Mario Reading - The Nostradamus prophecies

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.

Bale reached the hatch cover and dragged it to one side. He stared down into the empty bedroom.

It was dark. The windows were open and it was night. There were no lights anywhere. The police had left. Surely they had left.

He listened, through the rushing of blood in his head, for any inexplicable sounds.

There were none.

He eased his legs through the hatch cover. For a long time he sat on the lip of the hatch staring down at the floor. Finally he cracked his torch and tried to estimate the total drop.

Ten feet. Enough to break a leg or sprain an ankle.

But he didn’t have the strength left to let down the chair. Didn’t have the agility to hang from the hatch and feel for it with his legs.

He switched off his torch and slid it back inside his shirt.

Then he twisted on his good arm and dropped into the void.

Yola watched the two policemen from her hiding place at the edge of the wood. They were huddled in the shelter of the gardien ’s cabane , smoking and talking. So this is what the flics call a search, she thought to herself. No wonder the eye-man hasn’t been found. Satisfied that the two men could not possibly see her, she settled down to wait for the further twenty minutes or so until full dusk.

Bouboul had dropped Yola at the Bac, thirty minutes before and had then driven on to Arles, with his son-in-law, Rezso, to retrieve Sabir’s Audi. Later, Rezso would come back with the Audi to pick her up.

At first Sabir had refused to allow her to go and collect the prophecies. It was too dangerous. The job should be his. He was head of the family now. His word should count for something. But Sergeant Spola’s stolid and ever-watchful presence had eventually decided the matter – there was no way Sabir could go anywhere any more without his say-so.

Night-time would be different, though. The man had to sleep. If Sabir could manage to give Spola the slip, Bouboul had agreed to drive him back to the Maset, where Yola and Reszo would arrange to meet him with the prophecies. Sabir would then have both the time and the privacy necessary to translate them.

Before dawn, Reszo would come back with the car and collect Sabir and deliver him back to the caravan, just in time to meet an awaking Sergeant Spola. This was the plan, anyway. It had the virtue of simplicity, it protected the prophecies and it would serve to keep the police nicely out of the frame.

Yola had already established that the investigation had moved on and that the Maset would be empty. Sergeant Spola was a man who respected his stomach. Yola had offered him wild boar stew with dumplings for his lunch, instead of his customary chicken sandwich. Spola had proved particularly amenable after that – especially as the wild boar was twinned with about a litre and a half of Costieres de Nimes and a follow-up cognac. He had confi rmed to her that by now, a day and a half after the attack, the Maset would be bolted and sealed with police tape and to all intents and purposes abandoned until next needed. All available manpower would need to be seconded in the search for the eye-man. What did she think? That the police left people dotted around the countryside guarding old crime scenes?

The two flics at the cabane got up and stretched themselves. One of them walked a few yards, unzipped his fly and took a leak. The other flashed his torch around the clearing, lingering on the security tape marking the spot where Gavril had been found.

‘Do you think murderers really come back to the spot they’ve offed someone?’

‘Shit, no. And particularly not when they’ve got a bullet in them, they’re hungry and they’ve got sniffer dogs chewing up their arses. The bastard’s probably lying dead behind a bush. Or else he fell off his horse into a bog and drowned. That’s why we can’t find him. The wild pigs probably got him. They can eat a man, teeth and all, in under an hour. Did you know that? All the murderer has to do is to get rid of the spleen. They don’t like that for some reason.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Yes. I thought so too.’

Yola had walked in to the wood by the path, just as Alexi had described it to her, leaving strips of white paper at five-metre intervals to guide herself back to the road when it was dark. In her head she had marked the position of the solitary cypress tree beneath which the prophecies lay buried. If the police stayed where they were, however, she would have no possibility – even if she used the woodland as cover – of reaching the prophecies unseen. The cypress tree was far too exposed.

‘Shall we take a turn about the forest?’

‘Fuck that. Let’s go back to the cabane. Light a fire. I forgot my gloves and it’s getting cold.’

Yola could see their silhouettes approaching her. What were they after? Wood? How could she explain away her presence if they stumbled on her? They’d be so keen to get gold stars from Calque that they’d probably bundle her back with them in their poullailler ambulant – their travelling henhouse. Wasn’t that what Alexi called Black Marias? And Calque was certainly no fool. He would smell a rat straight away. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out that she was after the prophecies and that they weren’t lost at all.

As the policemen approached, Yola pressed herself into the ground and began to pray.

The first policeman stopped three or four feet away from her. ‘Can you see any dead trees?’

The second policeman switched on his torch and swung it in an arc above their heads. At that exact moment his cellphone rang. He tossed the torch to his companion and felt for the phone. As the torch passed near her head, Yola could feel the light from its beam skimming across her body. She stiffened, sure of discovery.