He reached across for a map of France and spread it neatly out on to the table in front of him.
10
The first Adam Sabir knew of the Surete’s interest in him was when he switched on the television set in his rented fl at on the Ile St-Louis and saw his own face, full-size, staring back at him from the plasma screen.
As a writer and occasional journalist, Sabir needed to keep up with the news. Stories lurked there. Ideas simmered. The state of the world was reflected in the state of his potential market and this concerned him.
In recent years he had got into the habit of living to a very comfortable standard indeed, thanks to a freak one-off bestseller called The Private Life of Nostradamus. The original content had been just about nil – the title a stroke of genius. Now he desperately needed a follow-up or the money tap would turn off, the luxury lifestyle dry up and his public melt away.
Samana’s advertisement in that ludicrous free rag of a newspaper, two days before, had captured his attention, therefore, because it was so incongruous and so entirely unexpected:
Money needed. I have something to sell. Notre Dame’s [sic] lost verses. All written down. Cash sale to first buyer. Genuine.
Sabir had laughed out loud when he first saw the ad – it had so obviously been dictated by an illiterate. But how would an illiterate know about Nostradamus’s lost quatrains?
It was common knowledge that the sixteenth-century seer had written 1,000 indexed four-line verses, published during his lifetime and anticipating, with an almost preternatural accuracy, the future course of world events. Less well known, however, was the fact that fifty-eight of the quatrains had been held back at the very last moment, never to see the light of day. If an individual could find the location of those verses, they would become an instant millionaire – the potential sales were stratospheric.
Sabir knew that his publisher would have no compunction in anteing up whatever sum was needed to cement such a sale. The story of the find alone would bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in newspaper revenue and would guarantee front-page coverage all over the world. And what wouldn’t people give, in this uncertain age, to read the verses and understand their revelations? The mind boggled.
Until the events of today, Sabir had happily fantasised a scenario in which his original manuscript, like the Harry Potter books before him, would be locked up in the literary equivalent of a Fort Knox, only to be revealed to the impatiently slavering hordes on publication day. He was already in Paris. What would it cost him to check the story out? What did he have to lose?
Following the brutal torture and murder of an unknown male, police are seeking the American writer Adam Sabir, who is wanted for questioning in connection with the crime. Sabir is believed to be visiting Paris, but should under no circumstances be approached by members of the public, as he may be dangerous. The quality of the crime is of so serious a nature that the Police Nationale are making it their priority to identify the murderer, who, it is strongly believed, may be preparing to strike again.
‘Oh Jesus.’ Sabir stood in the centre of his living room and stared at the television set as if it might suddenly decide to break free from its moorings and crawl across the floor towards him. An old publicity photo of himself was taking up the full extent of the screen, exaggerating every feature of his face until he, too, could almost believe that it depicted a wanted criminal.
A death-mask ‘Do You Know this Man?’ photograph of Samana followed, its cheek and ear lacerated, its eyes dully opened, as if its owner were sitting in judgement on the millions of couch-potato voyeurs taking fleeting comfort from the fact that it was someone else and not they, depicted over there on the screen.
‘It’s not possible. My blood’s all over him.’ Sabir sat down in an armchair, his mouth hanging open, the throbbing in his hand uncannily echoing the throbbing of the linking electronic music that was even now accompanying the closing headlines of the evening news.
11
It took him ten frenetic minutes to gather all his belongings together – passport, money, maps, clothes and credit cards. At the very last moment he rifled through the desk in case there was anything in there he might use.
He was borrowing the fl at from his English agent, John Tone, who was on holiday in the Caribbean. The car was his agent’s, too and therefore unidentifiable – its very anonymity might at least suffice to get him out of Paris. To buy him time to think.
He hastily pocketed an old British driving licence in Tone’s name and some spare euros he found in an empty film canister. No photograph on the driving licence. Might be useful. He took an electricity bill and the car papers, too.
If the police apprehended him he would simply plead ignorance – he was starting on a research trip to St-Remy-de-Provence, Nostradamus’s birthplace. He hadn’t listened to the radio or watched the TV – didn’t know the police were hunting for him.
With luck he could make it as far as the Swiss border – bluster his way through. They didn’t always check passports there. And Switzerland was still outside the European Union. If he could make it as far as the US Embassy in Bern he would be safe. If the Swiss extradited him to anywhere, it would be to the US, not to Paris.
For Sabir had heard tales about the French police from some of his journalist colleagues. Once you got into their hands, your number was up. It could take months or even years for your case to make its way through the bureaucratic nightmare of the French jurisdictional system.
He stopped at the first hole-in-the-wall he could find and left the car engine running. He’d simply have to take the chance and get some cash. He stuffed the first card through the slit and began to pray. So far so good. He’d try for a thousand euros. Then, if the second card failed him, he could at least pay the motorway tolls in untraceable cash and get himself something to eat.
Across the street, a youth in a hoodie was watching him. Christ Jesus. This was hardly the time to get mugged. And with the keys left in a brand-new Audi station wagon, with the engine running.
He pocketed the cash and tried the second card. The youth was moving towards him now, looking about him in that particular way young criminals had. Fifty metres. Thirty. Sabir punched in the numbers.
The machine ate the card. They were closing him down.
Sabir darted back towards the car. The youth had started running and was about five metres off.
Sabir threw himself inside the car and only then remembered that it was British made, with the steering wheel placed on the right. He plunged across the central divider and wasted three precious seconds searching around for the unfamiliar central locking system.
The youth had his hand on the door.
Sabir crunched the automatic shift into reverse and the car lurched backwards, throwing the teenager temporarily off balance. Sabir continued backwards up the street, one foot twisted behind him on to the passenger seat, his free hand clutching the steering wheel.
Ironically he found himself thinking not about the mugger – a definite first, in his experience – but about the fact that, thanks to his forcibly abandoned bank card, the police would now have his fingerprints and a precise location of his whereabouts, at exactly 10.42 p.m., on a clear and starlit Saturday night, in central Paris.
12
Twenty minutes out of Paris and five minutes shy of the Evry autoroute junction, Sabir’s attention was caught by a road sign – thirty kilometres to Fontainebleau. And Fontainebleau was only ten short kilometres downriver from Samois. The pharmacist had told him so. They’d even had a brief, mildly flirtatious discussion about Henri II, Catherine de Medici and Napoleon who had apparently used the place to bid farewell to his Old Guard before leaving for exile on Elba.