With these words, Butron rewound the tape. He meant to listen to himself. The two killers entered. They killed Butron and took the tape. They telephoned to report that Butron had just committed suicide. Not long after their call Commissioner Goémond appeared. The three shook hands. Then the two killers left in their Ford Mustang and delivered the reel to Oufiri. Oufiri listened to the tape. He got ready to leave. He took a bayonet from a drawer. He went downstairs to the basement. There he found Dieudonné N’Gustro where he had left him, hanging by his feet in the middle of the cellar.
At this moment the wretched Debourmann was dictating an imbecilic text dealing with dark imperialist forces. But it was not imbecilic for that reason. It was imbecilic in that it appealed to a universal consciousness. Simultaneously, the liberal newspaperman was continuing to pour rosé de Provence into a face now festooned with band-aids.
And then Oufiri thrust the bayonet seven or eight times into N’Gustro, who was hanging by his feet and swaying in time with the stabs. Blood spurted, but the marshal had placed his clodhoppers out of danger in good time, and the thick clay floor of the cellar soon absorbed the film of red. Oufiri called in Jumbo and his goons. They removed the corpse from the cellar and buried it in a field, taking good care to replant beets over the site.