The two motorcycle cops were still trying to force their way through the crowd. The blond boyfriend was facing off against the younger of the two men and, if Bale wasn’t mistaken, he was waving around an Opinel penknife - which would undoubtedly break the first time it encountered anything more substantial than a wishbone. The older man - the father, probably - was busy fending off his hysterical daughter, but it was clear that he would soon succeed in struggling free, upon which the two of them would fillet the blond long before the police had a dog’s dinner’s chance of getting close.
Bale glanced around the square. The whole thing seemed somehow contrived to him. Riots almost never happened organically - of their own accord. People orchestrated them. At least in his experience. He’d even stage managed one or two himself during his time with the Legion - not under the Legion’s particular aegis, needless to say, but merely as a means of forcing their involvement in a situation which, without them, might simply have resolved itself with no recourse to violence.
He remembered one riot in Chad with particular affection - it was during the Legion’s deployment there during the 1980s. Forty dead - dozens more injured. Word from the Corpus was that he had come perilously close to starting a civil war. How Monsieur, his father, would have been pleased.
Legio Patria Nostra - Bale felt almost nostalgic. He had learned a great many useful things in the Legion’s ‘combat village’ in Fraselli, Corsica - and also in Rwanda, Djibouti, Lebanon, Cameroon and Bosnia. Things he might have to put into practice now.
He stood up to get a better view. When that failed, he climbed on to the café table, using his hat as a sunshield. No one noticed him - all eyes were on the square.
He glanced over towards the entrance to the Sanctuary just in time to see Alexi, who had been lurking behind the main door, dart in behind the emerging watchman.
Excellent. Bale was having his work done for him again. He looked around the square for Sabir but couldn’t mark him. Best head down to the crypt entrance. Wait for the gypsy to come back out. In the maelstrom that was the Place de l’Eglise, no one would be in the least bit surprised to find a second corpse with a knife-wound in its chest.
32
Calque was having difficulty with the Countess. It had begun when she had nosed out his resistance to her assertion that her husband’s family were responsible for protecting the Angevin, Capetian and Valois Kings from diabolical intercedence.
‘Why is this not written down? Why have I never heard of a thirteenth Pair de France?’
Macron looked on in incredulity. What was Calque doing? He was here to investigate a pistol, not a bloodline.
‘But it is written down, Captain Calque. It is simply that the documents are not available to scholars. What do you think? That all history happened exactly as historians have described it? Do you really suppose that there are not noble families all over Europe who are keeping private correspondence and documents away from prying eyes? That there are not secret societies, still secret today, about whose existence no one is yet aware?’
‘Do you know of any such societies, Madame?’
‘Of course not. But they certainly exist. You may count on it. And with more power, perhaps, than might be supposed.’ A strange look came over the Countess’s face. She reached down and rang her bell. Without a word, Milouins entered the room and began clearing up the coffee things.
Calque realised that the interview was on its final legs. ‘The pistol, Madame. The one registered in your husband’s name. Who possesses it now?’
‘My husband lost it before the war. I distinctly remember him telling me. It was stolen by a gamekeeper who had become temporarily disenchanted with his position. The Count notified the police - I am sure the records still exist. They conducted an informal inquiry but the pistol was never recovered. It was of little import. My husband had many pistols. His collection was of note, I believe. I do not interest myself in firearms, however.’
‘Of course not, Madame.’ Calque knew when he was beaten. The chances of there being records still in existence of an informal inquiry about a missing fi rearm during the 1930s were infinitesimal. ‘But you married your husband, as I understand it, during the 1970s? How would you possibly know about events that took place in the 1930s?’
Macron’s mouth dropped open.
‘My husband, Captain, always told me everything.’ The Countess stood up.
Macron levered himself to his feet. He enjoyed watching Calque fail in his first attempt at lift-off from the sofa. The old man must be feeling the accident, he thought to himself. Perhaps he’s a bit more fragile than he lets on? He’s certainly acting bloody strangely.
The Countess gave her bell a double ring. The footman came back in. She nodded towards Calque and the footman hurried to help him.
‘I’m sorry, Madame. Lieutenant Macron and I were involved in a vehicle collision. In pursuit of a miscreant. I am still a little stiff.’
A collision? In pursuit of a miscreant? What the Hell was Calque playing at? Macron started towards the door. Then he stopped. The old man wasn’t as stiff as all that. He was putting it on.
‘Your son, Madame? Might he not have something to add to the story? Perhaps his father spoke to him about the pistol?’
‘My son, Captain? I have nine sons. And four daughters. Which of them would you like to talk to?’
Calque stopped in his tracks. He weaved a little, as if he were on his last legs. ‘Thirteen children? I’m astonished, Madame. How can that be possible?’
‘It is called adoption, Captain. My husband’s family have funded a nunnery for the past nine centuries. As part of its charitable work. My husband was badly injured during the war. From that moment on it became impossible that he should ever procure an heir for himself. It is why he married so late. But I persuaded him to rethink his position on the succession. We are wealthy. The nunnery has an orphanage. We took as many as we could. Adoption is a well-established custom in French and Italian noble families in the case of force majeure. Infinitely preferable to the name dying out.’
‘The present Count, then? May I know his name?’
‘Count Rocha. Rocha de Bale.’
‘May I talk to him?’
‘He is lost to us, Captain. For reasons best known to himself he joined the Foreign Legion. As you know, Legionnaires are forced to register under new names. We never knew what that was. I have not seen him for many years.’
‘But the Legion takes only foreigners, Madame. Not Frenchmen. Apart from in the officer class. Was your son an officer, then?’
‘My son was a fool, Captain. At the age at which he enlisted he would have be
en capable of any folly. He speaks six languages. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that he passed himself off as a foreigner.’
‘As you say, Madame. As you say.’ Calque nodded his appreciation to the footman. ‘We certainly seem to have struck a dead end in our investigation.’
The Countess appeared not to have heard him. ‘I can assure you that my son knows nothing of his father’s pistol. He was born thirty years after the events you describe. We adopted him as a twelve-year-old. On account of my husband’s advanced age.’
Calque was never slow in seizing an opportunity. He pressed his luck. ‘Could you not transfer the title to your second son? Safeguard the heritage like that?’
‘That possibility died with my husband. The entailment is inalienable.’
Calque and Macron found themselves smoothly transferred into the hands of the capable Madame Mastigou. In a bare thirty fluidly managed seconds, they were back in their car and heading down the drive towards Ramatuelle.
Macron fl icked his chin at the retreating house. ‘What the heck was that all about?’
‘What the heck was what all about?’
‘That charade back there. For twenty minutes I even forgot the pain in my feet. You were so convincing, I almost fell for your act myself. I nearly volunteered to help you down the stairs.’
‘Charade?’ said Calque. ‘What charade? I don’t know what you are talking about, Macron.’
Macron flashed him a look.
Calque was grinning.
Before Macron could press him further, the phone buzzed. Macron pulled over into a lay-by and answered.
‘Yes. Yes. I’ve got that. Yes.’
Calque raised an eyebrow.
‘They’ve cracked the eye-man’s tracker code, Sir. Sabir’s car is in a long-term car park in Arles.’
‘That’s of very little use to us.’
‘There’s more.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘A knifing. In Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. In front of the church.’
‘So what?’
‘A check I did. Following our investigations in Gourdon. I flagged up all the names of the people we interviewed. Told our office to inform me of any incidents whatsoever involving gypsies. To cross-correlate the names, in other words.’
‘Yes, Macron? You’ve already impressed me. Now give me the pay-off.’
Macron restarted the engine. Best not to smile, he told himself. Best not to show any emotion whatsoever. ‘The police are searching for a certain Gavril La Roupie in relation to the crime.’
33
Gavril had forgotten about Badu and Stefan. In his single-minded excitement at working out the plot to kidnap Sainte Sara, he had quite overlooked the fact that Bazena boasted two of the most vicious male relatives this side of the Montagne Saint-Victoire. Stories about them were legion. Father and son always acted together, one drawing attention away from the other. Their bar fights were legendary. It was rumoured that they had seen off more victims between them than the first atomic bomb.
It had been the drive down to Les Saintes-Maries that had done the damage. Both men had been in an unnaturally avuncular frame of mind. The festival was their highlight of the year - ample opportunities abounded for the settling of old scores and the creating of new ones. Gavril was so close to them and so obvious, that he didn’t count. They were used to him. And it wouldn’t have occurred to them that he could ever be so stupid as to force Bazena on to the streets. So they had drawn him into their vicious little world and made him, ever so briefly, an accomplice before the fact.
Now Stefan was coming at him and all he had to defend himself was a bloody Opinel penknife. When Badu finally succeeded in disentangling himself from his daughter, Gavril knew that he was for it. They would carve out his lights.
Gavril threw the penknife with all his might at Stefan and then legged it through the crowd. There was a roar behind him but he paid it no mind. He had to get away. He could decide how best to conduct damage limitation exercises later. This was a matter of life and death.
He zigzagged through the assembled gypsies like a madman - like an American footballer running interference through an enemy team’s defences. Instinctively, Gavril used the five bells in the open see-through tower of the church as his visual guide, meaning to sprint down towards the docks and steal himself a boat. With only three possible roads out of town and both incoming and outgoing motor traffic moving at a snail’s pace in the run-up to the festival, it was the only sensible way to go.
Then, on the junction of the Rue Espelly and the Avenue Van Gogh and just in front of the Bull Arena, he saw Alexi. And behind him, Bale.
34
Alexi had been just about to return the statue of Sainte Sara to its plinth in disgust. This had all been a grotesque waste of time. How did Sabir expect things that had happened hundreds of years before to carry over into the modern-day era? It was madness.
For his part, Alexi found it almost impossible to imagine himself twenty years back in time, let alone five hundred. The jottings that Sabir had so confidently decoded seemed to him nothing but the ramblings of a madman. It served people right if they insisted on writing everything down and communicating that way. Why didn’t they simply talk to each other? If everyone just talked, the world would make considerably more sense. Things would be immediate. Just as they were in Alexi’s world. He woke up every morning and thought about the way he felt now. Not about the past. Or the future. But now.
He nearly missed the cork of resin. Over the centuries it had weathered to a similar walnut sheen to the rest of Sainte Sara’s painted plinth. But its consistency was different. When he gouged at it with his penknife, it came up in spirals, like wood-shavings, rather than as powder. He levered away at it until it popped out. He felt inside the hole with his finger. Yes. There was something else there.
He stuck his penknife inside the hole and twisted. A gob of fabric came out. Alexi spread it across his hand and looked at it. Nothing. Just a motheaten bit of linen with worm holes in it.
He peered down the hole, but couldn’t see anything.
Intrigued, he tapped the statue sharply on the ground. Then again. A bamboo tube fell out. Bamboo? Inside a statue?
Alexi was about to snap the bamboo in two when he heard the sound of footsteps coming down the broad stone stairway to the crypt.
Swiftly, he tidied away the marks of his passage and returned the statue to its place. Then he prostrated himself on the ground before it.
He could hear the footsteps approaching him. Malos mengues! What if it was the eye-man? He’d be a sitting duck.
‘What are you doing here?’
Alexi levered himself up and blinked. It was the watchman. ‘What do you think I’m doing? I’
m praying. This place is a church, isn’t it?’
‘No need to get shirty about it.’ It was obvious that the watchman had had run-ins with gypsies before and wished to avoid a recurrence. Particularly after what he had just seen in the square.
‘Where is everybody?’
‘You mean you didn’t hear?’
‘Hear what? I was praying.’
The watchman shrugged. ‘Two of your people. Arguing over a woman. One threw a knife at the other. Caught him in the eye. Blood everywhere. They tell me the eye was hanging out on a string down the man’s cheek. Disgusting. Still. Serves people right for fighting on a holy occasion. They should have been down here, like you.’
‘Thrown knives don’t pop eyes out on to cheeks. You’re making this up.’
‘No. No. I saw the blood. People were screaming. One of the policemen had the eye on a pad and was trying to put it back in.’
‘Mary Mother of God.’ Alexi wondered whether it was Gavril who had lost his eye. That would queer his pitch. Slow him up a little. Perhaps he wouldn’t be quite so keen to laugh at other people’s deformities now that he was missing an organ of his own? ‘Can I kiss the Virgin’s feet?’ Alexi had seen some resin shavings still on the floor - a quick puff of air would lose them beneath Sainte Sara’s skirts.
THE NOSTRADAMUS PROPHECIES Page 25