14

Abi lay on top of the cliff and tried to snatch his breath back. The shouting continued below him, but he ignored it.

His hands were bleeding, as were his forearms and elbows. The rest of him felt as if some sadist had given him a full body massage with a belt sander.

When his breathing steadied, Abi eased himself onto his knees and checked the surrounding area for movement. Nothing. Not so much as a swaying blade of grass. The sun was beating down on the blue agave plantation so hard it was putting a crease into the light.

He turned his head and checked out what his botched jack-and-extinguisher device had snagged on. Yes. Just as he thought. The narco-cacique’s body. Which had then snagged onto another body, slowing down its movement towards the cliff edge. He’d been absurdly lucky that the two bodies hadn’t simply rolled over each other and across the edge of the cliff, taking him with them. Rigor mortis had set in during the night, leaving both cadavers a jumbled mass of protruding arms, legs, and knees – perfect for slowing down a roll.

Well. You needed luck sometimes. The Corpus had been having a bad run of it recently, and now maybe things were set to change.

Abi lurched to his feet. He took a few steps and then stood swaying, as if he had vertigo. Hunger was making his stomach clench – it felt as if someone had caught him unawares with a rabbit punch.

Abi’s mind was cutting loose on him too. He caught himself wondering how Aldinach and Athame were doing over in Europe, following up on his orders. Whether they’d managed to find and execute their sister, Lamia, for her betrayal of the Corpus with that motherfucker Sabir. Whether they’d identified and killed the Gypsy girl who was meant to be the future mother of the Second Coming. All these things had seemed so damned important a day or so ago. The central facts of his life. Now he found he didn’t care much either way.

Abi laughed and shook his head. He sucked air into his lungs like a man getting his first taste of the sea, and lurched forwards. Talk about a dysfunctional family. God had really messed up when He’d allowed Abi’s mother, the Countess, free rein in choosing her adoptive children. Still. Even freaks had to have a place to call their own.

Abi focused on the problem in hand. The dead cacique’s Toyota Roraima was parked twenty yards back from the lip of the cenote. Abi stumbled across to it and looked inside. No keys. But there was a three-quarters full bottle of water stuck into the service tray. And a box of half-eaten tacos on the passenger seat. And the passenger door was open.

Abi ate the tacos and drank the water.

The shouts from below him were getting louder. Abi pushed himself away from the Land Cruiser and walked to the edge of the sinkhole. ‘Can it for a minute, will you. I’m just working out how to get you all back up. There are no keys in the Toyota so I’m going to have to find them. Then I’ll attach this length of hosepipe I’ve found to the tow bar and lower it down. You can attach yourselves to it somehow or other, and then I’ll ease the car forward and haul you out. None of you will be strong enough to shin the fifty feet up here on your own otherwise.’

Abi didn’t wait for their reply but walked directly over to the cacique’s body. He was feeling stronger by the minute. Just so long as the cacique didn’t have a chauffeur who had pocketed the keys, and who was now lying at the bottom of the cenote with the rest of the skydivers, thought Abi.

Abi felt around in the cacique’s pocket. The man was already ripe, thanks to the action of the sun. Swarms of blowflies were busy in the collection of bullet holes scattered about his body.

No keys.

Abi shook his head. The Corpus’s rental cars had been parked too near to the crystal meth factory. They would almost certainly have fried when the place went up. And the Hummer in the basement would have fried too. Abi didn’t feel like walking out of the plantation and then another ten miles into the nearest town. And no way did he feel like bodily dragging his siblings out of the cenote via a hosepipe. It occurred to him that the cacique’s henchmen must have arrived in cars, but he would be faced with a similar problem there – no one in their right minds would leave a car unlocked near a public road in Mexico, and certainly not a habitual criminal. With his luck, the keys would all be down in the cenote. And there was no way on earth he was diving back in there to collect them.

He grabbed a fallen hat from near one of the stiffs and put it on. Then he walked back to the Toyota and felt underneath the front seat. No go. He walked around the car and tried under the passenger seat. Nothing.

He thought for a moment and then flipped the lid for the vanity compartment. There was a pistol inside, but nothing else. Abi pulled it out. It was a Beretta 92FS semi-automatic. What the US armed forces called the M9. Abi checked the load and then slid the weapon into the back of his trousers, so that it snugged between his skin and his shirt.

Keys. No. Wait a minute. No keys. A sensor. Abi knew a thing or two about Land Cruisers. And this Roraima was a Land Cruiser under another name.

Abi remembered that all top-of-the-range Land Cruisers had Smart Entry. Meaning the doors would open at the touch of a hand if the sensor was brought close enough to the vehicle. And all these doors had opened. Meaning the sensor was still around here someplace. Meaning the Smart Start would work as well, so long as the sensor was still hidden somewhere inside the car.

Abi sat in the driver’s seat and pushed the button. The Toyota thrummed into life. Abi grinned. He closed the doors and switched on the climate control. The tank was full of gas. He checked around for anything else to eat, but there was nothing.

He waited patiently for the climate control to lower the inside temperature to eighteen degrees.

Then, when he was feeling comfortable for the first time in more than twenty-four hours, he engaged the automatic shift and drove down the track and out of the plantation.