Death on the Pont Noir

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Rocco came out of a bustling Victoria station and threaded his way through the streets to the River Thames. It was late afternoon and already dark, the air cold and dry. There had been delays on the line from Dover, but he’d relished the chance to sit and contemplate the emptiness of the opposite seat, or the faux cheerfulness of a poster advertising the delights of a coastal resort called Margate. Such moments were rare enough.

Exchanging the gritty tang of locomotive smoke for the sour odour of street traffic was not much of a trade, no more than the metallic taste of river water in the air; but it was London, and he relished the sights and sounds so different from Paris — or, more dramatically, Poissons- les-Marais. He’d been here once before, with Emilie, shortly after his promotion to inspector in Clichy. It had been a rare break from the pressures of work and ambition and a desire to do something positive. On one level it had been a success: Emilie had loved it, sensing perhaps that her husband’s life wasn’t entirely dominated by the call of his job. But the time had gone by all too quickly and their relationship had not survived much beyond his return to the office — the late nights, early mornings and especially the days away, working undercover, when she didn’t know if he would come back in one piece or in a box, victim of taking a step too far into the dark.

The sight of the Thames brought a tug of regret like a pain in his chest, and he stood for a moment taking in the scenery: the occasional flash of white from the cross-currents, the passing river craft with their dim pilot lights and unnamed cargoes, and the rush of water in the gloom below. They had done this together many times, he recalled, enjoying the ebb and flow of the water when pavements became too crowded, traffic too noisy or the pull of museums and art galleries faded. Too late now for regrets; Emilie was gone and living another life. He wasn’t even sure where. He’d allowed too much outside their married life to dictate the pattern of living successfully in it, and had paid the price.

He followed the embankment to the north, passing the elegant seat of the British Government on the way and turning onto the approach to Westminster Bridge, then taking a sharp left to the imposing Gothic brick-and — concrete structure that was New Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police.

‘Inspector Rocco?’ The sergeant on the desk swivelled the signing-in book and studied his name, then asked him to wait. ‘Very good, sir. If you would hang on a bit, I’ll ask Chief Inspector Nialls to come down.’

Five minutes later, a tall, slim man in an immaculate grey suit appeared and shook his hand. He had greying hair and a slim moustache, and looked tired; the kind of tired that seeps into the bones. Rocco had seen it before in senior cops on his side of the water. ‘Inspector Rocco. David Nialls. I act as liaison with your DGPN. I’ve been expecting you.’

Rocco showed him the signed letter of authority and waited while the policeman read it. The fact that DCI Nialls had contact with the Direction Generale de la Police Nationale, which came second only to the Interior Ministry, was in itself no guarantee of cooperation. The correct protocol would have been to go through channels; but channels were something Rocco had little time for. Massin’s last-minute letter was a bonus he hadn’t counted on, however. All he had to do now was hope it carried some weight.

It took a moment to realise that Nialls had been reading the letter without great difficulty. The detective looked up and gave a sheepish smile. ‘I speak some French, but it’s not that brilliant. Do you mind if we speak English?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Good. Francois Massin said you could do with some information. I’m not sure how much I can help you, Inspector Rocco, but if you come with me, I’ll force you to drink some of our appalling tea and see what we can accomplish.’ He led Rocco through a side door and up a flight of narrow stairs, stopping to speak to a young woman in an apron on the way. Then he turned into a small office and shut the door. ‘The tea will be along in a moment. Sit down and fire away.’

They sat and Rocco explained about the ramming incident, and the wrecking of the bar by the drunken gang. Nialls seemed little more than politely interested at first, and only reacted at the point where Rocco mentioned George Tasker. Then he sat forward with a frown.

‘Tasker? Can you describe him?’

Rocco did so.

They were interrupted by the appearance of the young woman bearing a tray of tea and some biscuits, but Nialls barely allowed her out of the door before continuing. ‘I wondered where the bloody man had disappeared to. He dropped off the scene for a few days, and we wondered whether he’d become a building block.’ At Rocco’s blank look, he explained, ‘Got buried under an office block somewhere, victim of revenge for past misdeeds. Obviously he didn’t. Still, there’s always hope.’

‘You know him, then?’

Nialls nodded and sipped his tea. ‘Sadly, I do. He’s a nasty bit of work suspected of involvement in at least two gangland killings and numerous bank jobs. He’s employed by a man named Gerald ‘Ruby’ Ketch, who’s the frontman for an extensive East London gang. They’ve been around for a few years now, gradually building up their power base. Just recently, Ketch’s bosses have been staying in the background pulling strings, but we know they’re responsible for pretty much every nasty crime in the book.’

‘You do not have enough to convict them?’

‘Sadly, no.’ He rubbed his face. ‘We’ve been trying, but they have some very competent lawyers and rule by fear. Witnesses have a habit of developing amnesia… or disappearing altogether. My building block reference was not entirely in jest.’ He stared out of the window. ‘But what the hell were they doing in France?’

‘If my suspicions are correct,’ said Rocco, ‘pretending to make a film.’ He gave him the men’s names and described the crash scene witnessed by Simeon, and the state of the Citroen with its interior reinforcements. ‘But along the way they appear to have killed a man. It could be an accident, but we will probably never know for sure.’

‘What does your instinct tell you?’

‘That they were doing something else — but not making films.’

‘Like what? They’re not exactly known for working outside London and the South East. Our criminal gangs tend to have territories like everyone else.’

Rocco debated how much to tell this man. He didn’t know Nialls from a stick of celery, but he couldn’t walk away without gaining something from this visit. If his instincts were correct, there was too much riding on getting it wrong. Yet if he suggested that Tasker and his men were somehow involved with an attempted assassination of the French head of state, Nialls might feel compelled to take the matter higher, running the risk of word getting out and driving the plotters underground.

‘I think there is a chance that these men, Tasker and his colleagues,’ he said carefully, ‘may be involved in something much bigger than their usual operations.’

‘Like what?’ Then Nialls’ eyes widened. ‘Good God, you don’t mean an attempt on-’

‘Perhaps. But not directly.’ There. It was out now and too late to take back. Nialls was clearly no fool. He’d instantly run his mind over all the various possibilities that he could think of, and had settled unerringly on the correct one.

‘Have you discussed this with your superiors?’

‘Some of it. But they are sceptical.’

‘Why? I mean, don’t misunderstand me, but there have been plenty of attempts on your man already, so it’ll hardly come as much of a shock to anyone if someone has another go… especially on the heels of the Kennedy assassination.’ The recent death of the American president was still headline news everywhere, and had caused many world leaders to review their security precautions.

‘They have already tried.’ Rocco told him about the latest attack on the N19 to the south-east of Paris, and how it had failed, allegedly because of bad information supplied to the gang. Even had de Gaulle been in the car, it might not have carried the same magnitude outside France as the killing of the US president John Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.

Nialls picked up on the failure of information. ‘You don’t think it was simply a mistake on the attackers’ part?’

‘I am not sure. So far, the information these groups have worked on has always been correct. The failures have come because of poor organisation, good defensive tactics by the bodyguards… or simply bad luck. Whichever group is involved, they do not seem to have much difficulty finding out what the president’s movements are.’

Nialls lifted an eyebrow. ‘Someone on the inside?’

‘Possibly. But I never said that.’ Roco knew all too well that it was next to impossible to keep everything secret. Word leaked out and there was always someone ready to trade on it.

‘Maybe this lot were more amateurish than the others.’

‘Maybe.’

‘But you don’t think so.’

He was sharp, Rocco decided. His policeman’s nose had picked up on Rocco’s hesitation and he had drawn his own conclusions.

‘I have been working with a representative of the presidential security team, but I want to be sure of my facts before I go any further.’

‘Very wise, although waiting might be risky, don’t you think, if there’s a plot afoot?’

‘Possibly. But we have time. That is all I can say.’

Nialls shrugged. ‘Fair enough. What do you want from me?’

Rocco was surprised. ‘You will help?’

‘As much as I can, yes. It depends what you need, though.’ Nialls smiled and explained, ‘I’m on my way out of here, due for retirement in a few weeks. It means I have a certain amount of leeway; nobody expects me to begin any new investigations or to be running around like a spring chicken. But you’ll have to be quick.’

‘Why?’

‘There’s talk of the complete file on Ketch and his people being handed over to another team.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘I can’t say I’m too sorry, but I’d like to think I can do something useful before I go.’

‘Such as solving your train robbery?’ Britain’s biggest ever cash robbery had been carried out three months previously on a train transporting used banknotes due for incineration. So far they had come nowhere near finding out who had organised it.

Nialls grinned. ‘It would be a good one to go out on, wouldn’t it? But no, I don’t think I’ll get that one.’

‘Can you tell me anything about Tasker and his people? Calloway in particular — I am sure he has an important role in this. Who they know, who their contacts are in France.’

‘That last bit’s easy enough, especially with Tasker. He doesn’t have any contacts outside London. George Tasker’s a thug — a muscleman with enough brains to make him dangerous but with limited horizons. He’s like a sergeant in the military; he does what he’s told, passes on instructions, and chivvies the troops to do their bit.’ He lifted a hand in apology. ‘Sorry — “chivvies” means to encourage. Keep forgetting myself.’

‘I understood. But thank you for the explanation.’

‘Your English is impressive. How come?’

‘Thank you,’ said Rocco. ‘My mother insisted. She felt the world was becoming smaller and it would be an advantage. I was also with United Nations forces in Korea in 1952 for a while, attached to a British unit. I had to learn quickly.’

‘That would account for it. Wish I could claim the same with my French.’ He got back to the subject under discussion. ‘Anyway, Ketch is the man you should be looking at. He’s the operational head of the gang. If anyone’s in the know about what they were up to over in your neck of the woods, it’ll be him. He’s a very clever man.’

‘You admire him?’

‘No. I don’t. But I don’t underestimate him. Ketch is a broad thinker. He’s suspected of having put together a number of clever jobs over the years, every one of them successful and with a big return on their investment.’ A dry smile. ‘Makes him sound like the boss of ICI, doesn’t it? But it’s what he’s good at: the planning… and what we’ve come to recognise recently as smoke and mirrors.’

‘I’m sorry…?’

‘He takes the widest possible view of staging a job. He doesn’t simply look at the direct details, like most of his kind, focusing on the place to hit, how to get in, the men to use, that kind of thing. He uses distraction techniques. The first we’ll hear is a welter of rumours, usually spreading from drinking haunts around his manor, some conflicting with others until we don’t know what’s going on. Then the rumour becomes solid, and a mail van gets jumped. Then another, somewhere else. While we’re involved with those two, his men are busy running another — usually bigger job somewhere else. It’s a strategy we believe he borrowed from reading about the desert campaigns in North Africa.’

‘Hit and run, you mean?’ Rocco was familiar with the term; French forces had also used the tactics, relying on feeding out false information about possible attacks, then staging a surprise assault elsewhere.

‘Exactly. It’s only recently become recognisable, and we’re still playing catch-up. If you can get there first, I’d take my hat off to you.’

‘But?’ Rocco sensed a problem.

‘You’ll never get close to him. Ketch is paranoid about cops and snitches — informers. He uses Tasker to organise jobs and be the blunt instrument, and has a financial planner and crooked accountant named Brayne to help with his deep thinking. Between them they’re a very clever team. He compartmentalises, in other words.’

Rocco shook his head at the term. He thought he could guess, but guesses were no good at this point.

‘He keeps everything separate. You know in intelligence structures, they keep cells and cut-outs? If one goes down, they don’t compromise the others? Well, it’s similar to that. Most of the men he uses never even meet him. Tasker’s the recruitment sergeant.’

Rocco understood. It was a tried-and-tested system, also used by some Corsican gangs to reduce risks in case of penetration by undercover police.

Nialls glanced at his watch. ‘I won’t be able to get you an introduction to Ketch, but I know where he can be found most evenings. At least you’ll get a sighting of the man.’

‘That would help. And Simon Calloway? A former racing driver, according to a colleague of mine.’

‘Really? The name’s certainly familiar, but I’ll have to check. Some gang members work on a shifting pattern — brought in for special tasks, then let go. He could be one of those.’ He picked up the phone and dialled an internal number, then spoke briefly, giving Calloway’s name. He put the phone down and said, ‘Our intelligence unit. They keep a log of all known names. If he’s done time, or been picked up on suspicion of involvement in anything, they’ll know. It’ll keep until tomorrow. Shall we go look at some of our criminal brethren at play?’

As they walked back downstairs, they stepped aside to allow two men coming up to pass on the narrow stairway. It took Rocco a moment to realise that he recognised the man leading the way. By the time they were face to face, there was no way of feigning ignorance.

‘Rocco?’ The lead man was short and stocky, clean-shaven and smartly dressed. His tone was imperious and questioning, the singular word tinged with dislike. The last time Rocco had seen Jules Broissard, he was attached to the DST — the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance — the French internal security agency. They had clashed over a territorial dispute in Clichy. Rocco had arrested a known explosives specialist whom Broissard had wanted to remain free pending investigations into the man’s involvement in anti-government threats and arms supplies. The clear intimation had been that it would be in Rocco’s career interests to give way. Broissard had lost the argument, and had clearly not forgiven or forgotten him.

‘Broissard.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Broissard stared hard at Rocco, then at Nialls, as if they were at the centre of some kind of conspiracy. ‘And on whose authority?’