Rocco and the Nightingale by Adrian Magson

Author:Adrian Magson [Magson, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780995751026
Publisher: The Dome Press
Published: 2017-08-27T04:00:00+00:00

Twenty-five

The ambulance crews were soon on the scene and moved with efficiency, determining that the wounded man was not in immediate danger but needed surgery as quickly as possible. They conveyed him gently away, the siren blasting out over the fields and sending up the crows in another flurry. The second ambulance, leaving the barn, was in less of a hurry, its siren unused.

Rocco walked back to the house in its wake. He felt drained, angry and baffled in equal measure. Drained by the speed and change of events, and angry at the way the attackers had simply appeared to drive in and shoot two armed officers, then make off with Bouanga and his people. If they had been sent by Bouanga’s enemies, how had they found out so quickly where the ex-minister was staying? Even though his assignment to look after Bouanga was an open secret in the station, it still had to have got out into the wider world somehow. But how?

He was met at the corner of the house by Claude. Alix joined them soon afterwards and said, ‘Commissaire Massin said a team is on the way and he’ll inform the Interior Ministry. He wanted more details but I said you’d report in when you’d finished attending to the wounded man. I hope that was right?’

He nodded. ‘Perfect, thank you.’ So now Massin can spare a team, he thought, but didn’t say anything. He nodded towards the house and added, ‘You did good work in there. While we’re waiting, there’s a service weapon missing, and the wounded man’s cap. Find the cap and you’ll probably find the gun. He must have dropped them both trying to make his escape across the field. We need to find them.’ It was a time-filling distraction more than anything, but Rocco figured it was better than allowing Alix to stand around dwelling on what she had seen. There would be time for that later.

She said, ‘I’ll search the grounds.’ Then she stopped. ‘By the way, I know it might not be the right time, but that business about Mme Duverre’s neighbour yesterday evening?’

‘What of it?’

‘I spoke to Mme Drolet, who runs the local co-op, and she said a man she’d never seen before came in two days ago and bought bottles of water, some bread and a packet of cheese. Camembert. I checked her stock against the wrapping from the cottage. It was the same brand and production batch number.’

‘I’d say that ties it down. Did she give you a description?’

‘Young, she said. Quite good looking, nice. I asked her if there were any specific details that stood out, but she couldn’t think of any. Ordinary, she reckoned, wearing a blue shirt and dark trousers. In fact she thought he was a cop at first, but get this: he was driving a grey van. A Citroën ‘H’, she called it – the one with the corrugated panels. She knew what it was because her former husband used one for selling fish and vegetables around the villages.

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