76

‘YOU MISSED. HOW COULD YOU miss?’

Marita started to chuckle. Shaking her head in disbelief, she stepped forward, crossing the room towards Claudine and pointing out a saucer-shaped chip of stone removed from the wall behind her.

‘By a metre! A sitting target, right in front of you, and you miss.’

She walked back to the door, took up position beside Marina and, holding the gun in both hands, levelled it on Midou.

‘My turn,’ she said. ‘For Tomas.’

The gun spat and jerked, the tip of the silencer snapping back and upwards.

But the aim was true.

At the far end of the room the two women let out muffled screams, and Midou seemed to quiver, then flung back her head, hopping on the spot, tiptoes scrabbling for purchase as a widening red stain spread down the leg of her jeans from just above the knee – the first of the wounds that Marita had plugged in her brother’s naked body all those months ago in a farmhouse kitchen in Corsica.

‘Voilà,’ she said. ‘That’s how you do it.’

As Marita stood aside and Marina took her place, the two bound women at the other end of the room shrieked and squirmed.

‘A moving target,’ said Marita, as Claudine scrabbled this way and that, desperate to avoid the coming shot. ‘Stay still, chérie, or it may be the worse for you,’ she called out. ‘Stay still and take it, like our brothers.’

‘For Taddeus,’ whispered Marina, levelling the gun, taking a bead on the marker-pen cross on the leg of Claudine’s ao dai, the cross that she’d missed the first time.

With a slow hiss of released breath, Marina squeezed the trigger, and the gun leapt in her hands.

This time there was no mistake.

The impact of the bullet spun Claudine off her feet and left her twisting helplessly at the end of her rope, a line of blood trickling from beneath her silken trouser leg, down between her toes. A low, disbelieving whine rose from her throat and her leg trembled and jerked as though a jolt of electricity was passing through it.

‘Two down, five to go,’ said the elder sister, taking up position, legs apart, looking down the barrel of her Beretta for the next cross, higher up on Midou’s arm.

‘Wait,’ said Marina, the shiver of excitement in her voice unmistakable. ‘Un moment. Attend. Candles. We need candles. Some atmosphere. Something festive.’

She crossed to the old kitchen dresser on the left-hand wall, sorted through the glass jars on the shelves, pulled open the two drawers, ran her fingers through the mess inside. But there were no candles.

‘There are some upstairs. Reste, I’ll get them,’ she said, and was out of the room before Marita could stop her, footsteps sounding down the passage, up the wooden stairs.

‘Kids,’ said Marita to her targets at the end of the room. ‘Always a game. Always drama,’ she sighed. ‘But sometimes the real drama doesn’t need any props. Don’t you agree?’

And she raised her gun, took careful aim on Midou’s slender arm and squeezed the trigger.

‘For Tomas,’ she whispered.