The Nostradamus Prophecies (44 page)

The gag reflex began again and he could feel his heart clenching in his chest with each explosive expectoration. He tried to focus his mind on the outside world. To take himself beyond the cesspit and this hideous darkness which threatened to engulf him and drive him mad. But the darkness was so complete and his fear so acute, that he could no longer dominate his own thoughts.

He tried to drag his arms up from beneath him. Were they tied? Had Bale done even that to him?

With each movement he sank deeper into the sump.

Now it was up to his chin and threatening to invade his mouth. He began to wail, his arms flapping like chicken wings in the viscous liquid below him.

Bale would come back. He had said he would come back. He would come back to ask Sabir about the prophecies. That would afford Sabir the crucial leverage he needed. He would get Bale to pull him out of the cesspit so that he could write down all that he knew. Then he would overpower him. No power on earth would ever get Sabir back inside here once he was out. He would die if necessary. Kill himself.

It was then that Sabir remembered Bale’s useless left arm. It would be physically impossible for Bale ever to pull him out. Drag him to the cesspit he could. Control an unconscious man’s slide into the sump he could – that would simply have been a matter of leverage and of snagging his inert body by the collar and allowing gravity to do the rest. But there was no way on God’s earth that Bale could ever get him back out again.

Slowly, incrementally, the gases in the cesspit were having their effect. Sabir felt himself drawn upwards as if by an outside force. At first his entire body seemed forced against the sealed cover of the cesspit like a man sucked against the porthole of a depressurised plane. Then he burst through and up into the air, his body bent into the shape of a U by the centrifugal throw-out. He threw his arms as wide as he was able and his body-shape reversed itself, until he was rocketing upwards in the shape of a C – in the shape of a skydiver – but with the force and speed of his ascension having no discernible effect.

He looked down at the earth below him with a sublime detachment, as if this expulsive exodus was in no way part of his own experience.

Then, deep inside his hallucination, his body began a gradual process of discombobulation. First his arms were torn off – he saw them swirling away from him on a current of air. Then his legs.

Sabir began to moan.

With a frightful wrench, his lower torso, from his waist down to his upper thighs, ripped apart from his body, dragging intestines, lights, bowel and bladder in its wake. His chest burst apart and his heart, lungs and ribs shredded from his body. He tried to snatch at them, but he had no arms. He was powerless to control his body’s liquefaction and soon all that was left of him was his head, just as it had been in his shamanic dream – his head approaching him, face on, its eyes dead.

As the head came closer its mouth opened and from inside a snake began to issue – a thick, uncoiling python of a snake, with scales like those of a fish and staring eyes and a mouth that seemed to unhinge itself, becoming ever larger. The python turned and swallowed Sabir’s head – Sabir could see the shape of his head moving down the python’s body, driven by its myosin-fuelled muscles.

Then the python turned and its face was his face, even down to his newly damaged ear. The face tried to talk to him but Sabir could no longer make out the sound of his own voice. It was as if he was both inside and outside the snake’s body at one and the same time. Somehow, though, Sabir sensed that his incapacity to hear came from the internal head, which was being drawn like forcemeat through the lozenge of the snake’s body.

It’s like a birth, Sabir decided. It’s like coming down through the birth canal. That’s why I’m claustrophobic. It’s my birth. Something to do with my birth.

Now Sabir could see through the snake’s eyes, feel through the snake’s skin. He was the snake and it was him.

His hand burst out of the sump near to his face. He felt the hand reach for his neck, as though it were still not part of him.

He was still the snake. He had no hands.

The hand reached for the necklet the shaman had given him.

Snake. There was snake in the necklet.

Poison. There was poison in the necklet.

He must take it. Kill himself. Surely that was what the dream had been telling him?

Suddenly he was back in the reality of the cesspit. There was a scraping sound above him. In a moment Bale would be opening the hatch.

With his free hand Sabir tore a wad of fabric off the front of his shirt and rammed it into his mouth. He thrust it down his throat, blocking off all access to his windpipe.

He felt the gag reflex trigger, but ignored it.

Bale was sliding the hatch open.

Sabir broke the vial of poison into his mouth. He was breathing only through his nose now. He could feel the poison lying on his tongue. Dispersing against the roof of his mouth. Filtering up his nasal passages and through his sinuses.

When the hatch slid back, Sabir played dead. In the split second before the light struck him, he allowed his head to drop forward and rest on the surface of the scum, so that Bale would imagine he had drowned himself.

Bale grunted in irritation. He reached down to raise Sabir’s head.

Sabir grabbed the collar of Bale’s shirt with his free hand. Temporarily unbalanced, Bale started to topple.

Using the impetus of the downward movement, Sabir steered Bale’s head through the hatch. His eyes fixed themselves on the open wound on Bale’s neck.

As Bale’s head came briefly parallel with his own, Sabir sank his teeth into the wound, forcing his tongue inside the bullet hole, dispersing the poison deep into Bale’s veins.

Then he spat what remained of the poison into the cesspool surrounding him and prepared to die.

Joris Calque’s interview with the Countess had proved to be the equivalent of a coitus reservatus – in other words, he had delayed completion for so long that the final effect had been little more satisfying than a wet dream.

He had convinced himself before the interview that it was he who held the upper hand. The Countess, surely, must be on the defensive? She was an old woman – why didn’t she simply open up and have done with it? There was no capital punishment in France any more. In fact the Count would most probably be carted off to an asylum, where he could play dynastic games to his heart’s content in the sure and certain knowledge that after fifteen or twenty years he would be ejected back into the system with a ‘harmless’ label tagged around his neck.

Instead, Calque had found himself facing the human equivalent of a brick wall. Rarely in his career had he encountered a person so sure of the moral justifi cations of their actions. Calque knew that the Countess was the driving force behind her son’s behaviour – he simply knew it. But he couldn’t remotely prove it.

‘Is that you, Spola?’ Calque held the cellphone six inches in front of his mouth, as one would hold a microphone. ‘Where are Sabir and Dufontaine now?’

‘Sleeping, Sir. It is two o’clock in the morning.’

‘Have you checked on them recently? Within the last hour, say?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Well, do so now.’

‘Shall I call you back?’

‘No. Take the telephone with you. That’s what these things are for, isn’t it?’

Sergeant Spola eased himself up from the back seat of his police meat-wagon. He had made himself a comfortable nest out of a few borrowed blankets and a chair cushion which Yola had purloined for him. What was Calque thinking of? This was the middle of the night. Why would Sabir or the gypsy want to go anywhere? They weren’t being accused of anything. If Calque asked his opinion, he would tell him that there was no sense at all in wasting police manpower trailing non-suspects around in the enjoyment of their lawful rights. Spola had a lovely warm wife waiting for him at home. And a lovely warm bed. Those constituted his lawful rights. And, typically, they were in the process of being violated.

‘I’m looking at the gypsy now. He’s fast asleep.’

‘Check on Sabir.’

‘Yes, Sir.’ Spola eased the internal door of the caravan open. Such bloody nonsense. ‘He’s lying in his bed. He’s…’ Spola stopped. He took a further step inside the room and switched on the light. ‘He’s gone, Sir. They packed his bed full of cushions to make it look as if he was asleep. I’m sorry, Sir.’

‘Where’s the girl?’

‘Sleeping with the women, Sir. Across the way.’

‘Get her.’

‘But I can’t, Sir. You know what these gypsy women are like. If I go blundering in there…’

‘Get her. Then put her on the phone.’

Spola squinted through the windscreen at the passing trees. It had started to rain and the police car’s headlights were reflecting back off the road, making it difficult to judge distances.

Yola fidgeted anxiously beside him, her face taut in the reflected glare.

Spola flicked on the rear wipers. ‘That was a rotten trick to play on me, you know. I could lose my job over this.’

‘You shouldn’t have been told to watch us in the first place. It’s only because we’re gypsies. You people treat us like dirt.’

Spola sat up straighter in his seat. ‘That’s not true. I’ve tried to be reasonable with you – cut you some slack. I even let you visit the curandero with Sabir. That’s what’s got me into all this trouble.’

Yola fl ashed a glance at him. ‘You’re all right. It’s the others that make me sick.’

‘Well. Yes. There are some people who have unjustifiable prejudices. I don’t deny it. But I’m not one of them.’ He reached forwards and scrubbed at the inside of the windscreen with his sleeve. ‘If only they’d give us cars with air conditioning, we might see where we are going. Are we nearly there?’

‘It’s here. Turn left. And go on up the drive. The house will appear in a few moments.’

Spola eased the car up the rutted track. He glanced down at the clock. It would take Calque at least another hour to get here – unless he hijacked a police helicopter. Another night’s sleep lost.

He pulled the car up in front of the Maset. ‘So this is where it all happened?’

Yola got out and ran towards the front door. There was no firm basis to her anxiety but Calque’s call, warning them that the eye-man was still after Sabir, had upset her equanimity. She had thought that the eye-man was out of their lives forever. And now here she was, in the middle of the night, aiding and abetting the police.

‘Damo?’ She looked around the room. The fire was almost out. One of the candles was guttering and another was only ten minutes away from extinction. There was hardly enough light to see by, let alone transcribe detailed text. She turned to Sergeant Spola. ‘Have you a torch?’

He clicked it on. ‘Perhaps he’s in the kitchen?’

Yola shook her head. Her face looked pinched and anxious in the artificial light. She hurried down the corridor. ‘Damo?’ She hesitated at the spot where Macron had been killed. ‘Damo?’

Had she heard a noise? She placed one hand on her heart and took a step forwards.

The sound of a gunshot echoed through the empty building. Yola screamed. Sergeant Spola ran towards her. ‘What was that? Did you hear a shot?’

‘It was down in the cellar.’ Yola had her hand to her throat.

Spola cursed and manhandled his pistol out of its holster. He was not an active man. Gunplay was not in his nature. In fact he had never needed to use violence in over thirty years of police work. ‘Stay here, Mademoiselle. If you hear more shots, run out to the police car and drive it away. Do you hear me?’

‘I can’t drive.’

Spola handed her his cellphone. ‘I’ve put in a call to Captain Calque. Tell him what is happening. Tell him he must call an ambulance. I must go now.’ Spola ran through the back of the house towards the cellar, his torch casting wild shadows on the walls. Without pausing to think, he threw open the cellar door and clattered down, his pistol held awkwardly in one hand, his torch in the other.

A man’s feet projected from the lip of what appeared to be an old water cistern or cesspit. As Spola watched, the feet slithered down into the pit. Crazed sounds were coming from inside the sump and Spola stood, for one wild moment, fixed to the spot in shock and consternation. Then he crept forwards and shone his torch inside the pit.

Sabir had his head craned back and his mouth open, in a sort of silent rictus. In his free hand he held Bale’s fist, with the Redhawk anchored between them. As Spola watched, Bale’s head emerged from the cesspool, the clotted eyes turned up further than it seemed possible for human eyes to go. The gun rocked forwards and there was a vivid flash.

Spola fell to one knee. A numbness spread across his chest and down through his belly in the direction of his genitals. He tried to raise his pistol but was unable to do so. He coughed once and then fell over on to his side.

A figure darted past him. He felt the pistol being wrenched from his hand. Then his torch was taken. He placed both his free hands on his belly. He had a sudden, exquisite image of his wife lying on their bed, waiting for him, her eyes burning into his.

The gun fl ashes became more intense, lighting up the cellar like the repeated strikes of a tornadic lightning storm. Spola was aware of movement way out beyond him. Far away. Then someone was gently separating his hands. Was it his wife? Had they brought his wife to look after him? Spola tried to speak to her, but the oxygen mask cut off his words.

‘You owe the girl your life.’

‘I know I do.’ Sabir twisted his head until he was staring at the tips of the pine trees just visible outside the window of his hospital room. ‘I owe her more than that, if the truth be told.’

The remark passed Calque by. He was concentrating on something else altogether. ‘How did she know that you had taken poison? How did she know that you needed an emetic?’