‘Alexi Dufontaine. Yes.’
‘Do you have a problem with the word gypsy?’
‘When used in that way, yes.’
Calque acknowledged the validity of Sabir’s point without actually bothering to turn his head. ‘You’re loyal to your friends, aren’t you, Monsieur Sabir?’
‘They saved my life. They believed in me when no one else did. Am I loyal to them? Yes. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t.’
Calque twisted in his seat. ‘I ask you this only because I am having difficulty in tallying up what you have just told me about your discovery of La Roupie’s body and the fact that you declared quite clearly, when I questioned you earlier, that you went off in search of Dufontaine by foot. The distances involved seem quite unrealistic.’ Calque nodded to the driver, who swung the car away from the Maset and down the drive. ‘Do me a favour and look at this map, will you? I’m sure you will be able to put me right.’
Sabir took the map, his expression neutral.
‘You will see, marked on the map, the only cabane you could possibly mean. I have highlighted it with a large red circle. There. You see it? Are we in agreement that this is the place?’
The unsmiling CRS officer reached across and switched on the interior light for Sabir’s convenience.
Sabir glanced dutifully down at the map. ‘Yes. That would seem to be the place.’
‘Are you an Olympic sprinter, Monsieur Sabir?’
Sabir switched the interior light back off. ‘Captain.
Do me a favour. Just get whatever it is you want to tell me off you’re chest. This atmosphere is murder.’
Calque retrieved the map. He nodded to the driver, who set the siren in motion. ‘I have only one thing to tell you, Mister Sabir. If Dufontaine does a vanishing act before I have a chance to question him and take his statement, I will hold you and the girl in his place – as accessories before the fact – for as long as I deem it necessary. Do you understand me? Or shall I get on to the radio this minute and tell the car that is delivering your two gypsy friends to the curandero at Les Saintes-Maries to turn around and come straight back?’
65
Bale eased himself back through the rear window of the Maset a maximum of three minutes after the sound of his final shot. So far so good. There would be no new blood trails to give his position away. He had merely been going over old ground.
But from here on in he must be more careful. Any minute now the 7th Cavalry would be arriving and the place would revert to bedlam. Before that happened, he needed to find somewhere safe to lie up and nurse his shoulder. If he was caught out in the open, come first light, he might as well cash in his cards and cry caprivi.
Clutching his left arm to his side, Bale moved into one of the downstairs bedrooms. He was just about to snatch the coverlet off the bed in an effort to contain his bleeding when he caught the sound of footfalls approaching along the corridor.
Bale looked wildly around him. His eyesight had accustomed itself to the darkness by now and he was able to make out the silhouettes of all the major pieces of furniture. Not for a second was he tempted to hijack whoever was approaching. His main job now was to avoid the attentions of the police. The rest would come later.
He ducked in behind the bedroom door and pulled it tightly against his body. A man entered the bedroom immediately behind him. It was Sabir. Bale’s senses were so hyper-alert that he could almost smell him, even in the dark.
He picked up the sound of rummaging. Was Sabir taking the blankets off the bed? Yes. To cover the girl of course.
Now he was using a cellphone. Bale recognised the particular timbre of Sabir’s voice. The casually inflected, just so slightly mid-Atlantic, French. Sabir was speaking to a police officer. Explaining what he thought had happened. Telling him about the death.
Someone called the ‘eye-man’ was on the run, apparently. The ‘eye-man’? Bale grinned. Well, it made sense, in an off-beam sort of a way. At least it confirmed that the police didn’t yet know his name. Which also meant that Madame, his mother’s, house might still be a safe place to retreat to. The only problem would lie in getting there.
Sabir walked back towards the door behind which Bale was hiding. For a split second Bale was tempted to smash the door into his face. Even with one arm, he was more than a match for a man like Sabir.
But the loss of blood from his neck had weakened him. And the other gypsy was still out there – the one who had sprinted into the house just a few seconds after Bale had set the girl on the dangle. That had taken balls. If the plain-clothes policeman hadn’t neck-shot him, Bale would have picked off the gypsy a good twenty metres before he reached his target. The man must have a guardian fucking angel.
Bale waited for Sabir’s footfalls to diminish down the corridor – yes, there was the expected hesitation near the policeman’s body. Then the manoeuvring around the furniture. Sabir would want to avoid stepping in the man’s blood – he was a gringo, after all. Far too squeamish.
Hardly breathing, Bale eased himself out into the corridor.
In the salon there was a red glow as the fire in the grate gradually took hold. Now Sabir was lighting more candles. Good. No one would be able to make Bale out beyond the immediate axis of the light.
Keeping his back tight against the wall, Bale sidestepped towards the rear stairs. He reached down. Good. They were stone, not wood. No creaking.
A drop of blood plopped on to the step beside him. He felt around and scrubbed it off with his sleeve. He’d best make it fast. Before he left a blood trail any idiot could follow – let alone a policeman.
At the top of the stairs Bale decided that it was safe enough to risk his pocket torch. Shading the beam with his fingers, he played the torch down the disused corridor and then up along the ceiling. He was looking for an attic or a loft space.
Nothing. He moved into the first bedroom. Junk everywhere. When had this house last been lived in? Anybody’s guess.
He tried the ceiling again. Nothing.
Two bedrooms further down the corridor he found it. A loft hatch, consisting of a hole with a board laid across it. But no ladder.
Bale shone the torch around the room. There was a chair. A chest. A table. A bed with a distressed, motheaten coverlet. That would do.
Bale set the chair underneath the loft space. He knotted the coverlet around the spine of the chair and then tied the other end of the coverlet through his belt.
He tested the chair for weight. It held.
Bale eased himself up on to the chair and reached up with his one good arm for the loft cover. The sweat began popping out on his forehead. For a second he felt faint and as though about to fall, but he refused to countenance such a possibility. He let his arm drop and took a few deep breaths, until his condition returned to normal.
Bale realised that he would have to conduct the thing in one explosive movement, or else his strength would leave him and he would be unable to achieve his end.
He closed his eyes and began, quite consciously, to regulate his breathing once more. He started by telling his body that it was okay. That any trauma that had occurred to it was trivial. Not worth compensating for in terms of weakness.
When he felt his heart rate return to near normal, he reached up, slid the loft cover to the left and hooked his good arm up over the lip. Using the chair as a fulcrum, he swung himself up and out, taking the full weight of his body on to his good arm. He would have one only chance at this. He had better make it good.
Upending himself, he swung first one leg, then the other, over the lip of the loft space. For a moment he hung there, his bad arm fl ailing down, his legs and half his upper body eaten by the space. Kicking forwards, he managed to get the back of his right upper thigh across the hatch.
