He shivered and continued walking, his footsteps brisk on the tarmac. The surface of the road was good, solid and smooth, untroubled by the passage of too many heavy trucks. He stepped off the far end of the bridge and walked a hundred metres or so to where something white fluttered on a post adjacent to the road. It stood out because it was so out of place amid these fields. He found an oblong patch of mud the size of a rugby pitch marked out by pegs and white tape. Inside the oblong were more lines and squares, similar to the kind of markings used by builders.
It was the planned memorial site.
Rocco stared across the fields, scanning the area back to the bridge. The landscape lay muffled and still beneath the blanket of cold rain, fields normally full of sugar beet and wheat now empty and soaked, uninviting. A male hare moved against the background in the middle of a field, slow and cautious like an old man testing his limbs, rather than the fleet-footed creature that it could be, and one or two birds circled further away, seeking thermals to carry them higher.
Other than that, nothing.
He tried to picture this place as it had been nearly half a century ago, churned by war and man, an open charnel house, muddy, cold and desolate and dotted with humanity, some alive, most not. Even with his experience of war, he found it difficult; the war here had been like no other. He thought instead of the symbolism involved: of the president coming here to give a nod of his head to a stone representing what had gone before, so that others might feel a sense of recognition, of remembrance. Not that Rocco objected to that; he just wondered what the men themselves would have thought had they been given a voice, their symbolism being shifted without consultation. Ignored in the campaign for a war, ignored in the planning of a battle, pounded beyond recognition during its execution and shunted around for convenience afterwards like pieces of furniture.
He turned and walked back to the bridge. A few metres beyond it lay the mouth of the track he’d seen on the map, coming out at right angles from the fields. It looked little used, although flat and compacted and very straight. There were no ruts that he could see, just a few faint imprints of horses’ hooves. Carthorses were still the norm around here, ponderous and powerful beasts, a world away yet from what was common elsewhere. Tractors were coming in, but financial help was expensive. For those rich in time but with little money, the old ways still prevailed.
A sad-looking wooden structure sat alongside the track a hundred and fifty metres away. Too big to be a shed, but too small for a barn, it was black and forlorn and looked as if a strong wind might send it tumbling across the fields at any moment like an empty cardboard box. Topped by a rusting corrugated-metal roof, it looked forgotten and forlorn, like the track itself, with only a line of pigeons sitting on the apex to give it any semblance of current use. Life and progress had passed by very closely over the years, with the road and the bridge, brushing against it. Yet the shed had remained as it had always been, ignored and desolate, a monument to a time long gone.
He walked up the track, the mud sucking at the soles of his shoes, and wondered how far the track ran. The map hadn’t been detailed enough for that, and it would take some local knowledge to find out for sure. But someone would know.
He bent and examined the ground. Tyre marks, puddled with muddy water, showed where a vehicle had pulled in and stopped. Clear treads, sharply outlined. Not tractor tyres, nor cartwheels, which would have been worn smooth. Something newer. Heavy. And footprints where the driver had climbed out. Not a farmer’s boots, with their heavy, wavy-line patterns and worn-down heels, but flat soles, smooth, with sharply defined edges like his own.
City shoes.
He approached the shed. The pigeons watched him come, then took off in a rush, scattering into the sky in a burst of flapping wings, leaving behind a stained roof and a few drifting feathers. The dilapidated structure they’d been perched on looked even worse up close, a miracle of dogged survival in decayed wood and corrugated sheeting, the slats of the walls curled at the ends and shot through with knot holes that had long lost their hard centres.
He peered through one of the holes. What limited light there was filtering through showed a floor covered by browned, dry grass and nettles to waist height, throttling a set of rusted harrows. Stacks of rotting wooden crates piled haphazardly to the ceiling, remnants of a long-forgotten harvest, took up the remainder of the space. One of the wall slats moved as he touched it, and dropped like a guillotine, narrowly missing his fingers. He decided to leave well alone before the whole place fell on him. Desmoulins would have a field day if he had to come and dig him out from under a fallen barn. He checked the near end of the structure, which had two large doors held together by a huge padlock. It was rusted with age, the keyhole jammed with years of dirt.
A car engine broke into the silence, followed by the hiss of tyres on wet tarmac. He turned as a beaten-up grey van clattered by on the road, the driver an old man in workman’s blues and a peaked cap giving a jaunty salute through the flapping quarter-light.
Rocco watched as it disappeared into the distance, taking the rain with it and leaving behind nothing but the drip-drip and gurgle of water running off the fields and into a storm gully.
It was the only vehicle to have passed by since he’d arrived.
He walked back down the track and heard the beat of wings as the pigeons returned, reclaiming their places on the shed roof. He crossed the road and stopped at the top of the bank on the far side, where stout white poles standing at knee height were the only indication of the road’s edge and the drop beneath. He looked down, his feet close to the lip. It wasn’t quite so far down at this point as it was in the centre of the bridge, but still dizzying enough.
At the bottom was a gleam of water; a natural pond formed by nature, its surface as forbidding as black glass, the edges an indistinct mass of weeds and reeds.
He tried not to think about what would happen to any car plunging down right here, or the occupants trapped inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Bellin’s scrapyard after the rain looked even more miserable than before. The gates looked shoddy and sad, dripping wet, and the surrounding fence was as unwelcoming as a mausoleum.
Rocco stopped his car just short of the entrance and climbed out.
The DS was somehow at the heart of this whole thing, he was certain of it. As Desmoulins had said, nobody orders the scrapping of an expensive piece of machinery like the DS merely because of a dent in one side — not even extravagant film-makers with their investors’ cash to spare.
The gates were unchained.
He slipped through without touching the corrugated cladding, and instantly felt the sour graveyard atmosphere closing around him, the piles of dead cars and torn metal like jagged, rusting monuments to man’s wasteful extravagance.
He remembered the dog barking last time. There was none of that now; no signs of occupation, no banging or grinding of machinery. But guard dogs didn’t always signal in advance that they were coming. They just arrived and began chewing bits out of intruders.
He took out the MAB 38 and checked the magazine.
‘Bellin?’ There was no echo; his voice simply vanished, soaked up by the years of dirt and oil and scrap metal.
An ancient ship’s bell was hanging from a post near the cabin door. He rattled the rope and set off a deep clanging noise which seemed to reverberate through the piles of metal like a mad symphony, flushing a clutch of small birds into the air.
But no human reaction.
He checked the cabin, which was unlocked. It was cramped and squalid, doubling as an office and shop, every available centimetre packed with rescued mirrors, lamps, steering wheels, hubcaps and other unnameable car parts from hundreds of different vehicles. A man’s coat was draped across a chair, the cloth once good but now worn and shiny and ragged around the hem. A mug of chocolate stood on a small desk, a thin tail of steam curling into the air.
He checked the phone. Still working.
Back outside, he stood listening. He thought he’d heard something. Or maybe it had been the breeze sighing through the twisted towers of metal, setting up a mournful whining sound like souls in torment. If Bellin was here, he was keeping very quiet or was already buried under a pile of his own scrap.
Unless the dog had eaten him.
He walked through the yard, stepping carefully over patches of oil and shimmering multicoloured patches of spilt fuel. Shards of discarded metal sprouted like bright, spiky weeds amid a carpet of windscreen fragments, the whole scene resembling a madman’s sordid, glistening patchwork.
He rounded a pile of battered door panels at the very rear of the yard. Bellin was sitting alongside a wrecked tractor sprouting weeds from its wheels, its location and condition a sign of just how old the place was. He was sucking nervously on a roll-up twisted like a stick of pasta and stained by oily fingers. He appeared indifferent to Rocco’s arrival, but there was no mistaking the pallor of a man terrified out of his mind.
Rocco said, ‘You’re a hard man to find.’ He glanced round at the walls of metal. It was like a bunker of junk. Except that there was only the one way out.
Bellin eyed the gun. ‘What the hell do you want?’ he whispered. He dropped the remains of the cigarette on the ground between his feet. It joined several others already laying there, some dug into the earth by his heel.
‘I’d like another chat. Is the dog around?’
A shake of the head. ‘They’re gone.’
‘Gone? Who?’
‘Jacques and Bruno — who do you think? The two you saw before.’ He scrabbled in his shirt pocket and pulled out a flat tin. Prising the lid off with a filthy, curled thumbnail, he extracted another roll-up. He snapped the lid shut and put the tin away, then took out a lighter and fired up the cigarette, dragging in a lungful of smoke. ‘That’s your doing; you drove them away.’
‘Maybe they got a better offer. What about the dog?’ He was becoming unnerved by the silence in the yard. All this metal and no noise; it didn’t feel right.
‘Fuck the dog.’ Bellin hawked noisily and spat on the ground. ‘You’ve killed me, you know that?’
‘How do you work that out?’ Rocco tested the front wing of a truck and sat down. He had his back to the nearest metal pile, kept the gun in his hand. If the dog came hunting, he’d have two, maybe three seconds to stop it.
‘You and your questions, coming here in your big black car and nosing around like God Almighty. It’s not right.’ Bellin didn’t appear to have heard him, but was rambling along on automatic, the bitter, resentful words spilling out as if released from captivity. ‘You might as well have put up a sign with a bloody great arrow pointing at me.’ He sucked at the cigarette but it had gone out. He crumpled the dead smoke in thick fingers and dropped the shredded remnants on the ground. Spat a mouthful of phlegm after it.
‘You’re not making much sense.’
‘Word. Word got out that you’d come round asking about the DS. Doesn’t take any time at all for that to spread.’
‘Word got out to whom?’
‘I should have burnt that bloody thing the moment it arrived here — and the driver with it. Poured petrol on it and watched it melt.’ He dug a heel into the soft ground, grinding some of the butt ends deeper into the mud with studied viciousness. ‘I should have known it would come to no good.’
‘If you help me,’ said Rocco, ‘I can help you.’
Bellin’s eyes threw back the futility of that promise. ‘You think? You have a safe place where they can’t get at me? A big dark hole where even the light doesn’t shine?’ He sighed. ‘I’d be dead inside two days.’
‘If that’s the case, and you’re that important to them — whoever they are — you should consider my offer.’
‘Important?’ Bellin didn’t even lift his head. ‘I’m not important.’
‘So why would they come after you so quickly?’ He knew the answer perfectly well, but it was better to keep Bellin talking.
The scrap dealer gave a tired smile. ‘You know why, Rocco. You’ve been round the block; I’ve heard things about you, so don’t pretend to be the thick-eared country cop. You know how things work.’
He was right. Rocco knew all too well. Whoever Bellin worked for, if they thought he was doing anything more than being seen by the police about a suspicious car, they would come after him. No other reason existed. It was enough that he was seen talking to them out in the open. But if he agreed to go in, it would be seen as the ultimate betrayal, and that would merit an example to be set and a message to others.
Rocco opened his mouth to say more, then closed it again. He’d come across many others like Bellin; recognised them for what they were. Coarsened and brutalised by a life of petty crime and used by others more powerful than them, they strutted through life like winners in their own small world, but underneath it all were in constant fear of retribution from those same people whom they feared or had offended in some way. What Bellin lacked right now, here, today, was the imagination to survive, to tear himself away and flee. He was trapped by his own surroundings, unable to visualise an alternative, like a steer in a slaughter yard awaiting its fate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
He left Bellin to his self-imposed misery and drove back to the station. He would come back once the man had taken a while to think over his options. He was almost there, living the threat that was hanging over him, real or imagined; all it would need was a nudge and he’d crumble.
It was nearly lunchtime and quiet. He found Colonel Saint-Cloud in his temporary office studying a sheaf of papers.
‘I think I’ve found a possible attack site,’ Rocco told him.
Saint-Cloud gave a slight lift of an eyebrow. He was clearly sceptical but the statement seemed to take him by surprise. ‘How could you do that? You don’t even know the proposed route or timing.’
‘I know the president has expressed a desire to visit a local monument. I also know it will be a private visit, so no entourage, no press and minimum security presence other than his normal bodyguards. And I know how the attack will be carried out. What I don’t know for sure is when, or by whom.’
The wall clock ticked loudly several times before the colonel said, ‘How could you even know about such a place or the president’s interest in it?’ His face looked tight, and his voice carried a hint of disbelief. ‘Who told you?’
‘I learnt about it earlier this morning. It doesn’t matter who told me.’ Rocco didn’t want Blake to get into trouble, although he couldn’t think why Blake would have told him about it unless it was already known in certain quarters.
‘I think it matters very much. I would like the name, please, Rocco.’
Rocco shook his head. ‘If the information is out there already, Colonel, and I heard about it, then it’s too late to matter. The person who told me is not a threat, I promise you. But ignoring it is.’
More ticks of the clock, then, ‘Very well. You had better show me.’
Rocco led him downstairs to the wall map, and asked Berthier to clear the office and make sure nobody entered. When the door was closed, he explained in brief what he believed would happen, based on having seen the location and the entrance and exit roads, and its uncanny similarity to the site of the ramming. He used his rough-drawn sketch to back this up, then stood back and let Saint-Cloud think it over. What he didn’t mention was Calloway and his colleagues; while all the clues pointed towards their involvement somehow, he still wasn’t sure how a group of Englishmen could be tied in with an assassination attempt on the French head of state. That part still made no sense. Besides, there were other reasons why he didn’t want to set that particular hare running just yet.
The colonel seemed unimpressed. ‘I can see why you would consider this, Inspector. But the president has given no indications to me that he intends going to this Pont Noir, wherever it is. It may well have some historic and social importance to France and other countries, but he has far more importa
nt places to visit. In fact, I can show you one where my own experience tells me he is far more vulnerable… and where I have good reason to believe he will go very soon.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘I do have experience of these matters. Ensuring the safety of the President of the Republic is not as straightforward as catching criminals, I assure you.’
Rocco couldn’t understand why Saint-Cloud was being so dismissive. But he was remembering Santer’s warning about watching his back, and his vulnerability should anything go wrong. He’d been assigned to Saint-Cloud to help with the security review, and that was what he was doing. But he was determined not to be fobbed off because of the security chief’s superiority over a police detective. ‘I think you need to see this place for yourself.’
Saint-Cloud looked almost affronted at having his decision questioned. He took a deep breath and said coldly, ‘Are you absolutely certain, Inspector Rocco, that you have not allowed yourself to be influenced by some… disconnected but inexplicable events involving a car and a truck, driven by people you have not yet found? I can see why you would draw the conclusions you have, but this all seems… circumstantial, and frankly, nothing more than cinematic in scope.’
‘Maybe. But it won’t harm to look, will it? And,’ he added dryly, ‘your expertise will soon prove it one way or another.’
It was a challenge Saint-Cloud couldn’t ignore, nor could he dismiss the suggestion of an eyeball inspection. ‘Very well,’ he said stiffly. ‘How long will it take? Only I have a meeting in one hour. I’ll take my own car.’
‘Depends how fast you drive,’ said Rocco. He headed for the door and the rear car park. ‘Follow me and I’ll show you.’ A strong grain of rebellion resisted the courtesy of offering the colonel a lift. Besides, he had a feeling the man would only sneer at Rocco’s Traction and deem it unworthy of a proper policeman.
As he turned along the corridor leading to the back door, leaving Saint-Cloud to get his car keys, he saw Caspar walking towards him, a relaxed grin on his face. They shook hands and Rocco led the former undercover cop outside.
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