He shook his head. ‘You came all the way from France to see me. I can’t have you leave without hearing what we found.’
‘Don’t be crazy, man!’ Luc exclaimed. ‘You’ve been through hell. We’ll talk in a few days. Please!’
‘I had a PowerPoint presentation for you,’ Fred said wistfully. ‘Everything’s gone ka-boom. My computer, my lab, everything. Oh well. But, let me at least tell you about our results. Maybe we’ll be able to reproduce them one day. Our lawyer was upset at me because I analysed your sample without putting the proper paperwork and agreements in place. You see, we obtained some important data and it wasn’t clear who would own the intellectual property. She wouldn’t let me put any of in a letter or email. It all seemed so critical last week.’ His voice tailed off. ‘I was told she died this morning – that lawyer. Her name was Jane.’
‘I’m sorry, Fred,’ Sara said, squeezing his hand.
He asked for water from his bendy-straw. ‘Well, that liquid of yours had some really interesting biology. It lit up our screens like a Christmas tree. Where to start? Okay, then, did you have any idea it was swimming in ergot alkaloids?’
‘You’re kidding!’ Sara said. Then when she saw Luc’s puzzled expression, she explained, ‘They’re psychoactive compounds. Nature’s LSD. How’d ergots get in there? I gave you the list of plants, Fred.’ And then the answer hit her and she blurted out, ‘ Claviceps purpurea !’
‘Exactly!’ Fred said.
She was slowed down by the need to explain things to Luc. ‘It’s a fungus. It contaminates wild and cultivated grasses, like our wild barley. The fungus produces the ergot compounds. In the Middle Ages tens of thousands of Europeans came down with ergotism from naturally contaminated rye, causing hallucinations, madness, sometimes death. The Aztecs chewed Morning Glory seeds which contain natural ergots. It was their way of communicating with their gods. Christ, I studied ergotism in grad school! Ergot contamination of livestock grain is still a major problem.’
‘I’m a hundred per cent sure it was Claviceps -derived,’ Fred said with an excited look, seemingly forgetting his circumstances. ‘The predominant ergots were agroclavine and elymoclavine.’
She shook her head knowingly. ‘Did you find anything else?’
‘You bet I did. Ergots were only the beginning. Wait till you hear the rest!’
Luc’s mobile phone rang. When he opened it, someone with a hospital badge told him he couldn’t use it inside.
Luc excused himself and limped down the corridor towardsathe casualty department. ‘Hello?’
‘Is that Professor Simard?’
‘Yes, who’s this?’
‘It’s Father Menaud, from Ruac. I need to speak with you.’
‘Yes, one moment. Let me get outside.’
On the way out, Luc saw two large men heading towards him, shoulder-to-shoulder, and he thought he heard one of them say ‘Oui,’ which struck him as out of place in the corridors of the Nuffield Hospital. One was wearing a sweatshirt, the other a padded jacket. Both looked haggard. When he looked at them, he had the impression they deliberately looked away but it happened quickly and he was out the door.
The forecourt to the Casualty Department was crowded with ambulances, police cars and satellite trucks. Luc tried to find a relatively quiet spot.
‘How can I help you, Dom Menaud?’
It wasn’t a good connection. Syllables were dropping. ‘I’m afraid they’re all gone. I don’t know any other way to tell you.’
Luc was confused. ‘I’m sorry, what do you mean, gone?’
‘All your people at the camp. All of them are dead. It’s a terrible tragedy. Please, professor, come as soon as you can!’
TWENTY-TWO
Monday
Luc left Sara speechless and trembling at Fred Prentice’s side with nothing more than a few hurried words to tell her there’d been an accident in France.
Maybe it was a cruel thing to do to her, to leave so abruptly, but his mind wasn’t focused on anything but getting back across the Channel. He hailed a taxi and persuaded the driver to take him all the way to Heathrow for the cash in his wallet. He left his bag at the hotel; it was the last thing he cared about. He used his mobile until the battery went dead then sat in the cab with his hands in his head. The rest of the journey was a long, slashing blur, a journey to hell.
Hell was roped off with yellow incident tape.
The abbey grounds were the site of a major gendarmerie investigation. In the parking area, an officer recognised Luc and escorted him through the forensic cordon. In the distance, Luc saw the monks heading to the church. Which office of the day was it? He’d lost track of time. Then he noticed the sun was setting. Vespers. Nothing was going to interrupt the cycle of prayer.
Luc was like a foetus, suspended in murkiness, aware of his own heartbeat, his breathing, but primitively unaware of what was happening outside the womb.
Colonel Toucas was strutting around, very much in charge. By the cold ash of the camp fire pit, he immediately started peppering Luc with questions and confronting him with grim facts. The way he was so energised, almost giddy in the midst of all this calamity, angered Luc and brought him crashing back to the here and now.
But Luc had trouble looking into Toucas’s animated face when the policeman started describing the location of bodies, the nature of the wounds. Instead, he found himself staring furiously at the objects that adorned the colonel’s sky-blue shirt – his epaulets, his service patches, the dark-blue tie with its emblematic clip.
Luc began to fully absorb the horror. The three male under-graduate students and Jeremy were shot dead in the office, execution style. Marie, the female undergrad, raped and shot in one caravan. Elizabeth Coutard, raped and shot in another.
Finally, Luc was able to look at Toucas’s fleshy lips. ‘What about Pierre?’ he asked in little more than a whisper.
‘Who’s Pierre?’ the officer asked.
After Luc explained who Pierre was and that he was certainly there on Sunday night, Toucas began barking at his men, demanding an explanation for the incomplete body count, haranguing them to make another search of the camp site. Luc offered up the make and model of Pierre’s car and an officer was dispatched to locate it.
Toucas all but forced Luc to enter the Portakabin to give an accounting of what was missing. Mercifully, the bodies were covered, but the shrouds couldn’t hide all the blood.
‘My God,’ Luc muttered. ‘My God. Who could have done this?’
‘Who indeed,’ Toucas said. ‘We’ll find them, you can be sure of that.’
The office was completely ransacked. The computers were gone as were the scientific gear, the microscopes and environmental monitors. The file cabinets and desk drawers had all been emptied out into a great pile and by the looks of it, the intruders had set the pile on fire. About a quarter of the papers were burned through or singed.
‘Why would they burn the files?’ Luc asked numbly.
Toucas pointed to the charred remnants. ‘Perhaps they were using the papers to set the building off and destroy the evidence. The fire must have burned out on its own. These coated file folders don’t ignite easily. There’s no sign of accelerants. You light a match, start the fire, run away and it dies out. That’s what I think happened.’
An officer poked his head in. ‘That car isn’t around, Colonel.’
‘So where is this Pierre? What’s his last name, professor?’
‘Berewa.’
‘What kind of name is that?’
