Bale grunted in irritation. He reached down to raise Sabir’s head.
Sabir grabbed the collar of Bale’s shirt with his free hand. Temporarily unbalanced, Bale started to topple.
Using the impetus of the downward movement, Sabir steered Bale’s head through the hatch. His eyes fixed themselves on the open wound on Bale’s neck.
As Bale’s head came briefly parallel with his own, Sabir sank his teeth into the wound, forcing his tongue inside the bullet hole, dispersing the poison deep into Bale’s veins.
Then he spat what remained of the poison into the cesspool surrounding him and prepared to die.
84
Joris Calque’s interview with the Countess had proved to be the equivalent of a coitus reservatus – in other words, he had delayed completion for so long that the final effect had been little more satisfying than a wet dream.
He had convinced himself before the interview that it was he who held the upper hand. The Countess, surely, must be on the defensive? She was an old woman – why didn’t she simply open up and have done with it? There was no capital punishment in France any more. In fact the Count would most probably be carted off to an asylum, where he could play dynastic games to his heart’s content in the sure and certain knowledge that after fifteen or twenty years he would be ejected back into the system with a ‘harmless’ label tagged around his neck.
Instead, Calque had found himself facing the human equivalent of a brick wall. Rarely in his career had he encountered a person so sure of the moral justifi cations of their actions. Calque knew that the Countess was the driving force behind her son’s behaviour – he simply knew it. But he couldn’t remotely prove it.
***
‘Is that you, Spola?’ Calque held the cellphone six inches in front of his mouth, as one would hold a microphone. ‘Where are Sabir and Dufontaine now?’
‘Sleeping, Sir. It is two o’clock in the morning.’
‘Have you checked on them recently? Within the last hour, say?’
‘No, Sir.’
‘Well, do so now.’
‘Shall I call you back?’
‘No. Take the telephone with you. That’s what these things are for, isn’t it?’
Sergeant Spola eased himself up from the back seat of his police meat-wagon. He had made himself a comfortable nest out of a few borrowed blankets and a chair cushion which Yola had purloined for him. What was Calque thinking of? This was the middle of the night. Why would Sabir or the gypsy want to go anywhere? They weren’t being accused of anything. If Calque asked his opinion, he would tell him that there was no sense at all in wasting police manpower trailing non-suspects around in the enjoyment of their lawful rights. Spola had a lovely warm wife waiting for him at home. And a lovely warm bed. Those constituted his lawful rights. And, typically, they were in the process of being violated.
‘I’m looking at the gypsy now. He’s fast asleep.’
‘Check on Sabir.’
‘Yes, Sir.’ Spola eased the internal door of the caravan open. Such bloody nonsense. ‘He’s lying in his bed. He’s…’ Spola stopped. He took a further step inside the room and switched on the light. ‘He’s gone, Sir. They packed his bed full of cushions to make it look as if he was asleep. I’m sorry, Sir.’
‘Where’s the girl?’
‘Sleeping with the women, Sir. Across the way.’
‘Get her.’
‘But I can’t, Sir. You know what these gypsy women are like. If I go blundering in there…’
‘Get her. Then put her on the phone.’
85
Spola squinted through the windscreen at the passing trees. It had started to rain and the police car’s headlights were reflecting back off the road, making it difficult to judge distances.
Yola fidgeted anxiously beside him, her face taut in the reflected glare.
Spola flicked on the rear wipers. ‘That was a rotten trick to play on me, you know. I could lose my job over this.’
‘You shouldn’t have been told to watch us in the first place. It’s only because we’re gypsies. You people treat us like dirt.’
Spola sat up straighter in his seat. ‘That’s not true. I’ve tried to be reasonable with you – cut you some slack. I even let you visit the curandero with Sabir. That’s what’s got me into all this trouble.’
Yola fl ashed a glance at him. ‘You’re all right. It’s the others that make me sick.’
‘Well. Yes. There are some people who have unjustifiable prejudices. I don’t deny it. But I’m not one of them.’ He reached forwards and scrubbed at the inside of the windscreen with his sleeve. ‘If only they’d give us cars with air conditioning, we might see where we are going. Are we nearly there?’
‘It’s here. Turn left. And go on up the drive. The house will appear in a few moments.’
Spola eased the car up the rutted track. He glanced down at the clock. It would take Calque at least another hour to get here – unless he hijacked a police helicopter. Another night’s sleep lost.
He pulled the car up in front of the Maset. ‘So this is where it all happened?’
Yola got out and ran towards the front door. There was no firm basis to her anxiety but Calque’s call, warning them that the eye-man was still after Sabir, had upset her equanimity. She had thought that the eye-man was out of their lives forever. And now here she was, in the middle of the night, aiding and abetting the police.
‘Damo?’ She looked around the room. The fire was almost out. One of the candles was guttering and another was only ten minutes away from extinction. There was hardly enough light to see by, let alone transcribe detailed text. She turned to Sergeant Spola. ‘Have you a torch?’
He clicked it on. ‘Perhaps he’s in the kitchen?’
Yola shook her head. Her face looked pinched and anxious in the artificial light. She hurried down the corridor. ‘Damo?’ She hesitated at the spot where Macron had been killed. ‘Damo?’
Had she heard a noise? She placed one hand on her heart and took a step forwards.
The sound of a gunshot echoed through the empty building. Yola screamed. Sergeant Spola ran towards her. ‘What was that? Did you hear a shot?’
‘It was down in the cellar.’ Yola had her hand to her throat.
Spola cursed and manhandled his pistol out of its holster. He was not an active man. Gunplay was not in his nature. In fact he had never needed to use violence in over thirty years of police work. ‘Stay here, Mademoiselle. If you hear more shots, run out to the police car and drive it away. Do you hear me?’
‘I can’t drive.’
Spola handed her his cellphone. ‘I’ve put in a call to Captain Calque. Tell him what is happening. Tell him he must call an ambulance. I must go now.’ Spola ran through the back of the house towards the cellar, his torch casting wild shadows on the walls. Without pausing to think, he threw open the cellar door and clattered down, his pistol held awkwardly in one hand, his torch in the other.
A man’s feet projected from the lip of what appeared to be an old water cistern or cesspit. As Spola watched, the feet slithered down into the pit. Crazed sounds were coming from inside the sump and Spola stood, for one wild moment, fixed to the spot in shock and consternation. Then he crept forwards and shone his torch inside the pit.
Sabir had his head craned back and his mouth open, in a sort of silent rictus. In his free hand he held Bale’s fist, with the Redhawk anchored between them. As Spola watched, Bale’s head emerged from the cesspool, the clotted eyes turned up further than it seemed possible for human eyes to go. The gun rocked forwards and there was a vivid flash.
Spola fell to one knee. A numbness spread across his chest and down through his belly in the direction of his genitals. He tried to raise his pistol but was unable to do so. He coughed once and then fell over on to his side.
A figure darted past him. He felt the pistol being wrenched from his hand. Then his torch was taken. He placed both his free hands on his belly. He had a sudden, exquisite ima
ge of his wife lying on their bed, waiting for him, her eyes burning into his.
The gun fl ashes became more intense, lighting up the cellar like the repeated strikes of a tornadic lightning storm. Spola was aware of movement way out beyond him. Far away. Then someone was gently separating his hands. Was it his wife? Had they brought his wife to look after him? Spola tried to speak to her, but the oxygen mask cut off his words.
‘You owe the girl your life.’
‘I know I do.’ Sabir twisted his head until he was staring at the tips of the pine trees just visible outside the window of his hospital room. ‘I owe her more than that, if the truth be told.’
The remark passed Calque by. He was concentrating on something else altogether. ‘How did she know that you had taken poison? How did she know that you needed an emetic?’
‘What emetic?’
‘She fed you mustard and salt water until you brought up what was left of the poison. She saved Sergeant Spola’s life, too. The eye-man gutshot him. With gutshot victims, if they go to sleep, they die. She kept him talking while she lay with one hand hanging down into the cesspit, holding you upright – out of the sump. Without her, you would have drowned.’
‘I told you she was a special person. But, like everybody else, you distrust gypsies. It’s simply not rational. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
‘I didn’t come here to receive a lecture.’
‘What did you come here for, then?’
Calque sat back in his chair. He felt around in his pockets for a cigarette and then remembered that he was in a hospital. ‘For answers, I suppose.’
‘What do I know? We were pursued by a madman. He’s dead. Now we get on with our lives.’
‘That’s not enough.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I want to know what it was all for. Why Paul Macron was killed. And the others. Bale wasn’t mad. He was the sanest one amongst us. He knew exactly what he wanted and why he wanted it.’
‘Ask his mother.’
‘I have. It’s like kicking a dead tree. She denies everything. The manuscript we found in her hidden room is indecipherable and my superior considers it a waste of police time to pursue it any further. She’s got away scot-free. She and her aristocratic band of Devil-fanciers.’
‘What do you want from me, then?’
‘Yola admitted to Sergeant Spola that the prophecies weren’t lost. That you had secured them and were translating them at the Maset. I think she has a soft spot for Sergeant Spola.’
‘And you want to know what was in the prophecies?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what if I were to publish them?’
‘No one would listen. You would be like King Priam’s daughter, Cassandra, who was given the gift of prophecy by her suitor Apollo. Only when she refused to go to bed with him, he varied the gift so that, although her prophecies were invariably true, no one would ever believe them.’ Calque held up three fingers to silence Sabir’s inevitable riposte. He began to count off the points he wished to make by gripping each finger in the palm of his free hand. ‘One – you don’t have the originals. Two – you don’t even have a copy of the originals. You burned them. We found the ashes in the fireplace. Five million dollars’ worth of ashes. Three – it would simply be your word against the rest of the world. Anyone could say they found them. What you have is valueless, Sabir.’
‘Then why do you want it?’
‘Because I need to know.’
Sabir closed his eyes. ‘And why should I tell you?’
Calque shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can’t answer that.’ He hunched forwards. ‘But if I were in your shoes, I’d want to tell someone. I wouldn’t want to carry whatever it is you’re carrying to the grave with me. I’d want to get it off my chest.’
‘Why you in particular?’
‘For Christ’s sake, Sabir!’ Calque started up from his chair. Then he changed his mind and sat down again. ‘You owe me. And you owe Macron. You played me for a sucker after I trusted you.’
‘You shouldn’t have trusted me.’
Calque gave the ghost of a smile. ‘I didn’t. There were two trackers in the car. We knew if we lost one, that we could pick you up again with the other. I’m a policeman, not a social worker, Sabir.’
Sabir shook his head sadly. He was watching Calque, his eyes dark in contrast to the pristine white bandage that was protecting the side of his face. ‘Something happened to me in there, Captain.’
‘I know it did.’
‘No. Not what you are thinking. Something else. It was like a transformation. I changed. Became something other. The curandero warned me that it happens when you are about to become a shaman. A healer.’
‘I don’t know what the Hell you’re talking about.’
‘I don’t either.’
Calque sat back in his armchair. ‘Do you remember any of it? Or am I just wasting my time?’
‘I remember all of it.’
Calque’s body stiffened like a bird dog scenting its prey. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I told you that some change had occurred in me. Some transformation. I don’t know what it was or why it happened, but even now I can bring up every word of the French text that I saw. Like a photograph. I just have to close my eyes and it comes back. I spent six hours in that house, Captain. Reading those quatrains over and over again. Translating them. Trying to understand their significance.’
‘Have you written them down?’
‘I don’t need to. And I don’t want to.’
Calque stood up. ‘Fine. It was stupid of me to even ask. Why should you tell me? What can I do about anything? I’m an old man. I should retire. But I hang on in the police force because I don’t have anything else to do with my life. That’s about the sum of it. Goodbye, Mister Sabir. I’m glad the bastard didn’t get you.’
Sabir watched Calque shuffle towards the door. There was something about the man – an integrity, perhaps – that raised him above the common run of humanity. Calque had been honest according to his own lights during the investigation. He had cut Sabir far more slack than he had any right to expect. And he hadn’t blamed him for Macron’s death or Sergeant Spola’s wounding. No. He had taken those things on himself. ‘Wait.’
‘For what?’
Sabir held Calque’s eyes with his own. ‘Sit down, Captain. I’m going to tell you part of the story. The part that will not compromise any third parties. Will you be satisfied with that?’
Calque returned Sabir’s glance. Then he settled himself cautiously back in his seat. ‘I shall have to be, won’t I? If that’s all you feel you can give me.’
Sabir shrugged. Then he inclined his head questioningly. ‘Secrets of the confessional?’
Calque sighed. ‘Secrets of the confessional.’
87
‘There were only fifty-two quatrains on the parchment I retrieved from the bamboo tubing. I had initially assumed there would be fifty-eight, because that is the exact number needed to make up Nostradamus’s original ten centuries. But six are still missing. I now think that they are scattered around, like the ones at Rocamadour and Montserrat and designed to serve as clues to the main caucus.’
‘Go on.’
‘As far as I can work out, each of the fifty-two remaining quatrains describes a particular year. A year in the run-up to the End of Days. The Apocalypse.
Ragnarok. The Mayan Great Change. Whatever you choose to call it.’
‘What do you mean, describes a year?’
‘Each one acts as a pointer. It describes some event that will take place in that year – and each event is significant in some way.’
‘So the end isn’t dated?’
‘It doesn’t need to be – even Nostradamus didn’t know the exact date of Armageddon. He only knew what preceded it. So the date becomes obvious the nearer we get to it. In increments.’
‘I still don’t understand.’
Sabir sat up straighter in his bed.
‘It’s simple. Nostradamus wants mankind to escape the final holocaust. He feels that if the world can change its behaviour by acknowledging the Second Coming – by rejecting the Third Antichrist – then we might stand a faint chance of avoiding annihilation. That’s why he’s given us the clues, year by year and event by event. We’re to correlate the quatrains with the events. When each event occurs just as Nostradamus predicted, the quatrains will increase in importance and we can tick them off. The closer we get to Armageddon, the more obvious the starting date and the end date will be, for the simple reason that the events predicted for the last few years in the run-up to the End of Days haven’t happened yet. Then people will start to believe. And maybe change their behaviour. To all intents and purposes Nostradamus was giving us a fifty-two-year warning.’
Calque made a face.
‘Look, the first clue, in what I now believe to be the first quatrain, runs like this:
The African desert will melt into glass False freedoms will torment the French
The great empire of the islands will shrink Its hands, feet and elbows shun the head.’
‘That means nothing. It gets us nowhere.’
‘On the contrary. Look at it again. “The African desert will melt into glass.” In 1960 the French conducted their first ever nuclear test in south western Algeria. In the Sahara Desert. They called it the Gerboise Bleu – the Blue Jerboa.’
‘You’re stretching, Sabir.’
‘Try the next line, then: ‘False freedoms will torment the French.’ In 1960 France granted – or was forced to grant – independence to French Cameroon, French Togoland, Madagascar, Dahomey, Burkina Faso, Upper Volta, Ivory Coast, Chad, the Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Mauritania. But still they persisted with their war in Algeria. “False freedom” is when you give with one hand and you take back with another. Now lines three and four: ‘The great empire of the islands will shrink. Its hands, feet and elbows shun the head.’ Great Britain was always the ‘great empire of the islands’ to Nostradamus. He uses the image on numerous occasions and it was always specific to Britain. In 1960 the British granted independence to Cyprus. Also to British Somaliland. Ghana. Nigeria. These are the extremities. Queen Elizabeth II was the head. By achieving independence, they shun her.’
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