Slow to draw conclusions, since Morgan was so damn phobic about dogs.

“Well,” he said, finally. “We got rid of him.”

“Who’s we?”

“Me ’n’ Jérôme.”

“What d’you mean?”

“We fed him rat poison.”

“Vesuvio? Are you kidding me? You and Jérôme killed Thierry’s dog?”

Morgan said nothing. Rat chewed over this revelation, genuinely shocked. Sure, Vesuvio was a horrible beast. But how could you kill a poor animal for what was Thierry’s fault?

“When was this?”

“Last time Thierry came back.”

“Where’d you get rat poison?”

“Jean-Luc has some in the garage.”

“And Jérôme helped you?”

“Yeah.”

Cross-questioned, Morgan divulged that Jérôme had brought him a hamburger patty into which they’d stuck pellets of rat poison. Sunday morning, when Thierry let the dog out of the house for its morning pee before heading back to bed himself, they’d lured Vesuvio into the garage and locked the door. Came back later to make sure he was dead, loaded him into a garbage bag, and hauled the body off to the communal bins. Easy-peasy. Took off his tags so nobody could identify him.

Rat feels as if her world’s gone mad.

“Why didn’t you guys tell me?”

“I knew you wouldn’t like the idea, ’cause you love animals. I know you’d say it wasn’t Vesuvio’s fault. But that’s only because you haven’t been bitten by him as often as I have.”

“And Jérôme went along with it—with this dog murder? It sounds so cold-blooded, so planned out.” She’s nonplussed as much as anything. She always thought Jérôme was such a peaceable guy, far less of a hoodlum than she.

“Yeah, Jérôme said he’d rather kill Thierry, but if I was happy with taking out the dog, fine.”

Rat is silent for a moment. Much as she loathed that dog, she is totally creeped out. “You know, you can’t just keep on killing everything you’re scared of. Otherwise, you’ll never stop being scared.”

Morgan shrugged. “I didn’t kill him because I was scared; I killed him to get even.”

That was Morgan for you. Liked his revenge the way other boys liked candy bars or video games. What do you want for your birthday, Morgan? See that kid over there, the forward from Barcarés, who tripped me up when the referee wasn’t looking? Break his leg.

All the same, it gave Rat the creeps to think of that speckled piebald body going bloated, putrid, the blue eye maggot-ridden, in some municipal dump, while Thierry and Vanessa rode around town, putting up posters.

It was at a picnic area just north of Clermont-Ferrand that Florian tried to make the moves on Rat.