Fatale - Jean-Patrick Manchette [35]
“She is here!” the man cried in a high-pitched voice.
He took a step back. At the same moment, Aimée stood up straight and, taking three steps forward, struck the man with the shell. Though the shell had not been sharpened, the single blow cut Rougneux’s throat.
15
LORQUE was frustrated.
“Rougneux!” he cried in the clear night. “Was that you calling?”
He strained his ears, but no reply came. Lorque was still, his mouth open and his nerves jangled, standing beside his Mercedes. Next to him, the car’s left front window, operated by an electric motor, descended silently. Sonia Lorque leaned over and stuck her head halfway through the opening.
“Give me the revolver,” said her husband. “Give it to me!” he insisted, when she grimaced anxiously.
Her anxiety unallayed, Sonia rooted in the glove compartment and handed the weapon over. It was not a revolver but a little Austrian 4.25-millimeter pearl-handled automatic. Lorque relieved himself of his nutria fur coat, rolled it up, and stuffed it inside the Mercedes before taking the little automatic and putting it in his pocket.
“Close your window,” he ordered. “Don’t budge for any reason whatsoever. If you see her, sound the horn.”
“Please,” begged Sonia. “What are you going to do to her?”
“Close your window,” said Lorque again, impatiently.
He glanced west, towards the sea, to the point where the twin bridges led away from the market area. He saw nothing. The various lamps and floodlights of the port gave a deceptive impression of clarity. Indeed the air seemed almost to be filled with a luminous dust. It was not dark at all in the street or on the waterfront but you could not see more than fifteen meters ahead. The humidity must have had something to do with this haziness. Dr. Sinistrat made a sudden appearance amidst the luminous dust. He was covered in sweat. His lips were quivering.
“Have you f-found her y-yet?” he asked.
Lorque shook his head and set off east. He heard Sinistrat hurrying to catch up with him. The two men walked with short lively steps for thirty meters or so down the dirty roadway. Then they came upon a body stretched out on the sidewalk. It was the realtor Lindquist. Lorque and Sinistrat leaned over him. The realtor was dead. He had no visible injuries. Lorque heard the doctor’s teeth chattering alongside him and caught the smell of sweat coming off him. Sinistrat switched on a flashlight and played its beam over the entrance, a few meters away, to an alley that connected the street to the quayside. He uttered a tense exclamation when he saw Rougneux’s corpse with its throat slit crumpled against the wall at the opening to the alley. Lorque and the doctor hurried over to this second body.
“M-My God!” said Sinistrat. “What did she use to do that?”
“Could have been anything. We’ve been idiots. She really is a killer. We failed to consider that. She is truly dangerous. Put that thing out!”
Sinistrat complied. The moment the light was switched off, the night’s powdery glow seemed more opaque and menacing than ever.
Some fifty meters away, over by the quay, a commotion had broken out because Aimée had just attacked the pharmacist Tobie and her attack had failed in its purpose. The man had taken a notion to open a cold room, thinking, rather idiotically, that Aimée might have hidden there. Coming up behind him, confused by moving shadows, Aimée had bungled an attempted rabbit punch. She had struck too low. Pain flooded the pharmacist’s neck, and he fell flat on his face into a pile of fresh fish.