Sixteen
Rocco drove home with his head in a spin. He was followed part of the way by the Ministry car, before it peeled off and disappeared a couple of kilometres from the village. Getting bored already, Rocco thought.
He’d spent a couple of hours thinking over his plans, reviewing the three blackmail victims and what their possible connections might be. In the end he’d come up with nothing but speculation. The problem was he didn’t know enough about any of them beyond their professional lives, and could only hope that Massin would be able to fill the huge gaps in his knowledge. Now his eyes felt gritty and he had a bad taste at the back of his throat. If he was going to attack this case, he was going to need a good night’s sleep.
The first item on the agenda was a visit to Bourdelet’s house. In his experience the place where everything began was likely to throw up some clues, and maybe he could find out more than there appeared to be on the surface. A chat with Bourdelet’s housekeeper might help and, if he was allowed access, his driver and secretary.
He stopped at the village café in Poissons to buy some soft drinks. He would have preferred a decent bottle of wine, something light and refreshing such as a Muscadet, but that wouldn’t help keep a clear head for the following day.
‘Not going dry on us, are you?’ said Georges Maillard, the owner, placing two dumpy bottles of orange on the counter. ‘That would be sacrilege.’ He was a large and untidy man, with a fragment of cigarette paper stuck to one lip and a three-day stubble like a harvested cornfield. He seemed to exude a permanent air of defeat, and had been unfriendly at first, until Rocco had helped him out with three men trying to force him into buying stolen alcohol. It hadn’t made him any less melancholy or stopped him playing Georges Brassens endlessly in the café – a musical taste Rocco had never acquired – but he’d at least proved more approachable since then.
‘Not yet,’ said Rocco, and paid for the juice. ‘Early start in the morning.’
‘Ah. Tough luck. You around for the fêtenationale on Tuesday? Lots going on and there’s a strongman competition.’ He almost smiled. ‘Big chap like you would walk it, no problem. The local champion’s good but about half your size and, between you and me, he’s been drinking a bit recently.’ He patted his own considerable paunch. ‘Stops him being able to bend easily enough for the big lifts.’
Rocco had seen the posters advertising the events around the countryside and in Amiens, but hadn’t given it much thought. Bastille Day was France’s biggest celebration of the year, although some deferred to the Tour de France, which had passed through the region not long before. Every community held its own events and parades, some big, some small. Drink and music were a popular component whatever the size, making for a loud display of national pride.
‘I can’t recall when I last attended one,’ he replied honestly. ‘Always too busy.’
Maillard frowned, which was much more his usual expression, and scratched deeply at a large armpit. It sounded like scraping mud off the bottom of a bucket. ‘That’s shocking, that is. They work you too hard. You really should try this one, though; we’re having a pig roast, which is a first. If you drop by, I might even go so far as to buy you a drink.’ He winked and moved away, sweeping a cloth along the counter. ‘You should take advantage of that while you can, know what I mean?’
Rocco didn’t ask him to explain, but left and drove down the lane home. As he stopped outside his house, he caught a glimpse of Mme Denis in her garden, hacking at some long grass with a wicked-looking sickle. She looked up in mid-chop, saw him and, to his surprise, bustled indoors without acknowledging his arrival.
He remembered her previous abrupt greeting, which was so unlike her. And now this clear display, as if she were diving for cover. What was going on? One thing he’d learned since being here in Poissons was that leaving things to stew, as so many had done before, led to misunderstandings and extended feuds, some lasting years. Some had even led to violence. He couldn’t picture Mme Denis hopping over the fence between their gardens one night and coming at him with her sickle, but it paid not to take chances.
He knocked at her door. It took another rap of the knuckles before she answered. She peered through the gap at him, blinking against the light like a dormouse coming out of hibernation.
‘Yes?’
Rocco held up the two bottles of juice. ‘I come in peace,’ he said. ‘Whatever I’ve done wrong, I apologise, and if it’s something I haven’t done, tell me so I can put it right.’
The old lady hesitated, then opened the door wider and looked from the bottles to Lucas’s face. She batted a hand in the air and opened the door fully. ‘It’s me who should apologise,’ she muttered, her face turning red. She turned away, allowing him to step inside. ‘I’ve been a silly old fool. Come in and I’ll get glasses.’
The air inside the house was cool and smelled of soap and vegetables, a heady mix Rocco had come to recognise and enjoy. It was a pleasant place to be: small, consisting of two rooms and a cellar, neat and spotlessly clean. He’d seen Mme Denis chase down a stray piece of fluff like a cat after a mouse on more than one occasion, which put his own housekeeping habits to shame.
She nodded for him to sit at the table, which was covered by a patterned oil-cloth topped by a central laced doily, and placed two thick glasses in the middle. Rocco opened one of the bottles and poured juice for them both, then lifted his glass in a toast.
‘Death to our enemies,’ he said, and when she smiled and raised her glass added, ‘What’s the problem? Is it your back? You know you can tell me.’
‘My back’s fine, thank you. It’s not that.’ She twirled her glass on the oil-cloth as if marshalling her thoughts. ‘All right, I’ll tell you. I have a friend here in the village, named Sylvia. Not a close friend but we chat every now and then about this and that.’
‘You mean gossip?’
‘Call it what you will. She has a nephew in Amiens. He’s in the police there and they’re close; she helped bring him up, in fact, when his mother fell ill. He’s a good boy so I don’t want to name him and get him into trouble. I know you could probably find out very quickly who he is by going through the files or whatever it is you do, but will you promise me not to go after him? He didn’t mean any harm.’
Rocco wondered what was coming. ‘Go on.’
‘This … nephew rings Sylvia regularly for a chat, the way good nephews do, and told Sylvia something he’d heard in the office. Sylvia then told me and, well … it came as a shock, I have to say.’
‘Go on.’
‘You’re leaving us.’ She said it in a rush and put down her glass with probably more of a thump than she’d intended, slopping juice onto the oil-cloth. She brushed it away with the back of her hand, which was wildly out of character, and looked directly at him with an expression of sadness mixed, he thought, with embarrassment.
‘I see. You know that’s very serious, passing on that kind of information. It contravenes at least three laws that I can think of and–’
‘Forget laws, young man. Is it true?’ She stared at him.
Rocco smiled. ‘Sorry, I was joking. The truth is, I’ve been offered a new job in Paris. It’s going back to what I used to do, but at a more senior level. They’re starting up a new division and want me to join them.’
‘I see. That’s good, I suppose, moving up in the world.’
‘Maybe. I haven’t given them an answer yet. There’s a lot to consider.’ He reached out and touched her hand. ‘I’m sorry – that information isn’t public yet and I thought I’d have time to make up my mind before talking to anyone. I was clearly mistaken, thanks to Sylvia’s nephew.’
‘That doesn’t mean he’s in serious trouble, does it?’
‘Well, nothing that a spell in one of our remote Pacific Islands territoires won’t put right. And yes, I’m joking again.’
‘Of course you are. Thank you.’
He leaned forward. ‘When I said before talking to anyone, I meant you.’
She smiled and patted his hand in return. ‘That’s very sweet of you, Lucas. And I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions based on what Sylvia’s nephew told her.’ She turned and looked at a photo on the wall. It was of her husband, Guillaume, resplendent in uniform on his cavalry charger in 1920, back ramrod straight. ‘Guillaume loved horses. He wanted to be a jockey, did I ever mention that?’
‘No.’
‘Well, he did. It was his dream to ride at Longchamp in Paris. One race. He always said he’d have settled for that: one furious gallop down that famous course in front of all those cheering crowds. Actually, I think he’d have settled for doing it if the stands had been empty, and he’d have provided the background noise himself. He was good, too, which is why he joined the cavalry. He loved and understood horses, you see, knew how they thought, what would make a horse run.’ She stopped and shook her head, staring into the distance at a long-held memory.
‘What happened?’ Rocco asked.
She shook herself. ‘Well, the war for one. And … what do they call it – his genes. See that photo? That was taken when he was a young man – and tall. A lot taller than me. Someone once said we looked like a circus act, the two of us, side by side, but I didn’t mind. In the end, though, his weight and height counted against him: too tall, they told him. So, he decided to do what he could, still with horses but not in racing.’ She sniffed and took a sip of her drink. ‘He became a farm worker, driving teams of horses behind ploughs, carts, harrows – anything where a horse could still be useful. Not that it was going to last forever, with those tractors taking over. But not everyone can afford them, even now. There are still plenty of farms where they use horses, and Guillaume, God rest him, would have still been out there if he was alive. He loved it, I could see that, every day when he went out. It was his dream.’
‘But he missed his chance to race?’
She shrugged, a slow lift of her shoulders, and smiled. ‘Maybe. It’s hard to let go of a dream, especially one started so young.’ She looked directly at him. ‘And the point of me rambling on is that I want to give you one bit of advice, Lucas: you should do what you want. Not what your senior officers want, not what society expects … and certainly not what I might prefer. You only get one chance at this life, so don’t let yourself be swayed by outside forces or silly sentiment. It’s better to regret what you did do than what you didn’t.’ She nodded and finished her drink, putting the glass down, this time with a decisive firmness. ‘If you decide to go, you’ll be sadly missed around here, I can tell you. If you decide to stay, well, I’m sure crime will be the same and my hens will still be laying.’
‘Even though they don’t know they’re being kept in the dark?’ Rocco felt a tightness in his throat. If there was anyone he was close to in this community, it was this old lady, who had welcomed him from the very first day. He desperately didn’t want to upset her.
‘Even then. I haven’t told them because the less they know the better. They clam up tighter than a banker’s fist otherwise. Now, be off with you. Just promise me you’ll let me know what you intend to do before anyone else in this village. I’d love to see the look on that Sylvia’s face when she finds out I know more than she does.’