bronze statuette and flung it at the figure. There was a cry and the figure fell.
Bale stayed where he was – listening – breathing only through his mouth. Had anyone else made a sound? Or had there only ever been that single person in the house? The girl – he sensed now that it had been the girl.
He walked back into the kitchen and fetched the oil lamp. Holding it out ahead of him, he walked over to the main shuttered window. The girl was curled up on the floor. Had he killed her? That would be inconvenient. He had certainly thrown the bronze statuette as hard as he had been able. But it might have been Sabir. He couldn’t afford to take any chances at this late stage in the game.
As he reached down for her, the girl slithered away from his grasp and ran wildly down the corridor.
Had she heard him breaking in? Was she heading for the back window? Bale ran in the opposite direction to the one she had taken. He threw himself through the front door and then curved left around the house.
He slowed down as he approached the window. Yes. There was her foot. Now she was pulling herself through.
Bale lifted her bodily out of the window and dropped her on the ground. He cuffed her once around the head and she lay still. Bale straightened up and listened. Nothing. No other sound. She had been the only one in the house.
Reaching down, he felt through her clothes and up between her legs for a knife or other concealed weapon. When he was sure that she was unarmed, he lifted her up like a sack of grain, draped her around his shoulders and headed back towards the salon.
50
Bale helped himself to some soup. For the love of Mike, it was good! He hadn’t eaten anything at all in twelve hours. He could feel the richness of the broth replenishing his powers – rekindling his depleted energy.
He drank some wine, too and ate a little bread. But the bread proved stale and he was forced to dunk it in the soup to make it palatable. Well. You couldn’t have everything.
‘Are you getting tired, my dear?’ He glanced across at the girl.
She was standing on a three-legged stool in the centre of the room, a breadsack over her head and with her neck infibulated through a noose which Bale had constructed from a cowhide lariat. The stool was just wide enough to give her a fair base on which to stand, but the blow to her head had obviously weakened her and from time to time she swayed awkwardly against the rope, which, within reason, acted as a support for her neck.
‘Why are you doing this? I have nothing you want. I know nothing you want to know.’
Earlier, Bale had thrown open the salon shutters and the front door of the Maset to the night. He had also surrounded the stool with candles and oil lamps, so that the girl stood as if floodlit – visible for fifty metres in any direction except to the north.
Now he reclined as if on a divan, the saucepan of soup on his lap, the outlines of his body lost in the darkness outside the pool of candlelight, well out of any sight-lines afforded by the opened windows and front door. At his right side lay the Redhawk, its butt conveniently angled towards his hand.
He had chosen the three-legged stool because one shot from the Redhawk would be enough to topple the girl into the air. All he had to do was to shatter a single leg of the stool. True, she would kick and jerk for a minute or two, as the fall would be nowhere near long enough to break her neck – but she would eventually asphyxiate, leaving Bale ample time to make his getaway by the rear window while Sabir and the gypsy were occupied with trying to save her life.
None of this would be necessary, of course, if Sabir would simply come to terms. And Bale hoped that the sight of the girl would concentrate his mind on just that necessity. A simple transfer of the prophecies would do the trick. Then Bale would leave. Sabir and the gypsy could have the wretched girl. They were welcome to her. Bale never reneged on a deal.
In the unlikely eventuality that they came after him, however, he would kill them – but he was as certain as he was of anything that Sabir would capitulate. What did he have to lose? Some cash and a little fleeting fame. And to gain? Everything.
51
‘Tell me again what time he left.’
Yola groaned. She had been standing on the stool for over an hour now and her blouse was drenched in sweat.
Her legs felt as if they were filled with crawling parasites that paraded up and down her thighs and calves, nibbling as they went. Her hands were tied behind her and thus her only means of controlling her ever-wider swings was by means of her chin. When she sensed that she was on the verge of swaying, she would clamp the rope tightly to her shoulder with the underside of her jaw, counting on the tension of the lariat to keep her upright.
For some time now she had been wondering whether it would be worth testing the eye-man – letting herself fall on purpose. He was obviously waiting for Sabir and Alexi. So if they weren’t there to see her strangle, would the eye-man scoop her up and save her? Untie her, while she recovered, before using her again? Relax his attention for a moment? It would be her only chance of escape. But it would be an awful risk to take.
Maybe he would just amuse himself by watching her die? Then he might tie her back-up – string her from the noose – and nobody, at a distance, would realise that she was already dead.
‘I asked you a question. At what time did Sabir leave?’
‘I don’t use a watch. I don’t know the time.’
‘How far off from dusk was it?’
Yola didn’t want to antagonise him. He had already struck her once, after pulling her from the window. She was scared of him. Scared of what he was capable of doing. Scared that he might remember what he had threatened to do to her the first time they had met and repeat the threat to amuse himself. She was certain that the information she was giving merely confirmed what he already knew. That there was nothing new about it – nothing that could in any way prejudice Alexi and Damo’s chances of survival. ‘About an hour. I sent him off to catch another horse. He would have ridden off looking for Alexi.’
‘And Alexi would come back here?’
‘Yes. Without a doubt.’
‘And Alexi knows his way about the marshes? Knows enough to find his way back here in the dark?’
‘Yes. He knows the marshes well.’
Bale nodded. That much had been obvious. That had made all the difference. If Alexi had been travelling blind, Bale would have caught him. If only he hadn’t known about the Bac – then this entire charade would have been unnecessary. Bale could have taken the prophecies back to Madame, his mother and been acclaimed as a hero. The Corpus Maleficus would have honoured him. He, personally, might have been placed in charge of protecting the next Antichrist. Or of eradicating the bloodline of the New Messiah before the event. Bale was good at such things. His mind functioned in a methodical way. Give him a goal and he would steadily and painstakingly work towards it – just as he had done with the prophecies, over the past few weeks.
‘Are you going to kill them?’
Bale glanced up. ‘I’m sorry. What did you say?’
‘I said are you going to kill them?’
Bale smiled. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. It all depends on how they respond to the picture I have created of you dangling from the end of a rope. You’d better hope they understand exactly what I am trying to communicate to them with my little piece of theatre. That they come in of their own free will. That they don’t force me to shout-out one of those stool legs.’
‘Why do you do all this?’
‘Do all what?’
‘You know what I mean. Torment people. Pursue them. Kill them.’
