‘They’re working on it. How quickly can you do it?’
‘ Pfffff… You’ve no chance. You’ll have to join the queue like everyone else.’
Rocco bit down on a surge of impatience. Dealing with petty bureaucrats like this was the one thing guaranteed to spoil his day. ‘Let me speak to your supervisor,’ he snarled. ‘This is urgent!’
‘I am the supervisor,’ replied the man tersely. ‘And you’ll still have to join the queue like everyone else. If I let every person who claimed to be a cop jump the queue, we’d have rioting in the streets.’
‘Wha-? I am a cop, you imbecile!’
There was a click as the connection was cut.
Rocco slammed the phone down, nearly dislodging it from the wall. He swore at length, roundly calling into question the man’s family history, sexual proclivities and the likelihood of his ever fathering anything but deformed goats.
When he turned round, he found several customers — farm workers by the look of them — gathered in the bar behind him, listening in silent awe to his tirade.
‘Government business,’ he growled. ‘We talk in code.’ He strode from the bar, wondering just how much they’d heard and wondering how easy it would be to get them to take up pitchforks and tar barrels and march on the PTT offices.
CHAPTER FIVE
Rocco? Pushy… dogmatic… intuitive. He gets results.
Rocco climbed in his Citroen and headed along the main street to the eastern end of the village, where the landlord of the bar had told him the garde champetre had a cottage. He had no guarantee of a warm reception, since the man might resent a city detective landing on his doorstep without warning, viewing him as a threat or an informer, possibly both. But as Michel Santer had suggested, it would be the simplest way of getting to grips with his new territory, and he wasn’t about to ignore good advice.