So. His plan to waylay the policeman, question him and steal his clothes, was a non-starter. Tant pis. It was obvious, too, that he would no longer be able to break into the Sanctuary and check out the base of La Morenita. Wherever you found one of these concealed clowns lurking about, there were always more nearby. They operated in packs, like meerkats. The idiots obviously thought there was safety in numbers.
Bale felt around for his pistol. He couldn’t just wait there until dawn – he’d have to take action. The policeman was now outlined neatly against the luminous expanse of the Sanctuary square behind him. He would kill the man, then lose himself near the buildings. The police would figure that he’d headed back into the hills and focus their manpower in that direction. By morning, the place would be abuzz with helicopters.
But then they would almost certainly find his car. Lift it for DNA and prints. They’d have him cold. Get him on to their computers. Start up a record on him. Bale shivered superstitiously.
The paramilitary stood up, hesitated a little and then started up the hill towards him. What the Hell was happening? Had he been seen? Impossible. The man would have let rip with his Star Z-84 sub-machine gun. Bale smiled. He had always wanted a Star. A useful little gun: 600 rounds a minute; 9mm Luger Parabellum; 200-metre effective range. The Star would provide some compensation at least for the loss of his Remington.
Bale lay still, with his face turned to the ground. His hands – the only other part of him that might show up in the incipient moonlight – were tucked safely away underneath him, cradling the pistol.
The man was coming straight at him. He’d be looking ahead, though. Not expecting anything at ground level.
Bale took a deep breath and held it. He could hear the man breathing. Smell the man’s sweat and the waft of garlic left over from his dinner. Bale fought back the temptation to raise his head and check out exactly where the man was.
The man’s foot slid off a stone and brushed Bale’s elbow. Then the paramilitary was past him and heading up towards Macron.
Bale swivelled around on his hip. In one surge he was behind the man, the Redhawk held against his throat. ‘Drop. To your knees. No sound.’
Bale noted the sharp intake of breath. The tensing of the man’s shoulders. It was no-go. The man intended to respond.
He thrashed the man across the temple with the barrel of the Redhawk and then again across the base of the neck. Pointless killing him. He didn’t want to alienate the Spanish any more than was strictly necessary. This way they’d just resent the French for having put them in such an invidious, humiliating position. If he killed one of them, they’d sic Interpol on him, and harass him until the day he died.
He liberated the Star and then rifled the man’s pockets for anything else of use. Handcuffs. Identity papers. He was briefly tempted to take the man’s helmet transceiver but then decided that the rest of the paramilitary chameleons might be able to trace him on the back of it.
Should he revisit Lieutenant Macron? Give him another tap on the head?
No. No point. He had maybe half an hour’s start across the mountains before they cottoned on to what had happened. With luck, that would be enough. There was no way they could track him effectively in the dark – and by dawn he would be long gone. Back to Gourdon to renew acquaintance with friend Sabir.
63
‘I think you’ve had enough to drink, Alexi. You’re going to feel like Hell tomorrow.’
‘My teeth and my ribs are hurting now. The rakia is good for them. It is antiseptic.’ He slurred the word so badly that it sounded like ‘athletic’.
Sabir looked around for Yola, but she was nowhere to be seen. The wedding celebration was on its final legs, with musicians gradually dropping out either through exhaustion or inebriation, whichever came first.
‘Give me the gun. I want to shoot it.’
‘That wouldn’t be a good idea, Alexi.’
‘Give me the gun!’ Alexi grabbed Sabir by the shoulders and shook him. ‘I want to be John Wayne.’ He threw his hand out in a great arc to encompass the camp and the surrounding caravans. ‘I am John Wayne! You hear me? I am going to shout-out your lights!’
Nobody took any notice of him. Throughout the evening, at surprisingly frequent intervals, men had stood up, in a fever of alcohol and declared themselves. One had even claimed to be Jesus Christ. His wife had hurried him off to catcalls and jeering from as yet less inebriated souls. Sabir supposed this must be what the novelist Patrick Hamilton had meant when he defined the four stages of drunkenness as plain drunk, fighting drunk, blind drunk and dead drunk. Alexi was at the fighting drunk stage and clearly had a long way still to go.
‘Hey! John Wayne!’
Alexi swung around dramatically, his hands falling to his hips and to an imaginary pair of six-shooters. ‘Who asks for me?’
Sabir had already identified Gavril. Well here goes, he thought to himself. Whoever said life isn’t predictable?
‘Yola tells me you lost your balls. That the same guy who kicked out your teeth also bit your balls off.’
Alexi weaved a little, his face contorted in concentration. ‘What did you say?’
Gavril wandered closer but his eyes were elsewhere, as if part of him felt detached from whatever it was he was machinating. ‘I didn’t say anything. Yola said it. I don’t know anything about your balls. In fact I’ve always known you didn’t have any. It’s a family problem. None of the Dufontaines have balls ‘
‘Alexi. Leave it.’ Sabir put one hand on Alexi’s shoulder. ‘He’s lying. He’s trying to wind you up.’
Alexi shrugged him off. ‘Yola never said that. She never said my balls didn’t work. She knows nothing about my balls.’
‘Alexi…’
‘Then who else told me?’ Gavril threw out his arms in triumph.
Alexi glanced around, as if he expected Yola suddenly to appear from around the corner of one of the caravans and confi rm what Gavril was saying. He had a peeved expression on his face and one side of his mouth was hanging down, as if he’d suffered a minor stroke alongside his crushing by the chair.
‘You won’t find her here. I just left her.’ Gavril sniffed his fingers melodramatically.
Alexi lurched across the clearing towards Gavril. Sabir reached out one arm and swung him around, just as you would do a child. Alexi was so taken aback that he lost his footing and landed heavily on his rump.
Sabir stepped between him and Gavril. ‘Leave it off. He’s drunk. If you have a problem, you can sort it out another time. This is a wedding, not a kriss.’
Gavril hesitated, his hand hovering over one pocket.
Sabir could see that Gavril had worked himself up into thinking that he could deal with Alexi once and for all – and that Sabir’s presence between him and Alexi was not something that he had made any allowances for. Sabir felt the cold weight of the Remington in his pocket. If Gavril came at him, he would pull out the pistol and shoot a warning round at his feet. End the thing there. He certainly didn’t fancy taking a knife-thrust through the liver at this early stage in his life story.
‘Why are you talking for him, payo? Hasn’t he got the balls to talk for himself?’ Gavril’s voice had begun to lose its urgency.
Alexi was lying face down on the ground, with his eyes shut and was obviously way beyond talking to anybody. He had clearly moved from fighting drunk all the way through to dead drunk without bothering to visit blind drunk in between.
Sabir pressed home his advantage. ‘As I said – you can both sort this out another time. A wedding is certainly not the place to do it.’
Gavril clicked his teeth and gave a backwards thrust of the head. ‘All right, gadje. You tell that prick Dufontaine this from me. When he comes to the festival of Les Trois Maries, I shall be waiting for him. Sainte Sara can decide between us.’