The Mayan Codex

42

Abi was acting as look-out and Vau was driving. At first glance, the tracker had appeared to be misbehaving, which meant that the twins found themselves blundering past the stationary Grand Cherokee when they were least expecting it.

‘Christ. Did you see them? Did you see what they were doing? It was them, Abi, wasn’t it? Did they see us?’

‘Calm down, Vau. There’s no damage done. They were just sitting in their car talking. Or at least so far as I could see. We were moving way too fast when we passed them. Plus we’ve got a fresh car. Plus we’re wearing these stupid American baseball caps. They won’t have made us.’

‘I wish we’d planted a proper bug on them when we had the chance.’

‘Oh yes? And this from the man who couldn’t be bothered to break into their car when the opportunity was handed to him on a plate, but simply latched his tracker onto the fucking undercarriage in the fond hope that it wouldn’t fucking jerk off when they fucking went over their first fucking speed bump?’

‘Okay, Abi. Okay. You don’t have to rub it in.’

‘What do you think they were talking about? Maybe you’ve got a view on that too, Vau?’

‘How do I know? What do you think?’

Abi closed his eyes. He scrubbed at his face, then let his head fall back against the built-in headrest. He motioned to Vau to pull the car over. ‘Us, probably.’

‘How do you figure that, Abi? They don’t even know we’re following them.’

‘What? You think they’ve just relaxed down and forgotten about us, maybe? Put us out of their minds completely?’

‘No, Abi. I don’t think that.’

‘Why ever not?’

Vau’s face lit up. ‘Because they’re too smart. Lamia knows we’ll never give up. And she’ll have told them that. They’ll be shit scared we’ll spring out from nowhere and get them.’

Abi hunched down even further in the passenger seat in case the Cherokee overtook them again. ‘You know something, Vau? I think you’re right.’ He nodded his head a few times, thinking. ‘I think we need to rush things a little. I think we need to put the fear of God into them, and get them to make a few unforced errors. I’m fed up to my back teeth with all this pussy-footing around.’

‘But Madame, our mother, told you to hang back, Abi. I heard her say so. She told you to let them lead us to wherever they are going, and not to interfere with them until she tells you to do so.’

Abi glanced across at his brother. ‘Well we know that wherever they are going is in Mexico. And probably in either Veracruz or the Yucatan.’

‘How do we know that, Abi?’

‘Because they are taking the coastal route, dummy. If they were transiting through to Guatemala, for instance, or Honduras, or Panama, they’d go the fuck down the centre, wouldn’t they? Past Mexico City.’

‘I suppose so. But you don’t have to swear at me all the time to get your point across.’

‘You suppose right. And yes I do.’ Abi yawned. He was beginning to lose interest in winding Vau up. ‘So we’re getting near to where we need to be. And they don’t know we’ve got a tracker planted on them. So I say we scare the living bejasus out of them, and set them to running at double speed. Because if we carry on the way we are going, Aldinach’s going to get ants in her pants again, and trigger another riot. Or that stupid bastard Oni is going to fall foul of the Mexican cops. I mean, have you seen him recently? He’s taken to wearing floral shorts. The idiot stands out like a cockroach on a teacake.’

Vau slapped at the steering wheel. ‘Hey, that’s funny. I like that. A cockroach on a teacake.’

Abi gave Vau a pitying look. ‘It’s not original, Vau. I stole the idea from Raymond Chandler. Only he said “a tarantula on a slice of angel food”.’

‘Angel food? What’s that?’

‘Fairy cake.’

‘Fairy cake? And Raymond who, did you say?’

‘Forget it, Vau. It’s really not that important.’