She looked at the barman, who stood with his back to them, measuring out the whiskies. She looked at her watch. It was 11.37. She had barely twenty minutes left. There was a pocket of cold air deep in her stomach near the base of her spine. The rabbit-faced man suddenly leant out and grabbed her by the wrist. She reacted without thought, swinging the handbag off her shoulder and striking him in the face. He gave a squeal and lurched back, both hands over his nose.
The barman spun round holding a glass of whisky. An officer at a nearby table stood up. Somebody laughed. The journalist went on yelling into the telephone. Anne-Marie did not move. The second drunk had gone over to the rabbit-faced man who had begun to straighten up, his eyes filling with tears, screeching, ‘Salope! P’tite salope!’
The barman moved swiftly round, laid a hand across the little man’s chest, and said to Annie-Marie, ‘What happened?’
‘They’re drunk. They’re annoying me. Get rid of them.’
‘Salope!’ said the little man again, wiping his nose on his sleeve. The barman ignored him; he said to Anne-Marie, ‘Do you wish to make a complaint, mademoiselle?’
From across the room she saw the policeman making his way between the tables towards them. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to cause any trouble.’
The barman turned to the drunks: ‘Get out of here!’
The little one began to whimper in protest, but the other took him by the arm and hustled him off, just as the policeman came up. The barman said something to him. The man turned, his machine-pistol swinging round with him, and looked at Anne-Marie: ‘We don’t want any trouble here, mademoiselle.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘they were just drunks.’ She put up her hand to arrange some hair that had fallen loose from under her scarf. The policeman nodded and turned away. The two drunks had reached the end of the restaurant. The barman said, ‘Do you still want the Scotch?’
She looked up, and realized she was shaking all over. She put out a hand and gripped the edge of the bar. ‘Yes please,’ she murmured, and the barman pushed the glass over to her. The time was now 11.41. She swallowed the whisky neat and started to take some money from inside her dress; she did not touch the bag.
The barman waved a hand: ‘Ca va, c’est payé!’
She tried to smile, and said, ‘Merci’, then turned and walked hurriedly across the restaurant, past the woman in the blue hair, back to the lifts. The whisky had steadied her nerves; but her heart still beat hard and her face felt hot and throbbing. None of the lifts were at the floor. She started up the marble stairs. Room 274 was down to the left. There was no one in sight. She began to walk at a controlled pace along the dim carpeted corridor.
She reached the corner and turned. Behind her she heard a door close; a typewriter tapped in one of the rooms. She counted the decimal numbers set in the dark-varnished wood: — 68 — 70 — 72 — 74. She stopped, steadied herself, then lifted the handbag. None of the doors had handles, they locked automatically from the inside. She snapped open the bag and took out the pass-key; inserted it, twisted it to the left, pushed the door open and walked in.
It was dark inside. A passage led past the bathroom and toilet to the bedroom door, which stood ajar. She left the outer door open a couple of inches. There was no sound from the bedroom. She moved quickly, throwing the door wide-open. The shutters were closed across French windows and there was the metallic smell of air-conditioning. Through the darkness she could just make out the shape of a man lying under a sheet on the double bed. The wind roared outside and she could not hear him breathing. Her hand dropped the pass-key back into the bag and came out holding a revolver with the barrel wrapped in a bandage. She held it up level with her right breast and fired.
The bandage reduced the explosion to a loud thump, followed by a cracking sound. An arm moved out from under the sheet. She stepped forward and fired again. The first bullet had torn a white splinter out of the bed-top; the second thudded into the pillow.
The man’s head came up and began shouting. His voice was high and cracked, and she tried not to listen to it as she took aim again and fired. The man was half out of bed now, dragging the sheet with him. She stood gripping the gun with both hands, watching him come round the bed towards her, still pulling the sheet and screaming at her.
She fired again, and a bottle of mineral water shattered on a table by the bed. He lunged at her, tripping in the tangled sheet. With the next shot she aimed lower and heard him choke. She fired twice more; he stumbled and half his face disappeared.
He was kneeling on the floor now, and the room was full of his choking screams and the burnt smell of the gun. She watched as the upper half of his body grew dark; and he sank forward on to the carpet and died.
She stepped back and collided with the wardrobe, groped round it and bumped into the open door. She was shuddering, stumbling past the bathroom into the passage. She looked both ways, then started to run. Behind her a door slammed. She turned the corner and almost ran into a pot-bellied man in a dressing gown who stood gaping up and down the corridor. He called to her as she passed, ‘What’s happened? Is somebody hurt?’
She ran on without answering. Somewhere her mind began to register door-numbers: 307, 305, 303. She reached the stairs and
