He pulled a sheet of paper towards him. Adhering scrupulously to the text, he copied down the first quatrain. Then he began his first tentative translation.
80
Calque looked across at the Countess. They were alone in the room, just as the Countess had insisted when Calque had requested the interview. ‘So your son wants to come home?’
The Countess waved her hand in irritation, like someone trying to disperse a bad smell. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Calque sighed. ‘My people intercepted a telephone call, Madame. Between your son and your footman, Milouins. The same footman found attempting to lock your secret meeting chamber. Your son used Milouins name, so we are certain of our facts.’
‘How do you know it was my son? Milouins may receive calls from whomever he likes. I am extremely tolerant with my servants. Unlike some people I know.’
‘Your son introduced himself as the Count.’
The Countess’s eyes went dead. ‘I’ve never heard anything so absurd. My son has not called here for years. I told you. He left to join the Legion. Against my express instructions, I should add. I can’t understand why you are harassing us in this manner.’
‘Milouins passed your son a message.’
‘Don’t be so silly.’
‘The message consisted of one word. A German word. Fertigmachen .’
‘I don’t speak German. Neither, I believe, does Milouins.’
‘ Fertigmachen means to end something. Or someone.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. It can also mean to kill oneself.’
‘Are you accusing me of asking my son to kill himself? Please, Captain. Give me credit for a modicum of maternal solicitude.’
‘No. I believe you were asking your son to kill someone else. A man named Sabir. To kill Sabir and to make an end of the matter. I should tell you now that Sabir is in our protective custody. If your son attempts to murder him, he will be caught.’
‘You said “to kill Sabir and make an end of the matter”. What matter can you possibly be referring to?’
‘I know about the Corpus Maleficus, Madame. I’ve read the document you keep in the hidden room.’
‘You know nothing about the Corpus Maleficus, Captain. And you did not read the document you cite. It is in cipher. You are trying to bluff me and I won’t have it.’
‘Aren’t you concerned about your son’s actions?’
‘Deeply concerned, Captain. Is that what you want me to say? Deeply concerned.’
‘Cipher experts will soon decrypt the parchment.’
‘I think not.’
‘But you know what it says?’
‘Of course. My husband taught it to me verbatim when we first married. It is written in a language known only to an inner circle of chosen adepts. But I am an old woman now. I have entirely forgotten both the contents and the language. Just as I have forgotten the content of this conversation.’
‘I think you are an evil woman, Madame. I think you are behind whatever your son is doing and that you are happy to consign him to the Devil, if that accords with your and your society’s, interests.’
‘You are talking nonsense, Captain. And you are entirely out of your depth. What you say is pure speculation. Any jury would laugh you out of court.’
Calque stood up.
A strange look passed over the Countess’s face. ‘And you are wrong in another thing as well. I would never consign my son to the Devil, Captain. Never to the Devil. I can assure you of that.’
81
As he approached the final step in the seemingly endless line of stone steps leading to the ground floor, Bale slipped. He fell heavily against the wall – so heavily that he grunted in surprise when his shattered shoulder was caught a glancing blow by the balustrade.
Sabir sat up straighter in his chair. The police. They must have left someone here after all. Perhaps the man had simply crept upstairs to take a nap? It had been incredibly stupid of him not to have checked the house out before he settled down to start work.
Sabir gathered his papers together and went to stand with his back to the fire. There wasn’t time to make for the door. Best to bluff it out. He could always claim that he had needed to come back for some of his belongings. The dictionary and the wad of papers would bear him out.
Bale emerged around the corner of the living-room door like an apparition fresh from the grave. His face was deathly pale and his clotted eyes, in the light cast by the candles, resembled those of a demon. There was blood splattered down his front and more blood smeared like an oil slick across his neck and shoulder. He held a pistol in his left hand and as Sabir watched, horror-struck, Bale raised the pistol and brought it to bear on him.
For probably the first and only time in his life, Sabir acted entirely on impulse. He threw the dictionary at Bale and in the exact same movement he twisted in place until he was on his knees, facing the fire. A split second before the sound of the shot, Sabir thrust the original parchment and his paper copy deep into the flames.
82
Sabir awoke with no idea of where he was. He tried to move but could not. A fearful, noxious odour assailed his nostrils. He attempted to free his arms but they were immersed in a kind of mud. The mud reached to just above his collarbone, leaving his head free. Sabir frantically tried to lever himself out, but he only slipped deeper into the morass.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’
Sabir looked up.
Bale was squatting above him. Six inches above Sabir’s head was a small hole, little more than the width of man.
Bale was balancing the trapdoor that normally sealed the hole against his side. He shone his torch directly down on Sabir’s face. ‘You’re in a cesspit. An old one. This house has obviously never been on mains sewerage. It took me a while to find it. But you’ll have to admit that it’s perfect of its kind. There’s ten inches between the level of the shit and the roof of the pit. That’s just about the size of your head, Sabir, with a couple of inches left over for wastage. When I close and seal this trap you’ll have enough air for, oh, half an hour? That’s if the carbon monoxide from the decomposition of the food sugars doesn’t kill you first.’
Sabir became aware of a pain in his right temple. He wanted to put up his hand to feel for damage, but could not. ‘What have you done to me?’
‘I haven’t done anything to you. Yet. The damage to your face was from a ricochet. My bullet struck the fireplace just as you were turning to destroy the prophecies. The deformed slug sprang back and took part of your ear off. It also knocked you cold. Sorry for that.’
Sabir could feel the claustrophobia begin to take hold of him. He tried to breathe normally but found himself entirely incapable of that measure of control. He began to whoop, like the victim of an asthma attack.
Bale tapped Sabir lightly across the bridge of the nose with the barrel of his pistol. ‘Don’t go hysterical on me. I want you to listen. To listen carefully. You’re already a dead man. Whatever happens, I will kill you. You will die in this place. No one will ever find you in here.’
Sabir’s nose had begun to bleed. He tried to turn his head away from Bale’s pistol, fearing a second blow, but the sudden admixture of blood and excrement triggered his gag reflex. It took him some minutes to regain control of himself and stop retching. Eventually, when the fit was over, he raised his head as far as he could and dragged in some marginally fresh air from above. ‘Why are you still speaking to me? Why don’t you just get on with whatever you are intending to do?’
Bale winced. ‘Patience, Sabir. Patience. I am still speaking to you because you have a weakness. A fatal weakness that I intend to use against you. I was there when they put you in the wood-box back at Samois. And I saw your condition when they brought you out. Claustrophobia is what you fear most in this world. So I offer it to you. In exactly sixty seconds’ time I shall lock and seal this place and leave you here to rot. But you have one chance to buy back the girl’s life. The girl’s – not your own. You can dictate to me all that you know of the prophecies. No. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You had more than enough time to copy down the verses and translate them. I found the dictionary you threw at me. I heard your car arrive. I have estimated how long you were down in the sitting room and it runs into hours. Dictate what you know to me and I will shoot you through the head. That way you won’t die of suffocation. And I will promise to spare the girl.’