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By Root 245 0

rather hard because his paunch pulled him forward and he was obliged to dig in his heels and throw his head back. His head was shaped like a pear, stem upwards, and his bald pate was red beneath his green-and-brown camouflage-style cap. The skin of his face was red too, his eyes bright blue and his eyebrows white. His nose was short and stubby, with wide nostrils and white hairs inside them. He pulled up at the bottom of the coomb to catch his breath. He propped his gun against a tree trunk, then leaned back against it himself. Mechanically, he felt in his jacket pocket for a cigarette, then recalled that he had given up smoking three weeks earlier and let his hand fall to his side. He was disappointed. Suddenly a gunshot rang out no more than a hundred meters away and a badly trained dog barked briefly. Roucart had no dog. Without removing his considerable backside from the tree trunk, he leaned forward and with his mouth half open cocked an ear in the direction of the sound. All he heard at first was the murmur of the leaves, then someone coming down behind him into the coomb. He turned his head with some difficulty to see a young woman standing motionless at the foot of the incline, just four steps from him, a thin figure in a long light-brown oilskin, waders, a round rain hat over her long brown hair. Slung over her shoulder was a 16-gauge shotgun.

“Good heavens! If it isn’t Mélanie Horst!” exclaimed Roucart, hastily detaching his rump from the tree trunk and sucking in his stomach. “Well, this is a nice surprise! But how come? I thought you had left us for good, dear child.”

She smiled vaguely. She might have been thirty, or thirty-five. She had dark brown eyes and delicate features. The vague smile barely exposed her teeth, which were small and even. Roucart approached the young woman, continuing to address her as “dear child” and talking in an avuncular tone as his big blue eyes roved up and down her slim form. He declared himself greatly astonished to see her here—first because she never went shooting and secondly because she had said her goodbyes to everyone the previous afternoon and taken a taxi to the station.

“As surprises go, this beats all. And such a pleasant one too,” he exclaimed, and she unslung her 16-gauge shotgun, turned it on him, and before he had finished smiling emptied both barrels into his gut.

Moments later he was lying on his back against the upward slope and its rotting leaves. His torso was full of holes and his khaki jacket had ridden up beneath his chin from the impact and his check shirt was half out of his pants. Roucart’s bare head was bent forward and twisted to one side, his cheek was in the mud, his eyes and mouth were open, and his cap lay upturned on the ground. With saliva glistening in his mouth, the man narrowed one eye slightly and died. From far away there came the sound of three gunshots. The young woman walked away.

2

IT WAS night when she went into the station, and she had reversed her oilskin, which was light brown on one side and white on the side now visible. A red scarf was tied around her brown hair and the frame of her large glasses was black-and-white check. The young woman’s mouth was at present made up with scarlet lipstick. The station was hardly crowded. An Arab family with three children waited on a bench, peeling oranges. Lamplighters were going to and fro with oilcans suspended from their belts. The young woman made her way to the self-service luggage lockers. Opening a locker at one end of the row, she took out a slim attaché case and a large leather bag. Then, going to the other end, she opened another locker and removed a green plastic briefcase with a zipper running around three sides. She slid the fastener open about twenty centimeters and looked quickly inside the case, which was twisted and bulging from the volume of its contents. Raising her head, she zipped it up again. With her three pieces of baggage, she went and sat down in a corner of the station hall and smoked two Celtiques.

After ten or twelve minutes a royal-blue luxury train pulled