her own experience why the other woman might not want to remain in the full public gaze. ‘Okay. I go with you. If Damo says I should trust you, I will trust you. He would never do anything against my interests. But first we go to my caravan. We collect Alexi. He goes with us.’
‘Of course.’
Yola hitched her shoulders. ‘Maybe I should call this number anyway?’
‘There’s no one there. I promise. You can call it if you want to.’
‘And Damo? Does he not have a phone he carries?’
‘It was stolen. Along with his passport, his money, and his credit cards. And Calque never uses a cell phone anyway. He’s a technophobe.’
‘A what?’
‘He hates modern technology. He works entirely from his mind.’
‘Yes. Yes he does. That is what Damo told me. That is what I have seen for myself. Come. Let us go to your car. I don’t need to call the number.’
The two women headed for Lamia’s Peugeot. On a whim, Lamia darted into the bakery and bought a large bag of croissants and three baguettes. She was counting on them to provide her with a further level of camouflage. How could anyone think that a young woman loaded down with bread and croissants could possibly be a threat?
It was this five-minute delay, however, that dictated the way future events would pan out. For Athame, catching the fragrance of freshly baked bread wafting towards her from the bakery, blithely stuck her head above the door frame of the car she and Aldinach were sleeping in, and wound down her window.
7
The clutch on Sabir and Calque’s hire car burnt out just north of Melun.
‘I don’t believe it. I don’t fucking believe it.’ Sabir hammered on the steering wheel. ‘Fucking rentals. Fucking assholes. Why don’t they fucking service their fucking cars?’
Calque stared at him. ‘Have you finished, Sabir? There is nobody here but me to hear you. And I’m all for swearing alongside the next man, but at 2.30 in the morning, it can be a little hard on the nerves. And you’ve been riding this car like it’s a Formula 1 Ferrari. Not an imported hatchback that has been used by a hundred people already. And all of them with markedly different gear-changing techniques.’
Sabir collapsed back into his seat. ‘What do we do now?’
Calque pondered for a moment or two. ‘We find a telephone. We phone the rental company. They send a trailer out here with a new car on it. They winch the old car up on the trailer. Then we continue on our way.’
‘But what about Lamia? And the other two maniacs?’
‘We can do nothing about that, Sabir. Yola has no phone. It is in the lap of the gods.’
‘Did we pass an emergency telephone recently?’
‘No.’
‘So what do we do? Flag down a passing car?’
‘No one will stop for us at this time in the morning. We are on the outskirts of Paris, surrounded by bidonvilles. Are you crazy, man?’
‘All right. You stay in the car in case the police want to know what we are doing parked here. I will go walkabout.’
‘Okay.’
Sabir got out of the car. He started up the hard shoulder.
‘Sabir?’
‘What now?’
‘You’d better take the number of the rental agency with you.’
8
It took Sabir thirty-five minutes to find a telephone, and it took the rental agency a further two and a half hours to respond to their call and send out a fresh car. In the interim, both men stretched themselves out on their seats and snatched forty winks. For once in his life, Calque didn’t snore.
The trailer was with them at a little after six o’clock in the morning. The actual process of changing cars was a simple one, achieved in a little under ten minutes. Sabir reined himself in with the driver of the tow truck. Calque had warned him that the man was not personally responsible for their plight, nor for the rental company’s understandable slowness in responding to an early morning call.
Sabir stood by the tow truck, kicking at the tyres. He was cold. He had on only a thin jacket from Mexico, and it wasn’t suitable for an early November morning in northern France. Calque looked cold too. Sabir thought about offering him his jacket, and then rejected the idea. He knew what Calque’s response would be.
They were on the road again by 6.30. Both men could feel the events of the past few days beginning to tell on them. There was silence in the car until they reached the outskirts of Samois.
‘Let’s hope we’re still in time.’
‘We’ll be in time, Sabir.’
‘I’m glad you’re such an optimist.’
Sabir drove straight for the Gypsy encampment. He missed the turning first time around and had to backtrack a little. But he made it on the second pass, and bumped the car up the rutted track, trying to avoid the worst of the potholes and the puddles. He didn’t want to have call the rental agency out a second time.
People were already moving in the camp. Breakfast was being prepared. Sabir had a sudden flash back to the previous May, when he had made a similar journey, at a similar time, although on foot.
The children were the first to notice Sabir’s car nosing its way up the track. They came running towards it, suspicion on their faces. When they recognized Sabir’s face through the windscreen, they burst into smiles. ‘Damo! Damo!’
Sabir pulled the car up onto the verge of the track and got out. Some of the older men were approaching now, with the women holding back a little, to see what was occurring. Radu, Alexi’s cousin, whom Sabir had seen married in Gourdon, was the first to reach him.
‘Damo. Damo. It is good to see you. Yola will be overjoyed.’
‘Radu. Listen to me. We’re in a hurry. This is an emergency. You remember the people who killed Babel? Back in May, in Paris? They are after Yola now. We need to warn her and Alexi. We need to get them away from here as quickly as possible.’
Radu didn’t waste any time in questions. He took Sabir’s arm and led him and Calque towards Alexi’s caravan. Alexi was just stepping out of the door.
‘Damo! My brother. You have come to visit us. This is perfect timing, because I was just thinking that I need to ask you for another loan. Just for the short term, you understand. This pregnancy is stretching my resources. Not to mention Yola’s stomach. Heh. Heh. Heh.’ He leapt down from the caravan and threw his arms around Sabir.
‘Alexi. Where is Yola? We have an emergency. The Corpus wants to kill her. It’s my fault. We need to get her out of here.’
Alexi took a step backwards. Half of him was still locked onto the thought of the loan. ‘They want to kill Yola? But why? She has done nothing.’ He shook his head, as if clearing it of sleep. ‘Is this revenge for what she did to the eye-man?’
‘I’ll tell you later. Where is she?’
Alexi shrugged. ‘Around the camp, maybe. I don’t know where she goes in the morning. She is probably roasting coffee beans. Or making my breakfast. She could be anywhere.’
‘Radu, can you get all the kids to go look for her?’
Radu nodded. ‘I do that.’ He hurried off.
