Past Imperfect

The woman's voice beyond the door was staccato, alarmed. '… You mean now?… this minute….'

Car door shutting, footsteps approaching, key in the door…

'… But that's probably Gerome now, I could go straight off with…'

As the door swung open and the figure took a step forward, Brossard took his first clear shot towards the centre of its chest, and saw the figure fall.

Brossard jumped up quickly from his crouch — no time to lose, the woman would have been alerted by the noise — and burst into the drawing room. Quick flash image: the woman, the phone receiver held out slightly in defence, her panicked expression, a night-light beyond searing his eyes slightly…

Five seconds more and he would be finished and away.

'Monique. You're in grave danger. Get out of the house now!' Dominic flashed furiously as a car stayed obstinately in the fast lane. He'd phoned at two minute intervals, and on the third try had finally got through. The pent-up frustration and fear came through in his voice.

'What's happening, Dominic… what's going on?'

'No questions, Monique. Just go!'

'You mean now… this minute?'

'Yes, now!' Dominic screamed. 'Get out quickly and run to the nearest neighbour's house.'

Sound in the background. Car engine, wheels turning. '…But that's probably Gerome now. I could go straight off with him.'

'Whatever, Monique. But just go, get away from there as soon as…'

Another sound then: a dull thud and something dropping, as if Gerome had dropped a heavy kit bag in the hallway.

A sharp intake of breath from Monique, then a shriek as Dominic heard movement in the background, the door bursting open.

'Monique, get out of there… get out!' Dominic's voice was shrill, his throat almost bursting as he screamed into his mobile.

The sound of scuffling and light banging, as if the receiver had been dropped for a second at the other end. Then a man's voice, deeper. Not Gerome's. 'It's too late.'

And in that moment — with searing pain and lights bursting through his head in rhythm with his now almost constant flashing of the road ahead — the hollow, nauseating reality hit Dominic that the voice was right. He was too late to save Monique's life. He knew it even before he heard the gunshot and the sickening thud of the body hitting the floor. Then the line went dead.

Duclos was in a panic. He'd gone down to Vidauban with half an hour of daylight to spare, and had spent the time since scouting vainly for Brossard.

He'd looked first half a mile in each direction along the road leading to the farmhouse. Nothing suspicious, out of place. Then he'd decided to park a few hundred metres along the road leading to the motorway junction — the most likely direction that Brossard would approach.

After a few minutes, he realized that a bend in the road obscured the entrance to the farmhouse, and became concerned just in case Brossard approached from the other direction. He moved closer, to within a hundred metres of the entrance — the closest he dare park. And waited.

The hit had seemed a good idea originally: without Monique Fornier, there was no case! She was the only one who could vouch that the boy had left that day with the coin in his pocket, or that the tapes and transcripts bore any relevance to the life of her son. Without the coin or the tapes and transcripts, the case collapsed.

But now he just felt foolish, standing on a remote Provence lane hoping to stop the hit he'd ordered in the first place. He didn't even know which car Brossard would be driving. Though of the three cars which had so far passed, he'd been able to catch a fleeting glimpse of their drivers. No Brossard yet.

With the last dusk light fading, he realized that even that would be difficult. Another car approached, and he was hardly able to discern anything beyond the glare of its headlamps until it was almost past him.

He shuffled anxiously. Was this how he wanted to spend his last hour in France? He knew that all of this was only because one day he might want to return. He might be happy sitting in South America for a while, but forever? Times changed: the trial would slip from prominence, Corbeix would retire, a new prosecutor might not be so keen, might see through the evidence for the tenuous nonsense that it was.

Faced with no more than a weak, exploratory case against him, he might be tempted to return. But if Monique Fornier was killed, he would never be able to come back.

Another set of headlamps. Glimpse of a young man in profile as the car passed. The car slowed — it was turning into the farmhouse! Probably Fornier's son or a family friend, Duclos thought. With him there, would Brossard still make the hit? Perhaps Brossard would delay till the next night, and he could then reach Brossard tomorrow from Portugal, tell him not to go ahead.

Listening to his own wheedling, pathetically hopeful inner voice, it suddenly hit him: apart from his own neck, what did it matter? What did he care if Brossard dynamited the whole farmhouse with them all inside? Damn Fornier! Damn the lot of them! They'd brought him to this: standing on a lonely backwater lane in the dead of night, tired and afraid, his nerves frazzled, his career and life in ruins, running for his life from half the nation's police to catch a flight in just over an hour.

And now he was almost as worried about saving their necks as his own! His anger brought back his earlier pounding tension. His hands were shaking, and he rested back against the Peugeot bonnet to try and brace, steady them. But after a few more minutes with no cars passing, standing alone in the darkness with only some crickets breaking the silence, he couldn't bare it any longer. He slammed one hand on his bonnet. No! No more! He'd waited long enough. As far as he was concerned, Brossard could…

A set of headlamps appeared suddenly, startling him with the speed of their approach — and for a second he was caught in their glare. Quick flash glimpse as the car sped past, but enough: it was Fornier!

Duclos jumped in the Peugeot and started her up. His heart was pounding hard. Fornier had probably seen him! A moment for the realization to hit Fornier, and then the car would do a U-turn and head out after him.

Duclos bit hard at his lip. What a fool he'd been to come down here. He swung the Peugeot out quickly and put his foot down hard. He kept his eyes glued to the rear-view mirror as he sped away, fearful that at any second Fornier's headlamps would reappear at the farmhouse entrance and turn out.

Six minutes. All that it had taken from the phone going dead for Dominic to reach the farmhouse.

He screeched to a halt, leapt out almost before he'd stopped, taking his gun out in the few quick paces to the front door. It was slightly ajar.

He pushed it, but there was a weight the other side keeping it from opening. His nerves jumped, thinking for a moment that the hit man was still there, pushing from the other side — before his eyes adjusted to the dark and made out the ghostly white face on the floor. Gerome! He recoiled back in horror.

He couldn't risk forcing the door, moving the body, in case Gerome was still alive. He ran around the house, saw the dining room window open, and scrambled in.

Dominic realized he was probably following in the path the hit man had taken. Alive? He'd accepted in the last few minutes of frantic driving — fragments of hope and desperation fighting against hollow bewilderment — that Monique was probably already dead. But Gerome as well? He felt as if his stomach had been scooped out by a cold claw. Salt tears stung his eyes, his vision suddenly blurred.

But fear overrode, his hands trembling as he held his gun out, double beat pulse skittering across his cold dark sea of bewilderment.

Six minutes? A lifetime for a professional hit man. But still he might be lurking in the shadows, waiting. Dominic part of the contract along with Monique. Dominic moved stealthily, cautiously, alert to the slightest movement. Across the dining room, through the half open door, into the hallway…

Eyes adjusting, taking in the crumpled figure of Gerome at its end. He bit hard at his lip… please God, don't let him be dead! But he knew it was little more than a wishful, desperate prayer. Most professionals finished off with head shots.