Death on the Pont Noir - By Adrian Magson Page 0,56

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