‘Me? Kidnap you?’
Yola sighed. ‘In Manouche families, a man and a woman run off together when they want to get married. It is called a ‘kidnapping’. If a man ‘kidnaps’ you, it is the equivalent of marriage because the girl will no longer be – I don’t know how to say this – intact.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘Why should I joke? I’m telling you the truth.’
‘But I’m your brother.’
‘Not by blood, stupid.’
‘What? That means I could marry you?’
‘With the Bulibasha’s permission, as my father is dead. But if you did that, Alexi would get seriously angry. And then he might choose to really hit you with the knife.’
‘What do you mean ‘might choose to really hit me’? He missed me cleanly.’
‘Only because he wanted to. Alexi is the best knife-thrower in the camp. He does it at circuses and fairgrounds. Everybody knows that. That’s why the Bulibasha chose the knife judgement. They all realised Alexi thought you were innocent of Babel’s death. Otherwise he would have split your hand in two.’
‘Do you mean that all that theatre was just a put-on? That everybody knew all the time that Alexi was going to miss me?’
‘Yes.’
‘But what if he’d hit me by mistake?’
‘Then we’d have had to kill you.’
‘Oh great. That makes sense. Yeah. I see it all clearly now.’
‘You mustn’t be angry, Adam. This way, everybody accepts you. If we’d done it another way, you would have had problems later.’
‘Well that’s all right then.’
Calque watched the two of them through his binoculars. ‘I recognise the girl. It’s Samana’s sister. And Sabir, of course. But who’s the swarthy one using the pissoire?’
‘Another cousin, probably. These people are sick with cousins. Scratch one and cousins fall off them like ticks.’
‘Don’t you like gypsies, Macron?’
‘They’re layabouts. No southerner likes gypsies. They steal, trick and use people for their own purposes.’
‘ Putain. Most people do that in one way or another.’
‘Not like them. They despise us.’
‘We haven’t made life easy for them.’
‘Why should we?’
Calque pretended to nod. ‘Why indeed?’ He would have to watch Macron more carefully, though, in future. In his experience, if a man had one outspoken prejudice, he would be doubly as likely to harbour other, more secret ones, which would only emerge in a crisis. ‘They’re moving. Look. Give them half a minute and then follow on behind.’
‘Are you sure this is regular, Sir? I mean, leaving a murderer to go about his business on the public highway? You saw what he did to Samana.’
‘Have you forgotten about our other friend so quickly?’
‘Of course not. But we’ve nothing against him but your instinct. We have Sabir’s actual blood on Samana’s hand. We can place him at the murder scene.’
‘No we can’t. But we can place him at the bar where the blooding took place. And we have him travelling, seemingly of his own free will, with Samana’s sister. What do you think? That she’s suffering from Stockholm syndrome?’
‘Stockholm syndrome?’
Calque frowned. ‘Sometimes, Macron, I forget that you are quite so young. A Swedish criminologist, Nils Bejerot, coined the term in 1973 after a bank robbery in the Norrmalmstorg district of Stockholm went wrong and a number of hostages were taken. Over the course of six days, some of the hostages began to sympathise more with their captors than with the police. The same thing happened to the newspaper heiress, Patty Hearst.’
‘Ah.’
‘Do you think that Sabir has somehow managed to mesmerise an entire gypsy camp and turn them into his willing accomplices?’
Macron sucked at his teeth. ‘I wouldn’t put anything at all past such people.’
35
‘Do you still feel capable of handling this situation alone?’
Achor Bale was briefly tempted to throw the handset out of the car window. Instead, he gave the woman in the vehicle overtaking him a sarcastic smile, in response to her disapproving look about his use of a cellphone whilst driving.
‘Of course, Madame. Everything is copacetic, as the Americans say. I have Sabir under surveillance. I’ve identified the police car following them. The poor fools have even switched number-plates in an effort to throw off any pursuit.’
The woman’s husband was now leaning forward and gesticulating for him to put down his phone.
Peugeot drivers, thought Bale. In England, they would drive Rovers. In America, Chevrolets or Cadillacs. He pretended to lose concentration and allowed his car to drift a little towards the Peugeot.
The husband’s eyes opened wider. He reached across his wife and honked the horn.
Bale glanced into his rear-view mirror. Alone on the road. Might be amusing. Might even buy him a little extra time. ‘So do you want me to continue or not, Madame? Just say the word.’
‘I want you to continue.’
‘Very well.’ Bale snapped the telephone shut. He accelerated forward and cut viciously in front of the Peugeot. Then he slowed down.
The man hooted again.
Bale pulled slowly to a stop.
The Peugeot stopped behind him and the man got out.
Bale watched him in the rear-view mirror. He hunched down a little in his seat. Might as well milk this a little. Enjoy the process.
‘What do you think you are doing? You very nearly caused an accident.’
Bale shrugged. ‘Look. I’m incredibly sorry. My wife is expecting a baby. I’m due at the hospital. I just needed to check up on how to get there.’
‘A baby, you say?’ The man glanced quickly back at his wife. He began visibly to relax. ‘Look. I’m sorry to make such a fuss. But it’s happening all the time, you know. You really should get yourself a hands-off set. Then you can talk in the car as much as you want without being a danger to other road users.’
‘You’re right. I know it.’ Bale watched a Citroen drift past them and curl around the corner. He glanced down at the tracking radar. A kilometre already. He’d have to make this fast. ‘Sorry again.’
The man nodded and started back for his car. He shrugged his shoulders at his wife and then raised his hands placatingly when she scowled at him.
Bale slipped the car into reverse and stamped on the accelerator. There was the hysterical screech of rubber and then the tyres held their traction and the car lurched backwards.
The man turned towards Bale, his mouth agape.
‘Oy ya yoi ya yoi.’ Bale swung open his car door and leapt out. He glanced wildly up and down the road. The woman was screaming. Her husband was entirely hidden between and beneath the two cars and was making no sound.
Bale grabbed the woman’s hair through the open front window of the Peugeot and began to drag her out. One of her shoes caught between the automatic shift and the stowaway compartment dividing the two front seats. Bale yanked even harder and something gave. He dragged the woman around to the nearside rear door, which still had a winding mechanism.
He half wound down the window and pushed the woman’s head into the gap, facing into the car. Then he wound up the window as tightly as he could and slammed the car door shut.
‘What have we here?’ Calque reached towards the dashboard and raised himself partly out of his seat. ‘You’d better slow down.’
‘But what about…’
‘Slow down.’
Macron cut his speed
Calque squinted at the scene ahead of them. ‘Call an ambulance. Fast. And the police judiciaire.’
‘But we’re going to lose them.’
‘Get the first-aid kit. And clip on the flasher.’
‘But that’ll identify us.’
Calque had the door open before the vehicle had fully stopped. He ran stiffly to where the man was lying and knelt down beside him. ‘Right, Macron. You can tell the paras that he’s still breathing. Barely. But they’ll need a brace. He may have damaged his neck.’ He moved towards the woman. ‘Madame. Stay still. Don’t struggle.’