33
‘Where are we going?’
‘To where it says on the base of the coffer.’
Alexi leaned forward from the rear seat and clapped Sabir on the shoulder. ‘That’s telling her. Hey, luludji? What do you think of your phral now? Maybe he’ll leave you lots of money when this crazy man kills him? You got lots of money, Adam?’
‘Not on me.’
‘But you got money? In America, maybe? Can you get us a green card?’
‘I can give you a black eye.’
‘Hey? You hear that? That’s funny. I ask him for a green card and he offers me a black eye. This guy must be a Berber.’
‘Is anyone following us?’
‘No. No. I looked. And I keep on looking. We’re clear.’
‘I don’t understand it.’
‘Maybe he didn’t find the car. The boys hid it well. You owe me for that, gadje. They were going to break it up and sell off the pieces, but I told them you would pay them for protecting it.’
‘Pay them?’
‘Yeah. You got to leave them money too, when you die.’ Alexi suddenly sat up higher. ‘Hey. gadje. Pull over behind that car. The one parked down the track.’
‘Why?’
‘Just do it.’
Sabir pulled the Audi across the hard shoulder and down the track.
Alexi got out and began stalking around, his head cocked sideways. ‘It’s okay. There’s no one here. They’re off walking.’
‘You’re not going to steal it?’
Alexi made a disgusted face. He squatted down and began unscrewing the car’s number-plate.
‘He’s stopped.’
‘You mustn’t follow suit. Keep on driving. Go past him. But if you see another car pulled over, mark it. We’ll call in back-up.’
‘Why don’t you just pick up Sabir and have done with it?’
‘Because the gypsies aren’t stupid, whatever you might think of them. If they haven’t killed Sabir, it’s for a reason.’ Calque flicked a glance down the side track. ‘Did you see what he was doing down there?’
‘They. There were three of them.’ Macron cleared his throat uncertainly. ‘If I were them, I’d be switching number-plates. Just in case.’
Calque smiled. ‘Macron. You never cease to amaze me.’
‘What do you hope to gain by that? The minute they come back to the car they’ll see you’ve switched their plates.’
‘No.’ Alexi smiled. ‘People don’t look. They don’t see things. It’ll be days before he notices anything. He’ll probably only realise we’ve switched the plates after the police pounce down on him waving their machine guns – or when he loses his car in a supermarket parking.’
Sabir shrugged. ‘You sound as if you’ve done this sort of thing before.’
‘What do you mean? I’m like a priest.’
Yola bestirred herself for the first time. ‘I can understand my brother knowing about the first paper. My mother doted on him. She would have told him anything. Given him anything. But how did my brother know what was on the base of the coffer? He couldn’t read.’
‘Then he found someone in the camp who could. Because he used part of the same wording in his ad.’
Yola glanced at Alexi. ‘Who would he find?’
Alexi shrugged. ‘Luca can read. He would do anything for Babel. Or for a handful of euros. He’s sly, too. It would be just like him to plan all this and then set Babel up to act in his place.’
Yola hissed. ‘That Luca. If I find he did this, I will put a hex on him.’
‘A hex?’ Sabir glanced back at Yola. ‘What do you mean, a hex?’
Alexi laughed. ‘She’s hexi, this girl. A witch. Her mother was a witch. And her grandmother too. That’s why no one will marry her. They think that if they give her a beating she will poison them. Or give them the evil eye.’
‘She’d be right.’
‘What do you mean? A man’s got to beat a woman sometimes. Otherwise, how can he keep her in order? She’d be like one of your payo women. With balls the size of hand grenades. No, Adam. If, by a miracle, she ever finds herself a husband, you’ve got to talk to him. Tell him how to manage her. Keep her pregnant. That’s the best thing. If she’s got children to look after, she can’t nag him.’
Yola flicked at her front teeth with her thumb, as if she were getting rid of a piece of unwanted gristle. ‘And what about you, Alexi? Why aren’t you married? I’ll tell you why. Because your penis is split in half. One bit goes west, towards the payos and the other bit stays in your hand.’
Sabir shook his head in bewilderment. Both of them were smiling, as if they derived comfort from the badinage. Sabir secretly suspected that it reinforced, rather than truncated, their communality. He suddenly felt jealous, as if he, too, wanted to belong to such a light-hearted community. ‘When you’ve both stopped arguing, shall I tell you what was written – or rather burned – on to the base of the coffer?’
They both turned to him as if he had offered, out of the blue, to read them a bedtime story.
‘It’s in medieval French. Like the Will. It’s a riddle.’
‘A riddle? You mean like this one? ‘I have a sister who runs without legs and who whistles without a mouth. Who is she?’’
Sabir was getting used to the gypsy way with a non sequitur. At first, the sudden loss of a train of thought had disturbed his sense of order and he had fought to get back on track. Now he smiled and yielded himself up to it. ‘Okay. I give up.’
Yola hammered the seat behind him. ‘It’s the wind, idiot. What did you think it was?’ She and Alexi erupted into gales of laughter.
Sabir smiled. ‘Now do you want to hear what I found? Then we’ll see if you’re as good solving riddles as you are at setting them.’
‘Yes. Tell us.’
‘Well, the original French goes like this:
‘Heberge par les trois maries Celle d’Egypte la derniere fi t La vierge noire au camaro duro Tient le secret de mes vers a ses pieds’
When I first read it, I took it to mean the following:
Sheltered by the three married people The Egyptian woman was the last one The Black Virgin on her hard bed Holds the secret of my verses at her feet’
‘But that makes no sense.’
‘You’re darned right it makes no sense. And it’s not in Nostradamus’s usual style, either. It doesn’t rhyme, for a start. But then it doesn’t pretend to be a prophecy. It’s clearly meant to be a guide, or map, towards something of greater importance.’
‘Who are the three married people?’
‘I’ve not the faintest idea.’
‘Well, what about the Black Virgin, then?’
That’s a lot clearer. And it’s where the key, in my opinion, lies. Camaro duro doesn’t really mean ‘hard bed’,
