Death on the Pont Noir - By Adrian Magson Page 0,48

to the lip. It wasn’t quite so far down at this point as it was in the centre of the bridge, but still dizzying enough.

At the bottom was a gleam of water; a natural pond formed by nature, its surface as forbidding as black glass, the edges an indistinct mass of weeds and reeds.

He tried not to think about what would happen to any car plunging down right here, or the occupants trapped inside.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Bellin’s scrapyard after the rain looked even more miserable than before. The gates looked shoddy and sad, dripping wet, and the surrounding fence was as unwelcoming as a mausoleum.

Rocco stopped his car just short of the entrance and climbed out.

The DS was somehow at the heart of this whole thing, he was certain of it. As Desmoulins had said, nobody orders the scrapping of an expensive piece of machinery like the DS merely because of a dent in one side – not even extravagant film-makers with their investors’ cash to spare.

The gates were unchained.

He slipped through without touching the corrugated cladding, and instantly felt the sour graveyard atmosphere closing around him, the piles of dead cars and torn metal like jagged, rusting monuments to man’s wasteful extravagance.

He remembered the dog barking last time. There was none of that now; no signs of occupation, no banging or grinding of machinery. But guard dogs didn’t always signal in advance that they were coming. They just arrived and began chewing bits out of intruders.

He took out the MAB 38 and checked the magazine.

‘Bellin?’ There was no echo; his voice simply vanished, soaked up by the years of dirt and oil and scrap metal.

An ancient ship’s bell was hanging from a post near the cabin door. He rattled the rope and set off a deep clanging noise which seemed to reverberate through the piles of metal like a mad symphony, flushing a clutch of small birds into the air.

But no human reaction.

He checked the cabin, which was unlocked. It was cramped and squalid, doubling as an office and shop, every available centimetre packed with rescued mirrors, lamps, steering wheels, hubcaps and other unnameable car parts from hundreds of different vehicles. A man’s coat was draped across a chair, the cloth once good but now worn and shiny and ragged around the hem. A mug of chocolate stood on a small desk, a thin tail of steam curling into the air.

He checked the phone. Still working.

Back outside, he stood listening. He thought he’d heard something. Or maybe it had been the breeze sighing through the twisted towers of metal, setting up a mournful whining sound like souls in torment. If Bellin was here, he was keeping very quiet or was already buried under a pile of his own scrap.

Unless the dog had eaten him.

He walked through the yard, stepping carefully over patches of oil and shimmering multicoloured patches of spilt fuel. Shards of discarded metal sprouted like bright, spiky weeds amid a carpet of windscreen fragments, the whole scene resembling a madman’s sordid, glistening patchwork.

He rounded a pile of battered door panels at the very rear of the yard. Bellin was sitting alongside a wrecked tractor sprouting weeds from its wheels, its location and condition a sign of just how old the place was. He was sucking nervously on a roll-up twisted like a stick of pasta and stained by oily fingers. He appeared indifferent to Rocco’s arrival, but there was no mistaking the pallor of a man terrified out of his mind.

Rocco said, ‘You’re a hard man to find.’ He glanced round at the walls of metal. It was like a bunker of junk. Except that there was only the one way out.

Bellin eyed the gun. ‘What the hell do you want?’ he whispered. He dropped the remains of the cigarette on the ground between his feet. It joined several others already laying there, some dug into the earth by his heel.

‘I’d like another chat. Is the dog around?’

A shake of the head. ‘They’re gone.’

‘Gone? Who?’

‘Jacques and Bruno – who do you think? The two you saw before.’ He scrabbled in his shirt pocket and pulled out a flat tin. Prising the lid off with a filthy, curled thumbnail, he extracted another roll-up. He snapped the lid shut and put the tin away, then took out a lighter and fired up the cigarette, dragging in a lungful of smoke. ‘That’s your doing; you drove them away.’

‘Maybe they got a better offer. What about the dog?’ He was becoming unnerved by