The Alchemist's Secret (18 page)

‘What a terrible pity,’ Anna breathed.

Legrand turned to her with a charming smile. ‘In any case you would be more than welcome to have a tour of our little establishment, Anna. And if it could help you gain inspiration for your book, I could arrange for you to meet Rheinfeld in person-under supervision of course. Nobody ever comes to see him. You never know, it might do him good to have a visitor.’

Paris

The pieces of the puzzle were virtually flying together for Luc Simon. The description that the two seriously embarrassed officers had given of the man who’d bundled them into Roberta Ryder’s cupboard exactly matched Ben Hope.

Then had come the report about the Mercedes limo involved in the recent railway incident. The car itself was hot as hell. No registered owner. False plates. Numbers filed off both engine and chassis. Its internal locking system had been altered like a kidnap car. It looked as though it had been used for that kind of purpose too, as someone had obviously been trying to shoot their way out of it with a 9mm handgun.

Whoever that someone was, judging by the analysis report on the spent 9mm case found in the back, they were the same person as the mystery shooter from the scene of the riverside killings. And who was he? It had seemed impossible to find out. But then the cops at the scene of the railway incident had found a business card inside the Mercedes. The name on the card was Benedict Hope.

There was more. In the parking lot of a nearby bar-restaurant they’d found the Citroën 2CV that had been mixed up in the railway incident. The missing grille badge, traces of paint from the Mercedes, even the dirt on the wheels, all matched the railway scene. The 2CV was registered to Dr Roberta Ryder.

And it got even better. When the forensic team had gone through Ryder’s apartment with a fine-tooth comb, they’d found something. Right in the spot where she’d claimed her attacker had been lying dead, a speck of blood that whoever had cleaned the place up had missed. Simon bullied forensics into the fastest
DNA
test they’d ever done, comparing it against samples from Ryder’s hairbrush and other personal effects. The blood wasn’t hers. It did, however, match
DNA
samples from a grisly find that had turned up in the Parc Monceau. A severed human hand.

The hand’s previous owner had been one Gustave LePou, a criminal with a long history of sex offences, aggravated rape, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary and two suspected murders to his credit. It looked as though Ryder had been telling him the truth after all. But why had LePou been in her apartment? Was it just burglary? No chance. Something bigger was going on. Someone must have hired LePou to kill her, or to steal something from her-or maybe both. Simon felt like kicking himself that he hadn’t taken her seriously at the time.

More questions. Who had covered up the traces of LePou’s death, removed his corpse from Ryder’s apartment, chopped it up and tried, rather unsuccessfully, to dispose of it? What was the connection with Zardi, the laboratory assistant, and had the same people killed him? Where did Ben Hope fit in-was he the Englishman who Roberta Ryder had told him was in danger? If the railway incident had been meant to kill Hope, when Simon had seen him later that evening he looked pretty cool for someone who’d just narrowly escaped a horrific death. Where were Hope and Ryder now? Was Hope predator or prey? The thing was a complete enigma.

Simon was sitting in his cramped office drinking a coffee with Rigault when the expected fax came through from England. He tore it out of the machine. ‘Benedict Hope,’ he muttered as he read. ‘Thirty-seven years of age. Oxford educated. Parents deceased. No criminal record, not a parking-ticket. Squeaky clean, the bastard.’ He slurped his coffee.

He passed the sheet to Rigault as the fax started churning out a second page. It spat the paper into his hand and he read it, his eyes darting along the lines. Across the top of the sheet was the British Ministry of Defence letterhead. There was a lot of text below. Official stamps and confidentiality warnings in large bold print everywhere. The second page was more of the same. So was the third. He whistled.

‘What’s that?’ Rigault asked, looking up.

Simon showed him. ‘Hope’s military record.’

Rigault read it and his eyebrows rose. ‘Fuck me,’ he breathed. ‘This is serious stuff.’ He looked up at Simon.

‘He’s our mystery shooter, no doubt about it.’

‘What’s he doing? What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ Simon said, ‘but I’m going to bring him in and find out. I’m putting out an alert on him right now.’ He picked up the phone.

Rigault shook his head and tapped the fax printout with his fingers. ‘You’re going to need half the French police force to catch
this
fucker.’

The drive southwards down the autoroute from Paris was long and hot. At Nevers the motorway was interrupted for a while and they took the Nationale road as far as Clermont-Ferrand, then drove back onto Autoroute 75 heading towards Le Puy Ben’s destination was still a long way south, down in the Languedoc region where he could pick up the trail of Klaus Rheinfeld and, he hoped, make some progress on his search.

With only Fulcanelli’s half-read Journal for guidance, he still had no clear idea of what he was even looking for. All he could do was follow the thin clues as best he could and hope that things got a bit more promising along the way.

Roberta was asleep next to him, her head rolling on her shoulder. She’d been sleeping for the last hour or so, which was about the same length of time he’d known for sure that they were being followed. The blue
BMW
that he was now watching with half an eye in the rearview mirror, keeping pace with them through the traffic, had been on their tail since sometime after Paris.

The pursuing car had first caught his attention at a refuelling stop when the Peugeot had been ahead in the line. The four men in the
BMW
had been acting jittery. He could tell they didn’t want to lose sight of him.

They headed back onto the road, and Ben tested them. Whenever he overtook a slower vehicle in front of him, the
BMW
would follow. When he slowed right down to a pace guaranteed to annoy other motorists, the
BMW
followed suit, ignoring the blaring horns of the indignant drivers until Ben accelerated and it accelerated with him. There was no doubt about it.

‘Why’re you driving so erratically?’ Roberta complained sleepily from beside him.

‘Just my erratic personality, I guess,’ he replied. ‘Actually, I hate to tell you this, but we’ve got a friend. The blue
BMW
,’ he added as she twisted round in her seat, suddenly wide awake.

‘You think it’s them again?’

He nodded. ‘Either that, or they want to ask directions.’

‘Can we get out of it?’

He shrugged. ‘Depends how sticky they are. If we can’t shake them off, they’re going to follow us until we get to a quiet road and then they’re going to try something.’

‘Try what? Don’t answer that. See if you can shake them.’

‘OK. Hang on tight.’ He dropped down two gears and accelerated hard. The Peugeot surged forwards, weaving as he turned hard to overtake a truck. A horn sounded from behind. The roar of the engine filled the car. Ben glanced in the mirror and saw the
BMW
giving chase, dipping in and out between lanes. ‘If that’s the way you want it,’ he breathed, and pushed the accelerator down harder.

Up ahead, a lorry was pulling out of its lane. The Peugeot darted into the gap and overtook it on the wrong side. The lorry gave a furious wobble as it shrank fast in his mirror, its airhorns blasting angrily.

‘Are you suicidal?’ she yelled over the engine noise.

‘Only when I’m sober.’

‘Are you sober?’ She made a face. ‘Don’t answer that either.’

A clear stretch ahead. Ben floored the throttle, pushing the speedo needle past the 160 km/h mark. Roberta clutched the sides of her seat. The
BMW
emerged through the confusion of traffic they’d left in their wake, powering after them.

Ben wove the 206 at high speed in and out of the honking traffic. It was far more agile than the heavy
BMW
, and by the time they reached a turn-off their pursuers were lagging 100 metres behind. The Peugeot tore along a winding country road. Ben took two random junctions, left and then right. But what the
BMW
lacked in agility it gained in speed and with an obviously determined driver it was tough to shake off.

A sign flashed up for a village, and Ben skidded into the turning. They were on a long straight. The bigger car edged up on them. His eye was on the dial and he was going as fast as he dared. Behind them, one of the passengers of the
BMW
stuck an arm out of the window and squeezed off several shots from a pistol. The Peugeot’s rear window shattered.

They entered the village and sped through the main square, skidding to avoid a fountain and panicking some drinkers at a bistro terrace who roared and shook their fists only to dive for cover a second time as the
BMW
came roaring through and sent tables and chairs spinning across the pavement.

A junction flashed up and Ben skidded left with a screech of tyres. A truck swerved and narrowly missed them, crashing into a parked Fiat. The Fiat rolled into the path of the
BMW
as it veered around the bend in pursuit. The
BMW
hit the loose car a clanging blow from the side and spun it across the road into a wall. The
BMW
, with a crumpled wing and buckled bonnet, composed itself and came on again, picking up speed.

They were out of the village, blasting down a twisting road with trees zipping by on either side. A gap in the trees appeared on the right. Ben twisted the wheel and the Peugeot veered off the road, hitting the farm track with its tyres spinning on the loose surface. He controlled the skid and the car straightened up, then a severe rut hammered the suspension hard into its stops and their stomachs were in their mouths.

The
BMW
was doggedly hanging on behind. Dirt flew in their wake. Roberta twisted round again to see the BMW’s crumpled nose disappear in a cloud of dust as it plunged through the rut.

The Peugeot raced into a sharp bend. Suddenly a tractor filled the road. Skidding wildly on the loose surface Ben managed to aim the car through a flimsy farm gate. It splintered like balsawood and the Peugeot crashed on through into the field. It went bucking across the ridged surface of the field and down a sharp incline. A sudden dip as the front of the car plunged into empty space. Then a crash as they smashed into the opposite bank of the deep trench. The Peugeot bounced and lay still.

They climbed out as the
BMW
came bounding down the hillside after them. Seeing the dust rising from the crashed Peugeot, the driver braked-too hard, sending the
BMW
into a sideways skid. It spun, hit another rut, went up sideways on two wheels and rolled, coming to a rest upside down in a great plume of dust.

Its four dazed occupants spilled out. A fat man with blood streaming down his temple fired a pistol at the Peugeot. The passenger window burst and showered Roberta with glass as she crawled for cover.

‘Roberta!’ Ben grabbed the Browning and returned fire, the gun bucking in his hand as his bullet went through the side of the
BMW
four inches from the fat man’s head. She took cover next to him.

Three of their pursuers dived behind the
BMW
. The fourth scrambled behind a rock, clutching a short-barrelled shotgun. He fired. The shot blew a ragged hole in the roof of the Peugeot, and Roberta screamed. Ben brought the Browning up again and loosed off four rapid shots. Dust flew up around the prone shooter. Ben’s fourth shot caught him in the upper arm. He rolled out from the cover of the rock, racking the shotgun. Ben fired at him again, and kept squeezing off round after round until he was down and the Browning was out of ammunition. He ejected the spent mag and reached into his pocket for a spare one.

His pocket was empty. He suddenly remembered that all the magazines and ammunition were in his bag inside the car.

Another man came out from behind the upside-down
BMW
. The gun in his hands was black and oblong, with a stubby silencer and a long pistol-grip magazine. He fired a chattering burst from the Ingram submachine gun which peppered the side of the Peugeot with holes and forced Ben to take cover as he tried to get into the car. The third and fourth shooters were stepping out from behind the
BMW
, pistols in their hands, cautiously advancing. The man with the Ingram let off another spray, whipping up dust and stones in a line to Ben’s left.
Not good.

Suddenly the Ingram had shot itself empty, and the man was struggling to reload it. Ben saw his chance. He reached inside the Peugeot and grabbed his bag. Fumbled with the catches and found what he was looking for. He slammed in a fresh magazine as the man with the Ingram came closer. Throwing his gun arm up over the top of the car, Ben shot him twice in the chest and saw him go down on his back with his legs kicking in the air. The gunman nearest the
BMW
ran back for cover, snapping a wild shot over his shoulder. His colleague, realizing he was too far from the car, went down on one knee and emptied his 9mm at Ben.

Ben ducked down as bullets whanged past him.

But one caught him. The blow to his right side jerked him round. He righted himself and returned fire. The man came down sprawling with his arms outflung and his pistol tumbling to the ground.

Ben staggered. There was blood everywhere. His vision clouded and suddenly he was gazing up at a circle of treetops and grey sky.

Roberta saw him go down, screaming
NO!!!
and catching his pistol as it fell. She’d never fired a gun before, but the Browning was easy-just point and squeeze. The last gunman stepped out again from behind the
BMW
and fired at her. She felt the crack as the bullet zipped past her. With the Browning in both hands she fired back and sent him under cover in a shower of glass. She grabbed her shoulder-bag out of the Peugeot’s broken window.