The layout was similar enough to where the ramming had happened, but he could see no reason why anyone, least of all the president, would need to travel along it. It was in the middle of nowhere, for God’s sake. Just a boring, straight, little-used piece of tarmac lost in a patchwork of fields made famous only by history.
He bent closer. Faint lettering showed against the bridge.
Pont Noir. Black bridge.
He turned and checked the office. A uniformed officer was working quietly across the far side. He was a long-service member named Berthier, consigned to desk duties. If anyone knew the area, he would.
‘What’s the Pont Noir?’ Rocco asked him.
The man looked blank for a moment, his concentration broken. Then, ‘Ah, Pont Noir. You’ve never been there?’
‘No.’
‘It’s like… a war relic — a site.’
‘A memorial?’
‘Not yet — but it’s going to be. It’s a deep gully, some say formed centuries ago. They uncovered a number of military remains there a couple of years ago, then a lot more just recently. French, mostly, but British, Indians and Australians, too. Like the League of Nations. They think it could have been a field hospital from the First World War, dug into the gully as protective cover. A team of university archaeologists are out there on and off, along with British and Australian volunteers. They’ve been trying to get it excavated and declared a national monument. It’s not the sort of place to take your girlfriend, though.’
‘Why?’
The man hesitated, wary of causing offence. ‘It’s… creepy. Always chilly, even in summer. It’s like there’s no life to the place… like the warmth has been sucked out of it.’ He shrugged, embarrassed. ‘Sorry, but you’d have to go there to see what I mean.’
‘Who would know most about it?’
‘There’s a British War Graves Commission office in Arras — they’ve been monitoring and running the excavations. But the local historical society would be involved, too, and the national monuments office in Paris.’
War graves. Rocco remembered John Cooke, the British gardener who worked in the area. He’d met him on his first day in Poissons, when he’d found a dead woman in the British military cemetery just outside the village. The man had been helpful and calm in the face of what had been a daunting discovery.
He checked his watch. Just after eight. Where the hell had time gone? He looked up the number of the Arras office and dialled, and immediately got through to a superintendent named Blake, who spoke fluent French.
‘The site was uncovered not long ago after a landfall,’ the man told him. ‘A number of remains were found, and it was initially thought to have been a roadside burial site, maybe near a field hospital, which they hadn’t had time to signpost during a battle. That happened quite a lot, and sites easily got lost. At first it seemed to be mainly British and Australians, then a researcher in London found a reference written on a battlefield map, so they began digging a bit wider. What they discovered was a whole network of graves up to a hundred and fifty strong.’
‘So it’s a cemetery,’ said Rocco.
‘Not quite, Inspector. Partly because of the location in the gully, and the difficulty of accessing it for visitors and the likelihood of further subsidence, we’re in the process of moving the remains to a site nearby, clear of the road. But there are… sensitivities about the area.’
‘In what way?’
‘Some want the road and bridge closed permanently as a mark of respect to the dead. It’s actually not used much and they say it would be easy to use alternative routes. But plans have been put forward by the Australian and British Governments, countries which have the majority of dead on the site, for a memorial to be erected nearby, and for the road to be kept open as a sign of unity and determination.’
‘What’s the likely outcome?’
‘Oh, I have no doubt their proposal will go ahead. We’ve already marked out a potential site with access for visitors. And approval has already come from the highest level, in fact.’
‘Meaning?’
‘The president himself.’ His voice dropped. ‘In fact — and this is top secret, you understand — he’s expressed a wish to make a private visit when he’s next in the area, as a sign of respect. As a military man himself, he likes the idea of a memorial. All we need to know now is when that will be.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Rocco thanked Blake and put the phone down. He turned back to the map. His head was buzzing and he suddenly wanted a drink. Unwise, under the circumstances, and not a good idea generally, although it would certainly dull the enormity of the idea forming in his mind. But that was the last thing he wanted to do.
A war memorial in the making, in the middle of nowhere, with de Gaulle’s full approval and an expressed desire to visit the site without public ceremony or the customary press entourage. Suddenly Saint-Cloud’s briefing and what Massin had told him about the attack on the official car was assuming a whole different slant.
If Blake knew, why hadn’t Saint-Cloud mentioned it? Or was Blake merely playing up the possibility to highlight the presence of the burial site?
As he stared at the map, he felt the hairs move on the back of his neck. It wasn’t just the road or where it led to that mattered. It was something else. Faintly drawn, as if the draftsman had been unsure about whether it existed or not, a thin line met the road at right angles.
It was a track, coming out of the fields immediately adjacent to the bridge. A single track, probably unsurfaced, and meeting the road immediately opposite a point where the gully was at its deepest.
He grabbed a sheet of white paper and a pencil from a desk nearby and slapped it over the map where the ramming had occurred. Drawing quick lines on the paper, he sketched a rough outline of the track and the road, adding a circle to show the conifers where the camera had been stationed and where Simeon’s mysterious watcher had been standing.
Then he slid the paper across and placed it over the area of the Pont Noir, where the road crossed the bridge… and a track came out of nowhere at right angles. The only thing missing was the clump of pine trees.
Other than that, it was almost identical.
Rocco felt his heart pounding. There were times — not often, but rewardingly common enough — when idle thoughts, coupled with facts and suspicions, turned to absolute certainty. And right now was one of those times.
He picked up the telephone. It was time to call Saint-Cloud. If anyone could confirm the exact itinerary and timing for the president to visit the Pont Noir, it would be his security chief.
Then he put down the receiver.
He couldn’t think why, but instinct made him decide against talking to Saint-Cloud just yet. He stared instead at the map, and his overlay of the road and track.
If he understood the map details and the descriptions correctly, the road ran across the bridge, which spanned a drop into a deep gully. Beyond the bridge lay open fields, a smoothly rolling expanse of Somme countryside, no doubt dotted with the trademark white blemishes of former shell-holes and trenches so common in the area. No other roads, no houses or farm buildings. Anyone driving along it had a clear run to the main road three kilometres away. If they made it that far, they were away and free.
He shivered. He was thinking like an assassin.
His eyes were drawn back to the bridge. To the track.
He was looking at a kill zone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
