‘Let’s just say he’s pretty desperate for it.’
‘Boy, he must be.’
‘I was wondering if your fly elixir could be of any use to him.’
‘I’ve told you. It’s not ready yet. And I wouldn’t even try it on a human being. It would be totally unethical. Not to mention practising medicine without a licence. I’m in enough shit as it is, apparently.’
He shrugged.
‘So, Ben, are you going to tell me where we’re going in this fancy new toy of yours?’
‘Does the name Jacques Clement mean anything to you?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘He was Fulcanelli’s apprentice back in the twenties.’ She shot him a questioning look. ‘Why?’
‘The story goes, Fulcanelli passed on certain documents to Clement before he disappeared,’ he filled in. She was waiting for more, so he went on. ‘Anyhow, that was back in 1926. Clement’s dead now, died a long time ago. But I want to know more about whatever it was that Fulcanelli gave him.’
‘How can you find out?’
‘One of the first things I did when I got to Paris three days ago was to check out any surviving family. I thought they might be able to help.’
‘And?’
‘I traced his son, Andre. Rich banker, retired. He wasn’t very forthcoming. As a matter of fact, as soon as I mentioned Fulcanelli he and his wife basically told me to piss off
‘That’s what happens when you mention alchemy to anyone,’ she said. ‘Join the club.’
‘Anyway, I didn’t think I’d hear from them again,’ he went on. ‘But this morning, while you were sleeping, I had a call.’
‘From them?’
‘From their son, Pierre. We had an interesting talk. It turns out there were two brothers, Andre and Gaston. Andre was the successful one, and Gaston was the black sheep of the family. Gaston wanted to carry on his father’s work, which Andre hated, saw it as witchcraft.’
‘That figures.’
And they basically disowned Gaston. Family embarrassment. They won’t have anything to do with him any longer.’
‘Gaston’s still alive?’
‘Apparently so. He lives a few kilometres away, on an old farm.’
She settled back in her seat. ‘And that’s where we’re headed?’
‘Don’t get too excited. He’s probably some kind of oddball…what did you call them?’
‘Fruitcakes. Technical term.’
‘I’ll make a note of it.’
‘So you think Gaston Clement might still have those papers, or whatever it was that Fulcanelli passed on to his father?’
‘It’s worth a try.’
Anyway, I’m sure this is all very interesting,’ she said. ‘But I thought we were trying to find out what the fuck’s going on and why someone’s trying to kill us?’
He shot her a glance. ‘I haven’t finished yet. There’s one other thing Pierre Clement told me this morning. I wasn’t the last person to make contact with his father asking questions about Fulcanelli. He said that three men turned up there a couple of days ago asking the same questions, and asking about me too. Somehow all this is connected-you, me, Michel, the people after us, and the manuscript.’
‘But how?’ She shook her head in confusion.
‘I don’t know how.’
The question was, he thought to himself, had the three men found out about Gaston Clement? He could be walking into another trap.
In another hour or so they’d reached the derelict farm where Pierre Clement had said his uncle lived. They pulled up in a wooded layby a few hundred metres up the road. ‘This is the place,’ Ben said, checking the rough map he’d written from the directions.
Grey clouds overhead were threatening rain as they walked towards the farm. Without letting her see, he quietly popped open the press-stud on his holster’s retaining strap and kept his hand hovering near his chest as they reached the cobbled yard. There were deserted, decaying farm buildings on both sides. A tall, dilapidated wooden barn sat behind a wrecked cowshed. Broken windows were nailed over with planks. A slow curl of smoke was rising from a blackened metal chimney.
Ben looked around him cautiously, ready for trouble. There was nobody else about.
The barn seemed empty. Inside, the air was thick and smoky and laden with an unpleasant reek of dirt and strange smouldering substances. The building was one big room, dimly lit by milky rays of sunlight that shone through the cracks in the planking and the few dusty window-panes. Twittering birds were flying in and out of a hole high up in the gable end. At one side of the barn a raised platform on rough wooden poles supported a ragged armchair, a table with an old TV and a bed heaped with dirty blankets. At the other side was a huge sooty furnace whose black iron door hung open a few inches, exuding a stream of dark smoke and a pungent smell. The furnace was surrounded by makeshift tables covered in books, papers, metal and glass containers connected with rubber or Perspex tubing. Strange liquids simmered over Bunsen burners running from gas bottles and gave off foul vapours. Piled up in every shadowy corner were heaps of junk, old crates, broken containers, rows of empty bottles.
‘What a shit-pit,’ Roberta breathed.
‘At least it’s not full of flies.’
‘Ha ha.’ She smirked at him. ‘
Ben went over to one of the tables, where something had caught his eye. It was a faded old manuscript weighted down at the corners by pieces of quartz crystal. He picked it up and it sprang into a roll, throwing up a cloud of dust particles that caught the ray of light from the boarded window nearby. He brought the manuscript into the path of the sunbeam, gently unfurling it to read the spidery script.
‘Found something?’ she asked, peering over his shoulder.
‘I don’t know. Could be interesting, maybe.’
‘Let me see?’ She ran her eyes down the scroll. Ben searched the table for more like it, but all he could find among the heaped rolls and dog-eared piles of dirty paper were abstruse diagrams, charts and lists of symbols. He sighed. ‘Do
‘Um, Ben?’
He blew some dust off an old book. ‘What?’ he mumbled, only half-listening to her.
She nudged him. ‘We’ve got company.’
22
Ben’s hand his impoverished childhood in rural and saw the man approaching them, he let his arm drop to his side.
The old man’s eyes flashed wildly behind long, straggly grey hair that hung down to merge with his bush of a
