‘I waited for him, didn’t I?’
Rocco nearly slid off the table. ‘Berbier came down here?’
‘Like a snake down a rabbit hole. He was really pissed off at Nathalie. He’d had a phone call from one of his friends earlier, saying how she’d had a fight with the fat man. He said he was coming down to teach her a lesson.’
Rocco felt a drumming in his ears. So that was how Berbier had found out about his daughter: a phone call from Didier, and another from one of the guests. After that, strings were pulled. Friends in high places. He wondered if the magistrate who had signed the papers had ever been a guest here. If so, there might be some film of him Wait. Something didn’t match. ‘You told him she was missing? Not that she was dead?’
Didier screwed up one eye and thrust his good hand down into the chair as if bracing himself against a stab of pain.
‘Christ, you’re slow, aren’t you?’ he sneered. ‘She ran off and hid in the marais. It’s a big place… no way was I going out looking for her in the middle of the night, so I rang him. I wanted to stay out of it. Nothing to do with me if his kid hates his guts. He arrived with that driver of his just before dawn, then went searching for her.’
‘Him and the driver?’ Rocco pictured Andre, last seen dying in the woods. Whatever sins he had committed had finally caught up with him.
‘No. The flunky stayed here, watching me. I was cleaning up.’
‘What then?’
‘Berbier came back. Said he’d found her and was leaving. I assumed she was in his car. After they’d gone, I took a walk around, just to make sure nothing had been left lying around for the locals to get hold of.’ He sat back, eyes blank. ‘I ended up at the Blue Pool. She was lying there, just under the water. Nothing I could do but pull her out. She was dead.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing. After a bit, I wrapped her in a plastic tarpaulin and left her under the boat while I figured out what to do. There were people about, so I had to be careful.’
‘How long before you dumped her?’ He didn’t bother asking why the war cemetery: to Didier, it would have been ghoulishly appropriate.
Didier shrugged, no longer interested. ‘Three days… maybe four.’
Rizzotti had been right. Rocco stared at the floor, picturing the nightmare scene, trying to imagine how any father could murder his own daughter.
When he looked up again, Didier was smiling.
And holding a hand-grenade in his lap.
Rocco felt his gut lurch. Cursed himself for being so careless. The grenade must have been secreted down the side of the chair. In a room this small, if it went off they’d have to hose the pair of them off the walls.
‘What now?’ he said.
‘I get up and leave. You stay. First, though, put the gun down.’
Rocco did as he was told, but stuffed the gun in his pocket. It was no use to him now, not with what Didier was holding. ‘What are you going to do? Where will you go?’
‘My business. You’ll never find me.’
‘Don’t bet on it.’
Didier scowled, shook his head. ‘How did you get here?’
Rocco wondered why he wanted to know that. Surely he’d noticed his wet trousers? Then he realised that Didier wasn’t taking in much at all. He was talking and listening, but something in his brain was focused solely on getting out of this room with his money. And the film. Anything else not an immediate threat was a distraction to be ignored.
Instinct made him lie. ‘I came along the main street.’
Didier nodded and stood up with difficulty, face pinched with pain. He was nursing the grenade against his chest with his good hand. He swayed drunkenly but righted himself with a shake of his head. The grenade pin was almost out, Rocco saw. Just a flick of a thumb away from spinning across the room and sending them both to hell.
He tensed, waiting for his moment, then stopped himself. If he rushed Didier, the pin would come out. No way to stop it. No way to put it back.
‘What were you going to do with Francine?’ He was trying to buy time, he knew that. It was pointless, but when it’s all you have left, it becomes a currency, like anything else.
Didier frowned, the question throwing him. ‘What?’ He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t going to do anything with her. She’s a sick bitch… I don’t need to get my fun with women like that. But she was a useful bargaining tool.’ He smirked. ‘I figured you’d back off if you knew I had her tucked away. I’d have told you where she was eventually, once I was clear of this place.’
Rocco thought he recognised the truth when he heard it, and nodded. Maybe the man had at least one redeeming feature after all.
Didier coughed suddenly, and a pink bubble appeared at the corner of his mouth. He licked his lips and blinked very slowly, as if his eyelids had become sticky. He shook his head again, nodded towards the floor. ‘Pick up the money and the film, put them in the bag.’ He waited while Rocco complied, then put out his bad arm so that Rocco could hook the bag’s strap over it. He moved aside and nodded at the chair. ‘Your turn. Sit.’
Rocco sat.
‘What’s in the bottom of the bag?’ He had a good idea already, but confirmation might be useful. It was heavy and smelt faintly familiar. Like a brick of C4. Not that knowing would help him much. But any delay might give him the tiny edge he’d need to get out of this.
‘What’s it to you?’
Rocco shrugged. ‘Just interested.’
For a moment Didier said nothing. He simply stared at Rocco in a detached manner. The silence lengthened, and Rocco wondered if he’d pushed it too far, or whether Didier was about to fall over and drop the grenade. But then he turned and walked away.
As Didier moved up the stairs, Rocco looked around the room, his gut churning. He knew what was about to happen; what the end would be. He wasn’t meant to leave this room. Didier would get to the top, then flick out the pin and toss the grenade back down the stairs and slam the door. End of another problem. The thin partition across the room would offer no protection, merely adding to the deadly debris coming Rocco’s way. Minced meat and the beginning of the long, dark night.
He listened to Didier’s footsteps fading, crunching on grit. A split second before the door slammed, he heard a metallic ping and the rattle of the pin on the floor. Then a leaden thumping noise as the grenade bounced down the concrete steps and wallowed across the floor towards him.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Rocco found himself wondering how long Didier had set the fuse for. Six seconds? Ten? Three? A split second later he was throwing himself across the room, hurling the armchair towards the partition doorway and grabbing the metal cabinet. He ripped it away from the wall and threw it across the gap, too, then upended the wardrobe. It might not be enough, but it was all he had, a barrier against certain death. Trying to go for the grenade instead would merely be a quicker way to die.
At the last second, he dropped flat to the floor. Covered his ears. Opened his mouth.
The grenade went off.
The noise in the confined space was unbelievable. The concussion shook his whole body and he felt a hundred needle stabs of pain in his hands and across the back of his head. Something hot touched his leg, then was gone, and the air was sucked away from him, making him gag with the effort to breathe. The room filled with choking dust and he felt a shower of debris falling across his back.
The light went out, bringing total blackness.
Then Rocco was up and hurling himself towards the stairs by instinct, clawing past the cabinet and wardrobe and wondering how long he had before the ancient building caved in on top of him.
He reached the door at the top and kicked it open in a fury, slamming it back against the kitchen wall. The lights were on. He drew his gun and checked the empty room. Saw through the dirty window a pale shape on the other side of the stream, moving crablike along the path into the marais.