Bale hit the periphery of Espalion at seventy miles an hour, his eyes searching to right and to left, looking for red ‘H’ signs.
He slowed down towards the centre of town. Pointless drawing attention to himself. He’d have time. The three stooges didn’t even realise he was still following them.
He pulled up near the Cafe Central to ask for directions.
The girl. She was sitting there.
So they’d left her. Gone to do the dirty work themselves. Come back later. Pick her up when it was safe. Gentlemen.
Bale climbed out of the car. As he did so, the phone rang in the nearby booth.
The girl glanced across him at the booth. Then back towards him. Their eyes met. Bale’s face broke into a welcoming smile, as if he had just encountered a long-lost friend.
Yola stood up, knocking back her chair. A waiter started instinctively towards her.
Bale turned casually around and made his way back to his car.
When he turned to look, the girl was already running for her life.
12
Bale pulled gently away from the kerb, as if he had changed his mind about having a cup of coffee, or had left his wallet at home. He didn’t want anyone remembering him. He glanced back to his left. The girl was sprinting down the road, with the waiter in hot pursuit. Silly bitch. She hadn’t paid her bill.
He drew up beside the waiter and gently tapped his horn. ‘Sorry. My fault. We’re in a hurry.’ He waved a twenty-euro note out of the window. ‘Hope this covers the tip.’
The waiter looked at him in astonishment. Bale smiled. His clotted eyes always affected people that way. Mesmerised them, even.
As a child, his condition had fascinated a wide variety of doctors – papers had even been written about him. One doctor had told him that before his case was brought to their attention, eyes without whites (‘no-whites’, the doctor had called them, in which only the proximal interommatidial cells were pigmented) had only ever been noted in Gammarus chevreuxi Sexton – a sand shrimp. He was an entirely new genetic type, therefore. A true Mendelian recessive. If he ever had children, he could found a dynasty.
Bale put on his sunglasses, amused at the waiter’s discomfiture. ‘Drugs, don’t you know. The young these days. Not fit to be let off the leash. If she owes more, tell me.’
‘No. That’s all right. That’s fine.’
Bale shrugged. ‘The truth is that she needs to go back to the clinic. Hates the thought of it. Always does this to me.’ He waved at the waiter as he accelerated away. The last thing Bale wanted was a new police presence dogging his every footstep. It had already cost him far too much effort getting rid of the last bunch. This way, the waiter would explain what had happened to his customers and everyone would be satisfi ed. By the time they made it home, the story would have grown wings and a dozen different endings.
Yola looked wildly back over her shoulder. She slowed down. What was he doing? He was talking to the waiter. Stupid – so stupid – to run off without paying. She tried to catch her breath but her heart seemed temporarily out of her control.
What if he wasn’t the man? Why had she run like that? There had been something about him. Something about the way he had smiled at her. As if she had known him before, almost. A familiarity.
She halted at the corner of the street and watched his interaction with the waiter. He would drive away. He had nothing to do with her. She had panicked for nothing. And the phone had been ringing. Perhaps Damo had wanted her to call the police? Perhaps he had wanted to tell her that they had killed the eye-man?
The eye-man? She remembered the man’s eyes now. Remembered how they had pierced through her back at the cafe.
She moaned softly to herself and began to run again.
Behind her the Volvo started to gain speed.
13
At first Yola ran without thinking – away – simply away – from the white car. At one point, however, she had the presence of mind to slip down a narrow alley, where she knew that the big Volvo would find it hard to follow her. The momentary decline of tension calmed her and allowed her mind to dominate her emotions for the first time in the three minutes since she had recognised her assailant.
The Volvo was dogging her now at a slower, more uneven pace – impulsively speeding up and then slowing down when she least expected it. She suddenly realised that he was herding her – herding her like a cow – towards the periphery of the town.
And Damo had telephoned. It had to be him. Which meant that he and Alexi might be coming back to collect her.
She looked back over her right shoulder, towards the town centre. They would be coming in on the hospital road. Her only chance would be to meet them. If the eye-man carried on like this, she would eventually tire and then he could pick her up with ease.
She saw a man exit from a shop – reach down and adjust his socks – stride across for his bicycle, which was tethered to a plane tree. Should she call him? No. She instinctively understood that the eye-man would have no qualms at all about killing him. There was something fatalistic about the way he was following her – as if the whole thing were preordained. She would involve no one – no one who was outside the present hermetic loop.
With her hand on her heart, she ran back towards the centre of town, angling her direction so that she would bisect the incoming road – the road on which Alexi and Damo might be travelling. How long since they had telephoned? Five minutes? Seven? She was panting like a horse, her lungs unused to the dry town air.
The Volvo picked up speed again, as if he was really coming for her this time – as if he intended to knock her down.
She ran into a newsagent’s shop – then immediately ran out again – fearful of being trapped. If only a police car would drive by. Or a bus. Anything.
She ducked down another alley. Behind her the Volvo accelerated away, anticipating her exit.
She doubled back and continued on towards the main road. If he turned back now – turned back before he reached the exit of the alley – she was done for.
Now she really ran, her breath escaping from her lips in shrieks of effort. She remembered his hands on her. His words. The terminal effect of his words. She had known there was no escape. Known that he would do exactly what he said he would do by the river. If he got hold of her now, he would knock her out to silence her. He could do anything to her. She would never know.
She burst on to the main highway, looking to right and left for signs of the Audi. The road was empty.
Should she turn back towards town? Back towards the cafe? Or head towards the hospital?
She took the hospital road. She was limping now and quite unable to run.
When Bale’s Volvo breasted the corner of the road, she stumbled and fell to her knees.
It was midday. Everybody was having lunch. She was alone.
14
