Achor Bale watched the new young security guard work his dog in and out of every corner of the St-Sauveur Basilica. You had to hand it to the Rocamadour church authorities. They hadn’t been slow off the mark in the recruitment stakes. Still. Must be soul-destroying work. What were the chances of a miscreant coming back to the scene of his crime the very evening after an attempted robbery? A million to one against? More than that, probably. Bale eased himself closer to the edge of the organ loft. Another minute and the man would be directly beneath him.
It had been child’s play to switch the tracker back on and follow Sabir and the two gypsies as far as Gourdon. In fact Bale had been sorely tempted to bushwhack them that first night, while they were sleeping in the car. But they had chosen a particularly inconvenient spot, slap bang in the middle of a bustling market town, on the outskirts of the Bouriane – the sort of place that had security cameras and eager-beaver policemen on the lookout for drunks and pugnacious young farmers.
Bale’s decision had been duly validated when he had heard on the radio that the robbers had left the Virgin behind them. What was that all about? Why hadn’t they stolen her? They had his pistol. And the gardien was midway between senescence and the grave. No. He had definitely seen the gypsy squinting at the base of the Virgin before indulging in all that religious mumbo-jumbo of his – which meant that there was something written there, just as the girl had implied at the riverbank. Something that Bale desperately needed to see.
Now the security guard was zigzagging up and down between the pews, urging his dog forwards with a sequence of short whistles. You’d think someone was filming him, the zeal he was showing for his new job. Any normal human being would have stopped for a cigarette long ago. This one would have to be put well out of the way. The dog, too, of course.
Bale threw the candle-holder high over the man’s head, counted to three and launched himself out of the loft. The man had made himself an easy mark, just as he’d known. Hearing the noise of the candle-holder, he’d instantly turned away from his perusal of the organ and flashed his torch at the fallen object.
Bale’s feet caught him on the back of the neck. The man jerked forward, landing with the full weight of Bale’s projectile body driving him on to the flagstones. It had been an eight-foot drop for Bale. The security guard might as well have launched himself off a foot ladder with a rope tied around his neck.
Bale heard the vertebral crunch immediately he landed and turned his attention directly to the dog. The dead man still had his hand looped through the braided leather leash. The Alsatian instinctively backed away, crouching prior to his leap forward. Bale grabbed the leash and swung, like a baseball player striking out for a home run. The Alsatian took off, propelled both by its own forward impetus and the centrifugal throw-out of Bale’s swing. Bale let go of the leash at the perfect moment. The principle of the fulcrum worked to its full effect, sending the dog star-fi shing across the church like an athlete’s hammer shot. The animal struck the stone wall of the church, fell to the fl oor and began howling. Bale ran across and stamped on its head.
He stood for a moment, listening, with his mouth and eyes wide open like a cat. Then, satisfi ed that no one had overheard him, he set off for the Sanctuary.
55
Sabir resettled the blanket over his groin. There were times – and this was one of them – when he wished that Yola could wean herself off the habit of bursting into people’s rooms unannounced. Earlier that afternoon she had taken their clothes to the communal washtub, leaving both of the men wrapped in blankets, like shipwreck victims and forced to contemplate indefinite, unwanted siestas. Now Sabir found himself frantically searching around for something innocuous to say in order to defuse his embarrassment.
‘All right. I’ve thought of another riddle for you. This one is a real stinker. Ready? “What is greater than God? More evil than the Devil? The poor already have it. The rich want it. And if you eat it, you die.’’ ’
Yola scarcely looked up from what she was doing. ‘Nothing, of course.’
Sabir slumped back against the wall. ‘Oh Christ. How did you get the answer so quickly? It took me well over an hour when my cousin’s boy tried it out on me.’
‘But it’s obvious, Adam. I got it in the first line. When you asked what is greater than God. Nothing is greater than God. The rest falls into place when you realise that.’
‘Yeah, well, I got that bit too. But I didn’t stop to think that it might be the answer. I just got irritated and outraged that anyone could imagine that there was something greater than God.’
‘You’re a man, Adam. Men are born angry. That’s why they have to laugh at everything. Or strike out at things. Or act like children. If they didn’t, they’d go mad.’
‘Thank you. Thank you for that one. Now I know where I get my sense of humour.’
Yola had conjured up an entire change of clothing for herself. She was sporting a red-flowered blouse, buttoned to the collar and a hip-hugging green skirt with a flared rim, reaching to just below the knee. The skirt was cinched in at the waist with a broad leather belt studded with small mirrors and she was wearing Cuban-heeled shoes with ankle straps. Her hair was partially up, just as it had been at the Kriss.
‘Why don’t you ever wear jewellery? Like some of the other women?’
‘Because I’m a virgin and still unmarried.’ Yola cast a loaded glance at Alexi, who somehow contrived to ignore it. ‘It wouldn’t be seemly to compete with the bride and her married female relatives.’ She fussed around laying out two sets of clothes on the bed, near Alexi’s feet. ‘Your own clothes are still drying. I’ll bring them in when they’re ready. But here are two suits and two ties I borrowed. Also some shirts. They should fi t you. Tomorrow, at the wedding, you must also have some paper money ready to give to the bride. You’ll need to pin it on to her dress with this.’ She handed each man a safety pin.
‘Eh, Adam…’
‘Don’t tell me, Alexi. You need to borrow some money.’
‘It’s not only me. Yola needs some too. But she’s too proud to ask.’
Yola flapped her hand in irritation. Her gaze was focused on Sabir. ‘What were you going to tell us in the car? When I stopped you?’
‘I don’t understand…’
‘You said you had something important to say. Well. We’ve eaten. We’ve rested. Now you can speak.’
It had to come, thought Sabir. I should have learned by now – Yola never leaves a thing alone until she’s worried the juice out of it. ‘I think you both ought to stay here. For the time being, at least.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Alexi’s injured. He needs to recuperate. And you, Yola… Well, you had a terrible shock.’ He reached across the table for his wallet. ‘I’ve figured out the rhyme on the foot of the Black Virgin, you see.’ He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and flattened it against his knee. ‘I think it refers to Montserrat. That’s a place in Spain. In the hills above Barcelona. At least that seems to be the gist of it.’
‘You think we’re wasting our time, don’t you? That’s why you don’t want us along? You think this man will appear again and harm us if we continue along this path. But worse this time, maybe?’
‘I think we’re on a dangerous wild goose chase, yes. Look. Nostradamus, or your ancestors, or whoever carved these things on the Virgin’s feet – they could have carved stuff on half a hundred Virgins around the country. Things were much looser then than they are now. People made pilgrimages all over the place. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that eighty per cent of the Virgins that existed then are probably gone – victims of a dozen different religious wars. Not to mention the Revolution, the First and Second World Wars and the war with Prussia. Your people were nomadic, Yola. Far more so than they are now. They spent their time avoiding armies, not going in search of them. It’s odds on that if we find writing on the Montserrat Virgin’s feet, it’ll just lead us somewhere else. And then somewhere else again. That the verses, or whatever it is we are searching for, are long gone.’
‘Then why did the man follow us? What does he want?’
‘I think he’s crazy. He’s got some notion in his head that there’s money tied up in this thing and he simply can’t leave it alone.’
‘You don’t believe that.’
Sabir shook his head. ‘No.’
‘So why are you saying this? Don’t you like us anymore?’
Sabir felt momentarily at a loss, as if he had been blind-sided by a child. ‘Of course I like you. These last few
