The Prone Gunman (6 page)

The short fat man was dead, the two women unconscious. Terrier quickly examined Anne, noted that she had no physical wound, picked her up, and carried her to the convertible sofa. He hurried back to the kitchen. The young Italian was dead. Terrier returned to the living room, took out his handkerchief, and mopped his brow. His lips were trembling. After a moment, they stopped trembling. Then he saw that Anne had opened her eyes and was looking at him.

“I have to go,” he said. “You have to say that you were upstairs, that you saw nothing, heard nothing. No, you heard gunshots, you came down, you found everyone dead. . . . ”

“I'm going with you,” Anne cut in.

For a moment, Terrier seemed incapable of formulating an answer.

“You don't have to,” he said. “You just have to say . . .”

She interrupted again: “I'm going with you. Isn't that what you want?”

“Yes,” said Terrier. “Yes.”

He turned on his heel, striking his left palm with his right fist.

“Wait,” he said. “I'd like you to go upstairs for a minute. You must . . . I should. . . . ” He leaned over Rosanna Rossi and saw that she was dead. “No,” he said. “Okay. Let's go.”

12

They passed a police van, an Estafette, on the shoreline road.

“The neighbors must have heard something,” said Terrier.

He glanced at Anne. She didn't seem in shock. She was sitting in a relaxed manner. She was looking straight ahead. There was a black spot on her lower lip, where she'd bitten it and made it bleed. She didn't respond.

“I can't run the risk of stopping back at my hotel or your house,” said Terrier after a moment. “But I could drop you in the center of Nauzac.”

“No.”

“Or I can get right on the highway, and we head for Paris.”

The young woman gave a small quick nod.

“You're sure you know what you're doing?”

“Yes!” she said. “Do you want something to drink?”

“No,” said Terrier.

Anne turned around awkwardly under her seatbelt to grab the bottle of Martell cognac from the backseat. Before leaving, Terrier had collected all the handguns, abandoning the automatic weapons, an M16 and an Uzi, where he had found them: in the Rossi clan's car, a BMW parked under the pine trees about a hundred meters from the house. After making a hesitant tour of the premises, Anne had merely slipped on her wolf-skin coat and taken the cognac. She pulled out the cork and brought the neck to her lips, but then she put the bottle back on her lap.

“Not that thirsty,” she said. She corked the bottle and put it on the floorboard, between her feet. She looked at Terrier. “Would you rather people didn't talk to you while you're driving?”

“That doesn't bother me.” They had now reached a main road. Terrier slowed down, switched on his turn indicator, and took the junction leading to the highway. His broken finger did not seem to impede his driving.

“Did you really kill people all those years?”

“Oh,” said Terrier. “You heard that.”

“Of course,” Anne said deliberately. “I didn't black out or have a fit when I rolled on the floor. I wanted to get closer to that damn fork.” She shivered. “Somebody had to do something. They would have killed us, right?” She frowned. Her face was no longer expressionless. On the contrary, it was serious: she seemed to be concentrating. “I've never seen such people,” she said. “Are you like them? Or not?” Suddenly, her voice and her look became uncertain again.

“I'm like them. Not only. But I'm like them.”

“They weren't only like that, either, I suppose,” said Anne. She chuckled out of pure nervousness. “What I just said was very philosophical.”

“No doubt.”

Road signs announcing the proximity of the highway went by very quickly to the right of the DS. In fact, out of the night appeared a zone of orange half-light where the curves of an empty interchange meandered beneath overhead traffic signs. Entry to the toll road was not automated: there was a glass booth.

“Turn up your collar, turn toward your door, and don't move,” Terrier ordered.

Anne obeyed. The DS halted near the glass cabin. A yawning, ruddy-faced employee gave Terrier a ticket through the driver's window. The car started up, went down the ramp, gathered speed on the access lane, then, its turn indicator flashing, slipped onto the highway nearly devoid of traffic. It was almost midnight.

“Are you, uh, what they call a crook?” Anne asked after a few minutes.

“A crook?” repeated Terrier. “I don't think you say that much anymore. Well, no. No, I'm not a bandit.” He hesitated. “Listen, I was a soldier of fortune—a mercenary, if you like.”

Anne remained silent for so long that Terrier believed that she had no comment to make. But then she spoke:

“Not necessarily within the framework of normal military operations and not necessarily in uniform, is that it?”

“That's it.”

“And who is this American named Cox?”

“Forget that,” said Terrier. “Forget that right now.”

“Fine,” said Anne. “As much as I can. Do you plan to stop somewhere, or are we going to keep on charging along until we fall into the Baltic and drown?”

“We're heading for Paris.”

“Don't you think they'll set up roadblocks?”

“The police? It'll take them quite a while to identify me and the car,” said Terrier. “If they are very efficient and act very quickly, they'll be in the know around midday. We'll arrive long before.”

“And then?”

“There are any number of places that I can take you if you want to come along.”

“For example?”

“Well,” said Terrier, “what I had in mind at the beginning—I mean, before things went to hell, when I just thought I would show up and take you away, and that was all. . . . ”

“That's what you thought?” Anne interrupted. “After ten years. Very impressive.”

“Think so?” Terrier glanced at her, then looked back at the road. “What I had in mind was a rather primitive country, with a good climate, a weak currency, and easygoing relations between people.”

“That sort of thing exists, then?” asked Anne. She seemed amused, sardonic.

“My preferences tended toward Ceylon,” Terrier explained calmly. “Because in Africa or Latin America, it's over, it's completely ruined. Completely!” he repeated, nodding his head with conviction. “But a place like Ceylon or Mauritius, or even more remote places, that would be really quiet.” He frowned. “But maybe they're going down the drain, too. There's the Tamils in Ceylon, and there's trouble every now and then. I don't know.” He shook his head worriedly. “And there's tourism. It's the same thing. Maybe worse.”

“A desert island is what you need,” said Anne.

Terrier shrugged.

“An island where they don't even know about money.” He grunted weirdly. “But right now there's a different problem. Either a desert island or the exact opposite. I mean a place where you can get lost in the crowd. I don't know,” he said again. “I'm fucked up. I'll think about it. I'm going to lower the back of your seat so you can sleep.”

“I'm not a bit sleepy,” said Anne. “If you want to sleep, though, I could drive.”

Terrier gave her a perplexed look, as if she had something strange that didn't fit into his perspective. They spoke little after that. Around two-thirty in the morning they pulled up to a refreshment area. They drank cups of coffee from a machine. On Terrier's orders, Anne had pulled a woolen cap over her head after piling her hair up. When they left, the young woman took three long swigs of cognac.

“I'm not thirsty, but I should still get some sleep,” she explained. But she did not sleep.

The DS left the highway and entered the Paris ring road at the Porte d'Orléans at six-fifteen Sunday morning. Terrier and Anne took a room at an expensive hotel in the seventh arrondissement, not far from the Esplanade des Invalides, under the name of Monsieur and Madame Walter.

“Generally,” said the clerk, “we ask our guests to provide us with a credit card when they have no luggage.” He looked politely at Terrier.

From inside his jacket, Terrier produced a bundle of ten thousand francs, in five-hundred-franc bills.

“Can you deposit this in the safe?” he asked.

“The cashier doesn't arrive till nine,” said the clerk.

“I don't have a credit card,” said Terrier. “Do you want an advance?”

“Please! Please!” exclaimed the clerk. “You'll be shown to your room.” He rang. “Excuse me, monsieur,” he added. “You understand.”

Terrier did not reply. They were shown to their room.

“Maybe you think we're going to fuck,” said Anne, when the door was closed.

“Pardon?”

Anne repeated what she had said.

“No,” said Terrier. “Rest.” He picked up the telephone.

“Yes,” murmured Anne in a hesitant tone. She stopped for a moment, then she began to move and went into the bathroom.

Terrier dialed a number: there was no answer. The man frowned. He finally hung up. From the bathroom came the sound of water vigorously filling the tub. Anne had closed the door, but Terrier didn't hear her lock it. He approached the door.

“I'm going out for an hour or two,” he said. “Go to bed and get some sleep.”

In the bar downstairs he quickly drank two double espressos. Taking the DS from the hotel parking lot, he slowly headed north. It was eight-fifteen, Sunday morning: the streets were not very lively. When Terrier spotted an open service station, he parked a short distance away, then walked back to the place and made some purchases. He got back behind the wheel, then rushed into a vast underground parking structure near the Opéra. He deliberately descended to the lowest level, where there were few vehicles and less risk of being disturbed by a new arrival. He put on his gloves. Using a rag, he did his best to wipe down the interior of the DS and part of its exterior, particularly the door handles and the adjoining areas. Then he detached the license plates. With a can of spray paint acquired a few minutes earlier, he covered the license plate areas with black, applying just one coat; it was insufficient but would dry quickly. He used the detached plates as masks so that the four sides of the rectangle would be rectilinear and clearly set off.

He was disturbed only once. A door slammed, and steps resounded. Terrier slipped behind the DS and squatted down. At the other end of the parking structure, a fat man in a blue overcoat and white scarf slid uncomfortably behind the wheel of a Volvo. He started up and left without bothering to let the engine warm up. Terrier stood up and lighted a cigarette. It was freezing cold. Great dirty ventilators rumbled in the distance.

Then, on the still-sticky black paint, the man applied the white numbers and letters he had bought at the service station. Finally, with the license plates under his leather coat, Terrier climbed back up into the open air.

It was raining a little. It was now nine o'clock, and the streets were more animated. In the side streets Parisians hurried to the grocery stores that had just opened; on the boulevards groups of Japanese tourists circulated enthusiastically. Terrier dumped his spray-paint can and spattered gloves in one metro wastebasket and the license plates in another. After a brief train journey, he reemerged into the daylight and walked some two kilometers, sometimes stopping before a shopwindow, sometimes retracing his steps, and finally reached Faulques's apartment.

The financial adviser did not respond to the doorbell. Terrier frowned. He went back out into the courtyard. The bedroom shutters were closed, but not those of the office. Terrier stuck his face against the glass. There were lights on in the bedroom. The office was empty and in its usual disorder, as far as one could tell through the filthy yellow curtain.

Terrier returned to the hallway. The building was dilapidated and badly maintained. There was almost half a centimeter of light between Faulques's door and its warped jamb. Terrier used several of the many accessories in his Swiss Army knife. After a few minutes, he succeeded in working the latch and pushing open the door.

“Faulques? It's Charles.”

The apartment smelled like the garbage cans of a Chinese pastry shop. Terrier closed the door behind him and went into the bedroom. Faulques was hanging by a silk scarf attached to big hook set up high on the wall, just below the ceiling. Below Faulques's shoes, which were soiled with streaks of dried shit, the nightstand was overturned. The financial adviser's face had turned black and so had his tongue, which sprang from between his teeth like the tongue in a decapitated calf's head. He was wearing a shirt and pants. He had been dead for about forty-eight hours.

It was stifling in the apartment; the heat had been turned up to the highest setting. There was a sealed envelope on the pillow on the unmade bed. Terrier returned to the office, went over to the kitchenette, and put on a pair of gloves. He dug into the heaps of papers on the desk and on the floor, found a pile of new envelopes. He took one, returned to the bedroom, and opened the letter that rested on the pillow:

“I killed myself out of cowardice,” said the typewritten message. “I used the money of certain clients for personal speculation. I gambled and I lost. I don't have the courage to face up to my responsibilities. Farewell to all, forgive me.” There was a handwritten signature.

Terrier tossed what he was holding onto the pillow and abruptly sat down on the edge of the bed, crossing his gloved hands over his stomach. He leaned forward and gave a long sigh. His mouth was open, and he blinked repeatedly. He seemed to calm down after a moment. He got back up. Without looking at the hanged corpse, he refolded the message and slipped it into the new envelope that he had brought from the other room. He sealed the envelope and placed it on the pillow. He crumpled the used envelope and tossed it into the overflowing wastebasket near the desk. Retracing his steps through the communicating door, he briefly studied Faulques's body, then he went out and pulled the door shut behind him.