Fatale - Jean-Patrick Manchette [36]
“Help! Help!” he cried. “She’s here!” Absurdly, he was grabbing fish and hurling them at Aimée. “Wa! Wa! Wa!” he screamed in wild terror.
Aimée delivered a toe kick to his chest; he went quiet and lost consciousness; she bent over him and killed him briskly; then she moved off noiselessly towards the western end of the market area.
A minute later Lorque and Sinistrat, proceeding very cautiously, reached the vicinity of the cold room with its half-open door where Tobie lay dead among the fish. They had come to find the source of the commotion and shouting. They poked around for a moment or two, then thought to look inside the cold room and discovered the pharmacist’s body.
“I’ve had it,” declared Sinistrat.
He stood up straight and left at a run.
“Let’s stick together—don’t be a fool,” ordered Lorque, but it was quite useless.
The doctor ran off into the luminescent night and vanished. Lorque withdrew the little Austrian automatic from his pocket and took the safety off. He looked worried but at the same time calm. He went to the middle of the quay and headed east, looking about him frequently. He found Sinistrat lying near a bollard. One of the mooring ropes of a trawler tied up at dockside was wrapped around his neck and had strangled him. As Lorque contemplated the dead man, the rising tide shifted the small fishing boat. The bow of the vessel moved significantly away from the side of the dock. The mooring rope tautened. Sinistrat’s corpse was dragged across the quay, then it toppled over the side and fell into the water between the trawler and the wharf. Lorque heard the dead man’s skull bumping with dull thuds against the hull of the small craft. Sweating slightly with fear, he continued east. After the killer leaped through the window and disappeared, Lorque had taken charge of operations and dispatched men to both ends of the market area. Now, when he reached the eastern end, the place where the kind of peninsula joined the mainland, he found the two individuals whom he had posted there, namely Lenverguez and the engineer Moutet, dead. Panting a little, the fat man with the brownish eyelids turned and set off to walk back the full length of the area in the opposite direction. He kept to the center of the quay and his finger did not leave the trigger.
He proceeded so cautiously that it took Lorque seven or eight minutes to reach his car. His heart sank when he saw no movement inside the vehicle. He hastened his step. A window rolled down and Sonia’s worried countenance appeared. Lorque drew a sigh of relief. His heart was beating wildly in his rib cage.
“You didn’t see anything?” he asked.
“No. Did you find her?”
“No.”
“She has managed to get away then.”
“She had the chance to,” nodded Lorque. “Perhaps she did run away. Perhaps not. Perhaps she is still around here somewhere.”
“I would almost prefer to think she has escaped.”
“Not me,” said Lorque.
“What difference does it make?” said Sonia. “You are fifty-nine. You are an honorable man. You have resources. Maybe you’ll spend two or three years in prison. Maybe less. I know you, and I know you’ll make it. And I’ll be waiting for you. I have money put aside. When you get out we’ll go to the south. We can end our days in Nice or Roquebrune in peace and quiet.”
“No,” replied Lorque furiously. “No, I don’t want to end up like that. I won’t roll over. I’m taking this to the finish and not rolling over.” He handed the little automatic to Sonia. “Take this. If you see her, shoot.”
“You’re crazy!”
“No. She has killed Sinistrat. She has killed Henri. She has... She is absolutely insane and she’s a killer. I have to go and see what is happening at the bridge entrance.”
“She has what? Henri Lenverguez...?” Sonia swallowed hard. Her eyes widened. “That can’t be true, can it?” She shook her head. “I just can’t imagine...I could never shoot her, it’s absurd.”
“Keep that to defend yourself,” said Lorque. “I’m going to the bridge.”
“Wait!” called Sonia. But her husband was already fading