'They left me with friends in Norwich. Friends of my mum's, the Andersons. We were all very close, their kids and me. In fact it was them, the Andersons, who took me in when…when Mum and Dad…when they had the…the thing, you know, the crash. When they were killed.'
'OK.'
'But this is what's strange!' said David, his voice unexpectedly loud. He flushed, then continued more quietly. 'This is the odd thing: I remember I asked my mum, before they went, why they were going without me and she said: we're going to find out the truth — and then my dad sort of laughed but it was kind of different, embarrassed.'
Amy leaned a little nearer.
'To find out the truth. Why should she say that?'
'I don't know. I guess I've never really thought about it before. Never really wanted to think about it before.'
David sighed and shook his head. He sipped his coffee and stared across the river, at the ancient bridge. He wondered if Miguel had pursued them; he also wondered how Miguel had known they were in the witch's cave. Somehow he felt the terrorist would discover them, wherever they were hiding, wherever they fled.
And no wonder. With a cold shock of surprise, David realized that Miguel was looking at them right this minute. From the bridge.
The medieval parapets of the bridge were sprayed with ETA graffiti. The coarsely daubed words said Viva Otsoko!
And next to the word Otsoko was a crude, huge and very effective stencil of a black wolf's head.
The Wolf.
So he was here, and watching, always watching. He was watching them finish their croissants with apricot confiture.
David swallowed away the bitter taste of the image, with a slug of milky coffee. He lifted his gaze, determinedly, beyond the bridge and the disturbing graffiti, across the river, to the grey mansard roofs of Mauleon.
Over the rushing mountain water he could see a church spire, a row of parked Renaults and Citroens, and a pretty woman in her thirties coming out of the neighbourhood boulangerie, a baguette sticking out of her bag. The bakers' window advertised gateaux basque, the big fat cakes with lauburus of white icing sugar on the soft orange sponge, and thick cherry jam inside.
He watched the pretty blonde woman, a woman like his mother.
And now, at last, the deep wound re-opened, in real-time. A gateau basque sliced in two, to show the red cherry jam.
Vividly, he remembered the scene: the friend of his mother, Mrs Anderson edging red-eyed into his bedroom to tell him; the way she faltered, then sobbed, then apologized. Then at last she had told him what had happened to his mum and dad. A car crash in France.
At the time David had tried to be tough: a boy trying to be a man, but only fifteen years old. He'd refused to cry in front of Mrs Anderson, but when she had softly closed the door behind her — then he had yielded, at that moment something had unlinked inside him, something had snapped, something had forever broken the silver necklace of life, and he had turned and buried his hot boyish face in the pillow and cried, alone, trying to muffle the noise of his shameful weak sobs.
Since then he had determinedly never come here, never visited France, never wanted to know what had happened, how exactly they had crashed, how his mum and dad had died together. Instead he had taken the feelings, the memories, these mournful thoughts and considerations, and put them in a black iron box in the saltmine of his soul, like art treasures stored by a nation when the Nazis invade; and then he had turned to work and worry and study and keeping his life on track despite it all, to protect himself — but now here he was, in Gascony. Near Navvarenx. Near Navvarenx.
'Are you alright?'
Amy's smile was sympathetic, anxious and incoherent and affectionate and sympathetic. And yet maybe it was none of these things. Was he even reading her smiles correctly?
'I'm OK.' His throat felt a little thick. 'It's just that…I realized something. It's been staring at me all along.'
'What?'
Muted by his own surprise, he reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out the map.
Amy watched as he spread it on the table; the soft, sun-weary map, with the little blue stars.
David was scrutinizing the little markings, the little towns marked with the blue asterisks. The map suddenly possessed a terrible poignancy; he swallowed the upwelling emotion.
'Look. Here. See the way these stars are filled out, so carefully. I recognize the style.'
'Sorry?'
'It's my father's handwriting. This must have been his map. And he's marked on it…This place.' He pointed at one of the towns marked on the French part of the road map; Amy half rose from her chair and gazed down.
'Navvar…enx,' she said. 'Not far from here…and it's marked, so it's one of the places with churches. OK…'
'But next to that, here…' His finger moved a fraction and pointed at a smaller town right next to Navvarenx.
Amy looked at him.
'Gurs? Right by it.'
He nodded. His mouth was dry.
'Gurs.'
'That means…?'
'I've heard the name before. A long long time ago. I remember Mrs Anderson whispering it. You know, the way adults do when they're discussing something they don't want the child to hear.'
'So Gurs…'
'Is, I think, where my parents had the crash. This map must have been in my father's possession when it happened. When my mother and father were killed…They were following this map.'
13
In his study, overlooking the small lawn of his little house in the North London suburbs, Simon was trying to work. But his four-year-old son Conor kept running in, to show his dad a spider, and ask him what sheep liked to eat, and insist the world watch his Thomas the Tank Engine DVD.
The father found it hard to resist his son's demands; he knew he was an indulgent parent, perhaps because he had come to parenthood late: thirty-six. But he was also indulgent simply because he adored his son: the lad's trusting eyes of distant blue, the way he upbraided a recalcitrant football with a stick. Conor was a force of nature. And he could make his parents laugh at anything.
But Simon had to work. His first two Telegraph articles, on the linked and bizarre murders, had caused a mild stir, and his editor wanted more. Much more. Consequently he'd had to do some research, all this week, and more today.
Placating Conor with an organic raspberry drink snatched from the kitchen cupboard, he returned to his study, shut the door firmly, and let the au-pair-they-could-barely-afford deal with Thomas the Tank Engine. Sitting once more at his computer he glanced for a second out of the window at the endless suburbia, at a fat housewife hanging up her washing.
Then he started Googling.
Syndactyly.
The problem was there wasn't that much to learn. Half an hour's searching told him what his doctor wife had already explained: the deformation was moderately common, it was linked to various genetic syndromes: ensembles of ailments and afflictions, in turn linked to specific chromosomal abnormalities. The syndromes had
