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.
‘What’s that on her face? Is she injured?’
Picaro held the girl’s head up towards the light as if he were exhibiting a vase to a potential buyer at an auction house. ‘No. Birthmark. It’s a fucking shame, isn’t it?’
Calque recognized the girl’s facial disfigurement at once. She had been one of the members of the first party to arrive at the house – the party which had preceded the arrival of the two men. She had to be one of the Countess’s daughters, therefore – one of the Devil’s dozen. But what could she possibly have done to turn the Countess against her? Either way, he desperately needed to talk to her.
At that exact moment, Lamia opened her eyes.
Picaro raised his hand, ready to rabbit-punch her before she could catch a glimpse of his face.
‘No. No. Wait!’ Calque hurried forward. He scrabbled in his pocket and held out his badge. ‘Police, Mademoiselle. For your own good, do not look around. I’m going to ease you out of the car.’ He took her face in his hands. ‘Keep looking at me. Don’t look around. Trust me.’
Lamia was still dopey. She stumbled forwards and fell against Calque’s chest, her knees buckling.
Calque nodded at Picaro.
Picaro jumped into his car and slewed away. The back door slammed shut of its own accord as he revved up through the gears.
20
Philippe Lemelle had been one of the Countess de Bale’s footmen for eighteen months now. It was the single longest period in his life that he had ever held down a job, and he was beginning to get itchy feet. Something good needed to happen, or the old cow wouldn’t see his trail for dust.
Lemelle’s father and his grandfather had both worked for the old Count, and it was this fact, and this fact alone, which had secured the slow-witted and low IQ’d Lemelle the job. As a result, Lemelle was fully conversant – or so he fondly thought – with all the Corpus’s aims and aspirations. If it wasn’t for the butler, Milouins, who was clearly jealous of his good looks and his success with women, Lemelle was firmly convinced that he would have risen far more rapidly in the Corpus hierarchy, with the Countess using him for something just a little more onerous than the cleaning of people’s rooms and the mounting of guard duty on her disfigured bitch of a daughter.
Lemelle felt personally humiliated by Lamia’s escape during his watch, and his sense of humiliation was further compounded by Milouins’s triumphant recapture of the stuck-up bint just a few seconds after she’d touched down in the courtyard. He derived belated comfort from the fact that it was to him, and not to Milouins, that the Countess had reassigned Lamia after the escape fiasco. Madame la Comtesse had clearly marked him out from the herd, and intended him for higher things.
From the very first moment that he had seen her, fourteen months before, during a brief visit on the occasion of her mother’s birthday, Lemelle had found Lamia sexually attractive – despite, or perhaps even because of, the strawberry birthmark that marred her face. After all, as his father used to say, you don’t stare at the mantelpiece while you’re poking the fire.
As a result he had taken an unusually keen pleasure in knotting her to her chair, and forcibly dosing her with twice the regulation measure of tranquillizers. He was beginning to regret his final sadistic flourish, however, which had seen him balancing the now unconscious woman on top of the council room table for reasons which, in retrospect, eluded even him. In fact the memory of his stupidity had positively begun to haunt him. What if she woke up in a panic, fell off the table, and broke her stupid neck? That would complete Milouins’s triumph over him, wouldn’t it? The Countess would have every reason to bury him alive.
Lemelle threw on a few clothes and padded furtively downstairs. The stillness of the sleeping house was oddly comforting to him, for ever since childhood Lemelle had been prone to passages of voyeurism, and night time – with its secrets, and its recondite laws, and its infinite promises of concealment – held deeply stimulating associations for him.
The in-built connection between darkness and sexual promise now provided Lemelle with his next brainwave – with Lamia dosed up to the eyeballs on tranquillizers, what possible harm could there be in paying her something more than just a fleeting visit? If he was caught, he could always claim that he’d simply gone downstairs to check on her welfare.
For the fact remained that when Lemelle wasn’t working, sleeping, or eating, he was busy constructing elaborate sexual fantasies about any real-life women he happened to encounter. And ever since he had first heard of people using roofies to drug women so that they would neither resist nor remember anything that occurred, Lemelle had dreamed of getting hold of the stuff and using it as a means of self-empowerment. And if he couldn’t get his hands on the date rape drug Rohypnol, surely a double dose of Temazepam was the next best thing?
Even a cursory glance at Lemelle’s computer would have thrown up thousands of images from rape, BDSM, and sleep-attack websites. Here was his chance to turn fantasy into reality. If Lamia was still out cold, he could do whatever he wanted to her. The thought turned his legs weak with anticipation. He patted the digital camera in his jacket pocket. It would serve the bitch right if she found out in a month or so’s time that she was unexpectedly pregnant by her mother’s footman – and that if she decided to cut up rough he could take his revenge by plastering pornographic pictures of her all over the internet. She’d have to notice him then, wouldn’t she? She’d have to come to terms with him then. And Christ, how he’d make her suffer.
Lemelle’s first hint that his future plans weren’t going to run quite as smoothly as he expected came at the library door. It was wide open. And the Countess’s standing orders were that every unused door in the house be kept tightly sealed unless the room was actually in use. In fact the bastard Milouins set such store on pleasing the Countess on this subject that it would have been more than Lemelle’s job was worth not to double-shut the damned thing after he’d trussed the woman up and stuck her on the table like Quasimodo. Shutting doors had become an automatic part of his make-up – rather like a man who runs around the house switching off unnecessary lights.
The Corpus chamber door was wide open too. A wave of nausea leached through Lemelle’s body. If the woman was gone a second time, he’d get the blame for that too. That was as clear as day. He’d lose his job. Even his mother wouldn’t be able to protect him this time.
Lemelle eased himself around the open door. Lamia was nowhere to be seen. Her chair lay upside down on the floor, next to the council table. Lemelle picked up one of the discarded ropes and thumbed its end. It had been cut – clearly cut. So the bitch had got someone in to help her. Lemelle could already hear the triumph in Milouins’s voice when this new disaster came to light.
‘Twice? You let her go twice? We told you to tie her up and dope her, for Christ’s sake. What did you do, Lemelle? Give her a double espresso?’
Lemelle hurried through the empty house, his eyes searching for anything remotely out of place. Yes. Here was another door left wide open. Lemelle descended towards the buanderie. He could already feel a current of colder air playing against his forehead. Should he call Milouins and tell him what had occurred? Of course. That would be the smart thing to do.
Lemelle took out his cell phone and glared at it. He was near the back of the house now, looking out over the fields. As he watched, some car headlights cut a circular swathe across the vineyard.
Lemelle thrust the cell phone back in his pocket and hurried around to the servant’s garage. In the fantasy world Lemelle had constructed for himself, heroes didn’t fritter away their second chances. As he passed the gunroom he helped himself to Milouins’s precious Mossberg 500 pump-action shotgun and a box of twelve-gauge cartridges.
Whatever route they intended to take, Lamia and her white knight would have to pass within half a kilometre of the front of the property. This meant that Lemelle would have ample time to get the estate Land Rover out, douse the headlights, and follow on behind.
