‘We fell out over my attitude to the Corpus. I’ve been steadily easing back on my commitment for some years now. None of the others suspected, because they were not close to me – but Athame understood. And she couldn’t condone it. She believes the Countess, my mother, to be a sort of goddess figure. She worships her, like the Jews of the Old Testament worshipped graven images – the golden calf, or what have you. She believes the Countess to be a sort of golem. And sometimes I think she’s right. My mother is not entirely human. It is perfectly feasible that some force created her out of primeval clay, and simply gave her the face and body of a normal human being. To trick people.’
‘To trick people? How?’
Lamia met Sabir’s eyes straight on for the first time. ‘Into believing that she was like them.’
36
Vau could hear every word of their conversation from his prone position on the increasingly hostile concrete surface of the motel parking lot.
He was starting to feel the cold in his back, and imagining all sorts of scenarios, like him sneezing, or him dozing off and then sitting up and bashing his head against the Cherokee’s undercarriage and having to stifle his screams. The total nightmare scenario was the one in which the pair of them decided to go off for a sex assignation in the car together – for Vau was perfectly convinced from the sound of their voices, and the intimate way in which they were talking, that there was something more going on than a mere friendship of convenience – more than merely the random companionship of fellow travellers.
Abi could make fun of Lamia’s face and her near sexless way of dressing all he wanted, but Vau knew that there were men out there who found Lamia attractive. Take that oaf Philippe, for instance. The dead footman. He had been sniffing after Lamia for years, hadn’t he? It was only Madame, his mother’s, complete lack of interest in matters sexual that had allowed the man to continue in his job. And much good it had done him. He was now languishing below six feet of reinforced concrete at a new Catholic girls’ school the Countess was subsidizing at the Couvent des Abbesses de Platilly, near Cavalaire-sur-Mer. Nothing like keeping things cosy and in the family.
Still, Vau had all but decided that there was no way he was going to try breaking into the car again after this recent little contretemps. He would simply lie through his teeth to Abi and pretend he had planted the tracker in the spare tyre well. Instead he would attach it to the underframe of the car, and hope for the best. He had identified the perfect spot whilst lying prone beneath the Cherokee’s skirts. He would do the deed the minute the two lovebirds stopped babbling and went back inside again, and to hell with the consequences.
37
Abi watched his twin brother climbing back into the rental. ‘You’re filthy. What have you been doing all this time? Rolling around in a midden?’
‘What’s a midden?’
‘A shit heap.’
‘Then why don’t you say it the first time, instead of showing off how clever you are?
‘Answer my question, Vau.’
‘The answer is no. I haven’t been rolling around in a shit heap. If you want to know what I’ve been doing all this time, I’ll tell you. I’ve been lying underneath Sabir’s car, in the parking lot of the motel, listening to his cosy late-night conversation with Lamia.’
‘You’re kidding me? You’re not serious?’
‘Deadly serious. Plus she recognized Dakini earlier on today, while we were transiting Houston.’
‘Christ.’
‘It’s all right. She’s managed to convince herself that she was seeing things. Your trick with the baseball cap and the dark glasses worked a treat. It was so unlikely a disguise, that Lamia thinks she was simply imagining the vision from hell that Dakini represents, and not really seeing it.’
‘She is plug ugly, isn’t she?’
‘That’s the understatement of the year.’
Abi laughed. ‘Did you plant the tracker?’
Vau shrugged. ‘Of course I did. What do you think?’
‘Where?’
‘Where? In the tyre well of course. Where I usually plant them.’
‘Which key did you use to get in?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Because I’m not stupid, Vau. You got surprised on the job and you were forced to hide. Then you were constrained to listen to the pair of them yakking on about Dakini for half an hour. You’re lying under the car, at this point, pissed off to the nines. Don’t tell me it didn’t occur to you to take a shortcut?’
Vau hesitated. He was briefly tempted to try and compound his felony. Then he aimed a frustrated punch at the stowaway compartment. ‘Okay, Abi. Okay. You got me. As you always do. I slipped the fucking thing underneath the chassis, not in the tyre well. Between you and me there was no way in hell that I was going to break into that car with the pair of them wide awake inside their bedroom fantasizing about each other.’
‘What are you talking about? Fantasizing about each other?’
‘I heard Lamia’s voice. She’s my sister, remember. I’ve never heard her speaking like that to a man before.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like she gives a damn about what he thinks of her.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘I’m convinced she’s got the hots for Sabir.’
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Yes, it does stretch the imagination a little. When you think of all the millions of women with unblemished faces out there. I mean, why take second best when you don’t need to? Anyway, either she’s kidding herself, or Sabir must have detached retinas.’
‘Seriously. Does Sabir have the hots for her?’
Vau made a face. ‘Sabir hides it better, but I wouldn’t be surprised.’ He grinned at his brother, pleased that he was contributing something of value for once. ‘Can you use that knowledge in some way, Abi?’
Abi shrugged reflectively. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m sure as hell going to give it some thought.’
38
That morning saw the trio crossing the Rio Bravo at the Puente Nuevo, and driving through into Matamoros from Brownsville, Texas. They paid their $2.25 toll, and arranged for their temporary vehicle permit from the CIITEV office. Then they headed south down Highway 101 towards San Fernando.
Abi and Vau, who had crossed by foot earlier that morning, and secured a new, Mexican registered rental for themselves, picked up the Grand Cherokee about two miles out of town. The tracker was working fine, so they were able to follow the Jeep at a distance of about three quarters of a mile, with no possibility of a surprise sighting. The nine remaining members of the Corpus had been detailed to hire themselves two people carriers, one for the men and one for the women, and to keep in touch with Abi and Vau via cell phone. They would rendezvous every night near whatever motel the trio had chosen for themselves.
Abi had decided against concealing the existence of the tracker from his brothers and sisters for the simple
