21
Paris
‘Hello–put me through to Monsieur Loriot, please?’
‘He is away on business at the moment, sir,’ replied the secretary. ‘He won’t be back until December.’
‘But I got a call from him just yesterday.’
‘I’m afraid that isn’t possible,’ the secretary said testily. ‘He’s been in America for a month.’
‘Sorry to bother you,’ Ben said. ‘Obviously I’ve been misinformed. Could you tell me if Monsieur Loriot is still living at the Villa Margaux in Brignancourt?’
‘Brignancourt? No, Monsieur Loriot lives here in Paris. I think you must have the wrong number. Good day.’ The line went dead.
It was clear now. Loriot hadn’t called him at all-the train hit had been someone else’s idea. Just as he’d thought. It was too improbable.
He sat and smoked, thinking about it. The evidence pointed in a new direction. He’d called Loriot’s office from Roberta’s place. Michel Zardi had been in the room with him, listened in, taken his number. He’d gone straight out through the door soon afterwards–to buy fish for his cat. Yeah, and to pass the number on to his cronies, too. So they’d called him back pretending to be Loriot. It was a risk–what if the real Loriot had called back too? Maybe they’d checked first that he was out of town.
It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it had been good enough. Ben had let himself get picked up like an apple off a tree, and only Roberta’s chance intervention had saved him from being smeared over a hundred metres of railway line. Without her, they’d still be spooning him out of the cracks in the sleepers.
Was he slipping? This couldn’t happen again.
It also meant that the same people who were after Roberta Ryder were after him too. They meant business, and that, like it or not, drew Ben and her together.
He’d been awake since dawn and had been pondering all morning what to do with her. The day before, he’d been thinking that he’d have to ditch her, pay her off, force her to return to the States. But maybe he’d been wrong. She might be able to help him. She wanted to find out what was going on, and so did he. And he sensed that for the moment she wanted to stick by him, partly out of fear, partly out of fierce curiosity. But that wouldn’t last if he went on keeping her in the dark, freezing her out, not trusting her.
He sat on his bed and thought about it until he heard her moving about in the next room. He stood up and pushed open the door. She was stretching and yawning, the rumpled bedclothes heaped up on the floor at her feet. Her hair was tousled.
‘I’m making coffee, and then I’m getting out of here,’ he said. ‘The door’s open. You’re free to go.’
She looked at him, said nothing.
‘Time to decide,’ he said. ‘Are you staying or leaving?’
‘If I stay, I have to stay with you.’
He nodded. ‘We have a lot of figuring out to do. And we need to do this my way.’
Are we trusting one another now?’
‘I suppose we are,’ he said.
‘I’m staying.’
He walked along the row of used cars, casting his eye over each one in turn. Something quick and practical. Not too ostentatious, not too distinctive. ‘What about this one?’ he asked, pointing.
The mechanic wiped his hands on his overall, leaving parallel oil smears down the blue cloth. ‘She is one year old, perfect condition. How you paying?’
Ben patted his pocket. ‘Cash all right?’
Ten minutes later Ben was gunning the silver Peugeot 206 Sport along Avenue de Gravelle towards the main Paris ring-road.
‘Well, for a journalist you sure seem to throw a lot of money around, Ben,’ Roberta said next to him.
‘OK, time for the truth. I’m not a journalist,’ he confessed, slowing down for the heavy traffic on the approach to the Périphérique.
‘Ha. Knew it.’ She clapped her hands. ‘Am I allowed to know what you do do, Mr Benedict Hope? That your real name, by the way?’
‘It’s a nice name.’
‘Too nice for a guy like me?’
She smiled. ‘I didn’t say that.’ ‘As for what I do,’ he said, ‘I suppose you could say I’m a seeker.’ He filtered through the traffic, waited for a gap, and the acceleration of the sporty little car pressed them back in their seats as its fruity engine note rose to a pleasing pitch.
‘A seeker of what? Trouble?’
‘Well, yes, sometimes I’m a seeker of trouble,’ he said, allowing a dry smile. ‘But I wasn’t expecting as much trouble this time.’
‘So what are you seeking? And why come to me?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘I really want to know.’
‘I’m trying to find the alchemist Fulcanelli.’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘Riiight… Uh-huh. Go on.’
‘Well, what I’m really looking for is a manuscript he was supposed to have had, or written–I don’t know much about it.’
‘The Fulcanelli manuscript–that old myth.’
‘You’ve heard of it?’
‘Sure, I’ve heard of it. But you hear a lot of things in this business.’
‘You don’t think it exists.’
She shrugged. ‘Who knows? It’s like the holy grail of alchemy. Some say it does, some say it doesn’t, nobody knows what it is or what’s in it, or even if it really exists. What do you want with it, anyway? You don’t seem to me like the sort who goes for all this stuff.’
She snorted. ‘You know what one of the biggest problems with alchemy is? The people who are drawn to it. I never met one yet who wasn’t some kind of fruitcake.’
‘That’s the first compliment you’ve paid me.’
‘Don’t take it to heart. Anyway, you didn’t answer the question.’
He paused. ‘It’s not for me. I’m working for a client.’
‘And this client believes the manuscript can help with some kind of illness, right? That’s why you were so interested in my research. You’re looking for some kind of medicinal cure for someone. The client’s sick?’
‘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 Clément 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 Clément before he disappeared,’ he filled in. She was waiting for more, so he went on. ‘Anyhow, that was back in 1926. Clément’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, André. 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, André and Gaston. André was the successful one, and Gaston was the black sheep of the family. Gaston wanted to carry on his father’s work, which André 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.’
‘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 Clément 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 Clément 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 Clément? He could be walking into another trap.
In another hour or so they’d reached the derelict farm where Pierre Clément 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. ‘Jerk,’ she added under her breath.
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.
If the herb ch-sheng can make one live
longer
Surely this elixir is worth taking into one’s body?
Gold by its nature cannot decay or perish
And is of all things the most precious.
If the alchemist creates this elixir
The duration of his life will become everlasting
Hairs that were white now all return to black
Teeth that had fallen will regrow
The old dotard is once more a lusty youth
The crone is once more a maiden
He whose form has changed escapes the perils of life.
‘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 you understand any of this stuff?’
‘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.’