continued working, using the period of calm to make sure his paperwork was in order. Joining in with the speculation was pointless; it broke down the barriers between the ranks in an entirely damaging way and encouraged rumour. But his cop’s nose was beginning to make him uneasy. The men were right; something was going on.
Then the identity of the military-looking man came to him in a flash. He was neither Interior Ministry nor police. Rocco had seen the man once, maybe twice before, but only in passing. Colonel Jean-Philippe Saint-Cloud eschewed any kind of publicity, but was always much closer to the public than many would have believed, moving among them and seen only by those who knew where to look. Never identified by the press or Government, he had one purpose in life and one only: to run a top-class protection squad.
He was, in name at least, the president’s chief bodyguard.
The three visitors and Massin were already in when Rocco arrived next morning. The atmosphere in the building was still tense, but Perronnet and Captain Canet were surprisingly calm, which gave Rocco a degree of confidence that nothing serious was about to happen. The brass had a way of channelling news without saying anything, so maybe the general feeling of suspicion had been misplaced.
He checked the overnight list of reports and early calls, and noted one from Claude Lamotte. A local vagrant known as Pantoufle had been reported missing by the priest of a village called Audelet, not far from Poissons and within Claude’s patch. The man had a regular circular route around the area, which took in Audelet village church each Friday. That was the day Father Maurice handed out parcels of bread and cheese to the needy. His failure to turn up was sufficiently unusual for the priest to have alerted Claude.
Rocco was about to pass the task back to Claude to deal with, when he happened to glance at the large wall map of the region, idly tracing the usual route taken by Pantoufle from Audelet through Poissons and around the other nearby hamlets until he fetched up again back at Audelet.
The route ran along the same stretch of road where they had found the blood and the tooth.
CHAPTER NINE
‘What do you know about this Pantoufle?’ Rocco was driving his black Citroën Traction, with Claude in the passenger seat fiddling with the radio. They were on their way to see Father Maurice in Audelet. Rocco had never met the priest, and had asked Claude to come along in case he needed the familiarity of a known face. He had little time for men of any cloth and felt uncomfortable in their presence, as if they were trying to read his soul. It was fanciful rubbish, he knew that, but he preferred not to encourage them.
‘He’s a clochard,’ Claude replied. ‘A tramp. Always has been, I think – or as long as anyone can remember, anyway. Some say he was wounded in 1918 by a shellburst, and lost his memory. He’s been wandering around the district ever since, sleeping in barns and under hedges. It’s not his real name, by the way.’
Pantoufle. Slipper. Rocco thought the name oddly appropriate for a tramp, a gentleman of the road. A hobo, as the Americans called them. A hobo in slippers. ‘What is his real name?’
‘Nobody knows. He popped up in the area about forty years ago, I gather. People asked his name, but he always went blank. I asked him myself once; it was like looking into an empty bottle. Nothing there. After a while, people gave up. Then some wag gave him the name Pantoufle because he always wore slippers, even on the road. Reckoned proper shoes hurt his feet. He must have gone through a few thousand pairs over the years. The name stuck. He’s genial enough and harmless, so they leave him alone.’
Rocco wondered if they were chasing a false line of enquiry. All the indications at the crash scene pointed to a serious injury or death. But add in the report of a missing person – a tramp – who frequented the very road where the crash had happened, and it was hard to ignore the possibility that the two might be connected. While he was certain that Massin would want him to concentrate on more serious issues, there was something about the information at the crash scene which had remained with him, as if it were trying to convey a message. The only