Death on the Pont Noir

Chapter SIXTEEN



‘We need to find the DS,’ said Rocco. He was more convinced than ever that he was now leading a murder hunt. It might have been an accident to begin with, whatever had happened out on that stretch of road. Pantoufle might have wandered into the path of the truck, befuddled perhaps by cold or drink or hunger. But covering up the death and burning the body changed everything.

They were back in the office, putting their thoughts together. Rizzotti was compiling detailed notes on the burnt truck and the body, prior to requesting some scientific confirmation, while Rocco and Desmoulins went over the facts they had amassed so far.

On paper, it didn’t amount to much, other than a dead body and an unexplained event involving a truck and a car. But there was something tugging at his instincts that told him this was far deeper than a cover-up of a dead vagrant. Why go to so much trouble? They could have left him lying in the ditch and nobody would have been any the wiser. The road wasn’t used much; it could have been days, maybe weeks, before a body might be discovered, especially with snow on the way.

A phone jangled across the other side of the office. A uniformed officer listened for a moment, then held out the receiver to get Rocco’s attention. ‘Are you looking for a DS? Black, lots of side-impact damage?’

Rocco jumped up and strode across the office, snatching the phone from the man’s hand.

‘Rocco. You’ve found a DS?’

The man on the other end was a patrol officer who had stopped by a remote car breaker’s yard looking for a spare mirror, and had spotted a clean but badly damaged Citroën DS about to go under the breaker’s cutters. ‘It’s weird,’ he said. ‘The inside’s been fitted out like a race car – loads of reinforcing struts and padding. But it’s taken a hell of a bang on one side.’ He read out the car registration, which Rocco wrote down for checking later. ‘What do you want me to do, Inspector?’

‘Stay there and don’t let anyone near it,’ he ordered. ‘If anyone tries, shoot them in the foot.’ He dropped the phone back on its cradle and handed the registration number to the uniformed officer. ‘Check that, will you? Urgent.’ He looked at Desmoulins with a tight grin. ‘All good things come to those who wait. Let’s go.’



The breaker’s yard, a polite misnomer for a scrap metal dump, was located down a single-track lane on the northern outskirts of Amiens. Surrounded by a corrugated tin fence two metres high, with rolled barbed wire pinned along the top, it looked damp, unwelcoming and sinister. Like a hundred such similar sites Rocco had been to during his investigations, it was not intended as a place of beauty. But he also knew that places like this often hid by design a wealth of detail from passing eyes.

He drove through the entrance, a sagging pair of wooden frames covered in corrugated steel and wire, and stopped in the middle of an open, muddy space with a tired-looking office cabin on one side looking out at an expanse of broken cars and car parts arranged in rows. The place was sour and depressing, and he felt instantly unclean. A dog was barking somewhere close by, the noise angry and menacing, and he checked that his MAB 38 was within easy reach. He’d seen the mess some scrapyard dogs could make of a man, and had no desire to find himself on this one’s menu.

The yard’s owner, Olivier Bellin, was an overweight, rat-faced individual clothed in a grubby vest and trousers and a surly manner. He stared aggressively at Rocco around a yellow cigarette end and lifted his unshaven chin in query. A sharp wind was whistling around the yard, but he seemed not to notice.

‘What do you want? And why’s this Nazi stopping me and my men going about our lawful work?’ He jerked an oily thumb at the patrol officer who was leaning against a DS parked at the front of the yard. Two men in filthy overalls and welder’s goggles were sitting on a pair of rotting car seats nearby, smoking. ‘You’ve no right doing this. I’m a respectable businessman.’

‘Yes, and next year I’ll be pope.’ Lucas had heard all about Bellin and his illicit dealings over the years on the way from the station. The man had a lengthy record, had served two prison sentences for assault and robbery, and was suspected of having ‘disappeared’ at least two cars involved in major bank jobs. All in all, not one of Amiens’ finest citizens.

‘Where did the DS come from?’ he asked. ‘And be careful who you’re calling names.’

Bellin shrugged, which made his chest wobble. ‘Search me. It had been left outside the gates. Happens all the time … people treat this place like a rubbish dump.’

Rocco looked around at the muddy yard with its piles of dead cars and other junk. ‘I wonder why?’ He fixed the man with a hard stare. ‘Don’t mess with me, Bellin, I’m not in the mood. I’m investigating a possible murder and I think this car was involved.’

‘So?’ Bellin spat the cigarette out. The soggy mess landed very close to one of Rocco’s English brogues. ‘Nothing to do with me. I don’t know anything about any murder.’

‘Well, the car is now in your hands. That lands it on your doorstep – literally. Do you know what conspiracy is?’

Bellin feigned a look of boredom. ‘No. Should I?’

‘It means an agreement between people to commit a criminal act. One of the most serious is in the murder of a third party. Even after the event.’ He waited while Bellin processed what he was hearing. It was a slow grind, rather like watching one of those tumbling-man toys in action. But understanding dawned slowly on the scrap dealer’s face.

‘So – how does that affect me?’

‘It means anyone involved,’ Rocco explained carefully, ‘anyone – no matter what their role – gets the same sentence as the person who drove the car.’ It wasn’t entirely correct because of the likelihood of extenuating circumstances, but he wasn’t about to tell Bellin. Let the grubby little toad sweat a bit.

‘Hey – no! Wait!’ Bellin appeared to wake up as the words finally dropped into place like coins in a slot machine. ‘That’s not right. I told your man, the car was outside when I got here. I don’t know who left it there. I can’t be held responsible for what happened before it came here, can I?’

‘You can,’ Desmoulins put in, ‘if you don’t explain why you’re about to cut up an expensive car like that. You’d make a nice sum even if you sold it to one of your grubby criminal potes to do up. Give it new paperwork and a bit of paint, and sooner or later some mug will buy it.’ He leant closer. ‘And don’t tell me that hasn’t crossed your devious little mind, because I know you better than that.’

Bellin said nothing, but his beady eyes were going runabout, Rocco noticed. Not that he would crumble too easily; men like him would only cave in if they were on the brink of arrest and saw no other way out.

‘I think Mr Bellin gets the message,’ he said. ‘We’ll let him think it over.’ He walked away and stopped alongside the Citroën.

The uniformed officer gave a nod of recognition. ‘I hope this is the one you’re looking for.’

Rocco studied the damage to the side of the car. It looked as if a giant fist had hit the car amidships, pushing in both front and rear passenger doors. Had it not been for a network of sturdy metal poles welded together and covered in foam padding to form a protective cage, he guessed the damage would have been more extensive. He tugged a splinter of oily wood from the gap between the doors and sniffed at it. It smelt faintly of tar.

A connection.

‘I think it just might be. But we’ll soon find out. Well spotted.’ He looked around at the oil-sodden ground they were standing on and nodded at Desmoulins, who was peering in the driver’s side. ‘We need to get this out of here. Can you get it picked up and taken to the station? We can get Rizzotti to have a proper look there.’

‘Sure.’ Desmoulins looked at the patrol officer. ‘Can I use your car radio?’

The two men walked away, leaving Rocco to consider the car and what secrets it might eventually give up. That the vehicle had been left here to quietly disappear, he had no doubt. The same happened in Paris and other cities on a regular basis. Cars used in criminal enterprises were routinely repainted, re-registered or underwent some other transformation, often permanent. And yards like this were nearly always involved. They had the equipment and willingness to do such work … and their unwelcoming appearance, aided by guard dogs, was usually enough to put off casual snoopers from paying too much attention to what they were doing.

He peered through the splintered glass remaining in the side windows. He could see nothing inside, neither normal travel rubbish nor personal effects, and if there was any kind of crime involved, such as the death of a vagrant, even accidentally, it was probable that it had already been cleaned out. But as he knew well, even the most careful cleaning sometimes failed to remove everything.

He rejoined Bellin, who was busy lighting another foullooking cigarette. The man had to take three tries before it caught, and he avoided looking Rocco in the eye.

‘Last opportunity,’ Rocco murmured. ‘See, I know you’re lying. But there’s no need for your men to hear. Tell me where the car came from … or who wants it to disappear. Phone number, name, location – any or all will do. Otherwise I’ll put a squad in here this afternoon and they’ll go through this rat hole centimetre by centimetre.’ He took his diary from his coat pocket. It was leather-bound and slim. ‘See this?’

Bellin nodded. ‘Yes. So?’

‘It’s the official log of every car stolen in northern France over the last eight months. Now, what are the odds of me finding one of the plates listed here among all that shit out there?’ He nodded at the piles of junk. ‘Or do you trust your men implicitly?’

Bellin stared at the diary, then his eyes flicked away. He nodded. ‘Okay. But I’m not admitting anything. This guy called me last week, said a car would be dropped off. It would probably be badly damaged, he said, and he’d pay good money for it to be scrapped. I didn’t argue, and why would I? The demand for scrap metal isn’t that good at the moment. I can barely keep those two men on as it is.’

‘My heart bleeds for you. Who was this benevolent person?’

‘No idea. On my mother’s life!’ He was looking intense and Rocco detected a note of desperation in his voice. Maybe he was telling the truth … or maybe he was more scared of the man who’d called him than he was of the police.

‘All right. Who dropped it off?’

‘I told you, it was—’

‘Suit yourself.’ Rocco began to turn away. ‘This yard is closed as of now. Nothing leaves here. Send your men home and give me the keys to your office.’

‘Wait!’ Bellin looked shocked and grabbed Rocco by the elbow, then let go with a cry of dismay when Rocco instinctively bunched his arm. ‘Sorry … I didn’t mean anything.’ His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. ‘But you’ve got to listen to me … being seen talking to you could get me in the middle of one of those piles.’ He nodded at the heaps of chopped-up car parts lying around the yard. Few of them were much bigger than a man’s torso.

Rocco waited, his interest kicking into overdrive. If Bellin was this scared, he’d like to meet the person who could inspire this level of dread.

‘You’d better hurry, then, hadn’t you? Then I can be out of your hair.’

Bellin hesitated, then caved. He said quietly, ‘All right. This mec – I didn’t ask his name – just turned up outside the gate. He said this was the car for cutting, as arranged. That’s all. Then he jumped into another car that was waiting and that was the last I saw of him. And before you ask, I didn’t take a note of the registration or see the other driver. It wasn’t worth my face to look.’

‘When was this?’

‘Two days ago.’

Rocco considered it for a moment. The time frame was right, at least. But was he telling the whole truth? So, a guy turns up at the yard and dumps a car. Where hadn’t he heard that story before? It was probably going on right now in every other city across France, no questions asked, in exchange for hard cash or favours. Some of those favours might include leaving the yard owner’s face in one piece, as Bellin was suggesting. He guessed he wasn’t going to get much more from this man. Even crooks had their limits when self-preservation was at stake.

‘Can you describe him? Young, old, dark, fair, bad breath … what?’

Bellin gave an elaborate shrug, undoubtedly more for the benefit of his two men than anything, a display of obduracy should anyone have cause to ask later. ‘Youngish, early thirties, medium height, dark hair, a bit of a tan. Didn’t notice anything else.’

‘Like a million other Frenchmen. That’s a big help.’

Bellin’s eyes narrowed, as if he’d suddenly seen a way out. He dropped his cigarette in the mud and stamped on it. ‘Actually, that’s the thing. Not like any Frenchman – not in that way, anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He spoke French okay … but not good. And he wasn’t dressed like anyone around here.’

‘Go on.’

‘I think he was a Rosbif. An Englishman.’