The Mayan Codex

by Mario Reading

  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 considered 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 apéritif 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
Aimé L’OM says marche ou crève. 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 luck. 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 métis fiancée 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.

  Then she tiptoed back into the bathroom and continued with her task.

  When she had the sheets knotted together to her satisfaction, she measured them out against her forearm. Their length came to about ten metres. She hoped it would be enough.

  Her room was on the third floor of the house, over the courtyard. Once she was safely down, she intended to make inland for Ramatuelle. She knew where Monsieur Brussi, the taxi driver, lived. She had known him all her life. Even though Madame, her mother, had confiscated her purse and credit cards, surely he would agree to take her somewhere – anywhere – on credit?

  She unlatched the window, and sifted the knotted sheets through her hands. She’d taken the precaution of tying a hairbrush to the bottom sheet, and she hoped, in this way, to be able to gauge, even in the dark, how much further she would need to drop if her makeshift rope didn’t stretch all the way down to the ground.

  When the sheets had reached their full extent, she began swinging them from one side to the other, as gently as she was able. The hairbrush struck something a glancing blow.

  Lamia stopped her swinging, and listened, one hand cupped behind her ear. After a minute’s intense concentration, she relaxed. She had learned two things. The first was that there was no one stationed down in the courtyard. The second was that there was a further potential ten-foot drop between the opened shutter that she had just struck with her hairbrush, and the ground.

  She attached the free end of the knotted sheet to the central section of her bedroom window. There. Now she’d lost another foot in length. She’d have to drop down maybe eleven feet in the darkness. She racked her brains as to whether there was anything below her that might fall over and give her away. How stupid she had been not to have checked the whole area over while it was still light.

  With a final, bemused glance at her room, Lamia eased herself out of the window. She was about to leave everything she had ever known behind her. Security, family, tradition, and emotional ties. For twenty-seven years she had been living a monstrous lie.

  The real truth about her life, together with the true motives of the cabal that had adopted her – a cabal to which she had unwittingly and unthinkingly transferred all her loyalties – had only dawned on her following the publicity surrounding her brother’s death. If what she had been doing was by order of the Corpus Maleficus, then just how damaging had all the pathetic little courier jobs – which were all that Madame, her mother, had seen fit to allocate her over the years since her majority – actually been? How much damage had she inadvertently foisted on a society ignorant of the extent – or even the existence – of its own guilt? Now, at last, she would be able to enter the real world unencumbered by any of the baggage of the past.

  Using her feet as clamps, Lamia eased herself gingerly down the knotted line. She was fairly fit in terms of her age – tennis, yoga, and the occasional dance class had been her staples – but she was prone to vertigo, and she found herself thanking Providence that she had been forced to conduct her stunt in the dark.

  Once, halfway down her ersatz rope, and feeling herself in danger of freezing in fear, she had twisted the sheets violently around one wrist until the interrupted blood flow had forced her to gather her wits together and continue on with her descent.

  Finally, after what felt like half an hour but which had, in practice, been no more than a three-minute descent, she encountered the hairbrush with her feet. Carefully, she eased herself all the way down until she was hanging off the extreme end of the knotted line.

  Then, without allowing herself to think, she let go.

  Her plan was to strike the ground running. Instead, she took two lurching paces and fell to her knees. Instantly, every light in the courtyard switched on. Lamia twisted onto her back, her face contorted in shock. This was new. Madame, her mother, had never thought to safeguard the house with automatic security lights before.

  Lamia scrambled to her feet and began to run. Perhaps, when she was out of the courtyard, the lights would switch themselves off? Perhaps, if no one had been watching, they would think that a deer had wandered in from the surrounding fields and triggered the sensor?

  The front doors of the Domaine burst open and Milouins emerged. He was carrying a shotgun.

  Lamia struck out with all her might for the gap between the garage and the stable block. If she could only make it beyond the outbuildings, she might be able to lose herself amongst the vines.

  Milouins threw the shotgun aside and started after her.

  The instant he began to run it became obvious to Lamia that she stood no chance at all of evading him. He ran like an athlete, his hands pumping high above his hips, his face in a rictus of concentration.

  Lamia looked wildly around. Then she stopped, and fell back against the wall, holding her heart. She watched Milouins approach with her head down, sucking in air, like a feral, tethered mare, facing up to the man who intends to master her.

  ‘You’ll come with me, Mademoiselle.’

  Lamia shook her head.

  Milouins took her arm just above the elbow. When she attempted to struggle, he changed his grip so that he was holding both of her arms straight behind her back, where he could exert any pressure he chose against her shoulder sockets. ‘Please, Mademoiselle. I have no wish to hurt you. I’ve known you since you were a little girl. Walk quietly with me. I’d be beholden to you.’

  Lamia let out a sob of frustration. She nodded her head.

  Milouins relaxed his grip. He contented himself with walking two paces behind her, confident in his ability to catch her once again should she attempt to flee.

  The footman who had been guarding Lamia’s room skittered down the steps at the front of the house, the leather soles of his shoes echoing off the marble cladding. He stopped and made a face at Milouins as the pair came ab
reast of him. ‘The old woman will massacre me for this.’ He scowled at Lamia. ‘I hope she gives you to me to do over. I’ll stick a plastic bag over your head so I won’t have to look at you.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Milouins. ‘And go and wake Madame la Comtesse.’

  ‘She’s up already. The burglar alarm must have gone off in her bedroom when you came through the front door without neutralizing it.’

  Lamia, Milouins, and the footman stood in the hall, looking up towards the stairs.

  The Countess, in her dressing gown, and accompanied by a similarly clad Madame Mastigou, was descending the staircase to meet them.

  ‘What shall we do with her, Madame?’ Milouins looked marginally uncomfortable, like an axe-man at a royal execution who is suffering from a sudden onset of lèse majesté.

  ‘Do with her?’ The Countess came to an abrupt halt. ‘Get Philippe to tie her up, feed her a sedative, and then lock her in the Corpus chamber. That way we can all get some sleep. There are no windows in there to tempt her towards further recklessness. I shall decide on her future in the morning.’

  16

  Ex-Sergeant-Chef Jean Picaro – twenty years in the Legion, ten years banged up in La Santé prison for armed robbery, eight years on the outside as a procurer of hard-to-access items to the criminal fraternity – scratched his clean-shaven head with fingernails worn down by years of automatic habit. A former sufferer of bread scabies, which he had contracted at La Santé during a particularly pernicious period in its history, Picaro had found it physically impossible to rid himself of his fifteen-year-old anxiety tic whenever he entered periods of high stress.

  And it was most definitely stress that he was feeling now. One thing was certain – to all intents and purposes he was looking at a straight in-and-out affair. So why was he sweating? And why was he scratching his head like a chimpanzee with mange?