He knew the voice. It was the former legionnaire at whose house he had found refuge after the robbery at the Crédit Agricole. Against a tidy consideration, the guy had contrived to treat Alex himself. There had been no need to extract the bullet, because it had exited from his thigh after passing through the quadriceps. He had given Alex antibiotics and dressed his wound after sewing it up in makeshift fashion. It hurt a lot, but the legionnaire swore up and down that he knew enough to do without a doctor. In any event, Alex had no choice: he was wanted by the police and would never get away otherwise. The normal course, outpatient treatment from a hospital, was out of the question.
The phone conversation was brief and staccato. The owner of the farmhouse was implicated in a sordid business connected with prostitution. The police were liable to show up at the door in the next few hours armed with a search warrant. Alex must clear out immediately…
He agreed, stammering out his thanks. The caller hung up. Alex paced up and down with the Colt still in his hand. He wept with rage. It was all about to start again: flight, pursuit, terror of being caught, tingling of the spine at the merest glimpse of a policeman’s kepi.
He packed up quickly, transferring the money to a suitcase. He dressed in a cotton suit that he had found in a wardrobe. It was a little baggy, but what did that matter? The bandage around his thigh made a lump under the material. Freshly shaved, he tossed a bag into the trunk of the car: a change of clothes, toilet articles, not much else. There was no reason why the car should show up on police files: it was a Citroën CX, rented for a couple more months, and according to the legionnaire all its papers were in order.
Stowing the Colt in the glove compartment, Alex started the car. He left the iron gates to the property wide open behind him. On the road, he passed the Dutch family on their way back from the beach.
The major roads were swarming with vacationers in their cars and police setting speed traps wherever they could find the slightest cover.
Alex was sweating profusely. His false papers would not withstand anything like serious scrutiny, for the simple reason that his picture was on file with the police.
He had to get up to Paris as quickly as possible. Once there, it would be easier for him to find a new bolt-hole until the police got over their fury and his wound was completely healed up. Then he would need to figure out how best to get out of the country without getting himself picked up at the border. But where would he go? Alex had no idea. He recalled whispered conversations among his “friends.” Latin America was supposed to be a safe place. But one couldn’t trust anybody. The money, he realized, would attract all kinds of people. Weakened by his injury, panic-stricken, and caught up in an adventure that it was beyond his capacities to confront, Alex sensed obscurely that the future would be no bed of roses.
He was terrified by the mere thought of prison. That time when Vincent had got him to go to the Paris Hall of Justice to attend the superior court had left him with a most agonizing memory that he simply could not shake off: the accused rearing up in the dock after the guilty verdict and letting out a long howl when he heard the sentence. In his nightmares Alex still saw the man’s face, horribly contorted by incredulity and pain. He resolved to save a bullet for himself if ever he was caught.
He returned to Paris by back roads; the major arteries and highways were bound to be patrolled by the national security police at this, the height of the vacation season.
He had only one place to go: the house of the exlegionnaire who had already helped him in his desperate flight from the fiasco at the bank. The man now ran a private surveillance company. Alex had no illusions about his savior’s motives: he obviously had his eye on the money but was in no great hurry to make a move. If things smoothed out for Alex, if the bills were negotiable, then everything became possible … Meanwhile, the legionnaire knew that Alex was entirely dependent on him, not only to get over his injury but also to get out of the country. Alex, all at sea in his new life, was not about to throw himself blindly into the waiting arms of Interpol.
Alex had no foreign contacts offering him a guarantee of security abroad. He could easily foresee the moment when his protector would state his price for arranging a clean disappearance, complete with a credible passport and a quiet, discreet hideaway. And that price would certainly be a very high percentage of the proceeds of the hold-up…
Alex dwelt on his abiding hatred for men at ease in well-cut clothes, casually elegant, who knew how to talk to women. He himself was still a peasant, a rube that anybody could manipulate at will.
He wound up in a small suburban detached house at Livry-Gargan, one of the residential zones of Seine-Saint-Denis. After setting Alex up there, the legionnaire ordered him not to go out, and, much as at the farmhouse, he found a freezer stuffed to bursting, a bed, and a television set.
Alex made himself as comfortable as he could, using just one room. The neighboring houses were either unoccupied, in the process of being rented, or inhabited by bank employees with well-regulated lives who rose very early and returned only in the early evening. Moreover, the summer season meant that the Paris suburbs had been depopulated since the beginning of August. Alex took his ease, somewhat calmed by the emptiness that surrounded him. The legionnaire insisted absolutely on his remaining inside. Alex would not see his protector again until he returned to town in September, so Alex was to take things quietly until then. All he had to do was watch television, prepare frozen meals, take naps, and play solitaire…
3
Richard Lafargue was being visited by the sales representative of a Japanese pharmaceutical firm that had developed a new variety of the silicone commonly used in plastic surgery for breast augmentation. He listened attentively as the petty bureaucrat pitched his product, which according to him was easier to inject, easier to handle, and so forth. Medical records filled Lafargue’s office, and the walls were “decorated” with photographs showing the results of successful plastic surgery. The Japanese man was waving his arms about as he spoke.
The telephone rang. As Richard listened, a deep frown came over his face, and when he answered his voice was hollow and tremulous. He thanked the caller, then turned to the salesman and explained that he would have to terminate their meeting. They set up another time for the next day.
Lafargue doffed his lab coat and ran all the way to his car. Roger was waiting at the wheel, but he sent him home, preferring to drive himself.
He drove rapidly to the Paris ring road, then took the Normandy turnpike. He kept his foot down and leaned furiously on the horn whenever a driver did not get over into the slow lane quickly enough when he wanted to pass. In under three hours, he reached the psychiatric institution where Viviane was confined.
Once at the château, he leaped from the Mercedes and bounded up the front steps to the reception window. The receptionist went to find the psychiatrist who was treating Viviane.
Richard followed the doctor into the elevator. When they reached Viviane’s door, the psychiatrist nodded toward the plexiglass observation window, and Richard looked in.
Viviane was in crisis. She had ripped her smock, and she was stamping her feet and screaming, tearing at her body, which was already covered with bloody weals.
“How long?” Richard asked in a whisper,
“Since this morning. We’ve given her injections, tranquilizers. They should take effect soon.”