37
Gavril was twenty minutes out of Les Saintes-Maries when he remembered that he didn’t have a weapon. He had thrown it at Stefan in the scuffle.
The thought struck him with such an impact that he actually stopped his horse, mid-canter and spent a full half minute debating with himself whether to turn back.
But the thought of Badu and Stefan persuaded him to continue. The pair of them would be baying for his blood. They would be out scouring the streets of Les Sainte-Maries for him at this very moment – or else having their knives sharpened at Nan Maximoff’s pedal-stone. At least, on horseback, in the middle of the Marais, no one would have a hope in Hell of catching him.
The two men in front of him had no idea that he was following them. In fact, now that they’d finally left the roadway, he didn’t need to get within five hundred metres of them, such was the impact of the trail they were leaving behind them through the brush. Two galloping horses churned up the ground in a very satisfactory manner and Gavril could easily tell new horse tracks from old ones.
He would simply follow Alexi and the gadje ’s trail and see what occurred. If the worst came to the worst and he lost them, he could always ride on through to the outskirts of Arles and hop on a bus. Make himself scarce for a while.
After all, what did he have to lose?
38
Alexi was making up some ground ahead of the eye-man – but not quite as fast as he had hoped. The mare had had ample time to recuperate from that morning’s ten-kilometre ride, but Alexi suspected that Bouboul had neither fed nor watered her, for her tongue was already hanging loose at the side of her mouth. She was clearly on her last legs.
His only comfort lay in the knowledge that the gelding the eye-man was riding would be in a similar condition. The thought of being forced back on foot, however, in such an isolated environment and pursued through the marshes by a madman with a pistol, didn’t bear contemplation.
So far he had stuck to the exact reverse of the path that they had followed that morning, on their way from the house. But Alexi knew that he would soon have to veer off and strike out into the unknown. He couldn’t risk leading the eye-man back to their base – for when Sabir and Yola discovered the two horses gone, they would have no option but to return to the one place they knew he might come back.
His only hope lay in eluding the eye-man completely. To have any chance at all of doing this, Alexi knew that he needed to gather his wits about him. To control his rising sense of panic. To think clearly and constructively and at full gallop.
On his left, beyond the Etang des Launes, was the Le Petit Rhone. Alexi knew it well, having fished there with a succession of male relatives on and off since childhood. To his knowledge, there was only one ferry-crossing nearby – at the Bac du Sauvage. Saving that, you were forced to cross the long way round, by road, maybe ten kilometres further upriver, at the Pont du Sylvereal. There was, quite literally, no other way into the Petite Camargue – unless you flew, of course.
If he could time the ferry exactly right, he might stand an outside chance. But what were the odds? The ferry made the trip every half-hour, on the half-hour. It might already be positioned on the far side of the river, gearing up for the return journey – in which case he was trapped. The river, as he remembered it, was about two hundred metres wide at that point and flowed far too strongly for an exhausted horse to manage. And he didn’t have a watch. Should he throw all his eggs into one basket and try for the ferry? Or was he mad?
The mare stumbled and then caught herself. Alexi knew that if he carried on in this way she would simply burst her heart – he had heard of horses doing this. She would drop like a stone and he would break his neck in a flat-out fall over her shoulders. At least that way the eye-man would be saved the trouble of having to torture him, as he’d obviously done with Babel.
Alexi was two minutes ride from the ferry-crossing. He simply had to chance it. He cast one final, despairing glance over his shoulder. The eye-man was fifty metres behind him and gaining. Perhaps the gelding had snatched a drink of water at Bouboul’s? Perhaps that was why he wasn’t tiring as fast as the mare?
The barriers were down at the ferry-crossing and the ferry was just putting off from the shore. There were four cars and a small van on board. The crossing was so short that no one had bothered to climb out of their cars. Only the ticket collector saw Alexi coming.
The man raised a warning hand and shouted, ‘ Non! Non! ’
Alexi launched the mare at the single-barred barrier. There was a steep slope leading down to it. Perhaps she would be able to get a firm enough grip on the asphalt and launch herself over? Either way, he couldn’t afford to let up his pace.
At the last possible moment the mare lost her nerve and jinked to the left. Her back legs slid out from under her and her hip dropped, exaggerated by the downward slope of the slipway. She slid underneath the barrier, all four legs thrown up into the air, shrieking. Alexi hit it back on. He tried to curl himself into a ball, but failed. He smashed through the barrier, which partially broke his fall. Then he struck the asphalt with his right shoulder and side. Without allowing himself to think or to count the cost in pain, Alexi launched himself after the ferry. If he missed the metal landing plank, he knew that he would drown. Not only had he damaged himself, somewhere, somehow – but he couldn’t swim.
The ticket collector had seen many crazy things in his life – what ferryman hadn’t? – but this took the biscuit. A man on a horse trying to leap the barrier and get on board? He transported horses all the time. The ferry company had even set-up a semi-permanent tether for the summer months – tilted away from the cars so that the horses wouldn’t damage anyone’s paintwork if they kicked out backwards. Perhaps this man was a horse thief? Either way, he’d lost his prize. The horse had shattered her leg in the fall, if he wasn’t mistaken. The man, too, was probably injured.
The ticket collector reached down and unhooked the life ring. ‘It’s tied to the ferry! Grab it and hang on!’
He knew, now the ferry was under way, that it was all but impossible to stop the trawling mechanism. The pull of the river was so strong that the ferry had to be anchored to a guiding chain, which prevented it spinning out of control and down towards the Grau d’Orgon. Once the mechanism was triggered, it became risky to stop it, thereby loading the long loop of the chain with the dead weight of the ferry, backed up by the full driving force of the river. In conditions of heavy rain, the ferry could even burst its stanchions and drift towards the open sea.
Alexi grabbed for the ring and slid it over his head.
‘Turn around! Turn around in the water and let it drag you!’
Alexi turned around and let the ferry drag him along behind it. He was scared of swallowing water and maybe drowning like that. So he curved his neck forwards, until his chin lay fl at on his chest and allowed the water to wash over his shoulders like a bow-wake. As he did so, it belatedly occurred to him to feel around in his shirt for the bamboo tube. It was gone.
He glanced back at the slipway. Had he lost it there, while falling? Or in the water? Would the eye-man see it and realise what it was?
The eye-man sat astride his horse at the barrier. As Alexi watched, the eye-man took out his pistol and shot the mare. Then he turned back towards the Pont de Gau and the Marais and disappeared into the underbrush.
39
Perhaps it was a mistake to instil so much fear in your enemies that they had nothing left to lose? What other motive could possibly have prompted the gypsy into taking such a ridiculous risk as leaping across a single-pole barrier on an exhausted horse? Everybody knew that horses hated seeing daylight between whatever they were jumping over and the ground. And the horse had known it was headed for deep water. You had to train horses specially for that sort of thing. It was madness. Sheer madness.
Still. Bale had to admire the man for attempting it. The gypsy had known, after all, just what awaited him at Bale’s hands. Shame about the horse, though. But it had shattered its leg in the fall and Bale hated to see an animal suffer.
Bale gave the worn-out gelding its head. Instinctively, the gelding started back along the trail by which they had come. First stop on the return trip would be the gypsy who had been looking after the horses. Get some information there. Then a cast around town for the blond Viking. Failing that, his girlfriend.
Either way, Bale would pick up Sabir’s trail somewhere – somehow. He knew it. He always did.
40
Gavril slowed his horse to a walk. The animal was on its last legs. He didn’t want to risk killing it and then find himself stuck, kilometres from nowhere, in the middle of the Marais.
Unlike Alexi, Gavril wasn’t really a country boy. He was happiest lurking on the outskirts of town, where the action was. Until now, Gavril’s idea of a good time had involved the active trading of stolen cellphones. Gavril didn’t steal them himself, of course – his face and hair were far too memorable for that. He simply acted as the middleman, moving from cafe to cafe and from bar to bar, selling them on for a few euros profit per pop. It kept him in beer and clothes and there was the added attraction of knocking off the occasional payo girl, when he struck lucky. His hair always provided the guaranteed first topic of conversation. How can you be a gypsy with hair that colour? So his blondness wasn’t all bad.
Almost without realising it, Gavril drifted to a halt. Did he really want to chase after Alexi and the gadje? And what would he do when he came up with them? Frighten them into submission? Perhaps he shoul simply view the stealing of the horse as a clever way out of an impossible situation. It had at least guaranteed that Badu and Stefan couldn’t pursue him and wreak whatever vengeance their perverted minds could conjure up. He would be happy never to see them or Bazena again in his life.
And what of Yola? Did he really want her that much? There were other fish in the sea. It might be best to leave the whole thing alone. Make himself scarce for a while. He could rest the horse and then make his way slowly north. Abandon it somewhere near a train depot. Hitch a ride on a freight car to Toulouse. He had family there. They would put him up.
Secure in his new plan, Gavril turned away from the river and towards the Panperdu.
41
Bale chose to wait for Gavril behind an abandoned gardien’s cabane. He and the gelding blended in perfectly beside the deep-shelved thatching of the roof, which was capped in white, like the keel of an upturned rowing boat.
Bale had been standing in the lee of the cabane for the past ten minutes, watching Gavril approach. Once or twice he had even shaken his head, bemused by the man’s persistent blindness to whatever was going on around him. Had the gypsy fallen asleep? Was that why he had so arbitrarily decided to abandon a trail which had been clearly blazed through the marsgrass for everyone to see? It had been absurd good luck that Bale had caught sight of Gavril mere moments before the latter had had time to disappear for ever beyond the treeline.
At the last possible moment Bale stepped out from behind the cabane, leading his horse. He untied the handkerchief from around the horse’s mouth and replaced it in his pocket – it was a trick he’d learned with Berber pack camels in the Legion. He hadn’t wanted the horse to whinny when it heard its companion approaching and give away the game.
‘Get down.’ Bale waved his pistol encouragingly.
Gavril glanced over Bale’s head towards the edge of the nearby woodland.
‘Don’t even think about it. I’ve just shot one horse. Another will make no difference to me. But I’ve got nothing against the animal. Shooting it unnecessarily would be guaranteed to make me very angry indeed.’
Gavril cocked his leg over the saddle and slid down the horse’s flank. He automatically stood with the reins held in his hands, as if he had merely come to pay Bale a courtesy call, rather than to find himself the victim of an ambush. He looked bewildered – as if he were seven years old again – and his father had just landed him a clout for something he hadn’t done. ‘Did you shoot Alexi?’
‘Why would I do that?’
Bale approached Gavril and took the horse from him. He tethered it at the hitching post outside the cabane. Then he unknotted the lariat from around the pommel of the saddle. ‘Lie down.’
‘What do you want? What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to tie you up. Lie down.’
Gavril lay on his back, looking up at the sky.
‘No. Turn over.’
‘You’re not going to knife me again?’
‘No. Not that.’ Bale stretched both of Gavril’s arms out beyond his head and guided them through the loop of the lariat. Then he fastened the other end in a temporary slip knot to the hitching post. He walked across to the gelding and unknotted the lariat from around the gelding’s pommel. Then he walked back and knotted Gavril’s feet together, leaving the trailing rope-end on the ground. ‘We’re alone here. You’ve probably realised that by now. Nothing but horses, bulls and bloody pink flamingos in any direction.’
‘I’m no threat to you. I just now decided to head north. To steer clear of you and Sabir and Yola for good.’
‘Ah. She’s called Yola, is she? I did wonder. What’s the other gypsy called? The one whose horse I shot?’
‘Alexi. Alexi Dufontaine.’
‘And your name?’
‘Gavril. La Roupie.’ Gavril cleared his throat. He was having difficulty in concentrating. His mind kept moving on to irrelevant details. Like the time of day. Or the consistency of the scrubgrass a few inches in front of his eyes. ‘What did you do to him? To Alexi?’
Bale was walking the gelding around to where Gavril was lying. ‘Do to him? I didn’t do anything to him. He fell off his horse. Managed to scramble into the river and hitch a lift on a ferry. It’s a misfortune for you that he got away.’