“Look at the castle!” exclaimed Peter.
“That’s Hartog’s Moorish Tower,” Julie stammered.
“It’s all squished! It’s not a tower. It’s ugly.”
“No, no,” said Julie. “Come on. Let’s go down.”
The road looped into the valley, then followed the valley floor, leading away from the distant structure. Julie set off again, abandoning the dilapidated road, cutting straight down across fields and skirting copses. On the steep slope, helped by her own weight, she broke into a run. As she tried to slow down, her heels slammed into the ground and the shock carried to her injured arm. Peter frolicked around her, his fatigue forgotten.
The sun disappeared behind the Moorish Tower. Julie and Peter reached the bottom of the valley, where a fast-moving stream tumbled along. Anxiously, Julie contemplated its white eddies swirling in the shadows. Peter pulled her by the sleeve.
“There’s a bridge.”
He was pointing to a crude conglomeration of branches, planks, and logs a short way upstream. Julie followed him towards it.
The makeshift bridge, like something built by drunken boy scouts, was precariously balanced on large round rocks. The ropes that had once moored it securely to nearby trees were frayed, and so rotted that they almost crumbled at Julie’s touch. The plank walkway had holes in it at several points. Below, the water seethed black and gray.
By now night had fallen in the valley. Julie started onto the walkway and felt the breath of the torrent below upon her face. The girl clung to the rudimentary handrail that ran alongside the planking. The bridge trembled beneath her and she trembled along with it. She had the impression of being enormously heavy. The planks bowed beneath her feet and squeaked. Julie stopped halfway across and watched in horrible fascination as a rusty nail emerged slowly, like a penis, from the wood of a plank. The plank split, the twisted nail flew into the air and fell into the foam below, and Julie’s foot slipped through the walkway. The girl bruised herself as she grabbed onto the planking. Everything was shaking, around her and inside her head. She found herself on all fours, crawling along above the boiling race, desperately looking around for Peter. She heard the little boy call her, then saw him, already on the other side, hopping up and down with impatience.
“Hey, can’t you hurry up?”
The bridge gave way, and Julie flung herself forward. She ended up kneeling in the mud of the bank. Behind her, the walkway overturned. One end crashed into the creek. The whole contraption swung round into alignment with the current and plunged swiftly into the foaming waters, bouncing off rocks, coming apart, disintegrating, and disappearing with startling speed. The darkness swallowed it up.
Smeared with mud, Julie clambered up the bank. She was burning up with fever. She did not know where Peter was. She was driven on by a single idea: a hundred meters, fifty meters from where she was now, once past the foot of the mountain, there would be nothing ahead but a vast carpet of grass and flowers, and upon it would be the Moorish Tower, where Hartog was waiting for her.
28
Hartog, his features drawn and his lower lip covered with cold sores and fading bite marks, was slumped in a chaise lounge on a tiled deck. An enormous glass with a sprig of mint trailing in it sat on the ground beside him alongside an overflowing ashtray. A stained cigarette dangled from the redhead’s mouth. Dark glasses hid his eyes. He was wearing white pants and a mesh undershirt.
Dédé, the driver, wearing a dark suit, tiptoed up to him from behind.
“Any news?” asked the redhead between gritted teeth.
“The second goon died on the way to the hospital. The roadblocks have come up with nothing yet. The police are combing the region by helicopter.”
“I don’t understand what happened,” muttered Hartog. “Where has she gone, that loony bitch?”
The driver shrugged, stuck his hands in his pockets, and let his gaze wander over the Mediterranean, which was slapping at the pebbles below the deck.
29
Close up, the Moorish Tower appeared even more peculiar than in photographs. The place was obviously built upon several preexisting structures-the mountain cattle sheds that the Auvergnats call jasseries. But these had been literally buried by masonry, by low domes, barely level terraces, and formless piles of stones. There was nothing towerlike about the Moorish Tower. It had spread across the surface of the mountain without growing upward. It was like a Siamese temple flattened by power hammers.
Peter had halted near an outgrowth of the building with a dark opening like the entrance to a tunnel. Julie joined him, panting. She was shivering. The sky was violet, shadows cloaked the mountainside, and a pitted, yellowish moon floated at the horizon.
“There’s nobody here,” said Peter.
The labyrinthine stonework was indistinct. Julie approached the dark opening, stumbling amid pebbles and wild grass. Something rolled and clattered beneath her feet; she thought it was a can of food. A vague light twinkled in the tunnel. Julie went farther in and her forehead struck a bead curtain which began to jiggle and clink. Between its glass and wooden beads a room was visible. With a brusque movement of her left arm, Julie pushed the curtain aside and went on in.
She found herself at the side of a vaulted chamber furnished in nondescript fashion. A kitchen table, chairs, an ugly tiled floor.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Anyone here?”
A post office calendar was pinned to the enamel-painted wall. The picture was of cats in a basket. It was hideous. Julie contemplated it, swaying. She blinked. The calendar was immense. Was it a hallucination? The girl hobbled over to the wall and touched her hand to the color print. It was fifty centimeters long, at least. Julie gave a strangled cry, backed away, bumped into a chair, and felt her hair stand on end. The seat came up to the middle of her body and the table was almost on a level with her chin.
“It’s the Giant’s Castle,” cried Peter.
Eyes wide with terror, Julie wheeled around and saw a man emerge from the darkness at the far end of the crazy room. He wore blue work overalls. Yellowish strands of hair fell down over his broad brow. It was Fuentès. Julie tried to step back and felt herself falling.
30
Thompson awoke sweltering. The sun was shining on his face through a gap in the foliage and the killer was bathed in sweat. Hastily he got into a crouch, his head swiveling like a weathervane, but the surrounding woods were calm. The singing of the birds and the sighing of the wind were the only sounds. Thompson consulted his watch. It had stopped. He looked up. Judging by the sun, the morning was well advanced. The man clicked his tongue with irritation. For years he had never slept so late.
He got to his feet. He felt ill. He had difficulty walking as far as the upper fringe of the wood. Prone in the grass, he scanned the round-topped mountains. Here and there, kilometers away and shimmering, were little brownish groupings of what were long-horned cattle. No human beings were to be seen.
Thompson scratched his cheek. His growth of beard itched. The killer was exasperated. He had to nourish himself, yet the very idea turned his stomach. If he could just manage to slip through the roadblocks, reach a town, and get in to see a doctor, perhaps he could be set to rights by a blood transfusion.
But no. The doctor would ask questions. And ask himself questions. The whole region must be in an uproar by now. “Massacre in Montbrison,” the headlines probably read. Thompson got up. His leg muscles were jittery beneath him. He made his way, under cover, to the stream. Once there, he lay on his stomach to drink.