IT’S A CHILD, BARELY THREE YEARS OLD – LITTLE Billie – who finds Soren’s body five days later in a vacant lot behind the soccer field in Edgefront, where she’s wandering, teddy bear in hand, left to her own devices.

Billie likes this grassy wasteland a lot, lumpy, with dirty edges, begs to go there more and more often, and this morning while Katherine was getting her dressed, standing her up on the kitchen table before leaving for the site, while she was adjusting the elastic of her little canary-yellow skirt, the child took her face between her two soft hands and said, I want to go to the garden, so determined that Katherine suspended her gestures, admiring, looked at her and then hugged her close, whispering into her neck, I promise, my little chicken, you can go there today. Lifting the little one to the ground then, she rushed to the boys’ room, Liam had already left for junior high but Matt was still asleep – he had come home late again last night. The room stinks, an odour of livestock. Katherine sits on the edge of the bed and shakes Matt by the shoulder, wake up! He lets out a long groan and, since she’s still shaking him, pushes her away, eyes closed – she can feel that he’s almost as strong as she is now – then turns onto his side facing the wall, but Katherine persists, walks to the window and pulls open the curtain; streams of sun sweep through the room revealing heaps of crumpled, indistinct clothes, worn-out sneakers, dirty underwear, mistreated school books and binders, cookie wrappers, empty soda bottles, and crumbs over everything, and Katherine, discovering this mess, this filth, gags and asks herself how long it’s been since she came into this room; it comes back to her like a boomerang that Liam has been doing his homework at the kitchen table for a while now and only comes in here to sleep. Her own feeling of guilt, even more than the state of the room, is what throws her into a rage. She comes back to the bed, shakes Matt again, hard this time, channelling all her anger into this action, wake up, you little shit! Gets nothing but a loud snore. Unhinged, she charges to the kitchen and fills a pitcher with cold water and back in the room throws it in Matt’s face – he bolts upright yelling, Augh! Are you fucking out of your mind? Leaning back on his elbows, he drips, waxy circles under his eyes, mouth grey, skin bleary, stunned to see his mother standing straight and immense at the foot of his bed, pitcher in hand, and to hear her gunning him with these words: you have ten minutes to get up. Then you’re gonna clean up this room – your brother can’t even set foot in here anymore! When I get home tonight I want it to be spic and span, and this afternoon, instead of just skipping class, you’re gonna make yourself useful, take Billie to the garden after her nap, I want you to take care of her and talk to her, I want you to play with her, is that clear? The boy sits on the edge of the bed, head in his hands, and grumbles half-heartedly yeah, and if I don’t? Katherine hesitates, then, casting maternal reason and good role modelling to the wind, responds from between clenched teeth: Matt, if you don’t do it, I’ll break your face. She slams the door, looks at her watch, and goes to find Billie, who’s already watching TV on the pullout couch beside her sleeping father, passes a hand through her curly hair, I’m off, my little warbler, Matt will take you out later to play in the garden. The little girl, absorbed by the screen, doesn’t answer and mechanically holds out a cheek for her mother to kiss. As she passes through the front door, Katherine feels herself wobble, her eyes burning, her legs weak. She does a U-turn and swallows a big glass of water in the kitchen, breathes a long sigh with her arms stretched out on either side of the sink, then comes back to Matt’s room, pushes the door open gently, the boy is standing bare chested, getting dressed. His body’s changing, his shoulders are broadening and he has the torso of a young man now, he’s not a kid anymore. Matt, she begins, Matt, I’m sorry. The boy pulls a T-shirt on without looking at her. I got worked up. He turns his back to her, goes to open the window. I’m leaving you ten dollars for lunch, okay? She takes a step towards him, places a hand on his shoulder. His smell has changed too. He pulls away, Katherine’s hand falls. She begins again in a stronger voice, okay, take care of your sister. And in the doorway she hears the boy murmur I will, don’t worry. Later, in the bus full of tremors, Katherine bursts into tears without thinking of anything in particular, and to the woman beside her who looks at her questioningly – a very young woman full of solicitude – answers simply, I’m so tired.

WHEN MATT reaches the vacant lot there’s a girl there, sprawled in the grass, waiting for him with beers. What’s this? she asks, pointing to Billie in the stroller, little canary with pink heart-shaped sunglasses. This – this is my little sister! Matt releases Billie and she jumps from the stroller. The girl pouts, disappointed, I thought we were gonna be chill, I’m not crazy about kids, and Matt hastens to answer, don’t worry, she’s not a drag, you’ll see; already he’s kissing her with eyes closed squeezing her breasts, and Billie walks off quietly.

In the beginning, the little girl meanders along, picks up cigarette butts, drinks the last drops from discarded cans of beer, squats to pick dandelions. Hard to say what stories she’s telling herself, it looks like she’s talking, wandering in the sun, stepping over the carcasses of rusted bikes, gas cans busted by rifle shots. Soon she’s fondling a sole, unlacing a shoe, pulling at a sock, scratching the skin that’s revealed with a little wooden stick – she concentrates, her little pink tongue poking out between pursed lips – all the while shooing the flies hovering around, lots of them here, and noisy, then behind the leg she sees another leg, the same shoe and the same sock, and lifting her eyes discovers the rest of the body. She stands still for a long moment, above the head where half the face has disappeared beneath a black crust. Billie, surprised, leans over to ask, hey, are you sleeping? You asleep? When there’s no response, she begins to play with the hair, wiggling the head back and forth to unstick it from the ground and holding handfuls of hair at the back of the skull, but as soon as it comes unstuck, a swarm of flies, very dense, swells and surrounds her like the mesh of a net; the little girl hides her face, looks at her fingers covered in brown paste, doesn’t understand any of it, and at that exact moment a dishevelled Matt grabs her by the wrist exclaiming, oh shit! They back up. The horrified boy looks at the body, then looks at his sister, she’s disgusting, hands bloody, he calls out get over here to the girl who has stayed at the other end of the lot, and when she too is standing in front of the corpse, Matt yells at her, take the little one, take her, but the girl, seeing Billie’s hands, lets out a shriek and steps back, are you crazy, she’s covered in blood! So Matt sits Billie down roughly: hold up your hands, don’t move, stay like that, you understand? And Billie bursts into tears, then her face slowly deforms and she begins to scream as Matt leans over the body again, he too shooing the flies, it’s carnage, only the legs are intact – the head, the abdomen, and the entire back are lacerated, torn, ravaged.

THE BOMB hadn’t gone off. Unless, in the end, no one had pushed the button to detonate it. Short-circuit in the remote, bad electrical assembly, or a last-minute defection. The packs of dynamite remained stuck to the pier until they were discovered shortly after the men had arrived for the third shift. From the top of their building, standing neatly in a row before the picture window and looking at their watches, seeing nothing happen, the silent partners grew impatient, and finally the Frenchman yelled dammit, he fucked me over, and while Alex was admitting his failure, his fault for having chosen such a sucker, the Frenchman set the hunt in motion.

AFTER A brief moment of panic at the foot of the Edgefront tower, and once the explosives were neutralized, the guys called Diderot, who immediately whipped over to the site and then spent the rest of the night examining the apparatus, what is this mess? The quantity of dynamite was shocking but the ignition system was rudimentary. The work of an amateur, he concluded.

Soren, for his part, had bolted long ago, shivering in his heavy clothes, soaked with miry water and mud, terrified, not knowing if he had pressed the button on the remote or not, only that he’d thrown the case into the river and had run, looking for some shelter for the night, sure that if he went back to his place the Frenchman’s gang would find him there – he had run breathlessly towards the forest, the ultimate refuge for him, he would know how to survive there, a revelation, hit by the smell of the woods, racing along a dark road, faster and faster as the forest approached, with more and more joy to be coming back to the place where he belongs, but suddenly at the edge of the mountain range, headlights that flash on, beams that capture him, men who block his way. A wild growl. There’s a bear missing from the city zoo.