Body on the Rocks: Crime in the south of France (Madame Renard Investigates Book 1) Read online

  Body on the Rocks

  A Madame Renard Investigates novel

  Rachel Green

  Copyright © Rachel Green 2021

  The right of Rachel Green to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or transmitted into any retrieval system, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design copyright © Rachel Green 2021

  Cover photograph © Harry Gruyaert/Magnum Photos

  For a free short story featuring Margot Renard and to find out more about Rachel Green

  visit: www.rachelgreenauthor.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  What next?

  Follow:

  Chapter 1

  Margot was heading back from the cove, picking her way along the rocky headland path, when the shout came down from the street. Fifty metres away, a small group of men were running along Rue Voltaire, closing in on the harbour.

  It was seven a.m. and the town was just waking up. Keen to see what the commotion was, Margot hastened up the last few steps to the street. With her Speedo still damp beneath her beach sarong she would normally go straight home to change, but instead she followed the hurrying figures into the harbour where a small crowd had gathered beside the concrete wall.

  The fortified harbour dominated the little town of Argents-sur-Mer. An ancient stone turret stood sentry at its mouth while the bright blue waters of the Mediterranean sparkled in golden sunshine. Margot searched the crowd for a familiar face but failed to spot anyone she knew. Most of them were fishermen, and they were speaking in Catalan, though she knew enough to get the gist:

  “Someone saw a boat out last night.”

  “There was fog on the côte.”

  “They won’t reach it across the rocks. Fetch François. He’ll need to get a boat out.”

  Margot weaved between the gathered bodies to find a space by the wall. On the other side of the concrete barrier a beach of rocks sloped down to the sea. It was so steep and littered with such large boulders that no one would normally go out that way, but now two teenage boys were heading in the direction of the water, leaping between the rocks like a pair of human fleas. Margot shielded her eyes from the dazzling sun. It wasn’t obvious what they were up to. Picking up on her confusion, the man at her side leaned in. “Down there. See?” He nudged her arm.

  He was pointing at a formless object just visible at the bottom of the beach, seemingly morphed into one of the big brown rocks. At first Margot couldn’t believe it actually was what it appeared to be, but as the teenage boys honed in on it she realised it couldn’t be anything else: a small brown body, face down on a boulder.

  The first boy to reach it paused on the edge of an adjoining rock, as still as a statue. Despite his initial bravado he now seemed unsure and waited while his friend caught up. They exchanged a few words, and then the first boy hopped to the body and crouched beside it. He gave it a brief examination, his actions mechanical. A hush descended upon the crowd as he stood up straight and looked back at the harbour. Cupping his hands to his mouth, he cried:

  “Il sont mort!”

  And several people gasped.

  ***

  The route over the rocks was too perilous to bring in the body so François, the harbourmaster, instructed two of the fishermen to launch the RIB. As soon as they were on their way Margot moved further along the wall for a better view. The RIB turned sharply as it emerged from the harbour and then slowed to edge its way along the beach of rocks. It was a tricky landing, and when one of the fishermen jumped out he slipped and almost fell. They passed the body between them and loaded into the back of the RIB where it was quickly covered with a tarpaulin. The teenage boys looked on as the boat powered away.

  Margot took the shortcut to the jetty by going down the old stone steps and joined the smaller group that stood waiting. François had made a barrier out of rope and was urging people to stand back. By the time the RIB came in many hands were ready and waiting to help, but the body was so small it didn’t take much lifting. After removing the tarpaulin, two men swung it up onto the jetty and laid it flat on its back. And suddenly before them on the wooden planks lay the lifeless figure of a small boy, no more than six or seven years of age.

  His eyes were still open and his face bloated, his little body naked apart from a pair of blue and red football shorts. A long moment of stunned surprise passed before someone thought to cover him up. But the hush was rudely broken by a tut and a plop. Margot turned sharply: a few metres away an elderly man had just spat into the water.

  “Migrants,” he muttered, and headed off with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders.

  Margot’s eyes bored holes into the back of his head.

  Chapter 2

  News of the discovery spread quickly through the town. When Margot went to buy cigarettes later that morning everyone she encountered was talking about it. Then, in the boucherie, another development: the owner’s young assistant came in to announce that a second body had been found, this one down by the old fort.

  “He was just lying there, dead on the beach,” she declared, breathless and excited, as she knotted her apron strings.

  It was the body of an adult male, similar ethnicity to the boy, spotted by a dog-walker. The assumption was that they were migrants from North Africa, washed up after an accident at sea, and everyone seemed to be an expert on the subject despite the fact that the washing up of bodies in a town like Argents-sur-Mer was far from an everyday occurrence. Margot bought some duck comfit and a coil of Toulouse sausage and headed home.

  She took Rue Voltaire back to the harbour and turned right into the lane that led to her cottage. A multi-coloured row with hers at the centre, pretty as a picture with its yellow-washed walls and painted blue shutters. She unlocked the gate to the covered passageway and went through to the courtyard at the rear from where she entered the kitchen via a pair of glazed doors. And then, because it was Friday, she opened a bottle of champagne.
/>   She unpacked her shopping and sorted out some ingredients for her cassoulet. It was a winter dish really but making one usually cheered her up.

  The house had been her and Hugo’s holiday retreat for the past five years – their escape from the pressures of his job in the Paris police. In two years, when Hugo would have turned fifty-five, the plan had been to move here full time; in reality, here she was alone, having to make a fresh start. Friends had advised her to establish a new routine, decide what was most important in her life and build her day around that. And so, in the three months she’d been down here, Margot had begun every morning with a swim in the sea, regardless of the weather. Afterwards, she would have breakfast at Le Paname, maybe treat herself to an éclair. Or two. Did it matter if she put on a few extra few pounds? When the tourists started to arrive, she would wander up Rue Voltaire and lose herself in the steep narrow laneways of the old quarter. Look in on the galleries; she’d always wanted to paint. But finding motivation had not proved easy.

  She took some salt pork from the fridge and started cubing it with Hugo’s sushi knife. In Paris, this had been one of their little traditions, a dinner they’d prepared together when the nights started to draw in. They each had their roles: Hugo would chop the vegetables while Margot prepared the meat. In his youth, he’d trained as a chef and would always get tetchy whenever she touched one of his precious knives. He would watch anxiously from the corners of his eyes, tut irritably, and then finally take over. “No, like this,” he would say and take the knife from her. The onion she’d been methodically slicing would be reduced to a thousand tiny pieces in a blur of motion. “Not that I don’t trust you with a knife in your hand,” he would smile slyly.

  Margot would playfully throw something at him.

  “No one wants to be the unarmed man in a street-fight,” she’d responded.

  Words that would come back to haunt her.

  Dear Hugo.

  One of the first things she’d done after moving down here was place a photograph of him in every room. Here, on the shelf above the cooker, was one from a Christmas night out at Chez Raspoutine. Hugo had been into vintage clothing at the time and looked quite the Al Capone in his dark brown trilby and wool blend suit. They’d danced until two in the morning and walked home in falling snow. But the image they brought back never lasted long; it would soon be replaced by another: a scene-of-crime photo taken on the night her husband had been murdered. She wasn’t supposed to have seen it. When they’d called her in the early hours to break the news, Pierre, Hugo’s friend and colleague, had collected her from the apartment and driven her back to the station. The office had been in turmoil. Hugo had been a respected and well-liked member of the force, and everyone was breaking a limb to track down his killers. Pierre was so busy he’d left her unattended, and Margot had drifted across to his desk where she’d found the image staring back at her from the screen of his computer: a man lying dead in an alley, face and torso latticed with knife wounds. It had taken her several long seconds to realise it was Hugo. She had no idea how long she’d stood there, transfixed, before someone had drawn her away.

  He was on his way home, he hadn’t needed to attend. A report had come through of an incident at a hotel near Strasbourg-Saint-Denis. Three masked men, armed with knives and a machete, had forced their way into the owner’s room, killing a man and maiming a child. An armed response unit had been sent, but being only minutes from the scene Hugo and Pierre had pursued the three men on foot. They’d chased them into a maze of streets in Petites Écuries. Briefly losing touch, Hugo had ordered Pierre to wait at an intersection, ready to guide in the armed officers, while he went on alone. By the time the squad had caught up, Hugo was lying dead in the alley, a pool of his blood spreading across the cobbles.

  He hadn’t stood a chance. Camera footage showed him being ambushed by the men who’d set upon him with their knives and the machete. Had they not been disturbed by a passer-by they would probably have turned him to mincemeat. The pathologist’s report detailed a total of fifty-seven injuries, any one of which could have killed him. The face Margot had seen in the photograph bore little resemblance to her husband, the man she’d loved for all those years.

  Margot looked up from the chopping board. Had the room just turned a little bit darker?

  She went on chopping the salt pork. She tossed the cubes into the hot pan and watched the fatty edges sizzle, and then stared down at the sharp knife in her hand. At once an innocent tool and a terrible weapon. One capable of inflicting an unimaginable degree of pain.

  She laid her left hand flat on the board and held the knife over it with her right. What did it feel like to have a blade cut into you? How much pain would fire through your body when that slither of metal sliced open your skin? She imagined drawing the knife over her hand right now, the silky sharp steel cutting into her flesh, through veins and cartilage, until it got right down to the bone. Blood would puddle in the gaps between her fingers before dripping onto the floor. The human body was such a fragile thing. What thoughts had gone through Hugo’s mind as he’d lain there in that alley, watching his killers lay into him? A person you’d loved for the better part of your adult life could be gone like that, and all it took was a knife like this.

  Margot bit her lip, tormented by the horrible images, the knife blade hovering close to her hand. But then she forced the bad thoughts from her mind and cast down the knife in disgust.

  Leaving the cassoulet unfinished, she took the photo of her Al Capone down from the shelf and went out into the courtyard in search of solace. She sat at her wrought-iron table, surrounded by her window boxes and her pot plants, and struck a match. She smoked her cigarette with her face tilted to the sun, enjoying the heat. No one had been brought to justice for her husband’s killing. The police had rounded up a small army of gang members from across the district, but none of them had admitted to knowing anything. For over nine months now the case had gone unsolved.

  Margot heaved a sad sigh. She balanced her cigarette in the groove on the ashtray and then laid her fingertips onto the lips of the man in the photograph.

  Poor Hugo.

  Chapter 3

  The only sandy beach in town was on the north side of the harbour, and in summer it would be crammed with tourists. Even now, on a chilly Saturday morning in April, a dozen hardy souls were out walking the sands. Margot avoided it by taking the concrete walkway that skirted its edge and then followed the narrow path around the headland. The beach in the next cove was rocky and wild and screened by tall cliffs, and the path to it was steep, treacherous in places, meaning she could usually count on having the place to herself.

  She worked her way over the rocks to get down to the narrow band of shingle and then stripped down to her Speedo. She packed her clothes away into her bag and put on her bathing cap, tucking in strands of loose hair. When the water fizzed up over her feet Margot wiggled her toes. She waded in until she was waist deep, and then threw herself onto the waves. That first rush of adrenaline as the water enveloped her was intoxicating. And then it was just her and the sea and a feeling of freedom that few things could beat. Head down, Margot swam with vigour.

  She liked to swim a long way out. It was invigorating to see how far she could go. Sometimes she would venture out several kilometres and drift in the current, imagine herself being swept away into the ocean. After twenty minutes she paused for a breather, bobbing in a slight swell. The lighthouse on the tip of Cap Béar blinked away to the south, shielding the cliffs of the Spanish coast while inland, craggy green hills rose up above the town before merging into the mountains, their tips shrouded in haze. Despite the fact she’d swam in this water hundreds of times, today something felt different. So far, only two bodies had been washed up but there must have been more of them on the boat. There could be dozens of corpses floating around in the water beneath her. Now she was out here it felt like disturbing a watery grave.

  Margot kicked away, tempted to go back in. Wasn’t drow
ning the worst way you could go? She’d always loved to swim in open water but she never underestimated the dangers. When she was little, her parents used to take her on holidays to Scotland and as soon as she was old enough she would swim in the lochs. She would dive in from the bank and head straight for the middle. “Don’t go out too far,” Dad would call out, watching anxiously from the shore. “It’s deeper than it looks.”

  But it was the depth that excited her most. She’d read somewhere that the volume of Loch Ness was so great you could drown the entire population of the world ten times over and still have room to spare. Sometimes she tested how far down she could go. She would pinch her nose and let herself sink, dare herself to get close to the point of no return. As the pressure built, her lungs would come under such strain that she would be forced to open her airways and let them fill up with water. One time she’d stayed down so long she’d almost blacked out. Kicking furiously to get back to the surface, she’d emerged with her oxygen-starved mind seemingly tuned to an altered reality: the trees had turned orange, the sky gone yellow. Dad had had to wade in to rescue her. There was no harm done, but they’d never gone on holiday to Scotland again.

  The current was pushing her south towards the harbour but Margot dug in deep and focussed on the headland to the north. She was in the mood for something more energetic today and gave herself the target of making it to the next bay, determined to work off those extra few pounds. But after a couple of hundred metres the muscles in her calf started to cramp and her energy faded, forcing her to give in.

  She swam back to the cove and emerged on the beach, breathless and drained. Tugging off her bathing cap, she sat down on a rock, slumping her shoulders in frustration. Sometimes she forgot she was no longer twenty.

  The sound of voices made her perk up. A couple of fishermen had appeared on the path and were making their way towards the tip of the headland, laden with tackle. Margot retrieved her swimming bag and pulled out her towel, drying herself quickly. She’d just finished putting on her sarong when a flash of colour caught her eye. She stopped what she was doing and moved for a closer look. An item of clothing was snagged on a sharp edge of rock. Picking it up, she found that it was a football shirt, garnet and blue – the same colours as the shorts the boy on the rocks had been wearing.