Jean-Patrick Manchette - The Mad and the Bad

Thompson shook his head. Hartog pushed away from the wall and strode up and down on the blue-gray carpet, his hands behind his back, his chin sunk onto his chest, as though deep in thought.

“I do have you over a barrel,” said Thompson. “I’m not out to profit from that. I just want to finish my job. And to do so I need information from you.”

“The girl may never have gone up there at all,” said Hartog in a smarmy tone. “And even if she did, she may very well no longer be there.”

He went behind a kind of desk, quickly opened a drawer, and just as he was taking out the Arminius in order to gun Thompson down, was struck in the pit of the stomach by a glass ashtray whose impact was like the kick of a mule. Hartog doubled over and fell. He clutched at the drawer, which came out and overturned. The Arminius ended up on the carpet thirty centimeters from his hand. Curled up in pain, the redhead rolled over and reached for the little revolver, but Thompson kicked the weapon and it slid away along the wall for three or four meters.

“Be reasonable, Hartog,” said the killer, showing no trace of anger.

He leant over the redhead, helped him to sit up and relax, massaging his stomach in a practiced way. Hartog’s pain ceased to be excruciating. He sighed.

“You still have your reflexes,” he observed.

“You see, you can still count on me,” said the killer.

Hartog got gingerly to his feet. He looked at the floor, smiling distractedly.

“All right,” he murmured. “But I’m going with you. There is a man up there, a man who. . Listen, don’t interrupt me.”

Thompson leant against the desk.

“That bastard,” Hartog went on. “I know what he’s been telling that girl. I know what he thinks. I’m a murderer, am I? I have little children killed. For money, nothing but money. But it’s not true, Thompson. I create beauty. I have already told you that.” The redhead was shaking. “He’s up there with the girl and the little boy, and they aren’t going to the police to denounce me because they are waiting for me. They’ve got it in for me, Thompson. I know it.”

“You know it?”

Hartog nodded.

“They’ll have to be killed, all three of them,” he said. “The kid, the girl, the man.”

“That’ll be twenty thousand francs extra,” noted Thompson.

“Yes, yes,” said Hartog. “That’s fine with me.”

Once Hartog and Thompson saw eye to eye, the killer washed, shaved, combed his hair, and donned clean clothes. In his closets Hartog kept regular-size garments not his own just in case the odd guest needed helping out. Thompson was provided with white pants, an operetta sailor’s jersey, and a blue blazer. He had kept a healthy mustache and a short beard and looked like a Royal Navy reservist-albeit an insomniac one on account of the bags under his eyes, the cavernous cheeks, and the dry skin.

Dédé the driver returned at nightfall and called Hartog on the intercom. The redhead emerged from his sequestration to get the red hen that his man had procured and carried it into the living room. Thompson took the fowl and shut himself up in the bathroom. Hartog made no attempt to monitor him. The killer had told him about his problems. Hartog had no wish to see this.

When Thompson reappeared, his face and clothing bore not the slightest trace of blood. As for the bird’s feathers and carcass, they had been gobbled up by the waste disposal unit.

As for Hartog, just imagining the business made him lose his appetite for quite a while. Along with Thompson he studied maps of southwest France. The killer and the redhead were at present not far from the Spanish border. They decided on the route they would follow to the Moorish Tower and reckoned the time it would take. They were agreed that they should move in at dawn. Hartog informed Dédé that he was taking the Fiat and would be gone until the next evening. Around ten o’clock the redhead and the killer went straight to the garage and set off.

During this time, in the labyrinth, Julie was sleeping peacefully.

She sat up straight. A noise had woken her, but perhaps she had dreamt it.

She saw a white light through the curtains. Her watch said it was five thirty. Dawn. Julie had no desire to get up at dawn. She laid her dark head once more on the pillow without a pillowcase. But again there came a slight noise, from the hallway, like the sound of a large mouse. Julie got out of bed and slipped into her shorts. She went out of her room. In the blue half-light of the hallway, Peter, with his bow under his arm, was picking up arrows that he had dropped on the floor.

“Go back to bed this minute!”

“I’m not sleepy anymore.”

“It’s far too early to get up.”

“This is our last day,” said the boy. “We’re going to go home, and then where will I play with my bow and arrows?”

Julie untangled her hair with her fingers.

“Oh to heck with it!” She sighed. “I might as well make coffee.”

“While you’re doing it,” cried Peter, dashing down the hallway, “I’ll play with my bow and arrows. I’ll come back in when the coffee is ready.”

He raced off.

“Peter!”

He was gone.

“Goddammit!” said Julie.

She went into her room and sat down on the bed, but she no longer felt like going back to sleep. She drew the curtains. The sky was the color of milk, the vegetation dripping with dew. Peter was going to catch his death of cold. Drat! The girl left her room again, went down the hallway and out onto an interior courtyard with a stream running through it. She brushed her teeth, freshened up, then went into a hexagonal kitchen and put a coffeepot on the propane stove. The panes of the kitchen’s two windows turned yellow as the coffee began to brew.

When the coffee had finished brewing, Julie opened one of the windows and looked for Peter, meaning to call him, but he was not to be seen on the broad terrace outside. The boy had gone beyond the edge. Down below, in a wooded hollow, was a muddy track. The Fiat was stuck there, and Thompson and Hartog were trying vainly to free it up. The two were infuriated. They were way behind their planned arrival time. They had spent the last two hours losing their way down primitive, barely passable roads that never led where they wanted to go.

Peter could hardly make out the car and the two men through the pine branches. Persuaded that what he was looking at was a stagecoach in difficulty, he tried to creep up soundlessly and remain out of sight until he could shoot an arrow at the palefaces.

Julie poured herself a bowl of coffee, touched it to her lips and burnt herself. She put the vessel down and left the kitchen. She almost lost her way in the web of corridors and rooms. Then she stepped into Fuentès’s room. The failed architect was lying on his back in bed, wearing khaki shorts. Empty beer bottles were strewn across a good half of the room. He had dried beer on his chest. His thoracic hair was sticky with it. He was snoring. Julie contemplated him with commiseration and chagrin. She regretted the fact that he was not a handsome young man and that he had not tried to possess her. She would have struggled, scratched his face no doubt, and in any case men did nothing for her, but, all the same, she regretted it.

She was still regretting it when she heard the first gunshot.

“To blazes with it!” Thompson had just said. “To blazes with the car. We’re only a few kilometers at most from that labyrinth affair. Let’s walk it.”

“We’ll have to haul ass,” replied Hartog, “once the job is done. We’ll need the car.”

With great nervous energy he began breaking off pine branches and sliding them under the Fiat’s wheels. Thompson shrugged, taking his sailor’s canvas bag from the car and extracting the case containing his weapon. Opening it on the back seat, he assembled the gun with great care. The magazine was full. Rifle in hand, he turned round smiling. At that instant, through the branches, at ground level some fifty meters away, he spied Peter’s face. A hemorrhage made itself felt in his stomach. In a single motion he shouldered the gun and pressed the trigger. The rising sun was briskly evaporating the dew, causing a slight distortion of the light. Instead of hitting the boy exactly in the middle of the face, the round tore off an ear.