Death on the Pont Noir - By Adrian Magson Page 0,89

got out that he’d talked to the police. To speed the photographer’s thinking, Nialls leant close and said softly, ‘But if you do, I’ll have to let you go immediately, won’t I? Then you’re on your own. And it’s cold and dark out there, Skelton. Very dark.’

Skelton blinked rapidly. ‘I’ve got no choice, have I?’

‘Put like that – no, you bloody don’t. Now start talking, chapter and verse.’

Three hundred and fifty kilometres away, in a smoke-filled bar near Belleville in the north-east of Paris, Marc Casparon was having second thoughts about the wisdom of what he was doing.

He’d found his way here on the recommendation of a contact from his days on the force. He’d ordered a light beer to clear his head while waiting for a man named Susman, who claimed to have an inside link with a hard-core student group calling themselves Red Machine. Opposed to almost anything de Gaulle proposed or did, they were more than a bunch of activist malcontents, having shown themselves capable of violence in street marches, rapidly escalating to organised raids on opposition groups. Now they were rumoured to have picked up some financial backing. It was a worrying development. Rebellious students with no cash soon ran out of everything but hot air; those same students with access to funds were a whole different ball game.

He sipped his beer and reflected on how much time he had spent over the years waiting in late-night bars like this for contacts like Susman to show up. Too many, whatever it was – and not always with anything worth trading. It probably added up to a lot of wasted hours. But that was the life he’d chosen and at least Susman had always proven reliable. Well, fairly reliable. The man had a marijuana habit and sometimes behaved as if he had demons after him. He shook off the thoughts. At least now he was here by choice. It made him wonder how Lucas Rocco was holding up. The news of the investigator’s suspension had travelled quickly, but few believed it; every cop worth his salt got accusations flung at him at least once in his career. It was part of the job and didn’t mean there was any truth to it. And nothing he’d heard led him to believe Rocco was corrupt. Some cops were and he could call their names to mind. But not Rocco; he’d stake his life on it.

He saw movement at the door, and a face appeared, eyes scanning the room through the glass. Chubby, white, moustache, lank hair. Not a face he recognised. Hard eyes, though, like flints. Another man crowded behind him, almost a carbon copy, but bigger. Their eyes met.

Caspar’s survival instincts kicked in. He glanced at the clock above the bar. Susman was thirty minutes overdue. Where the hell had time gone? He’d been daydreaming. He sipped his beer like a man with time to kill, but the training he’d gone through was already kicking in, along with all the hints and tricks he’d picked up over the years of operating undercover. You never, never waited longer than ten minutes for a meet, no matter what. When the agreed time plus ten went by, you got out fast and reassessed the situation. Contacts lived for the small cash payments you handed out and the power that trading secret information gave them. If they were late, it was because they weren’t coming. Simple as that.

This wasn’t good. He’d pushed someone too hard, asked one too many questions; touched a nerve at the wrong moment.

It was time to go.

He left his beer on the bar and wandered towards the back, pausing to watch a game of baby-foot in one corner. The two contestants were drunk, spinning the players enthusiastically with no hope of hitting anything. He clapped one of them on the shoulder and shouted encouragement, then stepped casually through the rear door and hurried along a narrow corridor.

As he did so, he heard a volley of voices near the street door, and someone shouted an objection. Then there was the sound of a fist smacking something fleshy.

As he exited the back door into a yard and ran past the entrance to the pissoirs, he was surprised to see Susman standing in the shadows, beckoning to him.

‘Where the hell were you?’ he said, and dragged Susman along with him. The man was overweight and soft-looking, dressed in a white shirt and dark trousers from his job as a waiter at