The Mayan Codex as-2

by Mario Reading

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  ‘And, Oni.’

  ‘Yes, Madame?’

  ‘Soon, I may have a more specific use for you. You must hold yourself in readiness for that.’

  Oni hunched down and kissed his mother’s hand.

  The Countess noticed Lamia hesitate on her way to the door. ‘Have you anything to say to me, my child?’

  It looked for a moment as if Lamia would speak. Then she shook her head and followed her brother quietly out into the library.

  11

  At precisely 9.30 the next morning, Joris Calque watched from his camouflaged hiding place as the battery of chauffeur-driven cars returned to collect their clients. He counted them off, one by one.

  ‘That leaves three of them still inside the house. Two males and a female, if I am not mistaken.’

  In the lonely weeks that Calque had spent ensconced inside his eyrie, he had occasionally drifted into the habit of talking out loud to himself. He was well aware of this new tendency, but didn’t, as yet, feel that he was in imminent danger of turning into one of those ubiquitous males – and they were always males, weren’t they? – who stride up and down the pavements of their home town mouthing off to imagined companions.

  If he ever did slide into such a public form of idiocy, Calque hoped that he would have enough wit left to wedge a cell phone speaker in his ear, thereby protecting himself against the very forces of public order to which he had for so long subscribed.

  His main problem now wasn’t incipient dementia, however, but rather to retrieve the – hopefully – brimming voice-activated tape recorder from the Countess’s inner sanctum.

  He stood up and glanced around his eyrie. So. His time here was over.

  He wouldn’t miss the chemical toilet, the smell of stale tobacco, or the curious quality of light that filtered through the gaps in the camouflage netting. But he would miss the birdlife, and the sightings of badgers, rodents, rabbits, deer and foxes with which he had wiled away the more tiresome hours of his vigil. He decided, on the spur of the moment, to bequeath the entirety of his hidey-hole to the poacher who had set it up. That would save him the trouble of carting everything back to his car. It would serve to cover his back-trail rather nicely, too.

  Calque’s experience told him that he didn’t stand a cat-in-hell’s chance of getting into the Domaine to retrieve the recorder himself. He was neither young, suicidal, nor particularly eager to see the inside of any of the prisons to which he had consigned so many felons, child-molesters, and murderers in the course of his detecting career.

  But there was one possible alternative to professional suicide. And Calque made up his mind to explore it without further delay.

  12

  Calque watched as Paul Macron’s cousin put the finishing touches to a louvred shutter. The man was aware of him, that much was obvious. But it would have been unrealistic of Calque to expect an ex-Foreign Legionnaire to come running just because a captain – strike that, an ex-captain – of police showed up at his workshop. At least it would give him time to have a cigarette.

  Just as Calque was preparing to inhale, he saw Macron gesticulating at him with his sander from across the atelier.

  ‘Put that fucking thing out. This isn’t a country club. There’s enough dry wood stacked up in here to smoke a whale.’

  Calque gave a sickly smile and crushed the as yet unsavoured cigarette and its accompanying match out beneath his foot. He should have expected that, too. Macron’s cousin had no reason to view him with anything other than disdain. Paul Macron had been killed on his watch, and it was only luck, and Adam Sabir’s suicidal bloody-mindedness, that had allowed the police to put a line under Achor Bale’s killing spree.

  Aime Macron went over to a sink in the corner of the workshop and started on the laborious rigmarole of washing his hands, his face, and the back of his neck. Calque could see Macron weighing him up in the pin-up plastered mirror above the basin.

  Calque didn’t move. He was weighing Macron up, too. Deciding whether to trust him with information that, in the wrong hands, could send him to prison.

  ‘You’re not a flic any more, are you?’ Macron was moving towards Calque now, scrubbing at his neck with a towel, his eyes hooded.

  Calque was fleetingly tempted to brazen the thing out – pretend he was still on the force – flash his purposefully mislaid badge – but he thought better of it. ‘No. I’m not. How did you guess?’

  Macron shrugged. ‘I was in the Legion for twenty years. I can tell when a man has power by the way he carries himself. You don’t have power any more. If you were still a flic, you would have breezed in here and interrupted my work, knowing it was your fucking right. But you waited for me to finish instead. Cops aren’t usually that fastidious.’

  ‘ Touche.’ Calque was impressed despite himself. He instantly changed tack, and approached Macron from a different direction to the one that he had initially intended. ‘You remember me, don’t you?’

  ‘How could I forget? You brought us the news of Paul’s death.’

  Calque squirmed inside, each word like a touchpaper to his policeman’s soul. ‘You helped me that time. You gave me valuable information about Achor Bale. About his time in the Legion.’

  Macron squinted, as if something he had not understood had just been made blindingly clear to him. He lit a cigarette.

  Calque made a face.

  Macron grinned. ‘Yeah. I was just bullshitting you back there about the fire hazard and the cigs. Have one of mine.’

  Calque cocked his head questioningly. ‘Why the change of attitude all of a sudden?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’

  ‘I really do. Yes.’

  Macron snorted smoke through both nostrils. ‘Because you’re not a flic any more. I like you better this way. They kick you out because of Paul’s death?’

  ‘Indirectly.’

  ‘Fuckers. It wasn’t your fault. If it had been, you wouldn’t have made it past the front gate.’

  ‘I suspected that.’ Calque lit the proffered cigarette.

  The two men stood staring at each other, smoking.

  ‘So what do you want, Monsieur l’ex-Capitaine?’

  ‘Want?’

  Macron scrubbed his fingernails across his razor-stropped head. ‘Don’t fuck with me, Inspector. You haven’t come around here to see how I’m getting on. Or to chew the fat about all those happy times you shared with Paul. Neither of you could stand each other.’

  Calque could sense himself about to go on the defensive – he wrestled the instinct down. ‘You’re right, Macron. I need more than information this time. I need your help.’

  Macron allowed himself the ghost of a smile. ‘Paul’s killer is dead. What do you need me for?’ His face changed expression. ‘You need someone nobbled, don’t you? That’s it, isn’t it? And you remembered that good old Aime Macron was on the prison register for GBH, and maybe he hadn’t forgotten some of his old tricks in the years since they let him out?’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  Calque felt like a fool. What was he doing here, talking to a compete stranger about breaking the law, after spending his entire working life as its bondservant? He swallowed. Might as well get it out. What did he have to lose? His pension? It was hardly enough to keep him in toilet paper. His good name? What was that worth in this brave new world they called France? His integrity? He’d lost that when he’d trousered his badge back at the station. ‘Do you have any ex-Legionnaire friends who are firemen? Down St Tropez way, maybe?’

  ‘Firemen? Are you serious?’

  Calque flicked his cigarette into the puddle of water left over after Macron’s frenetic ablutions. ‘Perfectly.’

  13

  Abiger de Bale sat on the bed across from his sister.

  Lamia de Bale had her back to him, and was staring pointedly out of the window.

  ‘I’ve never liked you, Lamia. I’ve always conside
red you the weakest link in our family chain.’ Abi threw himself back on the bed and lay there, staring up at the ceiling.

  Lamia turned towards him. ‘Why not kill me then? That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it? Just like Rocha. Both of you, born killers.’

  ‘I only kill vermin. You should view me like a terrier, trained to kill rats. I’m sweet when you get to know me. Cuddly, even.’

  ‘Get out of my room. You’re dirtying my bed.’

  ‘I’m waiting for Milouins. He’s coming up to take over keeping an eye on you.’

  ‘I don’t need keeping an eye on. What do you think? That I’m going to betray you all?’

  Abi shrugged. ‘What’s to betray? We all work separately. None of us has a record of any sort. If you said anything, nobody would believe you. What we do makes no logical sense, unless one understands the Mysteries.’

  ‘What Mysteries? You don’t actually believe in a Second Coming, do you? Or the emergence of the Third Antichrist?’

  ‘Of course not. But Madame, our mother, does. And she holds the purse strings.’

  Lamia shook her head. ‘So it’s just an excuse, then? For you and Vau?’

  ‘No. Vau really believes in all that hogwash too. I do it for the fun of it. He does it out of conviction. The result’s much the same.’

  ‘You make me sick.’

  ‘Why? The others all believe it too.’ Abi grinned. ‘Gather together a bunch of freaks. Then brainwash them from birth. Tell them they’re special – that they’ve been handpicked by God, and that everyone else is inferior to them. Then shower them with money and privileges. Works every time.’

  Lamia glanced towards the open door. ‘If Madame, our mother, heard you talk like this, it wouldn’t be me whom she imprisons.’

  ‘But she won’t ever hear me talk like this. I’m not going to kill the golden goose. Do you think I’m insane?’

  ‘I refuse to answer that.’ Lamia hesitated. Against her better instincts she allowed herself to frame the question uppermost in her mind. ‘What do you think she will do with me?’

  Abi laughed. ‘If I were you, I’d change my tune. Fast. That way you won’t need to find out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this, because it’s not to my advantage in any way to do so. But you are my sister. Even if not by blood.’ Abi sat up straighter on the bed. ‘Do you know what I would do if I were her?’

  Lamia took a step towards him. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’d ask someone like me to kill you.’

  Lamia stopped. The unmarked side of her face turned deathly pale. ‘Is that what you’ve been sent to do?’

  ‘Me? No. You’d be dead already. I wouldn’t have bothered warning you either. We’ve got a jellyfish plague out in the bay. I’d simply have dumped you out there, in the middle of the biggest school of lashers I could find, and dragged you around on a rope and a life-ring. Everybody would think you’d been caught out swimming. Enough jellyfish stings, and you go into anaphylactic shock and drown. It’s happened hundreds of times. There are no EpiPens out at sea.’

  She stared at him. ‘Why? What’s so vital about now? What could possibly be important enough to kill your own sister for?’

  Abi shrugged. ‘I’d have thought it was obvious. This is the moment our family has been waiting eight hundred years for. Madame, our mother…’

  A voice at the door interrupted him. ‘Yes, Abiger. You are right. Madame, your mother, does think that this is the moment the Corpus has been waiting eight hundred years for.’ The Countess swept in, accompanied by Milouins and Madame Mastigou. She inclined her head first towards Abiger, and then towards her daughter. ‘But Niobe did not kill her own children, did she, Lamia? It was the immortal gods who decided on their fate.’ She glanced around the room, her eyes strangely unseeing. ‘You will remain here at the house for the foreseeable future. Or at the very least until such time as you can convince me that you’ve seen reason. Milouins will see that you are adequately looked after, and he and the men will watch over you in shifts. You will take your meals with me of course. That will give us time to talk. Aside from that you may use the library and the games room. But not the telephone or a computer. Do you understand me?’

  Lamia’s eyes flared briefly. Then she lowered her gaze in acquiescence. ‘Perfectly, Madame.’

  ‘This is all highly inconvenient, you understand? I have more important things to think of.’

  Abi, who had sprung to attention the moment his mother had entered the room, flashed his sister an old-flashioned look.

  The Countess turned towards her son. ‘Abiger. You have your orders. You and your brother are no longer needed here.’

  ‘No, Madame.’

  ‘Do you have adequate funds?’

  ‘Ample, Madame. As you are well aware.’

  ‘Then don’t let me down.’

  14

  ‘Yeah. I know a fireman. He works in Draguignan, though. Not in St Tropez. He’s a communist. Wears red underpants. Is that any good?’

  Calque closed his eyes. I must be insane, he thought to himself. Why am I doing this? I should be in Tenerife, living in one of those long-let apartments they lease out at peppercorn rents to the silver-haired brigade for the winter. I could play dominoes every morning with retired bank managers and redundant civil servants, and then flirt over the lunchtime aperitif with their wives. I wouldn’t even notice when the infarct took me. And my terminally uncommunicative daughter would only find out her father had finally cashed in his chips when they brought her my medals and the accompanying life-insurance cheque on a velvet-covered tray.

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t do.’ Calque hesitated. ‘I’ll be frank with you, Macron. I owe you that much. I need to get inside a house. A well-guarded house. I need to retrieve something I left there some months ago. Something that involves your cousin, and the people responsible for his death. It occurred to me that if a fire alert were called in – by a concerned citizen, say – everyone inside the house would be forced out while the firemen were checking around inside. I would pay the man for securing this article for me, of course. And I can assure you that it would not be a case of theft. The article belongs to me already. No one else even knows of its existence.’ Calque’s voice trailed off. Brought out into the open like that, his idea sounded lame in the extreme.

  Macron opened a cupboard concealed in a far corner of the workshop. He brought out a bottle and two glasses. ‘Pastis?’

  Calque was on the verge of saying that he was on duty, when he realized that he wasn’t. ‘Gladly.’

  The two men avoided each other’s eyes as they sipped from their glasses.

  Macron allowed his gaze to wander around his workshop. ‘Took me two years to build this place up from scratch. Can you believe that? Summon up a reputation. Get in some regular trade.’ He took another sip of his drink. ‘I’m on the up now. Might even think about getting married. Breeding some hoppers.’

  Calque put down his glass and prepared to leave. The game was up, and he knew it.

  ‘Wait.’ Macron tipped back his head. ‘You see all this?’ He pointed to his carefully tiered stock. ‘Each piece is best-grade hardwood. Over 95 per cent yield. Quadruple A. I get all my lumber from an ex-Legionnaire who lives out near Manosque.’

  ‘Manosque?’ Calque couldn’t work out where Macron was headed. Was the man deaf? Hadn’t he heard anything Calque had said?

  ‘Manosque. Yes. The man’s a marvel. He gets me anything I need. Doesn’t matter what sort of notice I give him. Totally reliable.’ Macron pointed with his chin. ‘That’s his card. Pinned up on the wall over there. You can scribble his name down in your notebook. Say you come from me when you speak to him. Tell him Aime L’OM says marche ou creve. Droit au but.’

  Calque hunched his shoulders questioningly. ‘Lumber? You get your lumber from this man?’ He wanted more. Some assurance that he wasn’t being led up the garden path.

  ‘Good luc
k. I hope you get back what you lost.’

  Calque sighed. He wrote down the woodsman’s name in his notebook.

  Macron hesitated, still reluctant to commit himself – still reluctant to trust a flic. ‘That cousin of mine, Captain. The one the eye-man shot. Your associate. He was a little Front National shit. That metis fiancee of his is well rid of him.’ He slugged back the remnants of his pastis. Then he looked Calque straight in the eye. ‘But his mother. My uncle’s wife. The one who collapsed into her husband’s arms when you told her the news about her son. She’s a woman in a million, that one. I think the world of her.’

  15

  Lamia de Bale glanced out of her bedroom window. It was midnight. The house was finally asleep.

  Outside her door she could hear Philippe, the footman, resettling his chair on the tilt.

  Her first idea had been to switch on the radio. Get him used to the music. But everybody knew that she never listened to music. The little pervert would come straight in to check what was going on out of sheer curiosity. And then he would probably try to inveigle her into bed, as he’d attempted to do on at least three separate occasions in the past year. And this time she was vulnerable. Not his employer’s daughter any more, but a prisoner, with no rights of her own. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  She picked up the bundle of sheets, went into the bathroom, and closed the door.

  First, she switched on the shower. Then she took the pair of surgical scissors out of the first-aid kit, and began slicing the sheets into strips.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this, she intoned to herself. What if I fall? What if I break a bone? They will kill me.

  When she’d finished dissecting the sheets, she began the laborious task of twisting and knotting them together. At one point she switched off the shower, and padded through into the bedroom, making sure to switch on the lamp by her bed and turn off the main light, just as she normally did.