Tales of Dirty Old Man Ch. 18

"Not a good idea," Philippe said. "My colleague and I are trained for this, and having a police officer with us makes it an official search." He handed me his radio, "You'll be able to follow us with this."

In the distance, we heard the throb of the helicopter and we went out to watch it land. It settled down on the lawn behind the chateau. Half an hour later it was back in the air. It circled the chateau once and them struck off in the direction of the canal. They were going to follow the route of the river and would be checking out any possible mooring sites they passed over.

The pilot reckoned it would take at least an hour to cover the two banks of the river as far as the locks at Aix. Then he wanted to refuel before starting on the branch canal.

"I don't want to be low on fuel if we see anything, it limits our options," he commented.

The radio crackled to life seventy minutes later.

"We've checked both banks as far as the locks and we've seen nothing."

I acknowledged the message.

"We are heading for the local airport and we should be back in the air in an hour."

Again I acknowledged the message and he signed off.

I looked at Simone and said, "I can't stand around here any longer; I need to be there!"

"We both need to be there," she said.

One of the security guards insisted that he drive us. We took the road that ran along the river. It wound through small villages and followed the twists and turns of the river. It was slow going, and we were still twenty kilometres away from the canal when the helicopter passed overhead.

We drove to the bridge that makes the furthest point that Rosie could travel to. There was no point trying to drive any further. So we waited in silence, hoping for the call over the radio that would announce they'd found the boat.

Every now and again we would hear the helicopter in the distance. At last in the late afternoon the radio crackled and Philippe had a conversation with our security guard.

He made a mark on the map he'd spread out over the hood of the car.

He said, "They think they've found it. There's a track we can use and it'll get us within a couple of hundred metres of the place. There's a police patrol already heading there."

We had driven off down the road for about ten kilometres before we turned onto a dirt track. The track skirted a few fields of corn that still stood tall before ending at a locked gate. Across the field in front of us, we could see a line of trees and shrubs that defined the route of the canal.

Through the trees, I could see the shrouded outline of a boat and as we got closer, I could see it was Rosie. We hurried across the field. At a first glance, Rosie looked fine. Then as we drew nearer, I saw the blackened paint and the scorch marks around the portholes of the rear cabin. There were two police officers and Philippe standing on the bank. As we hurried over, Philippe came over and stopped us.

His face was white and he had to swallow several times before he spoke. "You can't go on board! They ... they have found a body in the burnt out cabin."

Simone screamed and staggered against me. I held her tight and my world collapsed around me.

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To be continued.

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