than any man from Ruac. Now, his eyes were closed and his teeth gritted. Her breasts were bouncing up and down to the beat of the musette drums.
‘Hey, Helene,’ Bonnet shouted to the redhead over the music. ‘Later on. You and me! I’ll find you.’
Odile was alternatively clawing at Luc, stroking him, moving her hands over the broad expanse of his back down to his waist, trying to wriggle off his tight jeans.
Her eyes were glassy, her lips moving as if talking, but nothing was coming out. Then a word formed, and another, ‘ Cheri, cheri.’
Luc’s eyes snapped open.
He looked around the room then took her head in his large hands and said, ‘I’m not your cheri, and I’m not going to screw a great-grandmother.’
He tried to shake her off but she grabbed him tighter, her nails digging into his back.
‘I’ve never done this before,’ he said angrily.
He scowled and slammed his fist into her jaw.
Thankfully, she went limp immediately so he didn’t have to pummel her to unconsciousness.
He lifted himself off the bed and rearranged his clothes, watching the naked woman quietly breathing. ‘You look pretty good for one hundred and sixteen,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you that.’
He fished inside his pockets for his mobile and as expected, it was gone.
He twisted the door knob open. Bonnet had thought his daughter was enough of a honey pot to keep him in an unlocked room, Luc figured.
The corridor was empty, the music wafting from the large hall.
His head was perfectly clear. It was clear when he drank the tea. It was clear twenty minutes later. It was clear now.
He’d put on an act. He’d faked being zoned. He watched Sara and the villagers and did his best imitation. Bonnet had been fooled, that’s all that mattered.
Why wasn’t he affected?
No hallucinations, no other-worldliness, no nothing. Just a headache.
Sara was convinced he’d be immune? How did she know?
Sara.
He had to find her. The thought of Jacques pawing her body made him sick with rage.
He started twisting door knobs.
One after another, the same thing: old, overweight people having it on, oblivious to his intrusion. It was beyond unappetising.
After he tried all the private rooms off that corridor, he crept to the main hall. Bonnet was sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the room, resting drowsily. There was no sign of Pelay. There was enough floor-squirming going on between him and Bonnet to make him think he could slink low and make it to the next corridor.
He dropped down, frog-walked along the wall.
He was level with the tea-service table. The Ruac Manuscript was so close.
He didn’t even think. He just acted, dropping to his belly, starting to crawl.
He was swimming in a sea of naked bodies who were oblivious to his presence. He gritted his teeth and kept going.
He looked over for Bonnet.
He wasn’t in his chair.
Christ, Luc thought. Christ.
In one more second he was under the table.
He reached up and felt his hand close around it.
Sara, I’m coming.
He quickly wriggled back to the wall. Bonnet was nowhere to be seen so he boldly rose and sprinted to the next hallway, shoving the manuscript into his shirt.
He opened the first door he came to.
An old couple sweaty and panting.
Then, the second door.
On the bed, was a man with a hairy back and unbuttoned trousers. Jacques was awkwardly trying to peel them off with his free hand. The only part of Sara he could see, hidden underneath the beast, was tan silky hair, cascading onto the pillow.
There was a standing lamp, a heavy iron affair.
He felt a kind of murderous rage he’d never felt before.
It made him grab the lamp, snapping the plug from the wall.
It made him swing it like a pick axe, bringing the base crashing down onto the man’s thoracic spine.
And when Jacques arched his back in pain, raising his head off Sara’s chest and baying like a wounded dog, it made him swing the base of the lamp hard into his skull, crushing it like a walnut, and driving his body halfway off the bed.
Sara was moaning. He held her naked against him and told her she was going to be all right. Her eyes wouldn’t focus. He kept speaking to her, whispering into her ear which felt cold against his lips. And finally he heard a tiny, breathy, ‘Luc.’
There wasn’t time to try to dress her. He pushed Jacques’ corpse off the bed and wrapped her in the blood- splattered bedspread. He was about to lift her when he had a thought. He dug into Jacques’ pockets. The hard edge of Jacques’ mobile felt wonderful against his fingertips. He glanced at it.
No bars. Of course. They were underground.
He pocketed the phone, bundled Sara up and carried her in his arms, pushing the door open with his knee.
The corridor was empty.
He started to run with her, away from the music.
He felt strong and she felt light.
The hallway was darker the further he got from the main hall. He strained to see what was ahead.
Stairs.
Bonnet checked his watch again, lifted his heavy hips out of the chair and plodded back to Odile’s room to see how she was getting on with her paramour.
It had been four years since the birth of a new child in Ruac. They needed to pick up the pace if they wanted to sustain themselves. Odile was too picky for his liking. A women as attractive as her should be pumping out babies like a machine.
But she’d been pregnant only three times in her long life. Once during the First World War, where she lost the baby to a miscarriage. Again, right after the Second World War, a boy sired by a Resistance fighter from Rouen, who’d died of an infant fever. And again in the early sixties to a Parisian lad back-packing through the Perigord, a one-night stand.
This time a girl was born. She grew up young and pretty and carried the hopes of Bonnet and the entire village on her little shoulders. But she died in a freak accident down in the basements. She had been climbing on the old German crates, trying to scramble to the top of the box mountain, when one of the crates toppled and crushed the life out of her.
Odile had sunk into a depression and despite her father’s pleadings, lost interest in the pursuit of men from the outside.
Until the archaeologists came to town.
The only bright spot in a nightmare as far as Bonnet was concerned.
Bonnet opened her door, expecting to see two beautiful people making love, but she was alone, snoring, with a puffy jaw.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed.
There wasn’t any need to search the room. There was no place to hide.
He rushed out and ran as fast as his arthritic hips could carry him towards Jacques’ room.
There he found a profoundly worse scene. His son, bashed, bloody and most certainly dead, Sara gone.
‘My God, my God, my God!’ he muttered.
