‘What do you want with my son?’ she demanded, gaze fixed on him like a bird of prey spotting a particularly juicy target. There was nothing frail or sickly about her eyes, he noted. Like twin coals in the dark.

‘I’m afraid,’ he said politely, ‘that I can only discuss that with him.’

‘What is your authority?’ Her cheeks flushed red at his response, her annoyance clearly lurking just beneath the surface.

‘That, too, is something I need only reveal to Monsieur Berbier.’ He deliberately left off the Bayer part of the name to annoy her further. He had little time for the grandes dames of the city, who thought themselves above the law and able to parry questions from simple plodders like him by sheer force of personality or, when that failed, a bit of judicious name-dropping.

She blew out her cheeks in frustration, then shrugged and beckoned him to follow. Rocco trailed her slowly up a flight of tiled stairs, her hand grasping an elaborate handrail and her asthmatic breathing loud and wheezing in the confined space. She was wearing a pair of faded and threadbare slippers, with baggy stockings bunched around spindly ankles. He caught a distinct tang of expensive perfume. Not that he was any expert; he used to buy perfume for Emilie, back in the days when it was still an acceptable negotiating tactic for the hours spent at work instead of home, but the numerous scents seemed to him to be simply a variation on a theme.

When she arrived on the first landing, the old woman turned and put her face close to his.

‘My son is under a great deal of stress at the moment,’ she muttered savagely, her breath as sour as old milk. ‘Matters of state, of course. Important matters. I don’t want him upset further.’

‘Well, I’ll try, of course.’ He wondered if ‘matters of state’ was the new expression among the elite to cover a sudden death in the family. If so, they probably had an expression for the deceased being found wearing a Gestapo uniform and pumped full of drugs and alcohol, too.

‘See to it, otherwise I will speak to my friend, the député, and have you removed. He can do it, too. Like that!’ She clicked her fingers with a sharp snap.

Rocco was debating whether to use a hip throw on the old woman or simply kick her down the stairs, when they were interrupted by a deep voice echoing down the stairwell.

‘Maman!’

He looked up and saw a man standing on the bend of the stairs, peering down at them. The face was familiar: it was Bayer-Berbier. He was tall and elegant in a pear-shaped way, dressed in an immaculate grey suit and a white shirt. Rocco guessed him to be in his sixties. He had the short, stiff brosse style of hair affected by Frenchmen of an ex-military background, and the steel-grey eyes behind frameless glasses were cold and unemotional.

The old woman made a huffing noise and beat a retreat through a doorway, muttering something uncomplimentary as she went and hawking deep in her throat.

‘My apologies,’ said the man, coming down to meet Rocco. He held out his hand. ‘My mother believes it is her duty to intercept all callers – my mail, too. She is concerned about my safety. Last week she placed some documents from my office into the fire because she thought the paper might be contaminated with germs.’

‘I hope they weren’t valuable.’

‘They weren’t, fortunately. But it took me three hours and a lot of telephone calls to make sure of that. How may I assist you?’ His gaze was intense and Rocco had the feeling the comments about the man’s mother were merely a smokescreen to break the ice and lower barriers. It was executed smoothly, man to man, equals for the moment in spite of their undoubtedly different stations in life.

‘I have to talk to you about your daughter, Nathalie,’ he said carefully, reminding himself that this man was so high up the food chain, he was probably accustomed to dealing with officials via his lawyer. Not that he could have faced the kind of discussion Rocco was going to have with him too often.

‘Do you have some identification?’ Berbier held out a hand.

No questioning of the subject matter, thought Rocco. No frown, no doubt in the voice, the way most normal people would react when a policeman came calling. Iced water in his veins. He wondered at the ‘war hero’ tag which had followed Berbier around. A glorious but secret period operating with the SOE, he recalled reading somewhere; keen to fight the Germans, Berbier – a captain at the time – had found his way to London and joined the Special Operations Executive, parachuting back into France to help the underground fight. The detail remained clouded but the myth grew stronger as his prominence increased.

He produced his card and handed it over.

Berbier studied it, rubbing a thumb across the printed surface. It was a gesture Rocco had seen before: a tactile check among those who cared about such things, feeling for embossed letters. A faint lift of the Berbier eyebrows might have been a show of approval.

‘It is refreshing to see,’ he said, ‘that there are still those who take their work seriously. Were you with the military?’

Rocco nodded. ‘Once. A long time ago.’

It was all Berbier seemed to need: Rocco was a policeman, therefore not a civilian, a man with credentials, therefore not a peasant. He slid the card into a top pocket. ‘So. How could my daughter be of interest to you? A parking infraction, maybe? A traffic offence? She is sometimes a little careless about these things. You know how it is with the young, I’m sure.’

Rocco felt his breath go still. Was this man playing him or was he in denial? His daughter had been found dead, he’d claimed the body, yet here he was acting as if she were in an adjacent room, alive and well.

‘None of that,’ he replied, his mind racing ahead. ‘When did you last see her?’

Berbier shrugged, pushing out a thin lower lip. ‘I can’t recall precisely. Last week? Yes, last week. She has her own apartment in the fifteenth arrondissement – off Avenue de Félix Fau—’ He stopped as if he had said too much, then recovered. ‘We do not live in each other’s pockets, Inspector Rocco. She is young, pursuing her own career … her own life.’

‘Of course. May I ask what she does?’

‘She works in fashion.’ Berbier’s eyes glittered, and Rocco felt the balance tip in the air like a tangible force, as if a decision had been reached. ‘Tell me, on whose authority are you here, Inspector?’

‘My own.’ Rocco stared back steadily. He’d faced men like this before. They were powerful, confident and usually arrogant. They could, in the usual order of things, break a man like him with a simple phone call. ‘I’m investigating the death of a woman in a village called Poissons-les-Marais, in Picardie. Her body was discovered in a military cemetery and was taken to the station in Amiens, where it was released on the orders of a senior magistrate.’

‘And how does that affect me?’

‘The body was released to this address.’

The sound of firm footsteps echoed from the bottom of the stairs. The chauffeur, Rocco was willing to bet, coming in response to some unseen signal. Berbier said nothing, his face blank. Then he took Rocco’s card from his pocket and studied it again. ‘This does not give your préfecture. If you are asking questions about some place in – Picardie, was it? – you do not have any jurisdiction in Paris.’

‘I have jurisdiction wherever a crime has been committed,’ Rocco replied softly, ‘and wherever my investigations may lead.’ He was treading on thin ice and knew it; like stepping without care in the marais. But thin ice had never stopped him in the past.

Berbier indicated the stairway. ‘You have made a mistake. Please leave.’

‘A mistake? Are you saying your daughter was not reported dead and her body shipped back here?’

‘She couldn’t have been. I spoke to my daughter only last night.’