Macron’s family were waiting for him at the family bakery. A female police officer had gathered them all together, without being allowed to tell them the exact reason for their convocation. This was established practice. Dread, in consequence, laced the atmosphere like ether.
Calque was visibly surprised to find that not only were Macron’s father, mother and sister present, but also a bevy of aunts, uncles, cousins and even, or so it appeared, three out of four of his grandparents. It occurred to Calque that the smell of freshly baking bread would be forever linked in his mind with images of Macron’s death.
‘I am grateful that you are all here together. It will make what I have to tell you easier to bear.’
‘Our son. He is dead.’ It was Macron’s father. He was still wearing his bakery whites and a hairnet. As he spoke he took off the hairnet, as though it were in some way disrespectful.
‘Yes. He was killed late last night.’ Calque paused. He needed a cigarette badly. He wanted to be able to lean over and light it and to use the movement as a convenient means of masking the vast sea of faces that were now focusing on him with the greediness of anticipated grief. “He was killed by a murderer who was holding a woman hostage. Paul arrived a little before the main body of the force. The woman was in imminent danger. She had a rope around her neck and her kidnapper was threatening to hang her. Paul knew that the man had killed before. A security guard, up in Rocamadour. And another man. In Paris. He therefore decided to intervene.” ’
‘What happened to Paul’s killer? Do you have him?’ This, from one of the cousins.
Calque realised that he had been casting his seed on stony ground. Macron’s family must inevitably have heard about the possible death of a police officer on the radio or TV and have come to their own conclusions when the Police Nationale had convoked them. They hadn’t needed his rubber-stamping. All he could reasonably do, in the circumstances, was to provide them with any information they needed and then abandon them to the grieving process. He certainly couldn’t use them to rinse out his conscience. ‘No. We don’t have him yet. But we soon will. Before he died, Paul was able to get off two shots. It is not public knowledge yet - and we would prefer that you keep the information to yourselves - but the killer was badly injured by one of Paul’s bullets. He is on the run somewhere inside the Parc Naturel. The whole place is sealed off. More than a hundred policemen are out there searching for him as we speak.’ Calque was desperately trying to look away from the scenes in front of him - to concentrate on the questions that the peripheral family were firing off at him. But he was unable to take his eyes off Macron’s mother.
She resembled her son in an uncanny way. Upon hearing the confirmation of her boy’s death, she had instantly turned for comfort to her husband and now she clung to his waist, crying silently, the baking dust from his apron coating her face like whitewash.
When Calque was finally able to withdraw, one of Macron’s male relatives followed him out into the street. Calque turned to face him, half prepared for a physical assault. The man looked hard and fit. He had a razor-strop haircut. Indeterminate tattoo-ends burst from his sleeves to scatter out across the backs of his hands like varicose veins.
Calque regretted that the policewoman had remained inside with the rest of the family - the presence of a uniform might have acted as something of a curb.
But the man did not approach Calque in an aggressive manner. In fact he screwed his face up questioningly and Calque soon realised that something other than Macron’s death was foremost on his mind.
‘Paul telephoned me yesterday. Did you know that? But I wasn’t there. My mother took the message. I’m a joiner, these days. I have a lot of work on.’
‘Yes? You are a joiner these days? An excellent profession.’ Calque had not intended to sound abrupt, but the words came out defensively, despite his best intentions.
The man narrowed his eyes. ‘He said you were looking for a man who was in the Legion. A killer. That you thought the Legion would hold back the information that you needed. That they would force you to go through the usual fucking bureaucratic hoops they always use to protect their people with. That was what he said.’
Calque nodded in sudden understanding. ‘Paul told me about you. You are the cousin who was in the Legion. I should have realised.’ He was on the verge of saying ‘because you people get a particular look - like a walking slab of testosterone - and because you use “fucking” every other word’, but he somehow managed to control himself. ‘You were also in prison, were you not?’
The man looked away up the street. Something seemed to be irritating him. After a moment he turned back to Calque. He forced his hands inside his pockets, as if he felt that the material itself might prevent them from rioting - but still the hands thrust themselves towards Calque as if they wished to break through the cloth and throttle him. ‘I’m going to forget you said that. And that you’re a fucking policeman. I don’t like fucking policemen. For the most part they’re no fucking better than the cunts they bang up.’ He clamped his mouth tightly shut. Then he snorted long-sufferingly and glanced back down the street. ‘Paul was my cousin, even though he was a fucking bédi. This shit-heap killed him, you say? I was in the Legion for twenty fucking years. I ended up a fucking quartermaster. Do you want to ask me anything? Or do you want to scuttle back to fucking Headquarters and check out my criminal fucking record first?’
Calque’s decision was instantaneous. ‘I want, to ask you something.’
The man’s face changed - becoming lighter, less enclosed. ‘Fire away then.’
‘Do you remember a man with strange eyes? Eyes with no whites to them?’
‘Go on.’
‘This man may be French. But he might also have been pretending to be a foreigner to get into the ranks of the Legion as a soldier and not an officer.’
‘Give me more.’
Calque shrugged. ‘I know people change their names when they enter the Legion. But this man was a Count. Brought up as an aristocrat. In a family with servants and money. His original name may have been de Bale. Rocha de Bale. He would not have fitted easily into the role of a common soldier. He would have stuck out. Not only because of his eyes, but also on account of his attitude. He would have been used to leading, not being led. To giving orders, not taking them.’ Calque’s head snapped back like a turtle’s. ‘You know him, don’t you?’
The man nodded. ‘Forget Rocha de Bale. And forget leading. This cunt called himself Achor Bale. And he was a loner. He pronounced his name like an Englishman would. We never knew where he came from. He was crazy. You didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. We’re tough in the Legion. That’s normal. But he was toug
her. I never thought I’d ever have to think about the cocksucker again.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘In Chad. During the 1980s. The fucker started a riot. On purpose, I would say. But the authorities exonerated him because no one dared to testify against him. A friend of mine was killed during that action. I would have testified. But I wasn’t there. I was at the baisodrome, wasting my pay on porking blood sausage. You know what I mean? So I knew nothing about it. The cunts wouldn’t listen to me. But I knew. He was an evil fucking bastard. Not quite right in the head. Too much interested in guns and killing. Even for a fucking soldier.’
Calque put away his notebook. ‘And the eyes? That’s true? That he has no whites to his eyes?’
Macron’s cousin turned on his heel and walked back inside the bakery.
71
Bale awoke shivering. He had been dreaming and in his dream, Madame, his mother, was beating him about the shoulders with a coat hanger for some imagined slight. He kept on crying out - ‘No, Madame, no!’ - but still she continued hitting him.
It was dark. There were no other sounds from inside the house.
Bale shunted himself backwards, until he was able to prop himself against a beam. His fist was sore, where he had lashed out to defend himself during the dreamed attack and his neck and his shoulder felt raw - as if they had been scalded with boiling water and then scrubbed with an emery board.
He cracked on his torch and checked out the loft. Perhaps he could kill a rat or a squirrel and eat it? But no. He wouldn’t be quick enough anymore.
He knew that he didn’t dare venture downstairs yet to check out whether any food had been left behind in the kitchen, or to draw some water. The flics might have left a watchman behind to protect their crime scene from ghouls and curiosity seekers - it was comforting to think that such people still existed and that not everything in this life had been relegated to normalisation and mediocrity.
But water he did need. And urgently. He had drunk his own urine on three occasions now and had used the residue to disinfect his wounds, but he knew, from lectures with the Legion, that there was no earthly sense in doing that again. He would be contributing to his own certain death.
How many hours had he been up here? How many days? Bale had no idea of time any more.
Why was he here? Ah yes. The prophecies. He needed to find the prophecies.
He allowed his head to drop back on to his chest. By now the blanket he had been using as a pressure pad had congealed to his wound - he didn’t dare separate the two for fear of starting the blood flow up again.
For the first time in many years he wanted to go home. He wanted the comfort of his own bedroom and not the anonymous hotels that he had been forced to live in for so long. He wanted the respect and the support of the brothers and sisters that he had grown up with. And he wanted Madame, his mother, to publicly acknowledge his achievements for the Corpus Maleficus and to give him his due.
Bale was tired. He needed rest. And treatment for his wound. He was fed up with being hard and living like a wolf. Fed up with being hunted by people who were not worthy to tie his bootlaces.
He lay on his belly and dragged himself towards the hatch cover. If he didn’t move now, he would die. It was as simple as that.
For he had suddenly understood that he was hallucinating. That this temporary helplessness of his was just another strategy of the Devil’s to unman him - to make him weak.
Bale reached the hatch cover and dragged it to one side. He stared down into the empty bedroom.
It was dark. The windows were open and it was night. There were no lights anywhere. The police had left. Surely they had left.
He listened, through the rushing of blood in his head, for any inexplicable sounds.
There were none.
He eased his legs through the hatch cover. For a long time he sat on the lip of the hatch staring down at the floor. Finally he cracked his torch and tried to estimate the total drop.
Ten feet. Enough to break a leg or sprain an ankle.
But he didn’t have the strength left to let down the chair. Didn’t have the agility to hang from the hatch and feel for it with his legs.
He switched off his torch and slid it back inside his shirt.
Then he twisted on his good arm and dropped into the void.
72
Yola watched the two policemen from her hiding place at the edge of the wood. They were huddled in the shelter of the gardien’s cabane, smoking and talking. So this is what the flics call a search, she thought to herself. No wonder the eye-man hasn’t been found. Satisfied that the two men could not possibly see her, she settled down to wait for the further twenty minutes or so until full dusk.
Bouboul had dropped Yola at the Bac, thirty minutes before and had then driven on to Arles, with his son-in-law, Rezso, to retrieve Sabir’s Audi. Later, Rezso would come back with the Audi to pick her up.
At first Sabir had refused to allow her to go and collect the prophecies. It was too dangerous. The job should be his. He was head of the family now. His word should count for something. But Sergeant Spola’s stolid and ever-watchful presence had eventually decided the matter - there was no way Sabir could go anywhere any more without his say-so.
Night-time would be different, though. The man had to sleep. If Sabir could manage to give Spola the slip, Bouboul had agreed to drive him back to the Maset, where Yola and Reszo would arrange to meet him with the prophecies. Sabir would then have both the time and the privacy necessary to translate them.
Before dawn, Reszo would come back with the car and collect Sabir and deliver him back to the caravan, just in time to meet an awaking Sergeant Spola. This was the plan, anyway. It had the virtue of simplicity, it protected the prophecies and it would serve to keep the police nicely out of the frame.
Yola had already established that the investigation had moved on and that the Maset would be empty. Sergeant Spola was a man who respected his stomach. Yola had offered him wild boar stew with dumplings for his lunch, instead of his customary chicken sandwich. Spola had proved particularly amenable after that - especially as the wild boar was twinned with about a litre and a half of Costières de Nîmes and a follow-up cognac. He had confi rmed to her that by now, a day and a half after the attack, the Maset would be bolted and sealed with police tape and to all intents and purposes abandoned until next needed. All available manpower would need to be seconded in the search for the eye-man. What did she think? That the police left people dotted around the countryside guarding old crime scenes?
The two flics at the cabane got up and stretched themselves. One of them walked a few yards, unzipped his fly and took a leak. The other flashed his torch around the clearing, lingering on the security tape marking the spot where Gavril had been found.
‘Do you
think murderers really come back to the spot they’ve offed someone?’
‘Shit, no. And particularly not when they’ve got a bullet in them, they’re hungry and they’ve got sniffer dogs chewing up their arses. The bastard’s probably lying dead behind a bush. Or else he fell off his horse into a bog and drowned. That’s why we can’t find him. The wild pigs probably got him. They can eat a man, teeth and all, in under an hour. Did you know that? All the murderer has to do is to get rid of the spleen. They don’t like that for some reason.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Yes. I thought so too.’
Yola had walked in to the wood by the path, just as Alexi had described it to her, leaving strips of white paper at five-metre intervals to guide herself back to the road when it was dark. In her head she had marked the position of the solitary cypress tree beneath which the prophecies lay buried. If the police stayed where they were, however, she would have no possibility - even if she used the woodland as cover - of reaching the prophecies unseen. The cypress tree was far too exposed.
‘Shall we take a turn about the forest?’
‘Fuck that. Let’s go back to the cabane. Light a fire. I forgot my gloves and it’s getting cold.’
Yola could see their silhouettes approaching her. What were they after? Wood? How could she explain away her presence if they stumbled on her? They’d be so keen to get gold stars from Calque that they’d probably bundle her back with them in their poullailler ambulant - their travelling henhouse. Wasn’t that what Alexi called Black Marias? And Calque was certainly no fool. He would smell a rat straight away. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out that she was after the prophecies and that they weren’t lost at all.
THE NOSTRADAMUS PROPHECIES Page 37