Death on the Pont Noir

Chapter FIFTY-FIVE



‘In the name of God, he’s got to be down there somewhere. And where’s Alix?’

Rocco said nothing. Claude was talking to himself and breathing heavily. But it wasn’t from the climb; his concerns for his daughter, Alix, were growing by the minute, and so far they had seen no sign of her or Tasker.

After hearing the shot earlier, Rocco, Claude, Desmoulins and Godard’s men had spread out through the village, trying to determine where it had come from. But sound behaved oddly among the cluster of houses, and nobody could venture a definite origin without some element of doubt. It was enough for Rocco to order everyone to stay back. The last thing he wanted was to give Tasker any easy targets.

Working on the basis that Tasker knew where he lived, Rocco and Claude had made their way up to the grotto to St Paul, which stood on a hill overlooking the village. A man-made cave attended by a statue of the Virgin Mary and three angels, the grotto was rarely used now but gave an ideal vantage point of the area around Rocco’s house.

If Tasker had made his way down the lane, there were few places of concealment and it should be easy enough to spot him from here.

But so far there was nothing. Nothing, that is, Rocco realised with a feeling of dread, other than the body of a man lying in the middle of the lane. Dressed in workman’s blues and a heavy canvas trench coat, he was fifty metres away from Rocco’s house. A bicycle lay nearby, one wheel spinning slowly. He must have been riding down the lane and had been unlucky enough to bump into Tasker. That had been the origin of the gunshot.

Rocco scanned the body through a pair of binoculars. There was no way of telling from here whether he was alive or dead. What he actually wanted to do was charge down there with the Walther in his hand and make Tasker break cover. But apart from the danger to Alix and probably Mme Denis, that would be a short form of suicide. Instead, he clamped down on his impatience and worked on figuring out how to winkle the Englishman from wherever he was hiding.

He saw movement. At first he thought it was a trick of the light caused by the haze of smoke from chimney fires drifting across the village. But it was the man in the lane stirring. He looked around, then rolled quickly away to the cover of a farm building, where he sat shaking his head.

‘It’s old Antoine,’ said Claude, seeing the man’s face. ‘He lives in Danvillers. He comes here once a week for supplies.’

‘It’s his lucky day, then,’ Rocco observed.

‘Really? How do you make that out?’

‘Because he’s still alive.’

The old man was studying his canvas coat with obvious consternation. The front looked torn, but the heavy fabric must have resisted the worst of Tasker’s gunshot. Rocco glanced towards the village square, where his Traction stood across the road, blocking any exit. Godard’s men were visible, ferrying people out of the way, gradually drawing them out of their houses to reduce the chances of Tasker latching onto potential hostages.

‘Lucas – there!’ Claude grabbed his shoulder and pointed. There was movement at the rear of Rocco’s house. Two figures appeared, one slight, the other tall and bulky, imposing, even at this distance.

It was Tasker. And Alix. The Englishman towered over her with one big hand clamped on her shoulder.

Then he brought his other hand into view, and Rocco’s gut went cold. In his free hand he was holding the stubby shape of a sawn-off shotgun or lupara as it was known among Sicilian gangsters. It was a frightening weapon up close and indiscriminate in the wide spread of the shot from its barrels. And he was now holding the gun pointed at Alix’s head.

‘Putain!’ Claude swore, and made to stand up. But Rocco reached out and held him down. A frontal assault was impossible. Tasker had the upper hand. For now.

Tasker looked up the slope, his eyes seeming to drill right into Rocco’s as if he knew the effect the gun was having on him. He shouted something, the sound carrying up the hill, but not clear enough to distinguish the words.

But Rocco didn’t need to hear them to know what the man was after. Tasker wanted him down there. Nothing else mattered. He’d been cut loose by his bosses and his twisted vision of what had happened saw only one ending: revenge. And that revenge was centred solely on Rocco.



He debated the wisdom of going down empty-handed. Whatever course he took, the chances were that Alix was in the greater danger – especially if Claude couldn’t get close enough. If he could appear powerless, however, while having even a slight edge available to him, he might just get away with it.

‘Give me your knife.’

Claude reached back and took out a bone-handled clasp knife he used for everything from skinning rabbits to peeling an apple, and passed it across.

Rocco quickly stripped out one of his shoelaces and cut it in two. He tied the end of one half through the trigger guard of the Walther, and looped the other end around his middle finger. Then he fed the gun down the right-hand sleeve of his coat. It was a close fit, but with enough play to move quite freely. He used the other half of the lace to secure his shoe, then stood up and brushed the layer of damp from the front of his coat.

Claude was staring up at him and hissed. ‘What the hell are you doing? This isn’t the OK Corral!’

‘I know. But I don’t see that we have much choice. He’s right on the edge. If I don’t go down there, he’ll kill Alix.’ He flicked a glance towards the square where Godard and his men were hustling people away. They seemed unaware of Tasker’s appearance and there was no way Rocco could get word to Godard’s sniper without warning the gunman. He would have to do this himself with Claude as a diversion. ‘Can you follow me down and cover me? You’ll have to get close.’

Claude nodded. ‘You won’t even hear me coming.’ He patted the stock of his shotgun. ‘Just give me one chance, that’s all I need.’

Rocco nodded and stepped over the edge of the overlook, and began skidding down the slope so that Tasker could see him coming all the way. It was steep and uneven, with few handholds. If he fell, he wouldn’t stop rolling until he hit the track below, which would be of no use to Alix. That would still put him above Tasker, with another hundred metres to go, but still too far away to do anything useful.

As he reached the track leading down to the square, Tasker’s voice drifted up to him.

‘Stick your hands out and show me they’re empty, Rocco, or I’ll shoot the bitch!’

Rocco did as he was told. As he started across the track, he looked towards the square and caught a glimpse of Godard standing in the open. The sous-brigadier glanced his way and did a double take. But seeing Rocco’s hands out, he caught on immediately that something was wrong. Rocco pretended to lose his balance momentarily and made a flattening gesture with his left hand, hoping Godard got the message to keep back. Having a bunch of gardes mobiles charging down the lane to the house would be disastrous.

He reached the other side of the track and checked for a way down that would bring him out onto the lane across from the house. The slope was less steep here, and littered with trees and bushes. But the absence of foliage meant Tasker would be able to see him coming all the way. If he tried to drop out of sight even for a second, he figured the Englishman was mad enough to take it out on Alix. Yet coming within gunshot range – even the shorter range of the sawn-off weapon – would be crazy and wouldn’t help her at all.

He just hoped Claude was close by. If an opportunity presented itself, it would be brief, then gone.

As he walked down the slope, his senses seemed to come alive with greater clarity. The crunch of still-frozen grass stems beneath his shoes; the cold reaching through to the soles of his feet; rabbit droppings littered everywhere like sultanas sprinkled on icing sugar; the smell of a wood fire from Mme Denis’ chimney and the sharper tang of cows in the farm building along the lane, with its steaming manure heap in the middle of the yard picked over by chickens. A cockerel crowed, blissfully unmindful of the drama unfolding out here, and Rocco tried to recall if this was how suddenly acute the various sounds and smells had become each time he’d faced danger and death in the jungles of Indochina.

Right now all he could remember from then was the sticky feel of camouflage paint on his face, the reek of unwashed clothing and the absolute stunning silence all around.

He brushed those thoughts aside. He had to focus on the here and now. Nothing else mattered.