The Nostradamus prophecies

45

Thirty minutes into his walk he saw the saddled horse. It was standing near one of the gardien’s cabins, grazing.

Alexi fell back behind a nearby tree. Sweat dripped down his forehead and across his eyes. He had walked right into the trap. It had never occurred to him that the eye-man might be lying in wait for him again on this side of the bank. What had been the chances that he would return across the river after escaping on the Bac? One in a million? The man was crazy.

Alexi peered out from behind the tree. There was something strange about the horse. Something not quite right.

He squinted into the sunset. What was that darker mass lying near the horse’s feet? Was it a figure? Had the eye-man fallen off and knocked himself unconscious? Or was it a trap and the eye-man was simply waiting for Alexi to blunder over before finishing him off?

Alexi hesitated, thinking things through. Then he crouched down and buried the bamboo tube behind the tree. He took a few tentative paces and checked back to see if he could still mark its location. No problem. The tree was a cypress. Visible for miles.

He stumbled on for a few yards and then paused, rustling his pockets as if he were feeling for a titbit. The horse nickered at him. The figure at its feet didn’t move. Maybe the eye-man had broken his neck? Maybe O Del had listened to his prayer and settled the bastard for good?

Alexi shuffled forwards again, talking quietly to the horse – gentling it. He could see that the figure’s foot was twisted through one stirrup. If the horse walked towards him and all of a sudden felt the dead weight of the body holding it back, it would panic. And Alexi needed that horse. He wouldn’t make it back to the Maset otherwise – that much had become obvious in the last twenty minutes.

With each step he was becoming weaker and more desperate. His clothes had dried on him, stiffening his wounds. His right shoulder had seized up and he could no longer raise it further than his navel. In his present condition, he wouldn’t be able to outrun a tortoise.

Alexi reached the gelding and allowed it to nuzzle him – it was obvious that it was disturbed by the presence of the body, but that the grazing and Alexi’s whistling, had temporarily calmed it. Alexi took the reins and knelt down beside the horse. He already knew by the clothes who he was dealing with. Nobody else wore belts that big or buckles that showy. Gavril. Jesus. He must have tried to follow them and then somehow fallen off his horse and struck his head. Or else he had run into the eye-man coming back from the ferry and the eye-man had assumed he knew more than he did. Alexi retched and spat out the excess saliva. Flies were already congregating around Gavril’s nostrils and the massive dent in his temple. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Alexi unhooked Gavril’s foot from the stirrup. He attached the horse to the hitching post and glanced around, searching for something capable of inflicting such a crippling wound. The gelding couldn’t have strayed far, weighed down with Gavril’s body.

He hobbled over to the stone. Yes. It was covered in blood and hair. He lifted it up in his arms, using only his sleeves – he knew enough not to smear any fingerprints. He returned and placed the stone near Gavril’s head. He was briefly tempted to feel inside Gavril’s pocket for any spare cash, but decided not to. He didn’t want to provide the police with a possible false motive for the murder.

When he was satisfied with his scene-setting, Alexi levered himself up on to the gelding. He swayed in the saddle, the blood pulsing round his head like a ballbearing in a pinball machine.

Two-to-one the eye-man was responsible for the killing – it was too much of a coincidence otherwise. He’d obviously run into Gavril on his way back. Questioned him. Killed him. In which case there was an outside chance that he now knew of the Maset, for Gavril, like any other gypsy his age who regularly visited the Camargue, would have known of the famous card game between Dadul Gavriloff and Aristeo Samana, Yola’s father. He might not know exactly where the house was, but he’d sure as Hell have known of its existence.

For one brief instant of uncertainty Alexi had been tempted to head back to the tree and retrieve the bamboo tube. But caution finally won out over vainglory. Now, setting the gelding’s reins, he allowed it to follow its head back towards the house.