‘I think you are right. But that doesn’t take us much further, does it? Thanks to your failure to force information out of Sabir when you were offered the chance, we have no idea what they are doing, nor why they are doing it. Have you had any trouble along the way?’
Abi flared his eyes. He had been dreading the arrival of this question ever since the start of the conversation with his mother.
‘Abiger?’
‘Yes, Madame.’
‘Don’t lie to me. I can always tell if you are lying. I have been able to do this ever since you were a little boy.’
Abi glanced across at Vau, who was resolutely concentrating on his driving, and pretending that he was not privy to the conversation emerging loud and clear through the rental’s hands-free speakers.
‘Yes, we have had some trouble.’
‘Who caused it?’
‘Aldinach. She got the wind under her tail a little.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘It’s what happens with mares. When they come into season. It’s called “getting the wind under their tail”. They charge around the paddock with their tails cocked to one side, causing trouble.’
‘And this is what Aldinach did?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘And the outcome?’
‘Fourteen people in hospital. Hells Angels, mostly.’
‘Any of our people?’
‘Of course not. The opposition over-faced itself. They did not possess the will to win. They did not realize who they were up against.’
‘Anyone killed?’
‘No.’
‘So there will be no problems with the police?’
‘No. I guarantee it.’
‘Did you join in this fracas?’
Ah. Here was the trick question. Abi had known it was coming, but still it turned his blood to ice. Answer wrongly, and he would be hung out to dry like a strip of biltong. ‘Of course not, Madame. I followed your orders to the letter. Vau and I were watching Sabir’s motel. I had given the others time off to eat and to relax. I had not anticipated Aldinach’s bout of brain fever. She went into that place determined to start a fight involving everybody.’
‘Have you punished her?’
‘What’s the point? Everything turned out well in the end. We didn’t spook Sabir. The police weren’t involved until afterwards, by which time we had all dispersed to different locations. No harm was done. And it allowed everybody to let off a little steam.’
‘I think you need to place a tracker in Sabir’s car.’
Abi mouthed a swearword. ‘Is that wise, Madame? We have Sabir and Lamia and the policeman sewn up. They can’t so much as whistle without one of us hearing them.’
‘How much further do you have to go, Abiger?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Exactly. And how long until the next “wind under the tail” moment?’
Abi swallowed. ‘I can’t say, Madame. It could be any time. It could be never.’
‘Mexico is a country where things happen, Abiger. The police are endemically corrupt. There are drug wars going on all along the border. I don’t want Sabir lost because a maniac like Aldinach gets ants in her pants.’
Abi slapped Vau on the arm to catch his attention and then mouthed ‘ants in her pants’ and ‘maniac’ and raised his eyes heavenwards. ‘No, Madame. Of course not, Madame.’
‘Can Vau get inside their car without triggering the alarm?’
‘Vau can get inside any car. You know that, Madame. You were responsible for having him taught by the best car thief in the business. But it will be tricky. If something goes wrong, we risk stampeding them.’
The Countess sighed melodramatically. ‘Then we must risk a stampede, don’t you think, in view of the greater benefits involved in having a fallback position? But kindly do not tell your brothers and sisters that you have done this thing at my request. I don’t want them thinking that I don’t trust them. Do you understand what I am saying, Abiger?’
‘Perfectly, Madame.’
‘And Abiger?’
‘Yes, Madame.’
‘This one time I will not hold you personally responsible for what has happened.’
‘Thank you, Madame. You are very kind.’ Abi terminated the connection with one slow-motion finger. ‘Fucking old cow.’
Vau turned towards him. ‘You must not speak of Madame, our mother, that way.’
‘Oh really? Well what is she then? She sits in that spider’s web of hers, with that bastard Milouins and the fragrant Madame Mastigou always on hand to protect her from the real world, and she still thinks she can pull all the strings. Why doesn’t she come out here if she’s so eager to run everything?’
‘Because she’s an old woman. And because she’s rich.’
Abi turned to his brother. ‘Truly, Vau? Is that so? Well you could have fooled me.’
33
During your next two days on the road, you had achieved three lifts. Firstly to Minatitlan, in a brewery truck, then, after a long wait, to Agua Dulce, with a gringo, in his private car.
Agua Dulce was partially off your road, but you accepted the lift nevertheless, on the assumption that anywhere south was good and, on the whole, productive. It was better to keep moving than to remain static, with all the dangers that inactivity entailed, such as losing heart, or spending money that you could ill afford.
But the trip to Agua Dulce proved fortunate in more ways than one, because the same gringo saw you waiting on the road again the very next morning, and gave you a further lift, this time all the way to Villahermosa. The only thing you did not understand was that the gringo asked you, many times, if you had ever dug things up in your garden. Stone carvings. Pottery. Old necklaces. Obsidian knives. You tried to tell him that you did not have a garden – that you worked for your boss, the cacique, in his garden, and that therefore anything that you dug up legally belonged to him. That even in the cacique ’s garden you had never dug such things up in the entirety of your life.
The gringo had seemed very disappointed when you told him this. But still he had taken you on to Villahermosa, and had offered to buy you lunch from a roadside stall, which you had refused, on account of the gringo’s strange attitude. Were all gringos like this? Plunderers? Like the Spanish? You had only met two gringos in the entire course of your life, but they had not impressed you. A man should always speak directly of what was in his heart. Not come at a subject from the side. Or from on top.
From now on, you decided, you would avoid gringos, and stick to your own people. Peasants. Indios. Mestizos. People who made their living from the land, and not from thievery.
34
Vau waited until 2.30 in the morning before making his move on the Grand Cherokee.
He’d brought his bunch of skeleton keys, with a wedge and a flexible car antenna for back-up in case he
