The Mayan Codex

by Mario Reading

  But belief or non-belief was no longer the point. Crimes had been committed. People had been killed and injured. Incipient dementia or not, Calque’s sole remaining purpose in life must be to stop the commission of yet more crimes. He owed his late assistant that much, surely? He owed Paul Macron the courtesy of a significant death.

  31

  Calque ignored the box elevator and made his way laboriously up the stairs. He hesitated for a moment at the threshold to his room. Then he reached down, twisted the handle, and threw the door open in one fluid movement. What was the Corpus going to do? Bushwhack him? Shoot him in a public place? They’d already had their chance at him, and passed on it. He obviously wasn’t that important to them.

  The room was immaculate.

  With a burgeoning sense of hope, Calque hurried across to his suitcase and threw open the lid. All his notes were gone.

  ‘Merde! Putain de merde!’

  Calque slammed the lid of the case. He had grown up under the tutelage of a Protestant mother and a Catholic father, both of whom had instilled in him their very own – although occasionally contradictory – versions of correct behaviour. As a result he rarely swore. What was the point in shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted? But today was something of an exception.

  What terminal lunacy had encouraged him to leave his notes in his hotel room? And why had it never occurred to him to use the hotel safe? Too darned inconvenient, that’s why. If Calque had ever bothered to subscribe to something as mundane as the concept of low self-esteem, he would have been forced to admit to feeling gutted. As it was, his brain simply jerked up another gear and into overdrive. And the first thing on his sparkling new agenda would be to find out all he could about what had happened to the woman.

  Leaving his door wide open – after all, what did he have left for anyone to steal? – Calque retraced his steps down to the lobby. The concierge was back in his usual place, no doubt digesting after his lunch break. Calque cut straight to the chase.

  ‘Did my assistant, Madame Mercier, register with you this morning? She was due to arrive here around breakfast time.’ He allowed the man a brief flash of his illegal badge to further drive home his point.

  The clerk looked about him in so secretive a manner that even if Calque had not been watching out for it, he would have been hard-pressed not to suspect that the man had some hidden agenda. ‘Madame Mercier, you say?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  The clerk swallowed. He looked as if he were fighting some internal battle with himself, and losing. ‘I have to ask you something first. It’s very important.’

  Calque felt like giving the man an open-handed clout around the head. Instead, he nodded encouragingly, his lips fixed in the rictus of an artificial grin. ‘Go on then.’

  ‘How many croissants did you eat for breakfast this morning?’

  Calque’s mouth fell open. He was briefly tempted to reach across and grab the clerk by the scruff of his neck and shake him like a terrier does a rat – but in the present circumstances that might have proved counterproductive. Instead, Calque fixed his eyes on the clerk, leaving the man in little doubt that he would not take kindly if his question masked some vague attempt at a practical joke. ‘You’re serious? The important question you have to ask me is how many croissants I ate for breakfast this morning?’

  The clerk nodded. ‘Yes, Sir. That’s the question the lady told me to put to you.’

  Calque rolled his eyes. He willed himself to cast his mind back to earlier that morning, and not to throttle the clerk. ‘Let’s be surgically precise here. I ate three. Or rather, two and three-quarters. Two of my own, and one of Madame Mercier’s that she inadvertently abandoned, unfinished, on her plate. Does that satisfy you?’

  The clerk scrabbled underneath his counter and came up with an envelope. ‘Then I’ve been told to give you this, Captain.’

  Calque lunged for the envelope.

  The clerk clutched it against his chest, a canine expression on his face.

  Calque grunted. He rummaged around in his pockets and handed the man a ten-Euro note.

  The clerk hesitated, as if he were briefly considering holding out for more. Then he handed Calque the envelope.

  ‘Did anyone else ask for Madame Mercier?’

  The clerk shrugged. ‘If they had, I would have asked them the same question I asked you. And if they had answered correctly, I would have given them the envelope. Madame Mercier gave me the strictest possible instructions.’

  Yes. And a fifty-Euro tip with my money, you snivelling little bastard, thought Calque.

  Calque retreated to the lift, just as if he were contemplating an imminent return to his room. Once out of sight of the front desk, however, he tore open the envelope. All it contained was a single line of writing and an initial.

  8, 7, 11, 13, 12, of where we sat this morning. Your jacket.

  L

  Calque leaned back against the wall. What now? Another trap for him to stumble into? Perhaps the Corpus was having difficulty reading the handwriting on his case notes? Perhaps they wanted to invite him back to the Domaine to make sense of all the material they’d pilfered from his hotel room? It would be a simple enough thing for anyone with a semi-normal IQ to work out where he and Lamia had been sitting that morning. After all, the Corpus had staked out the place with cold-blooded efficiency, had it not? And the road to the beach was a cul-de-sac – meaning it led to a single, specific destination. The whole thing was scarcely nuclear physics.

  Calque shrugged, and began to work out the riddle in his head. He decided that he had little choice, in the circumstances, but to follow where it led him.

  PAMPELONNE PLAGE. Eighth letter N. Seventh letter O. Eleventh letter P. Thirteenth letter A. Twelfth letter L. NOPAL. What was that? Some kind of Mexican cactus, no? Or was it a seaweed? Definitely Mexican, anyway. So what was there likely to be that was Mexican in a town like Cogolin? A restaurant? That was the most likely answer. Or maybe a shop that sold Mexican goods? But more likely a restaurant. Lamia wouldn’t have had a long time to think up her plan, and she would have been under considerable pressure. She would have made the answer as obvious as possible in the time left to her.

  The concierge was obviously for sale to the highest bidder, so no point asking him if there was a Mexican restaurant in town. Calque might as well take out an ad with Radio Free Europe.

  Calque made up his mind. He headed towards the rear of the hotel. This time he expected to be followed. If the Corpus had truly failed to get their hands on Lamia, then he was the obvious person to lead them to her.

  Calque breezed out of the hotel’s rear exit. He accosted the first passer-by he saw and asked the man the way to the nearest police station. Disinformation. That was the name of the game.

  With the address of the gendarmerie safely to hand, Calque walked briskly up the street, looking neither to his right nor left. Let the bastards stew in their own juice. They’d obviously let him go for a reason, and that reason was that they’d failed to get Lamia back. Now they were expecting him to lead them to her. Well, he’d soon show them that they weren’t about to have everything their own way.

  Calque walked boldly up the gendarmerie steps and straight to the main desk in the lobby. ‘Good morning, Sergeant. My name is Captain Joris Calque, Police Nationale, retired.’ He proffered his entirely legal and above-board retirement warrant card – it wouldn’t do to flash the illegal one by mistake.

  The pandore behind the counter stood up and saluted. ‘It’s a pleasure, Captain.’

  Calque returned the salute. So I’ve still got what it takes, he thought to himself. You can take the policeman out of the service, but you can’t take the service out of the policeman. ‘I’m staying up the road, at the Hotel de la Place. I just thought I’d drop by and leave you my card. I have a feeling your Commandant and I know each other from way back.’

  ‘Shall I call him, Captain? I’m sure he’d be pleased to come out and see you.’ />
  ‘No. Please don’t do that. I’m already running late. And I’m sure the Commandant is very busy. I was just passing by on my way to lunch. I’m going to eat at the Nopal. I’m right, aren’t I? It’s just up the road?’

  ‘The Nopal?’

  ‘A Mexican restaurant, yes. Chillies. Enchiladas. Things like that.’

  The desk sergeant grinned. ‘No, Captain. That’s the Esposito. It’s the only foreign restaurant in town. But it’s got a bar attached to it that’s called the Nopal. You’ll find it just off the Place de la Liberté. But I wouldn’t recommend either of them. The Largesse is much better. Proper French food. Try their pot-au-feu. Madame Adelaïde has been using the same recipe for thirty years. And none of us regulars have complained yet. Tell her Sergeant Marestaing recommended you.’

  ‘Ah. That’s it. The Esposito. But we are to meet in the bar first. I knew I would get the name wrong.’ Calque allowed a wistful smile to invest his features. ‘I have no choice in the matter of where I eat today, Sergeant, as I’m invited. But I shall try the Largesse for certain tomorrow, on your personal recommendation. But tell me. Could I possibly use your toilet while I’m here? I have prostate troubles. Need to go every couple of hours. You know how it is?’

  The pandore nodded, as if he did, indeed, know how it was. He directed Calque up the corridor.

  ‘Can I go out the back way when I’m finished? Save myself a walk?’

  A telephone rang on the pandore’s desk, conveniently redirecting the man’s attention away from Calque. ‘There is a rear exit, yes, Captain. Please feel free to use it.’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant. I will.’ Calque felt curiously satisfied following their exchange, as if he had proved to himself that he could still take the initiative. Still cut the mustard.

  Once out in the daylight again, Calque’s demeanour underwent a subtle transformation. He stopped three times before he reached the corner of the street to make sure that no one was following him. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice in one day. He wasn’t about to lead the Corpus back to Lamia.

  With any luck, whoever had been tailing him would be fully taken up with communicating to the Countess that Calque was still tucked cosily away inside the gendarmerie – no doubt spilling the beans about the dead footman. Disinformation. Disingenuousness. Deceit. The three D’s. His late lamented mentor, Maurice Edard – an old-school policeman who had cut his milk teeth in the good old pre-1966 days when the Police Nationale was still the Sûreté – would have been proud of him.

  Calque grinned as he imagined the bedlam back at the Domaine. The Countess would be ordering the decks cleared pretty fast if she thought the police might be about to pay her an unexpected visit.

  32

  By the time he arrived at the Esposito, Calque was 99 per cent certain that he hadn’t been followed. He had doubled back on himself twice more since his first flurry of activity, confined himself to side streets only, and he had even done a Humphrey Bogart – minus Dorothy Malone, unfortunately – in a second-hand bookshop.

  When Calque reached the restaurant he didn’t linger by the menu board, but plunged straight in. He didn’t really expect Lamia to be waiting for him. In fact it was far more likely that the message was a false trail laid by the Corpus in an attempt to provide themselves with a fallback position – in case he eluded them the first time, say, or in case he had been professional enough to actually bother hiding his notes, rather than simply to leave them in plain view, like the very worst sort of greenhorn. But what else could he do but take the note at face value? It was the only way he could think of to remain in the game.

  Lamia was sitting with her back to him, in one of the private booths. Calque’s heart gave a lurch as he saw her. It astonished him to realize that he had been genuinely concerned for her safety. I must be getting soft in my old age, he thought to himself. First I go into mourning for my racist worm of an assistant, and now I’m acting like a bleeding heart for the sister of the very man who killed him.

  He sat down in front of her, facing the door, his expression studiously immobile.

  Lamia looked up at him. She held his eyes for ten seconds, and when he didn’t respond, she quietly slid a packet of papers across the table towards him.

  ‘My notes?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I didn’t dare to hope.’ Calque’s features relaxed, like those of a Chinese shar-pei dog. ‘How in God’s name did you do it?’

  Lamia shrugged. ‘I knew, the moment you gave the taxi driver the name of your hotel, and mentioned the fictitious Madame Mercier in front of him, that my mother would know all about it within twenty minutes – that we would both be fatally compromised. She owns half of St Tropez, Captain. She has feelers everywhere.’

  ‘I know. I spoke to her.’

  Lamia’s eyes widened. ‘You …’

  Calque reached across and squeezed her hand. ‘The notes, Lamia. How did you manage to get the notes? I can explain all the rest of it later.’

  Lamia’s expression lightened momentarily. ‘The taxi journey gave me time to think things through – to work out where we were most vulnerable. When I got to the hotel I pretended to the concierge that I was your mistress. He didn’t bite at first – I mean, who in his right mind would want someone like me as his mistress?’ She thrust herself back in her chair, as though she were challenging Calque to contradict her – to negate the reality of her face. ‘But then I gave him the rest of your money as a sweetener, and he handed over your key. It’s curious how easily men believe us women when we talk of sex.’

  Calque inclined his head politely. In reality he was desperately embarrassed at the sudden vulnerability she had shown about her birthmark. But he found it impossible, in the present circumstances, to summon up a suitably gallant riposte. ‘And my notes? You read them?’

  Lamia turned quickly away.

  ‘Listen. That was not an accusation. I want you to read them – in fact I desperately need your help.’

  Lamia turned back. ‘So you believe me?’

  ‘Yes. I believe you. I lied when I told you about the tape recorder this morning. I got nothing, absolutely nothing, from that idiotic stunt I pulled – apart from the drone of a vacuum cleaner, and the occasional crash of moving furniture.’

  Lamia snatched one hand to her face, as if she were about to stifle an outburst of the giggles.

  Calque pretended not to notice. ‘In point of fact I’m no further forward with anything. I might as well have spent the past five weeks windsurfing in Hawaii for all I’ve managed to achieve.’

  ‘You? Windsurfing? Surely not?’ Lamia allowed her hand to drop slowly back towards the table. It was a strange movement, akin to the shucking of a veil. Almost as if she were voluntarily revealing herself to him for the very first time. She tilted her head fractionally to one side to indicate that she was no longer jesting. ‘Why should I help you, Captain? Why should I betray my family to someone I only met a few hours ago?’

  Calque sat back in his seat. ‘No reason. No reason whatsoever. You’ve already helped me way beyond any capacity I may have to repay you, simply by keeping my notes from the Corpus. If you were to get up and leave now, I would still be infinitely grateful to you. There would be no blame attached to anything you’ve done.’

  Lamia’s eyes scanned Calque’s face, as though searching for clues to a long-standing and elusive mystery. ‘What are you expecting of me?’

  ‘I want you to tell me what you can of the Corpus’s plans.’

  ‘So you do want me to betray my family?’

  ‘Just as they’ve betrayed you. Yes. I won’t lie to you, Lamia. I believe the Corpus to be evil. And furthermore I believe your mother to be a person with no moral scruples whatsoever. Someone who would not hesitate to use any means necessary, including murder, to get her own way.’

  Lamia watched him, one hand splayed across her chest, as if she had temporarily lost control of her heart rate. ‘How much do you already know? About my mot
her, I mean. About her role in the Corpus Maleficus.’

  ‘Assume I know nothing.’

  ‘What particular question do you want to ask me?’

  ‘A simple one. What went on in that room when you all met?’

  Lamia still seemed to be weighing him up. ‘The people you saw. Entering the house. You know they are all my brothers and sisters?’

  ‘I deduced that much, yes. And your mother as good as confirmed it to me.’

  Lamia shook her head. ‘I still don’t understand why she let you go. You say you saw her? It seems impossible to me.’

  Calque waved away the waiter. He hunched towards her across the table. ‘I’m a senior ex-policeman, Lamia. Riverbanks collapse when unexpected things happen to senior ex-policemen – islands are washed away. Your mother was convinced she already had you back under her control. She thought she had my notes. Why muddy the waters further? I don’t think she rates me very highly.’

  ‘Then she’s a fool.’

  ‘It’s nice of you to think so – but I don’t believe it for an instant. But if she has made a mistake about me, then she has made exactly the same mistake about you.’

  Lamia turned her face away from him again. It was obviously a well-rehearsed, if entirely unconscious, movement. Almost as if she wished to give her interlocutor a rest from having to look at her blemish – or to give herself a rest from having to bear the weight of other people’s disenchantment. Just for a moment it was possible for Calque to imagine that she was merely a beautiful young woman – that she didn’t have a monstrous birthmark splayed, like a palm print, across the intimate confines of her cheek.