Jacquot and the Waterman Read online

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  Yves Guimpier, Chief of the Marseilles Police Judiciaire, turned from the window when Jacquot knocked and entered.

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  Part Three

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  After graduating from Hertford College, Oxford in 1973, Martin O'Brien joined Conde Nast and was British Vogue's travel editor for a number of years. As well as writing for Vogue, he has contributed to a wide range of international publications. He was editor of Sixty Years of Travel in Vogue (Macdonald) and is the author of All the Girls (Macmillan).

  He lives in Gloucestershire with his wife and two daughters.

  Also by Martin O'Brien

  All The Girls

  JACQUOT AND THE WATERMAN

  Martin O'Brien

  headline

  Copyright © 2005.Martin O'Brien

  The right of Martin O'Brien to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2005 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING

  First published in paperback in 2005 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING

  10 987654321

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Libraiy

  ISBN 0 7553 2286 X

  Typeset in New Caledonia Roman by Letterpart Limited, Reigate, Surrey

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic

  Headline's policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING A division of Hodder Headline 338 Euston Road LONDON NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk www.hodderheadline.com

  For my three girls Fiona, Katie and Polly with love

  Part One

  1

  Lac Calade, Salon-le-Vitry, Thursday

  They had called there four summers now, at the end of their holiday, on the northern shore of Lac Calade, in the wooded hills above Salon-le-Vitry. It was always the family's last stop, their final lunch before the airport at Marignane and the evening flight home. And in all the time they'd been there, on this narrow strip of sand, they'd never had to share it. Maybe a scatter of sails far off from the slipway at Salon-le-Vitry, but nothing closer. The track they followed, more than a mile of clumpy weed and rutted stone that seemed to go nowhere and promise nothing more than a broken exhaust, put most people off.

  There were five of them. The grown-ups and three children. As usual they'd arrived mid-morning, driving down from their holiday home near Courthezon. And just as they always did on this last day of their holidays, they'd taken their lunch early so the children could play. On a grassy bank above the shoreline, in a pool of shade beneath the single olive tree that grew there, they set about the bread, pate, sausage and cheese they'd bought at the charcuterie in Salon-le-Vitry, the rug from their car soon littered with breadcrumbs, smeared waxed-paper wrappings, discarded bottles of Or angina and an empty plastic vrac of local rose wine.

  Now the man dozed in his low picnic deckchair, ankles crossed, feet in sandals and socks, shirt unbuttoned, hands clasped across his stomach. Behind him, in the olive's shade, his wife read her book, smoking idly as she turned the last few pages, the three children ranged along the shore and in the woods. Around them, crickets beat out a static summer hum, lizards skittered from stone to stone and the midday sun laid a shimmering column across the water.

  'Daddy! Daddy!' The voice came from the point of land that separated their cove from its tinier, stonier neighbour. His twelve-year-old daughter, Mandy.

  'Dad, I can't see Julie.' The words were distant and scared.

  The man's eyes sprang open and he struggled to his feet. He felt suddenly hot and unsteady, staggering a little to gain his balance and his senses as he came awake.

  Under the olive tree, the woman put down her book and tipped off her sunglasses. What is it? What's wrong?'

  'It's Julie . . . Something

  The man shaded his eyes and looked to the spit of land where Mandy stood.

  She was pointing to an air-bed drifting thirty metres off shore.

  Their nine-year-old son, Ned, came out of the trees and joined her.

  'Jesus!' said the man under his breath, and his blood ran cold.

  His wife spun round, looking back to the woods.

  'Julie,'she shouted, short and sharp. And then, throwing away the cigarette, putting down the book, standing: 'Juuuuu-leeeee.' Long and hopeful, but somehow not convinced.

  'She was playing with the air-bed,' said the man. 'Last time I looked. Right there. On the beach. I told her not to. .:

  He spotted the child's armbands, like little red apples, on the sandy skirt of beach. A suffocating chill spread through him.

  He knew where she was.

  Heart hammering, he ran to the shore, pulling off sandals and socks, hopping from one foot to the other, damning the delay. A moment later, tearing off his shirt, he was splashing through the shallows, a bed of hard, slippery pebbles shifting underfoot, bruising the balls of his feet, propelling him forward. In an instant he was out of his depth, arms flailing, head coming up to take a breath and a bead on the air-bed.

  'Daddy! Daddy!' he could hear the kids shrieking. But all he could think was - how long? How long had she been off the air-bed? How long had she been under?

  Thrashing through the water, heart pounding, he reached
the air-bed, grabbed it, chest heaving, and looked down, holding the air-bed up to provide shade from the sun, a better view into the depths.

  Nothing. He could see nothing.

  He took a breath and flipped down, pulling himself into chill, coppery depths. He opened his eyes but could see

  only a dusty brown glow cut with slanting shafts of sunlight and, further down, the tops of some swaying grass.

  But nothing else. No Julie.

  He burst to the surface, filled his lungs again and dived a second time, hauling himself deeper into the gloom, feeling the water sluice through his fingers with every stroke, slide past his arms and shoulders. What had she been wearing? What colour?

  But still nothing. Nothing . . .

  A second time he broke surface, gasping for breath, head hammering, the air-bed floating away in the commotion. Legs bicycling, he spun himself in the water, frantically, full circle, catching his breath, wishing he was fitter, getting his bearings, the lake shore wheeling past. Filling his lungs he pushed down again, legs flailing in the air till they found purchase in the water and propelled him deeper.

  And then . . .

  Oh God, no . . .

  As he kicked out, a dozen feet down, somewhere in the murk to his right, he felt his foot push against something, something weighty, something suspended in the water, and he turned to see a dim white shape roll away, out of sight, out of reach.

  But his breath was gone, chest cramping. He had to go up. As he burst into the sunlight he took only the time to blow out the air from his lungs, drag in another breath and plunge back down, so fast that the water raced up his nostrils and into his mouth. He blew it out and felt the remains of his lunch rise up and follow, filling the water with a reddish cloud of crumbs and his throat with a

  burning acid tang. But there was still enough air; just.

  Oh God ... oh please God, don't let it be .. . he prayed, lunging his way down.

  But there she was. Suddenly. From nowhere. Right there beside him. A lolling head, drifting coils of hair. . .

  ... Oh God. Julie ...

  And he wrapped his arms around her, kicked out his legs and dragged her up with him.

  But even before he reached the surface he knew that there was something wrong, something not as it should be. There was no swimsuit on the body. Had she taken it off? And the flesh against his chest, in his arms, shifted like a puppy's coat, loose on the frame. Swollen. Slippery. Somehow larger and heavier than six-year-old Julie the closer he came to the surface.

  Then, suddenly, he was back in sunlight, water cascading from him, facing out across the lake, then turning to shore, hauling her with him . . .

  And standing there, thirty metres away, he could see .. .

  Four of them. On the beach.

  Not three. Four. His wife, Ned and Mandy . . . and Julie, their youngest, all of them waving at him. None of them able to see what he held in his arms.

  'She was in the woods,' he heard his wife shout across the water. 'She's okay, she's here . . . She was back in the woods.'

  Which was when the man knew for certain that the body in his arms, the body he'd pulled from the depths of Lac Calade, was not his daughter's.

  2

  Marseilles, Monday

  Daniel Jacquot cupped his hands and splashed water on his face, gripped the sides of the basin and looked in the mirror. Long strands of black hair stuck to his cheeks and water dripped from his chin.

  I need a rubber band, he thought to himself, absently, as if there was nothing else worth thinking about that first Monday morning in May.

  A rubber band. A rubber band. He'd seen one somewhere, he was sure of it. The one he'd used the day before. But where had he put it? He glanced around the bathroom, a small, angled space set beneath the eaves where he'd learnt to keep his head low, its single window giving onto pan tiled roofs, its pastel walls bright with a distant, shifting sea-glitter from the Vieux Port.

  Nothing. He couldn't see one anywhere.

  Jacquot dried his face on yesterday's T-shirt and tossed it into the wicker basket beneath the sink. Rubber band, rubber band. Sometimes, in emergencies, he used string. But it never worked as well as a rubber band. That was what he needed, and he went back into the bedroom to find one.

  Sunlight splashed through the room, the sound of Monday-morning traffic rising up like a hot murmur from rue Caisserie. And then, in an instant, his search for a rubber band was forgotten. There was something wrong, something out of place. He tried to register what was different, how the room had changed. And then he realised. He hadn't noticed the night before. She'd taken the curtains, the length of muslin she'd dyed a cobalt blue and trailed over the pelmet to fall in folds onto the bare wood floor. The curtains. She'd taken the curtains.

  Jacquot dressed in the clothes he'd worn the day before, save for the T-shirt that he'd used to dry himself. Pulling the hair from his collar he looked around for something to tie it. Nothing here he could use. And nothing in the bathroom. In the kitchen he slid open drawers, trawled his fingers through the contents, shifted the containers on the shelves to see if there was anything suitable, but found nothing.

  Then, beside the kitchen door, wedged under his service Beretta and holster, he saw the mail - a stack of circulars, bills, a postcard from Boni’s friend Chaume furloughed in Tahiti - which he'd brought up to the apartment the night before. All of it bound in a thick rubber band. He snapped it off, gripped his hair and wound it round into a ponytail. Then he buckled the gun to his belt, pulled on a jacket and closed the apartment door behind him.

  Taking the stairs two at a time, fingers brushing the wood banisters, shoes scuffing the worn stone, Jacquot swung down two flights to the ground floor, crossed the tiled hallway to the Widow Foraque’s door and knocked on the coloured panels of glass.

  It opened before his hand had dropped to his side.

  Thank you,' he said, handing Madame Foraque the saucepan she'd left outside his door the night before and the plate that had covered it.

  The old concierge took them both, tipped the plate, looked into the saucepan and nodded.

  'Rabbit,' she said, sweeping her mascaraed eyes up at him from beneath her black beret, the way she did when she talked to you. The man at the tabac. His son s got a smallholding over Aubagne someplace.'

  'It was good,' Jacquot told her. And it had been. Thick and meaty. But cold by the time he'd got back. While he'd walked around the emptied apartment, taking it all in, the stew had warmed on the stove.

  He'd only been away a single night. Not thirty-six hours. But Boni was gone. Nothing left of her. The clothes in the wardrobe behind the bedroom door and in the chest of drawers beneath the windows, her shoes, her toiletries, her tapes and CDs, pictures, books, the silly little things she'd bought for their second-floor apartment above the old cobbler's shop. She'd taken everything. Anything she could lay claim to, and some things that she couldn't. The place was empty, as if she'd never been there. Jacquot wondered how long it had taken her, how long she'd been planning it. She must have found herself somewhere without him knowing. All she would have needed was a couple of trunks in which to pack it all and the apartment to herself.

  'She left in the afternoon,' Madame Foraque began, telling Jacquot what she knew, whether he wanted to hear it or not. She'd have told him the night before if he hadn't got back so late. She gestured to the stairs with the empty saucepan. 'First I see of it there's men coming up and down, carrying bags and whatnots. Boxes and the like. They told me she was moving out. Couldn't have taken them more than an hour. Loaded everything in a van and drove away

  'Did you see her?' asked Jacquot quietly.

  Madame Foraque shook her head. 'Stayed upstairs the whole time. Just the key, left out here on the table while I took my nap.'

  'Well, thanks for the rabbit,' he said. 'It was kind of you to think of it.'

  'She leave you anything? Was anything left?'

  'Not much.' Jacquot tried a smile. 'This and that,'
he said, then turned to go.

  Madame Foraque watched him cross the hall - the hair, she thought to herself; when was he going to do something about his hair? Far too long. And those boots! The pointed toes. He'd regret it one day.

  'She was no good, Jacquot,' she called out as he pulled the door open. 'No good. You're better off without her, believe me.'

  'That's what you always tell me, Grand'maman. Maybe this time you're right.'

  And with that, Chief Inspector Daniel Jacquot stepped out into the glare of a Marseilles morning and was gone.