Calque sighed. Life was not going exactly as planned. Still. Whenever did it? He had married young, with all his ideals intact. The marriage had been a disaster from the start. His wife had proved to be a scold and he had proved to be a moral coward. A disastrous combination. Twenty-five years of misery had ensued, to such an extent that even these last ten years of court cases, punitive alimony and penury had sometimes appeared as a godsend. All he had left was his police work and a disenchanted daughter who got her husband to return his phone calls. ‘Can we still trace Sabir’s car through the eye-man’s tracker?’
‘No. Because we don’t have the correct code.’
‘Can we get it?’
‘They’re working on it. There are only about a hundred million possible combinations.’
‘How long?’
‘A day. Maybe two.’
‘Too long. How about the serial number of the pistol?’
‘It was first registered back in the 1930s. But nothing before 1980 has been computerised yet. So all the pre-war records – at least the ones that weren’t commandeered by the Nazis – are kept out at Bobigny, in a warehouse. A researcher has to check through them all by hand. Same problem as the tracker code, then. But with fifty per cent less chance of success. ‘
‘Then we need to return to the gypsy camp at Gourdon. Pick up their trail from there.’
‘How do you work that one out?’
‘Our trio were there three days. Someone will have talked to someone. It always happens.’
‘But you know how these people are. Why do you think they will suddenly talk to you now?’
‘I don’t. But it’s as good a way as any of passing the time until your pinhead friends manage to get us back on to these people’s – as you insist on calling them – tail.’
17
Achor Bale took a bite of his sandwich, then refocused the binoculars on the gypsy camp, chewing speculatively. He was up in the church tower, allegedly rubbing brasses and copying memorials. The priest was what the English might have called a ‘good egg’ and had seen no particular objection to Bale’s spending the day up there with his charcoal and his etching paper – the hundred-euro donation towards church funds had probably helped, though.
So far, however, Bale had seen no one he recognised from the Samois camp. That would have constituted his first line of attack. The second line depended on incongruities. Find someone or something that didn’t fit in and make an approach through them. Things that didn’t conform to established norms always represented weaknesses. And weaknesses represented opportunities.
So far he had identified a married girl with no children, an old woman whom nobody spoke to or touched and a blond man who looked as if he had stumbled off the set of a movie about Vikings – either that, or straight from the parade ground of the SS training camp at Paderborn, circa 1938. The guy looked like no gypsy Bale had ever encountered. But still they seemed to accept him as one of themselves. Curious. It would certainly bear investigating.
Bale felt no particular rancour about the blind alley of the statue at Espalion. It was a fair cop, as they say. The three of them had played him for a sucker and he had fallen for it. It had been an outstanding set-up and he had been forced to re-evaluate his view of them yet again. Particularly the girl, who had truly led him on – to such an extent that he had been entirely convinced of her terror of him. She had played the wooden horse to perfection and he must never underestimate her again.
Tant pis. He had Monsieur, his father’s, Remington back – before it occurred to anyone to try and trace it – and he had cleared his back-trail of policemen. So his time had not been entirely wasted.
But he was forced to admit that Sabir’s choice of Espalion had been nothing short of inspired. Everything about it had been right. In consequence, he was sure that the real clue to the location of the verses must be in the exact opposite direction to the one in which the trio had allegedly been travelling. That’s what book-learning intellectuals like Sabir always did – think things out in unnecessary detail. Which gave the true Black Virgin a home somewhere down in the south of France. That narrowed the field considerably. Which made Bale’s enforced return north – towards Gourdon – even more irritating. But it had to be.
He had lost the trio on his tracker almost from the start. Personally, he reckoned that Sabir had headed down the D920 towards Rodez and had then veered east, on the D28, to Laissac. From there he could easily have contrived his way down to Montpellier and the meeting of the three autoroutes. Perhaps they were still intending to head for Montserrat after all? That would make a kind of sense. In which case they’d be in for an awful shock. If he understood the mentality of the Spanish police correctly, they’d have the place staked out for a good six months yet, with everybody – officers and men – on copious amounts of overtime and making the most of any opportunity to be seen wandering around in shiny leather jackets and riding breeches, lugging sub-machine guns. Latins were the same the world over. They loved the show far more than the substance.
The blond man was making his way out of camp towards the centre of town. Very well. He would try him first. He would be easier to get to than either the girl or the old woman.
Bale finished his sandwich, collected up his brass-rubbing kit and binoculars and started down the steps.
18
Calque watched Gavril picking his way amongst the street-market stalls. This was the tenth gypsy whose movements he and Macron had monitored that morning. Being blond, though, Gavril blended into the background far more effectively than the others of his immediate tribe. But there was still something ‘other’ about him – some simmering anarchic streak that warned people that he wouldn’t necessarily conform to their mores, or agree with their opinions.
The locals, Calque noticed, gave him a wide berth once they had succeeded in clocking him. Was it the gaudy shirt, in definite need of a wash? The cheap-mock alligator shoes? Or the ridiculous belt with the branding-iron buckle? The man walked as if he were carrying a seven-inch knife on his hip. But he wasn’t. That much was obvious. But he might have one somewhere else about his person. ‘Pick him up, Macron. He’s the one we want.’
Macron moved in. He was still a patchwork of band-aids, hidden bandages, Mercurochrome and surgical gauze – not to mention tender on his feet. But Macron, being Macron, somehow contrived to hide these disadvantages beneath his own particular form of swagger. Calque shook his head in mild despair as he watched his subordinate home in on the gypsy.
‘Police Nationale.’ Macron flashed his badge. ‘You will please accompany us.’
For a moment it seemed as if Gavril were about to run, but Macron clamped his upper arm in the catch-all grip they were taught at cadet school, Gavril sighed – as if this were not the first time this had happened to him – and went along quietly.
When he saw Calque he hesitated for a moment, thrown by the arm sling and the nose bandage. ‘Who won? You or the horse?’
‘The horse.’ Calque nodded to Macron, who eased Gavril against a wall, legs splayed and patted him down for concealed weapons.
‘Only this, Sir.’ It was an Opinel penknife.
Calque knew that he wouldn’t be able to make any long-term legal running with a simple penknife. ‘How long is the blade?’
‘Oh, about twelve centimetres.’
‘Two centimetres longer than the legal allowance?’
‘Looks that way. Yes, Sir.’
Gavril snorted. ‘I thought this sort of harassment had stopped? I thought you’d been told to treat us like
