And with the righteous sense of a man who’d done his duty, he reapplied himself to the racing form, ignoring the noise around him.
The goddamned bitch, Rocco thought, pulling himself into a sitting position. He knew from experience that the bullet wouldn’t kill him, but he’d lost a lot of blood and he was weak, weak. It would take every ounce of strength he had left to crawl out to his car and drive to someplace where he could find help.
Probably back to Paris, much as he hated the thought. Marseilles was too far away. Besides, he knew where to find doctors who were as discreet as they were practiced. He’d get patched up, then disappear. He’d screwed things up but good this time. Hubert wouldn’t help him—not since he lost the child. And Marc sounded too crazy to be of much use to anyone.
No, things didn’t look good for Rocco. What with Malgreave hot on his trail, no one would be enthusiastic about hiding him. No one he knew would want to let themselves in for police attention.
He levered himself up to the bed, panting slightly. He was slightly disoriented. God only knows how long ago the Americans had left. He must have passed out. There’d be no catching them now, and he no longer gave a damn. He had his own skin to worry about, a more important issue than revenge.
He’d be lucky if he made it as far as Paris, he thought gloomily. He might very well have to stop on the way, but that would only be a last resort. He didn’t look like the kind of man who shot himself by accident, and he’d face all sorts of difficult questions if he checked himself into some rural hospital.
No, he’d make it. At least the bitch hadn’t taken his knife. She’d kicked it out of the way, but he could see it in the darkened confines of the empty living room. He’d take a minute or two, catch his breath, and then head for his knife.
He blinked. There was no noise but the sound of the rain beating against the deserted farmhouse, but he thought he saw a shadow. He squinted his eyes, concentrating on the knife, watching in shock as a white-gloved hand reached down and picked it up. He looked up as the figure filled the doorway, and a frisson of horror washed over him.
“Marc,” he said, forcing an easy tone of voice. “Old friend, I never expected to see you here.”
Marc said nothing. He was dressed in black—tight black leotards and top and mud-soaked black slippers. Only his gloves were white. And his face.
He glided into the room, the knife held loosely in the gloved hand. Rocco tried again, stilling the superstitious terror that threatened to swamp him. “Thank goodness you’re here. That damned bitch of yours shot me. I need some help. I’m afraid it’s going to have to be a doctor—I’m not sure if I’ll make it to Paris before someone patches me up.”
Marc said nothing. He kept coming, his feet making no noise, almost as if he were floating a few inches off the ground, Rocco thought dizzily. Every motion was smooth, effortless.
Rocco kept talking. His brain was getting a little muddled, but it no longer seemed to matter. “Remember the orphanage, old friend? Remember Grand-mère Estelle and that whip she used? I still have nightmares about her and old Georges. I remember how helpless I used to feel, and how I hated them. Sometimes I wake up at night in a cold sweat, remembering.
“Do you remember the smell? The rain and the charred timbers of the old place? And the roses, Georges’s goddamned roses, covering over the stink. I knew a whore once who always wore a cheap rose perfume. I killed her, just for the pleasure of it.”
Marc said nothing. He stood only inches away from where Rocco sat, and it took all his effort to lift his head, to look into that white-painted mask of glee and despair. The chocolate brown eyes were quite mad, Rocco decided. But then, they’d always been a little off. Marc was going to kill him. He knew what Rocco had been trying to do, knew that Rocco would kill him if he got a chance. He wasn’t going to get that chance.
“Have you ever killed a man before, Marc?” he inquired dreamily. “Of course you have. You were the one who killed Georges, weren’t you? And you’re going to kill me.” It really didn’t matter. He was very tired, and he didn’t want to go out into that cold, wet rain. Better to stay right here.
And then he remembered what Marc had done to the old gardener, his fitting act of revenge for the endless bouts of sexual torture. A last bit of energy filled him. He didn’t want to be mutilated. He reached out a hand, to protest, to stop Marc, but his arms were weak, and Marc was very, very strong. He kept slashing, slashing, and there was nothing Rocco could do but laugh. Marc didn’t realize that he was feeling nothing, cheating Marc of the pain. Finally he was cheating Marc of everything, as the blackness closed in, the thick silence settled around him, and he slumped forward on the bloody bed.
Claire was cold, so very cold. It never stopped raining in France; the steady downpour was a constant companion and reflection of the gloom. Rain and death seemed entwined, inescapable. She sat in the front seat of the Peugeot and shivered.
At least Nicole was temporarily distracted. Right now she was probably making herself sick in the back seat, gobbling down chips and candy bars and warm Coca-Cola. Doubtless in the next half hour Claire would have to crawl in back and hold her while she rid her body of everything she was busy stuffing into it. Which certainly wouldn’t help Claire’s uneasy stomach.
She’d forced herself to nibble on some bread and cheese, to choke down some of Tom’s god-awful wine. At least her hands had stopped shaking, even if her stomach still churned and roiled inside her. She kept feeling the cold, hard metal of the gun in her hand, the recoil as she shot, the second time, at the murderous intruder’s head.
It had been his quick reflexes and her own rotten aim that had saved her from killing him. Not any sense of morality, or decency, or fairness. She’d always considered herself a pacifist, someone who’d rather turn the other cheek than react with violence when threatened.
But it wasn’t her who was being threatened. It was Nicole. And when it came to a helpless child she was no pacifist at all, but the equivalent of a soldier, determined for revenge. No one could hurt or threaten Nicole and get away with it.
She shivered again, looking over her shoulder at the small figure happily gorging herself in the back seat. The amazing thing about children was their resilience. She’d seen it time and again when she was a teacher, hoped and prayed the girl Brian had hit would have that same ability to bounce back. And there was Nicole, who’d gone through a nightmare and a half during the last three days, entirely at ease, on the run with people who bore no relation at all to her.
Claire wished to God she could be that flexible. She wished she could blot unpleasant images out of her mind. But over and over again she saw the man Tom called Rocco, his hand clutching her ankle, his dark, evil eyes glaring up at her, as she shot at him, trying to kill him.
“Cold?” Tom asked gently, his attention still on the rain-swept afternoon, the headlights sweeping down the deserted roads.
“Yes.” She huddled deeper against the seat, hugging herself. Sooner or later this nightmare had to end. Sooner or later they’d be safe. “How far are we going?”
“I’m not sure. At least we know we’re safe for now. Guillère must have been driving the white Fiat. I thought I saw it in town, and I hurried back rather than waste any more time shopping.”
Claire lifted her head, finally giving Tom her full attention. “I don’t think so. We heard him outside about ten minutes after you left. You couldn’t have seen him in town.”
There was silence in the car. “Well,” he said finally, “Fiats are a dime a dozen in France, and white’s a popular color. It must have been my paranoia.”
“It must have been,” said Claire, shivering. And neither of them believed it.
“When the hell did this come in?” Malgreave roared through the offices, crumpling the paper in his fist. “God damn it, Gauge, get in here!”
He watched Pierre shuffle forward, cursing the incompetent idiot. Gauge had learned early in his career that you went farther in a bureaucr
acy if you didn’t allow yourself to think. He’d perfected the art of mindlessness, and his somewhat bovine brown eyes blinked at Malgreave innocently.
“Three o’clock this afternoon, Chief Inspector.”
“Why wasn’t I told?”
“You hadn’t given me any particular instructions. And since Inspector Summer had discounted the previous messages …”
“Previous messages?” Malgreave’s voice shook the windows. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Josef shrank in his chair, bewilderment and panic washing over his face. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. What previous messages?”
Gauge turned a limpid expression on the inspector. “They came in yesterday, sir. I placed them on your desk as you ordered.”
“Good God, I forgot to look at them!” Summer turned even paler.
Malgreave shut his eyes for a moment. It was no wonder so many old women had died. He was surrounded by incompetents; even his most trusted assistant was letting his ambition get in the way of the most rudimentary practices. “Get the other messages,” he said, his voice soft and very dangerous.
Summer scrambled from the room, returning moments later with a sheaf of neatly typed pages. “They’re on pages three and five …” he began, but Malgreave snatched them out of his hand.
“I don’t need you to point them out to me, Josef,” he said. “After all, you haven’t seen them before either, have you? Have you?”
“No, sir,” he mumbled.
At another day, another time, Malgreave would have taken pity on him. But not now. “Do you have any idea where these came from? Was the automatic tracer working?”
“Only on the first ones,” Gauge said calmly. “They were made from Paris. The number and address is listed. The one today was a trunk call, and they take longer. The man hung up before we could trace it.”
“So what we must do,” Malgreave said bitterly, “is wait, and hope that Bonnard or Guillère don’t catch up with these poor people. And the French police are left sitting on their hands. Damn you both for your incompetence!”
“Should we call the gendarmes?” Josef suggested timidly. “They have jurisdiction over rural matters …” He subsided in the face of Malgreave’s fierce glare.
“And tell them what? That we have some people on the run, somewhere in France? I don’t think they’ll appreciate the information, and I won’t appreciate being made a laughingstock by the army. We wait. We already have warrants out for Guillère and Bonnard. If we find them, the Americans are safe.”
“And if we don’t?”
Malgreave smiled sourly. “Then you can kiss any future advancement good-bye, Josef. And their blood will be on your hands.”
And Josef, thinking not of guilt but the anger of his ambitious Helga, groaned softly.
CHAPTER 22
They must have driven for hours. Claire lost track of time, staring into the rain, listening to the incomprehensible crackle and buzz of the car radio. Nicole, once she had finished eating every remaining crumb of junk food, leaned over the back seat and began an amiable conversation with Tom that soon lapsed into French. For once Claire didn’t care. It freed her from the necessity of keeping up a front. She could sit there in the front seat with the scent of Hélène’s Opium still lingering, mixing with the smell of chocolate and chips and exhaust, and think about the man she would have killed.
There were no headlights following them, spearing through the gradually diminishing rain. They were alone in the growing night, their Peugeot a tiny boat in the vast black sea of rural France, and for a while Claire played with the illusion of safety. It didn’t last. For all their sense of isolation, in the end she knew Marc would find them. When they thought they were safely hidden in some rural pension, waiting for the police to finally listen, Marc would appear. She could only hope they would see him first.
“Where are we?” she finally roused herself to ask. “Where are we going?”
She could feel the concern in Tom’s eyes as he glanced over at the tightly clenched fists resting in her lap. “I can’t say exactly. We’re somewhere beyond Jassy, heading into a more rural section. I’m afraid our accommodations aren’t going to be up to the old farmhouse. There’s an empty barn not too far from here that should do for tonight. Tomorrow we can head back to town and try to get through to those idiots in Paris once more.”
“All right.” She turned to look back at Nicole. She had chocolate on her face, her lank brown hair was a tangled mess, but she seemed surprisingly at ease amidst the clutter of the back seat. “Are you okay, Nicole?”
She grinned in response. “I like this,” she said calmly. “It’s an adventure.”
Thank God for children, Claire thought. “Yes, it is.”
“As long as Marc doesn’t catch us,” Nicole added soberly. “But he won’t. Tom has promised he’ll cut his heart out if he tries to touch me again.”
Claire controlled the tiny shiver. “Sounds messy.”
“It is what he deserves,” Nicole said in a complacent tone of voice. “Do you want any chocolate, Claire?”
This time Claire did shudder. “No, thanks. I’m not really hungry.”
“Well, I am. Tom promised that when we get to America he’ll take me to McDonalds and Burger King and Pizza House …”
“Pizza Hut,” Tom corrected, carefully keeping his face averted.
“When will this be?” Claire asked calmly.
“When we all go to New York to live. Tom says I may have to spend some time with my great-aunt Jacqueline, but apart from her, you’re my only living relative. So I’ll stay with you when you and Tom get married and I’ll become a real American girl.”
Too many things were happening at once. Claire picked the smallest issue she could face. “I thought you hated Americans.”
“Oh, I don’t hate them. I don’t much like them when they’re tourists, but once they’re home I don’t think I’ll have any trouble. Besides, your television is much, much better. And you have Burger Kings on every corner.”
“Not quite every corner,” she said faintly, settling back in her seat.
“Well, close enough,” said Nicole with more animation than Claire had ever seen her exhibit. “Tom says we’ll have a great time.”
“Oh he does, does he?”
Tom took one large, strong hand from the steering wheel and covered her clenched fists. The warmth of his flesh touching hers, the strength in those capable hands, soothed her, chasing away the nightmare they were living through. “He does,” Tom murmured.
Claire looked at him, tears stinging her eyes. For a proposal it definitely counted as one of the stranger ones. But then, their entire relationship was peculiar. She wasn’t quite sure when it had turned from friendship into courtship, but turn it had. She’d known him only a few weeks; they had kissed, but never made love. How could she consider sharing the rest of her life with a man she hadn’t slept with?
She glanced down at the hand covering hers. Honest hands, gentle hands. She didn’t have to sleep with him to know he’d never hurt her, would be tender and loving and more than she deserved. She looked up and smiled brilliantly through her unshed tears.
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll have a great time.” And Tom’s hand tightened on hers.
The small house in the Paris suburbs was empty when Louis Malgreave let himself in the front door, but then, he hadn’t expected Marie to be home. She never was these days, and tonight he was back early. He couldn’t stomach one more minute of Josef’s hangdog expression, Gauge’s bland stupidity, the mute frustration of the telephone that didn’t ring. He wanted to hit someone, very hard, and the only thing he could do was leave before he shoved his fist into Gauge’s fat face.
So close, so very close. If it weren’t for a comedy of errors the Americans would be safe, and Bonnard and Rocco well on their way to being caught. Instead they were still bumbling around like fools in the dark, waiting for still another lucky break that they no longer
deserved.
Malgreave snapped on the lights in the living room, illuminating the rain-dark afternoon. For some reason the house felt even emptier than usual. As if part of its soul had been torn away. He held himself very still, not reaching for the cigarette that was second nature to him, not slipping off his soaked raincoat. Fear made him silent, a deep, terrifying fear such as he’d never known. He’d faced death countless times, murderers so savage they surpassed comprehension, and never had he flinched. Right now all he wanted to do was turn around, walk out the door, and run away, run from what awaited him.
But running wouldn’t change it. He yanked off the raincoat, dropping it in a puddle on Marie’s spotless carpet, and started slowly up the stairs.
The bedroom looked so empty without her. The dresser was stripped of its bottles of scent and makeup, the closet bare of her clothes and shoes. Everything was gone, suitcases full of belongings, and all she’d left in the place of those years of accumulations was a small, lavender piece of paper propped on his pillow.
It was probably dowsed with her own special scent, Malgreave thought, making no move to touch it. The traces of it would linger on his pillow as he tried to sleep, forcing her into his unconsciousness as she would permeate every waking hour.
Turning on his heel, he went back downstairs without reading the note, heading into the kitchen. He had a bottle of American bourbon whiskey, and he poured himself a dark, tall glass of it. The name had always amused him—after the old kings of France. Something so very American, with such a very French name. He opened the refrigerator, hanging on the door and staring at the interior, the neatly labeled leftovers, the packages of meat and cheese and butter. Marie never had strange things growing in the back of her refrigerator. Everything was always accounted for, neatly dated and labeled and used before it grew too old.
He took another sip of the whiskey, then turned away to the sink to add a bit of water. He reached for the faucet, then dropped his hand. Marie always kept the medicines on the shelf above the old iron sink. His blood pressure medicine was there, along with some old antibiotics and a bottle of aspirin. Usually they jousted with seventeen different bottles of vitamins, minerals, fish oil, rose hips, and the like, all part of Marie’s strict beauty regimen since she’d started losing weight and making a life without him. Now his medicine sat alone on the shelf.