The Nemesis Program (Ben Hope) (12 page)

‘Not really.’

‘Those aren’t good for you.’

‘There are worse things in the world,’ Ben said. He lit up, drew the smoke in deeply and felt the quiet, comforting little hit of nicotine take the worst of the edge off his ragged emotions. The two of them sat hunched over the table with the sheet of paper lying between their coffees so they could study those three cryptic lines of code which Roberta had carefully copied from the original.

‘You still think that top line is a GPS location?’ she asked, tapping it with her finger.

‘Let me show you,’ he said. He laid the smoking cigarette in the ashtray and slid it to one side. Using a stubby pencil and a fresh sheet of paper from the desk drawer, he copied out the line, ‘4920N1570E’, as it had appeared in Claudine Pommier’s letter. He wrote it out again underneath, this time converted into a clearer form:

49º 2' 0" N 1º 57' 0" E

‘Okay,’ Roberta said, nodding thoughtfully. ‘Looks like you have something there. But this navigational stuff is more your kind of science than mine. I’m at a loss. What does it tell us?’

‘Let’s find out,’ he said, reaching for his phone. He activated the GPS application, punched in the coordinates and the screen instantly flashed up with a little green map of the location.

‘Out in the countryside,’ he said, showing her. ‘Forty kilometres northwest of Paris. The nearest towns are Condécourt and Tessancourt-sur-Aubette. Nothing much within three kilometres except farmland and forest, so we’re looking at a fairly remote spot.’

‘There’s nothing there. It’s got to be right, though,’ Roberta said, frowning at the onscreen map. ‘Claudine definitely meant for me to see this.’

‘Any idea why she’d point you in that direction?’

‘None. Unless … wait a minute. Yes, it could be. Can we get more detail on that?’

Ben switched from the default map view to a satellite image, then zoomed in as close as he could get. The screen pixellated out into a blur, sharpened up again, and he saw that it was centred on what looked from the aerial view like a large country estate, at its heart a huge sprawling property that could have been a manor house, even a château.

‘That’s it,’ Roberta said, grabbing the phone from him, her eyes fixed to the screen.

‘That’s what?’

‘Fabien’s place. She described it to me once.’

Ben stubbed out his cigarette and reached for another. ‘The ex-boyfriend? You told me he was a bum.’

‘Sure. A very, very rich bum. I guess he’s what you call dissolute aristocracy. Only child of Gaston and Nicolette De Bourg, and something of a disappointment to his family, to put it mildly. Claudine said they had all kinds of plans for him, but he was half burned out on booze and pills before the age of thirty and pretty much incapable of holding down any kind of responsible job.’

‘Sounds a strange match for a respectable physics professor.’

‘I never understood what she saw in him,’ Roberta said, shaking her head. ‘Never met him, either. But while they were together, she insisted he was a real charmer. A little too much of a charmer, as it turned out, if you know what I mean. Join the club.’

‘So our philandering Prince Charming was living on Mummy and Daddy’s estate?’

‘It was all his, if you can believe it. The parents quit the place and went off to live in South Africa years ago, for the climate and lower taxes. Claudine told me that Fabien lived at the old family home pretty much alone – when he wasn’t running blotto around the Riviera with his drinking and gambling cronies, that is.’

Ben gazed pensively at the satellite image. ‘The question is why Claudine wanted to show you this, now.’

‘I can only think of a single reason. It’s a message. If something happened to her, and she believed something might, she needed me to go there.’

‘Why? To talk to Fabien?’

‘I doubt she’d have involved him in this,’ Roberta replied. ‘They split up quite a while ago, and I’d be pretty surprised if she’d have let him back in her life anytime soon. No, I think Claudine sent this message because there’s something else there for me to find. That is, for
us
to find. Something she hid there, something important. I mean, it’s a big place. She could easily have … What’s the matter? You’re pulling a face.’

‘I don’t much like the idea of walking into this place without any clue what we’re looking for. Sounds like a wild goose chase waiting to happen.’

‘Then you tell me why the location is in the letter.’

‘We don’t even know what the rest of the figures mean,’ he said. ‘I can’t make any sense of them either.’

‘We’ll figure it out as we go. This is something, isn’t it? And it’s all we have right now.’

He considered. ‘Fine. We’ll head over to Montmartre and check her place over. From there we drive out to the château. But first, I’m going to brew up another pot of black coffee. Something tells me it’s going to be a long night.’

Chapter Fifteen

Whoever was holding the party on the second floor of the apartment building in Rue des Trois Frères obviously wasn’t put off by the recent murder that had taken place above. It was a warm, sultry night, and light and music and laughter spilled out of the open balcony windows to mingle with the carefree noise of the crowded café-bar down below.

At the building’s entrance, Roberta stared as Ben punched the buttons on the door buzzer system one after another. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Crashing a party,’ he said. Moments later, there was a click and Ben pushed open the little inset door, stepping through into the echoey stone passage that led into the central courtyard. To one side was the concierge’s apartment, to the other a set of stairs.

Up and up the bare spiralling steps. The second floor was alive with the clamour of the party, couples drinking and smoking and necking on the stairs and on the landing. Ben and Roberta threaded their way past and climbed upwards, leaving the noisy chatter and music behind them. By the time they reached the top floor, it was quiet and dark.

The L-shaped landing was dimly lit by a pair of iron-barred windows. One overlooked the streets and rooftops of Montmartre and the Sacré Coeur basilica in the distance, glowing like a golden idol from the highest point of the city. The other smaller window less picturesquely opened up onto a side alley and pulsated with the red neon sign of a neighbouring hotel.

There were just two black-painted doors on the top floor, one at each end of the landing. Roberta silently pointed out Claudine’s, nearest the neon-lit window. There was no sign of life from behind the other door. Ben imagined that the old woman who had been Claudine’s neighbour, and the one who had found her body, was either fast asleep in her bed or else staying with friends or family in the aftermath of the traumatic incident. But still, he didn’t want to risk drawing attention.

He unslung his bag, took out his mini-Maglite and discreetly shone it at Claudine’s door. The entrance was barricaded with bilingual police tape, as if the citizens of Paris needed to be told in both French and English not to cross the line into a crime scene.

‘Maybe this wasn’t such a useful idea after all,’ Roberta said in a low voice. ‘No way we can get in there without a key, and we can’t exactly ask the concierge to open the place up for us.’

‘But someone did get in there,’ Ben said. He reached past the tape and nudged the old door. There was no sign of forced entry. The wood felt thick and solid, and if the many Parisian apartments he’d seen were anything to go by, the inside of the door was festooned from top to bottom with heavy iron deadlocks and bolts – the kind of low-tech security that was almost impossible to crack without using violent force. It still perplexed him that Claudine’s killer could have got inside without a crowbar or sledgehammer, especially when his victim was already frightened about her safety and must have had every lock and bolt tightly shut.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Roberta said. ‘Maybe he was someone she knew. Or maybe he was pretending to be someone, like a cop. He could have tricked her into opening the door to him.’

Ben stepped across to peer out of the smaller window. The alley pulsed blood-red from the neon hotel sign. He craned his neck upwards, scanned this way and that, then withdrew from the window and thought for a moment or two.

‘I don’t think she opened the door to anyone,’ he said. Before Roberta could reply, he added, ‘Wait here,’ and turned towards the head of the stairs.

‘What? Where are you going?’

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said.

Knowing there was little point in pressing him for an explanation, Roberta reluctantly stayed where she was. She listened to his footsteps padding down the stairs, wondering where he was going all of a sudden, and at the same time thinking how lightly and silently he could move.

After a minute or two she suddenly felt very alone, and as more minutes went by she was beginning to feel resentful towards Ben for leaving her. She didn’t understand what his game was, slipping away like that with barely a word. It was typical of him, his whole damn ‘I work alone’ routine, the infuriating way he had of not telling her what he was thinking. He hadn’t changed a bit.

Roberta paced up and down outside Claudine’s door and tried to contain her restlessness, but it was no use. Within moments, thoughts of the brutal stalker began to invade her mind. She didn’t believe for an instant that he was the psychopathic maniac the police claimed, but the idea of a cold-blooded paid assassin was no less terrifying.

She couldn’t stop imagining him standing right here on this very spot, just days ago, preparing to enter Claudine’s apartment and snuff her out as if she were nothing. What kind of monster would do such a thing? Why would anyone slaughter poor Claudine? What harm had she ever done to a living soul? It made Roberta shake with rage and want to cry, all at once.

Another question crept into her mind. Her ingrained scientific instinct screamed out ‘
Irrational!
’, but her flesh couldn’t help but crawl at the idea.
What if the killer came back?

But there it was, gnawing at her as she waited there in the darkness. What if he was still watching the place, keeping an eye out for anyone who came snooping after clues? Or what if he decided to revisit the scene of his crime, looking for something he might have missed the first time around? And here she was, all alone …

She glanced nervously into the long, eerie shadows on the landing and froze, her stomach knotted in fear, suddenly convinced she’d seen a movement there.

Nothing more than her foolish imagination. She breathed. Just then, the unexpected whoop of a car alarm in the street far below made her jump. ‘Jesus, Ryder, get it together,’ she muttered irritably to herself. The car alarm stopped. She clasped her arms around her and went on pacing, shivering despite the warmth of the night. ‘Where the hell are you, Ben?’ she said out loud, and hated herself for the worry she could hear in her voice.

The door of Claudine’s apartment suddenly swung open with a rattle of the latch chain.

Roberta spun round with a gasp.

A figure stood silhouetted in the doorway.

A man’s figure, his face in shadow, looking right at her.

Chapter Sixteen

Roberta backed away. ‘Wh-who’s that?’ she stammered, her voice coming out as a strained croak of fear.

‘It’s me,’ the figure in the doorway said with a touch of irritation. ‘Who did you think it was?’

‘
Ben?
’

Ben ripped down a few strands of police tape and beckoned. ‘Stop making so much noise and come inside.’

‘How the hell did you get in here?’ she asked, bewildered, as she entered the apartment. Once the door was locked behind them, Ben turned on the lights.

‘Same way the killer did.’ He pointed upwards. ‘Through the roof. There’s a skylight panel over the bathroom with its fasteners missing. Glove marks in the dirt on the frame. Either he undid the screws, or someone else did it before him. Whichever it is, the police haven’t twigged it. It was a tidy job.’

‘But how did you—?’

‘The hotel across the alley,’ Ben explained. ‘It’s got an external fire escape, same as this building. From the top floor it’s only a five or six foot jump across. Nobody would see you in the dark. At least, nobody saw me.’

She looked at him. ‘You’re telling me you just leaped between two buildings, at night, with nothing between you and concrete except a long drop?’

‘What about it?’ he said blankly.

‘You really are nuts, you know that?’

He shrugged as he walked into the apartment’s modestly-sized living room. ‘So people keep telling me,’ he muttered.

‘What if you broke your stupid neck?’

‘Thanks for caring.’

‘Seriously. Where would I be then?’

‘Don’t fuss. You sound exactly like Winnie. I got you in here, didn’t I?’

‘Who the hell’s Winnie?’ she asked, frowning, but he didn’t reply as he went over to the window and eased back an edge of the drawn curtain to peer down to the street. He saw no police, and nothing else to worry about, but it wouldn’t be wise to hang around here too long. He turned away from the window and ran a practised eye over the details of the crime scene. The place wasn’t a great deal larger than his safehouse across town, and it looked exactly like what it was: the cluttered workspace of a busy science academic who had probably spent far too much of her time poring over books and papers. The shelves were crammed tight with hundreds of volumes, box files and folders full to bursting point.

‘You said nothing was stolen?’ he asked.

Roberta nodded unhappily. ‘That’s what the cops figured, that he just killed her and left. If that’s true, then it must mean her Tesla material was never here.’

‘Or that we’re up a blind alley with this whole thing,’ Ben said silently to himself.

‘All the same, now that we’re here I have to check.’ Roberta hauled down an armful of thick files, laid them on the sofa and started riffling quickly through the papers they contained. ‘This is awful,’ she sighed as she scanned and discarded one sheet after another. ‘I feel like I’m digging up someone’s grave.’