track of what we sell. My son is less … shall we say, detailed in his approach. Quick turnover, in, out and never look back. It’s not a business method I share, to be honest, but it seems it’s the new way of doing things in this trade. What can you do, eh? Progress, they call it.’