Julie grimaced. “Finish your dessert.”
“Not hungry anymore.”
Julie paid the bill. She counted the money she had left. Less than four thousand francs. How fast it went!
“Come on,” she said.
“Where to?”
“Let’s go.”
They wandered through the town. It was market day. The center of the little place was completely clogged with crowds of people and multicolored stalls. Julie bought the boy an ice cream. She was vaguely looking for a bus station. Was there even a bus station? At last, on a sort of circular avenue, near an empty café, she came upon a blue post bearing the words COACH STOP. No timetable was in evidence. Map in hand, taking her bearings by the sun, the girl tried to work out which way buses stopping there would be headed. At that moment a black Simca 1500 passed by, and through its open back window Julie saw Coco looking straight at her.
21
They had left the Rover at the Orly West parking lot.
“Wait for me,” said Thompson to the two brothers once they were in the terminal. “Wait for me. I’m going to see if there’s not a message for me.”
He disappeared briefly and returned hunched over, carefully tearing up a slip of paper. Coco and Nénesse were looking around the terminal with curiosity, concentrating chiefly on the legs of stewardesses. They both wore cheap slate-gray suits and checked shirts. Each carried a small suitcase containing a change of underwear and a gun.
“The girl,” said Thompson, “has been almost nabbed twice.”
“That a message from your client?”
The Englishman nodded. His eyes had horrible dark circles under them and the edges of his mouth were white.
“The police just missed her at a hotel where she spent the night. Then seemingly she caused a scandal at a hot gospel meeting a hundred kilometers away later in the morning. She’s been reported seen in other regions, in Rouen, in the Alps-but that’s perfectly impossible.”
“It’s always like that with regular citizens,” sneered Coco. “They see evil everywhere.”
“Your client,” said Nénesse, “he has his ear to the ground.”
“He stays informed,” said Thompson with a sigh. “Come on.”
The three men went on foot to the far end of the airfield. A few corporate and charter aircraft stood there, near a gray temporary building. Some young men in short-sleeved shirts were playing boule on the grass. Thompson hailed one of them.
“Finish up without me, fellows,” said the man to the other players.
“Where are you going?”
“Lyon.”
Thompson waited until they were seated in the plane then leant over to the pilot.
“Actually, I’m not certain that we are going to Lyon,” he said. “I need to get as close as possible to Boën, between Roanne and Saint-Étienne.”
The pilot scratched his head. He was dark, with brown eyes, a crew cut, and a lively, healthful mien.
“There’s Villeneuve, near Feurs,” he said. “That’s the closest. Otherwise, farther south, you have the Saint-Étienne airfield, which is actually at Andrézieux.”
“None of that means much to me. Let’s take off anyway. I’ll take a look at the map.”
The pilot put on his earphones and sunglasses with nylon frames and exchanged cabalistic signals with a mechanic. The engines sputtered into life. The aircraft had two of them. It was a yellow-and-red machine, quite graceful though a little garish, with scarlet nacelles on either wing that probably housed reserve fuel tanks. A Cessna 421. The cabin had room for six passengers, comfortable seats complete with armrests and ashtrays. The grass outside lay down flat in the prop wash. The twin-engine plane went into motion, maneuvering on the tarmac. The pilot chattered into his radio. The craft took up its holding position, brakes on.
“At Orly,” the pilot confided to Thompson, “it’s always a bitch on account of the commercial traffic.”
He gabbled into his microphone. The brakes were off. The aircraft raced over the concrete for the longest time, then tipped up and took off. Thompson rejoined the brothers aft. His color was greenish, his eyes half closed.
“I’ve never been up in a plane before,” said Coco.
Thompson was consulting his maps, marking places with a gold mechanical pencil. He stepped away for a moment, went into the lavatory, and vomited in an almost absentminded way; he was getting used to his condition.
Meanwhile the brothers were in ecstasies at seeing the earth from the air.
When Thompson emerged from the lavatory, his mouth dry, he went and shouted into the pilot’s ear, “At Villeneuve, could I easily hire a car?”
“You mean a taxi?”
“No. A hire car without a driver.”
“That, no way, old pal.”
“I’m not your old pal,” said Thompson.
The pilot blanched. “Excuse me, sir.”
Thompson smiled. “Take us to that airfield you mentioned before, near Saint-Étienne. I fancy we’ll find a car there.”
They found one right away, a black Simca 1500, rather the worse for wear but the best thing on offer.
Nénesse was grumpy. “I’m quite fit to drive,” he insisted. He took the wheel. The others did not argue.
Thompson had rented the car under the name of Andre Proust, producing all the paperwork needed.
“Make for Montbrison,” Thompson told Nénesse. “Then to Boen. We’ll make inquiries at the train station or the bus company office.”
“We’ll never corner her before the cops,” said Nénesse. “It’s hopeless.”
“Yes, we will,” countered Thompson. “We have to.”
The 1500 was going at top speed. Coco fidgeted in the back seat.
“Take it easy!”
“Shut up!”
Thompson sighed and contemplated his knees. He had fastened his seat belt. The road was very straight. The Simca was eating it up at roughly 100 kph. It was three in the afternoon when it entered Montbrison.
“Slow down,” Thompson ordered. “Look for signs to Boen or Roanne.”
“Christ alive!” shouted Coco. “There! Look there! Stop! Over there! The girl! She’s here!”
Nénesse slammed on the brakes. The Simca pulled to the left as it slowed. Eyeing his rearview mirror, Nénesse spun the wheel frenziedly. He felt a violent force applied to the side of his body. Skidding, the Simca performed a U-turn on the spot, blocking a Renault 4CV coming the other way. Coco and Thompson were half thrown from their seats. Their car had gone some fifty meters past Julie and Peter. The girl stood motionless, stricken, at the edge of the sidewalk, which was lined with plane trees.
“We kill her immediately and leave via the National 496,” declared Thompson.
He reached inside his jacket.
“We’re not hanging her anymore?” asked Coco in bewilderment.
“We kill her. That’s all that matters.”
The Simca hurtled towards Julie with its engine roaring. The girl seemed to come alive. She took Peter by the arm and ran between cars parked on the sidewalk.
Thompson’s hand emerged from his jacket armed with a bizarre-looking SIG automatic of the kind used for target practice. It could have been mistaken for a rather unrealistic toy gun. With his other hand he rolled down the window of his car door as quickly as he could.
Ten meters from his goal Nénesse downshifted. Braked by its transmission, the Simca slowed rapidly and leant forward on its tired suspension. Thompson heard Coco’s shot detonate right by his ear. Julie dived headlong into the dust, but Thompson spotted the bullet’s impact point, too high, on the roof of a parked Renault 4. Julie was crawling as fast as she could around the car. Thompson’s innards were in the grip of an iron hand. He saw Peter’s pale face lined up with his sighting mark and squeezed the trigger of the SIG just as Nénesse gave the steering wheel a violent twist. The round passed just beneath the little boy’s ear.
“I’m going to crush them,” said Nénesse.
The Simca, turning so sharply that it almost flipped over, mounted the sidewalk, lost contact with the ground, and swiveled head-to-tail.