The Mayan Codex (11 page)

The footman who had been guarding Lamia’s room skittered down the steps at the front of the house, the leather soles of his shoes echoing off the marble cladding. He stopped and made a face at Milouins as the pair came abreast of him. ‘The old woman will massacre me for this.’ He scowled at Lamia. ‘I hope she gives you to me to do over. I’ll stick a plastic bag over your head so I won’t have to look at you.’

‘Shut up,’ said Milouins. ‘And go and wake Madame la Comtesse.’

‘She’s up already. The burglar alarm must have gone off in her bedroom when you came through the front door without neutralizing it.’

Lamia, Milouins, and the footman stood in the hall, looking up towards the stairs.

The Countess, in her dressing gown, and accompanied by a similarly clad Madame Mastigou, was descending the staircase to meet them.

‘What shall we do with her, Madame?’ Milouins looked marginally uncomfortable, like an axe-man at a royal execution who is suffering from a sudden onset of
lèse majesté
.

‘Do with her?’ The Countess came to an abrupt halt. ‘Get Philippe to tie her up, feed her a sedative, and then
lock her in the Corpus chamber. That way we can all get some sleep. There are no windows in there to tempt her towards further recklessness. I shall decide on her future in the morning.’

Ex-Sergeant-Chef Jean Picaro – twenty years in the Legion, ten years banged up in La Santé prison for armed robbery, eight years on the outside as a procurer of hard-to-access items to the criminal fraternity – scratched his clean-shaven head with fingernails worn down by years of automatic habit. A former sufferer of bread scabies, which he had contracted at La Santé during a particularly pernicious period in its history, Picaro had found it physically impossible to rid himself of his fifteen-year-old anxiety tic whenever he entered periods of high stress.

And it was most definitely stress that he was feeling now. One thing was certain – to all intents and purposes he was looking at a straight in-and-out affair. So why was he sweating? And why was he scratching his head like a chimpanzee with mange?

At first he had been minded not to take the job at all. It went against the grain to deal with ex-
flics
. Shit sticks – and old shit sticks the worst. But the man came recommended by Aimé Macron. And Macron had saved Picaro’s life in Djibouti when he’d fallen foul of an Afar brigade leader in a convoluted deal involving drugs, women, and a consignment of FAMAS assault
rifles which had somehow gone missing from the Legion warehouse.

The
flic
had further undermined his objections by coming straight out and offering him 1,500 Euros on the nail, and a further 1,500 down the line, to liberate a personal item belonging to him from inside a house on the Cap. The deal didn’t even involve a break-in. The
flic
, as
flics
do, had secretly palmed and wax-pressed a backdoor key while conducting an investigation inside the house two months before. Picaro had even been given a detailed map of the layout, showing the position of the library and of the concealed doorway leading to the room containing the object. A piece of cake, surely. But something was still bothering him.

He played his torch over the map. He’d been watching the back of the house for over an hour now, and everything seemed quiet. No dogs. No automatic lighting sensors this side of the property. The
flic
had even explained to him where the alarm system and circuit breakers were, and how best to de-activate them. The whole thing was a fucking dream. But in Picaro’s experience, dreams had a nasty habit of jolting you awake when you least expected it.

He flicked some imaginary skin from the collar of his jacket.

Right. Either you do it or you don’t, Legionnaire.

Picaro rose to his feet and padded down towards the
buanderie
.

Picaro stood inside the back door and sniffed. He didn’t know how or why, but sometimes you could smell the presence of people, even rooms away from you. It was some atavistic instinct, he reckoned, from mankind’s earliest times as a cave dweller. Enter an empty cave which you meant to occupy yourself, and before you settled down in front of the fire it was a smart idea to make sure that no one else, man or beast, felt they had a prior claim.

Satisfied, Picaro padded up the concrete stairway that led to the back of the hallway. After neutralizing the alarm system within the stipulated two minutes, he cracked his torch and checked his map one final time. A left, a right, and then another right, and he should be in the library. Then a few steps across the room to the bound set of
La Vie Parisienne
– the
flic
had even set down the exact number of volumes there were in that particular run – and hey presto, open sesame.

Picaro cast a quick glance up the stairs as he passed through the hall. Despite the multitude of houses he had broken into during the course of his life, Picaro still couldn’t stop himself fantasizing about his own particular nightmare – that of an Alsatian – it was always an Alsatian – bounding noiselessly down the stairs, dewlaps flapping, saliva jetting into its mouth at the prospect of a piece of Jean Picaro’s thighbone.

Giving a little jump to settle his gooseflesh, Picaro eased himself through the doorway of the library. Jesus. He was getting too old for this. What did he need 3,000 euros for, anyway? His bank account was heaving. He
owned his house outright. His son was apprenticed to the best electrical engineer in the business, and he had vowed to die rather than ever to go back to prison again. So what the hell was he doing it for? Habit? Addiction to the kicks? Or just because it was one of the few things he could still do well?

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 Santé 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.