Tant pis. He had Monsieur, his father’s, Remington back – before it occurred to anyone to try and trace it – and he had cleared his back-trail of policemen. So his time had not been entirely wasted.
But he was forced to admit that Sabir’s choice of Espalion had been nothing short of inspired. Everything about it had been right. In consequence, he was sure that the real clue to the location of the verses must be in the exact opposite direction to the one in which the trio had allegedly been travelling. That’s what book-learning intellectuals like Sabir always did – think things out in unnecessary detail. Which gave the true Black Virgin a home somewhere down in the south of France. That narrowed the field considerably. Which made Bale’s enforced return north – towards Gourdon – even more irritating. But it had to be.
He had lost the trio on his tracker almost from the start. Personally, he reckoned that Sabir had headed down the D920 towards Rodez and had then veered east, on the D28, to Laissac. From there he could easily have contrived his way down to Montpellier and the meeting of the three autoroutes. Perhaps they were still intending to head for Montserrat after all? That would make a kind of sense. In which case they’d be in for an awful shock. If he understood the mentality of the Spanish police correctly, they’d have the place staked out for a good six months yet, with everybody – officers and men – on copious amounts of overtime and making the most of any opportunity to be seen wandering around in shiny leather jackets and riding breeches, lugging sub-machine guns. Latins were the same the world over. They loved the show far more than the substance.
The blond man was making his way out of camp towards the centre of town. Very well. He would try him first. He would be easier to get to than either the girl or the old woman.
Bale finished his sandwich, collected up his brass-rubbing kit and binoculars and started down the steps.
18
Calque watched Gavril picking his way amongst the street-market stalls. This was the tenth gypsy whose movements he and Macron had monitored that morning. Being blond, though, Gavril blended into the background far more effectively than the others of his immediate tribe. But there was still something ‘other’ about him – some simmering anarchic streak that warned people that he wouldn’t necessarily conform to their mores, or agree with their opinions.
The locals, Calque noticed, gave him a wide berth once they had succeeded in clocking him. Was it the gaudy shirt, in definite need of a wash? The cheap-mock alligator shoes? Or the ridiculous belt with the branding-iron buckle? The man walked as if he were carrying a seven-inch knife on his hip. But he wasn’t. That much was obvious. But he might have one somewhere else about his person. ‘Pick him up, Macron. He’s the one we want.’
Macron moved in. He was still a patchwork of band-aids, hidden bandages, Mercurochrome and surgical gauze – not to mention tender on his feet. But Macron, being Macron, somehow contrived to hide these disadvantages beneath his own particular form of swagger. Calque shook his head in mild despair as he watched his subordinate home in on the gypsy.
‘Police Nationale.’ Macron flashed his badge. ‘You will please accompany us.’
For a moment it seemed as if Gavril were about to run, but Macron clamped his upper arm in the catch-all grip they were taught at cadet school, Gavril sighed – as if this were not the first time this had happened to him – and went along quietly.
When he saw Calque he hesitated for a moment, thrown by the arm sling and the nose bandage. ‘Who won? You or the horse?’
‘The horse.’ Calque nodded to Macron, who eased Gavril against a wall, legs splayed and patted him down for concealed weapons.
‘Only this, Sir.’ It was an Opinel penknife.
Calque knew that he wouldn’t be able to make any long-term legal running with a simple penknife. ‘How long is the blade?’
‘Oh, about twelve centimetres.’
‘Two centimetres longer than the legal allowance?’
‘Looks that way. Yes, Sir.’
Gavril snorted. ‘I thought this sort of harassment had stopped? I thought you’d been told to treat us like everybody else? I don’t see you shaking down all the good citizens over there.’
‘We need to ask you some questions. If you answer them adequately, you can go. Along with your penknife and your no doubt unsullied record. If you don’t, we take you in.’
‘Oh, so this is how you get gypsies to talk these days?’
‘Exactly. Would you have spoken to us otherwise? In the camp, say? Would you have preferred that?’
Gavril shuddered, as if someone had walked over his grave.
No audience, thought Calque – this man would definitely need an audience in order to cut up rough. For a moment Calque felt almost sorry for him. ‘Firstly, your name.’
There was the briefest of hesitations – then capitulation. ‘Gavril La Roupie.’
Macron burst out laughing. ‘You’re joking. La Roupie? You’re really called La Roupie? That means rubbish where I come from. Are you sure it’s not Les Roupettes? That’s what we call balls down in Marseille.’
Calque ignored him. He kept his eyes fixed on the gypsy, watching for any change in facial expression. ‘Do you have your identity card with you?’
Gavril shook his head.
‘Strike two,’ said Macron, jovially.
‘I’ll make this simple. We want to know where Adam Sabir and his two companions have gone. He is wanted for murder, you know. And they are wanted as accomplices.’
Gavril’s face closed down.
Calque immediately sensed that the mention of murder had been a mistake. It had thrown La Roupie too much on the defensive. He attempted to back-pedal. ‘Understand this. We don’t think you’re involved in any way. We simply need information. This man is a killer.’
Gavril shrugged. But the potential conduit had obviously closed. ‘I’d give it if I could. The people you mention mean nothing to me. All I know is that they left here two days ago and haven’t been seen or heard of since.’
‘He’s lying,’ said Macron.
‘I’m not lying.’ Gavril turned to face Macron. ‘Why would I lie? You can make life very difficult for me. I know that. I’d help you if I could. Believe me.’
‘Give him back his penknife.’
‘But, Sir…’
‘Give him back his penknife, Macron. And one of my cards. If he calls us with information which directly results in an arrest, he will get a reward. Did you hear that, La Roupie?’
They both watched as Gavril jostled his way back through the crowd of early-morning shoppers.
‘Why did you do that, Sir? We could have sweated him some more.’
‘Because I made another mistake, Macron, in my long litany of recent mistakes. I mentioned the word “murder”. That’s taboo for gypsies. It means years of prison. It means trouble. Didn’t you see him close up like a Belon oyster? I should have come at him another way.’ Calque squared his shoulders. ‘Come on. Let’s find ourselves another one. I obviously need the practice.’
19
‘What did you tell the two Ripoux?’ Bale pressed the point of his knife against the back of Gavril’s thigh.
‘Oh Christ? What’s this now?’
Bale stuck the blade a quarter of an inch through Gavril’s flesh.
‘Aiee! What are you doing?’
‘My hand slipped. Every time you don’t answer one of my questions, it’s going to slip further. Failure to answer three questions and I’m through to the femoral artery. You’ll bleed to death in under five minutes.’
‘Oh putain! ’
‘I repeat. What did you tell the two Ripoux?’
‘I told them nothing.’
‘It’s slipped again.’
‘Aaahhh.’
‘Keep your voice down, or I’ll stick my knife up your arsehole. Do you hear me?’
‘Jesus. Jesus Christ.’
‘Let me rephrase my question. Where have Sabir and his two sea lice gone to?’
‘Down to the Camargues. To the festival. Sainte Sara.’
‘And when is this festival?’
‘In three days’ time.’
‘And why have they gone there?’
‘All gypsies go there. Sainte Sara is our patron saint. We go to get her blessing.’
‘How do you get a blessing from a saint?’
‘Her statue. We go up to her statue and get it to bless us. We touch it. We try to kiss it.’
‘What sort of statue are we talking about?’
‘Jesus Christ. Just a statue. Please take the knife out of my leg.’
Bale twisted the knife. ‘Is this statue black, by any chance?’
Gavril began to keen. ‘Black? Black? Of course it’s black.’
Bale snatched the knife from Gavril’s leg and stepped backwards.
Gavril doubled up, clutching his thigh in both hands, as if it were a rugby ball.
Bale rabbit-punched him on the back of the neck before he had a chance to look upwards.
20
‘We can’t wait until the festival, Alexi. We have to check out the statue before it starts. I don’t trust that maniac not to put two and two together and make it six. If he asks the right questions, any gypsy will tell him about Sainte Sara and the festival. It’d be like waving a red flag in front of a bull.’
‘But they’ll have it guarded. They know people want to come in and touch her, so they cordon her off. Post security guards there until the festival. Then she’s brought out and swung over the penitents. Everybody leaps up and tries to grab her. Men hold up their children. But she’s never out of someone’s sight. It’s not going to be like at Rocamadour. This is different. If we could only wait until the festival is over. She’s left alone then. Anyone can go in and see her.’
‘We can’t wait. You know that.’
‘Why does he want these verses, Damo? Why is he prepared to kill for them?’
‘One thing I can tell you. It’s not simply about money.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘You saw him, didn’t you? He was prepared to give up all his advantage over us simply in order to get his father’s gun back. Do you think that’s normal behaviour? For someone out to make himself a fortune? With the verses in his hands, he could buy himself a thousand guns. Publishers all over the world would climb over themselves in a bidding war to get their hands on something like that. That’s why I interested myself in the verses originally – venal financial gain. I’m not ashamed to admit it. Now I think there’s something more to them – some secret which the eye-man either thinks they will reveal, or which he fears. Nostradamus obviously discovered something – something of profound significance both to the world and to you gypsies. He had already predicted exactly when he was going to die. So he decided to protect his discovery. Not to publish but to hide. He believed in God – he believed that his gifts were specifically God-given. And in my opinion he believed that God would provide the correct outlet and the correct time frame, for his revelations to be made public.’
‘I think you’re crazy, Damo. I think there’s nothing there. I think we’re chasing a mulo.’
‘But you saw the carvings on the coffer? And under the Black Virgin? You can see the pattern for yourself.’
‘I’d like to believe you. I really would. But I can’t even read, Damo. Sometimes my mind gets so mixed up thinking of these things that I want to pull it out like string and untangle it.’
Sabir smiled. ‘What do you think, Yola?’
‘I think you’re right, Damo. I think there’s something about these verses we don’t understand yet. Some reason the eye-man is prepared to kill for them.’
‘Maybe he even wants to destroy them? Have you thought of that one?’
Yola’s eyes widened. ‘Why? Why would anyone want to do that?’
Sabir shook his head. ‘That’s the hundred-thousand-dollar question. If I could answer that one, we’d be home free.’
21
There were some amongst his friends who believed that Gavril had always been angry. That some mulo had entered his body at birth and, like a surgeon worrying at a tumour, had kept on at him ever since. That this was the reason he turned out looking like a gadje. That maybe he hadn’t been kidnapped at birth after all, but had simply been cursed, way back in another life and that his looks were a result of that. He was worse than simply apatride. He was a freak even to his own community.
Bazena, anyway, believed this. But she was hot in her belly for him and so was way beyond sense in the matter.
Today Gavril seemed angrier than ever. Bazena glanced at the old woman who was acting as her temporary duenna and then back at Gavril’s hair. He was lying on the ground, his trousers around his ankles and she was stitching the wound in his leg. It didn’t look like a dog bite to her – more like a knife-wound. And the livid bruise on his neck certainly hadn’t been made escaping over any fence. What did he do – fall backwards? But who was she to argue with him. She wondered for a moment what their children would look like? Whether they would take after her and be gypsies, or whether they would take after Gavril and be cursed? The thought made her go weak at the knees.
‘When are your people leaving for Les Saintes-Maries?’
Bazena slipped in the last stitch. ‘Later. In maybe an hour.’
‘I shall go with you.’
Bazena sat up straighter. Even the old duenna began to take notice.
‘I shall travel up front. With your father and your brother. Here.’ He poked around inside his pocket and came up with a crumpled twenty-euro note. ‘Tell them this is for the diesel. For my part of the diesel.’
Bazena looked across at the old duenna. Was Truffeni thinking what she was thinking? That Gavril was making it clear that he intended to kidnap her, when they were at Les Saintes-Maries and ask for Sainte Sara’s blessing on their marriage?
She tied the stitches off and rubbed over his leg with burdock.
‘Aiee. That hurts.’
‘I need to do it. It’s antiseptic. It will clean the wound.
Protect you from infection.’
Gavril rolled over and pulled up his trousers. Both Bazena and the old woman averted their eyes.