Death on the Pont Noir

Chapter FIFTY-EIGHT



In Amiens, Commissaire Massin put down the phone from talking to Captain Santer and drew a deep breath. He had a sudden urge to be sick.

The story Santer had just told him had confirmed his wildest fears, and put him in the worst kind of dilemma. He was now in possession of numerous anecdotes, suppositions and allegations, all pointing towards a conspiracy inside the presidential security apparatus. A conspiracy to assassinate France’s head of state.

He could barely believe it. Yet it was all so simple. And most of what he had heard would be sufficient for any ordinary man to find impossible to explain away, such was the collection of facts.

But Colonel Jean-Philippe Saint-Cloud was about as far from being an ordinary man as a person could get. He had the ear of the president and his colleagues, he was in the confidence of the highest men in the Ministry of the Interior, he worked hand in glove with the most influential members of the country’s security apparatus. His word carried weight and authority that was almost unrivalled anywhere.

In a word, he was untouchable.

Or was he?

Massin weighed up the risk of doing nothing; of sitting here and accepting that he had insufficient hard evidence to take action; that Saint-Cloud’s word and position and background trumped anything and everything he had heard so far. Sitting here would be easy. Forgetting what he’d heard would soon go away, brushed beneath the carpet of quiet convenience protecting the state apparatus.

But he knew that he wouldn’t forget, and neither would Rocco. And instinct told him that everything he’d heard was true and that his conclusions could not be faulted: Colonel Saint-Cloud, the president’s chief security officer, had conspired out of a sense of fury and resentment to kill de Gaulle, using a disparate chain of disenchanted ex-soldiers, OAS killers, English gangsters and men hired by the Paris gang lord, Patrice Delarue.

It sounded crazy, even now. Yet impossible to ignore. But there was something else driving Massin; something almost intangible that would never find its way into any court of law, because it would be viewed with ridicule and derision. Except by him.

He would never be able to forget the insults Saint-Cloud had thrown at him as long as the man walked free.

The telephone rang, the harsh jangle unsettling his nerves. He ignored it. Most likely the Ministry or one of any number of people with a drum to beat.

Massin stood up and straightened his uniform. Picked up his revolver and went to the door. Pulled it open.

Colonel Saint-Cloud was standing outside.