The Third Antichrist (9 page)

15

The rental car he and Vau had been driving was still intact. All the paint had been burned off and the windows had blown out, but the car had been parked far enough away from the warehouse to escape the worst of the blast.

Abi squinted into the sun. The last thing he wanted was to run into any of the
cacique’s
remaining foot soldiers coming back to check on why they hadn’t heard from their boss.

An old man and a young boy emerged from the woods and stood watching him from a corner of the plantation. Abi bunched his fingers and aimed a pretend pistol at them. The old man took the child by the hand and led him back into the undergrowth.

Almost gagging with nerves, Abi reached in through the back window of the rental and retrieved his leather holdall. He unzipped it. His false passports, his money, and his credit cards were all intact. As was his passport in his real name.

Abi glanced up at the sky. ‘Thanks, Vau. I owe you a big one.’

He threw the carryall into the back of the Toyota. Then he walked towards the ruins of the crank factory.

He stood for some time staring at the mayhem left by the explosion. The main fire had burned itself out long ago, but tendrils of smoke were still rising from the shell of the building twenty or so hours after the initial blast.

Abi re-imagined the warehouse in his head. It wasn’t a problem for him. He’d spent quite a little time there, and he had that sort of brain. He picked his way across the wreckage to where he and his brothers had hung Joris Calque from the rafters, with Adam Sabir squatting beneath him like in that scene from Sergio Leone’s
Once Upon A Time In The West
. Yes. This was the place he’d left the two of them when the
cacique
and his men had made their surprise attack.

No bodies. There were no bodies anywhere in the wreckage. And the fuckers should have been burned to a crisp.

Abi grunted. He stepped across to where the basement had once been. The source of the blast had obviously been down there. Near the crank vats. That much was clear. He stood on the lip of the crater left by the explosion and looked down. No Hummer. Not even the skeleton of a Hummer. Not even the photoplastic smudge of a Hummer.

So Sabir and Calque had got away after all. And not only that. They’d clearly caused the explosion in the first place, because it was hardly likely that the Mexicans would torch their own drug factory for a non-existent insurance payoff. And by setting the place off, they’d as good as signed his twin brother’s death warrant.

Abi took a deep breath. He would have a fair few scores to settle in the coming months. That much was clear. Calque and Sabir’s survival changed everything. Everything.

Without so much as a backward glance at the cenote – or a backward thought about his brother and sisters – Abi got into the Land Cruiser and drove out of the plantation gate in the direction of the main Cancun road.

Samois Old Quarry,
Samois-Sur-Seine, France
4 November 2009

16

Less than a day after Abi made it out of the cenote, Joris Calque stood watching as the tendrils of his best friend’s life unravelled themselves before his eyes. If Abi had wanted to find out what had happened to his three remaining siblings, this is where he would have had to look.

A few yards from where Calque was standing, Adam Sabir lay curled up beside the body of the woman he loved. Lamia de Bale hadn’t just won Sabir’s heart during their trip through Mexico – she had insinuated herself into Calque’s heart, too, taking the place of the daughter his embittered ex-wife had stolen from him as a young girl, and then converted to her ways.

That Lamia had been a breakaway member of the Corpus Maleficus who may, or may not, have been on the level, was irrelevant now that she was dead. The fact remained that at the very last moment she had stepped in between her siblings and Sabir, and had given up her life for the man she loved.

A few paces away from Lamia lay the bodies of her hermaphrodite brother, Aldinach, and her dwarf sister, Athame.

‘So what do we do now?’ Alexi’s cousin, Radu, was keeping his voice low out of respect for Sabir’s obvious grief. He was addressing himself to Calque.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean, we have three dead bodies here. And we’re Gypsies. I know you were a policeman in your former life, so you’ll understand what I am telling you. If we call the gendarmes to this place, it will be the end for us. They will tear up our camp at Samois and scatter it to the four winds. They will pin these deaths on me, Sabir, and Alexi, and they will throw away the key to the prison. Yola will be completely unprotected when the brothers and sisters of these filth come seeking to kill her and her baby – as they certainly will.’

‘But I’m a witness. I can speak for you all.’

Radu laughed. ‘You are also an optimist. Didn’t Alexi throw the knife that pierced the small woman lying over there? The one with the pistol in her backpack? And didn’t Sabir beat the other one to death with a branch?’

‘Yes. But they were both acting in self-defence.’

‘But the small one had no weapon in her hand. Alexi was acting with knowledge of what she was capable of doing, yes. We all know that. But the
flics
will say that she presented no threat. Is that not so?’

Calque gave a grudging nod. He knew how such things worked. The local gendarmes would take one look at the crime scene and bag it up. To them the whole thing would be as clear as day. A bunch of Gypsies, and their American fellow traveller, Adam Sabir, wanting revenge for the murder of their relative earlier that summer, kidnap a Frenchwoman whose family they feel might be involved. The Frenchwoman’s brother and sister give chase. There’s a showdown. The Gypsies and the American – who has already been involved in one killing of a member of the same family earlier that summer – murder everybody. Then ex-Captain Calque, the notorious Gypsy-lover ... etc. etc.

‘So what do you propose?’

Radu chucked his chin towards the disused mineshaft. ‘This place is so deep no one knows where the shaft ends. You cannot even hear a stone strike the base. We place the bodies in the car, then we shunt the car over the edge. Later on I will send a cousin, who knows about such things, with a small explosive charge. This charge will take the whole shaft down to the bottom. As if the rain we had a few days ago had weakened the structure of the mine and caused a landslide. No one will think to dig under such a mass of earth and rock. It would be impossible. Besides, they would have no reason to. Nobody knows we are here.’

‘And this cousin of yours? You really feel you will be able to trust him not to fess up later and hand you all in? Maybe win himself a reward?’

Radu shrugged. The answer was self-evident. ‘He is a Gypsy.’

Alexi stepped forward. As he did so, Yola disengaged herself from the protection of his arm and went over to comfort Sabir.

Calque was relieved that she was finally taking the initiative. He hadn’t relished the job of trying to prise Sabir from Lamia’s dead body.

Alexi stood facing Radu. ‘Damo won’t stand for his woman to be placed in the car with her killers and buried in that way. This I can tell you.’ He cast a worried glance at where Yola was comforting Sabir. ‘Best that we give her a Gypsy burial. Somewhere nobody will ever find her. But Damo will know where it is. This will be important for him.’

‘Damo?’ said Calque.

‘It is our Gypsy name for Adam.’

Calque blew out his cheeks. This was great. Here he was, a senior ex-police officer just a bare few months into his premature retirement, and he was already considering prejudicing a crime scene and withholding vital evidence from the authorities. If his former colleagues ever found out what he had done, they would coat him in honey and feed him to the ants. ‘This is impossible. We can’t hide three bodies just like that.’

‘Captain, no one knows they are here. These two filth will have covered their tracks. And Damo’s woman would have done the same. The Corpus Maleficus came here to kill Yola and her unborn child, because they believe her to be the mother of the Second Coming. You told me so yourself. So they won’t have left a trail. There will be nothing to connect any of them with this place.’

‘But Yola and Lamia might have been seen together. In the village, say. Or on the road.’

‘So what? Nobody cares what Gypsies do.
Payos
like you look through us, Captain. We scare you. We are a reminder to all you non-Gypsies that there are other ways of being. Other ways to think and act. The best answer to that is to ignore us. This is the easiest way.’

Calque chose to duck the implied insult. He sensed danger in the air. ‘Where do we hide Yola, then? If I agree to your plan, that is. And Sabir? What do we do with him? The Corpus will redouble its efforts to get to both of them after this.’

Radu turned to Alexi. They spoke together in low tones, in a language Calque could not understand. Alexi nodded a couple of times. Then he glanced towards Yola.

Yola was helping Sabir to his feet – she was doing this by supporting him around the lower back, as she was far too small to reach up and take him by the shoulders. She whispered something to him, and he nodded. He looked beaten. As if the simple exercise of holding himself upright was an effort too far.

Radu touched Calque’s arm. ‘We have a possible place, Captain. Amongst close relatives. It is far away, though. In Romania. Alexi has agreed to take Yola and Damo there. They can hide up for a while. At least until after Yola has given birth to her child. No one will find them there.’

‘But the border crossing. There will be records.’

‘There is no border crossing. There will be no formal records. You may count on this. We are all in the EEC now, remember? We cross through Austria and Hungary. No one will notice us. Gypsies come and go that way all the time.’

Calque gave a Pontius Pilate sigh. ‘I will want to see them. To keep in touch. There are things I must do.’

‘This can be arranged.’

Calque nodded. He was realist enough to recognize a
fait accompli
when he saw one. ‘Very well then. Bury them. And dynamite the shaft. No one will hear anything this far into the woods.’

Radu slapped Calque on the shoulder. ‘This is very true, Captain. We will cover all the entrances with our people. It will be as if the earth has swallowed them. You have made a fine decision.’

And opened myself up to a litany of blackmail and extortion whenever the whim takes these people, thought Calque gloomily. ‘And Lamia?’

‘Her too. The earth will swallow her too. But somewhere else. Somewhere secret.’

Calque turned away from the shaft. ‘I shall return our rental car to the hire company. Then I will revisit your camp. You will tell me where I can find Yola and Sabir if I need to. I shall give you pay-as-you-go cell phones for them. So that I may keep in touch with them. You agree?’

‘We shall do this.’

‘And Radu. One final question.’

Radu smiled. He rocked his head from side to side as if he knew what was coming.

‘What if I’d refused to go along with your plan of burying the bodies out here?’

Radu glanced at Alexi.

Alexi held out his arms apologetically. ‘Captain. I’m so sorry. It’s nothing personal. I like you very much. But we would have had to kill you too.’