He and Pradeau had decided to go and forget their troubles “somewhere pumping with sound and fury” and they found such a place; from the moment they stepped inside they had been bludgeoned by the deafening howl of feral rock music and overwhelmed by the oppressive heat and the swirl of smoke.
Right now, Pradeau was talking to him, but he could not make out what he was saying, catching only a word or a syllable here and there and attempting to string them into something that made sense, but more often than not the crushing wall of sound which kept them pressed against the bar almost as effectively as the people crowded around them reduced all human language to gibberish, so Vilar simply nodded and smiled, or adopted a serious look, trying to coordinate himself with the alternately satisfied, excited or distraught expressions flickering across the face hovering above a pint of Guinness less than fifty centimetres away. From time to time an arm would be thrust between them only to immediately withdraw clutching the handle of a tankard, and they would have to step back or duck their heads to make way for the countless beers of varying hues being swilled by the gallon all round. The place was pounding to a fusion of rock and heavy metal with shrieking guitars and a thumping bass that hit you in the solar plexus like a dozen Lilliputian boxers let loose among the clientele. Vilar thought he recognised a Gary Moore song he used to listen to long ago, the high-pitched harmonies sounding horrible at this volume.
Vilar blinked, trying to keep his eyes open in the thick, acrid pall of smoke that clung to his sweaty face and even seemed to compact the glare of the spots into tangible slabs of light through which hazy shadows moved. From the moment they arrived, his mouth had been filled with a coppery taste which he did his best to wash away with long swigs of beer, only to immediately light another cigarette since there was nothing else to do, because he had long since lost any desire to do anything at all tonight.
Pradeau began by talking about his ex-wife, how he still did not understand why she had left, yet still he felt vaguely guilty – miserable, wretched – and Vilar could hear the mournful intonations in his voice as it grew hoarse from drinking, smoking and having to shout in order to be heard. Then he talked about his sick mother, whose memory was completely gone, his distraught father trying to take care of her, stooped, shrunken in his grief, constantly by her side, a shadow of the shadow she had become. He looked up and Vilar saw the heartbroken look of a little boy, then he smiled bravely as he lit his umpteenth cigarette. He and his brother sometimes met up at their parents’ house, but found they had nothing to say to each other.
Once or twice he had talked bitterly and regretfully about the brother with whom he had cut all ties.
Pradeau trailed off and sipped his beer. He shook his head.
“He’d be better off dead.”
“It can’t be that bad, can it? He’s your brother …”
“Oh, not really … If only you knew. A toast,” he said raising his tankard, “to traitorous brothers and true friends!”
They clinked glasses, forcing themselves to smile, but their pinched faces, their eyes red from the smoke, suggested only weary melancholy.
When the music stopped, suddenly, brutally, Vilar felt relieved, as though some guy who had been sitting on his chest for the past hour had finally got up. Even Pradeau was quiet, his momentum lost, plunging his nose into his beer. It seemed that the sea of faces was thinning out, bodies straightened up and remnants of the crowd stood, revelling in this precious moment. At the far end of the room, he saw a group of musicians setting up on a small stage. There were five of them: guitar, bass, lead singer with bodhrán, violin and drums, flanked by an impressive battery of speakers from which one could but fear the worst. Vilar emptied his glass, felt a cool breeze on his face: someone had opened the door onto the street. It was at that moment he realised he was drunk, because the cool air rekindled the embers smouldering inside his head. Then someone tapped his hand and he looked at his fist curled around the handle of the tankard and up into the eyes of the waitress who wanted to take the glass; she smiled at him and asked if he wanted another. He nodded and, leaning towards her, felt a smile stretch his face, which probably looked like a crumpled sheet of paper suddenly smoothed out to reveal a message you did not want to read a moment earlier, because this girl was beautiful, luminous in this murky light, in this fetid atmosphere, singular amid this sweaty crowd. He was surprised not to have noticed her earlier, probably because since he had come into the bar, he had moved in a bubble, the sort of diving suit or survival suit into which he often withdrew to try to keep on breathing.
It was precisely the sort of beauty that, once seen, makes every other human presence disappear. Some guy ordered something and Vilar felt a fleeting pang of hatred for this intruder, hated the way she leaned forward, almost touching the man, so that she could hear what he was saying as though oblivious to the fact the music had stopped and it was possible now to be heard without having to scream. The girl shared some joke with the stranger and they both burst out laughing, then she went back to the beer pump. She must have felt Vilar’s eyes on her shoulders, bare in her sleeveless black T-shirt, because she turned and shouted, “Be right with you!”, shaking her dark hair. She had a slim figure and to Vilar it seemed that behind the bar strewn with barrels, the boxes and the crates, she moved with the grace and suppleness of a dancer.
“Camille,” Pradeau suddenly whispered into his ear.
He looked at him for a moment, puzzled.
“Her name’s Camille. And her boyfriend’s the guitarist.”
Vilar shrugged. The girl came back to them, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. She addressed him, asking what they wanted in a hoarse, cracked tone that made him think of scratches made by a cat.
“Same again,” he said, nodding at the glasses.
He racked his brain for something halfway intelligent to say to her, but all he could find in his addled brain were tedious platitudes. She turned away and walked off. Pradeau too stared after those shoulders, that back, that waist.
“Just looking at her I feel better,” he said with a sigh.
Victor was about to say he felt the same thing when a guitar chord exploded from an amplifier. Both men simultaneously shrugged and smiled. The drummer started warming up.
“Let’s finish this one and get out of here,” Pradeau shouted.
“Too bad about the beautiful Camille, I’m sure she’ll survive without us. It feels like he’s drumming right into my brain.”
The waitress came back with their beers and set them down. Vilar quickly whipped out a twenty-euro note but she was already at the far end of the bar. As the band started playing, Vilar felt the phone in his pocket vibrate. He put a finger in one ear, yelled into the mouthpiece for the caller to speak up, shook his head. Pradeau realised something was happening and leaned forward, staring at him worriedly.
He did not understand the first words, but he recognised the voice as that of Daras.
“Sandra de Melo, in Pessac.”
“What do you mean, Sandra de Melo? What about her?”
Even as he asked the question, he knew the answer. The connection was bad, Daras spoke haltingly as though she were walking briskly.
“A massacre. Some kid had his throat cut. The neighbours called the police … Around 9.00 p.m.”
Vilar felt his heart stop. He sucked in a lungful of air.
“What do you mean, massacre? Who?”
“Shift your arse. We’ll meet up there. I’ll call the procureur.”
“I’ll be right there,” he yelled twice, so loudly that people turned and looked at him in astonishment. He caught the stricken gaze of the waitress, whose beauty now seemed like a lantern disappearing into the darkness. He swallowed a long draught of beer, not taking his eyes off her until, with Pradeau stumbling after him, he elbowed his way through the crowd, this bunch of morons, determined to smash the face of the first person to hassle him. As soon as they were outside, he tried to run, but his stomach lurched, he felt completely breathless, panting as he told Pradeau what little he had learned and why they had to hurry.
They walked in silence back to the car, Pradeau’s, which was parked by the gardens outside the town hall. Both stopped and leaned on the bonnet to catch their breath, shaking themselves in an attempt to shed their inebriation, coughing up the cigarettes they had chain-smoked, sweating in the summer night filled with the bustle of pedestrians making the most of the illusory cool of evening, whereas to them the warm air felt muggy, heavy and squalid, and waiting at the end of their journey was another corpse. More blood.
It was Vilar who drove, since he felt a little less drunk than Pradeau, and he barrelled down the empty city boulevards and through the deserted suburban streets, windows rolled down, running every red light with every ounce of concentration he had left. Both men sat rigid in their seats, eyes wide and staring, neither of them spoke. It was difficult to tell whether they were drunk or aggressive, since the alcohol set their expressions in a scowl and exhaustion made them blink more even than did the hot air reeking of tar and motor oil that whipped at their faces.
They were stopped a hundred metres from the tower block by three officers in riot gear who had set up a roadblock with their van and glanced up from time to time at the windows, most of which were lit up. A little further on, there was a patrol car parked beneath the trees with four men in plain clothes armed with tear gas.
“O.K., go ahead,” the officer said, after checking Pradeau’s warrant card.
“That your own car? Well watch out, we had beer cans lobbed at us earlier tonight.”
Vilar drove on and parked behind a fire brigade ambulance. There were police everywhere, he could see about thirty posted around the tower block, patrolling the green areas or climbing back into their patrol cars and driving off slowly.
As he got out of the car, Vilar heard yelling, a commotion that echoed harshly off the buildings. At the far end of this stretch of road that ran alongside the building a group of about fifteen figures was being kept at a respectful distance by uniformed security guards. Daras’ voice from behind made him start. She was accompanied by Annelise Leroux, the deputy procureur, who watched dazed as the two officers approached.
“Sorry … I’ll never quite get used to this.”
Daras was watching the small groups of busybodies chatting at the foot of the building.
“I see the French underclasses have crawled out of their holes … Nice around here, isn’t it?” she said with a sweeping gesture of her hand.
“And then we wonder why they kick off … I had to talk down the C.R.S. captain from mounting a baton charge. Fancied kettling some chavs … I mean, Jesus, twenty cretins screaming ‘police scum’ and throwing empty coke cans. If they’d had gone in, we’d have cars burning and truncheons flailing all over the crime scene by now. What a tosser! He brought the C.R.S. to ‘secure the scene’ as they say. O.K., come on, we need to get a move on. There’s someone waiting for us. Madame procureur, I’ll call you tomorrow morning, O.K.?”
The young woman nodded, tight-lipped, and took her leave without a word.
“Poor girl’s got a weak stomach. But I’ve got a lot of time for her, she’s straight up,” Daras said as she watched the deputy procureur walk back to her car.
“Shall we go take a look? L’Identité judiciaire got here about five minutes ago.”
She walked towards the entrance of the tower block being guarded by two officers.
“So what’s the deal?” Vilar said.
“Some kid from the estate. Sofiane Khalef. Stab wound to the throat. I called you in when I realised it happened in the block your witness lives in.”
“And where’s she?”
Vilar climbed the four steps leading to the lobby.
“No-one knows,” Daras said as she stepped over the threshold.
“Before we set off, I asked for an officer to be sent around to her apartment, but the place was empty. The door wasn’t locked.”
The police in the lobby were doing very little, as were the various witnesses, who seemed to be setting up some sort of shrine. As they turned to look at him, Vilar felt the hostility they reserved for all intruders.
A body lay beneath a blanket at the foot of the stairs, a pool of blood spreading next to the head. There were also long blood spatters on the wall above the body. Vilar lifted the blanket and shuddered: it was one of the three little thugs who had tried to wind him up the day he came to interview Sandra de Melo.
“Was he with his mates?”
“What mates?” Daras said, astonished.
“You know this kid?”
“They were hanging around the first time I came here. They did their best to piss me off. Might be worth checking if these brave gentlemen were present when it happened and took off after the kid got shanked to avoid any grief.”
Daras jotted this in her notebook.
“We haven’t got the manpower. Door-to-door will have to wait for tomorrow, but I’ll put a call in to Ferrand anyway …”
Vilar did not let her finish. He stepped around the body and took the stairs three at a time until, reaching the first landing, he felt sweat course down his back, his legs buckle and his head spin. He tried to catch his breath, grabbed the banister and hauled himself to his feet, panting, then spat bile onto the ground and carried on up.
When he got to Sandra de Melo’s door on the third floor, he hesitated for a moment, listening to the sounds coming from the neighbouring apartments, then stepped inside.
He flicked the light switch with a fingernail and peered about the hallway. The kitchen was directly opposite him, then the living room and two bedrooms. He took the kitchen first, it was spotless, glowing in the warm light of the red and yellow lampshade, everything meticulously tidy. Nothing was left within reach of little José, nothing with which he could hurt himself or someone else. Then, under the table, between the metal chair legs, he saw the clown. Seen upside down, the painted smile on the little cloth head looked like a rictus.
“Toto the clown.”
He ran into the kid’s room. It was not the usual jumble of toys, stuffed animals and Action Men. Here too, nothing that could be swallowed or thrown had been left within reach. Vilar thought about Pablo’s den, the almost primeval cave teeming with bug-eyed creatures and stuffed animals over whom he ruled as the gaudy, plastic lord of the jungle. Here, everything was spartan; in one corner sat a large, bored teddy bear, with a stuffed snake wound around it. Vilar sighed, attempting to concentrate, because the urge to lie down anywhere and fall asleep all but cut the legs from under him.
As he expected, the bed was unmade. One of the dresser drawers was open, someone had hurriedly taken some clothes. Sandra de Melo had run away. She had made the decision in a matter of minutes. She had forgotten the clown, and the boy, half asleep, had not noticed. When he woke up later, or tomorrow morning, little José would throw a tantrum and perhaps the only way of calming him would be to sneak back to collect the toy. Someone would have to wait here to see if she came back for it.
The woman had to have been pretty scared to forget this particular object, the rag doll her son kissed instead of her. This extension he had dreamed up, this image of her in which she wanted to believe. A grotesque effigy. Whoever had thrown Sandra into a panic had had his way barred by the little thug hanging out in the lobby – this time without his friends – and had despatched that little problem without a qualm: a single stab wound to the throat. But what about the screams? What about the tenants hanging out of their windows, or the ones out making the most of the cool evening? It was hardly discreet.
He had killed Nadia, he had come here – for what? To kill Sandra too? To intimidate her? To keep her quiet, obviously.
Vilar went into Sandra’s room. White walls bare but for a large framed photograph of a street in the Alfama district in Lisbon. On a dresser like the one in the kid’s room there were two photographs: Sandra sitting on the beach, holding José’s hand, José holding Toto the clown by its floppy arm. The kid stares into the lens, though clearly unaware of it. He is listing, as though weighed down by the doll. It looks as though were his mother to let go he would drop like a stone without using his hands to break his fall.
Vilar leaned down to get a better look at this elusive stare. The other photograph showed Sandra arm in arm with another woman, someone perhaps a little older who looked a lot like her. Two pretty brunettes. Her sister. The picture had been taken on the streets of some nearby seaside resort. Soulac, Lacanau. Behind, beside and all around them were people in beachwear. Stands selling rubber rings, beach balls, sun-hats, beach towels. The colours garish. The sky an unreal blue. Vilar took the photograph out of the frame and turned it over: PAOLA AND SANDRA, LACANAU, AUGUST 2005. FOR MY LITTLE SISTER.
He opened a drawer, lifted up the pile of T-shirts and blouses, but found nothing underneath; he opened the second drawer, full of underwear, which he rummaged through gently with his fingertips.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Daras was standing in the doorway of the room; reflected in the picture frame he could also see the ashen face of Pradeau.
He extracted his fingers from the lace and pushed back the drawer.
“She’s at her sister’s place. We have to find her. The guy who killed Nadia came here tonight. He’s the one who killed the kid downstairs.”
Daras walked over to him. Pradeau leaned against the doorframe slowly massaging his temples.
“And you were expecting to find him among her bras and knickers?” she said mockingly.
“We’re good now? You got a good sniff? You’re sobering up?”
He ignored the sarcasm and stared down at the lingerie.
“She left in a serious hurry. She even forgot to take her autistic son’s clown. I don’t know what happened, whether she actually saw the guy, whether she pushed him or what … But we need to get her sister’s address and get round there fast …”
“We’ll talk about it downstairs. We’ve got three witnesses who say they saw something.”
“Laurent, you deal with this place, see if you can turn up anything that could help us track her down. Addresses, telephone numbers, whatever. We’ll go down and talk to the witnesses, you never know.”
The witnesses, who had been left standing in front of the letterboxes, had mostly heard noises. They thought it was a fight or some kids making a ruckus; it happened a lot. They had looked out of the window but had seen nothing.
All three were men, one of whom had visibly had an alcoholic Friday night bender, explaining that his wife was already in bed asleep because of the pills she took for her panic attacks. He probably drank every other day of the week, mornings too. It was impossible to guess his age, his drunken face was slick with sweat, his puffy red eyes glistened with tears, but he tried to shrug it all off with a sad smile, hunched over his cigarette, tottering on his feet. From time to time as he talked his horrified eyes flicked towards the corpse on the far side of the lobby, where the forensic boys from l’Identité judiciaire were now at work.
Another witness, tall and broad-shouldered with close-cropped hair, biceps bulging under a black sleeveless T-shirt, seemed pleased to be helping the police with their inquiries. He spoke in an affected, ponderous tone, clearly attempting to lend gravitas to his words, but came off sounding like a character from a badly written T.V. show. Vilar and Daras quickly sent him packing and when he gravely asked whether he should remain available for further questioning, Vilar patted him on the shoulder and thanked him for the valuable assistance he had given in tracking down a dangerous criminal. They would not hesitate to call on him if necessary. The man announced that he was merely doing his duty as an upstanding citizen and that if everyone did likewise, everything would be fine, then headed for the lifts, which had just been made operational again.
“I saw something,” the last witness said. He took a step towards Vilar and said his name was Éric Gauthier and that he lived on the fifth floor.
“I saw a guy doing a runner. I told the other officer earlier. He went that way.”
He pointed towards the end of the street and the whole town beyond.
“Did you see what he looked like?”
“Dark hair, not very tall. He was wearing a denim jacket.”
“His hair was long or short?”
“Short.”
“Did you get a look at his face?”
“It was dark, all I could tell was he was young. I mean he wasn’t young young. Thirty, thirty-five maybe.”
“No car?”
“Like I said, he left here on foot. After that, I didn’t see. Was he the killer?”
Vilar’s mobile made a sound like a foghorn. It was Pradeau. He turned away from his witness and took a few steps.
“We’ve got about a dozen addresses where she might have gone.”
“Do what you need to do, sort it with Daras. We have to get there before he does. I’m sure he’s looking for her right now. He might even have been in the apartment, I mean she didn’t close the door when she left, remember? He might have the same addresses we’ve got.”
“Fucking hell,” Pradeau said, and rang off.
Vilar went back to the witness, who had not moved and was waiting for him, smoking a cigarette. The smell of the smoke made him feel sick, and he felt his stomach heave slowly into his throat.
“What were you doing at the window?”
“Nothing. Just looking out. Getting some fresh air.”
“Did you know Sandra de Melo?”
“What did you say the name was?”
“Sandra de Melo. She lives on the third floor.”
“Neighbours, well, you know … I’ve not been living here long. What’s she look like? I must have run into her in the lift.”
“Short, brown hair, with a little boy.”
“Oh right, yeah, I know her. Really sweet, the kid. José I think his name is. Really polite, always smiling, he says hello to everyone.”
Vilar tried to conceal his surprise: the kid was not the sort to say hello to anyone, but this man, Éric Gauthier, clearly knew José by name. He was about to question him a little further about this when he heard shouts outside, the sound of people running, charging into the lobby. As the harried officers tried to restrain her, a woman rushed over to the body and howled, then fell on her knees, pulled off her hijab and used it to gently wipe the face of the dead boy. She lay down next to him, stroking him and covering him in kisses, letting out a long wail broken by sobs. Two young girls tried to lift her up, but she clung to the shoulders of her son. Her lamentations mingled Arabic and French and the girls seemed at a loss as to which language to speak in to make her see sense.
“Don’t touch me! Let me go!”
A man appeared, struggling with the security guards who tried to hold him back. Daras stepped forward and told them to let him through, then took him gently by the arm. He stood, frozen, before the body of his son, now covered by that of his wife who went on wailing while the two sisters hugged each other and sobbed. The forensics team responsible for collecting samples had retreated into a corner, gloved hands limply by their sides, petrified, as though shocked that anyone might grieve for a corpse. Vilar stepped forward to where Daras was standing next to the father and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Come on. Leave them.”
“This is a complete cock-up. Let’s get out of here, there’s nothing useful we can do now. I’ll tell them to move the body.”
The lobby was now full of police and bystanders, all united in a solemn silence broken only by sobs and the whispered voices of the daughters begging their mother to get up.
Vilar turned as he felt someone touch his shoulder and was rewarded with a cloud of alcoholic breath from the first poor bastard he had interviewed. Nose to nose with this angular, unshaven face weathered by drink and tired of living.
“What is it? What do you want?”
The man’s lips quivered, his wild eyes rolled, still glistening with tears.
“That guy. The one you were talking to a minute ago.”
Pradeau appeared on the stairs and stood, staring at the scene of mourning. He was very pale. He shot Vilar a weary smile.
“Yes, what about him?”
“He’s never lived here. I’ve never seen him before. I heard what he said to you, but he doesn’t live up on the fifth or down in the cellar. I don’t know him and I know everyone around here, me and the wife have been living here nearly thirty years.”
Vilar looked around half-heartedly to see whether the man was still among the small group of people bustling around the door.
“Did you see where he went?”
“Outside. About three minutes ago. That’s why I came to say something. I think it was him …”
Vilar laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. He tried to smile at him to express his gratitude.
“Thank you … Thank you.”
Pradeau came over.
“Look after this gentleman. We’ll need to take a statement. The guy talked to me, pretended to be a witness, he’s outside there somewhere on the estate …”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The guy who did it, for fuck’s sake. The guy who cut the kid’s throat, the guy who’s after Sandra de Melo. He was right here not five minutes ago, he wormed his way into the group of witnesses, he’s still toying with us, the bastard.”
Vilar was already heading for the door. A uniformed officer asked if he needed a hand, but he did not reply.
“Where the fuck is he going?” he heard Pradeau calling after him. Outside, there was no-one. All the night owls were inside, gathered around the body of a boy with his throat cut. Vilar could not see any of the riot police who had been milling around when he and Pradeau arrived. He turned right and quickly crossed the road, running past the cars parked along the tree-lined central reservation. Acacias. He shivered at a gust of warm air. Through the foliage, Vilar could see the tower block opposite, the few windows still lit up at this hour of the night. Snatches of music, of muffled bass reached him. He came to a crossroads: directly ahead on the right were tower blocks like the one he had just passed. To the left, a few shops grouped around a car park with about twenty cars.
Turning his head, Vilar saw a figure standing on the pavement, diagonally opposite, watching him perhaps. Suddenly he felt out of breath. He could not make out the face, but he was convinced he recognised the false witness. And when he saw him take off, running around the building, he ran out into the road without knowing whether his body could hold out more than five metres. As he crossed the road, a car sped past behind him, but he barely heard it. He slowed to a walk in order to ease the pounding of his heart and the terrible racket in his brain, the blurry mélange of alcohol and fatigue. He struggled to try and hear anything beyond the buzzing that engulfed him, and after a moment found himself in a sort of park planted with groves of trees whose dark shapes he could barely make out in the gloom. A few street lights were still working, but the faint bluish glow served only to stir the shadows that gathered around him, urged on by the wind that whirled around the tower blocks.
He stopped, hearing a slight rustle to his right. He peered into the darkness, saw the page of a newspaper slithering past a bench like one of those languid predators you see grazing the seabed in search of sustenance. He realised that he was standing at the foot of a pylon strung with a mesh of wires that reminded him of the complex rigging of a pirate ship in a movie. Again, he peered, tried to make something out in the darkness; he saw a roundabout, a see-saw, wooden horses set on huge springs. He listened for sounds above the cacophony of his exhausted body and found it ridiculous to find himself here, standing by a playground in the dark, searching for a suspect who had drawn him here precisely in order to toy with him, a suspect he would not find tonight. He decided to turn back, to go back to the others, he no longer felt the need to lie down, to rest his weary head on something soft and let sleep come.
The blow to the back of his neck sent him reeling and he crumpled to his knees, then down onto all fours, trying to work out what was happening. There was no pain. He felt as though he were floating, dazzled, deaf; he could no longer feel the heft of his body and for a moment he thought his head had been severed and in sheer terror threw himself to the ground, lying on his belly. Scarcely conscious, convinced that he was dying, he felt a knee against his back and someone slammed his head into the ground. Stones and gravel embedded themselves in his forehead and pain now awakened all his senses and brought him jolting back to a reality flooded with panic. He opened his mouth to scream, and felt a ball of paper being forced into his mouth; the smell of ink and the feel of the paper against his palate made his stomach turn. He felt bile rise in this throat. For several seconds he struggled and groaned, unable to breathe, his face ripped and torn by gravel.
“You looking for me? Calm down, you dumb shit, breathe through your nose! I don’t want you dying on me just yet. Besides, we ain’t got time because your buddies will be here soon.”
The man whispered the words into his ear. Vilar could feel his warmth, could almost feel the damp of his breath. Something sharp jabbed him between the shoulder blades, then sank a few millimetres into his flesh. Blood ran down his spine into the hollow of his back. He moaned, trying hard to swallow.
“I’m glad I caught you. You see, I know everything about you … I’ve been following you, I come and go at your place and make myself right at home, sometimes I’ll be standing there right next to you and you don’t even know it. When they said I’d get a taste for it, I didn’t believe them, but they were right. I’m like your shadow, but a shadow capable of getting there before you because I can anticipate what you’re going to do. Now isn’t that amazing?”
The knife twisted in the wound. Vilar felt blood run into his shirt. He realised he was trembling.
“Nothing to say? Not as cocky as when you’re down the station with your buddies, are you? Doesn’t matter … See, I decided to make you suffer, we’ve got a score to settle, you and me, and you’re going to pay dear. Providence – divine providence – put you in my path, and that’s too bad for you. Hey, you listening to me? Now … I don’t want to kill you. That’s not my style. So listen carefully: right here under my knife is your backbone. And I suspect that one sharp jab between the vertebrae and I’ll hit your spinal cord, and you know what happens then, don’t you? Given the blade’s position, you’d be happy just to be able to breathe by yourself. But I guess you’d probably be able to work the buttons on an electric wheelchair. Nothing to say? Cat got your tongue? Ah, I get it, you don’t find me funny? If you like I’ll come and push your little mobility vehicle and call you a cunt. You’ll have your whole life to wonder every morning whether you’ve got the courage to live or whether you should top yourself. That’s a pretty serious question, isn’t it? I had a lot of time to think about it when I was banged up.”
The blade stopped twisting. The man shifted his position, now he was sitting astride Vilar, who was just about managing to breathe in spite of the paper choking him.
“Don’t move! Drop the knife and put your hands in the air!” Pradeau’s voice, close by.
“Like I give a fuck, I’m going to end this bastard.”
The pressure on the blade increased. Vilar groaned. The pain spread through his thorax. This psychopath was going to cut him in two. Was actually going to sever one part of his body from the other. Was going to half kill him precisely so that he would be alive to witness the state he was in, to endure this amputation of self, the living corpse he would become. Suddenly, he was dazzled by the beam of a torch. He heaved his hips, trying to unseat the guy straddling him, and just then he heard the gunshot, felt a fearful judder as the bullet entered the man’s body even as he pressed himself against the ground, almost ready to dig himself to safety with his nails, his teeth. Deafened, dazed, unable to move, he heard nothing else. That was when he knew he was truly sinking, a scream and his last breath stuck in his throat.