She resembled her son in an uncanny way. Upon hearing the confirmation of her boy’s death, she had instantly turned for comfort to her husband and now she clung to his waist, crying silently, the baking dust from his apron coating her face like whitewash.
When Calque was finally able to withdraw, one of Macron’s male relatives followed him out into the street. Calque turned to face him, half prepared for a physical assault. The man looked hard and fit. He had a razor-strop haircut. Indeterminate tattoo-ends burst from his sleeves to scatter out across the backs of his hands like varicose veins.
Calque regretted that the policewoman had remained inside with the rest of the family – the presence of a uniform might have acted as something of a curb.
But the man did not approach Calque in an aggressive manner. In fact he screwed his face up questioningly and Calque soon realised that something other than Macron’s death was foremost on his mind.
‘Paul telephoned me yesterday. Did you know that? But I wasn’t there. My mother took the message. I’m a joiner, these days. I have a lot of work on.’
‘Yes? You are a joiner these days? An excellent profession.’ Calque had not intended to sound abrupt, but the words came out defensively, despite his best intentions.
The man narrowed his eyes. ‘He said you were looking for a man who was in the Legion. A killer. That you thought the Legion would hold back the information that you needed. That they would force you to go through the usual fucking bureaucratic hoops they always use to protect their people with. That was what he said.’
Calque nodded in sudden understanding. ‘Paul told me about you. You are the cousin who was in the Legion. I should have realised.’ He was on the verge of saying ‘because you people get a particular look – like a walking slab of testosterone – and because you use “fucking” every other word’, but he somehow managed to control himself. ‘You were also in prison, were you not?’
The man looked away up the street. Something seemed to be irritating him. After a moment he turned back to Calque. He forced his hands inside his pockets, as if he felt that the material itself might prevent them from rioting – but still the hands thrust themselves towards Calque as if they wished to break through the cloth and throttle him. ‘I’m going to forget you said that. And that you’re a fucking policeman. I don’t like fucking policemen. For the most part they’re no fucking better than the cunts they bang up.’ He clamped his mouth tightly shut. Then he snorted long-sufferingly and glanced back down the street. ‘Paul was my cousin, even though he was a fucking bedi. This shit-heap killed him, you say? I was in the Legion for twenty fucking years. I ended up a fucking quartermaster. Do you want to ask me anything? Or do you want to scuttle back to fucking Headquarters and check out my criminal fucking record first?’
Calque’s decision was instantaneous. ‘I want, to ask you something.’
The man’s face changed – becoming lighter, less enclosed. ‘Fire away then.’
‘Do you remember a man with strange eyes? Eyes with no whites to them?’
‘Go on.’
‘This man may be French. But he might also have been pretending to be a foreigner to get into the ranks of the Legion as a soldier and not an officer.’
‘Give me more.’
Calque shrugged. ‘I know people change their names when they enter the Legion. But this man was a Count. Brought up as an aristocrat. In a family with servants and money. His original name may have been de Bale. Rocha de Bale. He would not have fitted easily into the role of a common soldier. He would have stuck out. Not only because of his eyes, but also on account of his attitude. He would have been used to leading, not being led. To giving orders, not taking them.’ Calque’s head snapped back like a turtle’s. ‘You know him, don’t you?’
The man nodded. ‘Forget Rocha de Bale. And forget leading. This cunt called himself Achor Bale. And he was a loner. He pronounced his name like an Englishman would. We never knew where he came from. He was crazy. You didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. We’re tough in the Legion. That’s normal. But he was tougher. I never thought I’d ever have to think about the cocksucker again.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘In Chad. During the 1980s. The fucker started a riot. On purpose, I would say. But the authorities exonerated him because no one dared to testify against him. A friend of mine was killed during that action. I would have testified. But I wasn’t there. I was at the baisodrome, wasting my pay on porking blood sausage. You know what I mean? So I knew nothing about it. The cunts wouldn’t listen to me. But I knew. He was an evil fucking bastard. Not quite right in the head. Too much interested in guns and killing. Even for a fucking soldier.’
Calque put away his notebook. ‘And the eyes? That’s true? That he has no whites to his eyes?’
Macron’s cousin turned on his heel and walked back inside the bakery.
71
Bale awoke shivering. He had been dreaming and in his dream, Madame, his mother, was beating him about the shoulders with a coat hanger for some imagined slight. He kept on crying out – ‘No, Madame, no!’ – but still she continued hitting him.
It was dark. There were no other sounds from inside the house.
Bale shunted himself backwards, until he was able to prop himself against a beam. His fist was sore, where he had lashed out to defend himself during the dreamed attack and his neck and his shoulder felt raw – as if they had been scalded with boiling water and then scrubbed with an emery board.
He cracked on his torch and checked out the loft. Perhaps he could kill a rat or a squirrel and eat it? But no. He wouldn’t be quick enough anymore.
He knew that he didn’t dare venture downstairs yet to check out whether any food had been left behind in the kitchen, or to draw some water. The flics might have left a watchman behind to protect their crime scene from ghouls and curiosity seekers – it was comforting to think that such people still existed and that not everything in this life had been relegated to normalisation and mediocrity.
But water he did need. And urgently. He had drunk his own urine on three occasions now and had used the residue to disinfect his wounds, but he knew, from lectures with the Legion, that there was no earthly sense in doing that again. He would be contributing to his own certain death.
How many hours had he been up here? How many days? Bale had no idea of time any more.
Why was he here? Ah yes. The prophecies. He needed to find the prophecies.
He allowed his head to drop back on to his chest. By now the blanket he had been using as a pressure pad had congealed to his wound – he didn’t dare separate the two for fear of starting the blood flow up again.
For the first time in many years he wanted to go home. He wanted the comfort of his own bedroom and not the anonymous hotels that he had been forced to live in for so long. He wanted the respect and the support of the brothers and sisters that he had grown up with. And he wanted Madame, his mother, to publicly acknowledge his achievements for the Corpus Maleficus and to give him his due.
Bale was tired. He needed rest. And treatment for his wound. He was fed up with being hard and living like a wolf. Fed up with being hunted by people who were not worthy to tie his bootlaces.
He lay on his belly and dragged himself towards the hatch cover. If he didn’t move now, he would die. It was as simple as that.
For he had suddenly understood that he was hallucinating. That this temporary helplessness of his was just another strategy of the Devil’s to unman him – to make him weak.