‘It’s Yola. She’s been knocked down.’ Sabir slewed the car across the road and towards the kerb.
‘Damo. Look.’ Alexi reached across and took his arm.
Sabir glanced up. A white Volvo SUV with tinted window-glass breasted the corner at a leisurely pace and then stopped, on the wrong side of the road, about fifty metres from the girl. The door opened and a man got out.
‘It’s him. It’s the eye-man.’
Sabir stepped out of the Audi.
Yola stumbled to her feet and stood, gently weaving, her eyes fixed on the Volvo.
‘Alexi. Go and fetch her.’ Sabir took the Remington out of his pocket. He didn’t point it at the eye-man – that would have been absurd, given the distance between them – but held it fl at against the side of his trousers, as if he had meant to slip it back inside his pocket but had temporarily forgotten that he was holding a gun. ‘Now take her back to the car with you.’
The eye-man didn’t move. He merely stood watching their movements like a neutral observer at a formal exchange of prisoners between warring states.
‘Are you both inside?’ Sabir didn’t dare take his eyes off his eerily unmoving opponent.
‘Is that my pistol?’ The man’s voice was measured – controlled – as if he were conducting a prearranged negotiation between hostile factions.
Sabir began to feel light-headed – almost hypnotised. He held up the pistol and looked at it.
‘I’ll give you a ten-minute start if you leave it behind you on the road.’
Sabir shook his head. He felt dazed. In an alternative reality. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I’m deadly serious. If you agree to leave the gun behind you, I shall move away from my car and walk back towards the centre of town. I’ll return in ten minutes. You can go off in any direction you want. As long as it’s not towards the hospital, of course.’
Alexi pushed himself across the front seat. He whispered urgently to Sabir. ‘He doesn’t realise that we know about his tracker. He’s sure he can pick us up again without any problem if we’ve already taken La Negrette. But he’s counting on us not having done that. There are only four roads out of this town. He’ll see which direction we are going in and he’ll follow. We need those ten minutes. Leave him the gun. We’ll ditch the tracker, as you said.’
Sabir raised his voice. ‘But then we’ll have no way of defending ourselves.’
Alexi whispered through gritted teeth. “Damo, leave him the fucking gun. We’ll get another one down in the…” He stopped, as though he thought that Bale might be able to read his lips, or miraculously hear his words from a distance of over fifty metres. “…where we’re going.” ’
Bale reached behind himself and drew the Ruger from its sheath. He raised the pistol and held it in both hands, aimed at Sabir. ‘I can take out your knee. Then you won’t be able to drive. Or I can take out your front tyre. Same effect. This pistol is accurate to eighty-five yards. Yours is accurate to maybe ten.’
Sabir stepped back behind the protection of the car door.
‘It’ll punch through that, no problem. But it’s in no one’s vested interest to cause a ruckus out here. Leave the gun. Leave my way clear to the hospital. And you can go.’
‘Put your gun away. Inside the car.’
Bale moved over to the Volvo. He tossed the Redhawk on to the front seat.
‘Now step away.’
Bale took three steps out into the road. A blue Citroen camionette drove past them, its passengers busy talking – paying them no heed.
Sabir concealed the Remington behind his back and made as if he was getting back inside the Audi.
‘Do we have an agreement, Mister Sabir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’ll leave the pistol by the kerbside, in the gutter. I’m walking away now.’ He triggered the Volvo’s automatic door locks. ‘If you don’t do as you say, I will hunt you down, regardless of what I find in the hospital chapel and make sure you suffer for a very long time indeed before you die.’
‘I’ll leave the pistol. Don’t worry.’
‘And the Black Virgin?’
‘She’s still at the hospital. We haven’t had time to collect her. You know that.’
Bale smiled. ‘The girl. You can tell her she’s very brave. You can also tell her I’m sorry I frightened her down at the river.’
‘She can hear you. I’m sure she’ll be touched by your sentiments.’
Bale shrugged and turned as if to go. Then he stopped. ‘The pistol. It was Monsieur, my father’s, you know. Please place it gently.’
15
‘Do you think he’s mad?’ Alexi had just switched their number-plates for the third time – as usual, he favoured picnic places and scenic stops with broad vistas, which he could easily evaluate for incoming owners.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’ He slid back on to the front seat, tucking the screwdriver into the glove compartment. ‘He could have taken us easy. He had that monster of a pistol. All he needed to do was to run at us, shooting.’
‘What? Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?’
‘Now you’re kidding me, Damo. But seriously. We couldn’t have made it away in time.’
‘But he doesn’t want us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’re simply a means to an end, Alexi. A means to get to the verses. Start a shoot-out on the outskirts of town and he lowers his chances of getting there before the cops. The whole place is sealed off. As you said, there are only four roads out of here – it would be child’s play for the police to close down all the exits. Then send in a helicopter. Like netting rabbits with a ferret.’
‘Now I know what it feels like to be a rabbit. And all my life I thought I was a ferret.’
‘You are a ferret, Alexi. A brave ferret.’ Yola sat up on the back seat. ‘Thank you for saving me.’
Alexi blushed. He made a face, hunched his shoulders, started to grin and then slapped the dashboard. ‘I did, didn’t I? He could have shot me. But still I ran out into the street and got you. You saw that, Damo?’
‘I saw it.’
‘I got you, didn’t I, Yola?’
‘Yes. You got me.’
Alexi sat on the front seat, grinning to himself. ‘Maybe I kidnap you when we’re in Saintes-Maries. Maybe I ask Sainte Sara to bless our future children.’
Yola sat up a little higher. ‘Is that a proposal of marriage?’
Alexi looked resolutely forward – an El Cid, riding back into Valencia at the head of his army. ‘I only said maybe. Don’t get your hopes up too crazy.’ He pounded Sabir on the shoulder. ‘Eh, Damo? Start as you mean to go on, heh? That’s the way with women.’
Sabir and Yola’s gaze met in the rear-view mirror. She rolled her eyes in resignation. He hunched his shoulders and tipped his head in sympathetic response. She replied with a secret smile.
16
‘They’ve got rid of the tracker.’
‘What? The eye-man’s tracker?’
‘No. Ours. I think it’s the only one they found. I think they think it’s the eye-man’s tracker. Is that what you told them? That there’s only one?’
