‘Look,’ Billeter said, ‘the coroner already took samples from the body. We’ll know how much he had soon enough.’
‘I shouldn’t have let him go on his own,’ Luc choked. ‘I should have driven him.’
The officer had his answer and left them alone.
Sara didn’t seem to know what to do or what to say. Tentatively, she put the palm of her hand against Luc’s shoulder and he let her keep it there.
Another car arrived, this one from the direction of the village. A couple leaped out, Odile and her brother. She looked at Luc and Sara and started to run towards the crash but one of Billeter’s men stopped her and had a word.
She began to scream.
Sara told Luc she should go to her but before she could, one of the firemen strode from behind the pumper and grabbed Odile by the arm. It was her father, the mayor, decked out in his SPV uniform.
Bonnet pulled his daughter away and Sara did the same with Luc, tugging him in the direction of his car. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to be here.’
The afternoon light streamed thin through Luc’s caravan windows. Stretched on his bunk, he was more in darkness than light. Sara sat next to him on a pulled-up chair, sharing Hugo’s last bottle of bourbon.
Luc’s tongue was thick and lazy with booze. He pulled his hands from behind his neck and cracked his knuckles. ‘Do you have many friends?’ he asked.
‘What kind of friends?’
‘Same-sex friends. In your case, girlfriends.’
She laughed at his overexplanation. ‘Yes, quite a few.’
‘I don’t have same-sex friends,’ he said sadly. ‘I think Hugo was it for me on that score. Why do you think that is? I mean, you know me.’
‘I used to know you.’ She had been drinking a bit, enough to be convivial.
‘No, no, you still know me,’ he stubbornly insisted.
‘I think you spend too much time on female friends and your work to have male friends. That’s what I think.’
He turned on his side to face her with a revelatory expression. ‘I think you’re right! Women and work, work and women. It’s not healthy. A stool needs three legs, no?’ He began to flounder. ‘I think Hugo was going to be my third leg. We were reconnecting, really getting on, and now, he’s gone. The bastard drove into a tree.’ He reached for her with two arms.
‘No, Luc,’ she said, collecting herself and getting up. ‘Your instincts have gone haywire. You need emotional support right now, not physical love.’
‘No, I-’
She was already halfway out the door. ‘I’m going to get the chef to bring you something to eat and then I’m going to pack up the thermos to make the afternoon express parcel run. I want it to get to Cambridge by tomorrow afternoon. They’re expecting it at PlantaGenetics.’
‘Are you coming back?’ He was pathetic now, like a child.
‘When you’re asleep!’ she said soothingly. ‘Shut your eyes and drift off. And yes, I’ll come back to check on you. Just to check on you.’
When she was gone he stood up on shaky legs to splash some water on his face from the sink.
He stood over Hugo’s empty bunk and began to shake with the helpless rage he’d been suppressing all day. He closed his eyes and saw orange. Violence was needed, some sort of violence. That’s what his brain was telling him, so he punched the partition between his sleeping area and sitting area hard enough to seriously crater the particle board. He winced from the pain he’d inflicted on himself and saw blood on the wall. His fourth knuckle had a good deep cut. He wrapped it in a bandanna and sat back on his bed bleeding into the cloth and drinking more bourbon.
Sara protected him that night with a fierce, almost maternal instinct. She discovered his wound, saw the fist-shaped depression in the wall, clucked at him and dressed it. He was not to be disturbed. People could sort out their excavation issues on their own for one day, she insisted, and she posted a note on his caravan door to make sure he’d be left alone.
She stopped back later in the afternoon and wished she’d thought to take the bourbon bottle with her. It was empty, his tray of food was uneaten and he was snoring. She wiggled his boots off and threw the cover over his clothed body.
Later, when it was dark, she came back again. He had hardly moved. She decided to do her evening’s work at his desk to keep an eye on him. She kept vigil until quite late, reading her notes and typing on her laptop as the camp ground grew quiet and still.
A beam of light stretched across the darkness of the Portakabin. Luc’s desk was in the corner, furthest from the door. The light moved up and down over the desk drawers and settled on the lowest one.
The side drawers couldn’t be opened until the centre drawer was unlocked. There was a coffee mug on the desk crammed with pencils and pens. They were removed and the mug was tipped upside down. A small key dropped out.
The key unlocked the centre drawer and when it was opened, the side drawer slid open too. Inside were hanging files, in alphabetical order, covering a myriad of administrative issues.
A hand went straight for the Ds and a hand parted the file labelled D IVERS, for miscellaneous items. Among papers was an unmarked envelope, closed, not sealed.
Inside the envelope was the duplicate key to the titanium gate which sealed and protected Ruac Cave.
FIFTEEN
Ruac Abbey, 1118
Bernard strode back and forth inside his stone house, trying to outpace the black cloud hanging over his head. He couldn’t remember when he had been more troubled. The events of the previous evening had shaken him so deeply he felt he might go mad.
The only remedy was prayer and fasting, he was sure of that. He had already vigorously prayed in the church three times at Lauds, Prime and Terce, and in between prayer sessions he had marched straight back to his house and fallen on his knees for bouts of more personal prayer. He had avoided the others. He wanted to be alone.
He thought to ignore the knock on his door but his sense of comity would not abide that. It was his brother, Barthomieu, bowing his head. ‘Can we speak?’
‘Yes, come in. Sit.’
‘You did not have food this morning.’
‘I am fasting.’
‘We noticed your absence at breakfast and your demeanour in the chapel. There is anger on your face.’
‘I am most vexed. Are you not?
Barthomieu lifted his head to look at him squarely. ‘I am reflective. I am amazed. I am quizzical, but no, I am not vexed.’
Bernard raised his voice. He could not remember the last time he had shouted. ‘I believe you should be vexed! Last night you were powerfully turbulent. Do you not remember?’
‘I do remember,’ he chuckled. His knuckles were raw. ‘I hope it wasn’t you I struck, brother! Most unlike me, but it passed.’
‘You tried to strike Jean, for God’s sake, but you hit a cooking pot instead!’
‘Well,’ Barthomieu mused, ‘the good far outweighed the evil in my humble opinion.’
There was another knock on the door.
‘Good Lord, can I not be left in peace?’ Bernard exclaimed.
Jean and Abelard were both at the door, and the little stone house became crowded.
‘I was concerned about you,’ Abelard said.
‘We should all be concerned for our souls,’ Bernard answered acidly. ‘The Devil visited evil upon us last night.
