The Nostradamus Prophecies (41 page)

For the first time in many years he wanted to go home. He wanted the comfort of his own bedroom and not the anonymous hotels that he had been forced to live in for so long. He wanted the respect and the support of the brothers and sisters that he had grown up with. And he wanted Madame, his mother, to publicly acknowledge his achievements for the Corpus Maleficus and to give him his due.

Bale was tired. He needed rest. And treatment for his wound. He was fed up with being hard and living like a wolf. Fed up with being hunted by people who were not worthy to tie his bootlaces.

He lay on his belly and dragged himself towards the hatch cover. If he didn’t move now, he would die. It was as simple as that.

For he had suddenly understood that he was hallucinating. That this temporary helplessness of his was just another strategy of the Devil’s to unman him – to make him weak.

Bale reached the hatch cover and dragged it to one side. He stared down into the empty bedroom.

It was dark. The windows were open and it was night. There were no lights anywhere. The police had left. Surely they had left.

He listened, through the rushing of blood in his head, for any inexplicable sounds.

There were none.

He eased his legs through the hatch cover. For a long time he sat on the lip of the hatch staring down at the floor. Finally he cracked his torch and tried to estimate the total drop.

Ten feet. Enough to break a leg or sprain an ankle.

But he didn’t have the strength left to let down the chair. Didn’t have the agility to hang from the hatch and feel for it with his legs.

He switched off his torch and slid it back inside his shirt.

Then he twisted on his good arm and dropped into the void.

Yola watched the two policemen from her hiding place at the edge of the wood. They were huddled in the shelter of the gardien ’s cabane , smoking and talking. So this is what the flics call a search, she thought to herself. No wonder the eye-man hasn’t been found. Satisfied that the two men could not possibly see her, she settled down to wait for the further twenty minutes or so until full dusk.

Bouboul had dropped Yola at the Bac, thirty minutes before and had then driven on to Arles, with his son-in-law, Rezso, to retrieve Sabir’s Audi. Later, Rezso would come back with the Audi to pick her up.

At first Sabir had refused to allow her to go and collect the prophecies. It was too dangerous. The job should be his. He was head of the family now. His word should count for something. But Sergeant Spola’s stolid and ever-watchful presence had eventually decided the matter – there was no way Sabir could go anywhere any more without his say-so.

Night-time would be different, though. The man had to sleep. If Sabir could manage to give Spola the slip, Bouboul had agreed to drive him back to the Maset, where Yola and Reszo would arrange to meet him with the prophecies. Sabir would then have both the time and the privacy necessary to translate them.

Before dawn, Reszo would come back with the car and collect Sabir and deliver him back to the caravan, just in time to meet an awaking Sergeant Spola. This was the plan, anyway. It had the virtue of simplicity, it protected the prophecies and it would serve to keep the police nicely out of the frame.

Yola had already established that the investigation had moved on and that the Maset would be empty. Sergeant Spola was a man who respected his stomach. Yola had offered him wild boar stew with dumplings for his lunch, instead of his customary chicken sandwich. Spola had proved particularly amenable after that – especially as the wild boar was twinned with about a litre and a half of Costieres de Nimes and a follow-up cognac. He had confi rmed to her that by now, a day and a half after the attack, the Maset would be bolted and sealed with police tape and to all intents and purposes abandoned until next needed. All available manpower would need to be seconded in the search for the eye-man. What did she think? That the police left people dotted around the countryside guarding old crime scenes?

The two flics at the cabane got up and stretched themselves. One of them walked a few yards, unzipped his fly and took a leak. The other flashed his torch around the clearing, lingering on the security tape marking the spot where Gavril had been found.

‘Do you think murderers really come back to the spot they’ve offed someone?’

‘Shit, no. And particularly not when they’ve got a bullet in them, they’re hungry and they’ve got sniffer dogs chewing up their arses. The bastard’s probably lying dead behind a bush. Or else he fell off his horse into a bog and drowned. That’s why we can’t find him. The wild pigs probably got him. They can eat a man, teeth and all, in under an hour. Did you know that? All the murderer has to do is to get rid of the spleen. They don’t like that for some reason.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Yes. I thought so too.’

Yola had walked in to the wood by the path, just as Alexi had described it to her, leaving strips of white paper at five-metre intervals to guide herself back to the road when it was dark. In her head she had marked the position of the solitary cypress tree beneath which the prophecies lay buried. If the police stayed where they were, however, she would have no possibility – even if she used the woodland as cover – of reaching the prophecies unseen. The cypress tree was far too exposed.

‘Shall we take a turn about the forest?’

‘Fuck that. Let’s go back to the cabane. Light a fire. I forgot my gloves and it’s getting cold.’

Yola could see their silhouettes approaching her. What were they after? Wood? How could she explain away her presence if they stumbled on her? They’d be so keen to get gold stars from Calque that they’d probably bundle her back with them in their poullailler ambulant – their travelling henhouse. Wasn’t that what Alexi called Black Marias? And Calque was certainly no fool. He would smell a rat straight away. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out that she was after the prophecies and that they weren’t lost at all.

As the policemen approached, Yola pressed herself into the ground and began to pray.

The first policeman stopped three or four feet away from her. ‘Can you see any dead trees?’

The second policeman switched on his torch and swung it in an arc above their heads. At that exact moment his cellphone rang. He tossed the torch to his companion and felt for the phone. As the torch passed near her head, Yola could feel the light from its beam skimming across her body. She stiffened, sure of discovery.

‘What’s that you say? We’ve got to pull out? What are you talking about?’ The second policeman was listening intently to the voice at the other end of the line. He grunted from time to time and Yola could almost sense him glancing across at the first policeman, who was holding the lighted torch with its beam focused down along the seam of his trousers.

The second policeman snapped the cellphone shut. ‘That Parisian Captain they’ve sicced on us thinks he’s found out where the guy lives. Reckons, if he really has slipped the net, that he’s sure to make for there. We’re all wanted. This time all we’ve got to do is seal off the whole of the St-Tropez peninsula, from just outside Cavalaire-sur-Mer, via La Croix-Valmer and Cogolin, to Port Grimaud. Can you credit it? That’s sixty fucking kilometres.’

‘More like thirty.’

‘What do you care? There’s no sleep for us tonight.’

Yola turned on to her back, when they eventually walked away and gazed up in wonder at the first star of the evening.

Somewhat to his surprise Calque found himself regretting the lack of Macron’s presence as he made his way across the courtyard and back towards the Comtesse de Bale’s house. Calque did not consider himself a sentimental man and Macron had, after all, largely brought his death upon himself – but there had been something magnificently irritating about him as a person, an irritation which had, in its turn, fed Calque’s over-emphatic sense of self. He concluded that Macron had acted as a kind of straight man to his iconoclast and that he was missing having an excuse for being grumpy.

He recalled, too, his delight when Macron had leapt to his defence when the Countess had questioned his knowledge about the Pairs de France and the French nobility. You had to hand it to the man – he might have been a bigot but he had never been predictable.

The soignee private secretary in the tweed and cashmere twinset emerged from the house to greet him – this time, though, she was wearing a silk one-piece dress in burgundy, which made her look even more like a countess than the Countess herself. Calque searched through his memory banks for her name. ‘Madame Mastigou?’

‘Captain Calque.’ Her eyes skated over his shoulders to take in the detachment of eight police officers bringing up his rear. ‘And your assistant?’

‘Dead, Madame. Killed by the adopted son of your employer.’

Madame Mastigou took an inadvertent pace backwards. ‘I am sure that cannot be so.’

‘I, too, trust that I have been misinformed. I have a search warrant, however, for these premises, which I intend to exercise immediately. These officers will accompany me inside. They will obviously respect both Madame la Comtesse’s property and her privacy. But I must ask that no one interfere with them during the course of their duties.’

‘I must go and warn Madame la Comtesse.’

‘I shall accompany you.’

Madame Mastigou hesitated. ‘May I see the warrant?’

‘Of course.’ Calque felt in his pocket and handed her the document.

‘May I copy this?’

‘No, Madame. A copy will be made available to Madame la Comtesse’s lawyers when and if they desire it.’

‘Very well then. Please come with me.’

Calque nodded to his officers. They fanned out across the courtyard. Four of the officers waited patiently at the foot of the stairs for Calque and Madame Mastigou to enter the house, before clattering up the steps behind them to begin their search.

‘Do you seriously intend to implicate the Count in the killing of your assistant?’

‘When did you last see the Count, Madame?’

Madame Mastigou hesitated. ‘Some years ago now.’

‘Then you may take it from me. He has changed.’

‘I see that you have discarded the arm sling, Captain Calque. And your nose. It is healing. A great improvement.’

‘It is kind of you to notice, Countess.’

The Countess sat down. Madame Mastigou fetched a chair and placed it behind the Countess and a little to one side – she seated herself demurely, both knees pressed together, her ankles tucked beneath her and lightly crossed. Finishing school, thought Calque. Switzerland, probably. She sits just like the Queen of England.

This time, the Countess waved the footman away without bothering to order coffee. ‘It is nonsense, of course, to suspect my son of violence.’

‘I don’t suspect your son of violence, Countess. I formally accuse him of it. We have witnesses. In fact I am one myself. Thanks to the condition of his eyes, he does, after all, stand out from the crowd, does he not?’ He glanced across at her, his head tilted to one side in polite enquiry. With no answer forthcoming, Calque decided to press his luck. ‘The question I must ask – the question that really troubles me – is not whether he has done these things, but why?’

‘Whatever he has done he has done for the best.’

Calque sat up straighter, his antennae flaring. ‘You cannot be serious, Madame. He has tortured and killed a gypsy in Paris. Committed grievous bodily harm on three people, including a Spanish policeman and two casual passers-by. He has killed a security guard at the shrine at Rocamadour. Tortured and killed another gypsy in the Camargues. And two days ago he shot dead my assistant during a siege in which he was threatening to hang the sister of the man he killed in Paris. And all this to discover some prophecies that may or may not be true – that may or may not be by the prophet Nostradamus. I suspect, Madame, that you are not as unaware as you would have me believe of the true reasons behind this horrendous chain of events.’

‘Is that another of your formal accusations, Captain?

If so, I would remind you that there is a third party present.’

‘That was not a formal accusation, Madame. Formal accusations are for the courts. I am conducting an investigation. I need to stop your son before he can do any more harm.’

‘What you say about my son is grotesque. Your accusations are entirely without foundation.’

‘And you, Madame Mastigou? Have you anything at all to add?’

‘Nothing, Captain. Madame la Comtesse is not well. I consider it in the worst possible taste that you continue this investigation under such conditions.’

The Countess stood up. ‘I have decided what I shall do, Mathilde. I shall telephone the Minister of the Interior. He is a cousin of my friend, Babette de Montmorigny. We shall soon have this state of affairs rectified.’

Calque also stood up. ‘You must do as you see fit, Madame.’

One of the uniformed officers burst into the room. ‘Captain, I think you should see this.’

Calque shot the man a scowl. ‘See what? I am conducting an interview.’

‘A room, Sir. A secret room. Monceau found it by accident when he was investigating the library.’

Calque turned to the Countess, his eyes glittering.

‘It is not a secret room, Captain Calque. Everyone in my household knows about it. Had you asked me, I would have directed you to it.’

‘Of course, Countess. I understand that.’ With both hands anchored firmly behind his back, Calque followed his subordinate out of the door.

The room was approached through a tailored entrance, masterfully concealed within the library shelving.

‘Who discovered this?’

‘I did, Sir.’

‘How does it open?’

The officer swung the door shut. It sealed itself flush against the stacks. The officer then bent forwards and pressed against the ribbed spine of three books, situated near the floor. The door sprung back open again.