Splashing through the water, he groped at the panelling with his fingers until he found a vertical crack in the wood. It was too straight to be anything but a join. And joins were weaker than solid wood. He pushed against it but felt no give. Moving a few centimetres to one side, he tried again. This time he felt a small amount of movement. He ran his hands up to the top and felt the same.
Time to go. He turned over in the water and put his hands on the bulkhead floor for purchase. His mouth was now barely out of the water. Lifting his head and taking a deep breath, he ducked down and braced himself on the floor, picturing the space beyond the panelling.
The backwards double kick came with all the desperation and anger and the need to live that Rocco could muster. His bare feet hit the wooden panelling with the force of twin battering rams, and suddenly there was more water, this time surging around his head and spinning him around.
He rolled over and pushed against the panelling. It began to give. Using his powerful hands like grabs, he tore at the wood like a mad thing, then launched himself forward, squeezing his shoulders through and into a narrow, jagged gap. His coat snagged momentarily on a projection, but tore free as he heaved himself through.
Suddenly his hands were out of the water and into cold air.
Gulping back the instinct to breathe in, he pushed towards a patch of grey shimmering up ahead. Bits of debris swirled around him and something curled round his leg. He kicked frantically, barely resisting panic. It was a length of rope. He doubled over and ripped at it with his hands until it dropped clear, then lunged forward again. His lungs, sore from breathing the foul air, were now in agony.
Something heavy bumped against him. He pushed it away and felt rough material bisected with heavy stitching. What felt like a plastic bag moved against his face, cold and slimy. He brushed it off. Another, larger object bobbed alongside him, heavy and cumbersome. He pushed through and saw the patch of light growing bigger.
Another kick and he surfaced, coughing and retching. He was in a long cabin lined with small, square windows covered in heavy curtains. The water was halfway up the walls of the cabin, which he could now see vaguely through the gloom, his eyes already accustomed to darkness. A clutter of debris: plastic cups, food containers, cigarette packets, pieces of fabric and torn paper, and the edge of what appeared to be the mattress off a bed.
He was on the boat Nicole had shown him; the rotting hulk where the people from the truck had hidden. The atmosphere up here was stale and rancid, branded with the memory of unwashed bodies and damp clothing, of desperate men hiding until they could move on. But for Rocco it was almost sweet. He knew without being able to see that the ceiling and walls would be dirty yellow.
Then he remembered something else Claude had told him about the canal just here: a fault line on the bottom full of soft sediment which could swallow the barge whole.
He stilled the onset of panic, breathing raggedly. Still time to get out.
At the far end lay some wooden steps and the door to the rear deck. He pushed gently on the floor of the cabin and floated towards freedom. But the sudden movement caused a wash to break against the cabin’s walls, the water slapping like a mocking handclap, daring him to rush. The boat yawed lazily, debris floating and bucking like small boats on a rough sea. Then something heavy brushed Rocco’s leg. Whatever it was seemed to take hold, unwilling to break contact, and he kicked against it, imagination burning unseen horrors into his brain. After everything down in the hull, it was too much to ignore. He had to look. He turned as a dark shape lifted out of the water and rolled slowly away from him, shedding water from a cold, grey face and sightless eyes and a bright-red shirt.
The worker from the factory. Metz’s final victim.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
‘If I didn’t know better, Inspector, I’d say you suffered from suicidal tendencies. Were you in the habit as a child of throwing yourself out of very tall trees?’
Doctor Rizzotti dabbed at a cut on Rocco’s forehead, spreading a yellow-orange stain of iodine across the skin, then stood back with a smile to admire his handiwork. ‘Not bad, though I say it myself,’ he commented. ‘Although I’ve seen healthier-looking corpses after a Saturday-night bar brawl.’ He handed Rocco some tablets and a glass of water. ‘Take two of these now, then two every four hours. They’ll help with the headaches but not with being beaten up.’
‘You finished?’ Rocco stood up, swallowed two of the tablets dry and made for the door. His clothes had been swapped for clean ones, but still consisted of dark slacks and a black shirt. His English brogues were at the bottom of the canal, but he’d replaced them with an older pair.
‘Yes, off you go.’ Rizzotti shook his head. ‘Do come back soon. I must say, it makes a change from examining corpses. Not as much fun, but at least they lie still.’
After surfacing out of the sinking boat, Rocco had walked to the nearest road and hitched a lift to Poissons, where he’d washed and changed out of his wet clothes. Then he’d got Claude to bring him to Amiens while a team had been called in to search the sunken barge and bring up the body of the factory worker. Lambert’s plan had been simple. Get rid of Rocco and the dead man by placing them both on the barge, then sink it in the deepest part of the canal and nobody would be any the wiser. If the bodies did surface later, it would be next to impossible to make a connection with the factory.
‘You should have called me,’ Claude had muttered, when he told him what had happened. ‘I would have helped. You think my work here takes all my time?’ He puffed his cheeks in mild exasperation. ‘Mother of God, you could have been killed twice over! Barbarians!’
‘You were looking after Nicole.’
‘Sure. But Jean-Mi kept telling me to get lost; said I was spoiling his fun and he could keep her perfectly safe without me hanging around like the angel of doom.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Some inlet off the canal the other side of Amiens. He wouldn’t tell me where exactly; said it was better that way. But I think I know where.’
‘Can you take me there? I need to speak to her.’
‘Sure, but only after you see a doctor.’ Claude eyed the cuts and bruises on his face. ‘You could be suffering from concussion.’
He’d resisted, but in the end, to stop Claude’s nagging, it had been easier to let Rizzotti take a look at him. Fortunately, it had proven to be superficial, with no serious damage.
He sat back while Claude drove out to the west of the town, where he negotiated a series of narrow roads until they arrived at the canal. A small inlet was concealed by a line of poplar trees, with Jean-Michel’s boat anchored at the far end. The former police officer saw them coming and waved. A shotgun was resting on the roof of the cabin.
Claude turned off the engine and looked at Rocco. ‘You don’t look happy. This has nothing to do with what happened last night, does it?’
‘No. It doesn’t. At least, not directly.’
‘She’s been through a lot, that one.’
‘I know. But there’s something I need to ask her.’ He’d considered getting Alix to come with him, but decided against it. The presence of another woman might inhibit Nicole in some way, and he needed to hear her story without fear of hidden details.
‘OK. You know best. I’ll watch the approaches.’ Claude got out of the car and turned to survey the main canal. Rocco walked towards the boat, and Jean-Michel nodded towards the rear door, then wandered away to join his friend.
‘I need to know what happened,’ said Rocco, sitting down in the cabin across from Nicole. Massi was asleep in a bunk, wrapped in a blanket. The cabin was snug, warmed by a small but efficient log stove. ‘On that truck.’