Death on the Rive Nord (11 page)

Rocco parked along the street and waited.

‘What do we do, boss?’ said Desmoulins.

‘We give it a few minutes,’ said Rocco. ‘When he comes out again we’ll follow him and catch him somewhere quieter.’

‘Why don’t we just go and kick a couple of doors in? We’re cops, aren’t we?’

Rocco was tempted, but reminded himself that he was too exposed now to use methods which would have gone unnoticed when facing gang members in Paris, who reached for guns almost by nature. Employing excessive force would be playing right into Massin’s hands. ‘It’s not that simple,’ he explained. ‘I didn’t check in with the local chief before coming here.’

‘Ah.’ Desmoulins pulled a face. ‘And you didn’t get this cleared by Massin, either?’

Rocco nodded. Under the national initiative which had brought him out of Paris, his roving brief carried a considerable distance. But courtesies were supposed to be observed when stepping onto another district’s territory, which they were doing right now. ‘I’d rather the locals didn’t know we were after Maurat, in case he has friends.’

They sat in silence, the night air closing in on them. A buzz of music came from behind the café window, but everywhere else was silent save for the occasional car or moped passing the end of the street.

Rocco stared at the café and wondered what was going on inside. They had been waiting fifteen minutes and Maurat had still not emerged from the alley. For all they knew he
could have walked straight through and left the area by other means. But that presupposed he knew they had been following him, and Rocco was pretty sure the man had no idea. He’d skipped out of the warehouse pretty swiftly, and probably hadn’t even looked in his rear-view mirror. The café might have nothing to do with Maurat, but he had called at two other similar establishments before settling on this place.

‘Come on. Let’s go inspect the nightlife.’ He climbed out and closed his door, followed by Desmoulins.

As they crossed the deserted street, he wondered what had brought Maurat here. Picking up instructions, maybe? Or spooked by his mother into diving under cover?

He paused before nudging open the door, catching a glimpse of the interior through a grubby net curtain. A fifty-something woman with beefy arms stood behind the bar, wiping glasses. Three men in rough working clothes were drinking in front of her, with another on a pinball machine. The ping of the ball hitting the bollards vied with a blast of bad rock music coming from a speaker on the wall. A single door with a smoked-glass panel led to the rear of the premises. The few Formica-topped tables were vacant.

The air inside was thick with cigarette smoke and the smell of fried onions. As the door let in the night air around Rocco and Desmoulins, the smoke swirling like a living thing, everyone turned to look. Tired eyes, pasty skin and the usual expressions of wariness at a haven being invaded by strangers. Rocco was used to it.

The pinball machine gave a hollow
thunk
as the loose ball dropped unhindered into the tray, and the player swore softly.

Rocco ordered two beers and nodded at the three customers, all nursing glasses of milky pastis. They looked away without responding. The woman behind the bar pulled two beers without comment and slid them across with practised economy of effort. Unexpected customers they might be but clearly a welcoming smile wasn’t part of the deal.

Rocco slid some coins back and nodded his thanks.

‘Anyone seen Armand?’ he said, after taking the top off his beer. He figured that shaking the tree couldn’t do any harm, not now they knew where Maurat lived and worked. If word travelled fast enough, as it probably would do, it might make him panic and drop the ball.

Desmoulins picked up his glass and wandered over to watch the pinball player start a new game, leaning comfortably against the wall next to the rear door.

‘Armand?’ The woman pulled a face and rubbed at a clean glass, the flesh of her arms wobbling like a half-set crème caramel. ‘Armand who?’

Rocco ignored her. Part of a barkeeper’s job in a place like this was playing defence against unknown visitors asking questions. If they didn’t, their customer base didn’t stay around long.

Desmoulins wandered back, his glass drained, and gave a minute shake of his head.

They left.

Outside, Rocco stepped into the alley, feeling the crunch of litter underfoot. The street lights barely penetrated the darkened recesses, but they could see enough to identify two doorways on each side, and what might have been a loading bay at the end. Rocco tried the doors on his side, but they
were locked tight. He looked across at Desmoulins, who found the same.

‘Come on.’ Rocco backed up and returned to the car. He had a feeling Maurat had gone underground for a while. It might be better to let him come to them.

‘Where to?’ said Desmoulins. He sounded disappointed at the prospect of giving up so soon.

‘Back where we came from. If he goes anywhere, it’ll be home to Mummy.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It was forty minutes before the Simca turned back into the street and parked in front of the Berliet. The driver climbed out and looked around, then made for the rear of the bungalow. He didn’t notice Rocco and Desmoulins parked up the street behind a broken-down hoarding.

‘Let’s go.’ Rocco got out and walked along the street to the front door, while Desmoulins went to cover the back. Rocco waited for a few seconds to give his colleague time to get in position, then knocked softly on the window.

Maurat himself opened the door. He immediately realised his mistake and tried to slam it shut, but Rocco jammed his foot in the way and slammed it back, knocking the driver back down the hallway. He stepped in and stood over the man, deliberately intimidating him by his presence.

‘We need to talk, Armand,’ he said quietly, and gestured for Maurat to go into the front room, where a light was
on. The driver looked as if he was going to argue, then saw Desmoulins appear from the back, blocking the only other exit.

Maurat was tall, like his mother, and skeletal in build, with a mournful face showing a two-day stubble. His clothes were dusty and creased, and a small strip of packaging tape was clinging to one knee. He blinked at the two men and a tremor crossed his face. ‘What? Who are you and what do you want?’

‘Armand? Who’s there?’ It was his mother calling from a bedroom at the back of the bungalow.

‘We can talk here in front of your mother or out in the car,’ said Rocco matter-of-factly. ‘Your choice.’

Maurat hesitated, then sighed, the spirit draining out of him like air from a punctured balloon. He looked tired and worn, as if he had been under severe stress for too long. He turned his head and spoke out of the corner of his mouth, eyes never leaving Rocco. ‘S’OK,
Maman
… just someone from the depot. I’m going out for a bit.’

He stepped outside and walked along the street, then stopped and looked at Rocco. ‘Who are you? Cops? Customs?’

Rocco loomed over him, crowding close. ‘Luckily for you, neither,’ he said softly. ‘Let’s just say we’re not good news.’ He grabbed Maurat’s arm and walked him to the Citroën and pushed him into the front passenger seat, then climbed in beside him. Desmoulins sat in the back.

‘Made any stops near a canal recently?’ said Rocco. He held up a finger. ‘A warning: don’t lie to me. I can smell liars.’ To reinforce the message, he reached into his coat pocket and took out his gun. He made a play of checking the magazine,
making sure Maurat could see the shells. The clicks of the mechanism were unnaturally loud in the car, the smell of gun oil heavy and sweet. He looked back at Desmoulins and said, ‘Did you bring the silencer?’

‘Sorry. We need a new one … after that last job. I’ve got a cushion here in the back, though. Works a treat if you do it right.’

‘Jesus –
what
—?’ Maurat jumped in his seat and tried to bolt, scrabbling for the door handle. Rocco grabbed him by the arm, forcing him to turn his head. His face was full of grooves and angles under the reflected street lights, and was now beaded with sweat. ‘Christ, who
are
you …?’

Rocco ran one hand round the rim of the steering wheel. It made a soft, abrasive sound in the silence. Then he flexed his fingers, all the while staring into Maurat’s eyes. He allowed the seconds to tick by, and the driver blinked several times, eyes darting from one man to the other. The silence eventually had the unnerving effect Rocco had intended. His primeval look, someone had once called it.

‘Yes. Yes, all right?’ Maurat said. ‘I’ve been past the canal – a canal. So what?’ Close up, his breath stank of drink … and something else. Rocco recognised the sweet tang of weed. It explained Maurat’s erratic trip around town: he’d been looking for something to calm his nerves.

‘Why?’

‘What?’

‘Why?’ Rocco spoke softly. ‘You initially said
the
canal. There’s more than one around here, but you know which one we mean, don’t you? What were you doing there? It’s not your usual route … and I know you didn’t stop for a pee.’ He reached into the man’s shirt pocket and found a ragged-
looking joint, pinched at both ends. He stuffed it back. ‘Silly. That’s a jail term already.’

‘Hey – you put that there!’ But the protest lacked conviction.

Rocco reached under the dashboard and produced a white triangle, flipped it into the man’s lap. The wood was muddied and split, where it had been crushed by a heavy weight. ‘You know what this is? I’m willing to bet that the pattern on there will match your truck tyres exactly.’

‘Actually, there are scientific ways of proving it, now,’ added Desmoulins, for good measure.

Maurat looked stunned and shook his head, mouth working desperately. ‘I … can’t,’ he said softly.

‘Can’t what, Armand?’ Desmoulins leant over from the back seat and placed a heavy hand on the driver’s shoulder, making him flinch visibly. ‘Can’t what?’

‘I can’t tell you. They’ll come after me … or my mother. I thought you were them – when she called me at work … and then at the café.’

Word had travelled fast.

‘How do you know we’re not?’ said Rocco.

Maurat almost laughed. It didn’t quite come off. ‘Because if you were, I’d be dead. So would she.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re fucking cops, aren’t you?’

Rocco nodded and put the gun away. ‘Fair enough. Is that why you went for a drive earlier, to that café – because you thought “they” were after you and needed a boost?’

Maurat stared at him. ‘I needed some stuff, that’s all.’ He looked sickened. ‘Is that what this is about – me using drugs?’

‘No. We’re not interested in your mucky little habits. We want to know who “they” are.’

‘I don’t know.’ Maurat’s face crumpled with worry. ‘On my mother’s life. I’ve only ever seen the one face. I don’t contact him; he calls me. I don’t even know his name.’ He looked imploringly at both men in turn. ‘Honest.’

‘Then why so jumpy?’ Rocco asked. ‘If he’s just a name.’

‘I can’t … it’s too dangerous.’

‘Who’s to tell?’ said Rocco. ‘There’s only us here. And we can provide protection for you and your mother, away from here.’ He switched on the car radio, an act of normality which he knew would come across to Maurat as anything but normal, under the circumstances. He was right. It took a while, but in the end, Maurat gave in.

‘All right,’ he said quickly. ‘But you can’t say where you got the information, right, or I’m a dead man.’

‘Of course. Not a word.’ He switched off the radio and waited.

‘It was a couple of months back,’ the truck driver said without enthusiasm. ‘I travel all over, but mostly around the north and centre of the country, delivering car parts and small stuff like that. Anyway, this guy came up to me one day in a service area just outside Paris. After a bit of chat, he says he has a business proposition. He’d pay me double my normal rate if I picked up some parcels down south, near Dijon, and took them to Amiens.’ Maurat looked up. ‘I told him I wasn’t interested – I guessed they might be drugs or stuff from the Med. But he told me they were just more car parts, like the ones I was already carrying. Only they were cheap copies which he could sell to distributors and make a killing.’

‘And were they?’

‘Yeah. Straight up. I looked. I cut a small hole in the side and made it look like damage in transit. They were bits of
leather seat parts for luxury cars … some dashboard trim and armrests, things like that. Good quality, too, they looked.’

‘Go on.’

‘So I did the job, got the money up front, and a bonus. Two weeks later, I was in the same service area, and he was there. Same again, he said – some spare parts from down south.’ He breathed heavily and shifted in his seat. ‘I did four trips in all, easy money. Then a week ago, he rang me at home. Said he had some urgent parcels with a higher payment.’ Maurat’s eyes looked like deep pools in the street lights, haunted and regretful. ‘He wasn’t asking this time, though. It was like suddenly I had no choice.’

‘What kind of parcels?’ Rocco asked.

Maurat shook his head and sighed again. ‘I knew it wasn’t car parts – not with the money he was offering. I tried to tell him no. Said I wasn’t interested and he could go find someone else.’

Rocco saw it all. Maurat had been drawn in like a fish on a line, and duped all the way. ‘Is that when he told you that the load you’d carried on the last trip wasn’t car parts?’

Maurat and Desmoulins both stared at him.

‘That’s right,’ said the truck driver. ‘How did you know?’

‘I’m a cop. I’m paid to know these things.’

‘He said they’d been full of drugs … and a couple of illegals from Morocco. He said he’d got photos of me loading the boxes, and a couple showing me looking inside one of them. It was a set-up – a guy at the depot near Dijon said a box had split open and showed what was inside. Of course, I looked, didn’t I? Didn’t know there was a camera, waiting to catch me out.’ He looked almost affronted at the trick played on him.

‘And the special parcels?’ Rocco prompted him.

‘People,’ said Maurat simply. ‘He wanted me to pick up people.’