Mario Reading - The Mayan Codex

He bent down and felt around for the catch that the flic had told him was hidden under Volume Three of the collected periodicals.

A door, hidden in the bookcase, flicked open. With a cautious glance over one shoulder, Picaro stepped inside the concealed room.

‘ Putain de merde!’ he mouthed to himself, his eyes widening in horror.

The unconscious figure of a woman was tied to a chair in the very centre of the assembly table. Her head had fallen at an angle, and as Picaro played his torch across her, he saw that one whole side of her face was covered in what appeared to be a thin sheet of congealed blood.

Ever the professional – and ever mindful of his 3,000 euros – Picaro felt around under the table for the flic’s precious tape recorder. Exactly two metres to the right of the master chair, taped up inside the skirt, at the exact angle of the joist and the cross-brace. Yes. There it was. Picaro pocketed it.

He hesitated, and then made briskly for the door. What business was the woman of his? He’d done what he came here to do. He was already running late because of his previous caution. Why complicate matters? This way, he could get out of the house before daybreak with no one the wiser.

His gaze travelled inexorably back to the woman. What the hell had they done to her? Maybe she was dead, even? But no. He could see her breathing by the light of the torch.

As he played the light across her body, a memory came back to Picaro from his time at La Sante prison. A young lad, mixed race, not more than nineteen years old, who had fallen foul of one of the methamphetamine gangs. One day the gang had waited for him in the showers – for sooner or later, as Picaro had tried to explain to the boy, the bad guys always get you. What the hell else did they have to do with their time? But the boy had been too young and too cocksure to listen to him.

This one they’d condemned to a tournante – a gang rape. When Picaro found the boy, they’d left him tied to a chair, with his head through the seat, his belly over the backrest, and his hands and feet strapped to the legs – that way he would be available for anyone else to use who happened along.

At first Picaro hadn’t understood what he was looking at. It was like when his son had emerged, balls first, from his mother’s womb. Picaro had fallen back, his face ashen, shouting, ‘Christ, what’s that?’

‘It’s his testicles, Monsieur,’ the midwife had told him. ‘They swell up in a breech birth, because the legs are stretched back over the head.’

When he’d seen the state of the young man’s anus, Picaro had vomited. Then he’d untied the boy, straightened him out as best he could on the cold floor of the shower room, and gone to fetch the toubibs.

They’d stitched him up good, but the boy had never been right again after the attack. One day, about six months later, he’d cut off his own balls with a piece of broken glass.

Sighing, Picaro moved back to the table. Taking out his Opinel, he cut the cords binding the young woman to her chair, eased her towards him, and let her fall across his right shoulder.

With a hitch of his arms, he settled her weight more squarely. Then, feeling all kinds of a fool, he started back across the hall.

No point closing the door behind me now, he thought to himself. I might as well leave a fucking paper trail.

Picaro laid the woman gently on the rear seat of his car. He stood back and looked down at her in the cold glow of the interior lights. What he had imagined in the darkness of the sealed room to be blood, now proved to be nothing more than a strawberry birthmark. Poor bitch. She’d have been pretty without that. Sometimes you wondered what God was thinking of.

Picaro sprung back her eyelids and checked her pupils. She was doped – that much was obvious. He was briefly tempted to tie his chamois leather duster around her eyes so that she couldn’t identify him if she woke up – but with his present run of luck, she’d probably panic on awaking and cause a car wreck. Best to leave things be for the time being.

He’d arranged to meet the flic at the old parking place behind Pampelonne beach. A twenty-minute drive at the outside. He’d simply dump the female and the tape recorder on him, get the rest of his money, and then scram. The flic could sort her out. That’s what flics did, wasn’t it? Sort things out?

Three times on the drive to Pampelonne Picaro wondered whether he wouldn’t do better just leaving her on the side of the road. She hadn’t seen him yet. She hadn’t seen the flic. Why complicate life when you didn’t need to?

But the image of the girl tied to the chair in the centre of the table haunted him. What had that boy’s name been? The one in the prison? Chico? Chiclette? Something like that.

Stupid to put the chair on the table. What if the girl had woken up and thrown herself to one side in a panic? She could have broken her neck and paralysed herself. People could be dumb sometimes.

He saw the flic waiting for him in the curve of the headlights. Well. Here goes. What a man will do for three thousand smackers.

Picaro pulled up beside Calque. He got out of the car and looked around. Well. No unexpected reception committee. That was a good first sign.

‘Did you get it?’

‘Of course I got it.’ Picaro eased the tape recorder from his pocket and handed it to Calque.

Calque palmed him the remaining fifteen hundred.

Picaro jerked his thumb back towards the car. ‘I’ve got something else for you, too. No extra charge.’

Calque flinched, as if someone had fired a dried pea at the back of his neck. ‘What do you mean?’

Picaro opened the back door of his car and stood waiting for Calque to join him. They both stared down at the girl.

‘Don’t worry. She’s not dead. Someone drugged her and tied her to a chair. They left the chair on the table in that secret room of yours. I thought at first that it might have been one of those sex things – you know, a bondage thing, when they pop amyl nitrate and then half suffocate themselves in an effort to increase their kicks. But one look at her face told me otherwise. I thought about leaving her there, but I just couldn’t do it. She hasn’t seen me and she hasn’t seen you. My advice would be to abandon her here. But she’s your problem from here on in. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’ Calque had total control of himself again. He was already busy working out the possible ramifications of this new development.

‘Want me to move her, or will you?’

‘You’d better move her. I’m not in the best of health.’

Calque watched as Picaro eased the girl across the back seat towards him.

‘What’s that on her face? Is she injured?’

Picaro held the girl’s head up towards the light as if he were exhibiting a vase to a potential buyer at an auction house. ‘No. Birthmark. It’s a fucking shame, isn’t it?’

Calque recognized the girl’s facial disfigurement at once. She had been one of the members of the first party to arrive at the house – the party which had preceded the arrival of the two men. She had to be one of the Countess’s daughters, therefore – one of the Devil’s dozen. But what could she possibly have done to turn the Countess against her? Either way, he desperately needed to talk to her.

At that exact moment, Lamia opened her eyes.

Picaro raised his hand, ready to rabbit-punch her before she could catch a glimpse of his face.

‘No. No. Wait!’ Calque hurried forward. He scrabbled in his pocket and held out his badge. ‘Police, Mademoiselle. For your own good, do not look around. I’m going to ease you out of the car.’ He took her face in his hands. ‘Keep looking at me. Don’t look around. Trust me.’