Three to Kill by Jean-Patrick Manchette

Author:Jean-Patrick Manchette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Publishers

14

At two in the morning, while Gerfaut was plunged in a comatose slumber, Radio Luxembourg announced that the Taunus had been identified. It was described as a vehicle rented the same day as the gas-station drama by Georges Gerfaut, a Parisian mid-level manager, who had since gone missing. Listeners were reminded that a service-station attendant and another man whose identity was still unknown had been killed on the evening of the second of July. As always on Radio Luxembourg during the night, the newsreader spoke in a neutral and low-key tone. In the same tone he reported on the situation in the Near East, on an attack on the Yugoslav embassy in Paris, and on a tragic drowning in the Loire (two children at some camp had lost their lives, along with a priest who had been in charge of them and who had gone to the rescue). The news was followed by a promotional spot for a concert sponsored by the station. Then came station identification, followed by Leonard Cohen.

It was hot. Wearing only baggy white underwear and white ankle socks, Carlo was sitting at the table in a room at the Hotel Saint-Jacques. His features were drawn and his eyes red rimmed; he looked like a man who had been weeping for a long time. He sat still and showed no reaction to the news bulletin. At the same time, he held the table tightly and performed isometric muscle-building exercises.

After the fire at the service station and the death of Bastien, Carlo had driven haphazardly, utterly stricken and sick with rage and self-recrimination. On the outskirts of Bourg-en-Bresse he had stopped to have an emergency windshield installed—a sheet of pliable plastic held in place by clips. He had thought things over and consulted maps. Then he set off again in the direction of Paris. He had been careful not to pass by the gas station, which was sure by now to be crawling with firefighters and police. Once back on the highway, he had stayed in the slow lane and never driven faster than seventy kilometers per hour. He had exited at Achères-la-Forêt around five in the morning. Somewhere in the forest of Fontainebleau he had pulled off the road and parked under the trees. Since he could not bury Bastien’s body as he would have wished, he had taken the man’s personal possessions from the metal suitcase and buried them—the nylon cord, the toilet bag, the clothes. The sight of Bastien’s spare khaki underpants moved Carlo to tears—which tears rolled down his cheeks as he finished interring the objects and stamped down the loose earth to make it even. He had then sought words to pronounce over this pseudo-grave in lieu of a funeral oration. He could recall no prayer except for “Our Father.” From the floor of the Lancia he retrieved an old issue of Spiderman (not to be confused with The Spider, whose adventures appear in Strange magazine). He had brightened at this, returned to

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