“What’s Marjean, Dad?” he asked, swallowing hard so that his question came out almost as a whisper.
Cade didn’t answer immediately but instead looked at his son meditatively as if deciding how far he could trust him.
“I feel I owe you an apology,” he said finally. “You’re a grown man now and I should have more confidence in you. I’ve tried to shelter you too much since your mother died. I see that now.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Marjean’s a little town in Normandy. No more than a village really. There’s a chateau and a church. I went there in the war with Carson and the sergeant. Carson was a corporal then.”
“After D-day?”
“That’s right. It was a bad time. The Germans were a cruel lot at the best of times, but by that time they were losing and that made them vicious. They’d been using the house as a headquarters, and we ambushed them when they were leaving, but we were too late to save the family. It wasn’t the first time that happened or the last. War’s an ugly thing, Stephen.”
Cade got up and went over to a filing cabinet in the corner of his study and took out two documents fastened together with an old paper clip.
“Here, read this,” he said, giving them to Stephen. “Then you’ll understand.”
It was a British military report on the events at Marjean chateau on August 28, 1944, and everything was set out in black and white. Before they left, the Germans had taken the owner of the chateau and his wife into the church that was no more than two hundred yards from the house. There was an old family servant there too, and the Germans had shot all three of them. Then they had set the house on fire and an old woman, perhaps the wife of the servant, had died in the flames. The Germans had even shot the dog. This was how they had repaid their hosts’ hospitality. They’d been thorough as always.
The report had been written by Cade and cosigned by another officer whose signature Stephen couldn’t read. Attached to it was a shorter handwritten document bearing the signature of a Charles Mason, Army Medical Officer. He stated simply that he’d been called to the church at Marjean by Colonel John Cade on August 28, 1944, and been asked to examine three dead bodies dressed in civilian clothing and located in the crypt. He had extracted bullets from each of the deceased and was able to say that they were of German origin, fired from Mauser pistols of the type then in use by the German army.
The documents seemed entirely authentic, and they were enough for Stephen. He wanted to believe his father, and so he did believe him. He had stayed on at school for an extra year and had got a place at New College to study history, and his father seemed proud of his achievement. The start of term was only two months away, and Stephen was busy planning how to decorate his rooms. Outside it was summer and everything seemed full of hope and possibility.
But Stephen’s mood didn’t last. One night less than a week later, he had just got into bed and turned out the light when Silas knocked on his door.
Perhaps if Stephen had known where they were going, he would have refused to follow his brother down the west-wing stairs, out through the door into the night, and round the back of the house. But Silas’s air of mystery drew Stephen forward, and when they got close to the study window, Silas’s hand on his arm meant that Stephen would have had to struggle to get himself free. The window was open, and Stephen was not prepared to risk discovery. And he needed to hear what Ritter and his father were saying. They were talking about the letter.
One time only Stephen raised his head above the windowsill to look in, before Silas pulled him back. There was no light in the room except from the green reading lamp on his father’s desk. Ritter and Cade sat in the leather-backed armchairs in the centre of the room with their heads close together. They were talking about what to do, and it didn’t take Stephen long to realise that he had been lied to. The men inside the room were cold- blooded killers, and they were about to kill again.
“There wasn’t anyone else, Colonel. You know that as well as I do.” It was Ritter talking. His voice was soft but pressing, with the usual tone of false jocularity entirely absent. It made Stephen feel cold inside, even though the night was warm.
“I hope you’re right.” Cade sounded anxious, petulant almost, like a man who craves reassurance but can’t accept it when it’s offered to him.
“It’s the house that worries me, Reg,” he went on after a moment. “You should have searched it before, when you got the book.”
“Maybe I should’ve done. But you wanted to get them in the church straight away. It was your call.”
“I wasn’t going to stand there asking them questions out in the open.”
“And the church was safe. You knew that because you’d been there before.” Stephen sensed a slight impatience in the sergeant’s voice as if he’d been over this ground many times before. “The point is that it didn’t make any difference,” he went on after a moment. “No one left the house while we were in the church or Carson would’ve seen them. It wasn’t that dark, and he had a view of all the exits. I asked him about it afterward, and he had no reason to lie.”
“He had no reason to shoot me.”
“That was twelve years later,” said Ritter. “No one got away. I’m sure of it. You found everyone you expected to. You told me that yourself.”
“I didn’t know about the old woman.”
“Fine. And she burnt up like a stick of old firewood.”
Ritter laughed harshly, but Cade didn’t join in.
“That was Carson too,” he said, sounding even more agitated than before. “He caused that fire. He didn’t need to shoot back like that. He must have seen the lamp in the window. He knew the risk. Maybe what I really wanted was in that house. It hurts not knowing whether it was there or not. It’d be easier to know it was destroyed than not to know one way or the other. Part of me wishes there had been a survivor.”
“Well, there wasn’t. Just you and me and Carson.”
“I don’t know how he even made corporal,” said Cade quickly. “I should have killed him when he came here before.”
“You couldn’t. Not with the boy watching.”
“No. Maybe not. But I didn’t realise then how persistent he would be,” said Cade. “The best thing would have been not to have got the bastard involved in the first place.”
“There’s no point in going over all that again, John. You thought we needed him at the time, and I agreed with you. We didn’t know how many Germans there would be, and we had to have a lookout. For afterward.”
“Afterward,” repeated Cade bitterly. “That’s when I talked about the book. And the cross. Babbling about them like some idiot schoolboy. Making out as if they were the most valuable things in the world. I wouldn’t have said anything if it hadn’t been for the fire.”
“How valuable is the book?” Ritter’s voice was suddenly much softer than Cade’s. It made Stephen shiver.
“It’s worth money. But no more than some of the other manuscripts here. And that’s not why I wanted it. I needed it because of where I thought it would lead me. But it hasn’t. All it’s done is get me a bullet in the lung and this bastard Carson stalking me. I don’t think he even wants the codex. It’s double Dutch to him, and he couldn’t fence it even if he wanted to. He just wants to hurt me, because he’s got it in his head that I’m the reason he’s poor and unsuccessful. And shabby. God, you should have seen him when he came here the second time, Reg. He looked like a tramp.”
“I wish I had,” said Ritter. There was no mistaking his meaning.
There was silence for a moment before Cade spoke again, and then the fretful note was back in his voice.
“You’re sure it’s him, Reg. Nobody else?”
“I know it’s him. There were no witnesses and no survivors. Nobody except him. Look, give me that again.” There was a sound of paper rustling. Ritter was obviously reading the blackmail letter. “Here. Paddington Station’s where you’re supposed to meet him. And he lives just round the corner from there. Or at least he used to. In some dive up above a paper shop. I visited him there once. And seventeen’s probably his lucky number.”
“Was his lucky number.” Cade laughed. “What are you going to do to him, Reg?”
The sadistic curiosity in his father’s voice was too much for Stephen. Swallowing the bile that had suddenly come up into his throat, he took an involuntary step back from the window. Several twigs had blown down with the
