‘That’s it. Cut off his balls.’ ‘No. Do his eyes first.’ A chorus of elderly women were encouraging her from their position outside the caravan doorway. Sabir looked around. Apart from the woman with the knife, he was surrounded entirely by men. He tried to move his arms but they were bound tightly behind his back. His ankles were knotted together and a decorated pillow had been placed between his knees.
One of the men upended him and manhandled his trousers over his hips. ‘There. Now you can see the target.’
‘Stick it up his arse while you’re at it.’ The old women were pushing forward to get a better view.
Sabir began shaking his head in a futile effort to free the tape from his mouth.
The woman began inching forward, the knife held out in front of her.
‘Go on. Do it. Remember what he did to Babel.’
Sabir began a sort of ululation from inside his taped mouth. He fixed his eyes on the woman in fiendish concentration, as if he could somehow will her not to follow through with what she intended.
Another man grabbed Sabir’s scrotum and stretched it away from his body, leaving only a thin membrane of skin to be cut. A single blow of the knife would be enough.
Sabir watched the woman. Instinct told him that she was his only chance. If his concentration broke and he looked away, he knew that he was done for. Without fully understanding his own motivation, he winked at her.
The wink hit her like a slap. She reached forward and ripped the tape off Sabir’s mouth. ‘Why did you do that? Why did you mutilate my brother? What had he done to you?’
Sabir dragged a great gulp of air through his swollen lips. ‘Chris. Chris. He told me to ask for Chris.’
The woman stepped backwards. The man holding Sabir’s testicles let go of them and leaned across him, his head cocked to one side like a bird dog. ‘What’s that you say?’
‘Your brother smashed a glass. He pressed his hand into it. Then mine. Then he ground our two hands together and placed the imprint of mine on his forehead. He then told me to go to Samois and ask for Chris. I wasn’t the one that killed him. But I realise now that he was being followed. Please believe me. Why should I come here otherwise?’
‘But the police. They are looking for you. We saw on the television. We recognised your face.’
‘My blood was on his hand.’
The man threw Sabir to one side. For a moment Sabir was convinced that they were going to slit his throat. Then he could feel them unbandaging his hand - inspecting the cuts. Hear them talking to each other in a language he could not understand.
‘Stand up. Put your trousers on.’
They were cutting the ropes behind his back.
One of the men prodded him. ‘Tell me. Who is Chris?’
Sabir shrugged. ‘One of you, I suppose.’
Some of the older men laughed.
The man with the knife winked at him, in unconscious echo of the wink that had saved Sabir’s testicles two short minutes before. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll meet him soon. With or without your balls. The choice is yours.’
16
At least they’re feeding me, thought Sabir. It’s harder to kill a man you’ve broken bread with. Surely.
He spooned up the last of the stew, then reached down with his manacled hands for his coffee. ‘The meat. It was good.’
The old woman nodded. She wiped her hands on her voluminous skirts but Sabir noticed that she did not eat. ‘Clean. Yes. Very clean.’
‘Clean?’
‘The spines. Hedgehogs are the cleanest beasts. They are not mahrimé. Not like…’ She spat over her shoulder. ‘Dogs.’
‘Ah. You eat dogs?’ Sabir was already having problems with the thought of hedgehogs. He could feel the onset of nausea threatening.
‘No. No.’ The woman burst into uproarious laughter. ‘Dogs. Hah hah.’ She signalled to one of her friends. ‘Heh. The gadje thinks we eat dogs.’
A man came running into the clearing. He was instantly surrounded by young children. He spoke to a few of them and they peeled off to warn the camp.
Sabir watched intently as boxes and other objects were swiftly secreted beneath and inside the caravans. Two men broke off from what they were doing and came towards him.
‘What is it? What’s happening?’
They picked him up between them and carried him, splay-legged, towards a wood-box.
‘Jesus Christ. You’re not going to put me in there?
I’m claustrophobic. Seriously. I promise. I’m not good in narrow places. Please. Put me in one of the caravans.’
The men tumbled him inside the wood-box. One of them drew a stained handkerchief from his pocket and thrust it into Sabir’s mouth. Then they eased his head beneath the surface of the box and slammed shut the lid.
17
Captain Calque surveyed the disparate group in front of him. He was going to have trouble with this lot. He just knew it. Knew it in his bones. Gypsies always shut up shop when talking to the police - even when it was one of their own who had been the victim of a crime, as in this case. Still they persisted in wanting to take the law into their own hands.
He nodded to Macron. Macron held up the photograph of Sabir.
‘Have any of you seen this man?’
Nothing. Not even a nod of recognition.
‘Do any of you know who this man is?’
‘A killer.’
Calque shut his eyes. Oh well. At least someone had actually spoken to him. Addressed a comment to him. ‘Not necessarily. The more we find out, the more it seems that there may be a second party involved in this crime. A party whom we have not yet succeeded in identifying.’
‘When are you going to release my brother’s body so that we can bury him?’
The men were making way for a young woman - she manoeuvred herself through the closed ranks of women and children and moved to the forefront of the group.
‘Your brother?’
‘Babel Samana.’
Calque nodded to Macron, who began writing vigorously in a small black notebook. ‘And your name?’
‘Yola. Yola Samana.’
‘And your parents?’
‘They are dead.’
‘Any other relatives?’
Yola shrugged and indicated the surrounding sea of faces.
‘Everyone?’
She nodded.
‘So what was he doing in Paris?’
She shrugged again.
‘Anyone know?’
There was a group shrug.
Calque was briefly tempted to burst out laughing - but the fact that the assembly would probably lynch him if he were to do so, prevented him from giving in to the emotion. ‘So can anyone tell me anything at all about Samana? Who he was seeing - apart from this man Sabir, of course. Or why he was visiting St-Denis?’
Silence.
Calque waited. Thirty years of experience had taught him when and when not, to press an is
sue.
‘When are you giving him back?’
Calque summoned up a fake sigh. ‘I can’t tell you that exactly. We may need his body for further forensic tests.’
The young woman turned to one of the older male gypsies. ‘We must bury him within three days.’
The gypsy hitched his chin at Calque. ‘Can we have him?’
‘I told you. No. Not yet.’
‘Can we have some of his hair then?’
‘What?’
‘If you give us some of his hair, we can bury him. Along with his possessions. It has to be done within three days. Then you can do what you like with the body.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Will you do as we ask?’
‘Give you some of his hair?’
‘Yes.’
Calque could feel Macron’s eyes boring into the back of his head. ‘Yes. We can give you some of his hair. Send one of your people to this address…’ Calque handed the gypsy a card. ‘Tomorrow. Then you can formally identify him and cut the hair at the same time.’
‘I will go.’ It was the young woman - Samana’s sister.
‘Very well.’ Calque stood uncertainly in the centre of the clearing. The place was so completely alien to him and to his understanding of what constituted a normal society, that he might as well have been standing in a rainforest discussing ethics with a group of Amerindian tribesman.
‘You’ll call me if the American, Sabir, tries to make contact with you in any way? My number is written on the card.’
He glanced around at the assembled group.
‘I’ll take that as a yes, then.’
18
Sabir was close to delirium when they lifted him out of the wood-box. Later, when he tried to reassemble the emotions he had felt upon being forced into the box, he found that his mind had blocked them out entirely. For self-protection, he assumed.
For he hadn’t been lying when he said he was claustrophobic. Years before, as a child, some schoolmates had played a prank on him which had involved locking him inside the trunk of a professor’s car. He had blacked out then, too. The professor had found him, half dead, three hours later. Made a Hell of a stink about it. The story had appeared in all the local newspapers.
Sabir had claimed not to remember who had perpetrated the prank, but almost a decade on he had had his revenge. As a journalist himself he had become possessed of considerable powers of innuendo and he had used these to the full. But the revenge hadn’t cured him of his claustrophobia - if anything, in recent years, it had got even worse.
Now he could feel himself sickening. His hand was throbbing and he suspected that he may have picked up an infection during the course of the night. The cuts had reopened and as he’d had nothing to clean them with before reapplying the bandage, he could only presume that they had attracted a few unwanted bacteria along the way - the incarceration in the wood-box must simply have compounded the issue. His head lolled backwards. He tried to raise a hand but couldn’t - in fact, his entire body seemed beyond his control. He felt himself being carried into a shady place, then up a few stairs and into a room in which light drifted on to his face through coloured panes of glass. His last memories were of a pair of dark brown eyes staring intently into his, as if their owner were trying to plumb the very depths of his soul.
***
He awoke to a deadening headache. The air was stifling and he found difficulty in breathing, as if his lungs had been three-quarters filled with foam rubber whilst he was sleeping. He looked down at his hand. It had been neatly rebandaged. He tried to raise it but only managed one desultory twitch before allowing it to collapse helplessly back on to the bed.
He realised that he was inside a caravan. Daylight was streaming in through the coloured glass windows beside him. He attempted to raise his head to see out of the single white pane but the effort was beyond him. He collapsed back on to the pillow. He’d never felt so completely out of contact with his body before - it was as if he and his limbs had become disjointed in some way and the key to their retrieval had been lost.
Well. At least he wasn’t dead. Or in a police hospital. One had to look on the bright side.
***
When next he awoke it was night-time. Just before opening his eyes, he became aware of a presence beside him. He pretended to be asleep, and allowed his head to loll to one side. Then he cracked his eyelids and tried to pick up whoever was sitting there in the darkness without her being aware of his look. For it was a woman - of that he was certain. There was the heavy scent of patchouli and some other, more elusive smelt, that reminded him vaguely of dough. Perhaps this person had been kneading bread?
He allowed his eyes to open wider. Samana’s sister was perched on the chair at his bedside. She was hunched forward, as if in prayer. But there was the glint of a knife in her lap.
‘I am wondering whether to kill you.’
Sabir swallowed. He tried to appear calm but he was still having trouble inhaling and his breath came out in small, uncomfortable puffs, like a woman in childbirth. ‘Are you going to? I wish you’d get on with it then. I’m certainly not able to defend myself - like that time you had me tied up and were going to castrate me. You’re just as safe now. I can’t even raise my hand to ward you off.’
‘Just like my brother.’
‘I didn’t kill your brother. How many times do I have to tell you? I met him once. He attacked me. God knows why. Then he told me to come here.’
‘Why did you wink at me like that?’
‘It was the only way I could think of to communicate my innocence to you.’
‘But it angered me. I nearly killed you then.’
‘I had to risk that. There was no other way.’
She sat back, considering.
‘Is it you that’s been treating me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Funny way to behave to someone you intend to kill.’
‘I didn’t say I intended to kill you. I said I was thinking about it.’
‘What would you do with me? With my body?’
‘The men would joint you, like a pig. Then we’d burn you.’
There was an uncomfortable silence. Sabir fell to wondering how he had managed to get himself into a position like this. And for what? ‘How long have I been here?’
‘Three days.’
‘Jesus.’ He reached down and lifted his bad hand with his good. ‘What was wrong with me? Is wrong with me?’
‘Blood poisoning. I treated you with herbs and kaolin poultices. The infection had moved to your lungs. But you’ll live.’
‘Are you quite sure of that?’ Sabir immediately sensed that his effort at sarcasm had entirely passed her by.
‘I spoke to the pharmacist.’
‘The who?’
‘The woman who treated your cuts. The name of where she worked was in the newspaper. I went to Paris to collect some of my
brother’s hair. Now we are going to bury him.’
‘What did the woman say?’
‘That you are telling the truth.’
‘So who do you think killed your brother.’
‘You. Or another man.’
‘Still me?’
‘The other man, perhaps. But you were part of it.’
‘So why don’t you kill me now and have done with it? Joint me like a sucking pig?’
‘Don’t be in such a hurry.’ She slipped the knife back underneath her dress. ‘You will see.’
19
Later that same night they helped Sabir out of the caravan and into the clearing. A couple of the men had constructed a litter and they lifted him on to it and carried him out into the forest and along a moonlit track.
Samana’s sister walked beside him as if she owned him, or had some other vested interest in his presence. Which I suppose she does, thought Sabir to himself. I’m her insurance policy against having to think.
A squirrel ran across the track in front of them and the women began to chatter excitedly amongst themselves.
‘What’s that all about?’
‘A squirrel is a lucky omen.’
‘What’s a bad one?’
She shot a look at him, then decided that he was not being flippant… ‘An owl.’ She lowered her voice. ‘A snake. The worst is a rat.’
‘Why’s that?’ He found that he was lowering his voice too.
‘They are mahrimé. Polluted. It is better not to mention them.’
‘Ah.’
By this time they had reached another clearing, furnished with candles and flowers.
‘So we’re burying your brother?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you haven’t got his body? Just his hair?’
THE NOSTRADAMUS PROPHECIES Page 4