ten letter cipher when you type in my name on the computer. It is this. HKL481GYP7. Do you have that? Does it match the code on the national database? It does? Good. Hand me over to your supervisor immediately.’
Calque spent an intense five minutes talking down the phone. Then he turned to Macron.
‘Have Paris come back to you with Sabir’s GPS?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Now phone him. Compare it with the map reference he gives you.’
Macron got back on the phone to Sabir. ‘Do you have a map reference for us? Yes? Give it to me.’ He marked it down in his notebook, then ran across and showed it to Calque.
‘It matches. Tell him to wait exactly where he is until you arrive. Then get into place yourself and call the situation in to me at this number.’ He scribbled down a number on Macron’s pad. ‘It is the number of the local Gendarmerie. I will base myself there, coordinating the operation between Paris, Marseille and Les Saintes-Maries. I have been reliably informed that it will take at least fifty minutes to get the paramilitaries in place. You can be at the Maset in thirty. Twenty-five, even. Stop Sabir and the gypsy from panicking into any precipitate action. If it looks as though the girl is being imminently threatened, intervene. If not, keep your head down. Do you have your pistol?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Take any of the detectives that you can find with you. If you can’t find any, go alone. I will send them on behind you.’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘And Macron?
‘Yes, Sir?’
‘No unnecessary heroics. There are lives at stake here.’
56
The life-transforming idea came to Macron about six minutes into his journey. It seemed so simple – and so logical – that he was sorely tempted to pull the car over on to the hard shoulder to afford himself a little extra elbow room to consider it.
Why not think outside the loop for a change? Use his initiative? Why not take advantage of the eye-man’s ignorance about the secret connection between Sabir and the police? It was the single edge they had on him. He would be expecting only Sabir and the gypsy to come riding to the girl’s rescue. Why not make use of that very fact to pull off an ambush?
Macron had been present at only one single police siege during the course of his career. He had just turned twenty and had passed his police primaries six days before. Neighbours had reported seeing a man threatening his wife with a gun. A building in the 13th arrondissement had been sealed off. Macron had been all but forgotten about. His police mentor at the time had been a trained negotiator and had been called in at the very last moment to defuse the situation. Macron had asked if he might come along as an observer. The man had said yes. Just so long as he kept out of the way. Far out of the way.
Five minutes into the siege the negotiations had broken down. The wife had made a comment to her husband which had driven him over the brink. He had killed her, killed the negotiator and then killed himself.
It was the very first time that Macron had seen and understood the innate fallibility of the police machine. Which was only as good as the cogs that made it up. If one of the cogs skipped a ratchet, the whole machine could go kaput. Faster than the Titanic.
He had liked that mentor. Macron had counted on the man to monitor and encourage his career. Shepherd him through his rookie-ship.
After the siege he had been forgotten about a second time. As good as abandoned. No more mentors. No more helping hands up the greasy pole. And now it was all happening again. The Marseillais detectives would come in and take over his case. Cosy up to Calque. Shunt Macron to the sidelines. Take all the credit that was his by right.
The eye-man had hurt him. Once, personally, out in the field and once, professionally, on the road to Millau. And now the man was sitting, like a staked-out pigeon, in a partially lit room, expecting to dominate proceedings for the third time.
But Macron would be the spoke in his machine. He had a gun. He had the crucial element of surprise. The eye-man had made himself a sitting duck. Who would know, in the chaos of a shootout, what had really gone down?
If he killed the eye-man, his career would be made. He would forever remain the man who had cracked the twin fatalities of the Paris gypsy case. The gypsy didn’t matter, of course. But security guards were honorary police – at least when it came to being murdered. Macron could already imagine the envy of his peers; the admiration of his fiancee; the grudging respect from his normally detached father; the triumphant revenge of his downtrodden mother who had fought long and hard for his right to leave the bakery and attend police college.
Yes. This was it. This would be Paul Eric Macron’s moment of truth.
57
Sabir was standing by the side of the road, just as arranged. Macron recognised him immediately from the image he kept on his cellphone. Sabir had lost weight in the intervening period and his expression lacked some of the bumptious self-confidence he exuded in the publicity photograph they had downloaded from his agency website. Now his face looked washed out in the artificial light from the stationary Simca’s headlights – an airport face – the face of a man in endless transit.
The idiot was even stripped to the waist. Why had the other motorist stopped? If Macron, as a civilian, had happened upon a half naked-man, in the middle of a lonely road, at dusk, he would have hurried on past and left him to the next fool down the line. Or called the police. Not risked a mugging or a car-napping by stopping to pick him up. People were strange, sometimes.
Macron drew up beside the Simca, his eyes scanning the road for traps. At this stage he wouldn’t put anything past the eye-man. Even setting up an ambush, with Sabir as the bait, in order to procure himself a police hostage. ‘Are you alone? Is it just you two here? Where’s the other gypsy?’
‘You mean Alexi? Alexi Dufontaine? He’s injured. I’ve left him with the horse.’
‘The horse?’
‘We rode in. At least Alexi did.’
Macron sifted a little air through his front teeth. ‘And you, Monsieur. You decided to lend this man your phone?’
The farmer ducked his head. ‘Yes. Yes. He was standing in the road with his hands held up. I nearly struck him with my car. He said he had to call the police. Are you the police? What is going on here?’
Macron showed the man his warrant card. ‘I’m going to record your name and address on my cellphone and take a picture of you. With your permission, of course. Then you may go. We will contact you later if we need to.’
‘What’s happening here?’
‘Your name, Sir?’
Once the formalities were over, Sabir and Macron watched the Simca disappear into the darkness.
Sabir turned towards the policeman. ‘When is Captain Calque coming?’
‘Captain Calque is not coming. He is coordinating the operation from the gendarmerie in Les Saintes-Maries. The paramilitaries will be here in two hours.’
‘The Hell you say? You told me fi fty minutes. You people must be crazy. The eye-man has had Yola standing on a stool for God knows how long, with a noose around her neck and a sack covering her head. She must be scared witless. She’ll fall. We need an ambulance on standby. Paramedics. A fucking helicopter.’
