guys in Arles? If they knew they were here, that is.’
‘Alexi.’
‘Okay. Okay.’
Sabir smiled. What did the pundits say? You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. ‘How far is it to Saintes-Maries?’
Alexi’s eyes were still straying towards the furniture. ‘You know something, Damo? With you finding stuff for me and me selling it, we could make a Hell of a good living. You could even buy yourself a wife, maybe, after a year or two. And not so ugly as the first one I offered you.’
‘Les Saintes-Maries, Alexi. How far?’
Alexi sighed. ‘Ten kilometres as the crow flies. Maybe fifteen by car.’
‘That’s a heck of a long way. Is there nowhere nearer that would be safe to stay in? That would give us easier access?’
‘Not unless you want every policeman within sixty square kilometres to know exactly where you are.’
‘Point taken.’
‘You could always steal a horse, though.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘On the next farm. They’ve got dozens of horses scattered about. Over maybe a couple of hundred hectares. They can’t possibly know where they all are at any one time. We simply borrow three. There’s harness and saddles in the buanderie to ride them with. Then we keep them in the barn when we’re not using them. Nobody would know. We can ride cross-country into Sainte-Maries whenever we want and leave them with some gypsies just outside town. That way the gardiens don’t recognise their own horses and get pissed off at us.’
‘Are you serious? You want us to become horse thieves?’
‘I’m always serious, Damo. Don’t you know that yet?’
‘Look what I’ve got.’ Yola set down a wooden crate stuffed with farm produce. ‘Cabbages, a cauliflower, some courgettes… I’ve even got a marrow. Now all we need is some fish. Can you sneak over to the Baisses de Tages and catch us something, Alexi? Or steal some tellines from the cages?’
‘I haven’t got time for any of that nonsense. Damo and I are going to ride over to Les Saintes-Maries and check out the Sanctuary. See if we can figure out any way to come at the statue of Sainte Sara before the eye-man gets here.’
‘Ride? But we haven’t got a car any more. We left it in Arles.’
‘We don’t need a car. We’re going to steal some horses.’
Yola stood watching Alexi – weighing him up. ‘I’m coming with you then.’
‘That’s not a good idea. You’d just slow us up.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
Sabir stared from one to the other of his two ad hoc relations. As usual, where the two of them were concerned, there always seemed to be some hidden tension in the air that he wasn’t picking up. ‘Why do you want to come, Yola? It could be dangerous. There will be police everywhere. You’ve already had two run-ins with this man – you don’t need a third.’
Yola sighed. ‘Look at him, Damo. Look at his guilty face. Don’t you realise why he’s so keen to go into town?’
‘Well, we need to prepare…’
‘No. He wants to drink. Then, when he’s had enough to make himself ill, he’ll start looking around for Gavril.’
‘Gavril? Jesus, I forgot about him.’
‘But he hasn’t forgotten about you or Alexi. You can count on that.’
24
‘We’re on a wild goose chase, Sir. The pistol was last registered in 1933. And the man to whom it was registered has probably been dead for years. There may have been six changes of address in the interim. Or six changes of owner. The researcher tells me that when the war ended, nobody really caught up with their paperwork again until the 1960s. Why waste our time on it?’
‘Have your pinheads cracked the tracker code yet?’
‘No, Sir. No one has told me anything along those lines.’
‘Do you have any other leads you are not telling me about?’
Macron groaned. ‘No, Sir.’
‘Read me out the address.’
‘Le Domaine de Seyeme, Cap Camarat.’
‘Cap Camarat? That’s near St-Tropez, isn’t it?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Your neck of the woods, then?’
‘Yes, Sir.’ Macron did not relish the prospect of returning, with Calque in tow, to somewhere quite so near home.
‘Who was it registered to?’
‘You’re not going to believe this name.’
‘Try me.’
‘It says here it’s registered to Louis de Bale, Chevalier, Comte d’Hyeres, Marquis de Seyeme, Pair de France.’
‘A Pair de France? You’re joking?’
‘What’s a Pair de France?’
Calque shook his head. ‘Your knowledge of your own history is execrable, Macron. Have you no interest whatsoever in the past?’
‘Not in the aristocracy, no. I thought we got rid of all that in the Revolution?’
‘Only temporarily. They were reinstated by Napoleon, got rid of again in the Revolution of 1848 and then brought back by decree in 1852 – and as far as I know they’ve been around ever since. Established titles are even protected by law – which means by you and me, Macron – however much your Republican soul may resent doing it.’
‘So what’s a Pair de France when it’s at home, then?’
Calque sighed. ‘The Pairie Ancienne is the oldest and most exclusive collective title of nobility in France. In 1216 there were nine Pairs. A further three were created twelve years later, in 1228, to mimic the twelve paladins of Charlemagne. You’ve heard of Charlemagne, surely? Bishops, dukes and counts, mostly, deputed to serve the King during his coronation. One peer would anoint him, another would carry the royal mantle, another his ring, another his sword and so on… I thought I knew them all, but this man’s names and titles are unfamiliar to me.’
‘Perhaps he’s a fake? Assuming he’s not dead, of course, which he undoubtedly is, as we’re talking upwards of seventy-five years here since he first registered the pistol.’ Macron gave Calque a withering look.
‘You can’t fake things like that.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because you can’t. You can fake small titles – people do it all the time. Even ex-Presidents. And then they end up in the Livre de Fausse Nobilite Francaise. But big titles like that? No. Impossible.’
‘What? These people even have a book of fake peerages?’
‘More than that. The whole thing is like a mirror, really.’ Calque weighed Macron up, as if he feared that he might be about to cast pearls before swine. ‘For instance there’s a fundamental difference between Napoleonic titles and those which preceded them, like the one we’ve got here. Napoleon, being a bloody-minded so-and-so,
