In the glove compartment were an open pack of Camels and a lady’s Flaminaire lighter. Thompson stuck a cigarette between his lips, lit it, and stepped outside coughing. First he went back towards the dirt road. His tires had left impressions in the muddy ruts. The grassy center of the track was all broken up as though by a crude plow. The killer could do nothing about that. He grabbed handfuls of moss from the side of the hollow and used this to hide his trail, the place where the Ford had suddenly turned off and lunged into the undergrowth. He righted the flattened bush.
The vegetation was thick and sturdy. The car was virtually invisible from the track. Thompson went back and walked once all around it. It was still making little groaning sounds. His cigarette remained tight between his lips, the ash falling regularly and spreading over his jacket.
The Ford was useless. The clutch was shot, the suspension destroyed, and a viscous liquid was dripping from the back axle and soaking into the moss. Thompson opened the door and inventoried the vehicle’s contents. No radio- which was a real pity. No luggage, except for the rifle case and the brothers’ two suitcases. At the foot of the rear seat Thompson came upon Julie’s handbag. It took him a few moments to identify it. Then he was shaken by a wave of nausea. That bitch! He knew that he had not killed her. His body was telling him that. He was trembling convulsively. He opened the bag and furiously emptied the contents onto the grass. Using his heel, he stamped on the few items that had fallen out-a wallet, a handkerchief, a photograph, a nail file. .
The killer collected himself. Kneeling on the moss, he gathered up the crushed objects and put them back in the bag. Then, bag in hand, he moved off through the brush and under the old-growth trees to reconnoiter.
It was fortunate in a way that the Ford had given up the ghost where it had. A hundred meters farther on, Thompson reached the fringe of the woods. First the pines thinned, leaving large clearings, then the trees came completely to an end. Crouched in half darkness beneath a clump of ill-favored pines, Thompson surveyed the upslope before him. It rose evenly, clear, sunlit, and flecked with yellow and pink dots, which were flowers. The late-afternoon light made for long shadows and put everything into sharp relief. Up here the garnet-red Ford would have stood out like a fly on a baby’s head.
Blinking, Thompson looked up at a pale blue sky where barely perceptible tendrils of mist were floating. By now the region’s roads would be blocked; the helicopters of the gendarmeries must surely be hovering over the valleys. The killer shrugged and went back into the undergrowth.
Concerned not to get lost, he left a trail of discreet markers behind him-sprigs of brushwood, stones, or tiny grazes on the soft bark of the pines.
Zigzagging down the hill, he eventually found the spot he needed, a muddy gulley where a little brook bubbled, half covered by greenery. With his bare hands Thompson explored the blackish mud of the brook’s sides. The water had worn a channel through the earth. Thompson excavated the vertical side of the channel. When he had a hole big enough he buried Julie’s bag in it, tamping down the soil with his heel and covering all with mud. He worked with a fury. Once finished, he wondered whether he should repeat the operation for the brothers’ suitcases. But making them disappear meant a great deal of work and it would scarcely slow the thought processes of the police once the Ford was found. Thompson gave up on the idea.
He went back to the Ford. He felt curiously relaxed. He had not eaten for two days. He had become used to the pain from his stomach.
The light was fading in the clearing. Thompson opened the case where the parts of his rifle nestled so cozily. He oiled them and polished them with love. Then he went and sat in the car and waited for nightfall.
27
Julie was driving in second the whole time. Her right arm was no longer able to work the gearshift. It hung down by her side lacquered with dried blood.
“Does it hurt?” asked Peter.
“No. I mean yes. I don’t know.”
“You must know if it hurts, though!”
Julie shook her head. The road was very steep and winding. At bends the girl struggled to steer properly. Her left wrist was now hurting more than her injured arm.
“Did the bullet come out?” Peter inquired.
“I don’t know.”
“If it didn’t come out by itself, it has to be pulled out,” observed the little boy.
“Be quiet,” said Julie. “No, talk to me.”
“Will we be there soon?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have my maps anymore.”
“Are we lost?”
“No. I can remember the map. More or less, anyway. We have to go west. That’s why the sun is in our eyes.”
The engine coughed, spluttered, and died abruptly. A little red light on the dashboard came on. The 2CV was freewheeling, suddenly silent, the wind whistling against the windshield. Julie let go of the wheel to pull on the starter and the motor turned over and caught. The gear lever vibrated. Then the motor quit again. The little car was approaching another steep hill. Julie steered it onto the shoulder, where it came to a crooked halt. The girl applied the handbrake, shifted to neutral, and pulled on the starter again. The 2CV revved mightily but the motor would not turn over. Julie looked at the instruments. The needle of the gas gauge had fallen well below zero. The girl sighed a high-pitched sigh that almost broke into a sob.
“Isn’t it working?” asked Peter.
Julie got out of the car. The air was cooler now and she shivered. She took her bloodstained raincoat from the front seat and draped it clumsily over her shoulders. Then she fell suddenly into a sitting position on the asphalt. Peter leapt from the car, took Julie by the shoulder, and tried frantically to get her to her feet.
“I’m all right,” the girl murmured. “I’ll be okay.”
Clinging to the car, she got to her feet. She staggered a little.
“We’ll continue on foot,” she said.
“Oh drat!” said Peter. “I’m fed up with walking.”
“If you’d rather,” said Julie evenly, “I’ll leave you here on the edge of these deep woods haunted by big gray owls.”
“Shut up! Shut up!” exclaimed the little boy. “Okay, okay.”
Julie started off, unsteady on her feet. Peter trotted behind her. Darkness began creeping into the hollows, but beyond the crest of the hill ahead the sun was a pool of copper. The road, narrow and potholed, was deserted. Since the 2CV had left Montbrison the two travelers had encountered very few vehicles and only the odd pedestrian in the close vicinity of the town. For the last hour or more they had seen no one, and no sign of habitation.
Julie and Peter climbed towards the sunlit heights. A track crossed the little road. An improvised sign dangled from a post at the intersection. It bore the name of a hamlet that meant nothing to Julie.
Maybe, she thought, I’ll get to the top of this hill, then I’ll lie down and die and nothing will have mattered at all.
Her head drooped. She walked on like an automaton.
“Carry me,” Peter asked.
She made no reply. She kept on walking. The sky was misting over. Behind Julie, high above her, the clouds were taking on a blue-gray hue.
When the girl reached the top of the hill she almost failed to notice. But since the ground was no longer rising, her chin bumped against her chest and she raised her head and stopped short, swaying, before a glorious setting sun that whacked her full in the face with its light.
Below her feet lay a somewhat nondescript valley full of trees. Beyond it, almost immediately, the ground rose once more, precipitously, forming a mountainside even higher than the one the fugitives had just climbed. At Julie’s eye level, the trees vanished from its darkening slopes, and the summit sprang up above like a greenish skull. And there, far off, silhouetted against the sunset, and pointed out so to speak by the sun, a low, chaotic, grotesque structure adhered to that skull close to the summit.