Adrian Magson - Death on the Rive Nord

October 1963 — the Somme Valley

Armand Maurat was in the presence of death. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t hear it… but it was there, sticking to him as relentlessly as the tail lights of the Berliet truck he was driving.

His stomach lurched as the narrow road dipped unexpectedly, catching him off guard. Outside the cab, a cold spray was being blasted across his windscreen by a solid, vengeful easterly, reducing visibility to a blur of trees and hedgerows and an occasional sign pointing to a remote village tucked away in the darkness.

He reached out and banged the radio perched on the dashboard. It responded with a hiss of static, but even that drifted and ebbed as the sound waves became blocked by a nearby hill. Cheap crap, he thought savagely. Bought under the counter at a transit warehouse outside Paris, the packaging had guaranteed high-quality music but delivered mostly mush — or worse, what passed for singing these days. Give him Aznavour any day, even Brel. Depressing son of a bitch, Brel; enough to make a weak man jump off a bridge. On a lonely drive in the dark, though, it suited his mood of isolation.

He’d been on the road for over fifteen hours straight so far; first heading from his home in Saint-Quentin, where he lived with his mother, to a transit depot beyond Dijon to pick up a load of car parts for an assembly plant near Amiens; then dropping further south to an isolated depot near Chalon-sur-Saone to pick up his second consignment. This part of his trip wasn’t going to be mentioned anywhere; no paperwork, no names, no records. Staying clear of major towns and bypassing areas of known police activity had put dozens of kilometres on the journey, but he was now curving westward towards Amiens and hadn’t much further to go. Then he could be shot of his special load and whatever misfortune they might have brought with them, and get back home.

His lips moved silently, subconsciously mouthing the instructions he’d been given. His face looked unhealthily drawn in the light from the instrument panel, and he shook his head periodically to counter the deadly, hypnotic beat of the wipers. Not that falling asleep at the wheel would be his worst problem; if he missed his mark, the reaction waiting for him when he didn’t make the delivery would make hurtling off this godforsaken stretch of tarmac the least of his worries.

He checked the time. Gone three. He was on schedule. There should have been a clear sky, according to the weather reports, heralding a mild frost and a clear day to follow. Good driving weather. A trucker’s weather if you didn’t mind concentrating for long stretches. But if there were any stars out there, they were hidden behind a dense layer of low cloud. He might as well have been in a dead landscape, with only the occasional farmhouse light showing through the gloom to indicate any signs of life beyond his cab.

He shivered and hit the demister switch. Thoughts of life or death served no purpose right now, and reminders of his own mortality were the last thing he needed. Welcome as the cash was, he knew he was ultimately playing with fire. The kind of people he was dealing with, if anything happened beyond his control, shit would follow as surely as Sundays.

He turned his head and spat the soggy remains of a Disque Bleu through a gap in the side window and longed for a raw marc — brandy — to wet his throat. A nice Calvados would be even better, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

The road dipped again past a narrow turning on his right. The sign said Vailly, a tiny hamlet too small to appear on his road maps, but one he’d been told to watch out for. Not long now. He began to ease off the accelerator, the engine noise diminishing from its clattering roar to a more subdued rumble, like it had sounded when he’d first bought it three years ago. A lot of oil had gone into it since then, and a lot of kilometres on the clock.

The ghostly sides of a barn loomed close on his left-hand side, a brief glimpse of posters advertising a motocross event plastered across the boards. Then a bend came up, and across the road the dark emptiness of a field caught momentarily in the headlights. He tapped the brakes and hauled on the wheel, the tyres skittering slightly on the wet, rippled surface. Too fast; he should have been down to forty kph and reading the road, not fantasising. He corrected the beginnings of a skid by increasing power slightly, then eased off as the road straightened. Felt a wash of relief overtake the hot and cold sweats that had broken out between his shoulder blades.

Behind him came a brief rumble and what sounded like a thin squeal, cut off abruptly. He ignored it.

Another sign flashed by, rough and home-made. Peche Privee 1 Km. Just past this, he’d been told. Eyes open and don’t be seen. Not that anybody sane would be fishing at this time of year in the middle of the night. Look out for the marker. Miss it and you might as well continue driving until nobody can find you again.

Ever.

A slim flash of white in the headlights, right on cue. A short wooden stake with a white triangle on top, driven into the verge. Meaningless to anyone else, it would be gone the moment he was done. He checked his mirror. Black as a priest’s underwear and just as forbidding. Looked again as something glittered in the distance, and felt the raw bite of fear.

Vehicle lights coming this way.

Yellow and close together, they looked faint, probably too much work for the car’s battery with the wipers and heater on as well. He swallowed his anxiety, telling himself it was most likely a farmer returning from market, driving on reflex after too much pastis. He wouldn’t remember what he’d seen in fifteen minutes, let alone come morning.

Maurat slowed and pulled into the gateway alongside the marker post, a familiar tortured moan echoing around him as the truck body flexed on its base. The brakes squealed, too loud in the night, and he winced. He sat and waited for the car, flexing his hands on the wheel, his heart racing. He felt nauseous. This wasn’t good. What if it wasn’t a farmer? What if, against all the odds in this middle-of-nowhere shitty landscape, it was a bored cop on patrol looking for trouble? No way he’d go by without asking what a truck was doing here at this time of night. Then the other’s lights flared and a beat-up Citroen 2CV rattled past like a bag of scrap iron, bouncing and weaving on the uneven surface, the driver’s face briefly visible in the flare of a cigarette lighter. He probably hadn’t even registered the truck’s presence.

Maurat’s heart was like a runaway drumbeat and his mouth was tinder-dry. He wasn’t cut out for this business, no matter how good the money. Time he said no and meant it. If they let him.

As soon as the 2CV’s tail lights were gone he switched off his engine and took out a pair of cheap flashlights. Opened the door and jumped down from the cab; stood for a moment to let his legs regain their strength, the rain biting-cold on his cheeks. He walked to the tailgate and flicked one of the flashlights over the grass verge for a second, checking the terrain. The beam caught a wooden gate, just as he’d been told, before being lost in a dark void. But he caught a brief glimpse of metal bars. Some kind of barrier set in concrete; a parapet glistening wetly. Beyond it he could hear the gurgle of water pouring from a run-off, and a cow grumbled in protest at the intrusion before stomping away into the night.

He reached up and opened the back, then banged on the side of the truck’s panel with the flat of his hand.

‘ Allez!’ he barked, his voice tinged with urgency, before remembering words from long ago when he was a conscript in North Africa. ‘ Yalla! Emshi!’ Hurry. Go away. Poor bastards, he wanted to add, but didn’t have the words.