He called Michel Santer.

‘Christ, you’re still alive, then?’ his former boss greeted him. ‘I’ve been fielding calls about you ever since yesterday. What are you trying to do, Rocco – get an early ticket out?’

‘What kind of calls?’

‘High-level ones – the kind I can’t ignore. A divisional commissaire named Massin was the first up. He sounded thoroughly pissed. Then a Captain Canet was on, talking about you and a female body in a Nazi uniform. I thought maybe you’d got into some weird stuff out there among the buttercups, but he put me straight. He was OK, actually, just sounding you out. And this morning, as I was about to enjoy my first coffee, another senior shirt named Perronnet bent my ear. Sounds to me like you’ve gone in with both feet first, same as usual, and upset the big boys. What’s going on?’

‘I’ll tell you some other time.’

‘Oh. Right. You’ve got company.’

‘Yes. What did the two seniors want?’

‘Background stuff, mostly. Where you’d come from, what you’d done – the usual crap-shovelling when someone wants to stick it to you and needs a personal, non-official edge. I told them you were a royal pain in the neck and couldn’t find your arse in the dark with a sniffer dog, and I was bloody glad to have got rid of you. Did I do right, Lucas?’

Rocco smiled. Santer never called him Lucas unless he was taking the rise. He also knew his former boss wouldn’t have said anything detrimental, but neither would he have over-buttered the bread. ‘Thanks. I appreciate it. Now I need a favour.’

‘Of course you do. And I’d like a longer penis, but I doubt that’ll happen, either. Go on.’

Rocco explained briefly about the body in the cemetery, and the tag in the uniform. ‘The manufacturer’s name is Pheron et Fils, costumiers – probably on the theatrical side. Can you check them out for me?’

He heard the scratching of pencil on paper. ‘OK, will do. I’ll send your replacement. He finally turned up this morning like a spare wheel on a horse and cart. He’s already got lost twice, so this should be just up his street. Anything else?’

‘Yes. Can you make sure he stays zipped about it? No written notes.’

There was a long pause. ‘Any particular reason for that?’

‘I’m not sure. The body’s already been released.’

‘Jesus, that was quick. How come?’

‘Somebody had the right paperwork.’

‘Where from?’

Rocco smiled. Santer was right up there with him. For a body to be released so quickly and with no questions, only the best papers would have sufficed. And those could only come from one source. ‘Paris. I don’t know the details, but I hope to get them.’

‘Good luck on that one. Who was the dead Nazi – de Gaulle’s favourite niece?’

‘As soon as I find out I’ll let you know.’

‘Do that.’ Santer hesitated. When he spoke again, it was in a low voice. ‘Watch your back, big man. When the big fish start taking notice of minnows, it’s time to look for a handy rock to hide under. I don’t know what you’re getting into, but it could get messy.’

The phone clicked and Santer was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Rocco? He’s a cop. Always will be.

When he’s not, he’s sweet.

Emilie Rocco – ex-wife

By the time he got back to Poissons, it was too late to do anything useful, so he drove to the house and parked the car. The day’s heat blanketed the front garden, oppressive and still, and he stood for a moment, enjoying the tranquillity. It was something he’d rarely found in Paris, where he had always been too close to others and their lives, too concerned with the next case on his list or the ones he had been forced by the pressure of work or political imperatives to consign to the backlog files.

He reached the front door and found a cardboard box on the step. A note was tucked inside the flap.

A man should eat. I hope you cook better than you grow tulips. The man installed your telephone already. You must be a Very Important Policeman.

Mme Denis was looking after his welfare. He glanced towards the hedge separating the two properties and made a mental note to slip some money for the food through her letterbox. He took the box inside. It contained the basics of survival which even he could live on: milk, butter, cheese, eggs, a knot of fresh-cut herbs which he guessed might be basil and coriander, a box of sugar cubes and a bottle of wine.

The phone was standard black, perched on top of a telephone directory. An official subscription form was tucked under the handset. The instrument looked worn with use, with a coil of wire long enough to reach anywhere in the house, and a number was written on a yellowed piece of card affixed to a slim tray in the base. Dédé had evidently used a spare model to jump the queue. Not that Rocco cared; at least he was connected. He picked up the handset and heard the welcoming burr down the line. Wondered for a moment who to call to test it out, then decided it could wait.

He made an omelette, which he could cook with his eyes shut, thanks to his ex-wife’s teaching, and listened for sounds of the fruit rats overhead. Silence. Maybe they’d gone out for the evening. Or they’d seen his gun and decided to find another home before he started blasting holes in the ceiling.

It reminded him that be hadn’t cleaned the weapon for a few days, so he hoisted it out of his coat pocket and laid it on the table for later. He had a cleaning kit in the car and would find it therapeutic to go through the familiar exercise. The gun was a MAB .38 with a seven-round magazine. He had used it just twice in the police, and one like it a few times in the army. There were moves afoot to equip the police with another more up-to-date model, but Rocco had got used to the feel of the MAB and couldn’t imagine using something else just because it was to be the new standard model.

As soon as the omelette was ready, he scooped it onto a plate and poured a glass of wine, and sat down to eat his first meal in his new home.

He came awake with a rush at four in the morning. There was a scurrying sound overhead, but he knew it wasn’t the fruit rats which had disturbed him. Neither was it a physical intruder. Something more insidious had reached a hand into his sleep and dragged him to the surface; some dark thought at the back of his mind, nudging him awake.

His throat was dry and raspy. He’d been lying on his back. He scrambled up and reached for a glass of water, draining it in one gulp, then sat back in the dark and waited for whatever had been swirling around in his head to settle and become clear, as he knew it soon would. It had been one of the reasons Emilie had finally left; one of many, at least. She had accused him of living the job to the exclusion of all other facets of their life, evidenced by him often shooting bolt upright in the middle of the night in a eureka moment, dreams morphing back into reality. Like now. Sometimes the moments led somewhere tangible, sometimes not. But the damage had been great enough to rob him of her patience, then finally, her love.

He shook his head and forced his mind back to the job in hand. The dead woman had to be someone: someone’s daughter, sister, maybe wife or mother. But whose? And someone important, if the paperwork to release the body was any indication. He would have to see whether Rizzotti showed some balls and came up with the names he needed. The bigger question was, where had she been prior to and immediately following her death? The wet clothing could be from any number of sources close by: the canal, the river or the lakes. But if Rizzotti was correct and his own instincts were right, the state of the body showed the drowning couldn’t have been in the last twenty-four hours. Alcohol and fresh water … and maybe drugs. A lethal combination. Yet not necessarily suspicious. It could have been a genuine accident: too much to drink, a few pills maybe, followed by a stroll too close to water.