Death on the Pont Noir

Chapter THREE



Rocco reached the trees and did a careful examination, quartering the ground in a grid fashion. If anyone had been here, especially with a camera, there would be signs. It was a godforsaken spot, made worse by the bitter breeze cutting through the branches and whining like a soul in torment. The ground surrounding the trees was mostly covered with clumps of coarse grass, with a carpet of pine needles closer in. He noted other details and dismissed them: scraps of fertiliser bags rotting away beneath a bush; old bottles without labels glinted dully in the shadows; a rusting bucket without a handle; and further back, where the ground was clear, a set of footprints side by side where someone had stood and taken a leak, the story etched in the frosty ground. Size 42 or 43, he guessed, which told him nothing he could use. He finally found a spot by the side of the road where three holes had been pierced in the earth in a triangular spread about a metre across. A tripod, just as Simeon had said. So he hadn’t imagined that bit. But was it a camera or something else? The grass around it was trampled flat, but not as much as he would have expected if a cameraman had been working it. So what had been the point?

He flicked some pine needles from the cuffs of his trousers and walked back to join Claude and Simeon, scanning the ground as he went. Then he saw something in the grass verge. He stopped. The stems here had been either crushed or churned up, as if something heavy had rolled across here recently. But it wasn’t the grass or the earth that caught his attention.

It was the blood. Lots of it.

He took a rubber glove from his coat pocket and slipped it on, then carefully lifted some of the grass clumps to one side. The earth beneath was dark brown, and in parts, where it had been covered, more of a dark red. He wondered if a wild boar had been shot by a farmer and carted off as a trophy. Or maybe hit by a car. Both were possibilities. But the spread of blood seemed too extensive. And tied in with what Simeon had witnessed, there seemed to be another, less mundane possibility. He stepped back along the verge, his unease growing. More blood, flecks of it scattered across the grass, some on the edge of the tarmac, the bigger flecks with a covering of insects feeding on this rare bounty.

And a human tooth.

Forget the boar, then.

The tooth was worn down, and chipped around the top edges. A molar, by the look of it, stained with blood. Not a young one, either.

There was something else in among the bloody earth. Too uniform to be a stone and too rounded to be a piece of dirt. Rocco plucked the object out of the blood and turned it over.

It was a metal button embossed with a number five. A child’s button? His blood ran cold at the implication. But the tooth went against that – it was definitely an adult’s.

He scanned the fields, feeling a familiar buzz building in his head: the signal which told him something was beginning; that something bad had happened here. If anyone had been killed or injured in the crash seen by Simeon, then Amiens hospital, less than twenty kilometres away, would soon provide the answer.

Failing that, he would need Rizzotti’s help. In the absence of a bigger budget, the on-loan doctor was the only person approaching a scientific presence the local police force had. Although he might not be able to make sense of this with his limited equipment and experience, he would be able to gather evidence to prove whether the blood was animal or human, although the teeth pretty much made that a given.

‘Lucas,’ Claude Lamotte called. His voice sounded odd. He was standing a couple of metres away, holding in his hand a fragment of curved glass that glinted in the weak sunlight. Then he picked up another fragment and walked over to join Rocco. He was holding the top of a bottle, with a piece of rag stuffed through it. Both pieces of glass were dark green, clearly from the same vessel. ‘There’s more fragments back there, in the grass,’ Claude said. ‘Could be what Simeon saw being thrown.’

Rocco wrapped the button in a scrap of paper and put it in his pocket, then took the bottle top with the piece of rag and sniffed. No smell. Yet the rag was wet. He touched it with his finger. Not oily. ‘It’s water.’

‘That’s a Molotov cocktail, that is,’ said Simeon knowingly, shuffling over to join them and lifting one leg to scratch at his groin. ‘Light the rag and chuck the bottle, the car goes up in flames. Pouf!’ He grinned, revealing a mouthful of discoloured teeth.

Rocco didn’t doubt him. The farmer was of an age where he would know; where men and women just like him would have learnt the art of sabotage against an invading foe; where a wine bottle filled with petrol was an easily sourced weapon and all it took to be useful was someone willing to get in close, light the rag and throw it.

‘Can you describe the car?’ he asked.

Simeon shrugged. ‘Fancy. Black. Shiny – like the ones they use in official processions. Citroën, I think. I’m better with horses, of course … I know about them.’

‘A DS?’ Claude suggested. ‘They’re used in processions – especially black ones. And funerals. There are none round here, though. Too expensive, and who wants to drive round looking like a funeral director – or a politician?’

Rocco shook his head as the buzz increased. So what they had was a truck ramming an official-looking car, and two men jumping out of the ditch and throwing pretend petrol bombs and firing guns. It prompted a thought. He turned to where Claude had picked up the glass.

‘Any shell cases?’

‘No. I thought about that. They must have picked them up … unless they used revolvers.’

‘They weren’t real, anyway.’

Rocco and Claude turned and looked at Simeon, who was scrubbing at his groin again like an old dog.

‘Say again?’ Rocco was trying not to imagine what was going on down there. The man looked as if he and hot water and soap were distant acquaintances.

‘Guns. I know guns, too. They weren’t firing live rounds. The sound wasn’t right. Too flat and dull, like damp fireworks.’

Make that pretend petrol bombs and blank rounds, thought Rocco. He said, ‘Did you see where they went afterwards?’

‘No. Like I told you, I was on my way back home with the horse. But I could hear them. Sound travels out here, you see; nothing to stop it. Wherever it was they went, they had a sick Renault to take with them. It sounded more like a tractor and kept banging, like there was something broken—’

‘Hey!’ Claude jumped in. ‘You didn’t say anything about it being a Renault before.’

‘Well, I only just realised, didn’t I? There’s a builder over towards Fonzet uses one just like it. Got it cheap off the military, he said.’ He nodded. ‘Renault. Bet you anything.’

Rocco shook his head. No bet. Camera, men, vehicles, fake petrol bombs and blank bullets, lots of blood and a tooth. On the surface it added up to nothing more improbable than a makeshift film set. He wasn’t sure but he had a feeling film-makers were supposed to get a licence for shooting scenes on public roads, even out here. It could soon be checked. And the blood might well turn out to be a simple accident; a stuntman who’d miscalculated and performed his final cascade.

Except, where were the film crew and equipment?