And now this. He shook his head. He’d be an idiot to go up against Berbier, no matter what Rocco said the photo suggested. It would be professional suicide. He’d have no allies, no backing and would become a pariah with no fate but a lonely, humiliating resignation and a disappearance into obscurity.

It was not the ending he had envisaged for himself. And with that thought, he hated himself more than at any time in his life.

A knock sounded at his door. He straightened his shoulders and called, ‘Come in.’

It was Desmoulins, looking flushed. Captain Canet hovered behind him, face tense.

‘Urgent call from Poissons, sir,’ said Desmoulins. ‘Officer under threat. The missing woman has been found and there’s been gunfire … several armed men are in pursuit of Inspector Rocco.’

‘What?’ Massin stepped towards the two officers. ‘What men?’

‘That’s not clear, sir. One of them – the kidnapper – is Marthe, the man from the hospital. The caller said the others look like ex-military. Rocco’s been forced to go to ground in the local marais.’

Massin turned away in a moment of indecision. Ex-military men who were prepared to go up against the police? Impossible, surely. What if Rocco had stumbled on some kind of official operation? Careers could be fatally damaged if the wrong response was made. Yet if it was true, and the men were not part of the state, then it boded ill if it was allowed to go unchallenged. He glanced at the photo on the wall. He hadn’t done much to be proud of since those days. Now he was embroiled in a battle of wills with an enemy he could hardly see, let alone fight.

‘Sir?’ Canet prompted him. ‘The lads are ready to go. Your orders?’

Massin turned. Desmoulins had his service weapon strapped on and a bunch of car keys in his hand. Canet, too, was armed and looked ready for action, his eyes bright. Behind them in the corridor, he sensed the presence of others.

He nodded. Maybe this would be a new start. If not, he could deal with his future later.

‘You’d better get them moving, then, hadn’t you?’

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Rocco felt chilled. Stepping into the trees had been like walking into one of the giant cold rooms used by meat wholesalers in Les Halles, in Paris. Thirty paces into the wood had taken him out of the light and into a world of shadows and shifting vegetation. He stood still and waited. As long as he stayed low on the slope and off the skyline, and wasn’t silhouetted against the outside, he should be safe. He shivered, in spite of his coat, and sank to his knees, listening for the faintest sound of movement, of anything alien.

The quiet here was almost crypt-like. Barely a whisper penetrated from the outside, and if the men approaching up the track were still in their car, he couldn’t hear the engine. He realised the advantage Didier would have in this landscape. The scrap man would be in his element: he knew the terrain like the back of his hand. To anyone else, it was a hostile environment.

Something hard and unyielding was digging into Rocco’s left knee. He shifted his weight and looked down. A shape too uniform to be natural lay half-buried in the leaves and weeds. He shrank back, his gut going cold as he made out the familiar nose of a large artillery shell. He had no idea of the size, only that it had probably been designed to take out an enemy fortification or bury the occupants of a trench where they stood.

He lifted his knee and backed away, his thigh and back muscles protesting at having to move so slowly and carefully, stepping from one clear spot to another. It was all a gamble, he knew; God alone knew what he was treading on here. Most of the stuff had probably been buried deep, but over the years had risen gradually to the surface as the trees and vegetation grew and the elements flushed through, breaking up the surface soil and allowing the subsoil to yield up its deadly secrets.

The harsh whine of an engine penetrated the wood as it tore up the track at speed. The DS driver was making no attempt at subtlety, and Rocco heard a hollow crump as the Citroën’s soft suspension bottomed in one of the many deep ruts.

He stayed where he was, breathing easily, confident that he couldn’t be seen – at least, not by the gunmen. The thought made him want to spin round and search the immediate area for signs of Didier, but he resisted it. If the men came charging in here, they would be moving from light into shadow, fuelled by adrenalin and the desire to take him out as quickly as possible. Their vision would be slow to adjust and their control diminished, giving him ample time to identify the threat and move away.

As it would Didier.

As if on cue, a crackle came from deep in the wood to his rear. Rocco turned his head slowly, and was immediately rushed back to a time and place where every bush harboured an enemy, where sudden movement was to invite a rattle of automatic fire or a tripwire-linked explosion. He swallowed, his mouth dry, and felt a familiar tremble in his calves. For him, it had always been the legs, he remembered. For some men in the moments immediately before battle, it had been the hands shaking or the eyes flickering uncontrollably. For others it had been dark humour and dry laughter. Each had covered their own minor betrayals by gripping their weapons tighter, by thrusting their hands under their arms or simply by shutting their eyes and mouths and praying. In his case he had waited it out, because sooner or later it had always stopped.

A car door slammed and a voice drifted up from the track. The engine fell silent. Rocco watched the light, aware that somewhere behind him Didier would be doing the same.

Then he saw a flicker of movement and a dark shape appeared. A man with a handgun, head swinging from one side to the other, unaware or simply uncaring of the danger he was in. Another appeared nearby, further down the track. But this one was cooler, perhaps more experienced. One second he was there, the next he had melted to the ground.

Rocco didn’t wait for the third man. If he stayed here, with Didier behind him and others coming at him from the track, he’d be trapped, especially having to take time to study the ground before every step.

He began moving in a monkey crawl, edging back down the slope towards the cemetery. He was counting on Didier having moved higher, where he would feel in control looking down on the newcomers. Rocco instinctively preferred being closer to the cemetery boundary where the going might be easier and where he could track movement against the skyline.

A shot rang out and he dropped to the ground. A sharp voice shouted a query, followed by a brief reply, then silence. Shooting at shadows, he decided. City rats nervous at finding themselves out of their own environment, in an alien world of shifting light.

He took advantage of their confusion to move, this time across the side of the slope. Then he waited, resting and watching the trees where he thought Didier might be hiding.

For the next twenty minutes he followed the progress of the three men from the car as they blundered their way through the trees. Occasionally they would call to each other, checking their positions with a hollow laugh or a brief acknowledgement, their locations pinpointed by the snap of a branch or the scrape of fabric on the thorny underbrush.

Another shot, followed by two more, this time higher up. Two voices were raised in query, one in alarm, and Rocco realised he’d lost track of the third man. He must have penetrated the trees further up the slope, trying to catch Didier unawares.

He crabbed sideways, knowing the two other men were not far away. Then a shape appeared barely ten metres from his own position. The figure was moving fast across the slope with little regard for danger, crashing noisily through the undergrowth. Not Didier, Rocco decided, but one of the gunmen, responding to the shots by circling across the lower slope to move up behind where he thought Didier’s position might be. The man hurdled a tangle of briar, then stepped onto a fallen tree trunk and jumped down the other side.