Death on the Pont Noir - By Adrian Magson Page 0,111

that distant battlefield – even Rocco would be able to understand that indignity, no matter what the reason – but he was forced to recognise that he had been weak at the wrong moment when he should have been strong. For Rocco’s sake and his own.

He turned to leave, walking past the cabinet Saint-Cloud had been emptying. As he did so, he noticed a folded map in the very bottom of the drawer. It was of a stretch of open countryside, the detail too small to be certain of its location, but clearly a rural area. A red mark had been made on the map, drawing his eye. Next to it was a heavy dark line beneath two words he had come to recognise all too well … but only in the last twenty-four hours.

Pont Noir.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

‘In the name of God, he’s got to be down there somewhere. And where’s Alix?’

Rocco said nothing. Claude was talking to himself and breathing heavily. But it wasn’t from the climb; his concerns for his daughter, Alix, were growing by the minute, and so far they had seen no sign of her or Tasker.

After hearing the shot earlier, Rocco, Claude, Desmoulins and Godard’s men had spread out through the village, trying to determine where it had come from. But sound behaved oddly among the cluster of houses, and nobody could venture a definite origin without some element of doubt. It was enough for Rocco to order everyone to stay back. The last thing he wanted was to give Tasker any easy targets.

Working on the basis that Tasker knew where he lived, Rocco and Claude had made their way up to the grotto to St Paul, which stood on a hill overlooking the village. A man-made cave attended by a statue of the Virgin Mary and three angels, the grotto was rarely used now but gave an ideal vantage point of the area around Rocco’s house.

If Tasker had made his way down the lane, there were few places of concealment and it should be easy enough to spot him from here.

But so far there was nothing. Nothing, that is, Rocco realised with a feeling of dread, other than the body of a man lying in the middle of the lane. Dressed in workman’s blues and a heavy canvas trench coat, he was fifty metres away from Rocco’s house. A bicycle lay nearby, one wheel spinning slowly. He must have been riding down the lane and had been unlucky enough to bump into Tasker. That had been the origin of the gunshot.

Rocco scanned the body through a pair of binoculars. There was no way of telling from here whether he was alive or dead. What he actually wanted to do was charge down there with the Walther in his hand and make Tasker break cover. But apart from the danger to Alix and probably Mme Denis, that would be a short form of suicide. Instead, he clamped down on his impatience and worked on figuring out how to winkle the Englishman from wherever he was hiding.

He saw movement. At first he thought it was a trick of the light caused by the haze of smoke from chimney fires drifting across the village. But it was the man in the lane stirring. He looked around, then rolled quickly away to the cover of a farm building, where he sat shaking his head.

‘It’s old Antoine,’ said Claude, seeing the man’s face. ‘He lives in Danvillers. He comes here once a week for supplies.’

‘It’s his lucky day, then,’ Rocco observed.

‘Really? How do you make that out?’

‘Because he’s still alive.’

The old man was studying his canvas coat with obvious consternation. The front looked torn, but the heavy fabric must have resisted the worst of Tasker’s gunshot. Rocco glanced towards the village square, where his Traction stood across the road, blocking any exit. Godard’s men were visible, ferrying people out of the way, gradually drawing them out of their houses to reduce the chances of Tasker latching onto potential hostages.

‘Lucas – there!’ Claude grabbed his shoulder and pointed. There was movement at the rear of Rocco’s house. Two figures appeared, one slight, the other tall and bulky, imposing, even at this distance.

It was Tasker. And Alix. The Englishman towered over her with one big hand clamped on her shoulder.

Then he brought his other hand into view, and Rocco’s gut went cold. In his free hand he was holding the stubby shape of a sawn-off shotgun or lupara as it was known