The Mayan Codex

12

Calque watched as Paul Macron’s cousin put the finishing touches to a louvred shutter. The man was aware of him, that much was obvious. But it would have been unrealistic of Calque to expect an ex-Foreign Legionnaire to come running just because a captain – strike that, an ex-captain – of police showed up at his workshop. At least it would give him time to have a cigarette.

Just as Calque was preparing to inhale, he saw Macron gesticulating at him with his sander from across the atelier.

‘Put that fucking thing out. This isn’t a country club. There’s enough dry wood stacked up in here to smoke a whale.’

Calque gave a sickly smile and crushed the as yet unsavoured cigarette and its accompanying match out beneath his foot. He should have expected that, too. Macron’s cousin had no reason to view him with anything other than disdain. Paul Macron had been killed on his watch, and it was only luck, and Adam Sabir’s suicidal bloody-mindedness, that had allowed the police to put a line under Achor Bale’s killing spree.

Aime Macron went over to a sink in the corner of the workshop and started on the laborious rigmarole of washing his hands, his face, and the back of his neck. Calque could see Macron weighing him up in the pin-up plastered mirror above the basin.

Calque didn’t move. He was weighing Macron up, too. Deciding whether to trust him with information that, in the wrong hands, could send him to prison.

‘You’re not a flic any more, are you?’ Macron was moving towards Calque now, scrubbing at his neck with a towel, his eyes hooded.

Calque was fleetingly tempted to brazen the thing out – pretend he was still on the force – flash his purposefully mislaid badge – but he thought better of it. ‘No. I’m not. How did you guess?’

Macron shrugged. ‘I was in the Legion for twenty years. I can tell when a man has power by the way he carries himself. You don’t have power any more. If you were still a flic, you would have breezed in here and interrupted my work, knowing it was your fucking right. But you waited for me to finish instead. Cops aren’t usually that fastidious.’

‘ Touche.’ Calque was impressed despite himself. He instantly changed tack, and approached Macron from a different direction to the one that he had initially intended. ‘You remember me, don’t you?’

‘How could I forget? You brought us the news of Paul’s death.’

Calque squirmed inside, each word like a touchpaper to his policeman’s soul. ‘You helped me that time. You gave me valuable information about Achor Bale. About his time in the Legion.’

Macron squinted, as if something he had not understood had just been made blindingly clear to him. He lit a cigarette.

Calque made a face.

Macron grinned. ‘Yeah. I was just bullshitting you back there about the fire hazard and the cigs. Have one of mine.’

Calque cocked his head questioningly. ‘Why the change of attitude all of a sudden?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘I really do. Yes.’

Macron snorted smoke through both nostrils. ‘Because you’re not a flic any more. I like you better this way. They kick you out because of Paul’s death?’

‘Indirectly.’

‘Fuckers. It wasn’t your fault. If it had been, you wouldn’t have made it past the front gate.’

‘I suspected that.’ Calque lit the proffered cigarette.

The two men stood staring at each other, smoking.

‘So what do you want, Monsieur l’ex-Capitaine?’

‘Want?’

Macron scrubbed his fingernails across his razor-stropped head. ‘Don’t fuck with me, Inspector. You haven’t come around here to see how I’m getting on. Or to chew the fat about all those happy times you shared with Paul. Neither of you could stand each other.’

Calque could sense himself about to go on the defensive – he wrestled the instinct down. ‘You’re right, Macron. I need more than information this time. I need your help.’

Macron allowed himself the ghost of a smile. ‘Paul’s killer is dead. What do you need me for?’ His face changed expression. ‘You need someone nobbled, don’t you? That’s it, isn’t it? And you remembered that good old Aime Macron was on the prison register for GBH, and maybe he hadn’t forgotten some of his old tricks in the years since they let him out?’

‘It’s not that.’

‘Then what is it?’

Calque felt like a fool. What was he doing here, talking to a compete stranger about breaking the law, after spending his entire working life as its bondservant? He swallowed. Might as well get it out. What did he have to lose? His pension? It was hardly enough to keep him in toilet paper. His good name? What was that worth in this brave new world they called France? His integrity? He’d lost that when he’d trousered his badge back at the station. ‘Do you have any ex-Legionnaire friends who are firemen? Down St Tropez way, maybe?’

‘Firemen? Are you serious?’

Calque flicked his cigarette into the puddle of water left over after Macron’s frenetic ablutions. ‘Perfectly.’