men after him would give up. Or that Rocco would act as a handy decoy.
The thought was accompanied by a car window dissolving right next to him. Rocco dived into the open body of a truck cab, bouncing off the bench seat and disturbing a mound of broken windscreen glass and scraps of metal. He waited, lying on his back, the gun pointing at the source of the shot.
Then he realised: there had been no sound. The gunman was using a silenced weapon.
He slid on through the cab and out the other side, dropping to the ground and waiting.
Whoever was out there, he thought, was being extra careful not to make any sound. Whoever was out there had done this before.
He breathed out, straining his ears. It was just another kind of jungle, he told himself. Only not soft and hot and fragrant like the last one he’d been in. This one was hard and unforgiving, cold and full of sharp edges. But still a jungle.
Then a dense shadow rose from a patch of gloom about ten metres away. A man, squat and heavy across the shoulders, wearing a short jacket. Something glinted in his hand. A gun with a long barrel. He was looking along the row, not moving.
Rocco held his breath. One sudden movement and the gunman would see him. But the man seemed fixated on a spot further down. When Rocco looked, turning his head with infinite care, he saw a familiar shape coming along the row towards him.
It was Bellin, and he was heading straight towards the gunman.
The gunman moved, sinking to his heels, waiting. He evidently thought there was a risk that Bellin was armed, and was going to take him as he stepped by. The movement put him behind the cover of a car bonnet, where the chances of hitting him from Rocco’s position were virtually nil.
Rocco reached behind him and felt around until his hand fastened on a hubcap lying on the ground. Time to play the man at his own game. He pulled his arm back and flicked the hubcap into the sky. It sailed in a smooth trajectory, catching the air for a moment before starting to fall. The gunman must have caught the sound of Rocco’s movement or seen a flash from the hubcap out of the corner of his eye. He spun round, pointing first at Rocco’s position, then spinning again as the hubcap landed with a deep boom on a car roof just behind him. Two flashes of vivid light lit him up as he fired, each shot no more than a ragged cough.
Bellin, now just a few paces away, stopped and turned with a yelp, then ran. The gunman, moving smoothly, fired twice more after him, then jumped to his feet.
Rocco whistled. The gunman spun towards him with a grunt of surprise, and almost without aiming, fired twice. The first shot fanned Rocco’s face, the second went harmlessly away to one side.
Rocco fired twice, and saw his second shot hit the man in his free arm. He staggered and grunted, then recovered, turned and ran. Seconds later Rocco thought he heard a grunt, followed by a noise like a slap. Then silence.
Then a car started up outside the yard and moved away up the track at speed.
It left behind a heavy silence.
Rocco ran towards the gates. As he rounded the final corner, a flicker of movement came from inside a wrecked truck cab. He swung towards it, levelling his gun, his finger tightening on the trigger. Then he breathed out and relaxed: a strip of fabric caught on the breeze. False alarm.
When he got to the cabin, he stopped.
Bellin was lying face down near the door. His blood was soaking the ground, adding to the oil and other fluids in the soil.
Rocco turned him over onto his back.
He’d been shot in the chest and head, running towards the cabin.
Rocco let out a long breath. A second gunman had been waiting.
By the time Rocco had found a phone at a nearby shop and called for backup and for Rizzotti to come out, he was feeling sticky with humidity and depressed by Bellin’s senseless death. Whatever the man had done, he hadn’t deserved that. But then, gangland-style killings rarely had much to do with sense and only sometimes carried a hint of the rational.
He met Desmoulins at the gates and got him to seal off and make a detailed search of the cabin. He didn’t expect to find anything, but maybe Bellin had been more cautious than he’d given him credit for.
He returned to the station, where he filled out a report. It made grim reading, not least because he felt he’d failed, as the only policeman on the spot and one who’d not made an arrest. He made a notation about having wounded the gunman, suggesting that hospitals in the Paris region be made aware that they report to Amiens any patient being treated for a gunshot wound to the arm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
‘I need to go to England. To Scotland Yard.’
Rocco was in early next morning, and went straight to Massin’s office. After another fitful night’s sleep listening to the fouines play, and going over and over in his mind the events at the scrapyard, he had decided on a course of action; but it needed Massin’s cooperation, something he couldn’t entirely guarantee.
Massin looked up from the papers he was studying, and sat back, eyeing Rocco with a dour expression. ‘Do you, indeed? Does it have anything to do with your current caseload?’
‘Actually, yes. Partly.’
There was a flicker of interest. ‘Go on.’
Rocco explained about the burnt-out truck with the body in the back, and the Citroen DS found in Bellin’s scrapyard, followed by Bellin’s execution. ‘I believe there may be a link between those vehicles and the Englishmen who wrecked the Canard Dore.’ He began to explain about the car and Bellin’s description of the driver, but Massin held up a hand to stop him. He picked up a sheet of paper from his in tray.
‘I have Dr Rizzotti’s report. It’s very detailed. A fake camera, an English cigarette under the mat. But why these men? You have no proof that they were involved in the fake ramming incident. And you still have no proof that it actually happened, beyond some farmer’s early morning ramblings.’
‘There’s the blood at the scene and we have a dead body. Two dead bodies,’ he amended, ‘if we count Bellin.’
‘The first burnt beyond recognition. I doubt even the miracles of modern science will prove who it was.’
‘Possibly not. But I think the dead man — a tramp named Pantoufle — happened to be at or near the scene. It was on his usual route and it never varied, winter, summer or spring. I don’t know if he died by accident or was killed deliberately. Either way, they burnt his body to conceal his death and prevent recognition.’
‘Buttons. Is that the sum total of your clues?’ Massin made it sound as if Rocco were grasping at straws.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s not much, is it? And you still can’t tie the Englishmen to the truck or the DS. Not definitely.’
‘No. Not yet.’ Rocco fought to keep a hold on his impatience. He felt he was fighting a losing battle, but refused to give way to Massin’s open scepticism. He doubted the commissaire had ever followed a clue in his life; had never felt the thrill of a case building out of virtually nothing nor ever felt the clarion call of a chase. ‘They were in the Amiens area at the same time,’ he pointed out. ‘Five men with no valid explanation for being here. And I recognised the smell of Calloway’s aftershave from the damaged DS. It wasn’t easy to forget.’
‘You noticed a man’s cologne?’
‘In a place where the customary fragrance is sump oil and burnt metal, it stood out.’ He wasn’t prepared to let it go. ‘They set fire to a dead man’s body and tried to hide the evidence; normal people don’t do that.’
‘Is that your argument?’ Massin threw a hand in the air. ‘You think these men, who trashed a local bar, are some kind of criminal group who also killed a tramp while pretending to make a film? If it’s the same men — and I say that with great emphasis — they appear to have some influence in the British Parliament, for God’s sake. Enough to get them set free!’
‘Exactly my point.’ Rocco kept his face straight. ‘How many ordinary people have that privilege? I don’t. Do
