Death on the Pont Noir

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘Shut the door, Inspector.’ Massin was seated behind his desk, shuffling through a thin batch of papers. He gestured to a chair and continued reading for a moment, then sat back and looked at Rocco. ‘You appear to have consigned a group of English visitors to the cells. Would you care to explain why?’

‘They got drunk and wrecked a bar.’ Rocco wondered where this was going, although he could guess. Massin was having a twitch about the treatment of foreigners. He had no doubt found out about the reasons for the men’s detention from Canet, but had clearly chosen to go head-to — head about it.

‘Is that all — a bar brawl?’

‘By “wrecked”, I mean destroyed. They also assaulted the owner and Desmoulins got a headbutt to the face. A magistrate was lined up to deal with them today.’

‘Is Desmoulins all right?’

‘He’ll survive.’

‘So why were you involved? I would have thought you had better things to be doing than dealing with drunks on the rampage.’

‘I was called in because I speak English. They were being difficult.’

‘I see.’ Massin flicked at a piece of fluff on his desk and arranged a pencil in line with his blotter. ‘Well, I’ve had the prisoners released and put on a train to Calais.’ He held up a hand to stop Rocco’s automatic reaction. ‘Not my doing, I assure you. I actually agreed with your actions; a spot of time in the cells would have done them good. But…’ He shrugged. ‘They should be on the boat by now.’

‘Orders from the Ministry?’ Rocco bit hard down on the words he really wanted to utter. Querying Massin’s unwillingness to stand up to the senior drones in the Ministry would not have improved the prickly relationship that existed between them. Besides, he was puzzled by Massin’s obvious air of discomfort. Maybe, he thought, it was merely a spot of verbal indigestion at having agreed with his decision to hold the men in the first place.

‘In a manner of speaking.’ Massin pursed his lips. ‘It seems representations were made to the Ministry very early this morning by the British consulate office in Lille, originating from the office of a member of the British Parliament.’

‘What?’ Rocco had difficulty relating the men he’d seen with any member of the British Government. He was aware that even politicians were rarely the best judges of the company they kept, but picturing any public servant interested in helping out a man like Tasker took a real stretch of the imagination. He wondered instinctively about who had made the phone call to London in the first place.

‘How did the British find out?’

‘One of the men…’ Massin leant forward and checked a note on his blotter. ‘… named Calloway, indicated that he had chest pains and needed some allergy tablets. The duty officer quite rightly didn’t want to take a chance of a foreign prisoner dying in custody, but he couldn’t find an appropriate remedy here. Calloway asked permission to call his doctor in London for information.’

So Calloway spoke French — or, at least, enough. It showed he was smart, even devious, and he knew how to talk to people. It was more than could be said of the other thugs.

‘Don’t tell me: there was no doctor.’

‘Probably not. Less than an hour later, the Ministry called and recommended the release of all five men.’ He waved a hand. ‘It’s hard to accept, I know, after what they did. But the Ministry’s concern was that we should show willing… in the interests of international relations, you understand. The men deposited a sum of money to compensate the owner of the Canard Dore. He’s lucky — it’ll allow him to refurbish the dump.’ He shuffled the papers on his desk and sat up, smoothly changing the subject. ‘However, that is not why I asked you in here.’ His expression grew grave.

Great, thought Rocco. Here it comes. Remembered hurts coming back to bite him.

But Massin surprised him. ‘This is confidential for the time being, but I know you will not discuss this outside. I have just been briefed about what appears to be another attempt on the life of the president, two days ago. Thankfully, it failed, which is a blessing, of course.’

‘Another?’ How many attempts had there been on de Gaulle over the years? Some said it was already more even than there had been on Adolf Hitler. Unless you counted the efforts of British Bomber Command; that would increase the numbers a fair bit.

Massin sighed. ‘Perhaps it would be simpler if you read the summary yourself.’ He passed a sheet of paper across to Rocco and stood up, taking a walk around the room.

There wasn’t much to it, culled, no doubt from an official release which would be going out sooner or later. What there was did not vary much from some of the other abortive attempts on the life of de Gaulle. One of the fleet of official Government cars had been heading south-east from Paris on the N19 near Guignes, some forty kilometres from the city centre, accompanied by two Garde Mobile outriders, when men with automatic weapons had opened fire from a belt of trees at the side of the road. The car had been slowing down for some roadworks — fake, as it had turned out — and the attackers had used the opportunity to hose it down with bullets. A classic ambush technique.

Fortunately, one of the outriders had been thrown from his bike into a culvert and, although wounded, had been able to draw his weapon and give covering fire. After several minutes, the gunmen had abandoned their attempt and driven away in a stolen Simca Ariane, later found abandoned. They had left behind one of their number dead, identified as a renegade former NCO dismissed from the French military some years before.

To Rocco, it was disturbingly familiar. In August 1962, in Le Petit-Clamart, a south-western suburb of Paris, an attempt had been made on de Gaulle’s life by men from the OAS — the Organisation Armee Secrete — a group opposed to any idea of Algerian independence and formed by a mix of military and civilians, colonists and students. The man said to be the driving force behind the attempt, Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, a former lieutenant colonel and weapons engineer, had since been convicted and executed just months ago, in March. It had become a landmark event, stirring up old hatreds and enmities and polarising further the extremes on all sides.

Rocco put the paper down. Nothing much had changed, then.

‘They’re still trying.’ And pretty desperate, he figured, to use a Simca Ariane as a getaway car. Hardly a powerful vehicle — unless they’d been trying to blend in to the background — it was never going to win any races pursued by vengeful security personnel.

‘It would seem so.’ Massin returned to his seat and steepled his fingers. ‘Fortunately, the attackers had been misinformed. The car was not carrying General de Gaulle, but a junior member of cabinet taking important documents out to the president’s residence in Colombey-les-deux-Eglises.’

Rocco let a few seconds go by while assessing the implications, during which he could hear a clock ticking on the wall behind him. ‘Misinformed?’ It was an odd choice of word to use. ‘Did they have someone on the inside?’

Massin waved a hand. ‘Clearly they knew about a car. But not the correct one.’

Rocco let it go. ‘It’s a long way to take important documents by car.’ Colombey was over two hundred kilometres from the centre of Paris. As far as he knew, the president normally flew down by helicopter. Clearly the same courtesy wasn’t extended to official documents… or to members of his staff.

‘I agree. But it is not our place to comment on that.’

‘What about the passenger?’

‘Dead. Although an official vehicle, the car was not armoured. The driver was seriously wounded and not expected to live. It was a salutary lesson that the President’s enemies have not given up.’

Rocco said nothing. Another one to add to the lengthening list of assassination attempts on the country’s leader. He was ambivalent about many things de Gaulle had achieved, but he didn’t discount the man’s utter commitment to his country. If it had been him in the hot seat, he’d have given up the job long ago and taken up knitting. Maybe de Gaulle hadn’t yet got the message that someone didn’t like him — although that wasn’t a thought he could share with Massin; the man had a broomstick up his back about anyone in power and lacked the ability to see the occasional absurdities in life.

‘Is that anything to do with why the colonel was here?’

Massin threw him a sharp look. ‘You know Saint-Cloud?’

‘Not personally. But I know what he does for a living.’

Massin looked slightly peeved, as if he had had his thunder stolen. ‘The colonel and his colleagues were here on a fact-finding visit. You should not read anything into that. As a region, we are no more important than any other for future itineraries. But it makes good sense to check that all is well here should the president decide to include us in any future tour.’

‘Does that mean he’s coming or not?’ Rocco felt a momentary impatience with Massin’s tortuous evasiveness. Either he knew de Gaulle was planning on coming to the region or he wasn’t; pretending otherwise was a waste of time.

‘I cannot say.’ Massin sniffed and stretched his neck against his shirt collar, as if the admission was being wrenched out of him. ‘All I can say is, you should be aware that increased security measures in light of this latest attempt will mean everyone will be expected to be in attendance. If we are given the green light, I don’t need to tell you that every potential hazard will be investigated in advance.’

‘By “hazard”, you mean threat.’

‘Yes. Colonel Saint-Cloud and his staff are checking a list of known agitators, and this will be circulated to all offices in the region. But I’m sure you know which groups they include.’

Rocco nodded. Take your pick. OAS. Resistance veterans. Military men. Communists. Government conspirators. Police. Students. Algerians. The CIA. The British. The favoured list among conspiracy nuts was endless. Even NATO had taken a crack, so rumour had it, a temper tantrum in response to de Gaulle’s decision to withdraw French military facilities from the organisation. Rocco didn’t believe that one, if only because it would have required a full council meeting and de Gaulle’s signature to assassinate himself. He doubted even Le Grand Charles was capable of that level of arrogance.

‘What do you want me to do?’ He still couldn’t figure out why Massin had told him all this. Somehow he doubted this was an occasion for covering his back.

‘You may need to assist in preventing anything happening. As you know, Saint-Cloud runs a very small group, albeit very effective in what it does do. But while he is away checking routes and itineraries, he cannot do his main job, which is to oversee closely the protection of the president.’ He rearranged the already immaculate pencil. ‘It would be a disaster if anything were to happen in this region.’

Rocco nearly laughed at the outrageousness of the build-up. So Massin was covering his back after all. He asked, ‘Why me?’

Massin hesitated before answering, a flicker of something approaching doubt on his face. Then he said, ‘Because Colonel Saint-Cloud suggested it. He asked for names and selected you. His own team is stretched very thin, so he is having to use whatever facilities he can. Meet him here tomorrow at nine for a briefing.’

‘I’ve never been called a facility before,’ Rocco murmured dryly. ‘But I’ll do what I can.’ Short, he thought, of deliberately throwing myself in the way of a bullet, anyway.

Massin’s eyes were hooded when he looked up. ‘I’m delighted to hear it. I trust you will not let me down. You hear me?’

Home in Poissons earlier than usual, Rocco called in at the co-op store for some meat for dinner. Mme Drolet, the owner, fluttered her eyelashes and hurried round the end of the counter on high heels to join him, bringing with her a rush of perfume and powder.

‘I’ve got some nice cutlets,’ she suggested breathlessly. ‘Very filling for a big man like you.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, wondering if she spoke to Delsaire, the plumber, this way. He’d met Madame Delsaire, who looked the sort to eat thistles for breakfast. ‘I’ll just take some minced beef.’

‘Don’t you know how to cook cutlets?’ She reached up and patted her hair, which was frozen in some kind of unmoving, shimmering beehive. ‘I could pop down and do them for you, if you like.’

‘There’s no need-’

‘It’s really no problem. I’m nearly done here. Just give me fifteen minutes to freshen up.’

If she was any fresher, Rocco decided, she’d be as crisp as a newly peeled endive. He pointed at a piece of beef under the glass and said, ‘That minced would be fine. Really.’

She gave him a half smile, one eyebrow curving upwards. ‘There’s no need to be frightened, Inspector… I was only offering to cook, you know.’ She picked up the beef and fed it through the mincer, turning the handle with what seemed unnecessary vigour, and he wondered whether she had eaten any husbands in the past.

At the house he rented down the lane from the village square, he found some eggs in a basket on the front step. Mme Denis, his neighbour, making sure he was well stocked with the basics in life. Some days it was vegetables, others it was fruit. Today eggs.

He glanced through the fence separating their properties and caught a fleeting glimpse of the old lady ducking indoors, and smiled. She habitually wore an apron over a grey dress, and a triangle of headscarf pinned over her head. It was her uniform, her and others of her age; a sign of cleanliness, hard work and a lack of show. She was an independent old bird, and had become fiercely protective of the flic living next door. Her defensiveness had even included flinging hot tisane in a man’s face when he’d threatened her with a gun, saving Rocco’s life in the process.

‘You think because I’m old I’m a charity case?’ she had once asked him, eyes flashing dangerously behind thick glasses. Rocco had just offered to take her out for a meal in return for all her kindness since he’d arrived in the village. Big mistake. ‘You are a welcome guest here, Inspector,’ she’d explained primly. ‘We look after our guests.’

‘In that case,’ he’d replied, ‘feel free to go out on the town and get drunk and disorderly, and I’ll make sure they drop any charges.’

She’d giggled and told him she would hold him to it.

The interior of the house was cold. He lit the fire and fixed dinner, then rang Claude to check if there were any developments from Father Maurice. There were none. Wherever Pantoufle had disappeared to, it was not looking good.

He did a stint at the ancient hand pump out in the garden. It was reluctant to draw water, a sure sign that the cold in the atmosphere was reaching freezing levels once more. He’d already had to set a fire around it to loosen the ice more than once, and would no doubt have to do so again. The laying of pipes in the road outside had been completed and covered over, but there the work had stopped, nobody knew why.

Back indoors, the fouines — fruit rats — were skittering back and forth in the loft as if excited by his return. They seemed oblivious to the drop in temperature and intent on playing their nightly games instead of hibernating. Rocco had become used to them, finding their presence oddly comforting. He still wasn’t sure who was the guest and who the host here, but so far, the relationship had worked well.

And in his experience, there were far worse rats in the world to deal with.