The Alchemist

‘A cat.’

‘That’s right. The fish,’ he said.

‘That asshole with his fish…how could I forget? Anyway, the cat’s name was Lutin. That’s L-U-T-I-N.’

lutin

‘Bingo.’ Michel’s messages scrolled down on the screen. They were mostly spam, selling Viagra pills and penis extensions. Nothing from any of his mysterious contacts. Roberta leaned forward and clicked on SENT ITEMS. All the messages containing Michel’s reports to ‘Saul’ flashed up in a long column in order of date sent.

‘Look at them all,’ she said, running the cursor up the list. ‘Here’s the last one, with the attachment I told you about.’ She clicked on the paper-clip logo again and showed him the JPEG photo files. He glanced through them before closing the box and clicking on COMPOSE NEW MESSAGE. A blank window flashed up.

‘What’re you doing?’

‘Resurrecting our friend Michel Zardi.’ He addressed the new message to Saul, like the others. Her eyes widened in alarm as he typed.

Guess who this is? That’s right, you got the wrong guy. You bastards killed my friend. Now, you want the Ryder woman, I have her. Follow my instructions and I’ll give her to you.

‘Not exactly Shakespeare, but it’ll do the job.’

‘What the hell are you writing?’ She jumped to her feet, staring at him in horror.

He took her wrist. She struggled against his grip. He slackened it, and guided her gently back into her seat. ‘You want to find out who these people are, don’t you?’ She sat down again, but he could see the mistrust in her eyes. He sighed and tossed a bunch of keys onto the desk. ‘There. Like I told you, you’re free to go any time you want. But you agreed to do this my way, remember?’

She didn’t say anything.

‘Trust me,’ he said quietly. She sighed. ‘OK, I trust you.’ He turned back to the screen and finished writing his message. ‘Bombs away,’ he said as he hit SEND.

24

Gaston Clement had been too slow to take Ben’s advice. Counting his newfound wealth, he poured himself a glass of cheap wine and drank to the strange foreign visitor.

When three other visitors found him he was dozing in his tattered armchair, the half-empty bottle by his side. Godard, Berger and Naudon dragged the pleading Clement down off his platform and threw him bodily to the concrete floor. He was seized and held down in a chair. A heavy fist slammed into his face and broke his nose. Blood poured from his nostrils, soaking his grey beard.

‘Who gave you this money?’ roared a voice in his ear. ‘Speak!’ The cold steel of a pistol pressed against his temple. ‘Who was here? What was his name?’

Clement racked his brain but couldn’t remember, and so they beat him harder. They hit him again and again until his eyes were swollen shut and blood and vomit were all over the floor around him, his beard and hair slick with red. ‘Il est Anglais!’ he let out in a garbled, bubbling scream, remembering.

‘What’d he say?’

‘The Englishman was here.’

Clement’s face was down hard to the cold floor with a heavy boot across his neck that threatened to break it. He groaned, and then passed out.

‘Go easy, boys,’ said Berger, looking down at the pitiful unconscious form on the floor. ‘We’re to deliver him alive.’

As the Audi sped away through the derelict farm with Clement stuffed in the trunk, flames were already appearing at the barn windows and black smoke billowed into the sky.

Monique Banel was walking through the Parc Monceau with her five-year-old daughter Sophie. Monceau was a pleasant little park, with a peaceful atmosphere where the birds sang in the trees, swans paddled in the picturesque miniature lake and Monique liked to unwind for a few minutes after she finished her part-time secretarial work and went to pick Sophie up from her kindergarten. Monique said a cheerfully polite ‘Bonjour, monsieur to the elegant old gent who was often sitting on the same bench around this time reading his paper.

The little girl, as always, was full of attention for all the sights and sounds of the park, her bright eyes sparkling with joy. As they walked down one of the paths that wound between the park’s lawns, Sophie exclaimed in delight, ‘Maman! Look! A little dog’s coming to see us!’ Her mother smiled. ‘Yes, isn’t he pretty?’

The dog was a small neat spaniel, a King Charles Cavalier, white with brown patches and wearing a little red collar. Monique looked about. His owner must be somewhere nearby. Many Parisians brought their dogs here for a walk in the afternoon.

‘Can I play with him, Maman?’ Sophie was ecstatic as the little spaniel trotted up towards them. ‘Hello, doggie,’ the child called out to it. ‘What’s your name? Maman, what’s that in his mouth?’

The little dog reached them and dropped the object it had been carrying on the ground at Sophie’s feet. It looked up at her expectantly, tail wagging. Before her mother could stop her, the child had bent down and picked up the thing and was examining it curiously. She turned to Monique with a frown, holding the object up to show her.

Monique Banel screamed. Her little girl was clutching part of a severed, mutilated human hand.

25

Montpellier , France

The electrician’s apprentice couldn’t get the cellar out of his mind. He kept thinking about the strange things he’d seen. What went on there? It wasn’t a storage place. They definitely didn’t keep dogs there. There were bars, like the bars of cages, and rings on the walls. He thought about what he’d been reading in his book about castles in olden days. The modern, glass-fronted building was no castle-but that cellar looked like some kind of weird dungeon to him.

He’d finished work at 6.30 and now he was free till Monday. Thank Christ. Uncle Richard was a nice enough guy-most of the time anyway-but the job was boring. Uncle Richard was boring. Marc wanted a more exciting life. His mother was always telling him he had an overactive imagination. It was all very well wanting to be a writer, but imagination was never going to bring in any money. A good trade-like an electrician-that was the way to go. He didn’t want to end up like his father, did he? Always broke, a gambler, a lowlife who was in and out of prison all the time, who’d run out on his family because he couldn’t bear any responsibility? To be like Uncle Richard-settled, respectable, with a new car every couple of years, a mortgage, membership at the local golf club, a devoted wife and two kids-that was the life his mother had in mind for him, and nothing less would do.

But Marc wasn’t so sure he wanted to end up like either of the brothers. He had his own ideas. If he couldn’t be a writer, maybe he could be a detective. He was fascinated by mysteries, and he was pretty sure he’d found one.

He kept going back to the drawer in his bedside table, where he’d hidden the thing he’d found in the cellar. He hadn’t told anyone about it. It looked like it might be gold. Did that make him a thief, like his father? No, he’d found it, it was his. But what did it mean? What was that place?

He finished his evening meal, dutifully loaded his plate and cutlery in the dishwasher and headed for the door, grabbing his crash helmet and moped keys off the stand in the hallway. He threw a torch into a bag, slung it over