4:35 P.M.
Martial curls up on the floor of the Zodiac, his head bleeding; the scattered thoughts in his head are drowned out by an unbearable buzzing. His memory crackles in flashes, reconstructing the past few minutes in strobe lighting.
His loss of consciousness was brief, just enough time for Graziella to drop the basalt rock and tie his hands and ankles with the metal wire she kept in the trunk of her 4x4. His rude awakening: his ex-wife digging the barrel of the Hämmerli into the back of his neck and ordering him to crawl over to the dinghy, without offering to help; instead, standing firmly on the stones, she watched his suffering with the sadism of a child torturing an insect. And, lastly, his head-first dive into the boat; his clothes soaked by the puddles of lukewarm seawater and blood lying in the hollows of the plastic floor.
Liane . . .
She lies next to him, wrists and ankles fettered, hands behind her back, completely naked except for the gag around her mouth.
She’s badly burned. But alive . . .
While Graziella unties the boat, Liane shuffles clumsily over to Martial, her chest against his. Her eyes express the only question that matters to her:
Where is Sopha?
“Sopha’s O.K., Liane. She’s safe.”
Graziella gets into the dinghy and starts the motor. She stares at her prisoners, paying no attention to their weak caresses.
“I’ll pay a visit to your little treasure later. Someone will have to look after her when you’re gone.”
Liane’s eyes are filled with hatred. Martial sits up against the edge of the dinghy, as much to reassure Liane as to get Graziella’s attention.
“The police will have Josapha by now. You can’t win them all.”
Graziella bursts out laughing then presses on the accelerator. The Zodiac leaps as it drills through the waves nearest the shore. The most violent waves. Liane and Martial lose their balance and he falls on top of her.
“Your naïvety is almost touching, Martial. You think you can get out of this that easily? Have you still not understood? You’re the one the police are looking for! You’re the one who murdered poor Rodin, who cut old Chantal Letellier’s throat. You’re also the one who stabbed that nosey black woman. You’re the only one who is guilty, Martial. How many times do you need to be told? Imagine if your corpse and that of your wife are never found. What will the police think? That you killed her too then disappeared. The Creoles love this kind of murder story. You’ll be famous. Like Sitarane, but without a gravestone. The serial killer whose body was never found. Is Martial Bellion really dead? You’ll become a legend. Some Creoles will say they’ve seen your ghost in the avoune.”
Graziella stares up at the clouds. Martial balls his fists. He rubs his head against the edge of the Zodiac to wipe away the blood that continues to ooze from his wound. The rocky coast behind them is now just a thin black line with the huge dry bulk of the volcano towering over it. They are past the strong currents, and the sea is suddenly much calmer.
“Do you understand the situation now?” Graziella asks.
She pauses for a second, then hammers in the nail:
“Poor Martial. Once again, you’ve made the wrong decision. Thinking about it now, killing your daughter wouldn’t have brought Alex back to me. But when you’re not around any more, I’ll be able to visit your little Sopha. I could even offer to adopt the poor, traumatized orphan. That would be so generous of me, looking after my ex-husband’s daughter. Who could possibly say a word against it?”
Martial thinks about responding with a hail of insults. But he knows that this is what Graziella is expecting. So he stares out his ex-wife, defying her with all that remains of his manly pride. Finally he turns around, carefully, and kisses Liane, with infinite tenderness, on the least blistered parts of her skin. Her eyes, her shoulders, her breastbone, the tops of her arms.
Graziella does not react. She is content to observe them furtively, her right hand tensed around the boat’s rudder.
Martial does not stop. He moves further down and presses his wet lips against Liane’s darkened breasts, her stomach, covered with scarlet stigmata, purple bumps and dead skin, licking her wounds like a cat tending its injuries with its rough tongue. Slowly, Liane’s breathing is transformed into a hoarse gasp, muffled by the cloth gag.
“Stop that nonsense, Martial.”
But he doesn’t stop. He continues his exploration, even more gently. Between the thighs, Liane’s skin is now just raw flesh but Martial ventures there. His wife’s body shudders with every kiss.
The Zodiac stops in the middle of the sea. Graziella aims the Hämmerli.
“All right, Martial, you want to play? Come on, then! The rules are simple. I will aim at the precise part of your darling’s body that you are touching. Understand? If you kiss her arm or her leg or her hand, she might survive for a few minutes longer. Anywhere else . . .”
For a second or two, Martial assesses the determination in Graziella’s eyes. He remembers the three bullets fired at point-blank range into the blanket that she thought was covering the sleeping Sopha.
He moves away from Liane.
The Zodiac’s engine starts up again.
For several long, silent seconds, they move away from the coast.
4:41 P.M.
“You think you can reach Mauritius in this dinghy?”
Graziella is amused by Martial’s question.
“Mauritius is just over one hundred and seventy kilometers away. It’s barely a three-hour journey. The sea is calm, the weather forecast couldn’t be better. It’s a nice little trip. The only real constraint is petrol, which I have to take with me so I can fill up the tank en route. And, because of you, I’ve already had to make the same journey yesterday, there and back, just after you began your escape. With Operation Papangue, I realized that the police would want to interrogate me on Mauritius. Three hours in a boat . . . I arranged to meet with them late in the evening to give myself time to get back—it wouldn’t have been very discreet to take the plane—and then a few hours after making my statement to a man from the consulate at the Sapphire Bay, I returned here during the night. The 4x4 was waiting for me at the Anse des Cascades. I didn’t want to leave you alone for too long, with all those police chasing you. And most importantly, I had to move your wife, from my house in Saint-Pierre to a prison with a sea view, not far from here. We had a meeting. I wanted my bait to remain alive as long as possible in order to lure you here.”
Martial can barely imagine the hell that Liane has been through. She is no longer pressing herself against him, and is leaning against the side of the Zodiac instead. Her blistered, brown skin, glistening with foam, looks like the patched plastic of an adult doll.
Graziella stares at the horizon, as if she can already see the coastline of Mauritius.
“Of course, the Sapphire Bay’s employees don’t know where I am, but they have instructions to transfer all incoming calls to my mobile. It makes no difference whether I’m in Réunion or Mauritius: a simple iPhone is all I need to send any official document. The policeman I talked to on the phone earlier seemed a bit sharper than the one from the consulate, he was certainly more curious, but I just told him what he wanted to hear. Zoreilles love hearing the sob stories of Creoles—it’s their old paternalistic streak. He must have dug into poor Aloé Nativel’s past . . . do you remember little Aloé, Martial? Another of your victims. If she hadn’t met you, she’d have a nice husband by now, a pretty little house somewhere, half a dozen kids . . .”
Aloé?
Another victim?
Martial does not reply. He forces himself not to think about his former girlfriend.
Don’t be distracted.
He has to protect Liane and Sopha.
He looks out at the horizon. They are still less than a kilometer from the coast. The curve of the Piton remains perfectly visible.
“What are you going to do with us?”
Graziella stares into the distance ahead of them.
“You remember the weeks I spent alone, Martial, when you went off deep-sea diving? You told me all about the spots you visited, those places full of fish where the seabed would slope down so dramatically, sometimes more than a hundred meters in depth only twenty or thirty meters from the coast. I listened to you, Martial. I made a mental note. I’m going to wait a bit longer, until we’re over the deep-sea plain. I can’t take any risks if I’m going to look after little Sopha. Your bodies must never be found.”
Graziella pretends to look sorrowfully at Martial’s bleeding head and the open wounds covering Liane’s body.
“At least the descent won’t be as long as you think. The sharks’ judicial system moves much faster than their human counterpart.”
Martial forces himself to control every movement of his body so that he does not betray his fear. He won’t give Graziella that pleasure. He moves closer to Liane, leaving only a few centimeters between her bare skin and his soaked clothes. They obey Graziella’s orders—they do not touch each other—but they stare into each other’s eyes, their irises mixing like the colors on a painter’s palette, fusing their souls more intensely than any caress could.
As long as they are alive, Graziella cannot break the connection between them.
The Zodiac flies over the sea and the island recedes into the distance.
It’s over. They are completely alone now.
4:44 P.M.
The seconds tick by, punctuated only by the noisy thrumming of the Zodiac’s motor. Slowly, Liane changes position. She makes a few painful contractions and manages to sit up, her back against the inflatable’s side, as if she could no longer bear lying down.
Graziella gives the smile of a tolerant jailor and looks back at the ocean.
One quick glance, and Martial understands. He lowers his eyes to Liane’s hands, tied behind her back, held slightly apart.
He conceals his amazement.
Her fingers are gripping a sharp spike of basalt about ten centimeters long.
Once again, Liane seeks Martial’s agreement with her eyes. A silent marriage vow.
Till death do us part.
For worse. Only for worse.
He checks behind them—the volcano has disappeared behind the line of mist—then nods. Liane grimaces. Her arm muscles tense. The wounds open, blood flows. It doesn’t matter any more.
Graziella immediately notices that something is wrong.
Too late.
In the next moment, the sound of the motor is drowned out by the noise of an explosion, followed by an interminable sharp whistling as the dinghy deflates.
Graziella screams, stops the motor, aims her Hämmerli and violently pushes Liane out of the way.
The rip in the plastic is about ten centimeters long and is growing quickly with the pressure from the escaping air. In a few seconds, the Zodiac will be nothing but a flabby plastic envelope sinking to the bottom of the ocean, dragged there by the heavy motor and almost sixty litres of petrol.
“You crazy bastards!” Graziella spits.
Standing upright in the Zodiac, she estimates the distance to the coast.
Not much more than a kilometer.
A scowl distorts her face. She forces herself to regain control of the situation.
“You really love making my job easier, don’t you? After all, it hardly matters whether you die here or a little further on.”
The rip continues to blow hot air over their skin. Liane rolls onto Martial and the boat tilts under their weight. Graziella, impassive, maintains her balance.
“I seriously doubt you’ll be able to swim all the way to shore with your hands and feet tied together. As for me, I’m not in any great danger. Never mind the crossing, I’ll just have to take the plane back to Mauritius.”
She stares at the turquoise water.
“I’ll give Sopha a kiss from you both.”
As the water begins to lick at the Zodiac’s drooping plastic, Graziella tears open her kurta, revealing the two lifejackets she is wearing: the final detail of her disguise as a fat Malbar.
In the next moment, she is nothing but a red dot floating on the ocean.
4:46 P.M.
Martial is suffocating. Already, the water is entering his mouth. He spits it out. The Zodiac has vanished beneath them like a huge translucent jellyfish drifting along with the underwater currents. Liane clings to him. He feels her naked crotch against his, but they are incapable of helping each other. Without the use of their hands, they are both drawn down irremediably into the depths, but they continue to struggle against their fate, desperately moving their joined legs like two weak flippers.
Their bodies touch, crash into each other.
He can kiss Liane, one last time.
Just above the waterline, Martial’s lips touch Liane’s cheek. His teeth bite into the plastic sticking tape that is holding the gag in place and tear it off in one sudden movement.
Liane screams, at the top of her voice, with pure, animal pain.
One brief moment.
Then they sink together, their mouths joined.
The ocean cannot separate them. They kiss for an eternity, sharing their oxygen. This is the only air they will ever breathe again before they asphyxiate. This is how they will die. The most beautiful death that two lovers could imagine.
They no longer think about reaching the surface.
Martial can already see the lights of the next world, a funeral chapel with fluorescent coral walls.
As he lets himself sink, he is surprised to feel Liane biting him. He stares into her eyes one last time. Liane looks up. One meter of water above them.
Martial feels the water infiltrating his brain, flooding it, feeding his hallucinations. He is surrounded by coral now, not only below him but above too. Unbelievable colors: orange, red, blue.
Liane bites him again, on the chin this time, hard enough to draw blood. Her eyes beg him. She wants to fight, to kick herself back up to the surface one last time.
Body against body, back muscles straining as they flap like two exhausted mermaids, they manage to force their heads above the water for one final breath.
Together.
Liane explodes with laughter and kisses him again.
He looks up, not understanding.
Around them, angels are descending from the sky.
Silent angels, flying with the aid of immense, rectangular, multicolored wings.