Seeking Whom He May Devour (16 page)

“
Love
,” Soliman declared as he leaned against the lorry with his hands on his hips. “‘A. That state of feeling with regard to a person which manifests itself in concern for the person’s welfare, pleasure in his or her presence, and often also desire for his or her approval. B. Sexual passion combined with liking and concern for the other. C. Strong attachment to a person of the opposite sex.’”

Camille was taken aback and turned to look at the young man.

“It’s the dictionary,” Buteil explained. “He’s stored it all up here,” he added, pointing to his head.

“I’m going to say my goodbyes,” Camille said, standing up.

Watchee took his turn to inspect the converted transporter. Buteil showed him his drawer – the first on the right as you come in – and the old man put his things away in it in no time at all. Then he hopped down and stood waiting next to Soliman, by the cab steps, filling in time by hand-rolling a cigarette from shag. Straight after
the
funeral Watchee had got back into his baggy cords and his shapeless jacket and put on his hiking boots and his time-worn hat with its traditional black ribbon, all impregnated with dust. He had trimmed his hair and shaved and then put a clean white shirt over his under-vest. It felt a bit stiff. He was standing as straight as a ramrod with his cigarette hanging on his lower lip and his left hand at rest on his crook. His dog lay at his feet. Watchee got out his pocket-knife and started to strop the blade on his trouser-leg.

“So when are we going to start up this here road movement?” he asked gruffly.

“This what?” Soliman queried.

“This road movement. Road
movie
.”

“Oh, I see. Soon as Camille has stopped saying goodbye to the trapper.”

“In my day young women did not kiss men in front of me on unmade roads.”

“It was your idea to get her to come too.”

“In my day,” Watchee went on, as he folded away the blade of his pocket-knife, “young women did not drive lorries.”

“If you’d learned to drive, we wouldn’t be in this pickle.”

“I didn’t say I was against it, Sol. I’m actually for it.”

“For what?”

“Having a young lady’s hands on the wheel. I’m for it.”

“She’s pretty,” Soliman said.

“She’s more than just pretty.”

Johnstone was watching them from the distance, holding Camille in his arms.

“The old man’s putting his best foot forward for you,” he said. “He’s got a spotless shirt tucked into his filthy trousers.”

“He’s not filthy,” she said.

“Well, all you can now do is pray to heaven he doesn’t bring his dog along for the ride. That dog must reek.”

“Possibly.”

“For God’s sake, are you sure you want to go?”

Camille looked at the two anxious and worried men waiting for her by the running board. Buteil was putting the finishing touches to the equipment – securing a moped to the bodywork on the near side, and a pedal cycle to the off-side.

“I’m sure,” she answered.

She kissed Johnstone; he hugged her close, then let her free with a nod of his head. From the driver’s cab she watched him going back to his motorbike, start up and ride away down the track.

“So, what’s next?” she asked the two men.

“We sit on his shadow,” said Watchee with a commanding stare and his jaw set stiffly at the angle of determination.

“Which way? He was at La Castille on Monday night. That means he has almost forty-eight hours’ head start.”

“Let’s roll,” said Soliman. “I’ll tell you what the idea is as we go.”

Soliman was a featherweight youngster, and, with his dainty hands, his long arms and his slouch, he seemed all the time to be holding his sharp, handsome profile up to the stars. His complexion was smooth, and his face, like
a
child’s, seemed almost transparent. But there was always a glint of irony or perhaps of impish fun in those eyes, as if the young man was straining not to let some huge joke – or some great message – out of the bag, or as if he was constantly talking to himself and saying “Now wait till you’ve heard this one . . .” Camille imagined that the combined effects of the dictionary and of African folklore were responsible for Soliman’s strangely knowing smile, which gave his face an ambiguous light and made it look in turns obedient, then kindly, then dark, then dictatorial. She wondered what kind of smile he might have acquired from concentrating instead on the
The A to Z of Tools for Trade and Craft
. Probably not a very nice one.

Camille tossed her own rucksack into the lorry, unpacked it neatly into the drawer under her bed – the rear left-hand bed, Buteil had said – closed the tailgate and clambered into the cab where the two men were already settled, Sol next to the driver’s seat and Watchee by the near-side door.

“You’d better lay your crook on the floor,” she advised the old man, leaning towards him. “If I have to brake hard, it could smash your jaw.”

Watchee hesitated, pondered, then lay his shepherd’s crook flat on the cab floor.

“Belt, please,” Camille added amiably as she wondered whether Watchee had in fact ever been in a motor vehicle before. “You have to click it in here. In case I brake sharply.”

“It’ll trap me,” said Watchee. “I don’t like being trapped.”

“It’s the rule, I’m afraid. Compulsory.”

“Fuck compulsory, that’s what we say,” said Soliman.

“All right,” Camille said as she switched on the ignition. “What direction of travel?”

“Due north, towards the Mercantour.”

“Via?”

“The Tinée valley.”

“Good, that’s the way I’m heading, too.”

“Eh?” said Sol.

“Yes. I’ll tell you what the idea is as we go.”

The transporter clanked and snorted down the dirt and gravel track and onto the metalled road. Buteil, leaning back against the old wooden gate, gave them an unenthusiastic wave. He had the worried look of a man watching his own home wandering over the fields and far away.

XVIII

CAMILLE TURNED VERY
slowly onto the main road.

“Did you have to bring the dog?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about him,” said Watchee. “He’s a real sheepdog. He goes for wolves and foxes and all kinds of shit including werewolves, but he never lays a paw on women. Woof respects women.”

“I wasn’t worrying,” Camille said. “It’s just that he smells.”

“He smells of dog.”

“As I said.”

“You can’t expect a dog not to smell of dog. Woof will look after us. You can rely on him to catch the scent of that lousy werewolf five miles off. Nobody needs to know his teeth have been filed.”

“Filed?”

“He’s a sheepdog. Has to be prevented from harming the flock. Mustn’t get used to the taste of blood, either, because he’d have to be put down. But Woof has a fine nose. He’s taken the scent from Massart’s shack, and he’ll find the man.”

Camille nodded, keeping her eyes on the road. She had changed up to third and for the time being she had the lorry under control. It made an enormous racket on the road. The metal bars holding together the side-slats rattled with every bump. You had to shout in the cab to be heard. The windows were down and the tarpaulins rolled up to get some air through the vehicle.

“Woof? Is that his name?” she asked.

“I picked it from the dictionary, arbitrarily, when he was born,” Soliman explained. “‘
Woof. n
. A. The threads that cross from side to side of the loom. B. A woven fabric. C. The texture of a fabric.’”

“I see,” Camille said. “What time is it?”

“Past six.”

“Tell us your idea, Sol.”

“It’s Watchee’s, too.”

The lorry was now rolling along a minor road that ran beside the north-flowing river. Camille wasn’t pushing the vehicle, she was taking her own good time to get accustomed to the controls. Bends were not easy.

“Massart left his pick-up at Mont Vence,” Soliman began. “He had to, if he wanted people to believe he’d gone missing in the mountains. So for the meantime the vampire had to go on foot.”

“Or by bike,” Watchee added.

“Tell him to shout louder, Soliman, I can’t hear a word he says with all the racket the lorry’s making.”

“Say it louder!” Soliman told the shepherd.

“Or by bike,” Watchee boomed.

“Has he got a bike?”

“Certainly has,” said Watchee. “At any rate he had one, a few years back. He used to keep it in the kennel. I went over to look last night and the bike’s not there.”

“You mean Massart is riding round on a bike with a mastiff and a wolf padding along beside him?”

“He’s not riding around, dear girl. He’s proceeding. And proceeding to murder.”

“It’s too visible,” Camille objected. “He’d be spotted a mile off if he tried to get near a sheep farm.”

“That’s why he only moves at night,” said Soliman. “He hides during the day and moves at night, with his creatures.”

“Even so,” Camille said. “He won’t get far with a crew like that.”

“He’s not going far, dear girl. He’s going to Loubas, just past Jausiers.”

“I can’t hear you!” shouted Camille.

“To Loubas,” bellowed Watchee. “It’s eighty kilometres the other side of the Mercantour. That’s where he’s heading.”

“Is there anything special at Loubas?”

“There certainly is.”

Watchee leaned out of the window and spat noisily. Johnstone’s warning flashed across Camille’s mind.

“There’s his cousin,” he continued. “Sol, you explain.”

“He needs a car,” Soliman said. “He can’t hang around out in the open with his animals in tow. He only abandoned his pick-up because it’s part of a plan. Massart’s cousin is a crook who lives at Loubas, runs a shady garage and sells used cars. A cousin who can be relied upon to keep his mouth shut.”

“Fine,” Camille said, who was concentrating on the tight bends in the narrow road. “Let’s say Massart has gone to Loubas to get a car. Fine. But why didn’t he just rent one?”

“So as not to get caught.”

“For heaven’s sake, no-one is looking for him! Nobody’s going to stop him going wherever he pleases.”

“He’s not a wanted man yet, but he could be. But the main thing is that Massart wants to be thought dead.”

“To carry on doing the werewolf business in peace and quiet,” Watchee said.

“Exactly,” Sol said.

“If that’s so,” Camille pointed out, “he’ll need an alternative ID.”

“His cousin’s bent,” Watchee said. “The garage is a front.”

“That’s what people say,” Soliman confirmed.

“The cousin can forge official documents?”

“He can get hold of false identity papers.”

“How?”

“You can buy anything if you know where to shop.”

Camille slowed down and brought the lorry to a halt in a lay-by.

“Are we stopping already?” Watchee said.

“My arms need a break,” said Camille, getting down from the cab. “The steering is heavy and the road is nothing but bends.”

“I can see,” said Sol. “I realise.”

“I’m going to show you a map,” she said. “We found it at Massart’s place. It’s got a whole route marked out on it. You’re going to show me where Loubas is on that map.”

“Just past Jausiers.”

“Well, show me where Jausiers is.”

“You don’t know Jausiers?” said Soliman, evidently astonished.

“No, I don’t.” Camille was leaning on the driver’s door. “I do not know where Jausiers is. I’d never even been to this baking-hot region until earlier this year. And this is the first time I’ve driven a three-ton wreck round a bloody switchback. And I’ve no idea what the Mercantour looks like. All I know is that the Mediterranean is down at the bottom and that it has a tide that goes neither up nor down.”

“Wow,” said Soliman. He was really impressed. “Where have you been living so as to not learn all that?”

Camille went to her drawer to look for the map, closed up the tailgate, climbed back into the cab and sat down beside Soliman.

“Listen, Sol,” Camille said, “did you know that there are places – thousands of places – in the world where cicadas never go?”

“I had heard tell,” Sol said, pursing his lips sceptically.

“Well, that’s where I was living.”

Soliman shook his head, half in admiration, half in pity.

“All right then,” Camille said as she unfolded Massart’s map. “Show me where this Loubas is.”

Soliman put a finger on the map. “What’s this red line?” he said.

“I told you, it’s Massart’s route. All the
X
s match sheep farms where he’s savaged the animals, except Andelle and Anélias where nothing has happened. I reckon he hit the
road
before he had time to attack there. They’re too far east. At the moment he’s making his way along his red route to the north. By the banks of the Tinée, through the Mercantour, and by way of Loubas.”

“And then?” asked Soliman, with an inquiring frown.

“Look. The itinerary wiggles along minor roads as far as Calais, and then over the Channel to England.”

“Whatever for?”

“He’s got a step-brother working in a slaughterhouse in Manchester.”

Soliman shook his head. “No,” he said. “Massart is not trying to start a new life like your average fugitive. Massart is beyond the living already. He’s out of the light, he’s living in the night. He’s dead to the police, he’s dead to the village, he’s dead to everyone and maybe even to himself. He’s not after a new existence, he’s after an altered state.”

“My, what a lot you know!” Camille said.

“He wants a new skin,” Soliman added.

“A hairy one,” said Watchee.

“That’s right,” said Soliman. “Now the man is dead, the wolfman can kill as he pleases. I just don’t see him going to look for a decent job in Manchester.”

“In that case, why cross the Channel? Why work out an itinerary if it’s not to follow it somewhere?”

Soliman rested his head on his hands and thought, letting one eye wander over the map. “It’s like a vanishing point. He’s on the move because he can’t stay where he is. He will cross to England, maybe he’ll look for a helping hand over there. But he’ll keep on moving wherever he is, all round the world. You know what ‘werewolf’ means?”

“Lawrence told me that lycanthropy wasn’t my strong point.”