Mario Reading - The Nostradamus prophecies

When he could feel himself drifting into a pre-hypnotic state, he began to suggest certain things to himself. Things like ‘in thirty breaths you will fall asleep’, followed by ‘in thirty breaths you will do exactly as I tell you’ – and then, later, ‘in thirty breaths you will no longer feel any pain’ – culminating with ‘in thirty breaths your collarbone will begin to heal itself and your strength will return to you’.

Bale understood only too well the potential shortcomings of self-hypnosis. But he also knew that it was the only possible way that he could dominate his body and return it to a state bordering on the functional.

If he was to last out in this loft space – with no food and with no medical attention – for the day or two that it would take the police to complete their enquiries, he knew that he must focus all his resources on the conservation and cultivation of his essential energies.

All he had was what he came in with. And those assets would diminish with each passing hour, until either an infection, an unforced error, or an unintended noise could bring him low.

Gavril’s body lay exactly where Alexi had said it would be. Sabir glanced idly towards the woodland – yes, there was the solitary cypress tree, just as Alexi had described it. But it might as well have been on Mars for all the good it would do him at this moment.

Calque seemed to be deriving keen pleasure from rubbing salt into Sabir’s wounds. ‘Is this how you remembered it from yesterday afternoon?’

Sabir wondered if he might get away with asking to take a leak? But a fifty-metre walk towards the woods might seem just a little suspicious in the circumstances.

When it became obvious that Sabir had no intention of responding to his digs, Calque tried a different tack. ‘Tell me again how Dufontaine lost the prophecies?’

‘Escaping from the eye-man. On the Bac. He lost them in the water. You can confirm his story with the pilot and the ticket collector.’

‘Oh, believe me, Mister Sabir, I will.’ Calque mispronounced the Mister as Miss-tear.

Sabir decided that Calque was mispronouncing Miss-tear on purpose, simply in order to needle him. The man was obviously sore about Sabir’s breaking their previous agreement over the tracking device. That and the minor matter of the death of his assistant.

‘You don’t seem at all disappointed about the loss of the prophecies. If I were a writer, I would be very angry indeed at my friend having mislaid such a potential gold mine as that.’

Sabir contrived a shrug. It was meant to convey that losing a couple of a million bucks was an everyday occurrence with him. ‘If it’s all right with you, Captain, I’d like to go back to Les Saintes-Maries and check up on my friends. I could also do with a little sleep.’

Calque made a big show of weighing up Sabir’s request. In reality, he had decided on his plan of action some time before. ‘I shall send Sergeant Spola back with you. Both you and Dufontaine will remain within his sight at all times. I am not finished with you both yet.’

‘And Mademoiselle Samana?’

Calque made a face. ‘She is free to go about her business. Frankly, I would like to hold her too. But I have no grounds. Something, though, may occur to me, should you and Dufontaine give my subordinate any difficulties whatsoever. But she is to confine herself within the precincts of the town. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Quite clear.’

‘We are in agreement, therefore?’

‘Perfectly.’

Calque flashed Sabir an old-fashioned look. He beckoned to Sergeant Spola. ‘Drive Mister Sabir back into town. Then find Dufontaine. Stay with them both. You are not to let either one of them out of your sight for even an instant. If one man wants to go to the washroom, they both go – with you stationed outside holding their free hands. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

Calque glanced at Sabir, frowning. There was something still niggling him about Sabir’s part in the proceedings – but he couldn’t put his finger on it. With the eye-man still on the loose, however, any misgivings about Sabir could wait. The eye-man’s horse had turned up unexpectedly, in a lather, twenty minutes ago, a little less than five kilometres down the road to Port St-Louis. Could the eye-man really have escaped that easily? And with Macron’s bullet still inside him?

Calque signalled to one of his assistants for a cellphone. As he dialled, he glanced across at Sabir’s retreating back. The man was still holding out – that much was obvious. But why? For what? No one was accusing him of anything. And he didn’t look the sort of a man to be consumed by thoughts of revenge.

‘Who found the horse?’ Calque angled his head towards the ground, as if he felt that such a movement would in some way improve reception – transform the cellphone back into its more efficient cousin, the landline. ‘Well put him on.’ He waited, his eyes drinking in the dawn-lit landscape. ‘Officer Michelot? Is that you? I want you to describe the condition of the horse to me.

Exactly as it was.’ Calque listened intently. ‘Was there blood on the horse’s flanks? Or on the saddle?’ Calque sucked a little air through his teeth. ‘Anything else you noticed? Anything at all? The reins, for instance? They were broken, you say? Could they have been broken by the horse treading on them after it had been abandoned?’ He paused. ‘What do you mean, how can you tell? It’s simple. If the reins are broken at their furthest extent, then it suggests that the horse trod on them. If they are broken farther up – at a weak point, say, or near the bit – then it means that the horse probably broke away from the eye-man and we still have the bastard inside our net. Did you check this out? No? Well go and check them this instant.’

Sergeant Spola had never been inside a gypsy caravan before. Even though this one was of the mechanised variety, he looked cautiously around himself, as if he had unexpectedly blundered his way on to an alien spaceship, rocketing towards a planet where intimate experiments were about to be conducted on his person.

Alexi was lying on the master bed, with his shirt off. The curandero was standing above him, a bunch of lighted twigs in one hand, chanting. The room was suffused with the scent of burning sage and rosemary.

Spola screwed up his eyes against the acrid smoke.

‘What’s he doing?’

Yola, who was sitting on a chair near the bed, put a finger to her lips.

Spola had the good grace to hitch his shoulders apologetically and retreat outside.

Sabir hunched down beside Yola. He looked quizzically at her, but her concentration was all on Alexi. Without looking at him, she pointed briefly to her head and then to that of the curandero, making a circular movement with her hands to encompass both as one entity; to Sabir, she seemed to be implying that she was helping the curandero in some way, possibly along telepathic lines.

Sabir decided to let her get on with it. Alexi didn’t look good and Sabir made up his mind that once all the mumbo-jumbo was over, he would exert as much pressure as he reasonably could to persuade Yola to allow Alexi to be treated in a hospital.

The curandero laid his burning twigs aside in a dish and moved to the head of the bed. He took Alexi’s head in his hands and stood silently, with his eyes shut, in an attitude of intense concentration.

Sabir, who was not used to squatting, could feel his thighs beginning to constrict with the tension. He didn’t dare to move, though, for fear of breaking the curandero ’s trance. He glanced at Yola, hoping that she might somehow deduce his problem and offer him some guidance, but her gaze remained firmly fixed on the curandero.