‘Jesus,’ breathed Claude in admiration. ‘How the hell did they get all this stuff in without anyone seeing it?’

‘At night, probably,’ said Rocco. He pointed to an open stairway across the room. There was no light, and it looked dark. Too dark. He motioned Claude to stay where he was and moved back into the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards. Seconds later he found a supply of candles and two torches that worked. He went back into the main room and tossed one to Claude.

‘I’ll go first,’ he said softly. ‘You stay down here in case anything happens.’

Claude’s eyes were huge in the reflected torchlight. ‘Like what?’

‘You’ll know, believe me. If anything does, get outside and wait – but make sure it’s not me before you start shooting.’

Claude nodded and moved across to the side of the stairway, where he merged into the gloom.

Rocco had done this before several times, moving into darkened rooms and up ill-lit stairways. The main threat was to the lead man. It never got any easier and nobody had ever been able to convince him that taking it slowly was any safer than going in at a mad rush with gritted teeth and a blood-curdling battle cry. He took a deep breath, checked that Claude was ready, then switched on the torch and charged ahead, legs propelling him up the open stairs.

He emerged into another large area like the one below, and swung the torch in an arc. There was absolute silence apart from his own breathing. His heart was thumping and he wondered what it would take to get him back to a peak of fitness. A short flight of stairs shouldn’t be this stressful. He breathed deeply and called down to Claude, who came up to join him, adding his light to the room.

At first glance, it resembled an open-plan office divided by low screens. The difference was, each space contained a low, single bed and cabinet, and a small oil lamp. Small rugs covered the wooden floor, and the beds were spread with thick duvets and heavy, plumped pillows. The air was scented with pine. Across the room, above the kitchen area, were two open doorways with reed curtains. Rocco checked and found they were toilets with showers and small hand basins. Bottles of liquid soap and hair products stood in steel racks, and at floor level, small cabinets opened to reveal thick bath towels and pre-packed slippers, toothbrushes, combs and toothpaste.

‘All mod cons,’ he said. Whoever had furnished this place had decided that the guests should not go without the basics.

‘You can say that again.’ Claude had opened one of the bedside cabinets. Inside was a selection of porn magazines, tubes of jelly and a basket of sex toys. The last time Rocco had seen such a display was when he helped bust a brothel masquerading as a private gaming club in Clichy.

Clearly, guests here did not mind sharing even their closest and most intimate leisure time with their colleagues. Maybe it was part of the attraction.

Back downstairs, they checked the cupboards built into the walls. One was a well-stocked drinks cabinet full of expensive spirits and liqueurs; another housed a top-of-the-range Danish Bang & Olufsen radio and sound system wired to speakers dotted strategically around the walls. Others held a large supply of books, records, board games and – to complete the collection – a film projector and an extensive library of pornographic movies.

Rocco tilted his head. ‘You hear that?’

‘Hear what?’

‘Precisely. You could slaughter a pig in here and nobody would hear a thing. The place is soundproofed. Just right for noisy parties. Doesn’t attract any attention if things get out of hand.’ As Rocco’s torch played across the cupboard, he caught a tiny glitter of colour at the base. An object was wedged in the gap between a rug on the floor and the framework. He bent down for a closer look.

It was a yellow-and-white earring in the shape of a marguerite.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

‘So she was here, then. The Berbier girl.’ Claude followed Rocco out of the lodge and kicked the door shut behind him. It bounced open again, trailing the ruined lock and splinters of wood. He let it swing.

‘I think we knew that.’ Rocco felt oddly deflated by the discovery, the piece of jewellery merely underlining the fact that, apart from the crate of forgotten groceries, they had still found no trace of Francine Thorin. But why was the crate left out here to spoil? A few items had been taken, but he didn’t think a random thief would have left anything behind: a prize of fresh supplies like that was simply too good to miss. No, if it was anyone, it would have been Didier, snatching whatever was easy to carry and wouldn’t spoil too quickly. A man on the run has no time to plan his menu.

‘They must have been put off,’ he said half-aloud.

‘Who?’

‘The guests for the latest party … the one this stuff was intended for. They must have heard the news and cancelled … or received a call telling them it was off.’ A murder in the area will do that, he thought sombrely. People aren’t keen on partying with a killer on the rampage.

‘I can’t believe it.’ Claude swept his arm around at the lodge with an expression of disgust. ‘All that inside … and happening right under our noses. And nobody in Poissons knew a thing.’

‘Someone did,’ Rocco corrected him. He switched off the torch and stared out across the marais. ‘Didier Marthe knew.’

‘Just him?’ Claude puffed out his lips in disbelief. ‘Yeah – you’re right. Something else I find baffling: that a worm like him had anything to do with this … this extravagance.’

‘You mean a nonentity having access to wealth?’ Rocco shook his head. ‘Half the crims in the world are nonentities on the outside. It’s what makes them so hard to spot.’ He nudged the crate with his foot. ‘Anyway, I doubt it was his money he was playing with. He was just the local fixer.’

‘You think he had partners?’

‘I’d bet my car on it.’ He thought he knew who that partner might be, but proving it would be the interesting bit. But that was his job. He looked around, a thought tugging at his subconscious: something wasn’t right about this scene. Then he realised.

The blue crate. A car.

‘She couldn’t have carried the crate all the way down here,’ he said softly. ‘And someone saw her driving. So where’s her car?’

They scoured the immediate area around the lodge. The ground was soft, which should have been ideal for finding traces of a car. But the surface had been laid with several layers of wood chippings and dried reeds, and other than a mess of indistinct footprints around the crate and the back door, there were no definite furrows to show the passage of a vehicle.

‘Hang on.’ Claude walked round to the front of the building, to where Rocco had left his car. He inspected the ground where the soil was harder, and looked up towards the nearest bed of reeds that led to the lake. He pointed and said dully, ‘Over there. The bastard drove her into the lake!’

They ran across to the reed bed. Most of the stronger reeds on the bank were more or less upright. But beyond that, it was clear that something heavy had ploughed right through into the murky water, chopping down the thinner vegetation and carving a trough through the soft mud. A blueish glimmer of metal caught the light just below the surface, and Rocco felt the hairs move on the back of his neck as he realised what he was looking at. It was the roof of a car, just visible through the murk.

‘What car did she drive?’

‘A Panhard,’ said Claude. ‘Duck-egg blue, I think. It probably drove like one, too. Don’t tell me—’

‘It’s here.’ Rocco turned and headed for his car.

‘Wait! Can’t we do something?’ Claude skidded down to the water’s edge, staring at the area where the car was sitting.

‘Like what?’ Rocco called back. There were no bubbles to indicate trapped air slowly escaping, no signs of life. If Francine was down there, she was beyond any help they could give. ‘There’s no point.’