Death on the Pont Noir

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

‘But why come here?’ said Desmoulins. He was driving Rocco’s car with the inspector in the passenger seat. Godard and his men were following close behind. They were heading towards Poissons, leaving the two patrolmen to look after Biggs’s body. ‘He could have been away and clear by now, heading for the ferries.’

‘Away, maybe,’ Rocco replied, reloading his gun. ‘But not clear. Tasker’s been used and cut adrift by his own people, and I suspect he knows it. He’s got nothing to lose.’

It didn’t take much putting together, not once Desmoulins had got the story from the Bethune police. They had interviewed the French gunmen left inside the bank, and the wounded man had been eager to talk. They had been recruited to do the one job, each a solo operator under the command of an older armoured-car specialist, originally from Corsica. He was now dead, shot by the big Englishman, Tasker. They had never met their recruiters, all discussions having been carried out by telephone and through ‘contacts’. But investigators were already working on that angle. Rocco, however, had a good idea who was behind the recruitment.

Patrice Delarue.

It all fitted together, an oddly shaped jigsaw of disparate events. The original ramming had been a practice run, using Calloway’s skills to avoid maximum damage while giving the important man in the scheme, Fletcher, as near a real scenario as he could get without him knowing. Fletcher the giant fist: the real attacker. The other men had been bit players in a theatrical drama, added to provide a fog to prevent anyone seeing the real picture.

Distraction, too, had been the purpose of the other events, to draw away security and police attention from what was being planned: the smashing of the Canard Dore, the openly argumentative front put up by Tasker and his men, all the while knowing they would not be held for long; the burning of the truck, the disappearance — albeit mismanaged — of the damaged Citroen DS. And finally the bank job, skewed deliberately towards failure and using expendable men from two gangs to divert police attention from what was really going to happen.

And that was the real event; the genuine piece of theatre.

It was so simple, Rocco realised, once you peered under the surface. Almost military in terms of ruse and planning, coldly expensive in terms of men — but they were unimportant, anyway, gun fodder to be used and forgotten. What was important was achieving their aims of toppling the president while out from the cover of crowds and the usual security cordon.

And that was where he had a real problem: knowing who was behind the attempted attack. It could be any one of several groups spread across France and Europe, into North Africa. But it was suddenly very clear that Saint-Cloud was in there right at the thick of it. Pretending to still be working for the presidential security unit, while all the time he was… what? Sick? Deluded? Plotting? He wondered at the sheer size of the bluff the man had pulled off to arrive here, establish himself — dragging Portier and even Broissard along with him, although Rocco had no doubts they were fooled, too — all without revealing that he was no longer employed to protect the president. But then, had anyone thought for a moment to check his credentials? He himself hadn’t, nor had Massin. Who, after all, thinks to check the bona fides of one of the most important men in the country?

‘Alix is in Poissons,’ said Claude from the back seat. He was holding his shotgun across his knees, broken, the cartridges in his hand. He sounded distracted, as if talking to himself. ‘She had a day’s leave to take in lieu of a late shift. She’s been working too hard. I told her to stay at home and relax. She won’t, of course. She’ll be out and about in the village doing stuff to keep herself occupied.’ He stopped talking and stared out of the window, his words hanging in the air between them.

Rocco took out the revolver he’d taken from Biggs. It held two shells. ‘Do they know what weapons Tasker was using?’

‘A shotgun with sawn-off barrels,’ said Desmoulins. ‘Nasty brute of a weapon — like the man himself. He’s probably got a handgun, too.’

‘What do we do if he’s in the village, Lucas?’ said Claude. He didn’t have to explain himself; Tasker was a city gangster, accustomed to the proximity of streets and houses and people. He’d be in his element among buildings, even in a small village like Poissons, with ample protection and hiding places. And he’d be ruthless and desperate enough to use whatever and whomever he could, and to hell with the consequences.

‘If he’s in there,’ said Rocco evenly, ‘we’ll get him out. Don’t worry about it.’ He closed the cylinder of the revolver with a soft click, and hoped the other two couldn’t hear the uncertainty in his voice.

Because with men like Tasker, at the end of his rope and with nothing to lose, there were no certainties.

They drove into Poissons slowly, watching the buildings for movement, for signs of an impending ambush. If Tasker was a strategist, he’d wait for them to get in among the houses, then take them out one by one. But all the while he’d be waiting for Rocco to show.

A police car was parked across the street, empty, and a group of men was gathered at the door of the village cafe. Among them Rocco saw M. Thierry, who cared for the graveyard, and Delsaire, the local plumber, and Arnaud, the village handyman.

They liked a good gathering, Rocco remembered. Anything for a bit of excitement.

The men turned when they heard the vehicles and stepped away from the door. Rocco told Desmoulins to stop and jumped out. Leaving Godard and his men to take a look round, he walked into the cafe, nodding at the men, and found two uniformed officers with a dejected-looking Calloway slumped in a chair, his wrists handcuffed.

‘Where is he?’ Rocco felt dirty and tired and damp and didn’t want to waste his time talking to this man, but to get on with tracking down Tasker. But he needed to get something from Calloway while he still could. His attitude clearly conveyed itself to the Englishman, because he drew his feet together and sat up straight, eyes wary.

‘I dropped him off near the church,’ he said quickly, without being asked. ‘He said he was going to kill you.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘I mean, does he intend hurting anyone else?’

‘I doubt it. He doesn’t know anyone else. He’s pretty much a mental mess right now; too much to think about and he’d explode.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s over the edge. It’s as if he’s lost all reason. Rambling, playing with his guns and threatening anyone who disagrees. He kicked Biggs out of the car because he said something he didn’t like and he needed a decoy, and he only got me to bring him here by sticking his gun in my ribs. I think he’s nuts — and he wasn’t exactly the most stable of men, anyway. Then he met you.’ When Rocco didn’t say anything, he continued, ‘Tasker’s been pretty much top dog in his own world for years now. There are men above him on the human ladder of pond life, but far more below. He enjoys throwing his weight around but hasn’t got the brains to run his own show, so he’s been playing second fiddle to someone who does.’

‘Ketch, you mean.’

‘Yes. And I think Ketch knew how he felt. Which is probably why he sent him on this suicide mission. Tasker’s problem was, he was too thick to turn it down.’

‘You came, too,’ Rocco pointed out.

Calloway smiled grimly. ‘Yes. What does that say about me? Thing is, none of us knew what we were signing up to, not really. I suspect that in the long run, neither did Tasker.’

‘The bank robbery.’

‘Yes. It was supposed to be the real thing: in, out and away to the ferries, easy money. But it was no such thing. There was no cash drop, Tasker said, and another bunch of gunmen was already inside. I don’t think we were meant to come out of that one.’

Calloway was no fool, Rocco recognised. He’d come along knowingly on an illicit venture, but had clearly put two and two together since it had gone wrong. ‘What do you think it was really about?’

‘We were a giant decoy squad, weren’t we? You remember Fletcher — the big lug? He drove the Renault truck when we did this the first time round. But this trip he was off doing it solo, on direct orders from Ketch himself. The rest of us were assigned to the bank job. On the surface, all a bit disconnected, but we were being paid, so why question it?’

‘You had no idea what Fletcher was doing?’

‘No. He was given specific instructions about today, I know that — and told to keep his mouth shut. He could barely keep it in he was so made up, like a bloody kid in a toyshop. What was he doing?’

‘He tried to kill President de Gaulle.’

‘What?’ Calloway shook his head. ‘Fletcher? That’s crazy. He wouldn’t…’ He stopped, eyes going wide. ‘The idiot.’

‘What?’

‘I should have guessed,’ Calloway said bitterly. ‘It didn’t take Einstein to figure out something big was going on… the black DS, the ramming and the Molotovs and pistols. I thought it was all a test run for someone else. But Fletcher?’ He stared at Rocco. ‘I mean, he wasn’t political — he wasn’t anything. He was a thug and a haulage driver, but that was it. Are you sure it was him?’

‘I saw him.’ Rocco wondered about it. Calloway sounded too shocked to be play-acting. Maybe Fletcher hadn’t known what he was doing either; maybe he thought the target was someone low-grade — a business rival. But they’d never know now. ‘If you thought it was something big, why did you go along with it?’

Calloway gave a wry smile. ‘I needed the money, didn’t I? I have gambling debts with people who break legs and things if they’re kept waiting.’

‘Nice friends you have.’

‘Yeah, I know. It wasn’t just us, though, running this thing. A French group was involved — some big man in Paris, according to Tasker.’

‘Name?’

‘He never said. The French provided the plans to the bank, too. Tasker pretended he was in the know all along, but all he really knew was that Ketch had been paid by this French crew to stage a “scenario”, and we were the players.’

‘A scenario?’

‘That’s what he called it. It was all part of some weird plan to tie up and confuse the cops in the area. Now we know why, right?’ He squinted up at Rocco. ‘Did it work?’

Rocco refused to answer. He wondered how Godard was getting on out in the village. He responded instead with another question of his own. ‘What about the body of the tramp?’

Calloway’s face paled and he clamped his lips shut. But he was beyond denying anything. ‘Was that what he was? Poor bugger. That was Tasker’s idea. He found the body under the truck… I reckon he’d been sitting on the verge or had collapsed, and the truck ran over him. None of us saw him until we found him underneath the wheels. Anyway, Tasker reckoned you’d never find him in the burnt-out truck as long as we piled in some wood and lots of petrol.’

‘But burning the truck was still part of the scenario?’

‘Yes.’

Rocco wondered whether Calloway had been truly in the dark as much as he said, or was simply a very good actor. He was inclined to think a bit of both. ‘What about the first DS?’

‘What about it?’

‘We found it at the scrapyard. Before it was broken up.’

‘Now that wasn’t part of the plan. It was supposed to disappear completely. I reckon it was hot from a previous job and we were using it for the last time. The scrap merchant — Bellin? — had orders to torch it and cut it up immediately.’

‘Did he supply the car?’

‘No. Both vehicles were supplied by someone else; we just collected them from a prearranged spot. They came fitted with the harnesses and the timber. We just had to drive them according to instructions.’ He gave another dry smile. ‘A rare case of hands across the sea, wouldn’t you agree?’

Rocco said nothing. A babble of voices came from outside the cafe door, and Claude appeared with Desmoulins close behind. Godard was in the background, shaking his head.

‘They can’t see him anywhere,’ said Claude. He shuffled his feet. ‘I called home, but Alix isn’t there. Thierry said he saw her walking down the lane towards your place less than twenty minutes ago.’

Then came the sound of a gunshot.