Читать книгу The Prone Gunman - Jean-Patrick Manchette - Страница 5

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It was winter, and it was dark. Coming down directly from the Arctic, a freezing wind rushed into the Irish Sea, swept through Liverpool, raced across the Cheshire plain (where the cats lowered their trembling ears at the sound of the roaring in the chimneys) and, through the lowered window, struck the eyes of the man sitting in the little Bedford van. The man did not blink.

He was tall but not really massive, with a calm face, blue eyes, and brown hair that just covered the tops of his ears. He wore a reefer, a black sweater, and blue jeans; he had fake Clarks on his feet. He kept his upper body erect, leaning against the right door of the cab, his legs on the bench seat, the soles touching the left door. One would have taken him for thirty or a little more; he was not quite that old. His name was Martin Terrier. An Ortgies automatic pistol with a Redfield silencer rested on his lap.

The Bedford was parked in the northern suburb of Worcester, in a residential neighborhood full of Tudor-style houses, with half-timbering and small-paned windows whose cross pieces were painted a shiny black. The gray or pastel light of television glowed behind the windows of houses without shutters. Two couples waited at the nearby bus stop, their heads bent, their backs to the wind.

A porch light came on beneath the awning of a Tudor house fifty meters from the Bedford. When the door of the house opened, Terrier tossed his French cigarette, a Gauloise, on the floorboard of the cab. He picked up the Ortgies and cocked it, while at the top of the steps Marshal Dubofsky turned to give his wife a brief kiss on the cheek. A green double-decker bus, all lit up, was approaching from the north. Crammed into a beltless putty raincoat, Dubofsky began to run on his short legs. With one hand clutching a fluffy green velvet Tyrolean hat to his head, he crossed the yard on the double, hurried down the sidewalk, and reached the stop three seconds ahead of the bus. Terrier made a small sound of irritation with the saliva in his mouth. Swinging his legs around, he took the wheel of the Bedford and set the safety of the automatic, which he put next to him on the left-hand side of the bench seat. Meanwhile, the two couples and Dubofsky were getting into the bus. Terrier allowed it to get a little ahead.

In the center of Worcester there is a square that is the terminus of several bus lines. As he was parking the Bedford there, Terrier saw Dubofsky go into a movie theater that was showing a double feature, a mediocre American thriller starring Charles Bronson along with a regional black-and-white British comedy with Diane Cilento. Once the bus passengers had dispersed, the square was deserted. Across from the theater, a pub devoid of all picturesqueness and looking more like a big launderette cast pools of yellow light on the sidewalk through its opaque windows. In her glass cube at the back of the lobby the theater cashier was knitting.

A fake redhead dressed in a poppy-red three-quarter-length coat of acrylic fur, wearing scarlet lipstick, too much mascara, and black plastic boots with very high heels, came out and left the theater. A red purse slung across her shoulder, she had her hands in her pockets and wore a sullen, calculating expression. Dubofsky followed twenty meters behind; he cast a furtive glance toward the pub.

When the girl and the man were away from the theater and were about to go around the corner, Terrier released the clutch and caught up with and overtook them. Just before the redhead reached the intersection, he swerved, pulled up to the sidewalk, and came to a stop. With the engine running, Terrier opened the left door and stepped out onto the sidewalk, with the Ortgies in his hand. Dubofsky almost ran into him. Their eyes met. Dubofsky opened his mouth to shout. Terrier quickly shot him once in his open mouth and again at the base of his nose.

At the discreet sound of these shots, the redhead turned. Terrier also turned, and they found themselves face to face just as Dubofsky’s head, which was split open, full of holes, and shattered like the shell of a hard-boiled egg, hit the sidewalk with a squishy sound. Terrier took two steps forward, extended his arm, put the silencer against the girl’s heart, and pressed the trigger once. The girl flew back, her intestines emptying noisily, and fell dead on her back. Terrier got back in the Bedford and left.

He turned left once again and drove westward down an absolutely deserted shopping street where the violent wind pursued dirty newspaper pages. Behind the dark shopwindows were hundreds of empty suits, thousands of empty shoes, thousands of square cardboard labels bearing prices in pounds sterling and occasionally in guineas.

The Bedford soon rejoined the highway. Around midnight it passed Oxford. Later it reached London.

Terrier was staying at the Cavendish Hotel. He parked the little van in the hotel lot, went up to his room, and from the individual automatic bar removed a split of Spanish champagne. He drank a glassful, then poured the rest of the sparkling wine down the toilet and tossed the bottle into a corner of the room. He opened a bottle of Watney’s “strong ale” and sipped it as he reclined on the bed, his upper body erect, and smoked two or three cigarettes. He was almost motionless and did not seem sleepy. Then he got back up, dismantled the weapon, cleaned it meticulously, and put it away in a cardboard box. He smoked another cigarette, then put on his pajamas, got into bed, and turned out the light.