designed as pacifiers. In ten seconds a man could be crippled, his legs worse than useless, by the simple expedient of a scything stroke behind the knee. The twins, being two, found this the best resort in all but the most extreme of circumstances. One would monopolize the target’s attention whilst the other struck him from behind. It had never failed them. A frightened man on the floor, one leg unmarked but useless, was a very different animal indeed from an angry man in possession of all his physical faculties.
The inspector curled up in the foetal position at the entrance to his apartment and began to dry retch, like a cat attempting to bring up a fur ball. His wife came hurrying out of the kitchen, where she had been preparing their supper. Vau gave her two for good measure, one behind each knee. She dropped to the floor and then stretched out, like a postulant at some Easter confraternity ceremony.
Abi closed the door. He and Vau dragged the couple through into the lounge.
Vau switched on the television. ‘Gas explosion or double suicide?’
The inspector tried to raise himself from the floor. Vau flailed him behind the other knee. ‘Silence. You will both remain silent, faces to the ground. Do you understand me?’
The woman was unconscious – shock, probably. The boys were used to people responding in disparate ways. Women were particularly vulnerable to sudden explosions of violence, whereas men would often struggle, requiring further pacification.
Abi snapped his fingers triumphantly. ‘No. No. Listen. I’ve got another idea. Kill two birds with one stone.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Wait for me here. I won’t be more than ten minutes. A surprise.’ Abi was staring out of the window now, his expression speculative. He snapped the baton shut and secreted it back inside his sleeve. He had scarcely even broken into a sweat.
5
Abi had passed the Jaguar Sports on their way in from the station. The car had captured his attention even then, as It had seemed so out of place in a street full of Peugeots, and Renaults, and six-seater Fiat run-arounds. A pimp’s car, probably, or the vehicle of some chancer who had made it good and couldn’t tear himself away from the old neighbourhood. Perhaps the owner was visiting his elderly mother?
It took Abi less than a minute to bypass the alarm system. He had been breaking into cars ever since his early adolescence, and considered it one of his primary skills. During their teen years, Madame, his mother, had arranged for him and Vau to serve as apprentices to one of the best auto thieves in the business. It was something he was infinitely grateful to her for. It had given him power.
He drove the car to the front of the inspector’s apartment building and triggered the trunk mechanism. Vau was watching from the inspector’s window. Abi mouthed a few words and pointed to the trunk. Vau nodded his head.
He emerged, less than a minute later, supporting the inspector like a man will support his drunken friend after a night out on the town.
Abi had closed the trunk by this time, and was holding the passenger door open, with the seat pulled forward. He checked around, then nodded. Speed was of the essence in such cases – any hesitation could prove fatal. Neither he nor Vau appeared on any police records, and he intended to keep it that way. ‘Get in there. Keep your head down.’
The inspector stretched himself flat down across the well. ‘What about my wife? What are you doing with my wife?’ His voice shook. One hand snaked down as if to feel for any damage to his knees.
‘Don’t worry, Colonel. She’s coming along for the ride too.’
Once they were safely out of town, Vau stopped the car, and they transferred the inspector and his wife to the trunk. It was a tight fit, but it seemed unlikely the pair would actually suffocate. Both parties had wet themselves, which saved the brothers the trouble of having to stop somewhere en route for a leak break.
Vau caught his brother’s eye. He gave a speculative chuck of the head. ‘I know exactly what you’re thinking. But we’ll never make it. You can’t beat a TGV. Those things average more than three hundred kilometres an hour.’
‘Three stops. They have to make three stops. Then they have to cut their speed radically along the coast. I’ll give you a thousand Euros if we make it to Madame, our mother’s, twenty minutes before our allotted time.’
‘Done. You want to take the wheel?’
‘No. You’re a better driver than I am.’
Vau fishtailed the car out onto the highway, in the direction of the nearest autoroute toll booth.
6
They made it to the Cap Camarat lighthouse with fourteen minutes to spare. Below them the rocks loomed white in the glow of the waxing moon.
‘Jesus, Abi. You don’t mean to bung them off here? We’re only a few kilometres from the house.’
‘Look.’ Abi held out an unfamiliar cell phone. ‘It probably belongs to the pimp who owns this car.’
‘So what?’
‘So what? So everything. We get them out of the trunk, give them the keys, and let them take off.’
‘Are you crazy?’
‘But not before we’ve phoned a place in South Africa I know of and arranged a movie download – the damned thing will take hours and cost thousands. Then we bury the cell phone down the side of the seat. After that we phone the flics back in Saint Evry, and check up on what we claim is our stolen car – the one that we called in a few hours ago. Don’t they remember taking the call? Maybe it was someone else on duty? There’ll be a record of it, anyway. Then we tell the flics that we just remembered that there’s a cell phone in the car, and give them the number and the server. Then we leave the rest to them.’
‘I still don’t understand.’
‘Come on, Vau. The flics check on the cell phone. They find that the line is conveniently open. They can then pinpoint the car to within about three metres, give or take. So they swoop down and reel these two losers in.’
‘But then they’ll tell the flics about us.’
‘Oh really? That they were kidnapped and forced to drive three hundred kilometres by two guys the inspector talked rough to on the train? That they were then calmly handed back the stolen car keys, and, to celebrate, they began to download a child porn movie? When the flics get through with them – if they ever get through with them – Monsieur et Madame L’Inspecteur will still have the pimp to reckon with. And his dear old mother lives just down the road from them, remember? And they’ve just run up an uninsured bill of three thousand Euros on the pimp’s cell phone, and got him branded a paedophile to boot.’
‘Christ, Abi. That’s genius.’
Abi used his own cell phone to call up a local taxi. ‘You’re right. It is. Why bother to kill people when you can simply ruin their lives with a little creative imagination?’
7
Genevieve de Bale, dowager Countess of Hyeres, stood on the steps of the Chateau de Seyeme and watched as her adopted twin sons descended from their taxi. They were the last of her children to arrive, and she was marginally displeased.
‘You were due in at 8.10.’
She leaned towards her personal assistant, Madame Mastigou, who consulted her brooch watch and mouthed
