Now he was hanging with the coverlet trailing from his belt and still attached to the chair. He scissored his way further into the loft space, transferring the entire weight of his body on to his thighs.
With one final twist he launched himself over the edge of the loft hatch and lay there, cursing silently through clenched teeth.
When he had sufficient control of himself again, he untied the coverlet from around his waist and pulled the chair up behind him.
For one dreadful moment he thought that he had misjudged the size of the hatch cover and that the chair was not going to pass through. But then he had it. Out of sight, out of mind.
He shone his torch down on to the floor to check for blood loss. No. All the blood had landed on the chair. By morning, any other spots would have dried anyway and be virtually indistinguishable from the filth already covering the oak boards.
Bale hefted the plank back across the loft hatch, untied the coverlet from the chair and collapsed.
66
He awoke to a fearful, nagging pain in his left shoulder. Daylight had found its way through a thousand inadvertent chinks in the roof and one chink had been shining fully on to his face.
He could hear voices outside the house – shouts, orders, the hefting of large objects and the firing-up of engines.
Bale crawled out of the light, dragging the coverlet behind him. He would have to do something about his shoulder. The pain of his shattered collarbone was close to unbearable and he didn’t wish to pass out, with the risk that he might call out in his delirium and alert the police below.
He found himself an isolated corner, well out of the way of any boxes and bric-a-brac that might be susceptible to a kick or to toppling over. Any noise at all – any unexpected crashes – and the enemy would find him.
He constructed a pad for himself with the coverlet, forcing it under his armpit and then tying it back around his shoulder blades. Then he lay fl at on the planking, with his legs stretched out and his arms down by his sides.
Slowly, incrementally, he began inhaling in a series of deep breaths and as he took each breath he allowed the words ‘sleep, deep sleep’ to echo through the inside of his head. Once he’d got a satisfactory rhythm going, Bale opened his eyes as wide as he could manage and rotated them backwards, until he was staring at a point on the ceiling way beyond his forehead. With his eyes fixed in that position, he deepened his breathing, all the while maintaining the rhythms of his internal chant.
When he could feel himself drifting into a pre-hypnotic state, he began to suggest certain things to himself. Things like ‘in thirty breaths you will fall asleep’, followed by ‘in thirty breaths you will do exactly as I tell you’ – and then, later, ‘in thirty breaths you will no longer feel any pain’ – culminating with ‘in thirty breaths your collarbone will begin to heal itself and your strength will return to you’.
Bale understood only too well the potential shortcomings of self-hypnosis. But he also knew that it was the only possible way that he could dominate his body and return it to a state bordering on the functional.
If he was to last out in this loft space – with no food and with no medical attention – for the day or two that it would take the police to complete their enquiries, he knew that he must focus all his resources on the conservation and cultivation of his essential energies.
All he had was what he came in with. And those assets would diminish with each passing hour, until either an infection, an unforced error, or an unintended noise could bring him low.
67
Gavril’s body lay exactly where Alexi had said it would be. Sabir glanced idly towards the woodland – yes, there was the solitary cypress tree, just as Alexi had described it. But it might as well have been on Mars for all the good it would do him at this moment.
Calque seemed to be deriving keen pleasure from rubbing salt into Sabir’s wounds. ‘Is this how you remembered it from yesterday afternoon?’
Sabir wondered if he might get away with asking to take a leak? But a fifty-metre walk towards the woods might seem just a little suspicious in the circumstances.
When it became obvious that Sabir had no intention of responding to his digs, Calque tried a different tack. ‘Tell me again how Dufontaine lost the prophecies?’
‘Escaping from the eye-man. On the Bac. He lost them in the water. You can confirm his story with the pilot and the ticket collector.’
‘Oh, believe me, Mister Sabir, I will.’ Calque mispronounced the Mister as Miss-tear.
Sabir decided that Calque was mispronouncing Miss-tear on purpose, simply in order to needle him. The man was obviously sore about Sabir’s breaking their previous agreement over the tracking device. That and the minor matter of the death of his assistant.
‘You don’t seem at all disappointed about the loss of the prophecies. If I were a writer, I would be very angry indeed at my friend having mislaid such a potential gold mine as that.’
Sabir contrived a shrug. It was meant to convey that losing a couple of a million bucks was an everyday occurrence with him. ‘If it’s all right with you, Captain, I’d like to go back to Les Saintes-Maries and check up on my friends. I could also do with a little sleep.’
Calque made a big show of weighing up Sabir’s request. In reality, he had decided on his plan of action some time before. ‘I shall send Sergeant Spola back with you. Both you and Dufontaine will remain within his sight at all times. I am not finished with you both yet.’
‘And Mademoiselle Samana?’
Calque made a face. ‘She is free to go about her business. Frankly, I would like to hold her too. But I have no grounds. Something, though, may occur to me, should you and Dufontaine give my subordinate any difficulties whatsoever. But she is to confine herself within the precincts of the town. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Quite clear.’
‘We are in agreement, therefore?’
‘Perfectly.’
Calque flashed Sabir an old-fashioned look. He beckoned to Sergeant Spola. ‘Drive Mister Sabir back into town. Then find Dufontaine. Stay with them both. You are not to let either one of them out of your sight for even an instant. If one man wants to go to the washroom, they both go – with you stationed outside holding their free hands. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
Calque glanced at Sabir, frowning. There was something still niggling him about Sabir’s part in the proceedings – but he couldn’t put his finger on it. With the eye-man still on the loose, however, any misgivings about Sabir could wait. The eye-man’s horse had turned up unexpectedly, in a lather, twenty minutes ago, a little less than five kilometres down the road to Port St-Louis. Could the eye-man really have escaped that easily? And with Macron’s bullet still inside him?
Calque signalled to one of his assistants for a cellphone. As he dialled, he glanced across at Sabir’s retreating back. The man was still holding out – that much was obvious. But why? For what? No one was accusing him of anything. And he didn’t look the sort of a man to be consumed by thoughts of revenge.
‘Who found the horse?’ Calque angled his head towards the ground, as if he felt that such a movement would in some way improve reception – transform the cellphone back into its more efficient cousin, the landline. ‘Well put him on.’ He waited, his eyes drinking in the dawn-lit landscape. ‘Officer Michelot? Is that you? I want you to describe the condition of the horse to me.
Exactly as it was.’ Calque listened intently. ‘Was there blood on the horse’s flanks? Or on the saddle?’ Calque
