The Nostradamus prophecies

64

Sabir watched the police car take Yola and Alexi away. He supposed that it was a deal that he had reluctantly cut with Calque but words like ‘rat’ and ‘trap’ kept interposing themselves between him and any satisfaction that he might have taken in its inception.

The only edge that he had possessed with which to counter Calque’s anger at his holding out about Gavril, lay in his by now tacit agreement to keep quiet about Macron’s criminal impetuosity. Ironically, though, he hadn’t dared mention Macron again in case he inflamed Calque way beyond rationality and ended up counting bricks in a jail cell – so that particular bargaining counter had proved less than worthless.

This way, at any rate, he remained useful to the man and capable of maintaining at least some degree of free movement. If Yola did what she’d said she’d do, they would still be ahead of the game. If the gouts of blood left in the Maset salon were anything to go by, it couldn’t be long, surely, before the French police ran the eye-man down and either killed him or took him into custody?

Calque crooked a finger at Sabir. ‘Get into the car.’

Sabir seated himself next to a CRS officer in a bullet-proof vest. He smiled but the offi cer refused to respond. The man was going to a potential crime scene. He was in official mode.

Hardly surprising, thought Sabir to himself – he was still a suspect in nearly everybody’s eyes. The cause, if not exactly the perpetrator, of a colleague’s violent death.

Calque spread himself out across the front seat. ‘I’m right, am I not? La Roupie’s body is lying outside a gardien ’s cabane, twenty minutes north of the Bac, just before you get to the Panperdu? That’s what you told me, isn’t it? That’s where you came across it while you were out searching for the gypsy Dufontaine?’

‘Alexi Dufontaine. Yes.’

‘Do you have a problem with the word gypsy?’

‘When used in that way, yes.’

Calque acknowledged the validity of Sabir’s point without actually bothering to turn his head. ‘You’re loyal to your friends, aren’t you, Monsieur Sabir?’

‘They saved my life. They believed in me when no one else did. Am I loyal to them? Yes. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t.’

Calque twisted in his seat. ‘I ask you this only because I am having difficulty in tallying up what you have just told me about your discovery of La Roupie’s body and the fact that you declared quite clearly, when I questioned you earlier, that you went off in search of Dufontaine by foot. The distances involved seem quite unrealistic.’ Calque nodded to the driver, who swung the car away from the Maset and down the drive. ‘Do me a favour and look at this map, will you? I’m sure you will be able to put me right.’

Sabir took the map, his expression neutral.

‘You will see, marked on the map, the only cabane you could possibly mean. I have highlighted it with a large red circle. There. You see it? Are we in agreement that this is the place?’

The unsmiling CRS officer reached across and switched on the interior light for Sabir’s convenience.

Sabir glanced dutifully down at the map. ‘Yes. That would seem to be the place.’

‘Are you an Olympic sprinter, Monsieur Sabir?’

Sabir switched the interior light back off. ‘Captain.

Do me a favour. Just get whatever it is you want to tell me off you’re chest. This atmosphere is murder.’

Calque retrieved the map. He nodded to the driver, who set the siren in motion. ‘I have only one thing to tell you, Mister Sabir. If Dufontaine does a vanishing act before I have a chance to question him and take his statement, I will hold you and the girl in his place – as accessories before the fact – for as long as I deem it necessary. Do you understand me? Or shall I get on to the radio this minute and tell the car that is delivering your two gypsy friends to the curandero at Les Saintes-Maries to turn around and come straight back?’