The Alchemist's Secret (17 page)

‘We’ve got a witness. Motorist reported two people running from the scene of the incident, just around the time it was happening. Male and female Caucasian. Woman young, we
think
red hair, maybe early thirties. Male possibly a little older, taller, fair-haired. Looked as if the woman was struggling, trying to get away. Witness says she was covered in blood.’

‘A blond man and a red-haired woman?’ Simon repeated. ‘Was the woman injured?’

‘Doesn’t look like it. We think she’s the same woman our officers picked up just before they were killed. She left some blood traces on the back seat of the car, but it belonged to one of the bodies we found under the bridge, guy with his brains blown out by a rifle bullet. Pretty pictures all over the wall.’

‘So where did she go?’

Bonnard made a helpless gesture. ‘No idea. Looks like she just vanished. Either she got away on her own or someone took her away pretty damn quick before our boys got to the scene.’

‘Great. What else do we have?’

Bonnard shook his head. ‘It’s a mess. We recovered the rifle. Military weapon, untraceable and not a print on it anywhere. Same with the pistols we found. A couple of the victims we know-stints for armed robbery and so on. Usual suspects, won’t be missed. But we haven’t much of a clue what the hell this is about. Drug-related, maybe.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Simon said.

‘One thing we do know is that we’re missing at least one shooter. Nine-mil slugs were found in three of the bodies. Looks like they all came from the same gun, which the forensic guys tells us from the rifling pattern is a Browning type pistol. It’s the only gun we haven’t recovered.’

‘Right,’ Simon said, nodding, thinking hard.

‘There is one more thing,’ Bonnard went on. ‘Based on what we can figure out, the mystery nine-mil shooter isn’t your typical low-life crim. Whoever it is can hit high-speed one-inch groups on moving targets at twenty-five metres in the dark. Can you do that? I sure as hell can’t do that…We’re dealing with a serious pro.’

‘You’re sure it’s on the bedside table?’ Ben was saying as he parked the dented Peugeot a discreet distance from Roberta’s building.

She was wearing the baseball cap he’d bought her at a market earlier that morning, her hair tucked into it. With that and the shades she was unrecognizable. ‘Bedside table, little red book,’ she repeated.

‘You wait here,’ he said. ‘Key’s in the ignition. Any sign of trouble, get out of here. Drive slowly, don’t rush. Call me first chance you get, and I’ll meet you.’

She nodded. He got out of the car and put on the sunglasses. She watched with trepidation as he walked briskly up the street and disappeared into the doorway of her building.

Luc Simon had had enough of hanging around Roberta Ryder’s place. He’d been here half an hour now, waiting with his two agents for the forensic team to arrive. His impatient rage was giving him another one of his killer headaches. As usual, the forensic guys were keeping him hanging around waiting. Undisciplined bunch of bastards-he’d give them hell when they got here.

He thought about sending one of his uniforms out to get coffee.
Fuck it.
He’d do it himself-Christ knew what kind of shit they’d bring back. There was a bar across the street,
Le Chien Bleu;
stupid name but the coffee might not be too bad.

He thundered down the spiralling flights of stairs, trotted through the cool hallway and out into the sunshine, deep in thought. He was too preoccupied to notice the tall blond man in sunglasses and a black jacket coming the other way. The man didn’t slacken his stride but recognized the police inspector immediately, and knew there’d be other cops waiting upstairs.

‘That was quick,’ the two officers thought when they heard the doorbell of Ryder’s apartment. They opened the door, expecting Simon. If they were lucky, he’d have brought them a coffee and a bite to eat-though that was almost certainly wishing for too much considering that the chief was in an even fouler mood than usual.

But the man at the door was a tall blond stranger. He didn’t seem surprised to find two policemen in the apartment. He leaned casually against the doorway, smiling at them. ‘Hi,’ he said, taking off his sunglasses. ‘Wondered if you could help me…’

Simon returned to Ryder’s apartment, sipping his paper cup of scalding espresso. Thank Christ, it was taking the headache away already. He hurried back up the stairs to the third floor, banged on the door and waited to be let in. After three minutes, he thumped harder and yelled through the door. What the hell were they doing in there? Another minute passed, and it was clear that something was wrong.

‘Police,’ he said to the neighbour, flashing his ID. The little old man craned his head on a shrivelled, tortoise-like neck and peered bemusedly at the ID, then up at Simon, then at the cup of coffee in Simon’s hand.

‘Police,’ Simon repeated more loudly. ‘I need to use your apartment.’ The old man opened the door wider, stepping aside. Simon pushed past him. ‘Hold this, please,’ he said, handing the old man his empty cup. ‘Where’s your balcony?’

‘This way.’ The neighbour shuffled through the apartment ahead of him, down a little corridor lined with watercolour paintings, then into a neat salon with an upright piano and mock-antique armchairs. The television was blaring. Simon saw what he was looking for, the tall double windows leading out onto the narrow balcony.

There was a gap of only about a metre and a half between the old man’s balcony and Ryder’s. Keeping his eyes resolutely off the three-storey drop to the yard below, he climbed over the iron railing and jumped across from one balcony to the other.

Ryder’s balcony window was unlocked. He drew his service sidearm and thumbed back the hammer as he paced silently into the apartment. He could hear a muffled thumping coming from somewhere. It seemed to be coming from Ryder’s makeshift laboratory. With the cocked .38 revolver pointed in front of him he moved stealthily towards the sound.

Inside the lab, he heard it again. It was coming from behind those doors where Ryder kept her revolting flies.
Thump, thump.

Simon pulled open the doors, and the first thing he saw was the black, hairy insects swarming over the glass, their disturbed buzzing muted behind the thick walls of their tanks. Something moved against his leg. He looked down.

Crammed into the space beneath the tanks were his two officers, bound and gagged with tape, struggling. Their automatics were lying side by side on the desk, unloaded and stripped, their barrels missing.

The police squad found them later, one inside each of the fly tanks.

Ben tossed the little red book onto her lap. ‘First chance you get,’ he said, getting into the car, ‘you destroy that, understood?’

She nodded. ‘S-Sure.’

As the Peugeot speeded up and disappeared down the street, a man slouching in a doorway turned and watched it go. The man wasn’t a cop, but he’d been watching the Ryder place since the night before. He nodded to himself and took up his phone. When someone answered after a couple of rings he said, ‘A silver 206 coupe with a dented front wing just took off down Rue de Rome heading south. Man and a woman. You can pick them up at Boulevard des Batignolles but you’d better move fast.’

Six months earlier, near Montségur, southern France

Anna Manzini was unhappy at having put herself in such a situation. Who would have thought that the author of two acclaimed books on medieval history and a respected lecturer at the University of Florence would have behaved in such an impulsive and idiotically romantic fashion? To give up a well-paid professional position to go off and rent a villa-a very expensive villa, at that-in the south of France to begin a whole new fiction-writing career from scratch wasn’t the kind of measured and logical behaviour that Anna was known for amongst her former colleagues and students.

Worse, she’d deliberately chosen a secluded house, deep in the rugged mountains and valleys of the Languedoc, in the hope that the solitude would fire her imagination.

It hadn’t. She’d been there for over two months, and had hardly written more than a sentence. To begin with she’d kept herself to herself, not seeing anyone. But more recently she’d started welcoming the attentions of local intellectuals and academics who’d discovered that the author of the books
The Crusade that History Forgot
and
God’s Heretics: Discovering the Real Cathars
was now living just a few kilometres away in the countryside. After months of boredom and loneliness she’d been relieved at the chance to befriend the vivacious Angélique Montel, a local artist. Angélique had introduced her to an interesting new circle of people, and Anna had eventually decided to have a dinner party at the villa.

While she waited for her guests, she remembered what Angélique had been saying on the phone two days before. ‘You know what I think, Anna? You have writer’s block because you need a man. So for your dinner party I’m bringing along a good friend of mine. He’s Dr Edouard Legrand. He’s brilliant, rich, and single.’

‘If he’s so wonderful,’ Anna said smiling, ‘then why are you so keen to pass him onto me?’

‘Oh, you wicked girl, he’s my
cousin
.’ Angélique giggled. ‘He’s been divorced only a short while, and he’s lost without a woman. He’s six years older than you, forty-eight, but has the physique of an athlete. Tall, black hair, sexy, sophisticated…’

‘Bring him along,’ she’d said to Angélique. ‘I look forward to meeting him.’
But the last thing I need in my life right now is a man
, she thought to herself.

There were eight for dinner. Angélique had strategically managed to ensure that Dr Legrand was seated beside Anna at the top of the table. She’d been right-he was very charming and handsome in a well-tailored suit, hair greying at the temples.

The conversation had dwelt for a while on a modern art exhibition that many of the guests had attended in Nice. Now they were all keen to know more about Anna’s new book project.

‘Please, I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Anna. ‘It’s so depressing. I have writer’s block. I just don’t seem to be able to do it. Maybe it’s because I’m writing a book of fiction for the first time, a novel.’

The guests were surprised and intrigued. ‘A novel? What about?’

Anna sighed. ‘It’s a mystery story about the Cathars. The trouble is that I have such difficulty imagining my characters.’

‘Ah, but I have the right man here to help you,’ Angélique said, seeing her opportunity. ‘Dr Legrand is a famous psychiatrist and can help anyone with any kind of mental problem.’

Legrand laughed. ‘Anna hasn’t got a mental problem. Many of the most talented people have sometimes suffered from temporary loss of inspiration. Even Rachmaninov, the great composer, found his creativity blocked and had to be hypnotized in order to create his greatest works.’

‘Thank you, Dr Legrand,’ Anna said, smiling. ‘But your analogy does me far too much credit. I’m no Rachmaninov.’

‘Please, call me Edouard. But I’m sure you
are
very talented.’ He paused. ‘However, if it’s interesting characters you’re looking for, with a taste of the mysterious and the gothic, there I may be able to help you.’

‘Dr Legrand is director of the Institut Legrand,’ said Madame Chabrol, a music teacher from Cannes.

‘The Institut Legrand?’ asked Anna.

‘A psychiatric hospital,’ Angélique filled in.

‘Just a small private establishment,’ Legrand said. ‘Not far from here, outside Limoux.’

‘Edouard, are you referring to that strange man you once told me about?’ Angélique asked.

He nodded. ‘One of our most curious and fascinating patients. He’s been with us for about five years now. His name is Rheinfeld, Klaus Rheinfeld.’

‘His name sounds like Renfield, from the Dracula story,’ Anna commented.

‘That’s quite apt, although I haven’t yet observed him eating flies,’ Legrand replied, and everyone laughed. ‘But certainly he’s an interesting case. He’s a religious maniac. He was found not far from here, in a village, by a priest. He self-mutilates-his body’s covered in scars. He raves about demons and angels, convinced he’s in Hell-or sometimes in Heaven. He continually recites Latin phrases, and is obsessed with meaningless series of numbers and letters. He scrawls them all over the walls of his ce-...his room.’

‘Why do you allow him to have a pen, Dr Legrand?’ asked Madame Chabrol. ‘Could that not be dangerous?’

‘We don’t, any longer,’ he said. ‘He writes them in his own blood, urine and faeces.’

Everyone around the table looked shocked and disgusted, except Anna. ‘He sounds terribly unhappy,’ she said.

Legrand nodded. ‘Yes, I believe he probably is,’ he agreed.

‘But why would anyone want to…
mutilate
themselves, Edouard?’ asked Angélique, wrinkling her nose. ‘Such an awful thing to do.’

‘Rheinfeld displays stereotypic behaviour,’ Legrand replied. ‘That is to say, he suffers from what we call an obsessive-compulsive disorder. It can be triggered by chronic stress and frustration. In his case, we think that the mental disorder was caused by his years of fruitless searching for something.’

‘What was he searching for?’ Anna asked.

Legrand shrugged. ‘We don’t really know for sure. He seems to believe he was on some form of quest for buried treasure, lost secrets, that sort of thing. It’s a common mania among the mentally ill.’ He smiled. ‘We’ve had a number of other intrepid treasure hunters in our care over the years. As well as our share of Jesus Christs, Napoleon Buonapartes and Adolf Hitlers. I’m afraid they’re often not very imaginative in their choice of delusions.’

‘A lost treasure,’ Anna said, half to herself. ‘And you say he was found not far from here…’ Her voice trailed off in reflection.

‘Can nothing be done to help him, Edouard?’ asked Angélique.

Legrand shook his head. ‘We’ve tried. When he first came to us, he received psychoanalysis and occupational therapy. For the first few months he appeared to respond to treatment. He was given a notebook to record his dreams. But then we discovered that he was filling its pages with insane babble. Over a period of time, his mental state deteriorated and he began to self-mutilate again. We had to take away his writing implements and increase his medication. Since then, I’m afraid to say, he’s descended deeper and deeper into what I can only describe as madness.’