Seeking Whom He May Devour (17 page)

“It means a wolf that wanders far and wide. Massart won’t hide under a stone, he’ll keep going, moving on each night. He knows the little roads like the back of his hand. He knows where he can go to ground.”

“But Massart is
not
a werewolf,” Camille said.

There was a brief silence in the cab. Camille could feel Watchee making an effort not to respond.

“Well, at least he thinks he’s a wolf,” Soliman said. “That’s sufficient.”

“Probably.”

“Did the trapper show this map to the
flics
?”

“Obviously he did. They take it to refer to an ordinary trip to Manchester.”

“And the Xs?”

“Just simple job-related marks, they say. It holds water, if you’re convinced that Suzanne was savaged by a wolf, and only a wolf. And the police
are
convinced of that.”

“Idiots,” said Watchee authoritatively. “Wolves do not attack humans.”

Another pause. The memory of Suzanne lying in her own blood flashed through Camille’s mind.

“No,” Camille mumbled.

“We hunt him down,” said Watchee.

Camille switched on the ignition and manoeuvred the lorry out of the lay-by. She drove on for a good while with her arms taut on the wheel before anything more was said.

“I’ve worked it out,” Soliman said at length. “Massart can do between fifteen and twenty kilometres a night
without
overstretching the animals. He must be on the northern edge of the Mercantour now, let’s say around the level of the Col de la Bonette. So tonight he’ll have an easy downhill walk towards Jausiers, about twenty-five kilometres. That’s where we’ll expect him tomorrow morning, if we haven’t crossed his path already, higher up.”

“Do you want us to spend all night driving round the Mercantour?”

“I’m simply suggesting we pitch camp at the Col. We’ll take turns to keep watch on the road, but I don’t expect any result. He knows the goat-tracks and the passes. At five thirty in the morning we’ll drive down to Loubas and that’s where we’ll pounce on him.”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘pounce’?” asked Camille. “Have you ever tried to pounce on someone who has a mastiff and a trained wolf for bodyguards?”

“We’re going to set ourselves up properly first. We’ll identify his car. Then we tail him until he savages another flock. We’ll catch him at it, red-handed. That’s when we pounce.”

“We means you and who, Sol?”

“We’ll sort that later. It’s a nuisance you don’t know Jausiers.”

“Why?”

“Because that means you don’t know the road either. It climbs to almost three thousand metres, with a hairpin every few hundred metres. It’s barely wider than the lorry. There’s a sheer drop over the side and the barrier wall’s got a gap in it every few feet. What we’ve done so far is a picnic compared to what’s up ahead.”

“I see,” Camille said. “I didn’t think the Mercantour was quite like that.”

“What did you think it was like, then?”

“I imagined a hot and slightly hilly sort of area, with olive trees. That sort of thing.”

“Well, no. It’s cold and hilly to the utmost extreme. There are larches, but when it gets too high for them to survive, there’s nothing at all, just us three, and a lorry.”

“How jolly,” Camille said.

“Didn’t you know that olive trees can’t grow above six hundred metres?”

“Six hundred metres above what?”

“Above sea level, for heaven’s sake. Olive trees stop at the six hundred metre line, everyone knows that.”

“Where I come from there aren’t any olive trees.”

“You must be joking. So what do people live on?”

“Beet. Beets are brave, you know. They never give up, and they go right round the world.”

“If you were to plant beets up on the Mercantour, they would die.”

“Fine. That’s not what I was aiming to do. How far is it to the top of the bloody Col?”

“About fifty kilometres. The last twelve are the worst. Do you think you can manage it?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Can you give a real heave with those arms?”

“Yes, I can heave with these arms.”

“Do you think you can make it?”

“Leave her alone, Sol,” Watchee growled. “Leave her in peace.”

XIX

IT WAS SEVEN
in the evening and the day’s heat was slowly waning. Camille kept her hands on the wheel and her eyes straight ahead. The road was still wide enough for two cars to pass, but the unending switchbacks were wearing her arms out. The trouble was that she had virtually no margin for error.

The road went ever up. Camille wasn’t saying a word, and Soliman and Watchee had fallen silent too, their eyes glued to the landscape. The familiar foliage of hazelnut and oak was long behind them. Now serried ranks of dark
sylvestris
pines marched over the hillsides. Camille found them as sinister and as disturbing as columns of black-clad soldiers. Further up you could make out the start of the larch forest which was a little lighter in colour but just as regimented and military, then the green-grey grass of the high plateau and then, higher up still, bare rock reaching to the summit. The higher you go the harsher it gets. She relaxed for a few moments on the descent into Saint-Étienne, the last village at the head of the valley
before
the big climb to the Col. The last inhabited outpost. Much more sensible to stop here, call it off, settle down. Taking this cattle truck up two thousand metres over the next twenty-five kilometres was not going to be a piece of cake.

Camille pulled up just after Saint-Étienne, took the water bottle, drank slowly, and let her arms hang loose. She wasn’t sure she could control the lorry in these conditions. She did not like sheer drops and felt that she was at the limit of her physical abilities.

Soliman and Watchee said nothing. They were peering intently at the mountainside, and Camille was not sure whether they were trying to make out the bent shadow of the werewolf, or whether they were fretting about what the lorry might fall into. But since they looked pretty confident Camille reckoned they must be on the lookout for Massart.

She glanced at Soliman, who smiled back.

“Obstinacy,” he said. “‘The quality or condition of being obstinate; stubbornness; persistency.’”

Camille started the engine and the livestock transporter moved on, away from the village. A sign told them this was the start of Europe’s highest road. Another sign advised caution. Camille took a deep breath. It stank of sweat, dog and sheep, but in the circumstances that homely if stomach-turning blend was almost comforting.

A little more than two kilometres further on they crossed into the Mercantour National Park. Much as Camille had feared, the corkscrew road narrowed until it seemed no wider than a shoelace, no more significant
than
a scratch on the mountainside. The engine roared and the bodywork rattled as the sheep wagon nosed its way up, with less thunderous moments only on the flatter curves of left-hand hairpin bends. The near-side wing was inches from the sheer rising cliff, and from her window Camille could see straight down to the bottom of the ravine. She tried to keep her eyes off that spectacle and watched out instead for the kilometre posts by the roadside. Above 2,000 metres’ altitude the trees grew sparser, and the engine began to pink in the thinner air. Gritting her teeth to keep on going, Camille kept a wary eye on the water temperature gauge. It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that the lorry would make it to the top. A brawny lass, Buteil had called her, but he had had lots of practice nursing her from pasture to mountain pasture. Camille would not right now have said no to a helping hand from him, just to get to the top of this Col.

At 2,200 metres the last puny larches gave way to verdant carpets of grazing set against the grey slopes. A harsh kind of beauty, to be sure: a vast, noiseless, lunar landscape in which people, not to mention their sheep, were mere specks. Lonely, old, tin-roofed sheepfolds were dotted around the fields. Camille glanced at Watchee. With his face overshadowed by his faded hat, he sat so still and steadfast, like a ship’s captain standing at the bridge, that he almost seemed to be drowsing. She thought him admirable. She was awed by his having spent more than half a century living in these immense uninhabited spaces, no bigger than a flea on a mammoth’s back, without making the slightest fuss about it.
People
always seemed to be hinting at something dark when they said that Massart had never had a wife; Watchee had not been married either, but nobody commented on that. Always on his own up in his mountains. Two thousand six hundred and twenty metres. Camille cautiously overtook two cyclists weaving out of exhaustion, only yourself to blame, and then double-declutched into first for the last round of tight bends before the top. Her whole chest was aflame with aching muscles.

“Summit,” Soliman shouted above the engine noise. “ ‘The top, the highest point; utmost elevation, as of rank, prosperity, etc.’ Pull in over there, Camille, there’s a parking area at the peak.”

Camille nodded.

She brought the lorry to a halt in the lengthening shade, switched off the engine, let her arms fall to her side and closed her eyes.

“Break,” Soliman said to Watchee. “‘Respite from labour, pause in activity, downtime, rest.’ Let’s get down and make dinner while she’s getting her strength back.”

It wasn’t so easy to get out of the cab and Soliman had to lend the old shepherd a helping hand and almost lift him down the two steps.

“Don’t treat me as if I was ready for the scrap-heap,” Watchee said sharply.

“You’re not ready for the scrap-heap. You’re just very old, very stiff, and quite knocked about, and if I don’t give you a hand you’ll most likely break your neck. Then we’d have to look after you for the rest of the trip.”

“Bugger off, Sol. Let go of me now.”

One hour later, Camille joined the two men for dinner in the open, sitting on the folding stools set around the tea chest. It was getting dark. Camille looked over the peaks and pine trees that filled the landscape as far as the eye could see. Not a hamlet, not a shack, not a single human being could be seen moving in what was the wolves’ natural habitat. At this moment the two cyclists panted over the top of the Col and disappeared down the other side.

“There we are now,” she said. “All on our own.”

“There are three of us on our own together,” said Soliman as he passed her a plate.

“Plus Warp,” Camille added.

“Woof,” Soliman insisted. “‘Threads that cross from side to side of the loom.’”

“Yes,” Camille said. “Sorry.”

“There are four of us,” Watchee said by way of correction.

Sitting up straight on his stool he gestured towards the high pastures.

“We three, and him,” he said. “He’s about. He’s gone to ground, but he’s lurking. In an hour’s time, when it’s completely dark, he’ll move off with his animals. He’ll be looking for meat to feed them, and himself.”

“Do you think he too eats the flesh of the sheep he kills?” Soliman said.

“He has to drink their blood, at least,” Watchee asserted. “We forgot to get the wine out,” he added without a pause. “Go and get it, Sol. I put a whole case behind the canvas curtain, by the toilet.”

Sol came back with an unlabelled bottle of white wine. Watchee held it out for Camille’s approval.

“
Vin du pays
,” he said as he took the corkscrew from his pocket. “Our own, from the vineyards of Saint-Victor. Doesn’t travel at all. It’s a miracle, like a gift of life. It’s got a fair nose, good legs, and a broad bottom. It’s all the wine we need.”

Watchee raised his elbow and took a swig.

“You’re not all on your own up here,” said Sol, pulling down the shepherd’s arm. “You’ve got company. Don’t drink like a pig. From now on we’ll use wine glasses.”

“I was going to share it,” said Watchee.

“That’s not the point,” said Soliman. “The point is glasses.”

He gave a tumbler to Camille who held it out for Watchee to fill.

“Careful,” the old man said as he poured. “It’s got a tail.”

It certainly was an unusual wine – sweet and slightly sparkling; and it had been warmed right through in the back of the lorry. Camille could not decide whether it would keep them alive for the rest of the trip or kill them off in three days. She held out her glass for more.

“Be careful about that sting in the tail,” Watchee warned again with raised index finger.

“We’ll take turns at sentry duty over there,” said Soliman, pointing to the bare knoll on their right. “From there you can keep an eye on the whole mountainside. Camille, you take first watch until half past midnight, I’ll do second watch. I’ll call reveille at five thirty.”

“The young lady should get some sleep,” Watchee said. “She’s got to get us all down the mountain in the morning.”

“That’s true,” said Soliman.

“I’ll be fine,” Camille said.

“We haven’t got a gun,” said Watchee with a resentful glance at Camille. “What do we do if we see him?”

“He won’t come over the Col by the road,” said Soliman. “He’ll use a sidetrack. All we can hope for is to catch sight or sound of him. If we do, we’ll know to within the hour when we can expect to nab him at Loubas.”

Watchee rose with the help of his crook, folded his canvas stool and put it under his arm.

“I’ll let the dog stay with you, young lady,” he said to Camille. “Woof defends women.”

He shook her hand very formally, the way tennis players do at the end of a match, and got into the lorry. Soliman watched him with mistrustful eye, and then went on in after him.

“Hey!” he said when he was inside. “Don’t sleep starkers. Did that occur to you? You can’t sleep in the altogether.”

“I’ll do as I please in my own bed, Sol. Bugger off.”

“You won’t be
in
your bed, you’ll be
on
your bed in this stifling tin can.”

“So what?”

“She has to come past to get to her bed. I don’t see why she should have to set her eyes on you in your birthday suit.”

“How about you?” Watchee said.

“I’m in the same boat,” said Soliman haughtily. “I’ll keep a whatsit on.”