The Alchemist's Secret (12 page)

But as weeks turned into months and he continued to show no interest in her sexually, Maria started taunting him. One night she pushed him too far. ‘I’m going out to find a real man with balls,’ she screamed at him. ‘And then everyone will know that my husband is nothing but a useless
castrato
.’

Franco was already powerful and muscular at the age of twenty. Enraged, he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her up to the bedroom where he threw her brutally down on the bed, knocked her semiconscious and took a knife to her flesh.

That had been the night that Franco had made a life-changing discovery, that a woman’s body could excite him after all. He didn’t touch her-only the steel touched her. He left Maria tied to the bed, mutilated and permanently disfigured. He fled the village in the middle of the night. Maria’s father and brothers came after him, vowing revenge.

Franco had never ventured more than a few miles from his village before, and he was soon lost, penniless and hungry in the verdant Sardinian countryside. It was outside a bar near Cagliari, begging for food, that Maria’s elder brother Salvatore found him one night. Salvatore crept up on the unsuspecting Franco from behind and slashed his throat with his knife.

A weaker man would have collapsed and died, let himself be butchered. Franco was half starved and drenched in the blood that spurted from the gash in his neck. But the pain and the smell of the blood gave him new strength, raw energy. He stayed on his feet like a wounded animal. Instead of running, he attacked. If Salvatore had brought a gun that night, it would have been different. But Franco took the knife from him, overpowered him and cut his liver out. Slowly.

It was the first time he’d killed a man, but it wouldn’t be the last. He robbed Salvatore’s body of money, and fled to the coast where he took the ferry to the Italian mainland. His cut throat healed, but he would speak in a strangled whisper for the rest of his life.

With the ensuing vendetta against him, Franco Bozza was exiled from Sardinia. He travelled around southern Italy, bumming from job to job. But his lust for inflicting pain was never far away, and before the age of twenty-four his talents were being put to good use by Mafia hoods who employed him to press information out of their captured enemies. Franco Bozza was a natural, and his fearsome reputation soon spread through the criminal underworld as an exceptionally callous and cold-hearted torturer. When it came to prolonging life and maximizing agony, he was the undisputed maestro.

When Bozza-or the Inquisitor, as he now styled himself-wasn’t performing his art on some hapless criminal he’d stalk the streets at night and prey on prostitutes, luring them to their death with his whispering voice. Their pitiful remains began to appear in dingy hotel rooms all over southern Italy. Rumours spread of a ‘monster’, a maniac who feasted on pain and death the way a vampire feasted on blood. But the Inquisitor always covered his tracks. His police record was as virginal as his sexuality.

One day in 1997 Franco Bozza got an unexpected phone call-not from the usual underworld kingpin or Mafia boss, but from a Vatican bishop.

It was through the shadows of the underworld that Massimiliano Usberti had heard of this Inquisitor. The man’s notorious religious zeal, his absolute devotion to God and his unflinching will to punish the wicked, were just the qualities Usberti wanted for his new organization. When Bozza heard what his role was to be, he seized the opportunity right away. It was perfect for him.

The organization was called
Gladius Domini.
The Sword of God.

Franco Bozza had just become its blade.

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 my real name.’

‘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.’

‘What sort’s that?’

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.’

‘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 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.