Death on the Pont Noir

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

If there had ever been a street name to the narrow run of ruined buildings on the outskirts of Creteil, in south-east Paris, it no longer existed save on old maps of the commune or in the memories of its more senior inhabitants.

Now, and in the dark, it was a place visited by bored kids looking for trouble, the occasional drunk seeking a place to doss down, and the various creatures of the night which had made it their own.

Halfway down the street stood the gutted remains of a butcher’s shop. The wooden sign was still there, hanging drunkenly by a single chain, but warped and rendered illegible by the elements. Only its telltale shape of a horse’s head remained. The building, though, like its neighbours, was a shell of crumbling brick and rotten plasterand-lath construction, waiting for progress and the promised redevelopment of the area to erase its existence and replace it with another.

A dark Renault van with battered panelwork and a broken side window was the only vehicle in sight, left skewed at an angle to the kerb in front of the shop. A ripped plastic bench seat was leaning against the driver’s door, and a worn car tyre sat on the bonnet, indications to anyone passing that the vehicle had been abandoned to its fate.

A flicker of movement showed a small dog trotting along the pavement, following a zigzag course from scent to scent. It paused to cock its leg against a rear wheel, then sniffed along the van’s side before moving on into the night. A cat across the street watched it go, the fur on its back lifting momentarily, then settling as the dog vanished into the shadows.

Lights flickered in the darkness at the top of the street, where it connected with that part of the town which still had life and movement. The flicker grew to a glow, and a car’s engine puttered steadily over the silence as a vehicle nosed into the street, the headlights pushing back the dark and revealing the walls and empty windows of a dead zone. The light rushed on, washing quickly over the abandoned Renault and down to the far end, where a row of small garages with corrugated metal roofs stood like orphans, their walls and dilapidated wooden doors covered in graffiti, a tangled mess of emblems, slogans and angry cries for attention which would only ever come in the form of a developer’s bulldozer.

The car — a dark Panhard with a crumpled rear wing — slowed alongside the Renault, its occupants checking it out as the dog had before them. The car’s tyres crunched through a mess of rubble, a reminder that few vehicles ever passed this way. It was enough to satisfy them; they drove on and did a U-turn at the end and stopped facing back the way they had come.

The headlights were extinguished, returning the street to darkness.

Five minutes ticked by. The engine remained on, a muffled rumble in the dark. Other than that, no lights, no sound.

Finally, the front passenger door opened and a man stepped out. He stood with his head back, like an animal probing the night air. He was tall and athletic, and moved with confidence. Moments later he was followed by two other men, one the driver, who left the engine running and the door open. His companion stepped to one side to keep watch.

The lead man moved to one of the garages and produced a key, opening a large padlock holding the double doors together. The two men disappeared inside the garage, lighting the dark with the yellow glow of a flashlight.

‘Coucou, Baptiste. Time to go tickle a trout.’ A hoarse whisper echoed softly in the dark of the abandoned Renault van, and a foot tapped on the floor. Moments later, a figure rolled out from between the wheels and stood upright on the pavement. Turning, he padded silently along the street, hugging the ratty buildings, unobserved by the watcher at the garage who was taking an artistic leak over a pile of bricks to one side.

Another figure appeared on the far side of the street, surprising even the cat, which vanished without a sound. This one paralleled the first, treading carefully over a route scouted earlier that evening to note any obstacles to be avoided later. Both men were dressed in dark clothing and soft boots, and wore balaclavas pulled down over their faces.

Both were armed with handguns.

The man on watch shook himself and turned, mouth dropping open as he picked up a sound or a sense of something in the atmosphere. But he was too late. The first figure reached out a pair of brawny arms and plucked him off his feet, while the second stepped in and rammed an elbow into his stomach, stifling the warning he was about to utter. Only a soft whoosh of expelled air escaped.

But it was enough.

‘Franco?’ The light inside the garage moved and a voice called out softly, ‘You all right?’

‘Yeah. Hurry up!’ One of the newcomers hissed, and clamped a large hand over the prisoner’s mouth, staring into his eyes with a gaze cold enough to freeze the blood.

Then two more men appeared out of the night, taking up positions on either side of the garage entrance. Both carried pistols. A brief exchange of signals, and the first two men hustled silently away back down the street, carrying their prisoner with them.

Seconds passed, then a shrill whistle pierced the night. Suddenly the abandoned Renault burst into life. It charged away from the kerb, shrugging off the bench seat from the door and the tyre on the bonnet, and roared towards the garages, the high-performance whine of the engine giving lie to the poor state of the bodywork. The headlights flared on with shocking intensity, illuminating the garage and the two men who were emerging from the interior.

They froze, their faces registering shock at this sudden eruption of activity and the sight of men with guns standing almost alongside them. With a scream of rubber, the van stopped facing the garage opening. Before they could gather themselves, they heard the rattle of weapons being cocked and a bellowed order from the Renault.

‘Stand still or we shoot!’

The men obeyed. Lit up like the fourteenth of July and facing automatic weapons, they were too stunned to do anything but stare dumbly around them at a scene which, moments earlier, had been theirs and theirs alone.

‘Alors. What have we got here, then?’ A slim figure in dark clothing stepped into view. Like the other men, his face was covered, but his eyes glittered with grim humour. ‘Doing a spot of tidying up, were we? Trying to make the place look nice?’ He peered into the garage, where a workbench against one wall held an array of weapons, the blued steel and wooden stocks clearly visible in the glow from the Renault’s lights. ‘Oh dear. Now that’s a prison sentence, all ready and waiting.’ He turned and looked at the lead man. ‘You three must have really upset someone, you know that? Shame. You can’t rely on anyone to keep a secret these days, can you?’ He signalled for his men to check them for weapons and cuff them. ‘We don’t want any nasty surprises, do we?’

‘What did you mean just then?’ The lead man seemed perfectly calm, as if accepting that being caught was part of the risk, and therefore to be expected. He spoke well, his voice carrying a natural tone of authority. He turned his back and clasped his hands behind him. ‘We upset someone.’

‘You were sold out, my friend,’ replied the slim figure, who seemed to enjoy turning the screw. ‘Like chickens at a Saturday market. Never mind; you’ll have plenty of time to figure out who by, I’m sure.’