Death on the Pont Noir

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Things began to go wrong the moment George Tasker and his men stepped through the door of the bank.

It was nine-fifteen, with snow in the air dusting the roads and pavements outside. The kind of day you were better off staying at home if you had any sense and nothing more important to do. The kind of day, he reflected, not to be relying on having to drive anywhere fast.

But some days you had no choice.

Leaving Calloway at the wheel of the black DS outside the entrance and facing towards the crossroads ready for a fast getaway, he’d led Biggs and Jarvis, each tooled up with old service revolvers, through the front door. Without pausing, he’d fired a shot from the sawn-off provided by their French contact into the ceiling, bringing down a portion of the tiling and stopping everyone dead in their tracks. Short of shooting someone, it was the single most effective method he’d come across of getting everybody’s full and undivided attention.

With the security van gone only minutes ago, Tasker had expected — indeed had been told — to find three handy metal boxes of cash waiting to be picked up. What he saw was one small box, and three men in suits staring at him and his fellow gang members as if they were creatures from outer space.

He plucked a piece of ceiling plaster from his jacket and flicked it away, then stepped over to the centre of the floor. Biggs and Jarvis stayed to cover the door and watch for anyone foolhardy enough to try anything heroic. Pointing his gun at an older man with grizzled grey hair and a hangdog expression, Tasker shouted, ‘Where’s the money, you French git?’ He fired another shot over the man’s head, breaking and reloading the gun in seconds, his hands a blur. It was a make of weapon he’d never seen before, stripped bare and filed clean, but it worked well enough and that was all he needed.

It galvanised the man into action. He muttered something at one of his colleagues, who walked over to a large metal door set in the rear wall. He swung the door back a fraction, revealing a glimpse over the counter of a small room lined with shelves.

‘Tasty,’ said Jarvis, and made to leap the counter.

‘Wait.’ Tasker stopped him. It was all too easy. Something about this set-up wasn’t right. Forget the fact that it was French; a bank was a bank was a bank. But this one didn’t feel good. The manager showing them the bank vault so readily was also odd; it stank of a distraction.

He looked around. No customers. Maybe it was too early in the day — and he hadn’t thought to ask about opening times. And most banks he’d ever seen had at least a couple of women workers. But not here.

Then he saw a coat stand in one corner. It held two coats, one red and the other a dull mauve colour, a man’s mackintosh and a couple of colourful scarves. Women’s stuff.

He pointed at the manager who was glaring at him. ‘You. Come here.’ He stabbed at a spot in front of him, making sure the man was looking down the twin snouts of the sawn-off.

The man complied. It was only when he was standing before him that Tasker realised something else was missing: that tangible element he was so accustomed to on a bank job, the inevitable reaction of a worker ant being faced by a man with a gun who was not afraid to use it.

Fear.

Something made him lift onto his toes so he could see over the counter into the safe room. A woman was lying on the floor, eyes bulging over a gag around her face, her legs wrapped in rope. Nice legs, too. He could just see a man’s shoulder next to her, and beyond that, another stocking-covered leg and a woman’s shoe.

‘Tasker!’ It was Jarvis, shouting a warning.

Tasker turned back to the man in front of him, saw him flicking back his suit jacket and reaching inside. Saw the butt of a revolver stuffed down his waistband.

‘It’s a set-up!’ he shouted. He pulled the trigger, realising in the instant that he did so that this was no police trap. The man in front of him, in spite of being armed, was too old for this kind of job in the name of the state. Too old and, up close, not smart or quick enough. The shot was deafening in the enclosed space, and caught the man in the centre of his chest, hurling him backwards across the floor. At the same moment Biggs began firing at the other two, who had dived for cover behind the counter, drawing weapons of their own.

The small room reverberated to the sounds of gunshots, and for a fleeting second, Tasker felt his blood stir at the noise, the smell of gunpowder and the pounding of conflict. Then survival kicked in and brought him back to reality. This was a dead end; they’d been fooled, suckered into colliding with someone else’s job. It was a total lash-up. He fired at the two men behind the counter, seeing one man’s hand dissolve under the hail of shot. There was a scream, then the other man stood up and blazed away like a maniac. A yelp came from alongside Tasker and Jarvis was flipped onto his back, his face a bloody mess. Dead.

‘Out!’ Tasker shouted at Biggs, and stooped to pick up Jarvis’s revolver. This was beyond going wrong; it couldn’t get any worse. If they stayed here they were dead meat. Running was their only option. He could already hear the first sounds of a siren… or was it his imagination? Surely the local cops couldn’t have got themselves together already.

He felt a shiver go through him, and the first tremors of panic in his legs.

Until that moment, George Tasker had always been lucky. He’d found himself in situations before where things had not run in his favour due to surprise, superior firepower or better tactics by the opposition. You couldn’t get it right every time. But he’d always coped and brazened it out; stood up and blasted his way through. But this was different; it was like some kind of horror film unfolding. In the space of two minutes or less, he was a man down and facing gunmen who were on home soil and mad enough to fight back like crazies. And the police sirens were real — and getting louder.

The last brought a disturbing realisation.

They had been sold out.

While Tasker and his men were finding themselves on the brink of disaster, Jack Fletcher was a very happy man. He was sitting alone in the cab of a small Renault truck identical to the previous one he’d driven, with no Tasker watching over him and no smart-Alec Calloway making snide remarks about his driving. And he was doing a job solo. It didn’t get much better than this.

He was humming as he followed on the heels of a white Peugeot as it negotiated a series of narrow, snow-dusted country lanes, working the pedals of the Renault with care to avoid the truck going into a terminal skid on the slippery surface. Weighed down by the addition of a railway sleeper across the front bumper, covered by a piece of tarpaulin to avoid raising suspicions, the steering was jittery but manageable. But Fletcher wasn’t bothered; he’d driven in far more challenging weather and in worse vehicles than this, and even though he was in a left-hooker, he was beginning to get a feel for the way the vehicle handled. All he had to do was follow the Frenchman in front of him, a sour-looking grump in his fifties who had nodded once on introduction, then gestured for Fletcher to stick to his tail before driving off.

Tasker and the others had stood and watched him go, and he’d waved cheerfully and called out, ‘Bump into you later, boys!’

He’d enjoyed knowing that they could have no idea of just how prophetic his words were going to be.