The Nostradamus Prophecies (28 page)

It had been the drive down to Les Saintes-Maries that had done the damage. Both men had been in an unnaturally avuncular frame of mind. The festival was their highlight of the year – ample opportunities abounded for the settling of old scores and the creating of new ones. Gavril was so close to them and so obvious, that he didn’t count. They were used to him. And it wouldn’t have occurred to them that he could ever be so stupid as to force Bazena on to the streets. So they had drawn him into their vicious little world and made him, ever so briefly, an accomplice before the fact.

Now Stefan was coming at him and all he had to defend himself was a bloody Opinel penknife. When Badu finally succeeded in disentangling himself from his daughter, Gavril knew that he was for it. They would carve out his lights.

Gavril threw the penknife with all his might at Stefan and then legged it through the crowd. There was a roar behind him but he paid it no mind. He had to get away. He could decide how best to conduct damage limitation exercises later. This was a matter of life and death.

He zigzagged through the assembled gypsies like a madman – like an American footballer running interference through an enemy team’s defences. Instinctively, Gavril used the five bells in the open see-through tower of the church as his visual guide, meaning to sprint down towards the docks and steal himself a boat. With only three possible roads out of town and both incoming and outgoing motor traffic moving at a snail’s pace in the run-up to the festival, it was the only sensible way to go.

Then, on the junction of the Rue Espelly and the Avenue Van Gogh and just in front of the Bull Arena, he saw Alexi. And behind him, Bale.

Alexi had been just about to return the statue of Sainte Sara to its plinth in disgust. This had all been a grotesque waste of time. How did Sabir expect things that had happened hundreds of years before to carry over into the modern-day era? It was madness.

For his part, Alexi found it almost impossible to imagine himself twenty years back in time, let alone five hundred. The jottings that Sabir had so confidently decoded seemed to him nothing but the ramblings of a madman. It served people right if they insisted on writing everything down and communicating that way. Why didn’t they simply talk to each other? If everyone just talked, the world would make considerably more sense. Things would be immediate. Just as they were in Alexi’s world. He woke up every morning and thought about the way he felt now. Not about the past. Or the future. But now.

He nearly missed the cork of resin. Over the centuries it had weathered to a similar walnut sheen to the rest of Sainte Sara’s painted plinth. But its consistency was different. When he gouged at it with his penknife, it came up in spirals, like wood-shavings, rather than as powder. He levered away at it until it popped out. He felt inside the hole with his finger. Yes. There was something else there.

He stuck his penknife inside the hole and twisted. A gob of fabric came out. Alexi spread it across his hand and looked at it. Nothing. Just a motheaten bit of linen with worm holes in it.

He peered down the hole, but couldn’t see anything.

Intrigued, he tapped the statue sharply on the ground. Then again. A bamboo tube fell out. Bamboo? Inside a statue?

Alexi was about to snap the bamboo in two when he heard the sound of footsteps coming down the broad stone stairway to the crypt.

Swiftly, he tidied away the marks of his passage and returned the statue to its place. Then he prostrated himself on the ground before it.

He could hear the footsteps approaching him. Malos mengues! What if it was the eye-man? He’d be a sitting duck.

‘What are you doing here?’

Alexi levered himself up and blinked. It was the watchman. ‘What do you think I’m doing? I’m praying. This place is a church, isn’t it?’

‘No need to get shirty about it.’ It was obvious that the watchman had had run-ins with gypsies before and wished to avoid a recurrence. Particularly after what he had just seen in the square.

‘Where is everybody?’

‘You mean you didn’t hear?’

‘Hear what? I was praying.’

The watchman shrugged. ‘Two of your people. Arguing over a woman. One threw a knife at the other. Caught him in the eye. Blood everywhere. They tell me the eye was hanging out on a string down the man’s cheek. Disgusting. Still. Serves people right for fighting on a holy occasion. They should have been down here, like you.’

‘Thrown knives don’t pop eyes out on to cheeks. You’re making this up.’

‘No. No. I saw the blood. People were screaming. One of the policemen had the eye on a pad and was trying to put it back in.’

‘Mary Mother of God.’ Alexi wondered whether it was Gavril who had lost his eye. That would queer his pitch. Slow him up a little. Perhaps he wouldn’t be quite so keen to laugh at other people’s deformities now that he was missing an organ of his own? ‘Can I kiss the Virgin’s feet?’ Alexi had seen some resin shavings still on the floor – a quick puff of air would lose them beneath Sainte Sara’s skirts.

The watchman looked around. The crypt was deserted. People’s attention was still obviously focused on what was happening up in the square. ‘Okay. But make it quick.’

Bale had moved in on Alexi almost immediately the gypsy had left the church. But the gypsy was hyper-alert. Like a greyhound after a race. Whatever he’d been doing in there had psyched him up and his adrenalin was pumping.

Bale had half expected the gypsy to turn immediately back into the square, to check out what was happening and to find Sabir. But the gypsy had hurried down through the Place Lamartine towards the sea instead. Why? Had he found something in there?

Bale decided to shadow Alexi out of town. It was always a good idea to get well clear of the most populated areas. The location of the killing would matter as little as the end result, as far as the police were concerned. It would still be merely another gypsy knifing. But this way he would have ample time to rifle through Alexi’s pockets and find whatever it was he’d filched or copied down from inside the crypt. He quickened his pace, therefore and sacrificed invisibility, counting on the crowd to protect him.

It was then that Alexi saw him. Bale knew he’d been seen because the gypsy missed his footing in shock and fell briefly down on to one knee. Alexi was no Johnny-Head-in-the-Air, like Gavril.

Bale started running. It was now or never. He couldn’t let the man get away. The gypsy was clutching something tightly to his chest – the loss of the use of one of his arms was actively hampering his speed. So whatever it was, was important to him. Therefore it was important to Bale.

Now he was heading for the Arena. Good. Once he was out on the Esplanade it would be far easier to see him. Far easier to mark him out from the crowd.

People turned to stare as the two men pounded past them.

Bale was fit. He had to be. Ever since the Legion he’d realised that fitness equated with health. Your body listened to you. Fitness freed it from the oppression of gravity. Find the right balance and you could very nearly fl y.

Alexi was light on his feet but nobody could call him fit. In fact he had never consciously exercised in his life. He merely lived an unconsciously healthy life, in natural harmony with his instincts, which drove him more towards feeling healthy than to feeling unwell. Gypsy men traditionally died young, usually as a result of smoking, genes and alcohol. In Alexi’s case he had never taken to smoking. His genes he could do nothing about. But alcohol had always been a weakness and he was still feeling the after-effects of both the wedding blow-out and being fallen upon from a considerable height by a man in a chair. The same man who was now following him.

He could sense himself starting to flag. Five hundred metres to go until he reached the horses. Please God they had left the saddles on. If he knew Bouboul’s family, no one would have even bothered to touch the horses after he, Yola and Sabir had arrived in town from the Maset de la Marais, two hours before and left them in Bouboul’s care. The horses offered him his only chance of escape. He had had the opportunity to check out all three and he knew that the mare with the four black socks was by far the best. If the eye-man didn’t catch him before he reached Bouboul’s, he would still be in with a chance. He could even ride bareback if the worst came to the worst.

One thing Alexi was supremely good at was coping horses. He had done it ever since he was a child.

Now all he had to do was to reach the beach and pray.

Gavril could feel the anger of outrage building up in him as he followed Bale and Alexi. It was their fault that this succession of tragedies had happened to him. Without falling foul of Alexi he would never have met the gadje. And without the gadje spearing him in the leg with his knife he would never have had the run-in with the police. And, in consequence, he would never have heard of the reward. Or had it been the other way around? Sometimes Gavril’s mind ran away with him and he lost track of things.

Either way, he would still have come to Les Saintes-Maries, it is true, but he would have been in control of events and not have allowed events to control him. He could have confronted Alexi at his leisure, when the fool was good and drunk. Gavril was a Master of low shots – of playing to the gallery. What he didn’t like were sudden changes to established patterns.

Perhaps he could still pull the pig from the fire? If he allowed the gadje to deal with Alexi, the man would lose concentration. It would cause him to be vulnerable. With both of them in hand, Gavril would really have something to sell to the policemen. A simple phone-call would do it. Then, after they paid him the reward, he could negotiate with the policemen so that Badu and Stefan would be warned off messing with him. All gypsies were scared witless of prison. It would be the one thing capable of controlling them.

Maybe he could still marry Yola? Yes. This way his plans needn’t be changed after all. All could be well again.

Hurrying after the two men, he idly he wondered how much money Bazena had been able to inveigle from the tourists before her interfering father had managed to put a stop to it.

Sabir looked vainly around for Alexi. What had the idiot done? Last seen, he had been heading off towards the church. But Sabir had checked out the crypt and found him nowhere. And this crypt wasn’t like the one at Rocamadour. Here, there was nowhere to hide – unless he’d somehow managed to secrete himself beneath Sainte Sara’s multi-layered skirts.

He returned to the town hall as arranged. ‘Have you found him?’

Yola shook her head.

‘Well what do we do then?’

‘Maybe he’s gone back to the Maset? Maybe he found something? Did you see him actually enter the church?’

‘You couldn’t see anything in that bedlam.’

Instinctively, without saying a word to each other, they turned down the Avenue Leon Gambetta towards the Plage des Amphores and the horses.

Sabir glanced across at Yola. ‘You did brilliantly by the way. I just wanted to tell you that. You’re a born agent provocateur.’

‘Agent provocatrice. Who taught you your French?’

Sabir laughed. ‘My mother. But her heart wasn’t in it. She wanted me to be an All-American, like my father. But I let her down. I turned into an All-or-Nothing instead.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Neither do I.’

They’d reached Bouboul’s caravan. The picket where the three horses should have been tethered was conspicuously empty.

‘Great. Someone’s made off with the bloody lot. Or maybe Bouboul’s sold them for dog meat? Do you know what shanks’s pony is, Yola?’

‘Wait. There’s Bouboul. I’ll ask him what happened to them.’

Yola hurried across the road. Watching her, Sabir realised that he was missing something – some clue that she had already picked up. He crossed the road behind her.

Bouboul threw his hands up in the air. He was talking in Sinti. Sabir tried to follow but was unable to do more than understand that something unexpected had happened and that Bouboul was loudly disclaiming any responsibility for it.

Finally, tiring of Bouboul’s harangue, Sabir drew Yola to one side. ‘Translate, please. I can’t make out a word of what this guy is saying.’

‘It is bad, Damo. As bad as it could be.’

‘Where have the horses gone?’

‘Alexi took one. Twenty minutes ago. He was exhausted. He had been running. According to Bouboul he was so worn out he could hardly mount the horse. Thirty seconds later another man came running up. This man was not tired at all. He had strange eyes, according to Bouboul. He didn’t look at anybody. Talk to anybody. He simply took the second horse and rode off after Alexi.’

‘Jesus Christ. That’s all we needed. Did Bouboul try and tangle with him?’

‘Does he look like a fool? They were not Bouboul’s horses. They weren’t even ours. Why should he risk himself for someone else’s property?’

‘Why indeed?’ Sabir was still trying to figure out what might have triggered the chase. ‘Where is the third horse? And was Alexi carrying anything? Ask him.’

Yola turned to Bouboul. They exchanged a few brief sentences in Sinti. ‘It’s worse than I thought.’

‘Worse? How can it be worse? You already said it was as bad as it could be.’

‘Alexi was carrying something. You were right. A bamboo tube.’

‘A bamboo tube?’

‘Yes. He had it clutched to his chest like a baby.’

Sabir grabbed Yola’s arm. ‘Don’t you see what that means? He found he prophecies. Alexi found them.’

‘But that is not all.’

Sabir closed his eyes. ‘You don’t need to tell me. I picked up the name while you were talking. Gavril.’

‘Yes, Gavril. He was following both of them. He arrived about a minute after the eye-man. It was he who took the third horse.’