Thirty-five

The track from the road to Petissier’s house was narrow and deserted. The grass verge on each side brushing the wheels of the Citroën demonstrated the lack of regular traffic. Drivers coming down this way were either lost or here by invitation.

It was a peaceful haven in a pleasant setting, Rocco concluded. After driving through many kilometres of undulating fields dotted with small villages and an occasional farming cooperative depot, he reached a lake in a hollow. Through the surrounding trees, he counted two, maybe three large properties, each with its own fenced-off space. A rich man’s paradise, secluded enough to guarantee privacy.

Petissier’s house was the first one he came to. He opened the gate and drove up to the main building, twin porthole windows in the roof like eyes observing his approach. No uniformed officer on watch this time, simply a strip of police tape across the front door, one end flapping vaguely in the slight breeze. As he got out of the car, a squat figure in a leather jacket emerged from behind an outbuilding at the back, adjacent to a double garage. As the man approached, he jingled a bunch of keys in one hand. He looked to be in his early fifties, with short-cropped hair and a military bearing.

‘Inspector Rocco?’ he queried. ‘You’re here to inspect the house, sir.’

‘That’s right. Who are you?’

‘Officer Hubert, Abbeville station.’ They shook hands. ‘I’m sorry about the informal clothes, sir, but I’m supposed to be on sick leave. Walking wounded, you might say. They drafted me in to come down because of a severe shortage of staff. They said to leave you to it.’ He smiled and held up the keys, selecting one. ‘This is to the front door, the others are to the back and side doors and the outbuildings. When you’re done, if you could close the door behind you and leave the keys on the bench in the shed over there, I’ll pick them up later.’

‘Thanks. Do you know anything of what happened here?’

‘Only what I heard at the station, sir. They said the judge lost it and tried to kill himself.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t condemn anyone who’s that desperate; you never know what goes on in people’s lives, do you? But they reckon he’d used dirty money, so we shouldn’t feel too cut up about it, eh?’ He nodded towards the shed. ‘Before he went, he had a big burn-up behind the shed. Paperwork, they reckon. It’s all gone now, though. Anyone’s guess what that was all about.’ He added heavily, with a tug of cynicism at the corner of his mouth, ‘Guilty conscience, perhaps?’

Rocco didn’t comment. He’d thought he’d detected a smell of smoke in the air, but assumed it was from a farmer nearby. He was surprised it had hung around this long.

With a brief wave Hubert stumped away to a powerful-looking motorbike leaning against the garage wall. He put on a crash helmet and kicked the engine into life, then headed off down the drive, the engine noise echoing around the house and trees in a crackling farewell and growling up the narrow road out of earshot.

Inside, the house was cool and smelled of furniture polish and something infinitely less pleasant: death. The shutters had been left hanging half-open, no doubt by the emergency team and police, letting in just enough light to see. Rocco did a walk-through first to get a sense of the place. From the hallway he checked a long galley-style kitchen with a tiled floor and heavy wooden cupboards, then moved to a large living room followed by a dining room and a study overlooking the lake and gardens at the back.

To Rocco, each room had the familiar feel of a space that had been well-searched by the police, with drawers not quite closed and, in the study especially, a few scattered papers lying about.

A rich man’s house, Rocco thought. Expensive tastes. It was stylishly furnished but somehow lacking in feel, as if rarely lived in. A place for display rather than comfort.

He returned to the living room, where a now familiar picture was propped against one wall. It was ‘The Toilette of Esther’byChassériau, and looked somehow diminished down on the floor. A hook on the wall above showed where it had been hung, and he wondered who had moved it. Petissier himself, possibly. From regret or guilt? Or maybe both at being found out?

There was a signature, he noted, at bottom right, but it was indecipherable and too short for the artist’s full name. If it was meant to be Chassériau, maybe he’d run out of paint. He studied the painting from a few paces away, then compared it with the photo Dreycourt had given him. Interesting.

He looked at an array of family photographs around the room. Dreycourt had been right about one thing: Petissier’s late wife had looked nothing like Esther. Not that she’d been in the back row when it came to looks, but a strong chin and a direct, unsmiling stare gave her an unforgiving, though handsome, look. He wondered if she had approved of her husband’s choice of art or whether she had died before he’d made the purchase. It couldn’t have been easy for an older companion or wife, living with a picture of a beautiful young woman with a come-on look and no clothes to conceal her youthfulness.

He walked through to the study and made a rapid search of the desk. It contained nothing useful and he decided that whatever else Petissier had done here, he hadn’t left anything behind that might come back to haunt him or his family.

More photos were dotted about on the desk, walls and side table, set in silver frames. Rocco checked them through, then looked again. Most were collegiate group shots, taken at functions or with neutral backdrops, in which Petissier held the centre spot, the successful man among his peers. Rocco recognised one or two faces from government circles or the judiciary. Then he stopped, seeing one familiar face in particular, and checked again. It appeared more than once, and one photograph showed the two men on board a yacht, dressed in casual shirts with their arms about each other’s shoulders, waving champagne glasses at the camera. Petissier was grinning.

And so was Maître Laurent Vauquelin.

Rocco walked out to the shed with a leaden feeling in his stomach. He found a brick-built firepit behind it, leaking a trail of smoke and fine ash which danced on a breeze from the lake. He leaned over the pit. The bricks of the wall were surprisingly warm, and all that was left of the fire at the bottom was a dry, grey soup, leaving no trace of anything which could have been useful.

A metal container stood on the ground nearby. He sniffed at the open neck but already knew what it would be. Petrol.

He went back to the house and found the phone. There was a notepad alongside it, containing local and useful numbers, including the police station. He dialled the number and identified himself, and asked to be put through to the investigating officer.

‘Captain Souchay,’ said a voice. ‘Can I help you, Inspector? Sorry there’s nobody down there to help you but we’ve had a bastard of a gastric epidemic tear through here like Attila the Hun and it’s left us really short-handed. Did you get the keys all right? I left word at your office about where you’d find them.’

‘Yes, thanks. Your man Hubert gave them to me.’

‘Say that again?’

‘Officer Hubert.’ Rocco sensed instantly that something was wrong. ‘Short, thick-set, fifty-ish? Rides a big motorbike.’

There was a brief silence, then Souchay said, ‘Sorry, Inspector, but like I said, there’s nobody been assigned from here to hand over the keys because we don’t have the manpower. Furthermore, we don’t have anyone called Hubert at this station.’

Rocco felt his skin go cold. ‘So who did you assign to search the building?’

‘We didn’t. After the body was removed, we were instructed to seal the place and leave it be. We thought you’d be the one doing the searching.’