Death at the Clos du Lac (6 page)

It took them two hours to comprehensively search the entire house, even with Desmoulins helping. And Rocco knew that even with that, they were probably only scratching at the surface. The building was a rabbit warren of rooms and corridors, although with Inès’s help they were able to isolate or disregard a number of places where access had been denied to patients. But it was still a long job, moving furniture and checking a number of what could have been obvious places of concealment. Rocco had considered getting in more manpower, but figured they would only get in the way.

‘What are we looking for?’ asked Desmoulins, as they were checking the layout of rooms on a fire escape panel in the office and using it to mark the areas covered. The detective arrived not long after Rocco’s call, and with his powerful build and energetic attitude, looked ready to tear the building apart with his bare hands.

‘Anything hidden,’ said Rocco. ‘The people here were
kept locked in or sedated. To all intents and purposes they were prisoners. And prisoners hide things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Things they value; items they might normally ignore, but which become trophies. It’s like a game, where scoring a point over the authorities becomes part of their life. After all, what else do they have to do?’ He glanced at Inès, who looked surprised by the comment, but nodded.

‘That’s correct,’ she said. ‘Stefan was the worst, but they all did it to one degree or another. Food, fruit, books, items of cutlery, documents – even personal things left lying around by the staff. They never intended to keep them, but having them was a sort of victory. We’d find them, take them back … and they’d take something else.’

‘What did Stefan hide?’

‘Anything and everything. The man was like a big child – a jackdaw. He had his fingers into everything, especially at night. If we didn’t lock a room, he saw it as his to explore. I was forever retrieving stuff that didn’t belong to him.’ She sighed. ‘It was quite sad, really. Most of them probably wanted some attention. It was their way of getting it.’

‘Documents.’

She looked at him. ‘I’m sorry?’

He tried to recall Stefan’s exact words. ‘I met Stefan in the pool house. He said something like, “
There are lots of secrets here … but I’ve got a few of them.
” It was an odd thing to say, not as if it was just food or cutlery he’d picked up. I think he meant papers. Documents.’

Inès frowned. ‘But the only documents here were kept locked up in the office, which was always locked. Drucker was paranoid about it.’

‘Could you swear to that – twenty-fours hours a day?’

She hesitated, then shook her head. ‘No. I suppose not.’

‘Fine. Then that’s what we’re looking for.’

‘That narrows it down, at least,’ Alix suggested. ‘We concentrate on Stefan’s room.’

‘I wish it was that easy.’ Rocco looked at Inès again. She pulled a face in agreement.

‘He loved hiding stuff away from his room,’ she said. ‘That way he could claim it wasn’t him, and he could watch while we took the place apart whenever something went missing. He enjoyed the game. As I said, he was like a big child.’

Claude wandered in after doing a thorough search of the grounds, to find Rocco, Desmoulins, Alix and Inès taking a break.

‘You need to see this,’ he said, nodding behind him. ‘I found a door open at the back of the pool house and footprints leading away across the garden towards the lane.’

Inès looked up. ‘That can’t be right; that door’s never unlocked.’

‘Well, it is now.’

Rocco stood and followed Claude outside, leaving the others to continue the search. Daylight was beginning to fade and the countryside around the sanitarium was sinking into the soft folds of evening. The ground at the back of the pool house fell away down a sloping garden to a hedge overlooking the lane. Beyond that, a field ran for some two hundred metres down to a large lake, gleaming in the last of the light. It was surrounded on the far side by
tall poplars, in a pattern too regular to be accidental, and he guessed it had been the wealthy owner, wanting the lake to be framed for the delight of friends and family.

‘The canal runs by just before you get to the lake,’ Claude told him. ‘It’s in a fold in the ground, so you can’t quite make it out from here.’ He turned to his right and pointed at the ground, where a faint line could be seen through the grass. ‘Somebody walked across here. I thought at first that it could have been a member of staff or the guard, Paulus. But the trail only goes one way, across to a hedgerow on the far side. I wouldn’t have seen it in direct sunlight, but the falling light helps show it up. Come this way.’ He set off on a parallel line with the trail and with one hand pointing it out as he walked. They were now on a parallel course with the lane.

He was right, Rocco realised; in normal sunlight this wouldn’t have been noticeable. They arrived at the hedgerow, a gnarled, ancient tangle of briar and rosewood. Claude turned down the slope for a couple of paces, then stepped into the hedge where a natural gap had occurred.

‘See this?’ He pointed at a thick piece of rosewood where a pale gash showed against the darker coloration. ‘And here.’ Another gash. Both cuts had separated a main stem of the hedge, leaving just enough space for someone to squeeze through the tangled growth.

Claude lifted his arms and pushed through, and Rocco followed. They were in an open field of overgrown, lush grass, and a dark line showed the continued trail leading down the slope towards a fence at the bottom.

‘He headed for the lane down there,’ said Claude. ‘It runs along just the other side of that fence. Come on.’

They followed the trail, which ended at a wire fence, and a deep, seemingly man-made pit in the ground overlooking the lane.

‘An old German gun emplacement,’ Claude explained. ‘There were several on the roads around here, meant to cut off the retreat to the coast.’ He skirted the pit and hopped over the fence, then skidded down the bank to the lane and turned away from the house. A few minutes later, he stopped and pointed at an ancient corrugated metal structure at the side of the road. It was a small barn, rusted and full of holes, the thin metal of the walls beginning to flake away.

Rocco followed Claude inside. The air was musty and cold, and the place probably hadn’t been used for many years. Not by farmers, anyway. A couple of bright-yellow sweet wrappers were on the ground by the door, alongside some old cigarette butts. The wrappers were dried out and brittle. Kids, he figured.

The floor was a compounded layer of ancient straw, dried grass and cow droppings. Against one wall was a collection of old metal farm implements, among which he identified a feeding trough, bent and battered out of shape. Elsewhere, weeds, brambles and nettles had pushed their way through the walls and sprouted to almost shoulder height, untroubled by any competition for space.

‘See here?’ Claude knelt just inside the entrance, and pointed at a small patch of dirt, where the imprint of a tyre had been left in the surface.

‘A motorbike?’ said Rocco.

‘Small one, maybe. More likely a moped.’ He reached down and touched a dark spot. ‘Oil.’

‘How old?’ Rocco could follow basic trails, but Claude was much better at this kind of thing.

‘We’ll soon see.’ Claude bent and blew gently at the dirt. After a moment, some of the looser dust shifted, filling in some of the lighter tread marks. He looked up. ‘If these imprints were more than a couple of days old, they’d have filled in by now. I’d say last night.’

Rocco stood back and surveyed the barn. ‘But a moped?’ He tried to picture a professional hitman using such a lowly form of transport. It didn’t quite fit. Yet he’d once arrested a gang killer in Paris who had used a bicycle for the simple reason that it didn’t stand out. Until he was caught, he was absolutely right: who ever took notice of a man on a bike?

‘Didn’t you say you were following a poacher before you heard the scream?’

Claude nodded. ‘I was, but he was on foot, following the line of the canal. He wouldn’t have come this way. And there’s only one set of tracks. If this was a regular poacher’s hideout, he’d have left more traces.’

Rocco went back outside and looked both ways along the lane. If this had been the killer, he would not have wanted to run the risk of going back past the house. ‘Where does this lead to?’

Claude puffed out his cheeks. ‘Just open fields. It’s a while since I’ve been up there. It runs out of proper road after a couple of kilometres and becomes a track. Old Bertrand owns most of the land up there, but he gets to it from the other end.’

‘So it’s not a dead end?’

‘Not really. The track loops through the fields and meets
up with another road. It wouldn’t be quick, but a moped could make it easily enough.’

‘But he’d be unlikely to meet anyone coming the other way?’

‘Not a soul.’

‘And once he was on that road?’

‘You name it. Locally, Amiens, Bapaume – anywhere north. Double back and he’d eventually hit the road to Paris.’

‘That’s what I was afraid of.’

The woman lifted her head. She needed water. She had been lying motionless for what now seemed a lifetime, too scared to move, unable to see. And hearing anything above the drumming noise of the van in motion was impossible. Even the noise of other traffic, just metres away, might as well have been on another planet, it meant as little to her. The constant juddering motion and the smell of exhaust fumes filtering through the hood over her head had made her nauseous at first, but she had fought hard to overcome it.

Now the van had stopped moving and the man in the leather jacket had climbed out. There was silence at first after the door slammed shut, then she heard voices nearby and a grunt of laughter. Beyond that, however, there was nothing. Wherever they had stopped was devoid of the normal life sounds such as cars, children, machinery – even birdsong.

She tried to work up some spittle by holding her mouth
open, but nothing came. Sucking her teeth merely highlighted just how dry and thirsty she was. So she rolled onto her back and lifted both feet in the air, then brought her heels down as hard as she could. Maybe that would bring the man on the run.

But the noise was muffled by the mattress. She shimmied down by dragging herself along with her heels, aware that her skirt was being hiked up around her thighs, but she was beyond caring. She was close to choking; if she didn’t get some moisture in her throat soon, she was going to suffocate.

She stretched out her legs and heard the rasp of leather on the metal floor. At last. With that she lifted her feet again and slammed them down hard. It made a satisfying booming sound. She did it again and heard an exclamation from outside. Quickly she moved back to her original position before the man came in and saw her.

The van rocked and a door opened, letting in a gust of cooler air. She heard breathing nearby, and a faint squeak of leather as the man moved. She could smell cigarette smoke on him, overlaid with male sweat and unwashed clothing.

‘I need some water,’ she said, keeping her voice under control. ‘Please – I’m choking in here.’

The man didn’t reply, but she heard him moving around close by, then the clink of a spring stopper being loosened on a bottle.

‘Sit up,’ he told her. ‘But don’t try anything silly or I’ll slap you.’

‘No. I promise.’ She felt herself shrink. It was the first distinct threat that he’d made.

She felt his hand beneath her shoulder, then she was sitting upright and her back began aching at the
unaccustomed position. She couldn’t feel where her skirt was positioned, and hoped her legs weren’t bare.

‘I’m going to loosen the hood,’ he said, ‘to put the bottle underneath. But I’m not taking it off. You’ll have to drink as best you can.’

‘Please,’ she said softly. ‘Take it off, just for a moment. I need to see daylight.’

There was a short silence, then he said, ‘Fine. Don’t drink. Your choice.’

‘No, wait!’ Panic took hold of her. The thought of not drinking was horrifying. Her throat was as dry as paper, and scratchy from having to breathe forcibly under the hood. If it closed up altogether … she didn’t want to even think about it. ‘Please.’

She felt the hood loosened, and a subdued flood of light came in and made her wince. Then she felt a rough hand touch her throat and the cool touch of glass against her chin. Almost sobbing with relief, she waited patiently while the man lifted the bottle and a rush of water filled her mouth. She choked instantly, and coughed, half the water falling across her chest and soaking the inside of the hood. But it was like the best nectar in the world, even though it had a slightly metallic taste.

‘More,’ she gasped.

‘Slowly,’ the man said. ‘Ready?’

She nodded with almost shameful gratitude, and the man repeated the process, carefully dribbling water into her mouth until she turned her head aside and coughed. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of a western-style boot. It looked new, with burnished, stitched leather and a silver tooled point on the toe.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘Thank you.’

He helped her lie down again and made sure the hood was tight, then moved away. ‘Remain still,’ he told her, ‘and you’ll have food later. But don’t bother trying that trick again to attract attention. Where we are, nobody but God can hear you.’

Then he was gone and the door slammed shut behind him, leaving her alone once more with her thoughts and fears.

Several kilometres away, a team of undercover police officers was quietly scouring the area around Avenue de Friedland and the
Salon Elizabeth
, trying to pick up a trace of how a woman could disappear off a main Paris thoroughfare so easily without anyone noticing. They were under strict orders not to disclose who they were looking for, the instruction having come from high in government circles. It had been judged best not to alert the press in order to avoid panicking the kidnappers – if indeed the woman had been taken against her will.

‘Let’s not fool ourselves,’ Divisional Inspector Leon Drueault, given overall charge of the task, had told his three hand-picked men, ‘this isn’t going to end well.’ He had wide experience of such crimes and knew that women of certain years did not simply disappear from a comfortable life of luxury imagined by many but enjoyed by few, and run off into the hills with a wandering shepherd or their favourite plumber. And this woman had even less reason to go anywhere, for she was loved by her husband above all things. Well, a cynic might argue with that, but if press publicity was to be believed, she certainly seemed to come
higher on his list of values than his many businesses, which took up most of his waking life.

Until now.

‘Her husband,’ Drueault had continued, ‘could reach for a phone and have the president himself join a search team if he so wishes. He’s that important. He could take on his own private army – and probably already has – to track her down if he thinks we’re not doing enough. But we’ve managed to hold him back by convincing him that rash action will only get her killed. So don’t screw this up and don’t get noticed. Get out there and find what happened, when and how. Somebody must have seen something. Anything.’

‘So what’s wrong with using the press this time?’ asked Captain Paul Detric, the team leader. He had worked on many such cases and knew that there had been times when a press campaign had resulted in the early release of a kidnap victim. He was also aware that it had failed on more than one occasion, with tragic results.

‘This is not like other cases,’ Drueault had replied calmly. ‘If someone’s taken this particular woman, it’s not simply for money. They could have done that at any time. She uses Avenue de Friedland like you and I use the
Métro
.’

‘So why now?’ asked Sebastien, one of the other men. ‘It might help us to know.’

It was a fair question. But not one Drueault was prepared – or even allowed by his superiors – to answer. He shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you. Just know this: if we balls this up, she will most likely die. The kidnappers aren’t going for cash or diamonds or any of the usual stuff. If they took her, it’s got to be for something far more important.’

‘You know what that is?’ asked Detric, probably the only one of the three who could.

‘No. And I haven’t asked. Some things we don’t need to know. We just do our jobs, right?’ He looked at them each in turn, Detric, Sebastien and Ivrey, the third man, until they nodded agreement, confident that if any three officers could find a single trace of the woman, these three would. Then he nodded towards the outside world. ‘Go find her.’