Jean-Patrick Manchette - The Mad and the Bad

“Answer me, for heaven’s sake!” complained Peter. “What are we doing? Where are we going?”

“We’re running away. We’re going to Hartog’s place. His magnificent house over the horizon.”

Julie consulted the departures board, and with help from her road maps she eventually figured out where she was: sixty-odd kilometers west of Lyon. It was another sixty kilometers or so to the canton of Olliergues and the magnificent house. A local train drew in. Julie bought two tickets for Saint-Étienne. The train bore the fugitives away. It was hot. Julie was sweating under her formless raincoat. Peter was silent, remarkably well-behaved, gazing at Julie with eyes wide, green, and suspicious. Julie began looking at her maps again.

“We’re going to be traveling in the mountains,” she told Peter. “In the mountains no one can catch us. We’ll go into the mountains and we’ll find the magnificent house.”

“You already told me that.”

They got off at Montbrison. It was half past one in the afternoon. This surprised Julie. It should have been earlier. She and Peter crossed the sweltering esplanade fronting the station and had lunch in a sort of brasserie.

“When are we leaving?” asked Peter.

“We’re not in a hurry.”

“Yes, we are. We are hunted animals,” observed the boy.

“Do you wish we were there already?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you happy just to be with me?”

“Oh yes, I am.”

“Would you like me to buy you some toys?”

“I don’t know. If you like. What kind of toys?”

“I don’t know. Whatever you like.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Listen, Peter,” said Julie, “we could stop in the mountains and live as a mother and her son. No one would ever find us.”

“The police always find criminals.”

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.

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.