Mario Reading - The Mayan Codex

Milouins dry-retched. Then he stood up and glanced over at the Land Rover. Only one thing to do.

Still gagging, he hefted Lemelle in both arms and manhandled him across to the vehicle. The man reeked of shit from his ruptured bowels. Milouins threw open the cat-flap and windmilled Lemelle in over the lower tailgate. Then he hunched down behind the Land Rover and vomited up his supper.

With Lemelle safely tucked inside the vehicle, Milouins set about covering the body with some sacking and a scattering of loose straw. Then he tidied himself up as best he could with a horseman’s wisp made from the remainder of the straw. When he was done, he refastened the tilt and went to look for his Mossberg.

A ten-minute search produced a grand total of three unused cartridges that had probably been ejected from Lemelle’s pocket when the vehicle – and Milouins now accepted that it had to be a vehicle – had hit him. But no Mossberg.

So either Lamia and the man who had rescued her had clean escaped, or Milouins’s original hunch still held, and her abductor had dropped Lamia off at a secondary vehicle, fallen foul of Lemelle on the way back out, and driven straight at him.

Lemelle, being Lemelle, had no doubt brandished the shotgun menacingly at his intended victim before actually getting around to firing it. That’s what the tracks told Milouins, anyway – and Milouins was a man who always believed the evidence of his own eyes.

Milouins glanced down at his watch – 5.20. And the rapidly stiffening Lemelle was obviously in no hurry to go anywhere.

Milouins checked back down the road again, one forearm clamped to his nose in a vain effort to obviate the smell that still permeated his clothes. Either Lamia and her St George were long gone, or she was still down there, cash on delivery. What did he have to lose by backing his hunch? He’d either lost them, or he hadn’t. If they came back down the road he would follow them – to hell and back if necessary. If not, he would go back to the Domaine and arrange Lemelle’s secret burial.

Satisfed that he had cleaned up the area and secured Lemelle’s body, Milouins got back inside his car and settled down to wait.

Incongruous in his ten-year-old charcoal-grey Le Bon Marche suit, Calque sat in the sand, his knees spread, staring out to sea at the gradually emerging dawn. The woman, covered in a tartan blanket from the back of his car, lay motionless beside him.

The sudden opening of her eyes had proved to be a false alarm – a purely automatic reaction to the change of light. She was still doped out, her mouth partly open, her hands turned back on themselves as if she were trying to fend off the attentions of an overactive pet.

Calque lit a cigarette. Scrunching his eyes against the smoke, he fished the tape recorder out of his pocket and reversed the spool. Then he hit the play button and held the recorder up to his ear.

The recorder was sound-activated – meaning that the moment it identified a sound within a radius of maybe three metres, it would start itself up. The tape would then automatically turn itself over after forty-five minutes, and cut off for good after ninety. Calque noted with satisfaction that the full ninety minutes appeared to have been used.

The first noise Calque heard was that of a vacuum cleaner. The tape switched itself on and off a dozen or more times as the vacuum cleaner moved in and out of focus. Calque reined in a desire to fast-forward the tape. He had time. No one knew he was here. And the sea was calming in its way.

Half an hour in, he picked up his first voices. Calque shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over his head, creating a mini echo chamber. Two men were talking. Calque recognized the voice of the butler, Milouins, and someone whom he assumed to be one of the footmen – for it was clear from Milouins’s tone that he was addressing a subordinate. The two men seemed to be preparing the room for a meeting. As Calque listened, Milouins told the footman to lay on the wax polish with a will. A series of bumps followed.

‘The bastard is cleaning the table,’ Calque said to himself.

More bumps.

‘He’s moving chairs. The bastard is moving chairs.’

Another ten minutes went by and the tape auto-reversed. Still cursing, Calque began to fast-forward. Nothing. Just bumping, banging, and the occasional word between Milouins and the footman he was ordering about.

Calque switched off the tape recorder, replaced it in his jacket, and let the jacket slip down around his shoulders. He threw back his head as if he were about to howl at the moon. Five weeks. Five weeks of waiting and watching, and for what? A ninety-minute tape recording of two men cleaning a room.

He was past it. That was clear now. He had finally lost the plot. The Service had been right to green-light his early retirement. He was nothing but a liability. A dinosaur.

He looked down at the woman.

The dawn was up and her face was clearly visible now. She was watching him, her eyes wide open in shock.

Calque fought the temptation to plunge his hand back inside his jacket pocket and drag out his purloined badge for the second time. Why aggravate the situation? If the woman decided to prosecute him for kidnap, the fact that he had attempted to masquerade as a serving police officer would doubtless secure him a good two-to-three years’ extra prison time. Think what a field day some of his recidivists would have with him inside. They’d tattoo his eyeballs with a screwdriver.

‘You’re free to go, Mademoiselle. I want you to understand that. I’m not coercing you in any way.’

Lamia raised herself up on her elbows. After staring silently at him for what seemed the better part of sixty seconds, she allowed her eyes to drift away from Calque’s face and off towards the horizon. ‘Where am I?’

‘You’re at Pampelonne Beach. Near St Tropez. It’s just after dawn.’

Lamia sat up, shrugging the blanket away. She stretched her hands out in front of her, as if she still expected to find them tied up. ‘What am I doing here?’ She glanced across at Calque. ‘And who are you?’

‘Ah,’ said Calque. ‘You want to know who I am?’ once again he found himself on the cusp of declaring that he was Captain Joris Calque, Police Nationale, 2eme Arrondissement, Paris. Instead, he muttered, ‘If you will forgive me, Mademoiselle, I will withhold my name until the situation we are in establishes itself a little clearer.’

Lamia began to laugh. ‘Are we really in a situation?’

Calque shrugged. He felt like digging a hole in the sand, laying himself face down in it, and inviting the woman to fill it in. ‘In a manner of speaking. Yes.’

The smile stayed on Lamia’s face. ‘Have you kidnapped me? Or have you saved me? Make up your mind, please.’

Calque unslung his jacket from about his shoulders and replaced it carefully over Lamia’s. ‘It’s cold, Mademoiselle. This is the time of day when the body is at its most fragile.’

Lamia reached across herself and touched the flap of the jacket. ‘If you’re a kidnapper, you’re not a very good one. You’ve left your gun in your jacket pocket.’

Calque gave a small bow. It was clear that the woman was inviting him, for the second and last time, to lay his cards on the table. ‘It’s not a gun but a tape recorder, Mademoiselle. A tape recorder that I secreted illegally in your mother’s house some months ago, whilst I was still a serving police officer.’

Lamia pinched the jacket closer around her shoulders. ‘Ah, yes. The intellectual policeman. I’ve heard all about you. You’re the man my mother says harassed my brother into an early grave.’

Calque could feel himself bridling. An early grave? A psychopath like Achor Bale? Best place for him. He stopped marginally short of expressing his feelings in words, however, for he was still trying to second guess the woman’s intentions – just as she was attempting to gauge his.