The Mayan Codex as-2

by Mario Reading

  Then she tiptoed back into the bathroom and continued with her task.

  When she had the sheets knotted together to her satisfaction, she measured them out against her forearm. Their length came to about ten metres. She hoped it would be enough.

  Her room was on the third floor of the house, over the courtyard. Once she was safely down, she intended to make inland for Ramatuelle. She knew where Monsieur Brussi, the taxi driver, lived. She had known him all her life. Even though Madame, her mother, had confiscated her purse and credit cards, surely he would agree to take her somewhere – anywhere – on credit?

  She unlatched the window, and sifted the knotted sheets through her hands. She’d taken the precaution of tying a hairbrush to the bottom sheet, and she hoped, in this way, to be able to gauge, even in the dark, how much further she would need to drop if her makeshift rope didn’t stretch all the way down to the ground.

  When the sheets had reached their full extent, she began swinging them from one side to the other, as gently as she was able. The hairbrush struck something a glancing blow.

  Lamia stopped her swinging, and listened, one hand cupped behind her ear. After a minute’s intense concentration, she relaxed. She had learned two things. The first was that there was no one stationed down in the courtyard. The second was that there was a further potential ten-foot drop between the opened shutter that she had just struck with her hairbrush, and the ground.

  She attached the free end of the knotted sheet to the central section of her bedroom window. There. Now she’d lost another foot in length. She’d have to drop down maybe eleven feet in the darkness. She racked her brains as to whether there was anything below her that might fall over and give her away. How stupid she had been not to have checked the whole area over while it was still light.

  With a final, bemused glance at her room, Lamia eased herself out of the window. She was about to leave everything she had ever known behind her. Security, family, tradition, and emotional ties. For twenty-seven years she had been living a monstrous lie.

  The real truth about her life, together with the true motives of the cabal that had adopted her – a cabal to which she had unwittingly and unthinkingly transferred all her loyalties – had only dawned on her following the publicity surrounding her brother’s death. If what she had been doing was by order of the Corpus Maleficus, then just how damaging had all the pathetic little courier jobs – which were all that Madame, her mother, had seen fit to allocate her over the years since her majority – actually been? How much damage had she inadvertently foisted on a society ignorant of the extent – or even the existence – of its own guilt? Now, at last, she would be able to enter the real world unencumbered by any of the baggage of the past.

  Using her feet as clamps, Lamia eased herself gingerly down the knotted line. She was fairly fit in terms of her age – tennis, yoga, and the occasional dance class had been her staples – but she was prone to vertigo, and she found herself thanking Providence that she had been forced to conduct her stunt in the dark.

  Once, halfway down her ersatz rope, and feeling herself in danger of freezing in fear, she had twisted the sheets violently around one wrist until the interrupted blood flow had forced her to gather her wits together and continue on with her descent.

  Finally, after what felt like half an hour but which had, in practice, been no more than a three-minute descent, she encountered the hairbrush with her feet. Carefully, she eased herself all the way down until she was hanging off the extreme end of the knotted line.

  Then, without allowing herself to think, she let go.

  Her plan was to strike the ground running. Instead, she took two lurching paces and fell to her knees. Instantly, every light in the courtyard switched on. Lamia twisted onto her back, her face contorted in shock. This was new. Madame, her mother, had never thought to safeguard the house with automatic security lights before.

  Lamia scrambled to her feet and began to run. Perhaps, when she was out of the courtyard, the lights would switch themselves off? Perhaps, if no one had been watching, they would think that a deer had wandered in from the surrounding fields and triggered the sensor?

  The front doors of the Domaine burst open and Milouins emerged. He was carrying a shotgun.

  Lamia struck out with all her might for the gap between the garage and the stable block. If she could only make it beyond the outbuildings, she might be able to lose herself amongst the vines.

  Milouins threw the shotgun aside and started after her.

  The instant he began to run it became obvious to Lamia that she stood no chance at all of evading him. He ran like an athlete, his hands pumping high above his hips, his face in a rictus of concentration.

  Lamia looked wildly around. Then she stopped, and fell back against the wall, holding her heart. She watched Milouins approach with her head down, sucking in air, like a feral, tethered mare, facing up to the man who intends to master her.

  ‘You’ll come with me, Mademoiselle.’

  Lamia shook her head.

  Milouins took her arm just above the elbow. When she attempted to struggle, he changed his grip so that he was holding both of her arms straight behind her back, where he could exert any pressure he chose against her shoulder sockets. ‘Please, Mademoiselle. I have no wish to hurt you. I’ve known you since you were a little girl. Walk quietly with me. I’d be beholden to you.’

  Lamia let out a sob of frustration. She nodded her head.

  Milouins relaxed his grip. He contented himself with walking two paces behind her, confident in his ability to catch her once again should she attempt to flee.

  The footman who had been guarding Lamia’s room skittered down the steps at the front of the house, the leather soles of his shoes echoing off the marble cladding. He stopped and made a face at Milouins as the pair came abreast of him. ‘The old woman will massacre me for this.’ He scowled at Lamia. ‘I hope she gives you to me to do over. I’ll stick a plastic bag over your head so I won’t have to look at you.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Milouins. ‘And go and wake Madame la Comtesse.’

  ‘She’s up already. The burglar alarm must have gone off in her bedroom when you came through the front door without neutralizing it.’

  Lamia, Milouins, and the footman stood in the hall, looking up towards the stairs.

  The Countess, in her dressing gown, and accompanied by a similarly clad Madame Mastigou, was descending the staircase to meet them.

  ‘What shall we do with her, Madame?’ Milouins looked marginally uncomfortable, like an axe-man at a royal execution who is suffering from a sudden onset of lese majeste.

  ‘Do with her?’ The Countess came to an abrupt halt. ‘Get Philippe to tie her up, feed her a sedative, and then lock her in the Corpus chamber. That way we can all get some sleep. There are no windows in there to tempt her towards further recklessness. I shall decide on her future in the morning.’

  16

  Ex-Sergeant-Chef Jean Picaro – twenty years in the Legion, ten years banged up in La Sante prison for armed robbery, eight years on the outside as a procurer of hard-to-access items to the criminal fraternity – scratched his clean-shaven head with fingernails worn down by years of automatic habit. A former sufferer of bread scabies, which he had contracted at La Sante during a particularly pernicious period in its history, Picaro had found it physically impossible to rid himself of his fifteen-year-old anxiety tic whenever he entered periods of high stress.

  And it was most definitely stress that he was feeling now. One thing was certain – to all intents and purposes he was looking at a straight in-and-out affair. So why was he sweating? And why was he scratching his head like a chimpanzee with mange?

  At first he had been minded not to take the job at all. It went against the grain to deal with ex- flics. Shit sticks – and old shit sticks the worst. But the man came recommended by Aime Macron. And Macron had saved Picaro’s life in Djibouti when he’d fallen foul of an Afar brigade leader in a convoluted deal
involving drugs, women, and a consignment of FAMAS assault rifles which had somehow gone missing from the Legion warehouse.

  The flic had further undermined his objections by coming straight out and offering him 1,500 Euros on the nail, and a further 1,500 down the line, to liberate a personal item belonging to him from inside a house on the Cap. The deal didn’t even involve a break-in. The flic, as flics do, had secretly palmed and wax-pressed a backdoor key while conducting an investigation inside the house two months before. Picaro had even been given a detailed map of the layout, showing the position of the library and of the concealed doorway leading to the room containing the object. A piece of cake, surely. But something was still bothering him.

  He played his torch over the map. He’d been watching the back of the house for over an hour now, and everything seemed quiet. No dogs. No automatic lighting sensors this side of the property. The flic had even explained to him where the alarm system and circuit breakers were, and how best to de-activate them. The whole thing was a fucking dream. But in Picaro’s experience, dreams had a nasty habit of jolting you awake when you least expected it.

  He flicked some imaginary skin from the collar of his jacket.

  Right. Either you do it or you don’t, Legionnaire.

  Picaro rose to his feet and padded down towards the buanderie.

  17

  Picaro stood inside the back door and sniffed. He didn’t know how or why, but sometimes you could smell the presence of people, even rooms away from you. It was some atavistic instinct, he reckoned, from mankind’s earliest times as a cave dweller. Enter an empty cave which you meant to occupy yourself, and before you settled down in front of the fire it was a smart idea to make sure that no one else, man or beast, felt they had a prior claim.

  Satisfied, Picaro padded up the concrete stairway that led to the back of the hallway. After neutralizing the alarm system within the stipulated two minutes, he cracked his torch and checked his map one final time. A left, a right, and then another right, and he should be in the library. Then a few steps across the room to the bound set of La Vie Parisienne – the flic had even set down the exact number of volumes there were in that particular run – and hey presto, open sesame.

  Picaro cast a quick glance up the stairs as he passed through the hall. Despite the multitude of houses he had broken into during the course of his life, Picaro still couldn’t stop himself fantasizing about his own particular nightmare – that of an Alsatian – it was always an Alsatian – bounding noiselessly down the stairs, dewlaps flapping, saliva jetting into its mouth at the prospect of a piece of Jean Picaro’s thighbone.

  Giving a little jump to settle his gooseflesh, Picaro eased himself through the doorway of the library. Jesus. He was getting too old for this. What did he need 3,000 euros for, anyway? His bank account was heaving. He owned his house outright. His son was apprenticed to the best electrical engineer in the business, and he had vowed to die rather than ever to go back to prison again. So what the hell was he doing it for? Habit? Addiction to the kicks? Or just because it was one of the few things he could still do well?

  He bent down and felt around for the catch that the flic had told him was hidden under Volume Three of the collected periodicals.

  A door, hidden in the bookcase, flicked open. With a cautious glance over one shoulder, Picaro stepped inside the concealed room.

  ‘ Putain de merde!’ he mouthed to himself, his eyes widening in horror.

  The unconscious figure of a woman was tied to a chair in the very centre of the assembly table. Her head had fallen at an angle, and as Picaro played his torch across her, he saw that one whole side of her face was covered in what appeared to be a thin sheet of congealed blood.

  18

  Ever the professional – and ever mindful of his 3,000 euros – Picaro felt around under the table for the flic’s precious tape recorder. Exactly two metres to the right of the master chair, taped up inside the skirt, at the exact angle of the joist and the cross-brace. Yes. There it was. Picaro pocketed it.

  He hesitated, and then made briskly for the door. What business was the woman of his? He’d done what he came here to do. He was already running late because of his previous caution. Why complicate matters? This way, he could get out of the house before daybreak with no one the wiser.

  His gaze travelled inexorably back to the woman. What the hell had they done to her? Maybe she was dead, even? But no. He could see her breathing by the light of the torch.

  As he played the light across her body, a memory came back to Picaro from his time at La Sante prison. A young lad, mixed race, not more than nineteen years old, who had fallen foul of one of the methamphetamine gangs. One day the gang had waited for him in the showers – for sooner or later, as Picaro had tried to explain to the boy, the bad guys always get you. What the hell else did they have to do with their time? But the boy had been too young and too cocksure to listen to him.

  This one they’d condemned to a tournante – a gang rape. When Picaro found the boy, they’d left him tied to a chair, with his head through the seat, his belly over the backrest, and his hands and feet strapped to the legs – that way he would be available for anyone else to use who happened along.

  At first Picaro hadn’t understood what he was looking at. It was like when his son had emerged, balls first, from his mother’s womb. Picaro had fallen back, his face ashen, shouting, ‘Christ, what’s that?’

  ‘It’s his testicles, Monsieur,’ the midwife had told him. ‘They swell up in a breech birth, because the legs are stretched back over the head.’

  When he’d seen the state of the young man’s anus, Picaro had vomited. Then he’d untied the boy, straightened him out as best he could on the cold floor of the shower room, and gone to fetch the toubibs.

  They’d stitched him up good, but the boy had never been right again after the attack. One day, about six months later, he’d cut off his own balls with a piece of broken glass.

  Sighing, Picaro moved back to the table. Taking out his Opinel, he cut the cords binding the young woman to her chair, eased her towards him, and let her fall across his right shoulder.

  With a hitch of his arms, he settled her weight more squarely. Then, feeling all kinds of a fool, he started back across the hall.

  No point closing the door behind me now, he thought to himself. I might as well leave a fucking paper trail.

  19

  Picaro laid the woman gently on the rear seat of his car. He stood back and looked down at her in the cold glow of the interior lights. What he had imagined in the darkness of the sealed room to be blood, now proved to be nothing more than a strawberry birthmark. Poor bitch. She’d have been pretty without that. Sometimes you wondered what God was thinking of.

  Picaro sprung back her eyelids and checked her pupils. She was doped – that much was obvious. He was briefly tempted to tie his chamois leather duster around her eyes so that she couldn’t identify him if she woke up – but with his present run of luck, she’d probably panic on awaking and cause a car wreck. Best to leave things be for the time being.

  He’d arranged to meet the flic at the old parking place behind Pampelonne beach. A twenty-minute drive at the outside. He’d simply dump the female and the tape recorder on him, get the rest of his money, and then scram. The flic could sort her out. That’s what flics did, wasn’t it? Sort things out?

  Three times on the drive to Pampelonne Picaro wondered whether he wouldn’t do better just leaving her on the side of the road. She hadn’t seen him yet. She hadn’t seen the flic. Why complicate life when you didn’t need to?

  But the image of the girl tied to the chair in the centre of the table haunted him. What had that boy’s name been? The one in the prison? Chico? Chiclette? Something like that.

  Stupid to put the chair on the table. What if the girl had woken up and thrown herself to one side in a panic? She could have broken her neck and paralysed herself. People could be dumb sometimes.

  He saw the flic waiting
for him in the curve of the headlights. Well. Here goes. What a man will do for three thousand smackers.

  Picaro pulled up beside Calque. He got out of the car and looked around. Well. No unexpected reception committee. That was a good first sign.

  ‘Did you get it?’

  ‘Of course I got it.’ Picaro eased the tape recorder from his pocket and handed it to Calque.

  Calque palmed him the remaining fifteen hundred.

  Picaro jerked his thumb back towards the car. ‘I’ve got something else for you, too. No extra charge.’

  Calque flinched, as if someone had fired a dried pea at the back of his neck. ‘What do you mean?’

  Picaro opened the back door of his car and stood waiting for Calque to join him. They both stared down at the girl.

  ‘Don’t worry. She’s not dead. Someone drugged her and tied her to a chair. They left the chair on the table in that secret room of yours. I thought at first that it might have been one of those sex things – you know, a bondage thing, when they pop amyl nitrate and then half suffocate themselves in an effort to increase their kicks. But one look at her face told me otherwise. I thought about leaving her there, but I just couldn’t do it. She hasn’t seen me and she hasn’t seen you. My advice would be to abandon her here. But she’s your problem from here on in. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’ Calque had total control of himself again. He was already busy working out the possible ramifications of this new development.

  ‘Want me to move her, or will you?’

  ‘You’d better move her. I’m not in the best of health.’

  Calque watched as Picaro eased the girl across the back seat towards him.