Rocco? Unorthodox. If they don’t walk, he brings them in under his arm.
Lieut. Pierre Comorre – Custody & Records Office – Clichy-Nanterre district
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 Citroën 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?’
‘Death.’ To Rocco the aroma was all too familiar. Heavy and sickly, it hung in the air like a curtain, thick enough to taste. ‘Come on.’ He led the way into the cemetery and saw a man sitting at the far end of the cloister with his back against the wall. He looked unnaturally pale and was staring across the cemetery with a tight expression etched on his face. Probably trying not to breathe in, thought Rocco. It never works, no matter how hard you try.
‘John Cooke – the Englishman,’ whispered Claude, one hand clamped across his nose. ‘His French is so-so.’ He wagged his other hand in a see-saw fashion. ‘Actually, for an Englishman, not bad.’
Rocco strode along the walkway, his footsteps echoing around him, and watched as Cooke stood up to greet them. Up close, he was the quintessential Englishman: tall and thin, with blue-grey eyes, a neat moustache and fair hair. He wore dark-blue overall trousers and a check shirt, and had the wiry, sun-bronzed arms and face of an outdoor worker. Right now, however, the tan on his cheeks was struggling to stay in place.
‘Mister Cooke,’ Rocco said in English, and introduced himself. ‘Inspector Rocco. I understand you found a body.’
‘That’s right. Over there.’ Cooke looked surprised and relieved at hearing his own language. ‘Glad I don’t have to explain this in French. I could do it, of course, but… Anyway, come this way and I’ll show you.’ He set off out of the cloister and across the carefully tailored lawn, leaving the two policemen to follow. He walked like a soldier, Rocco noted, easy strides, back straight.
‘You speak English,’ muttered Claude, tapping Rocco’s arm. ‘You didn’t say.’
Rocco gave a ghost of a smile, remembering his surprise at finding Claude was the garde champêtre. ‘You didn’t ask.’
Cooke stopped alongside the giant stone cross set in the centre of the lawn. It had a stepped platform beneath an oblong base, and the main stone of the cross was inlaid with a bronze sword, the tip of which was running with verdigris.
Like green blood, Rocco thought sombrely.
Cooke gestured to the far side of the platform, and moved back to allow them to pass. ‘I hope you’ve got strong stomachs,’ he said. ‘It’s not pretty.’
Rocco stepped around the cross.
The woman was lying on the stone platform, arms flung wide, one leg bent beneath her. She had a dark, mottled tinge to her facial skin, which was bloated and pin-cushioned out of shape. Her pupils were milky-white, her eyes half-closed, and she could have been anywhere between twenty and sixty – it was impossible to be certain. Her hair was mousy, lank and crusted against her head in tangled snakes, and one cheek was pulled back in a cruel facsimile of a smile. But that was the only detail Rocco could determine immediately without a closer examination.
She was dressed, as Claude had said, in the stark black uniform jacket and skirt of a Gestapo officer, complete with a swastika armband, leather belt, shirt and tie. The collar of the jacket bore a twin lightning bolt insignia and three pips, and the black forage cap lying by the woman’s side was decorated with white piping.
‘You found it like this when you came in?’ Rocco asked Cooke.
‘Yes. I had to call in at Peronne first thing this morning; I only got here twenty minutes ago.’
‘Can anyone confirm that?’
Cooke lifted an eyebrow. ‘What – you think I might have left her here? Bit obvious, isn’t it?’ When Rocco said nothing, he added dispiritedly, ‘No, I didn’t see anyone to speak to.’
‘And there was no one here when you arrived?’
‘No. The place is hardly Piccadilly Circus.’ He paused, apologetic. ‘That’s in London.’
‘I know where it is.’
‘Right. Of course. If we get any visitors, it’s usually not until after midday. Otherwise it’s just me and the chaps.’
‘Chaps?’
Cooke gestured vaguely towards the lines of white stones. ‘Them. Trouble is, they don’t talk much.’ He gave a thin smile.
English humour, thought Rocco. ‘When were you here last?’
Cooke thought about it. ‘Three days ago. I have to cover several other cemeteries; this one is the easiest to maintain, so I don’t come every day.’
Rocco bent to peer more closely at the woman’s face. No significant marks, although it was hard to tell with the lumpy state of the skin. But he noted what might have been a small bruise on the side of the woman’s neck. She wore a single silver-and-enamel earring in the shape of a yellow-and-white flower – it looked like a marguerite – in her left ear, but nothing in the right. The yellow centre showed sharp and bright in contrast to the body and the dark clothing.
He ran his fingertips across the skirt and jacket. The material was heavily creased and the fabric damp – in fact, worse, it was soaked through. Several white marks showed on the fabric and were repeated around the welts of the shoes, and tendrils of weed were dotted here and there on the clothing and wrapped around her legs like dark-green centipedes. Her black stockings were ripped and laddered, exposing the flesh underneath which bulged through the mesh like uncooked pork.
‘Did it rain here last night?’ he asked.
‘No. Hasn’t for days.’
‘What did you do after you found the body?’
‘I didn’t touch anything, if that’s what you mean. It was obvious she was dead, so I drove to the station and got Monsieur Paulais to call Claude. I think he also called the police in Amiens.’
Great, thought Rocco. It won’t be long before the circus gets here. He’d have liked more time to study the scene in peace, but that was no longer in his hands. He turned to Claude. ‘How long before they arrive?’
‘About an hour… thirty minutes if they’ve got nothing else on. Depends whether Monsieur Cooke mentioned the uniform.’
‘I told them.’ Cooke took up the conversation in French, his accent evident but not bad. ‘It seemed pretty important… I thought it might galvanise them into action a bit sooner.’
It would do that all right, thought Rocco. Finding a corpse dressed like Himmler’s sister is not the kind of thing you ignore, not in France. He lifted the forage hat, which was dry to the touch, and opened it. There was no name tag.
Claude looked glum. ‘If Paulais called the police, he’ll have called the press, too.’ He rubbed his thumb and fingers together. ‘Money. In these parts, this will be a big story.’
‘You think we get bodies in Gestapo uniform turning up every day in Paris?’ Rocco shook his head. ‘Where’s the closest stretch of water?’
‘To here?’ Claude jutted his chin back towards the village. ‘The canal, just the other side of the railway. After that, the lakes and the marais. Why?’
‘The clothing’s wet through. She was in water until very recently.’ He touched the skin of the dead woman’s leg. It was covered in a slimy film.
He turned his thoughts to what would be needed here, if it wasn’t already on the way. The full works, undoubtedly – forensics, scene of crime, mortuary service… and Lord knows who else would want to get in on this act, with that uniform. Poissons-les-Marais wouldn’t know what had hit it.
Claude read his mind. ‘This is going to get messy, isn’t it?’
‘Very. I hope you had a good night’s sleep, because this could be a long stretch of duty. You ready for it?’
‘Me?’ Claude looked surprised. ‘I’m a lowly garde champêtre – the regular cops won’t want me around.’
‘It won’t be up to them, though, will it?’
‘Really? What do – Ah.’ The light dawned. ‘Of course – this is your patch now.’
‘Too right. They sent me down here; I might as well do my job. So stick around.’