28

‘What’s your name?’

The boy darted a sideways glance at the girl beside him. Then back to Abi. ‘She is Koiné. I am Bera. Who are you?’

‘None of your business.’

‘What do you want? Are you a bad man? Why do you have guns?’

Abi nodded. ‘Yes. I’m a bad man. This...’ He jerked his head at Rudra. ‘This is a bad man too. And these...’ He chucked his chin towards Nawal and Dakini. ‘These are bad women.’

‘Are you going to sell us?’

‘Not if your sister does what we say.’

‘What do you say?’

Abi made a face. This one was a sassy little runt. ‘That she’s to go back to the camp and tell your headman to come out to speak to me. Privately. Quietly. Without making a song and a dance out of it. Meanwhile, this bad man will hold you in another place. I have a phone. When your chief tells me what I want to know, then I phone the bad man and you get to go home. If he doesn’t, this man will hurt you. She’s to tell him that.’

‘Why you do this?’

‘That’s none of your business either.’

‘Koiné. You don’t go.’

‘Listen here, you little guttersnipe. If she doesn’t go, we drop you both down a convenient mine shaft. I’ve heard there are old mines around here. We’ll drop you down and you’ll break your legs. Then you’ll starve to death. We’ll be long gone by then. Nobody will know you’re down there. It’s not a nice way to die. Take it from me.’ An image flashed into Abi’s brain from the cenote, but he shunted it away into his unconscious. He noticed, though, that Rudra looked as pale as a fish belly beneath the remnants of his Mexican tan.

Bera turned his dark eyes onto Abi. ‘You killed my cousin Babel. I know who you are. I know why you are here.’

‘You’re a smart little bleeder, I’ll give you that much. But we didn’t kill anybody. That was someone else. We need information, that’s all. And you’re going to get it for us. Either that, or we drop you thirty feet down an open mine shaft. It’s a simple equation. Take it or leave it.’

Bera looked at his sister. ‘You go tell Radu. You tell him about the mine shaft. What they are going to do.’

Abi pointed to his pistol. ‘You tell no one else, mind. Only this Radu person. We don’t want the whole camp in an uproar. If you don’t do as we ask, we will hurt your brother.’

Koiné began to cry. Bera approached his sister and yanked her by the pigtails. ‘Listen. You talk to Radu. Tell him about the mine. Only him. You understand me?’

Koiné glanced up at her brother. Her mouth twisted itself out of shape in an effort to fight back her tears. She nodded.

Abi took a step forward. ‘He’s to meet me in an hour. Centre of Samois. By the post office. He’s to come alone. On foot. He’s to wear something red. If I see anybody with him, I’ll order this man to hurt you. Make Radu understand that. If he talks to me, you can go free. We don’t want you. I never liked kids. Untrustworthy little blighters.’

‘You are a bad man.’

‘You’d better believe it.’

‘Go, Koiné. Talk to Radu.’

With a backward glance at her brother, Koiné started up the track.

Abi watched her go. Then he turned to Rudra. ‘Okay. Take this little brat off in the car. The girls can go with you – they’re far too memorable to be let loose on a sleepy little village like Samois. I’m going to walk – that way the timings will be right. I’ll call you when I need you.’

Rudra urged the boy away with the barrel of his gun. He didn’t look at Abi. Neither did Dakini or Nawal.

Abi shrugged. Well. Maybe he still wasn’t flavour of the month with those three. But Madame, his mother, had clearly put him in charge again, so he didn’t much care what the others thought. This time around he was going to do things his way. He’d follow the Countess’s agenda, sure. But he’d follow his own agenda too.

The four of them had lucked into the children twenty minutes before. Found them playing alone, three-quarters of a mile from the camp, while they were scouting the area prior to moving in on the headman. Abi didn’t like involving children in Corpus affairs – not altruistically, but on principle, because children refused to behave and think like adults. They were ungovernable. Unpredictable.

But their presence had given him his idea about how to persuade the headman to tell them where Sabir and his Gypsy friends were hiding. Originally, he had intended to watch the camp until he was certain of the chief’s identity. Then kidnap and torture him. But why use violence when you could use psychology instead? And not queer your back trail into the bargain?

He knew that the others weren’t comfortable with him sidetracking them all the way back to near Paris. Madame, his mother, had ordered them to go directly to Moldova. Once there, they were to exert pressure on some certifiable nutter called Mihael Catalin, who claimed he was the Second Coming, and had amassed an army of fanatical followers to support his claim. The same nutter whom Sabir had indiscreetly identified as Nostradamus’s Third Antichrist whilst he was still pussy-struck with their sister Lamia.

‘Look. This so-called Antichrist isn’t going anywhere in a hurry. We can catch up with him whenever we want to. He’s got his own town. He’s got his own airport. He’s even got his own bank. So he’s going to be busy as hell. Plus he doesn’t believe he’s the Antichrist – he thinks he’s the Second Coming, for pity’s sake. The fucking Saviour of Mankind. So he’ll keep. Sabir won’t. He’s on the run. He knows we’ll be coming after him and his Gypsy friends. And I have a score to settle with that bastard. If it hadn’t been for him and Calque torching the crystal meth factory, we might have been able to bribe our way out of that cenote. So I blame the two of them directly for Oni’s death. And for Vau, Asson, Alastor, and Berith’s earlier. And it wouldn’t surprise me if they weren’t involved in Lamia, Athame’s and Aldinach’s disappearance somehow too. So they owe us – they owe us large. And I, for one, aim to collect.’