Death on the Pont Noir

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

‘Lucas?’ It was late in the afternoon when Desmoulins stuck his head round the door and got Rocco’s attention. ‘Those crash-damaged vehicles you were asking about?’

Rocco blinked, his thoughts still on Saint-Cloud’s briefing and his final words. He wasn’t in the habit of telling Massin everything he was doing day to day because it wasn’t necessary. But he didn’t like being told by an outsider to hold back information about his movements; it went against the grain of all he’d been taught.

‘What about them?’ He’d forgotten about the Englishmen, and had almost pushed the crash investigation to the back of his mind. If Saint-Cloud wanted his help on security checks for de Gaulle, he would have to hand over some of his caseload for others to handle. Still, his curiosity in unexplained events never entirely vanished, no matter what other priorities came up.

‘Nothing’s shown up in any local garages, but a Renault truck has been found torched in a quarry near Picquigny. There are remnants of camouflage canvas and green wood on the scene, so it could be the one you’re looking for. The locals thought the smoke was a farmer burning dead wood, so they didn’t bother checking it out earlier. They only just got round to calling it in when they realised what it was.’

Picquigny. About ten kilometres to the west of Amiens. Rocco stood up. He needed a break and some fresh air. ‘Better take a look, then. Get Rizzotti, will you? And tell him to bring his camera. Let’s go see what we can find.’ He wasn’t expecting much, but it was an outstanding matter to be checked out, and it might serve to clear his mind a little.

By the time they arrived, the remains of the truck were cold, with only a thin veil of smoke hanging in the air like a ghost. The carcass had settled onto the axles, and the tyres had burnt down to the rims. The throat-catching aroma of burnt metal and rubber was overlaid with the harsher tang of petrol fumes.

Rocco recognised the model by its stubby size and shape. A Renault Goelette 4x4, a small, brutishly effective workhorse, often used as a military ambulance among other functions. There were a few about in private hands, sold off by the military and used in all manner of capacities. He stood back from the scene while Dr Rizzotti took an initial look around, but could see nothing about the location to tell him why the truck had been torched here. It was parked off the road in an old chalk quarry, just out of sight of passing vehicles, but he could think of lots of other places where it would have probably remained unseen for longer. But why set fire to it? It was screaming to be noticed by someone sooner or later, no matter how uninquisitive the locals might be. Perhaps it had become a liability and the men driving it had been left with no choice but to dump it and leave.

‘You think I can tell anything from this?’ Dr Rizzotti murmured, gesturing at the remains. ‘I’m a doctor, not a mechanic.’

‘I’m not asking for an annual service on it,’ Rocco replied. ‘I need your scientific eye, that’s all.’ He had initially found Bernard Rizzotti defensive and overcautious in his opinions, but over the ensuing months they had formed a good working relationship. The doctor had found the investigative side of his work rewarding, and responded well to Rocco including him in the procedure whenever possible.

Rizzotti grunted and smiled an acknowledgement. ‘Very well. Let me see. As you can see from the remains, the fire was clearly fierce enough to scorch the surrounding vegetation and blacken the chalk face of the diggings. But there is not enough soft material in a truck cab like this to cause that level of heat, so I think perhaps the person who set the fire used petrol to help it along.’ He shrugged. ‘That would suggest they wanted to obliterate as much as possible of the vehicle and leave nothing for us — you — to work with.’

The fire had certainly done that, eating away at anything consumable on the truck and leaving a shell of thin metal for the cab and hood, and the bare metal structure of the rear bed with the wooden floor and sides almost completely gone.

Desmoulins found a stick and began teasing open the driver’s door and poking around inside, while Rocco went round to the front of the cab, where Rizzotti was squatting before a pile of ash on the ground.

‘Interesting,’ Rizzotti muttered. Under the remains of the vehicle’s front wing, he had found a thick section of wood that had not burnt all the way through. The end of the wood showed traces of saw marks and a sticky coating. Rocco bent to touch it. Was it tar… or black paint?

Rizzotti supplied the answer. ‘It looks like a railway sleeper. I bought a couple recently from the rail depot, for my garden. Extremely heavy and durable.’ He prodded the end with his pen. ‘See? Weathered by age and preservative. The flames ran out of heat before they could consume the wood completely.’ He dug gingerly in the pile of ash and lifted something from the powdery remains. It was curved and uniform, the thickness of a little finger, and heavy, about a metre in length.

‘Steel cable,’ said Rocco. He recognised the spiral shape of the burnt metal. He’d seen plenty in burnt-out trucks in Indochina. The sight triggered flashes of memory he didn’t wish to pursue. He shook his head and focused hard on what he was seeing.

Rizzotti pursed his lips, anticipating Rocco’s question. ‘The sleeper could have been lashed to the front of the truck to act as a counterweight,’ he suggested. ‘Maybe the truck had a small crane or winch fitted by a previous owner.’ He gestured towards the rear of the vehicle. ‘It’s definitely not there now, though.’

Rocco recalled what Simeon had told them. The truck had rammed the car, coming out of the track at speed. That being the case, a large lump of wood on the front would have acted as an ideal battering ram and added extra weight to the collision.

Desmoulins came round to join them. ‘Nothing useful in the cab,’ he said. ‘Apart from this.’ He opened his hand to reveal a thin circular metal disc. Although burnt black, it had clearly withstood the worst of the heat and showed a portrait on one side, and a date.

‘It’s an English penny.’ Rocco took it from him and turned it over. Sure enough, the figure of Britannia showed on one side, with the royal profile just visible on the opposite face.

‘War relic?’ suggested Desmoulins. It wasn’t uncommon to find English coins in the fields around here, lost during both wars as soldiers passed through on their way to and from the front… or back towards Dunkirk in May and June 1940.

‘Not unless the war happened within the last two years and nobody told us,’ replied Rocco. He held it up for them to see.

The coin was dated 1961.

Ten minutes later, Rizzotti stood up from where he had been examining the rear of the truck. ‘Lucas.’ He looked shocked, and was pointing at the ground between the truck’s rear wheels.

Rocco joined him. All he could see was more ash, some remnants of oil, and a few remnants of unburnt wood beneath the scorched heavy metal of the truck’s axle assembly.

Then Rizzotti used a stick to move the ash, gently flicking it to one side. It revealed a grey-white object, stick-like but clearly not wooden.

Rocco felt his gut tighten. He’d seen this kind of thing before. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

Rizzotti nodded. ‘A thigh bone. At a guess, male, not young, and quite long.’ He poked around a little more and uncovered more bones and, to one side, a fragment of cloth which had somehow escaped the worst of the flames. Attached to it was a single metal coat button. ‘The fire in the truck bed must have been fierce,’ Rizzotti continued. ‘They were probably carrying a fuel can or some liquid which acted as an accelerant.’

‘Or lots of dry wood.’ Rocco stepped round the ruined truck to where a tangle of branches lay in a heap, the sides scorched and blackened, but not burnt through. He squatted and looked closer at the ground beneath the truck. ‘Would the truck bed produce this much ash?’ From what he could recall, Renault trucks weren’t that big, built more for utilitarian use, not style or comfort.

‘Possibly not.’ Rizzotti had walked back to the car to get his camera, and was setting it up to take pictures. He studied the branches, then looked around at the sides of the quarry walls. The quarry had long been abandoned, allowing a thick spread of bushes and trees to proliferate. Some older trunks showed evidence of having been cut some time ago, no doubt for fence posts, while others had fallen down from the quarry rim of their own accord, no doubt due to wind damage, and lay rotting on the quarry floor. ‘I see what you mean,’ he concluded. ‘This is brushwood and dry tinder.’ He pointed at the branches Rocco had noticed. ‘It looks like they piled them under and on top of the bed of the truck — perhaps covering this poor unfortunate — then set fire to it. It would have acted like a Viking funeral pyre.’ He grimaced and began clicking away with the camera. Then he paused and looked at Rocco, who hadn’t answered. ‘You okay?’

But Rocco was barely listening. He was staring at the button retrieved from the ashes and reflecting on how often these investigations hinged on chance discoveries. If he hadn’t gone to see Father Maurice, he wouldn’t have known anything more about the button he’d found on the side of the road, or that it had come from a tramp’s jacket. Yet now its twin was staring up at him.

A child’s birthday coat button, clearly embossed with the number 5.