‘Are you sure you’re not mahrime? You haven’t polluted me?’
Bazena shook her head. The old woman cackled and made a rude sign with her fingers.
Yes, thought Bazena. She, too, thinks he wants me. She, too, thinks he has lost interest in Yola.
‘Good.’ He stood up, the anger still flaring in his eyes. ‘I’ll see you then. At your father’s caravan. In an hour.’
22
‘It’s impossible. We’re on a hiding to nothing.’
Macron made a face. ‘I told you these people were useless. I told you these people were untrustworthy.’
Calque drew himself up. ‘I think we’ve discovered just the opposite. They are obviously trustworthy, as they have refused to give their own people away. And as for useless – well. Enough said.’
Macron was sitting on a stone wall, with his back hunched against a corner of the church. ‘My feet… Jesus Christ they hurt. In fact everything hurts. If I ever catch that bastard, I’m going to deglaze him with a blowtorch.’
Calque took the unlit cigarette out of his mouth. ‘An odd manner of expression for a policeman. I assume you are just letting off steam, Macron and don’t really mean what you are saying?’
‘Just letting off steam. Yes, Sir.’
‘I’m very relieved to hear it.’ Calque detected an echo of cynicism in his own voice and it distressed him. He made a conscious effort at lightening his tone. ‘How are your pinheads getting on with disentangling the tracker code?’
‘They’re getting there. Tomorrow morning at the latest.’
‘What did we do before computers, Macron? I confess, I’ve quite forgotten. Real police work, perhaps? No. That cannot possibly be so.’
Macron closed his eyes. Calque was on the same old bandwagon as ever – would he never change? Fucking iconoclast. ‘Without computers we wouldn’t have got this far.’
‘Oh, I think we would.’ More pomposity. Sometimes Calque made himself ill with it. He sniffed at the air like a bloodhound anticipating a day’s hunting. ‘I smell coq au vin. No. There’s more. I smell coq au vin and pommes dauphinoises.’
Macron burst out laughing. Despite his profound irritation with the man, Calque could always be counted on to make a person laugh. It was as if he held the secret within himself of suddenly being able to tap into a hidden conduit of mutuality – of mutual Frenchness – like Fernandel, for instance, or Charles de Gaulle. ‘Now that’s what I call police work. Shall we investigate further, Sir?’ He opened his eyes, still not completely certain of Calque’s mood. Was the Captain still down on him, or was he cutting him some slack at long last?
Calque flicked his cigarette into a nearby bin. ‘Lead the way, Lieutenant. Food, as the philosophers say, must always precede duty.’
23
‘It’s perfect.’ Sabir looked around the interior of the Maset de la Marais. ‘The brothers are crazy to have abandoned a place like this. Look over there.’
Alexi craned his neck to where Sabir was pointing.
‘That’s an original Provencal cupboard. And look at that.’
‘What?’
‘The bergere suite. Over there. In the corner. It must be at least a hundred and fifty years old.’
‘You mean these things are worth money? They’re not just old junk?’
Sabir suddenly remembered who he was talking to. ‘Alexi, you leave them alone, huh? These people are our hosts. Even though they may not know it. Okay? We owe them the courtesy of letting their stuff alone.’
‘Sure. Sure. I’m not going to touch anything.’ Alexi didn’t sound convinced. ‘But what do you think they’re worth? Just at a guess?’
‘Alexi?’
‘Sure. Sure. It was only a question.’ He shrugged. ‘I suppose they would interest one of those antique dealer guys in Arles? If they knew they were here, that is.’
‘Alexi.’
‘Okay. Okay.’
Sabir smiled. What did the pundits say? You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. ‘How far is it to Saintes-Maries?’
Alexi’s eyes were still straying towards the furniture. ‘You know something, Damo? With you finding stuff for me and me selling it, we could make a Hell of a good living. You could even buy yourself a wife, maybe, after a year or two. And not so ugly as the first one I offered you.’
‘Les Saintes-Maries, Alexi. How far?’
Alexi sighed. ‘Ten kilometres as the crow flies. Maybe fifteen by car.’
‘That’s a heck of a long way. Is there nowhere nearer that would be safe to stay in? That would give us easier access?’
‘Not unless you want every policeman within sixty square kilometres to know exactly where you are.’
‘Point taken.’
‘You could always steal a horse, though.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘On the next farm. They’ve got dozens of horses scattered about. Over maybe a couple of hundred hectares. They can’t possibly know where they all are at any one time. We simply borrow three. There’s harness and saddles in the buanderie to ride them with. Then we keep them in the barn when we’re not using them. Nobody would know. We can ride cross-country into Sainte-Maries whenever we want and leave them with some gypsies just outside town. That way the gardiens don’t recognise their own horses and get pissed off at us.’
‘Are you serious? You want us to become horse thieves?’
‘I’m always serious, Damo. Don’t you know that yet?’
***
‘Look what I’ve got.’ Yola set down a wooden crate stuffed with farm produce. ‘Cabbages, a cauliflower, some courgettes… I’ve even got a marrow. Now all we need is some fish. Can you sneak over to the Baisses de Tages and catch us something, Alexi? Or steal some tellines from the cages?’
‘I haven’t got time for any of that nonsense. Damo and I are going to ride over to Les Saintes-Maries and check out the Sanctuary. See if we can figure out any way to come at the statue of Sainte Sara before the eye-man gets here.’
‘Ride? But we haven’t got a car any more. We left it in Arles.’
‘We don’t need a car. We’re going to steal some horses.’
Yola stood watching Alexi – weighing him up. ‘I’m coming with you then.’
‘That’s not a good idea. You’d just slow us up.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
Sabir stared from one to the other of his two ad hoc relations. As usual, where the two of them were concerned, there always seemed to be some hidden tension in the air that he wasn’t picking up. ‘Why do you want to come, Yola? It could be dangerous. There will be police everywhere. You’ve already had two run-ins with this man – you don’t need a third.’
Yola sighed. ‘Look at him, Damo. Look at his guilty face. Don’t you realise why he’s so keen to go into town?’
‘Well, we need to prepare…’
‘No. He wants to drink. Then, when he’s had enough to make himself ill, he’ll start looking around for Gavril.’
‘Gavril? Jesus, I forgot about him.’
‘But he hasn’t forgotten about you or Alexi. You can count on that.’
24
‘We’re on a wild goose chase, Sir. The pistol was last registered in 1933. And the man to whom it was registered has probably been dead for years. There may have been six changes of address in the interim. Or six changes of owner. The researcher tells me that when the war ended, nobody really caught up with their paperwork again until the 1960s. Why waste our time on it?’
‘Have your pinheads cracked the tracker code yet?’
‘No, Sir. No one has told me anything along those lines.’
‘Do you have any other leads you are not telling me about?’
Macron groaned. ‘No, Sir.’
‘Read me out the address.’
‘Le Domaine de Seyeme, Cap Camarat.’
‘Cap Camarat? That’s near St-Tropez, isn’t it?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Your neck of the woods, then?’
‘Yes, Sir.’ Macron did not relish the prospect of returning, with Calque in tow, to somewhere quite so near home.
‘Who was it registered to?’
‘You’re not going to believe this name.’
‘Try me.’
‘It says here it’s registered to Louis de Bale, Chevalier, Comte d’Hyeres, Marquis de Seyeme, Pair de France.’
‘A Pair de France? You’re joking?’
‘What’s a Pair de France?’
Calque shook his head. ‘Your knowledge of your own history is execrable, Macron. Have you no interest whatsoever in the past?’
‘Not in the aristocracy, no. I thought we got rid of all that in the Revolution?’
‘Only temporarily. They were reinstated by Napoleon, got rid of again in the Revolution of 1848 and then brought back by decree in 1852 – and as far as I know they’ve been around ever since. Established titles are even protected by law – which means by you and me, Macron – however much your Republican soul may resent doing it.’
‘So what’s a Pair de France when it’s at home, then?’
Calque sighed. ‘The Pairie Ancienne is the oldest and most exclusive collective title of nobility in France. In 1216 there were nine Pairs. A further three were created twelve years later, in 1228, to mimic the twelve paladins of Charlemagne. You’ve heard of Charlemagne, surely? Bishops, dukes and counts, mostly, deputed to serve the King during his coronation. One peer would anoint him, another would carry the royal mantle, another his ring, another his sword and so on… I thought I knew them all, but this man’s names and titles are unfamiliar to me.’
‘Perhaps he’s a fake? Assuming he’s not dead, of course, which he undoubtedly is, as we’re talking upwards of seventy-five years here since he first registered the pistol.’ Macron gave Calque a withering look.
‘You can’t fake things like that.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because you can’t. You can fake small titles – people do it all the time. Even ex-Presidents. And then they end up in the Livre de Fausse Nobilite Francaise. But big titles like that? No. Impossible.’
‘What? These people even have a book of fake peerages?’
‘More than that. The whole thing is like a mirror, really.’ Calque weighed Macron up, as if he feared that he might be about to cast pearls before swine. ‘For instance there’s a fundamental difference between Napoleonic titles and those which preceded them, like the one we’ve got here. Napoleon, being a bloody-minded so-and-so, gave some of his favourites the same, or already existing, names and titles – to humiliate the original owners, probably and keep them in their place. But the effects proved unexpectedly long term. For even now, if you place a Napoleonic noble higher up the table than an Ancient noble with the same name, the Ancient noble and all his family, will simply turn over their plates and refuse to eat.’
‘What? Just sit there?’
‘Yes. And that is the sort of family we’re probably dealing with here.’
‘You’re kidding me?’
‘It would be seen as a calculated insult, Macron. Just like someone saying that the schools of Marseille produce only cretins. Such a statement would be palpably untrue and, in consequence, subject to castigation – except in certain extreme cases, of course, when it is found to be perfectly correct.’
25
For three hours Gavril had paced the streets of Les Saintes-Maries searching for any sign of Alexi, Sabir or Yola. During that time he had bearded every gypsy, every gardien, every street musician, ostler, panhandler and palm reader that came into his ken, but he was still no further along.
He knew the town intimately, his parents having joined in the annual pilgrimage right up until his father’s death, three years earlier. Since that time, however, his mother had dug in her heels and now refused to travel more than thirty kilometres in any direction from their home campsite near Reims. As a result of her intransigence, Gavril, too, had drifted out of the pilgrimage habit. He had been lying, therefore, when he had declared to Sabir that of course he was heading south with the rest of his clan. But some mulo had prodded him, none the less, into challenging Alexi to meet him at Sainte Sara’s shrine. Some unconscious – even superstitious – force, whose exact origin he was unaware of.
What it finally came down to was this. If he could just get rid of Alexi – take Yola from him and marry her himself – his gypsyhood would be proven. No one could deny him his place inside the community. For Yola’s family were gypsy nobility. He would be marrying into a bloodline that stretched all the way back to the great Exodus and beyond. Maybe even as far as Egypt itself. Once he had sons and daughters of such a lineage, no one could reasonably question his rights or his antecedents. The stupid, hurtful story of his father kidnapping him from a gadje woman would be laid to rest for ever. He might even become Bulibasha himself one day, given luck, money and a little measured diplomacy. He would grow his hair long. Dye it red if he chose to. Piss in all their faces.
It was the two gadje policemen who had been the first to plant the larger idea in his mind, with their calling cards and their hints and their miserable insinuations.
As a direct consequence of their intervention, he had made up his mind to kill Alexi, then betray Sabir to the authorities for the promised reward. No one could blame him for defending himself against a criminal, surely? Then he would be free to revenge himself on that other gadje bastard who had so humiliated him and carved up his leg.
For that guy, too, had proved to be a fool – like all gadjes. Hadn’t he given away exactly what he was after, with all his questions and his threats? Something to do with the statue of Sara-e-Kali itself? Gavril kicked himself for having wasted so much time parading around town and asking dumb questions. The man and Sabir were obviously linked – both, after all, had shown an unlikely interest in the festival. They must be after the same thing, therefore. Perhaps they wanted to steal the statue and hold it to ransom? Make all the gypsies in the world pay to have it back? Gavril shook his head in wonder at gadje stupidity. Gypsies would never pay for anything. Didn’t these people know that?
Now all he had to do was to wait at the Sanctuary door and let them come to him. The festival, after all, was a mere forty-eight hours away. That gave him ample time to put his plan into action. And when he needed to rest, there was always Bazena. It would be child’s play to persuade her to stand in for him. The silly bitch still imagined he wanted her. Well, it would be very convenient indeed to have her on tap. So he would cosy her along a little – feed her a sliver or two of hope.