‘I’ll take that.’ Calque held his hand out for Macron’s gun.
Sabir tendered him the pistol. ‘Whenever we meet, I always seem to be passing you firearms.’
‘The mobile phone, too.’
Calque pocketed the gun and the cellphone and moved towards the corridor. He shouted back over his shoulder. ‘Can we get the electricity reconnected here? Someone call the company. Either that, or hitch up a generator. I can’t see to think.’ He stood for a moment over Macron’s body, playing his torch over what remained of his assistant’s face.
Sabir moved up behind him.
‘No. Stand back. This is a crime scene now. I want your friends to remain by the fireplace until the ambulance comes. Not wash their hands. Not tread in anything. Not touch anything. You, Sabir, will come outside with me. You’ve got some explaining to do.’
Sabir followed Calque out of the front door. Temporary spotlights were being levered into place outside, giving the area the look of a floodlit, all-weather football pitch.
‘I’m sorry. Sorry about your assistant.’
Calque glanced at the surrounding trees and breathed in deeply. He felt in his pockets for a cigarette. When he didn’t find one he looked temporarily bereft – as if it was the lack of a cigarette he was mourning and not his partner. ‘It’s a funny thing. I didn’t even like the man. But now he’s dead I miss him. Whatever he might have been – whatever he might have done – he was mine. Do you understand that? My problem.’ Calque’s face was a frozen mask. Impossible to read. Impossible to touch.
A passing CRS officer, noting Calque’s search for a cigarette, offered him one of his own. Calque’s eyes flared angrily in the rush of the lighter flame – an anger that was just as suddenly extinguished. Catching sight of Calque’s expression, the man gave an embarrassed salute and passed on.
Sabir shrugged his shoulders in a vain effort to mitigate the effect of what he was about to say. ‘Macron called it off his own bat, didn’t he? Your people were here ten minutes after he moved in. He should have waited, shouldn’t he? He told us the shooters would take two hours. That they had to come from Montpellier and not Marseille. He was lying, wasn’t he?’
Calque turned away, grinding out his freshly-lit cigarette in the same fluid motion. ‘The girl is alive. My assistant secured her life at the cost of his own.’ He glared at Sabir. ‘He injured the eye-man. The man is now on horseback, spewing blood, in an area bounded by two rarely used roads and a river. Once daylight comes, he will stick out like an ant on a blank sheet of paper. He will be caught – either from the air or in the land net. The area is already ninety per cent sealed off. In under an hour, we will have made it a hundred.’
‘I know that, but…’
‘My assistant is dead, Monsieur Sabir. He sacrificed himself for you and the girl. First thing tomorrow morning I will have to go and explain his death to his family. How it could possibly have happened on my watch. How I let it happen. Are you sure you heard him right? About Montpellier, I mean? And the two hours?’
Sabir held Calque’s eyes with his own. Then he allowed his gaze to slide back towards the house. The distant sound of an ambulance cut through the night air like a lament.
‘You’re right, Captain Calque. I’m just a stupid Yank. My French is a little rusty. Montpellier. Marseille. They all sound the same to me.’