The Nostradamus prophecies

12

Bale pulled gently away from the kerb, as if he had changed his mind about having a cup of coffee, or had left his wallet at home. He didn’t want anyone remembering him. He glanced back to his left. The girl was sprinting down the road, with the waiter in hot pursuit. Silly bitch. She hadn’t paid her bill.

He drew up beside the waiter and gently tapped his horn. ‘Sorry. My fault. We’re in a hurry.’ He waved a twenty-euro note out of the window. ‘Hope this covers the tip.’

The waiter looked at him in astonishment. Bale smiled. His clotted eyes always affected people that way. Mesmerised them, even.

As a child, his condition had fascinated a wide variety of doctors – papers had even been written about him. One doctor had told him that before his case was brought to their attention, eyes without whites (‘no-whites’, the doctor had called them, in which only the proximal interommatidial cells were pigmented) had only ever been noted in Gammarus chevreuxi Sexton – a sand shrimp. He was an entirely new genetic type, therefore. A true Mendelian recessive. If he ever had children, he could found a dynasty.

Bale put on his sunglasses, amused at the waiter’s discomfiture. ‘Drugs, don’t you know. The young these days. Not fit to be let off the leash. If she owes more, tell me.’

‘No. That’s all right. That’s fine.’

Bale shrugged. ‘The truth is that she needs to go back to the clinic. Hates the thought of it. Always does this to me.’ He waved at the waiter as he accelerated away. The last thing Bale wanted was a new police presence dogging his every footstep. It had already cost him far too much effort getting rid of the last bunch. This way, the waiter would explain what had happened to his customers and everyone would be satisfi ed. By the time they made it home, the story would have grown wings and a dozen different endings.

Yola looked wildly back over her shoulder. She slowed down. What was he doing? He was talking to the waiter. Stupid – so stupid – to run off without paying. She tried to catch her breath but her heart seemed temporarily out of her control.

What if he wasn’t the man? Why had she run like that? There had been something about him. Something about the way he had smiled at her. As if she had known him before, almost. A familiarity.

She halted at the corner of the street and watched his interaction with the waiter. He would drive away. He had nothing to do with her. She had panicked for nothing. And the phone had been ringing. Perhaps Damo had wanted her to call the police? Perhaps he had wanted to tell her that they had killed the eye-man?

The eye-man? She remembered the man’s eyes now. Remembered how they had pierced through her back at the cafe.

She moaned softly to herself and began to run again.

Behind her the Volvo started to gain speed.