Death on the Pont Noir lr-3

by Adrian Magson

  He took a table in the corner, nodding at a few familiar faces at the bar. Cops going off duty taking a drink, cops going on duty hitting the coffee to stay awake throughout their shift. The same scene would be replicated in every town across the country. He saw Alix at a table on the far side of the room. She was sitting with the young officer who’d been helping Rizzotti with his examination of the DS. She smiled faintly and nodded, then excused herself and stood up. She crossed the room and stopped at his table.

  ‘So, Inspector,’ she said, ‘have you solved the puzzle of the fragrance yet?’

  ‘Not yet. But I will. Thank you for your help, by the way. You were correct — it was aftershave.’

  ‘But you don’t know whose?’

  ‘Actually, I do.’

  Her eyebrows lifted. ‘So it’s true what they say about you. You are some kind of wizard when it comes to finding clues. I must remember never to do anything wrong with you around.’ Her eyes remained innocent, and Rocco felt he’d missed something. Or maybe not.

  ‘I’m not a Canadian Mountie,’ he said. ‘I don’t always get my man.’ He looked past her to where the young officer whom Rizzotti had referred to as Romeo was throwing dark looks his way. ‘Is he trying to convey some sort of message?’

  Alix clearly didn’t need to turn and see who he was talking about. ‘He’s young,’ she said, which, coming from her made it sound like a capital offence. ‘He thinks because I said yes to coffee, it means something else. I’m not sure how to break the bad news to him that I’m not interested.’

  ‘I do. Introduce him to your father.’

  She laughed aloud, a burst of spontaneity that seemed to go well with the freckles on her nose. ‘That’s a low blow. A good idea, though.’ She turned and went back to the table, leaving Rocco to conclude that if Romeo persisted in his pursuit of Alix, Claude Lamotte was probably going to get a phone call soon asking him to bring his shotgun.

  His coffee arrived and he went back to thinking about his immediate problems. He still couldn’t make out what the crash was all about. It patently wasn’t a real film set, as evidenced by the fake camera. So what was it? A stunt of some kind? The presence of seat harnesses clearly indicated that the driver and passenger had expected to be involved in some kind of dangerous manoeuvre, but how and why was open to speculation.

  Then there was the increasing likelihood that the group of English drunks were involved. Certainly Calloway was. If he had driven the DS, what about the other men? Had one of them — Tasker, perhaps — been driving the Renault truck, with the others playing the gunmen who had attacked the car after the ramming?

  It was the DS which puzzled him most. Nobody trashes a car like that without good cause. A rehearsal for a film, maybe, but with a fake camera, this was clearly no film.

  Which left one thing.

  It had been a rehearsal for something else.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Unable to sleep for the thoughts whirling around in his head, Rocco got up early, put a saucepan of water on a low heat, then dressed quickly in a tracksuit and went for a run. It was still dark outside, but he was able to follow the lane out from the village easily enough, his usual training route when he was in the mood.

  The air was bitingly cold and deathly still, and he’d even got the jump on the village cockerels, usually so vocal and quick to wake everyone. Other than the brief stomping of a few cows startled by his passing, and one or two early birds ignoring the mad human to start the day with their singing, he was alone. No traffic, either, as usual. Perfect.

  He covered a kilometre at a brisk rate, then turned and jogged back. In spite of the temperature, he’d built up a sweat and his lungs were aching as they took in the chilled air. As a training run it was nothing like enough, but better than nothing.

  Back indoors, he bathed, drank his coffee, then headed for the car. He wanted to get to the office before the main shift came on and the atmosphere got blown to hell by noise, confusion and the daily briefing, which he tried to miss anyway. He also wanted to take a good look at the wall map and have a think.

  The map in the main office was big enough to include even small details of the countryside up to thirty kilometres out from Amiens, including tracks, streams, old WWI and WWII ammunition sites, trenches and other topographical details natural and man-made. The only items not marked were the many filled-in shell craters left over from the war, their locations circular white scars on the land and still visible if one knew where to look.

  Rocco focused on the roads.

  He grabbed a chair and sat down with a fresh coffee, staring up at the map and following the network of major roads likely to be used during a visit, linking Amiens with the safest routes in and out, and the quickest route to and from Paris. He discounted the main national roads, where ambush points were aplenty simply by being accessible from both sides. Saint-Cloud and his men would have the most obvious choke points covered, using the local police to flood the area and discourage anyone from considering any possible assault. Instead, he looked for some kind of pattern elsewhere, something that would jump off the wall and smack him between the eyes.

  But nothing did.

  He made more coffee, brutally strong this time, with lots of sugar, and tried to stop thinking like a policeman. He had to get into the mind of the attackers, of the men who wanted de Gaulle out of the picture for ever. He had to picture how, rather than preventing a killing, he would execute one. He had to go against the grain.

  To think like an assassin.

  He shuffled close to the map on the chair and sat back, eyeing the uneven web of roads. He automatically discounted anywhere close to villages or towns, anywhere where security forces would be certain to close down the area, flooding all possible means of escape with men and guns. That way lay certain failure.

  So, somewhere remote, then.

  He thought about where de Gaulle would be likely to go if he came here. And come here he would, he was certain of that. There could only be a limited number of places the president would consider worthwhile visiting out here, from strategically important industrial sites to places of national interest. And each one of those would have to be a point of maximum political impact. The president would want it, the advisors would suggest it — and the public would expect it.

  Something out there must ring a bell.

  He thought back to previous attacks. The only common denominators seemed to be de Gaulle on one side and his enemies on the other. And although the use of cars, guns and explosives was common, as were roadside attacks, none of them presented a pattern. All the attacks were clearly planned, but the methodology was almost random in nature, perpetrated by different groups with different training, skills and reasoning. Except that they all aimed at what usually turned out to be an official car.

  An official car.

  Like they use in processions.

  A Citroen DS.

  He skidded the chair closer, his heart tripping faster as the possibilities began building in his mind. He was looking at the section of the map which included the road where Simeon had witnessed the ramming incident, and thinking about rehearsals. The road was nowhere special… not even on a regular through-route and little used even by locals. But that surely made it ideal for a practice run; something you didn’t want anyone to see, where timing and distance had to be specific.

  A truck with a battering ram on the front. Thinking of assaults on a car, that detail alone was very unusual: someone had decided that whatever they were going to do, guns alone would not work. So, if it was a rehearsal, all he had to do was figure out where the real event was to take place. Presumably somewhere similar in layout.

  Twenty minutes later, he was about to give up when his eyes landed on a straight section of road in the middle of open countryside, several kilometres from any visible habitation. The ground looked level, there were few trees or other natural cover, unless what looked like a smudge mark was a small copse.

  Something ab
out it made his gut clench.

  He checked the scale of the map. The smudge lay approximately two hundred metres from the road. Almost adjacent to it on the map, the road was flanked by two broad lines and chevrons indicating a cutting. Or was it an embankment? God, he should know this — he’d studied enough maps in his time, reading them like a book to determine fighting terrain, gradients, dead ground, approach routes and exits. He rubbed his face. He’d had too much coffee and too little sleep. He felt a burst of impatience and went to the legend panel in one corner, showing the scale and markings. Chevrons — that was it. It meant the road passed over a bridge with a gully beneath.

  Back to the map.

  The layout was similar enough to where the ramming had happened, but he could see no reason why anyone, least of all the president, would need to travel along it. It was in the middle of nowhere, for God’s sake. Just a boring, straight, little-used piece of tarmac lost in a patchwork of fields made famous only by history.

  He bent closer. Faint lettering showed against the bridge.

  Pont Noir. Black bridge.

  He turned and checked the office. A uniformed officer was working quietly across the far side. He was a long-service member named Berthier, consigned to desk duties. If anyone knew the area, he would.

  ‘What’s the Pont Noir?’ Rocco asked him.

  The man looked blank for a moment, his concentration broken. Then, ‘Ah, Pont Noir. You’ve never been there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s like… a war relic — a site.’

  ‘A memorial?’

  ‘Not yet — but it’s going to be. It’s a deep gully, some say formed centuries ago. They uncovered a number of military remains there a couple of years ago, then a lot more just recently. French, mostly, but British, Indians and Australians, too. Like the League of Nations. They think it could have been a field hospital from the First World War, dug into the gully as protective cover. A team of university archaeologists are out there on and off, along with British and Australian volunteers. They’ve been trying to get it excavated and declared a national monument. It’s not the sort of place to take your girlfriend, though.’

  ‘Why?’

  The man hesitated, wary of causing offence. ‘It’s… creepy. Always chilly, even in summer. It’s like there’s no life to the place… like the warmth has been sucked out of it.’ He shrugged, embarrassed. ‘Sorry, but you’d have to go there to see what I mean.’

  ‘Who would know most about it?’

  ‘There’s a British War Graves Commission office in Arras — they’ve been monitoring and running the excavations. But the local historical society would be involved, too, and the national monuments office in Paris.’

  War graves. Rocco remembered John Cooke, the British gardener who worked in the area. He’d met him on his first day in Poissons, when he’d found a dead woman in the British military cemetery just outside the village. The man had been helpful and calm in the face of what had been a daunting discovery.

  He checked his watch. Just after eight. Where the hell had time gone? He looked up the number of the Arras office and dialled, and immediately got through to a superintendent named Blake, who spoke fluent French.

  ‘The site was uncovered not long ago after a landfall,’ the man told him. ‘A number of remains were found, and it was initially thought to have been a roadside burial site, maybe near a field hospital, which they hadn’t had time to signpost during a battle. That happened quite a lot, and sites easily got lost. At first it seemed to be mainly British and Australians, then a researcher in London found a reference written on a battlefield map, so they began digging a bit wider. What they discovered was a whole network of graves up to a hundred and fifty strong.’

  ‘So it’s a cemetery,’ said Rocco.

  ‘Not quite, Inspector. Partly because of the location in the gully, and the difficulty of accessing it for visitors and the likelihood of further subsidence, we’re in the process of moving the remains to a site nearby, clear of the road. But there are… sensitivities about the area.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Some want the road and bridge closed permanently as a mark of respect to the dead. It’s actually not used much and they say it would be easy to use alternative routes. But plans have been put forward by the Australian and British Governments, countries which have the majority of dead on the site, for a memorial to be erected nearby, and for the road to be kept open as a sign of unity and determination.’

  ‘What’s the likely outcome?’

  ‘Oh, I have no doubt their proposal will go ahead. We’ve already marked out a potential site with access for visitors. And approval has already come from the highest level, in fact.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘The president himself.’ His voice dropped. ‘In fact — and this is top secret, you understand — he’s expressed a wish to make a private visit when he’s next in the area, as a sign of respect. As a military man himself, he likes the idea of a memorial. All we need to know now is when that will be.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Rocco thanked Blake and put the phone down. He turned back to the map. His head was buzzing and he suddenly wanted a drink. Unwise, under the circumstances, and not a good idea generally, although it would certainly dull the enormity of the idea forming in his mind. But that was the last thing he wanted to do.

  A war memorial in the making, in the middle of nowhere, with de Gaulle’s full approval and an expressed desire to visit the site without public ceremony or the customary press entourage. Suddenly Saint-Cloud’s briefing and what Massin had told him about the attack on the official car was assuming a whole different slant.

  If Blake knew, why hadn’t Saint-Cloud mentioned it? Or was Blake merely playing up the possibility to highlight the presence of the burial site?

  As he stared at the map, he felt the hairs move on the back of his neck. It wasn’t just the road or where it led to that mattered. It was something else. Faintly drawn, as if the draftsman had been unsure about whether it existed or not, a thin line met the road at right angles.

  It was a track, coming out of the fields immediately adjacent to the bridge. A single track, probably unsurfaced, and meeting the road immediately opposite a point where the gully was at its deepest.

  He grabbed a sheet of white paper and a pencil from a desk nearby and slapped it over the map where the ramming had occurred. Drawing quick lines on the paper, he sketched a rough outline of the track and the road, adding a circle to show the conifers where the camera had been stationed and where Simeon’s mysterious watcher had been standing.

  Then he slid the paper across and placed it over the area of the Pont Noir, where the road crossed the bridge… and a track came out of nowhere at right angles. The only thing missing was the clump of pine trees.

  Other than that, it was almost identical.

  Rocco felt his heart pounding. There were times — not often, but rewardingly common enough — when idle thoughts, coupled with facts and suspicions, turned to absolute certainty. And right now was one of those times.

  He picked up the telephone. It was time to call Saint-Cloud. If anyone could confirm the exact itinerary and timing for the president to visit the Pont Noir, it would be his security chief.

  Then he put down the receiver.

  He couldn’t think why, but instinct made him decide against talking to Saint-Cloud just yet. He stared instead at the map, and his overlay of the road and track.

  If he understood the map details and the descriptions correctly, the road ran across the bridge, which spanned a drop into a deep gully. Beyond the bridge lay open fields, a smoothly rolling expanse of Somme countryside, no doubt dotted with the trademark white blemishes of former shell-holes and trenches so common in the area. No other roads, no houses or farm buildings. Anyone driving along it had a clear run to the main road three kilometres away. If they made it that far, they were away and free.

  He shivered. He was thinking like an
assassin.

  His eyes were drawn back to the bridge. To the track.

  He was looking at a kill zone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  By the time Rocco arrived at the Pont Noir, it was raining hard, cold, stinging needles that numbed the skin and blurred the landscape, moving across the fields in a malevolent cloud, drenching everything in their path. He shrugged it off; bad weather had never bothered him much, not once he’d got an idea firing up and needing answers. And this one was beginning to call loud and clear.

  He walked to the centre of the structure. Other than the patter of the rain, it was deathly quiet here, and considerably colder than in town, as if the weather wanted to punish the rolling fields for being there. But there was something else, too: it was, as Berthier had said in his apologetically poetic manner, as if history itself had laid its ghostly hand on the area, draining the land of any warmth. Then a bird sang; a single trill, but distant and faint, as if it didn’t wish to come close to disturb this place with its cheerful song. Maybe it was protesting at the rain. Or maybe it had forgotten to leave for warmer climes.

  The bridge’s parapet consisted of thick wire hawsers linking a series of metal posts each two metres apart. Rocco peered over the wires to the gully below. It was a long way down. He shuffled forward until his toes protruded over the iron lip along the edge and used his rain-spotted toecaps as gun sights, focusing on the ground. He wondered what had caused this enormous gash in the earth. It was overgrown in places, nature having reclaimed it over the years, with an array of rabbit holes in the side of the bank between scrubby bushes holding the soil together. There were clear signs of man-made digging, too, with strips of tape between small white posts marking where measurements had been made.