doing that, then he had to let her do it. With a gasp of exhaustion, he released her — and fell back onto the soggy ground.
Amy hissed a warning but Eloise did not respond, she moved a few yards, waiting, watching — there were lights on in the bungalow- and then she ran across the road, in and out of the gloomy shadows, running to her grandmother. David stood there, lurking and shameful, paralyzed — for half a minute. He whispered hoarsely to Amy: 'What do we do? What do we fucking do?'
Amy raised a hand, and mouthed the word silently: 'Eloise.'
The teenage girl was running back, her face was stricken with terror, her young lips trembling.
'El — '
The girl shook her head. The silver cross on her dark skin glittered in the lonely streetlight.
'I see I saw I see I see — ' she stammered, fighting tears, or screams '- through the window.'
'What?'
Another shake of the head. No words. Eloise stood there shivering, like a terrified gazelle, aware of a nearby predator. Amy put a hand on Eloise's shoulders; David reached in his pocket and gave her the phone. He whispered, fiercely, 'Call the police. Call them. Even if you don't trust them…'
Eloise accepted the phone, and dialled. Amy and David whispered together, trying to work out where to go, where to hide next. Everywhere they went, they got hunted down, maybe it was hopeless. Eloise was talking urgently on the mobile.
The door to the bungalow opened. David grabbed Eloise once again and they ducked into the woods.
'Come on!'
At last, Eloise spoke, 'I know…I know where we can go. We have to hide. Yes? He will kill us too!'
'Yes — '
'Give me your car keys!'
David handed them over; they skulked down the line of trees to David's car. Eloise hissed: 'Now!'
They jumped in. David took the back seat, Amy the front, Eloise revved the engine fiercely, squealed into reverse; and they were away: headlights dipped and racing out of Gurs, taking a narrow, rustic route, racing for the mountains. David looked behind — the road was empty; he turned and saw. Eloise's face was streaked with fierce, silent tears.
He didn't want to guess what she had glimpsed through the window. Her grandmother killed — or worse — being killed. She was obviously in some kind of shock. And yet her driving was good. She was crying but she was coping. Doing it. He gazed at her dark profile. There was something proud in her teenage grace; and something purely sad. Again he noticed the cross on her dark Cagot neck. It was glittering in the oncoming carlights.
Amy opened a window and the cold night air gushed in; David flopped back, quite shattered. He was covered in noisome mud, yet again, from the crawl into the trees.
But at least they were alive; Amy and Eloise were alive.
But they'd left her grandmother to die.
Eloise had stopped crying. Her face was now devoid of expression. She was driving, fast — with a bleak efficiency — through the back roads, the black mountains looming ahead; the clouds had cleared, so the tallest summit wore a saintly halo of stars against the deep dark blue.
They were alive. But Eloise's grandmother was surely dead.
Amy turned and looked at David, and then at his hand. He stared down: he had a vivid and bloody cut along the palm, from when they'd fallen back, so violently, into the trees.
'Ouch,' she said.
He exhaled.
'Doesn't hurt.'
'We need a bandage.'
Amy grabbed at a T-shirt, tore it vigorously in two, and wrapped the cloth tightly around his wound. 'It will have to do for now,' she said. 'Until we get to…wherever…'
The question had been broached. David nodded.
'Eloise. Where are we going?'
The girl did not reply. David and Amy swapped a knowing, worried glance.
'Eloise?'
The car burned down the road, the girl said nothing. Then at last she replied, quietly yet precisely: 'Campan.'
More silence. Amy filled the painful stasis: 'Eloise, look, I…'
'No! Non! Not talk about it. Please do not talk about it or I will turn the car and go back…I cannot tell you what I saw! Non non non. Please do not ever ask me.'
David glanced Amy's way. She silently nodded. They needed to distract the poor girl some other way. He spoke: 'Campan, Eloise? What's there?'
'The cagoteries.' Eloise turned the wheel to take a curve. 'No one goes there to the ruins. The ruins are stretching, down to the ravine…There is a house!'
'Campan…' David whispered to himself. The village of the dolls. Amy asked, 'You think we will be safe?'
'Oui,' said Eloise, with a bitter tinge to her voice. 'The cursed side of the river? Everyone avoids it and everyone never goes there. Totally safe. Totalement.'
David sat back, assenting, as Amy wrapped the bandage tighter around his bleeding palm. The blood looked like black squid-ink in the moonlight.
It was indeed obvious now. Who was doing it all: who had killed his parents. Who was killing the Cagots. It had to be.
He said, 'Miguel. He's doing all of it. Or most of it.'
Amy frowned, severely.
'But why? And how?'
'I don't know. I just know. Miguel killed my mum and dad. The…' His voice dropped to the lowest cadence. A dark whisper. 'The grandmother saw someone. A tall man? Remember? So it was him. She sensed. And she suspected the same man of killing my family and hers. This is it, Amy. This has to be it. He is killing for a reason. He is chasing us for a reason. Trying to kill us for a reason.'
'But what?' Her question was hushed — yet fierce. 'What's it got to do with you, with you and…with Jose? And the Cagots?'
'He saw the map in Jose's house.' David was working it out even as he spoke. 'Maybe he realized we were on the same trail. Following the same route that got my mum and dad killed. So he has to kill us too.'
Amy was looking out of the window at the stars. 'I suppose…And Jose knew — he knew that if we pursued the same puzzle, Miguel would come for us too. He was trying to save us from his son. My God.'
David nodded, feeling almost foolish. It was as if he had been marvelling at some little corner of a painting, not realizing that the actual painting was ten times the size. Now the full horror was revealed: a grotesque and Biblical tableau of the cruel and invincible son: killing mothers and fathers.
'But why?' Amy said. 'What mystery could be so bad that Miguel has to kill for it? To keep it quiet?'
'It must be something to do with his father. And the war,' said David. 'He was in Gurs. The traitor in Gurs…?'
The sign from Campan flashed past, momentarily red and white in their headlights. Then the car slowed.
Eloise talked, for the first time in half an hour.
'It gets difficult…from here.'
They were driving over a bridge. In the half-light David recognized the mournful spire of Campan church across the slated roofs; he glimpsed one of the rag dolls lying next to the bridge, smiling happily in the headlights; but now the car was headed deep into the bad side of the river, into the cagoterie. Ruined cottages with empty black windows stood on either side, tumbledown barns, derelict allotments. Thick woods approached, slowly reclaiming the ancient ghetto of the untouchables.
The road worsened, stones and branches littered the way. In the chilly darkness David got the sense they were driving underground — a ravine was rising on either side. The humble cottages were more scattered now, low grey shapes through the trees; a ghostly white owl flapped across the headlights' dazzle.
