People were hastening towards the cataclysm. Customers had come out of the newsagent’s onto the sidewalk to see. Their jostling overturned the newspaper rack. Kids bounded up, full of the excitement that grips children at moments of catastrophe.
Above the rooftops rose an ever thicker and darker plume of smoke. The firehouse alarm blared continuously. A jet of water appeared amid the smoke, gleaming in the sunlight.
Batteries of water cannon had been positioned to either side of the blazing store. The front of the building was being hosed down as the ground floor flooded. Another siren with a different sound signaled the arrival of an Estafette that immediately disgorged policemen. They began to push the press of people back. The tactics of the firefighters and police were hindered by the throngs of country people down from the mountains to shop. Stalls cluttered the main street. In the pushing and shoving many of them had been knocked over. Fruit rolled about on the ground. People trampled on it, squashed it, slipped on it. Some fell. A three-note klaxon sounded insistently: an ambulance was struggling through to evacuate burn victims.
The floors of the building’s second story had caught fire. Occupants were leaping from windows.
Thompson walked at a swift pace, hunched forward. He did not look back. Around him the crowd thinned out. He reached the circular road at a point about fifty meters from the café called Les Fleurs.
Nénesse was sitting on the terrace with a beer in front of him and his face covered by tiny beads of sweat. He rose as Thompson approached and left some coins on the round table. At the curbside in front of the café stood a Ford Capri, empty, its engine running. The uproar that had broken out in the town center had made things easier for Nénesse. He’d had no problem discreetly dumping the Simca and appropriating another car. The town had gone mad.
“Where is Coco?” asked Nénesse.
Thompson shook his head. His lips were white with dried saliva. Nénesse’s eyes narrowed dangerously.
“Did you start the fire?”
“That little bitch did it,” panted Thompson. “Set the damn department store on fire. I got her, though. Ha!” He clutched his stomach. “But what about Coco?”
“He was on the other side. I saw him in flames. Cops. Firemen. Out of here. Gotta get out of here.”
Thompson turned away and opened the Capri’s passenger door. His whole back was quivering. The hairs at the nape of his neck stood on end. The blood throbbed in his ears, which were scarlet. Nénesse grabbed his shoulder, whirled him around roughly, and shook him.
“You’re going to take off, Thompson, and leave my brother behind?”
“Where’s my gun?” asked Thompson in a zombielike voice. “You didn’t forget my gun, did you?”
He struggled distractedly in Nénesse’s grip, surveying the inside of the Ford. He saw the case on the back seat and sighed with relief. Nénesse shook him more and more violently.
“You’re figuring to leave Coco!”
A police Estafette passed them, its siren wailing, and continued down the circular road. Thompson wrenched his shoulders away and grimaced.
“Have to get out of here! Get your hands off me!”
“No way!” cried Nénesse.
Mustering all his strength, Thompson kicked the man in the crotch. Nénesse staggered back groaning and piled into the railing of the café. Doubled up in pain, he reached inside his cheap jacket. Thompson dealt him a double forearm smash to either side of the neck. Nénesse groaned again and sat at the foot of the railing. His eyes were bulging. Slowly he tried to draw his weapon. Thompson grabbed his forearm and broke the man’s wrist over his knee. Nénesse passed out briefly.
Coco, meanwhile, in his underpants, brandishing his Colt, was running every which way.
“Stop him! Stop him!” came shouts in his wake.
The blond giant reached the circular road and hesitated.
“Arsonist!” yelled his pursuers, who were more and more numerous. “He’s armed! Watch out!”
Coco’s burnt legs were hurting. He took off once more down the sidewalk towards the café called Les Fleurs, which he had spotted. A garnet-red Ford Capri had just pulled out from in front of the café and was racing away. Coco recognized his brother sitting on the ground at the edge of the café’s terrace. Nénesse was swaying. He is drunk! thought the giant.
“Halt! You are ordered to halt!” came a new voice, distinct, military.
Coco ran faster.
“Halt!”
Coco heard the report of a service pistol, very likely from a shot in the air. The giant turned and saw four gendarmes running towards him like a line of rugby players mounting a perfect attack. Behind them a horde of spectators were cheering as if in a stadium. Coco emptied his revolver at random. He still had three rounds. He noted with satisfaction that one of the gendarmes had fallen on all fours. The other three stopped dead, stood with legs apart, took aim with arms outstretched, and opened fire more or less simultaneously.
“They’re killing him,” muttered Nénesse.
His whole body was wracked with pain. He watched Coco being cut down like a blade of wheat. Fragments of knee flew into the air and the blond giant twirled screaming into the dirt, one leg bent and the other oddly straight. Nénesse had struggled to his feet and managed to draw his weapon with his left hand. He fired over his brother but hit nobody. The gendarmes returned a disorderly fire. Nénesse saw rounds exiting his brother’s back in a shower of flesh and tissue. Coco rolled back onto his disarticulated leg without dropping his empty Colt, whose trigger he continued to press. Nénesse sighed, and two large tears sprang from his little eyes. He tossed his weapon aside and waited to be arrested. At that moment the café’s owner crossed the terrace in three strides and emptied both barrels of a shotgun into Nénesse’s ear.
26
The Ford Capri was doing 130 kph on National 496. Thompson felt as if he had swallowed boiling oil. He clung to the steering wheel, which his chin collided with every time convulsive retching overtook him.
Very sharp bends obliged him to slow down. The car jolted over the uneven surface of the roadway. Subjected to erratic forces, the tires screeched. Thompson zigzagged.
Some fifteen kilometers along, he braked violently and swung the Ford onto a grassy track, which met the road at a right angle, and followed it between clusters of pine trees. The dirt road was deeply rutted. The car danced grotesquely. A brutal impact threw Thompson forward. The man’s forehead rammed into the windshield. He recovered himself, reversed, and promptly speeded up. The motor howled. The automobile’s underbelly was scraping the center of the track and crashing into granite boulders three-quarters concealed in the dirt. From time to time the wheels slithered on the slick grass and spun wildly. The overheated tires were wreathed in smoke.
Brush and trees closed in quickly on either side. Branches lashed the sides of the Ford. The way got steeper and the car’s hood loomed over Thompson like the prow of a boat. The killer ground his teeth. He was now climbing into a real forest.
Eventually he felt the rear axle strike an obstacle. The shock ran through the whole vehicle, which seemed to slump. A continuous whine rose from the chassis. Thompson looked over to the left, towards a narrow opening. The Ford flattened a bush before passing between two trees and bouncing down into a tiny hollow. The front bumper buried itself in moss and earth, the engine groaned and began racing, the transmission was shot, the car had lost all propulsion, and the machine sank onto its ruined shock absorbers.
Thompson turned off the ignition.
He remained in his seat for a moment, motionless. He was not touching the back of it, for he was bent forward, his torso pressed against the wheel and his tense bony buttocks perched on the edge of the leather. His spasms died down. He could hear birds singing in the woods.