Death on the Pont Noir

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Bellin’s scrapyard after the rain looked even more miserable than before. The gates looked shoddy and sad, dripping wet, and the surrounding fence was as unwelcoming as a mausoleum.

Rocco stopped his car just short of the entrance and climbed out.

The DS was somehow at the heart of this whole thing, he was certain of it. As Desmoulins had said, nobody orders the scrapping of an expensive piece of machinery like the DS merely because of a dent in one side — not even extravagant film-makers with their investors’ cash to spare.

The gates were unchained.

He slipped through without touching the corrugated cladding, and instantly felt the sour graveyard atmosphere closing around him, the piles of dead cars and torn metal like jagged, rusting monuments to man’s wasteful extravagance.

He remembered the dog barking last time. There was none of that now; no signs of occupation, no banging or grinding of machinery. But guard dogs didn’t always signal in advance that they were coming. They just arrived and began chewing bits out of intruders.

He took out the MAB 38 and checked the magazine.

‘Bellin?’ There was no echo; his voice simply vanished, soaked up by the years of dirt and oil and scrap metal.

An ancient ship’s bell was hanging from a post near the cabin door. He rattled the rope and set off a deep clanging noise which seemed to reverberate through the piles of metal like a mad symphony, flushing a clutch of small birds into the air.

But no human reaction.

He checked the cabin, which was unlocked. It was cramped and squalid, doubling as an office and shop, every available centimetre packed with rescued mirrors, lamps, steering wheels, hubcaps and other unnameable car parts from hundreds of different vehicles. A man’s coat was draped across a chair, the cloth once good but now worn and shiny and ragged around the hem. A mug of chocolate stood on a small desk, a thin tail of steam curling into the air.

He checked the phone. Still working.

Back outside, he stood listening. He thought he’d heard something. Or maybe it had been the breeze sighing through the twisted towers of metal, setting up a mournful whining sound like souls in torment. If Bellin was here, he was keeping very quiet or was already buried under a pile of his own scrap.

Unless the dog had eaten him.

He walked through the yard, stepping carefully over patches of oil and shimmering multicoloured patches of spilt fuel. Shards of discarded metal sprouted like bright, spiky weeds amid a carpet of windscreen fragments, the whole scene resembling a madman’s sordid, glistening patchwork.

He rounded a pile of battered door panels at the very rear of the yard. Bellin was sitting alongside a wrecked tractor sprouting weeds from its wheels, its location and condition a sign of just how old the place was. He was sucking nervously on a roll-up twisted like a stick of pasta and stained by oily fingers. He appeared indifferent to Rocco’s arrival, but there was no mistaking the pallor of a man terrified out of his mind.

Rocco said, ‘You’re a hard man to find.’ He glanced round at the walls of metal. It was like a bunker of junk. Except that there was only the one way out.

Bellin eyed the gun. ‘What the hell do you want?’ he whispered. He dropped the remains of the cigarette on the ground between his feet. It joined several others already laying there, some dug into the earth by his heel.

‘I’d like another chat. Is the dog around?’

A shake of the head. ‘They’re gone.’

‘Gone? Who?’

‘Jacques and Bruno — who do you think? The two you saw before.’ He scrabbled in his shirt pocket and pulled out a flat tin. Prising the lid off with a filthy, curled thumbnail, he extracted another roll-up. He snapped the lid shut and put the tin away, then took out a lighter and fired up the cigarette, dragging in a lungful of smoke. ‘That’s your doing; you drove them away.’

‘Maybe they got a better offer. What about the dog?’ He was becoming unnerved by the silence in the yard. All this metal and no noise; it didn’t feel right.

‘Fuck the dog.’ Bellin hawked noisily and spat on the ground. ‘You’ve killed me, you know that?’

‘How do you work that out?’ Rocco tested the front wing of a truck and sat down. He had his back to the nearest metal pile, kept the gun in his hand. If the dog came hunting, he’d have two, maybe three seconds to stop it.

‘You and your questions, coming here in your big black car and nosing around like God Almighty. It’s not right.’ Bellin didn’t appear to have heard him, but was rambling along on automatic, the bitter, resentful words spilling out as if released from captivity. ‘You might as well have put up a sign with a bloody great arrow pointing at me.’ He sucked at the cigarette but it had gone out. He crumpled the dead smoke in thick fingers and dropped the shredded remnants on the ground. Spat a mouthful of phlegm after it.

‘You’re not making much sense.’

‘Word. Word got out that you’d come round asking about the DS. Doesn’t take any time at all for that to spread.’

‘Word got out to whom?’

‘I should have burnt that bloody thing the moment it arrived here — and the driver with it. Poured petrol on it and watched it melt.’ He dug a heel into the soft ground, grinding some of the butt ends deeper into the mud with studied viciousness. ‘I should have known it would come to no good.’

‘If you help me,’ said Rocco, ‘I can help you.’

Bellin’s eyes threw back the futility of that promise. ‘You think? You have a safe place where they can’t get at me? A big dark hole where even the light doesn’t shine?’ He sighed. ‘I’d be dead inside two days.’

‘If that’s the case, and you’re that important to them — whoever they are — you should consider my offer.’

‘Important?’ Bellin didn’t even lift his head. ‘I’m not important.’

‘So why would they come after you so quickly?’ He knew the answer perfectly well, but it was better to keep Bellin talking.

The scrap dealer gave a tired smile. ‘You know why, Rocco. You’ve been round the block; I’ve heard things about you, so don’t pretend to be the thick-eared country cop. You know how things work.’

He was right. Rocco knew all too well. Whoever Bellin worked for, if they thought he was doing anything more than being seen by the police about a suspicious car, they would come after him. No other reason existed. It was enough that he was seen talking to them out in the open. But if he agreed to go in, it would be seen as the ultimate betrayal, and that would merit an example to be set and a message to others.

Rocco opened his mouth to say more, then closed it again. He’d come across many others like Bellin; recognised them for what they were. Coarsened and brutalised by a life of petty crime and used by others more powerful than them, they strutted through life like winners in their own small world, but underneath it all were in constant fear of retribution from those same people whom they feared or had offended in some way. What Bellin lacked right now, here, today, was the imagination to survive, to tear himself away and flee. He was trapped by his own surroundings, unable to visualise an alternative, like a steer in a slaughter yard awaiting its fate.