Death on the Pont Noir

Chapter TWENTY-SIX



Rocco dropped the phone and called across to Berthier. ‘Where’s Desmoulins?’

‘Out on a job. He’s due back at any time. Can I help?’ He looked excited at the prospect of going out on a call, but Rocco had to disappoint him. This could be a fuss about nothing, Bellin’s imagination overcoming rational thought. The dog might simply have run off, as he would have in its place. But if it hadn’t, he couldn’t place a man on desk work in the line of fire.

‘Get him to follow me to Bellin’s yard.’

He drove as fast as traffic would allow, wondering if this was a panic over nothing, or whether this might finally produce results. A name was all he needed, then he could make some progress. Soon he was bumping down the lane to Bellin’s yard, pulling to a stop clear of the entrance.

He took out his gun and slipped through the gates as he’d done before. The light was fading, throwing the junkyard into something resembling a horror movie scene of jagged edges and shadows. There were no lights on in the cabin and no sign of Bellin. He strode across the yard, slipping on the mud, and peered through the doorway. Empty.

The telephone handset was lying on the floor.

Rocco turned and looked back at the telegraph pole outside the gates, which had once fed the phone line in a loop overhead to the cabin.

The wire had been cut.

He debated the wisdom of going further into the yard alone in search of Bellin. If anything happened, he’d be an easy target. On the other hand, Bellin had asked for his help.

He walked along the first open row, sticking close to the line of junked vehicle bodies, checking every few steps as he came across a gap. He stopped, listening for sounds of voices or movement, but there was nothing. The breeze was just sufficient through the metal piles to throw out a sound all of its own, deadening any other noises and creating a background hum which served to confuse the ears.

Then he heard a clink of metal. It had come from the area where he’d last seen Bellin, sitting morosely at the back of the yard, smoking endless cigarettes. He hoped the scrap dealer was resisting the urge this time; if anyone was here looking for him, all he had to do was follow the smoke.

Rocco loosened his coat buttons and shrugged his shoulders, eyeing the ground in front of him. This was best done at speed, staying on the move. Anyone tracking movements around the yard would be as hampered as he was by the poor light and the shadows, and if they meant business, they would have little chance to pin him down.

He jogged down the row and turned right, holding the gun two-handed, the safety off. The light here was even worse, with giant shapes looming up on either side to create confusion. A truck body lay on its axles, the windows and engine gone and the rear end missing. A battered Simca stood on its nose against a pile of other car bodies, like a child’s parking lot at bedtime. Other vehicles were unrecognisable, merging one with another in the gloom.

He rounded the corner where he had last seen Bellin. He was sitting exactly where he had been before.

‘Where the f*ck have you been?’ the man hissed. He jumped up and threw a glance past Rocco’s shoulder. He looked terrified and was shaking visibly, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his filthy overalls to hide his nerves.

Rocco urged him back into the recess and made him sit down by the simple process of pushing him by his shoulders until his legs gave way. In Bellin’s present state, anyone out there would hear him and be able to pinpoint his location in seconds.

‘Tell me what happened,’ he said softly. ‘Keep your voice down and breathe, and we might get you out of here in one piece.’ He turned so that he could keep an eye on the open area towards the back fence. If anyone came looking for Bellin, he wouldn’t get much warning, but at least his own presence here might put them off long enough to take evasive action. To emphasise his intentions, he made a play of checking his weapon, which caused Bellin’s eyes to widen.

‘I got a call,’ Bellin muttered, rubbing his face with podgy hands. ‘A mate in Paris said I was in deep shit.’ His breathing came fast and shallow and his eyes were darting everywhere. ‘Told me to run or I’d regret it.’

‘Do you trust him?’

‘Yes. Well, pretty much. What’s that got—’

Rocco clamped a hand over Bellin’s mouth as his voice began to rise, cutting him off. ‘I’ve known some people all my life,’ he explained. ‘But I wouldn’t trust them further than I could throw one of these cars.’

Bellin struggled free of Rocco’s grip and said softly, ‘All right. Maybe he’s got an angle – I don’t know. But it makes no difference now, does it? Where the hell would I go?’

As he spoke, he heard a dull metallic clank. It had come from beyond the piles of junk at the front of the yard. Someone had pushed against one of the gates, disturbing the corrugated sheeting.

Bellin reacted as if he’d been scalded. He jumped up and stared around as if demons were about to emerge from the scrap metal.

Rocco grabbed his shoulder. ‘Are you expecting company?’

‘It’s them.’ Bellin’s voice was soft but high-pitched, childlike in fear. His face crumpled and he looked at Rocco as if he were about to burst into tears. ‘You’ve got to stop them.’

‘I can’t,’ said Rocco, ‘if you don’t tell me who they are.’ He checked the gun again, a last-second-before-action subconscious habit. Full magazine. Then he looked around at their position. He’d been in worse spots when attacked before, but he couldn’t recall when. Indochina without a doubt. Only the ones coming here were unlikely to be communist Viet Minh. But neither was he accompanied by trained and battle-hardened troops. He looked at the fence in front of them. It was nearly three metres high and clad in bashed metal. No handholds and no pile of scrap close enough to get a leg-up. ‘How strong is that?’

‘Forget it.’ Bellin bit the words off, resentful and angry. ‘I built it so the locals wouldn’t steal everything I had. I can’t climb that.’

‘You should have thought of that, shouldn’t you? So tell me, who is it likely to be, out there?’

Bellin swallowed and ducked his head. ‘Them. The ones who arranged the car thing. They’ve come to settle up.’

‘They must have a name?’

Another noise, and Rocco turned towards the front. As he did so, a small shape soared high into the air. It seemed to hang for a moment against the dark grey sky, then fell and bounced with a series of tinny clatters as it penetrated the scrap piles.

Someone had thrown a hubcap.

Another one flew into the air, this one on a lower trajectory. It hit the jib of a crane and dropped harmlessly to the ground. Then another and another, each one aimed at different corners of the yard.

Whoever was throwing them, Rocco decided coolly, had a good arm.

A smaller shape came looping towards them. It tumbled through the air and landed with a crash on a door panel and bounced away, shedding splintered glass like broken fragments of silver.

Scare tactics, Rocco recognised. He glanced at Bellin, who was now a quivering wreck, eyes wide open and waiting for the next one. The tactics were working.

‘Names,’ said Rocco. ‘Quickly.’

‘I can’t.’ Bellin was trembling. A patch of damp had appeared on the front of his trousers and was spreading fast down his legs, but he seemed not to have noticed. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘We have to get out of here.’ Rocco figured Bellin must have a way of slipping away if an angry ‘customer’ came calling. To men like Bellin, in his line of business, a back door was as instinctive as breathing. ‘Where’s your escape route?’

‘Blocked.’ Bellin waved a hand towards the left-hand end of the yard. ‘They left a warning. The dog. Gutted it and left it for me to find.’

‘Oscar?’

A quick nod. ‘Yes.’

Rocco breathed out. Now he tells me, he thought savagely. And whoever was able to handle a big guard dog had to know what they were doing. Somehow he couldn’t picture Bellin with a poodle.

With perfect and grisly timing, another object came soaring over the nearest pile of junk. It bounced, this time with a dull thud, off the car wing Rocco had been sitting on moments earlier. Ricocheting off a door panel, it rolled to stop at Bellin’s feet.

It was a dog’s head. Not a poodle’s, either. Oscar had been a big, ugly Rottweiler.

It was too much for Bellin. The fat man turned with a yelp and ran, surprisingly fast on his feet, out of the protective haven they were in, careering off a car body and nearly falling, but managing to stay upright, his trouser legs flapping around his ankles like flags.

‘Wait!’ Rocco hissed. But it was too late. Bellin was gone.

Rocco chased after him. It was a lunatic thing to do, he decided, but there was no other way to handle it. At least he might be able to catch whoever was out there. If not, they were both dead.

He found himself in another gap between two rows of scrap. There was plenty of cover if he was quick enough, but that counted just as much for the other man as well. He hunkered down for a moment, breathing easily and listening for sounds of Bellin’s progress. Trying to tune in to the atmosphere. He couldn’t hear anything, so he stood up and continued, carefully stepping away from shapes of metal rubbish lying in his path.

As he came level with a row between piles of family saloons heaped one on the other, he saw Bellin disappearing into a virtual tunnel to one side, his fat body burrowing like a rat. He followed him in and saw a flash of movement up ahead. The idiot was digging himself deeper into the metal mountain, no doubt hoping the man or men after him would give up. Or that Rocco would act as a handy decoy.

The thought was accompanied by a car window dissolving right next to him. Rocco dived into the open body of a truck cab, bouncing off the bench seat and disturbing a mound of broken windscreen glass and scraps of metal. He waited, lying on his back, the gun pointing at the source of the shot.

Then he realised: there had been no sound. The gunman was using a silenced weapon.

He slid on through the cab and out the other side, dropping to the ground and waiting.

Whoever was out there, he thought, was being extra careful not to make any sound. Whoever was out there had done this before.

He breathed out, straining his ears. It was just another kind of jungle, he told himself. Only not soft and hot and fragrant like the last one he’d been in. This one was hard and unforgiving, cold and full of sharp edges. But still a jungle.

Then a dense shadow rose from a patch of gloom about ten metres away. A man, squat and heavy across the shoulders, wearing a short jacket. Something glinted in his hand. A gun with a long barrel. He was looking along the row, not moving.

Rocco held his breath. One sudden movement and the gunman would see him. But the man seemed fixated on a spot further down. When Rocco looked, turning his head with infinite care, he saw a familiar shape coming along the row towards him.

It was Bellin, and he was heading straight towards the gunman.

The gunman moved, sinking to his heels, waiting. He evidently thought there was a risk that Bellin was armed, and was going to take him as he stepped by. The movement put him behind the cover of a car bonnet, where the chances of hitting him from Rocco’s position were virtually nil.

Rocco reached behind him and felt around until his hand fastened on a hubcap lying on the ground. Time to play the man at his own game. He pulled his arm back and flicked the hubcap into the sky. It sailed in a smooth trajectory, catching the air for a moment before starting to fall. The gunman must have caught the sound of Rocco’s movement or seen a flash from the hubcap out of the corner of his eye. He spun round, pointing first at Rocco’s position, then spinning again as the hubcap landed with a deep boom on a car roof just behind him. Two flashes of vivid light lit him up as he fired, each shot no more than a ragged cough.

Bellin, now just a few paces away, stopped and turned with a yelp, then ran. The gunman, moving smoothly, fired twice more after him, then jumped to his feet.

Rocco whistled. The gunman spun towards him with a grunt of surprise, and almost without aiming, fired twice. The first shot fanned Rocco’s face, the second went harmlessly away to one side.

Rocco fired twice, and saw his second shot hit the man in his free arm. He staggered and grunted, then recovered, turned and ran. Seconds later Rocco thought he heard a grunt, followed by a noise like a slap. Then silence.

Then a car started up outside the yard and moved away up the track at speed.

It left behind a heavy silence.

Rocco ran towards the gates. As he rounded the final corner, a flicker of movement came from inside a wrecked truck cab. He swung towards it, levelling his gun, his finger tightening on the trigger. Then he breathed out and relaxed: a strip of fabric caught on the breeze. False alarm.

When he got to the cabin, he stopped.

Bellin was lying face down near the door. His blood was soaking the ground, adding to the oil and other fluids in the soil.

Rocco turned him over onto his back.

He’d been shot in the chest and head, running towards the cabin.

Rocco let out a long breath. A second gunman had been waiting.



By the time Rocco had found a phone at a nearby shop and called for backup and for Rizzotti to come out, he was feeling sticky with humidity and depressed by Bellin’s senseless death. Whatever the man had done, he hadn’t deserved that. But then, gangland-style killings rarely had much to do with sense and only sometimes carried a hint of the rational.

He met Desmoulins at the gates and got him to seal off and make a detailed search of the cabin. He didn’t expect to find anything, but maybe Bellin had been more cautious than he’d given him credit for.

He returned to the station, where he filled out a report. It made grim reading, not least because he felt he’d failed, as the only policeman on the spot and one who’d not made an arrest. He made a notation about having wounded the gunman, suggesting that hospitals in the Paris region be made aware that they report to Amiens any patient being treated for a gunshot wound to the arm.