Death on the Pont Noir

Chapter THIRTY-SIX



The phone hauled Rocco out of a fractious sleep. He felt cold and stiff, his head a jumble of confused thoughts.

It was Michel Santer. ‘Lucas? Can you talk?’

‘Sure. Go ahead.’ He rolled over to check the time. It was late afternoon. Or early, depending on one’s line of work. If one had a line of work. The scene at the office seemed like a ghastly dream from which he hadn’t yet awoken.

‘You okay?’ Santer didn’t have to say anything; he’d heard the news of Rocco’s suspension. It would be all over the police network by now, talked over and rehashed over coffee breaks and passed along as shifts changed. Most wouldn’t believe it; cops being accused of taking bribes was commonplace and usually a derailing exercise, at worst a clumsy form of revenge by a resentful con or his colleagues. But some would take delight in hearing that an investigator had been taken down, even if the accusation hadn’t yet been proven.

‘I’m catching up on sleep. Other than that, and wanting to shoot someone, which I can’t do because they took my gun, I’m fine.’

‘Was this because of your trip to London?’

‘It didn’t help.’ He levered himself up and went through to the kitchen trailing the telephone cord after him. Clamping the receiver under one cheek, he put some water on to boil and scooped coffee grounds into a percolator.

‘I bet Delarue has something to do with this,’ Santer muttered, ‘directly or indirectly. He must be getting ambitious.’ Santer, like most officers in the capital, was well acquainted with Patrice Delarue’s activities over many years, and prayed for the day when the man could be brought down. ‘Is it true what they’re saying – there are photos?’

‘Yes. It was a set-up, but I should have known better – I walked right into it.’

‘It’s easy to do, everyone knows that. So how do we get you out of it?’

‘You don’t.’ The last thing Rocco wanted was any of his friends putting their careers on the line for him. This thing had to be played out, and until it was, he was effectively on his own. Anyone coming near would be tainted by the accusation against him, and he didn’t want that to happen. ‘Stay clear of me and don’t make waves. I’m not done yet, even if I have to go to London and ram Tasker’s teeth down his throat.’

Bones, he thought. He might be a weak link. Almost certainly English, by his clothes, since he doubted Tasker would find it easy working with a Frenchman on setting up incriminating photos of a cop being handed an envelope. He’d call Nialls later on. He might recognise the man’s name.

‘So what can we do?’

Rocco sat down at the table and rubbed his face. That was the question: what could they do? Faced with such clear and unequivocal evidence of an officer taking an envelope, and with Saint-Cloud working away in the background with his sly digs and vaguely worded throwaway lines, Rocco himself would have come to the same conclusions as Massin. Until proven otherwise.

There was only one thing to do.

‘We prove I’m right about the proposed attack,’ he said.

‘But you’re suspended. What can you do?’

‘I’m suspended, I’m not chained to the wall.’

Santer said, ‘Well, that sounds more like the old Rocco I used to know. Thank God for that. For a moment there I thought I was going to have to come down and kick your arse.’

‘Not yet, you won’t.’

‘Good. Actually, I’ve got some information that might cheer you up. It’s about the attack on the car in Guignes. You still want to hear it?’

‘More than ever.’ Rocco stood up and poured boiling water into the top of a percolator and snapped the lid shut. Even the smell was making him feel more awake.

‘The man I told you about, with the cousin in the office here?’

‘Yes?’

‘He came by a while ago, on his way to a raid on a suspected OAS cell. He said the body spirited away from the N19 scene wasn’t a body. The man was wounded but still breathing. Someone identified him and let the word out. His name’s Christophe Lamy. He’s a former captain in the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment. He left the regiment along with several others before they got pushed and charged with anti-government agitation over Algeria.’

A military officer with strong opinions and possible sympathy for the OAS. It wasn’t news, but it was hardly the kind of information the authorities would want broadcast. Disaffected and potentially violent individuals with no ties to the establishment were easily dismissed as malcontents. But former soldiers – especially former officers from elite regiments – were bad press for a government trying to push a line of propaganda based on national unity.

He sat upright, the clutches of sleep falling away.

Colonel François Saint-Cloud. He’d also been a member of the 1st REP. Was there a connection, other than that they liked to throw themselves out of perfectly safe airplanes for a living? He wasn’t sure. But it was too close to be ignored, too much of a coincidence to disregard – especially with his limited number of choices.

Santer hadn’t finished. ‘There’s more. I had a call from Caspar. His contact couldn’t get the name of the motorcycle escort who fought off the attack, but he knew the hospital where he was taken. It’s a specialist military unit near Versailles. Caspar got close and did some digging. He’s still trawling for information at the moment, but he asked me to let you know what he’s found so far.’

‘Go on.’ Rocco sipped the coffee. Strong enough to float a horse; he probably wouldn’t asleep for a week after this.

‘The escort’s name was Jean-Paul Leville. And guess what – he’s no normal escort.’

‘Don’t tell me – another specialist.’

‘Damn. How did you know?’

‘I didn’t. But it seemed unusual for a motorcycle cop to survive coming off his bike enough to fight back and disable two attackers. What is he?’

‘A former marine commando. Served with an elite unit in the Horn of Africa, trained men at Lorient, the commando training school, and even ran specialist courses for the Legion on escape and evasion techniques and close-quarter fighting. There are gaps in his résumé of several months at a time, but we can both guess what they were.’

‘Covert missions.’ It had to be. The alternative was prison. But men with prison records wouldn’t get anywhere near becoming a motorcycle cop, let alone serving as an official security guard. Leville was a government gunman.

‘Exactly. Falling off a bike at speed and getting up again would be pretty simple for a guy like him, don’t you think?’

‘Yes. So what’s he doing riding a bike for the official fleet?’

‘God knows. Certainly not for the excitement or the fresh air.’

There was only one reason Rocco could think of: someone had known the car was going to be hit and had brought in a specialist. If that were the case, the attackers couldn’t have known their plan was exposed, and would have been in ignorance about who they were up against. If they had known, as reckless as some of the extreme groups were, they would have thought twice about launching the attack.

Unless they had been told something completely different.

‘Where is this supersoldier now?’

‘Disappeared. Caspar said the hospital’s now under a shutdown order. He got all this from a contact who got a peek at Leville’s medical record.’

‘They had it to hand just like that?’

‘Seems so. He had light abrasions and a wrenched shoulder. Pretty standard stuff for a para, I’d have thought. They discharged him at his own request and he was gone.’ He sighed loudly. ‘Listen, Lucas, this isn’t over; I’ll call you back the moment I get anything. I’ve got to go.’

‘Thanks, Michel.’ Rocco put the phone down.

The whole thing smelt wrong. Medical records didn’t simply turn up like that at the drop of a hat, not even with improved filing systems. But they might if the person they applied to was expected to suffer injuries and need urgent treatment. The president, for example, was one; soldiers on dangerous missions were others; and specialists on high-risk covert assignments in-country.

The attackers had been set up to fail.

As he thought it over, his eyes settled on a crumpled slip of paper on the table. It was the note Desmoulins had handed him in the station. He hadn’t even looked at it yet, too weighed down with what had taken place back at the station. He picked it up and read it. Then read it again. It was in Rizzotti’s handwriting, and helpfully concise.

Tell Lucas the DS battery carried a supply sticker from Ets. Lilas Moteurs – a garage in St Gervais.



Rocco felt as if an electric charge had gone through him. St Gervais. If it was the same St Gervais he knew, it was an eastern suburb of Paris and within spitting distance of Delarue’s stamping grounds around the 10th and 19th arrondissements.

He grabbed the phone and dialled Santer. When his friend answered, he read him the contents of the note. It was a remote possibility, but what were the chances of a car battery from a garage in eastern Paris ending up out here? Was that why the people behind the killing of Bellin had been so keen on seeing the car destroyed – to eliminate any possibility of a link back to them?

‘Anything’s possible,’ Santer said reasonably. ‘But a damn sight better than anything else we’ve got. I’ll get Caspar to go in there. That way we don’t have any jurisdictional problems. In the meantime I’ll get someone looking into who owns this place. I’ll call you as soon as I have anything.’