Death on the Pont Noir - By Adrian Magson Page 0,1

the two men stepped closer, drew handguns and opened fire at point-blank range.

Three hundred metres away across the fields, a farmer named Simeon watched from behind his prized horse, a heavy grey percheron, as the sounds of gunshots drifted across on the breeze. He didn’t know what was going on, only that strangers were behaving like lunatics for no good reason. Probably Parisians, he thought, and spat on the ground. Too much money and time on their hands, mostly. Thought they were God’s gift. He recognised a film camera when he saw one, though. It was parked on a tripod by a clump of spindly pine trees, although if it was working, it was doing so all by itself, because there was nobody with it. The truck had barrelled along the narrow track by the trees, passing the camera by no more than a couple of metres before slamming into the Citroën with a loud bang.

Simeon decided it was none of his business. As for the gunshots, he valued his horse too highly to risk it being hit by a stray bullet. He gathered up the lead rein, urging the animal on with a gentle clicking noise. Time to be gone, instinct told him, heading for dead ground where he couldn’t be easily seen. Madness like this was best left to its own company. He’d come back later when they’d gone. Or maybe call the local garde champêtre, Lamotte. Let him deal with it.

Back on the road, Tasker had finally calmed down and was pulling on a cigarette, the smoke billowing around his head as he watched Calloway inspecting the damaged coachwork.

‘Not too serious.’ Calloway patted the panel. ‘Thanks to the welding. We were lucky, though.’ He turned and flicked some fragments of broken bottle to one side with his foot, gesturing at the Renault. ‘Any faster and we’d have been toast.’

‘It worked, didn’t it?’ The truck driver called defensively, and jumped down with a grunt from the cab. Jack Fletcher was big across the shoulders and spreading around the midsection, with a face that had seen a few too many hard fights and late nights. Alongside Calloway, he made the former race driver look slim and boyish. He held a match to a roll-up. The loosely packed tobacco caught with a burst of flame, and he sucked hungrily, consuming a third of its length in one drag. His voice had the scratchy quality of a heavy smoker. ‘Came at you square on, just like I was told.’ He huddled inside his coat, shivering against the cold breeze knifing across the flat terrain. It brought with it a metallic smell of standing water and cold, wet earth.

Tasker nodded grudgingly, his fury gone as suddenly as it had arrived. ‘Yeah, it worked. But you bloody near killed us in the process, you ponce. You didn’t need to hit us that hard.’ He dropped the cigarette on the road and stamped on it, watching the two men in camouflage smocks gathering up the glass debris to throw in the ditch. As he bent to pick up the cigarette butt, he froze in a half crouch. ‘Christ,’ he whispered. ‘Where the hell did he spring from?’

‘Who?’ Fletcher turned, and saw the big man staring beneath the truck.

‘Him.’ Tasker pointed under the rear wheels. ‘What’s left of him, anyway.’

Fletcher squatted for a look and uttered an oath. Lying under the rear wheels was a man’s body, twisted and torn and covered in grass, grease and dirt. It had been rolled beneath the wheels and dragged, somehow managing to become caught up in the chassis, where it now hung like a collection of bloody rags.

Fletcher stood up, his face grey. He’d seen bodies before, in varying states of disrepair. But this was different. Unexpected. ‘What do we do?’

‘We get rid, what do you think?’ Tasker whistled for the two bottle throwers to come and help, and stood back as they wormed their way beneath the truck. They untangled the dead man’s limbs until the body flopped onto the stubby grass.

‘He must have been on the verge,’ said Calloway, remembering. He glanced at Fletcher. ‘Didn’t you see him?’

‘Of course I bloody didn’t.’ Fletcher lit another cigarette. ‘I was busy at the time, remember? Didn’t you clock him?’

‘No. I thought I caught something in the background, but I couldn’t make out what it was.’ He bent and stared at the body. ‘Looks like a tramp, poor bastard.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Smells like one, too. Maybe he