Star looked at him; he could feel God in his skull. If the man hadn’t stressed the excellence of the pharmacy, he thought, he might have let him live. As it was, he had a twitchy rabbity look Star did not like. He took out the gun and fired two bursts straight in the man’s face. He watched it splinter and pulp and spray, then he reloaded, stuffed the gun back in his pocket, and jogged the few hundred yards to the mews.

No sirens, no shouts, no sound of running feet. Easy, easy, easy, Star thought: it was just so fucking easy to be great. He opened the gates to the mews and jogged the last few yards to the end garage. He listened, but he could hear nothing at all except the calm of this God in his head. He was about to open the garage doors, then he thought: a little reward.

He took out the container of White Doves. Six remained. One—taken with speed the previous night while Mina lay beside him, pretending not to be afraid, pretending not to be awake, pretending she wasn’t going to betray him like everyone else—one taken then had produced a confidence swoop. Also other interesting and gratifying effects.

He tipped one pill into the palm of his hand. He added a second, then swallowed them. Water, he thought: must take some water—but that was okay. He could drink water, do the interview—at Mathilde’s place.

“Gini,” he said, calling her name through the doors in a low voice. “Gini, it’s okay. It’s me. I’m sorry I’m late.”

Chapter 20

“SWEET,” STAR SAID AS the garage doors lifted. He was standing directly in front of Gini, blocking her escape. She stood looking at him, transfixed. He was covered in blood. There was blood on his shirtfront, on his hands, under his nails, on his neck, on his face. The front of his hair was wet with blood, and caught in his hair, in one loose lock at the front, were some small sharp white fragments. Bone; tiny fragments of bone, Gini thought. She clamped her hands across her mouth. He stood there, drenched in blood, tossing down an overcoat, a pair of black gloves, a wide smile on his face.

She slumped back against the garage wall, shaking.

How many more people had he killed? Just Jean Lazare; just the driver of this car—or, as he had claimed, more than that? The driver of this car had been young, she thought, insofar as she could tell the age of a man left with only half a face. She had taken off her green scarf and pressed it against the terrible wounds. She knew what was going to happen, because she had watched similar things happen in Bosnia; nothing could have saved him, and it was useless to try to stanch the blood. Nevertheless, she did try. It had taken him over an hour to hemorrhage to death.

Now she, too, was bloodstained. She was wearing a sweater and a thick coat, but shock was making her bitterly cold. She could not stop shivering—and Star, when he finally noticed, seemed pleased by this.