Adrian Magson - Death on the Pont Noir

Tasker and the others had stood and watched him go, and he’d waved cheerfully and called out, ‘Bump into you later, boys!’

He’d enjoyed knowing that they could have no idea of just how prophetic his words were going to be.

Moments after Tasker and Biggs had thrown themselves back in the DS, Calloway was revving the car and hurtling away from the bank, the engine screaming in protest. Tasker let him get on with it and reloaded the sawn-off, leaning out of the window to fire two parting shots at the front door of the bank to keep the third man’s head down. Then he sat back and swore repeatedly. He’d be glad to see the back of this shit town and shit country, and get back home to where he felt able to breathe.

‘What,’ said Calloway quietly, ‘the fuck happened back there?’ It was the first time Tasker had ever heard him swear. ‘And where’s the cash — and Jarvis?’

‘There ain’t no cash and Jarvis is dead. We were sold a pup.’ Tasker was breathing hard, the rush of adrenalin making his nerve ends jangle. He was trying to work out what had just happened, how such a simple job had gone belly up. ‘There wasn’t the money we were told about, and another mob was already there.’

‘Mob?’

‘Firm… crew… you know what I bloody mean. Frenchies.’

‘How?’

‘Because we were sent on a sucker job. Somebody’s going to pay dearly for this if it’s the last bloody thing I ever do!’ He dug in his pocket and took out two more cartridges, and sniffed at them as if they were a source of comfort.

Calloway seemed happy with that. ‘Fair enough. So, where are we headed — back to Calais?’

‘Not yet.’ Tasker had been toying with an idea for some time. It had taken root days ago, but had grown fast over the past few hours, fermenting in his mind and now tugging so urgently at his consciousness that he couldn’t let it go. ‘Soon, though.’

Rocco was the cause of all this. Had been from the very beginning, ever since he’d walked into that cell, revealing that he spoke English and even understood cockney slang, treating Tasker like a nobody, a gofer, and questioning Calloway first. That was right out of order.

He breathed deeply, his blood pressure rising the more he thought about it. Even dropping the suspicion of corruption on the big French cop hadn’t given Tasker the satisfaction he’d expected, not long-term. He knew his thinking was irrational, that he was on foreign soil and way out of his depth. But he didn’t care.

Because right now he had nothing to go back to. It was over. Ketch had seen to that. Ketch and his smooth-talking, number-crunching weasel, Brayne. They’d talked him and the others into a dead-end job — he didn’t need a degree in accountancy to know it, either. Not now. There were only so many ways the game could be played, and after years of using the distraction thing for their purposes, Tasker knew and recognised when he himself had become the distraction. It was the way things were. But he didn’t have to like it.

Before anything else, though, he had a score to settle over here. After that, well, he’d get back to the Smoke and make a couple of visits. He stroked the shortened barrels of the shotgun. He’d have to lose this one, but he’d soon get another just like it or better. No sweat.

Then they’d learn what it meant to have crossed George Tasker.

‘So where to?’

Tasker leant forward and picked up a road map of the area, found the place he wanted and stabbed it with a thick finger. It was back towards Amiens, but off to the east. ‘Here.’

Calloway glanced across, nodded and began looking for a turn to get them off the main road and double back. ‘Poissons-les-Marais? What’s there, then?’

‘Not what,’ said Tasker, rolling the two shotgun cartridges between his fingers. ‘More like who.’

Rocco was staring through a veil of tangled, bare branches at the bridge, half a kilometre away, and wondering what the hell he was doing here. He and Claude had found a spot where they could just see the bridge and the road leading over it, but where they were hidden from view by a clump of bushes. It wasn’t great but it was the best they could do at short notice.

He shivered and took a turn back and forth, trying to work some warmth back into his feet and lower legs. The air was bitingly cold and, just for the moment, clear, the earlier snow having turned by degrees to a miserable, grey sleet before dying out. But there was more on the way. The clouds looming overhead were heavy, grey and dough-like, waiting to dump their contents on the land below, and he wondered if a change in the weather might interrupt any attack plans. If there were any.

‘Where does that track lead?’ he said, stepping back alongside the passenger window. ‘The map doesn’t say.’

‘Nowhere. It’s just a track through the fields.’ Claude held up a hand, giving it some thought. ‘Actually, that’s not strictly true. If they drive carefully, they could reach a road at the other end — but that’s ten kilometres over rough ground. And after this weather?’ He pulled a face. ‘Unlikely. Hardly a quick getaway.’

‘So they’d be trapped.’ Rocco tensed as a dark shape approached the bridge, wobbling slightly on the road, bouncing on soft suspension. It was a dark-blue saloon with something strapped on the roof. A cupboard or a box — it was difficult to tell from here. The car trundled across the bridge and continued on down the road towards them, passing the proposed site of the new war monument and rattling past them without stopping.

‘Unless things went right and nobody saw them.’ Claude pursed his lips and eyed the car out of sight. ‘If they were cool-headed enough and had the right vehicle, I suppose they could do it.’ He grinned. ‘Unlikely now, though, huh? With us here.’

Rocco lifted a pair of binoculars off the back seat, focusing on the track beyond the shed. Nothing. No waiting truck, no motorbikes — another favoured form of transport for an attack — and no men. Just the shed, run-down and ready to fall over.

‘There aren’t many of those left,’ Claude told him, following his line of sight. ‘I’m amazed it’s lasted this long.’

‘It was locked tight by rust when I saw it, and full of farm rubbish. I thought it might be something they’d use, but I was wrong.’ Yet he felt sure he’d got the location right. The circumstances, the pointers, the confluence of the ramming idea, de Gaulle’s visit and the similarities of the sites… it had all been so clear. So obvious.

He swung the glasses back to the shed and stared hard, the rubber eyepieces pressed into his skin. It looked the same as it had the other day, so what was he worried about? The roof still stained with bird droppings, the wooden walls peppered with holes and the planking warped by the elements, the whole thing surrounded by a hovering grey mist, like a scene from a ghost film. Yet something was tugging at his mind, gently insistent. Something… different. What the hell was it? Or was he just desperate for something to show up that would prove he’d been right about this?

‘It’s an old cart shed,’ Claude continued chattily, showing his mastery of all things rural. ‘They were just big enough to take a hay cart. Take it in one end, unhitch the horse, fold up the shafts and close the door, take the horse out the other. Saved trying to reverse it in. The logic was impeccable.’

Rocco took his eyes off the road. Tried to follow through what Claude had said. ‘What are you saying?’ Then it hit him. ‘That shed has a back door?’ He hadn’t looked. It hadn’t occurred to him.

‘Yes. Same as the front. In one end, out the other. Why?’