‘Plus, according to you, it will soon become a crime scene. With police seething around everywhere with their sniffer dogs and their metal detectors and their plastic BVDs.’
‘That doesn’t matter. You don’t need to be seen when you pick up the prophecies.’
‘How come?’
‘Hide yourself. Then pretend as if you are at the cabane and turn to look south. You will see a single cypress tree standing out from the nearby wood. The prophecies are buried directly behind that, about two feet from the trunk. Not deep. I was already too weak for that. But deep enough. You will soon see that the earth has been disturbed.’
‘They’ll rot. In the first rain. They’ll become illegible. And all this will have been for nothing.’
‘No, Damo. They are contained in a bamboo tube. The tube is sealed in the middle with hard wax. Or tree sap. Something like that. Nothing can get in.’
An unknown horse suddenly whinnied ahead of them, the noise of its cry echoing through the marshes like a lament for the dead. Their own horse was about to answer, but some belated survival instinct in Sabir caused him to clamp the gelding’s nostrils shut just as the animal was taking a preparatory breath. He stood, the gelding’s nose locked beneath his arm, listening.
‘I told you.’ Alexi was whispering. ‘It is the eye-man. I told you he tortured Gavril. Got the location of the Maset off him.’
‘I can see lights through the trees. Why would the eye-man switch on a bunch of lights? It doesn’t make sense. It’s more likely that Yola has received a visit from some of her girlfriends from the town. Everybody knows about this place – you told me so yourself.’ Despite his apparent confidence, Sabir stripped his shirt and wrapped it tightly around the gelding’s nose. Then he led him on through the willow copse and down towards the rear of the barn. ‘Look. The doors and windows are wide open. The place is lit up like a cathedral. Has Yola gone mad?
Perhaps she wanted to guide us in?’
‘It’s the eye-man. I tell you, Damo. You must listen to me. Don’t go straight towards the lights. You must check the place out from the outside first. Perhaps Yola had time to run away? Either that, or she’s in there with him.’
Sabir looked up at him. ‘You’re serious?’
‘You heard his horse.’
‘It could be any horse.’
‘There was only Gavril’s and the eye-man’s left. I have Gavril’s. And the third horse is dead. The horses know each other, Damo. They know the sound of each other’s steps. They recognise each other’s whinny. And there aren’t any other horses within half a kilometre of here.’
Sabir attached the reins to a bush. ‘You’ve convinced me, Alexi. Now wait here and don’t move. I will go and reconnoitre the house.’
53
‘What are you burning? I can smell burning.’ Yola instinctively turned her face away from the light and towards the darkness behind her.
‘It’s all right. I’m not setting fire to the house. Or heating up the pinching tongs like the Hangman of Dreissigacker. I’m merely burning cork. To blacken my face.’
Yola knew that she was perilously close to exhaustion.
She didn’t know how much longer she could hold her position. ‘I’m going to fall.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘Please. You have to help me.’
‘If you ask me again, I will sharpen a broom handle and shove it up your arse. That’ll keep you upright.’
Yola hung her head. This man was impossible to touch. All her life she had been able to manipulate and thus to dominate, men. Gypsy men were easy game that way. If you said what you had to say with enough conviction, they would usually give in. Their mothers had trained them well. This man was cold, however. Not amenable to the feminine. Yola decided that there must be a very bad woman in his life to make him this way. ‘Why do you hate women?’
‘I don’t hate women. I hate everybody who gets in the way of what I am doing.’
‘If you have a mother, she must be ashamed of you.’
‘Madame, my mother, is very proud of me. She has told me so.’
‘Then she must be evil too.’
For a moment there was dead silence. Then a movement. Yola wondered whether she had finally gone too far. Whether he was coming across to get her.
But Bale was only stowing away the remainder of the soup in order to give himself a clearer line of movement. ‘If you say more, I shall whip the back of your legs with my belt.’
‘Then Alexi and Damo will see you.’
‘What do I care. They don’t have guns.’
‘But they have knives. Alexi can throw a knife more accurately than any man I know.’
In the distance a horse whinnied. Bale hesitated for a moment, listening. Then, satisfied that it had been his own horse and that there had been no answering call, he resumed their conversation. ‘He missed Sabir. That time in the clearing.’
‘You saw that?’
‘I see everything.’
Yola wondered whether to tell him that Alexi had missed on purpose. But then she thought that it would be a good idea if he continued to underestimate his opponents. Even the smallest thing might be enough to give Alexi or Damo a crucial edge. ‘Why do you want these writings? These prophecies?’
Bale paused, considering. At first Yola expected him to ignore her question but he suddenly appeared to make up his mind about something. In doing so, however, his tone changed infinitesimally. Thanks to the claustrophobic intensity inside the bread bag, Yola had become morbidly sensitive to each and every nuance in the eye-man’s voice – it was thus at that exact moment that she understood, with total certainty, that he intended to kill her whichever way the handover went.
‘I want the writings because they tell of things that are going to happen. Important things. Things that will change the world. The man who wrote them has been proved right many times over. There are codes and secrets hidden within what he writes. My colleagues and I understand how to break these codes. We have been trying to lay our hands on the missing prophecies for centuries. We have followed countless false trails. Finally, thanks to you and your brother, we have found the true one.’
‘If I had these prophecies I would destroy them.’
‘But you don’t have them. And you will soon be dead. So it is all an irrelevance to you.’
54
Sabir lay on his belly at the edge of the stand of trees, watching. He could feel the horror of his position leaching through his body like a cancer.
Yola was standing on a three-legged stool. A bread sack covered her head and a noose had been slipped around her neck. Sabir was certain that it was Yola by her clothes and by the timbre of her voice. She was talking to someone and this person was answering her – a deeper, more dominant timbre. Not up and down, like a woman, but fl at – all on one note. Like a priest intoning the liturgy.
It didn’t take a genius to realise that the eye-man had staked Yola out as bait to catch him and Alexi. Nor to realise that the minute that they showed themselves, or came within range, they would be dead meat – and Yola with them. The fact that the eye-man would thereby inadvertently lose the best chance he had ever had to discover the location of the prophecies was yet another of life’s tender little ironies.
Sabir made up his mind. He squirrelled himself backwards through the undergrowth towards Alexi. This time he would not blunder in and risk everybody’s lives. This time he would use his head.
55
When Macron’s cellphone rang, he was interviewing three reluctant gitans, who had only just crossed the Catalonian border that morning, near Perpignan. They had obviously never heard of Sabir, Alexi or Yola and didn’t object to making this clear. One of them, sensing Macron’s ill-concealed hostility, even pretended to fend him off with the fl at of his forearm – just as if he had the ‘evil eye’. Macron might have ignored the insult in the normal run of things. Now he responded angrily, the concentrated memory banks of his mother’s ingrained superstitious beliefs erupting, uncalled for, through the habitually dormant surface of his own sensibilities.
The truth was that he felt disheartened and bone-weary. All his injuries seemed to have compounded themselves into one all-encompassing ache and, to cap it all, Calque seemed to be favouring one of the new detectives to make the real running in the investigation. Macron felt humiliated and isolated – all the more so as he considered himself a local lad, whilst the six pandores Calque had seconded from Marseille – his home town, for Christ’s sake! – still insisted on treating him like a pariah. Like a sailor who has abandoned ship and is busily swimming towards the enemy, hoping to give himself up in exchange for preferential treatment. Like a Parisian.
‘Yes?’
Five hundred metres from the Maset Sabir nodded gratefully to the motorist who had lent him the phone.
Five minutes earlier he had leapt in front of the man’s car, waving dramatically. Even then the man hadn’t halted, but had veered over on to the hard shoulder, missing Sabir by inches. Fifty metres further up the road he had changed his mind and stopped the car, doubtless imagining that there had been an accident somewhere in amongst the marshes. Sabir couldn’t blame him. In his panic, he had forgotten all about his shirt, which was still wrapped around the gelding’s nose – he must have presented a disturbing sight, lurching out of the undergrowth on a minor country road, half naked and in the pitch darkness.
‘This is Sabir.’
‘You’ve got to be joking.’
‘Who is this?’
‘Lieutenant Macron. Captain Calque’s assistant. We haven’t met, unfortunately, but I know all about you. You’ve been running us a merry little dance across most of France. You and your two Magi.’
‘Pass me Calque. I have to talk to him. Urgently.’
‘Captain Calque is conducting interviews. Tell me where you are and we’ll send a stretch limousine out to collect you. How’s that for starters?’
‘I know where the eye-man is.’
‘What?’
‘He’s holed up in a house, about five hundred metres from where I am speaking to you. He is holding a hostage, Yola Samana. He has her standing on a stool, with a noose around her neck. She’s lit up like a son et lumiere. The eye-man is presumably hiding in the shadows with a pistol, waiting for Alexi and me to show ourselves. As far as armament is concerned, Alexi and I have got exactly one knife between us. We don’t stand a chance in Hell. If your precious Captain Calque can get some paramilitaries in place and if he can guarantee me that he will prioritise Yola’s safety – and not the capture of the eye-man – I’ll tell you where I am. If not, you can both go and piss against a drystone wall. I’ll go in myself.’
‘Stop. Stop. Wait. Are you still in the Camargue?’
‘Yes. That much I’ll tell you. Is it agreed? Otherwise I’ll switch this phone off right now.’
‘It’s agreed. I’ll go and fetch Calque. There are CRS paramilitaries on permanent standby in Marseille. They can be deployed straight away. By helicopter, if necessary. It will take no more than an hour.’
‘Too long.’
‘Less. Less than an hour. If you can be accurate about the location. Give me an exact map reference. The CRS will have to work out where to land the helicopter without giving away their presence. And then approach by foot.’
‘The man I borrowed the cellphone from may have a map. Go get Calque. I’ll stay online.’
‘No. No. We can’t risk your battery running out. I have your number. When I’ve reached Calque I will call you back. Get me that map reference.’
As Macron ran to where he knew Calque was conducting his interviews, he was already scrolling down for the code to their Paris headquarters. ‘Andre. It’s Paul. I have a cellphone number for you. We need an instant GPS. It’s urgent. Code One.’
‘Code One? You’re joking.’
‘This is a hostage situation. The man holding the hostage killed the security guard in Rocamadour. Get me that GPS. We’re in the Camargue. If any other part of France comes up on your gizmo, you’ve got interference or a malfunction. Get me the exact position of that cellphone. To within five metres. And inside five minutes. I can’t afford to blow this.’
***
Within thirty seconds of Macron explaining the situation to him, Calque was on the phone to Marseille.
‘This is a Code One priority. I will identify myself.’ He read out the number on his identity card. ‘You will see a ten letter cipher when you type in my name on the computer. It is this. HKL481GYP7. Do you have that? Does it match the code on the national database? It does? Good. Hand me over to your supervisor immediately.’
Calque spent an intense five minutes talking down the phone. Then he turned to Macron.
‘Have Paris come back to you with Sabir’s GPS?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Now phone him. Compare it with the map reference he gives you.’
Macron got back on the phone to Sabir. ‘Do you have a map reference for us? Yes? Give it to me.’ He marked it down in his notebook, then ran across and showed it to Calque.
‘It matches. Tell him to wait exactly where he is until you arrive. Then get into place yourself and call the situation in to me at this number.’ He scribbled down a number on Macron’s pad. ‘It is the number of the local Gendarmerie. I will base myself there, coordinating the operation between Paris, Marseille and Les Saintes-Maries. I have been reliably informed that it will take at least fifty minutes to get the paramilitaries in place. You can be at the Maset in thirty. Twenty-five, even. Stop Sabir and the gypsy from panicking into any precipitate action. If it looks as though the girl is being imminently threatened, intervene. If not, keep your head down. Do you have your pistol?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Take any of the detectives that you can find with you. If you can’t find any, go alone. I will send them on behind you.’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘And Macron?
‘Yes, Sir?’
‘No unnecessary heroics. There are lives at stake here.’