Alexi launched the mare at the single-barred barrier. There was a steep slope leading down to it. Perhaps she would be able to get a firm enough grip on the asphalt and launch herself over? Either way, he couldn’t afford to let up his pace.
At the last possible moment the mare lost her nerve and jinked to the left. Her back legs slid out from under her and her hip dropped, exaggerated by the downward slope of the slipway. She slid underneath the barrier, all four legs thrown up into the air, shrieking. Alexi hit it back on. He tried to curl himself into a ball, but failed. He smashed through the barrier, which partially broke his fall. Then he struck the asphalt with his right shoulder and side. Without allowing himself to think or to count the cost in pain, Alexi launched himself after the ferry. If he missed the metal landing plank, he knew that he would drown. Not only had he damaged himself, somewhere, somehow – but he couldn’t swim.
The ticket collector had seen many crazy things in his life – what ferryman hadn’t? – but this took the biscuit. A man on a horse trying to leap the barrier and get on board? He transported horses all the time. The ferry company had even set-up a semi-permanent tether for the summer months – tilted away from the cars so that the horses wouldn’t damage anyone’s paintwork if they kicked out backwards. Perhaps this man was a horse thief? Either way, he’d lost his prize. The horse had shattered her leg in the fall, if he wasn’t mistaken. The man, too, was probably injured.
The ticket collector reached down and unhooked the life ring. ‘It’s tied to the ferry! Grab it and hang on!’
He knew, now the ferry was under way, that it was all but impossible to stop the trawling mechanism. The pull of the river was so strong that the ferry had to be anchored to a guiding chain, which prevented it spinning out of control and down towards the Grau d’Orgon. Once the mechanism was triggered, it became risky to stop it, thereby loading the long loop of the chain with the dead weight of the ferry, backed up by the full driving force of the river. In conditions of heavy rain, the ferry could even burst its stanchions and drift towards the open sea.
Alexi grabbed for the ring and slid it over his head.
‘Turn around! Turn around in the water and let it drag you!’
Alexi turned around and let the ferry drag him along behind it. He was scared of swallowing water and maybe drowning like that. So he curved his neck forwards, until his chin lay fl at on his chest and allowed the water to wash over his shoulders like a bow-wake. As he did so, it belatedly occurred to him to feel around in his shirt for the bamboo tube. It was gone.
He glanced back at the slipway. Had he lost it there, while falling? Or in the water? Would the eye-man see it and realise what it was?
The eye-man sat astride his horse at the barrier. As Alexi watched, the eye-man took out his pistol and shot the mare. Then he turned back towards the Pont de Gau and the Marais and disappeared into the underbrush.
39
Perhaps it was a mistake to instil so much fear in your enemies that they had nothing left to lose? What other motive could possibly have prompted the gypsy into taking such a ridiculous risk as leaping across a single-pole barrier on an exhausted horse? Everybody knew that horses hated seeing daylight between whatever they were jumping over and the ground. And the horse had known it was headed for deep water. You had to train horses specially for that sort of thing. It was madness. Sheer madness.
Still. Bale had to admire the man for attempting it. The gypsy had known, after all, just what awaited him at Bale’s hands. Shame about the horse, though. But it had shattered its leg in the fall and Bale hated to see an animal suffer.
Bale gave the worn-out gelding its head. Instinctively, the gelding started back along the trail by which they had come. First stop on the return trip would be the gypsy who had been looking after the horses. Get some information there. Then a cast around town for the blond Viking. Failing that, his girlfriend.
Either way, Bale would pick up Sabir’s trail somewhere – somehow. He knew it. He always did.
40
Gavril slowed his horse to a walk. The animal was on its last legs. He didn’t want to risk killing it and then find himself stuck, kilometres from nowhere, in the middle of the Marais.
Unlike Alexi, Gavril wasn’t really a country boy. He was happiest lurking on the outskirts of town, where the action was. Until now, Gavril’s idea of a good time had involved the active trading of stolen cellphones. Gavril didn’t steal them himself, of course – his face and hair were far too memorable for that. He simply acted as the middleman, moving from cafe to cafe and from bar to bar, selling them on for a few euros profit per pop. It kept him in beer and clothes and there was the added attraction of knocking off the occasional payo girl, when he struck lucky. His hair always provided the guaranteed first topic of conversation. How can you be a gypsy with hair that colour? So his blondness wasn’t all bad.
Almost without realising it, Gavril drifted to a halt. Did he really want to chase after Alexi and the gadje? And what would he do when he came up with them? Frighten them into submission? Perhaps he shoul simply view the stealing of the horse as a clever way out of an impossible situation. It had at least guaranteed that Badu and Stefan couldn’t pursue him and wreak whatever vengeance their perverted minds could conjure up. He would be happy never to see them or Bazena again in his life.
And what of Yola? Did he really want her that much? There were other fish in the sea. It might be best to leave the whole thing alone. Make himself scarce for a while. He could rest the horse and then make his way slowly north. Abandon it somewhere near a train depot. Hitch a ride on a freight car to Toulouse. He had family there. They would put him up.
Secure in his new plan, Gavril turned away from the river and towards the Panperdu.
41
Bale chose to wait for Gavril behind an abandoned gardien’s cabane. He and the gelding blended in perfectly beside the deep-shelved thatching of the roof, which was capped in white, like the keel of an upturned rowing boat.
Bale had been standing in the lee of the cabane for the past ten minutes, watching Gavril approach. Once or twice he had even shaken his head, bemused by the man’s persistent blindness to whatever was going on around him. Had the gypsy fallen asleep? Was that why he had so arbitrarily decided to abandon a trail which had been clearly blazed through the marsgrass for everyone to see? It had been absurd good luck that Bale had caught sight of Gavril mere moments before the latter had had time to disappear for ever beyond the treeline.
At the last possible moment Bale stepped out from behind the cabane, leading his horse. He untied the handkerchief from around the horse’s mouth and replaced it in his pocket – it was a trick he’d learned with Berber pack camels in the Legion. He hadn’t wanted the horse to whinny when it heard its companion approaching and give away the game.
‘Get down.’ Bale waved his pistol encouragingly.
Gavril glanced over Bale’s head towards the edge of the nearby woodland.
‘Don’t even think about it. I’ve just shot one horse. Another will make no difference to me. But I’ve got nothing against the animal. Shooting it unnecessarily would be guaranteed to make me very angry indeed.’
Gavril cocked his leg over the saddle and slid down the horse’s flank. He automatically stood with the reins held in his hands, as if he had merely come to pay Bale a courtesy call, rather than to find himself the victim of an ambush. He looked bewildered – as if he were seven years old again – and his father had just landed him a clout for something he hadn’t done. ‘Did you shoot Alexi?’
‘Why would I do that?’
