Saucissonnage

Last week we saw lots of police cars, loaded with heavily armed filth, heading in the direction of Juan les Pins. Neither of us knew what was up, so at the next choir practice I asked whether any of the local singers there could explain what had been going on.

A soprano, coincidentally a town council big shot, told me that though she couldn't explain what we had seen, she could explain a big shoot out the night before. "Where?", I asked. "La Badine", she replied, along with a tally of those wounded and those at death's door.

The day after choir practice, I headed for the public library and began looking through Nice Matin. Sure enough, there had been a serious fusillade between cops and robbers only about two hundred metres from where we used to live, on a really peaceful street where nothing ever happens.

A score of anti-gang police heavies had staked out a couple of cars parked suspiciously, and when the occupants got wind of being observed, they drove at the police road block, knocking two policemen over and injuring them. The numerous remaining colleagues amongst the BRI stormtroopers did not like this at all, and opened up with everything they had. The speeding car was comprehensively creamed, along with its four occupants, who are now in intensive care.

Details about the chappies seriously ballasted with police lead are still meagre, but apparently it was a gang of 'traveling folk' (the official euphemism here for gypsies from Eastern Europe) who specialised in saucissonnage. Luckily I was in the public library when I read this, for I was able to ascertain that far from being something to do with salami manufacture, this saucissonnage was a criminal technique consisting of forcibly entering rich people's homes and torturing the occupants until they revealed where their money and valuables were. Apart from guns, the riddled car contained handcuffs and a plentiful supply of that wonderful DIY resource, duct tape, which would make fantastic gags, but would be very painful at the moment of being removed. The gang had apparently carried out over a dozen raids of this kind in the département, which is why the police were there in such numbers. Glad I wasn't walking there at the time.