Three to Kill Read Free Page A

Parisian.
    â€œYou’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.”
    Gerfaut pushed the injured man’s legs in farther, slammed the back door, and climbed briskly into the driver’s seat. He was thinking that the blood would soil the leather upholstery; or perhaps he was thinking nothing. The Mercedes started up. During the journey Gerfaut said very little, and the injured man said nothing at all.
    They were at Troyes in less than ten minutes. It was twelvetwenty. There was not a cop to be seen. Gerfaut hailed a tardy passerby, who directed him to the hospital. The passerby was drunk, and the directions were confusing. Gerfaut almost missed the way, losing time. In the back, with great difficulty but without audible complaint, the injured man had removed his jacket. Beneath it he wore a black polo-neck pullover. He had folded his jacket in four and was pressing it to his side to stanch the bleeding. Just as they arrived at the hospital, he passed out. Gerfaut parked hurriedly at the entrance to Emergency. He leaped from the car and entered an ill-lit lobby.
    â€œA stretcher! A stretcher, quickly!” he shouted and returned to the car to open the rear doors.
    Nobody came out of the hospital. To the right of the lobby Gerfaut found a large glassed-in reception area with two girls in white blouses behind a counter and four other people: an Algerian and an old couple sitting on tubular-metal-and-plastic chairs and a guy in his thirties with a white complexion and flaccid cheeks, in a suit but no tie, leaning against the wall and biting his nails.
    â€œCome on! For Christ’s sake!” yelled Gerfaut.
    Two male nurses appeared in the lobby with a gurney.
    â€œWe’re coming!”
    Efficiently, they lifted the injured man out of the car, laid him on the gurney, and left at top speed through the lobby. Before they disappeared, one of the nurses turned to Gerfaut, who was hesitantly following in their wake.
    â€œYou need to register him, okay?”
    Gerfaut was by now standing some four or five meters inside the lobby, close to the side door leading to the reception area. The aged couple and the Algerian had not budged. The tieless thirty-year-old man had stepped up to the counter. He had a form in front of him and a ballpoint in his hand, and he was talking animatedly with one of the girls in blouses.
    â€œI don’t know her,” he was saying. “I found her lying on my doormat. I could see that she’d been taking something; I couldn’t leave her like that; I brought her here in my car, yes, but I don’t know who she is, I don’t know her, I don’t even know her name. I can’t help it if she decided to commit suicide on my doorstep, can I?”
    Sweat was running down his pale forehead.
    Gerfaut got out a Gitane filter and slowly retraced his steps, trying his best to appear inconspicuous, his gaze directed vaguely toward the floor. He need not have bothered: no one was paying him the slightest attention. Once outside, he got back in his car and drove off in a hurry.
    A moment or two later, a medical resident and a bareheaded policeman burst agitatedly into the reception area and loudly demanded to know where the person was who had brought in the man with gunshot wounds.

4
    â€œIt’s stupid. You must be mad,” said Béa.
    Béa was Béatrice Gerfaut, née Changarnier, by background Catholic on one side and Protestant on the other, Bordelaise on one side and Alsatian on the other, bourgeois on one side and bourgeois on the other; by profession a freelance press agent, formerly a teacher of audiovisual techniques at the University of Paris at Vincennes and, before that, manager of a health-food store in Sèvres—a superb and horrible mare of a woman: bigboned and elegant; with big green eyes; thick, healthy, long black hair; big, hard white breasts; wide, round white shoulders; a big, hard creamy ass; a big, hard white belly; and long, muscular