The Prone Gunman. Jean-Patrick Manchette

      1

      It was winter, and it was dark. Coming down directly from the Arctic, a freezing wind rushed into the Irish Sea, swept through Liverpool, raced across the Cheshire plain (where the cats lowered their trembling ears at the sound of the roaring in the chimneys) and, through the lowered window, struck the eyes of the man sitting in the little Bedford van. The man did not blink.

      He was tall but not really massive, with a calm face, blue eyes, and brown hair that just covered the tops of his ears. He wore a reefer, a black sweater, and blue jeans; he had fake Clarks on his feet. He kept his upper body erect, leaning against the right door of the cab, his legs on the bench seat, the soles touching the left door. One would have taken him for thirty or a little more; he was not quite that old. His name was Martin Terrier. An Ortgies automatic pistol with a Redfield silencer rested on his lap.

      The Bedford was parked in the northern suburb of Worcester, in a residential neighborhood full of Tudor-style houses, with half-timbering and small-paned windows whose cross pieces were painted a shiny black. The gray or pastel light of television glowed behind the windows of houses without shutters. Two couples waited at the nearby bus stop, their heads bent, their backs to the wind.

      A porch light came on beneath the awning of a Tudor house fifty meters from the Bedford. When the door of the house opened, Terrier tossed his French cigarette, a Gauloise, on the floorboard of the cab. He picked up the Ortgies and cocked it, while at the top of the steps Marshal Dubofsky turned to give his wife a brief kiss on the cheek. A green double-decker bus, all lit up, was approaching from the north. Crammed into a beltless putty raincoat, Dubofsky began to run on his short legs. With one hand clutching a fluffy green velvet Tyrolean hat to his head, he crossed the yard on the double, hurried down the sidewalk, and reached the stop three seconds ahead of the bus. Terrier made a small sound of irritation with the saliva in his mouth. Swinging his legs around, he took the wheel of the Bedford and set the safety of the automatic, which he put next to him on the left-hand side of the bench seat. Meanwhile, the two couples and Dubofsky were getting into the bus. Terrier allowed it to get a little ahead.

      In the center of Worcester there is a square that is the terminus of several bus lines. As he was parking the Bedford there, Terrier saw Dubofsky go into a movie theater that was showing a double feature, a mediocre American thriller starring Charles Bronson along with a regional black-and-white British comedy with Diane Cilento. Once the bus passengers had dispersed, the square was deserted. Across from the theater, a pub devoid of all picturesqueness and looking more like a big launderette cast pools of yellow light on the sidewalk through its opaque windows. In her glass cube at the back of the lobby the theater cashier was knitting.

      A fake redhead dressed in a poppy-red three-quarter-length coat of acrylic fur,