The Watchers (21 page)

‘Who?’

‘Your husband.’

‘Oh, him. Of course he’s home. He was drinking last night and can barely move. We’re to leave for my sister’s house in Unterwald today. I’ll get him.’

Rochat counted to fifteen waiting for Monsieur Buhlmann.

‘
Salut
, Marc. The old girl finally fall down?’

‘
Pardon?
’

‘The cathedral, is she still standing?’

‘
Oui, monsieur
. But I found something in the crypt, in the well.’

‘In the well?’

‘A box. A black box with a handle.’

‘A what?’

‘A box, like a lunchbox.’

‘A lunchbox?’

‘
Oui
. I don’t know what to do with it.’

‘Is it ticking?’

‘Is what ticking?’

‘Is the lunchbox ticking?’

‘
Non
, I tapped it and listened. It’s very quiet, monsieur.’

Rochat heard Monsieur Buhlmann chuckle down the line.

‘A quiet lunchbox, the best kind. Put it someplace safe, I’ll take care of it when I come to the tower next Sunday.’

‘I’m sorry to disturb you. Have a good trip to Unterwald.’

‘
Merde
, don’t remind me. My wife’s sister and husband are teetotallers. I must go two days without drink, terrible. Don’t forget our Christmas lunch. Emeline is anxious to meet you.’

‘Who?’

‘The daughter of my Swiss hillbilly friend. I told you about her, from the farm expo.’

Rochat thought about it.

‘She won a blue ribbon because she knows how to milk a cow.’

‘The very one. Come to the tower on Sunday evening if you like, we can talk about her. And we’ll burn another witch at the stake.’

‘Monsieur?’

‘We’ll cook raclette on the grill, next to Clémence.’

‘And we can give back the lunchbox, too.’

‘Marc, listen to me. You know how you are when you imagine things,
mon cher
.’

‘But I’m very sure this is a real thing, monsieur.’

‘
Écoute, mon cher
. I want you to listen to me. You put that lunchbox back in the well where you found it. And I want you to forget about it. Will you do that, Marc?’

‘I’m very good at forgetting things, monsieur.’

‘I know, just put it back and don’t even think about it.
À bientôt, Marc
.’

‘
Bonne journée, monsieur
.’

Rochat hung up the phone.

‘Just forget about it, Rochat, don’t even think about it.’

He took the plastic basin from under the bed, poured in cold water from one of the Chianti jugs and splashed the water on his face. He made a cup of tea and sat at the table again. He stared at the lunchbox.

‘But as you haven’t put it back yet, you could think about it a little more.’

He looked under the handle. Three tiny dials with tiny numbers. Like the numbers wheel on the old telephone in the loge.

‘If you don’t know the numbers to dial on the numbers wheel, then you must look them up in a telephone book.’

He shuffled to the bed, tore a blank page from his sketchbook and grabbed his pencils. He sat at the table and set the lantern on the page, using the base as a ruler to draw ten vertical lines across the page. He inspected the columns to make sure they were nice and even.

‘Very good, Rochat.’

Then he began to write zero numbers.

000

001

002

003

All the way to 009 at the bottom of the page, writing the numbers as tiny as the numbers on the dial. Then back to the top of the next column for the one numbers.

101

103

102

He wrote slowly and carefully, filling the columns of the page, till he reached the last of the nine numbers.

997

998

999

‘It must be one of the numbers on this page.’

He heard the timbers groan as Marie shook the tower twelve times in her most matronly tone, ‘No, no, no …!’ When the great bell finished making her opinion known, Rochat pulled open the window on the east wall and poked out his head.

‘
Excusez-moi, madame
, but I am in no mood to be corrected by a bell. The lunchbox is a real thing, madame, not an imagination, I know it is. I can attend to it myself and not trouble Monsieur Buhlmann. He’s an old man and needs his rest, and he’ll be very proud of the telephone book I wrote.’

He switched his head for the page of numbers, let her have a good look. He pulled back the page, poked out his head again.

‘See? You can read every number very clearly. You go have a snooze, I have important work.’

He slapped the window closed and sat at the table. He set the page of numbers next to the lunchbox and, very carefully, he turned the tiny numbers of each of the three dials to zero. He checked the latches, locked. He took his pencil and drew a line through 000. He turned the dials to 001, locked, line through that number; 002, locked …

At the end of the zero numbers he took a sip of tea and started with the one numbers: 100, locked, line; 101, locked, line …

By the time he reached 899, he was losing hope. He didn’t like the thought of having to admit to Marie-Madeleine she was right after all. Nothing worse than a gloating old bell. He checked over the page of numbers.

‘You’ve tried all those, unless you missed one and thought you didn’t and crossed it out anyway. But the only way you’d know is to start over again after you finish the nine numbers. Such silly jumping around things numbers can be.’

He turned the dials: 901, 902 … 956, 957 … 997, 998 …
click
.

He thought he imagined the sound. He put his ear to the lunchbox, listened carefully. Nothing. He sat up straight and scratched his head. He touched the latches, they snapped open. He raised the lid and looked inside.

He didn’t know what to do next.

book two

the place of broken angels

twelve

The taxi crossed over Pont Bessières and turned at Rue Curtat. Lausanne Cathedral was at the top of the road but a lorry blocked the drive. Harper paid the fare and climbed out. He lit a cigarette, looked through the windows of Café de l’Évêché. College types jagged on espresso, old men reading newspapers, cheap beer on tap. Nice place. He thought about a liquid lunch. He headed up the hill instead.

With the old city at its feet, the cathedral seemed to fill the sky with Gothic dominion. But stepping on to the esplanade, Harper thought it looked as plain as Yuriev’s cardboard toy, only bigger. He walked along the chain-link fence wrapped around the south wall. Inside, tarpaulin covered scaffolds 60 metres high. And there were drawings and photographs explaining the obvious. It’s old, it’ll fall down if we don’t fix it. The clatter of drills and hammers added to the urgency of the argument. As did the sight of a needlelike steeple, dangling from a crane and being lowered to the ground near the belfry tower. Harper stood at the skinny red door set in the base of the tower. He leaned back, looked up. Bloody long way up, it was. Chunks of stone fallen away, ratty wood plank nailed over one window. Whole place looked wobbly as hell. A huff and a puff and it just might blow down.

Harper scanned the esplanade. Small park of bare chestnut trees near an embankment wall. An elderly Swiss woman on one bench, her sharp eyes locked on the teenagers on the next. The girl straddled across the boy’s lap, mouths and tongues busy as birds and bees.

Twelve loud gongs tolled from the belfry, loud enough to break the young lovers’ liplock. They lit smokes, tossed on their backpacks and left. Left the elderly lady with nothing to watch but the view. But it was a good view. Red-tiled rooftops of the old city, ever-present lake, heavy grey clouds coming in from the northwest. And somewhere out there, one half-mad Russian gone walkabout. A walkabout that had come this way. So said Inspector Gobet when Harper asked him how many gift shops sold the maquette of Lausanne Cathedral, like the one Yuriev left at Hôtel Port Royal.

‘Mr Harper, in all of Lausanne, in all of Switzerland there is only one such place.’

‘Let me guess. Lausanne Cathedral.’

‘Very good, Mr Harper. And may I say, as a working detective, there may be hope for you yet.’

Harper shrugged and dropped his smoke on the cobblestones, headed towards the cathedral.

‘
S’il vous plaît, monsieur
.’

Harper looked back. The little old lady was pointing to his still smouldering cigarette. He picked it up, tossed it in a bin.

‘
Pardonnez-moi, madame
.’

‘
Bonne journée, monsieur
.’

He walked to the cathedral doors, gave the façade a quick glance. Everything about the place said, ‘Remember, man, that thou art dust.’ He grabbed an iron latch, pulled open the heavy wood door, looked inside. Oval-shaped vestibule with a high stone arch facing him. Purple curtain hanging in the arch, billowing in the draught. He stepped in, the door closed behind him with a creak and a thud, the curtain settled. Dark, but for the splatters of coloured light seeping through stained glass. Dead quiet. No jackhammers, no drills. He felt the hairs at the back of his neck stand up, sensing he wasn’t alone. His eyes rose to the apex of the arch, to a woman’s form carved in stone and enthroned under a sky of faded stars painted on the stone ceiling. The woman’s head and hands had been sawed off. Long ago from the look of it. Stub of her neck suggested she was looking at him anyway, articulation of her arms suggested she’d been holding a child at her breast.

‘Headless Mary, Mother of God. Rather creepy for a church.’

Headless Mary wasn’t alone. At the sides of the arch, along the walls, more statues eyeballed him. They had heads, most of them. Above was the wedding to Joseph the Carpenter, patron saint of understanding husbands.

Harper pulled aside the curtain. A sudden rush of vertigo. Like falling off the earth into an unbound space stretching and rising to the cloudlike vault high above. His brain flashed back to
Great Cathedrals of the World
on History Channel. Cathedrals were built to create the illusion of entering the kingdom of heaven. Harper looked to the ground, tapped his earthbound shoes on the flagstones.

‘Right, so this would be the narthex.’ He lifted his eyes to the make-believe kingdom of heaven. ‘And that out there would be the nave.’

He walked ahead. Above the curtained arch, long brass horns and sky-high pipes protruded into the nave, with a huge organ console set amid them. The whole whacking thing looking as if it was floating in air. Wind sound in the dead quiet. He thought it might be air circulating through the pipes, but it was coming from two iron grates set in the flagstones. He stepped closer, looking down one grate into a lightless dark. Warm air rising and smelling of dusty earth.

In a corner to the left, tall iron gates trimmed with gold crosses and topped with thornlike points. Dim light from within cast long shadows over the flagstones. He followed the shadows to the gates. Inside, a room of elaborately carved wood stalls around a wood plain table. Black iron chandelier hanging from the ceiling, wax candles burning halfway bright. Looked like the court of the final judgement, with the heavenly host just popping down to Café de l’Évêché for a pint before condemning the next lot of sinners to hell. Outside the gates, a green slate propped on a rickety easel, a small sign on the wall:

Chapelle de Saint-Maurice

Visiteurs, inscrivez ici vos intentions de prière.

Yellow paper squares posted on the slate. Hand-written notes in all kinds of script, all kinds of languages. French, Italian, German, Japanese, three in English: ‘We wait for the light’, ‘Why am I in this place?’, ‘For blessed comfort from fearful memories’.

Box of pencils and a pad of yellow squares in the easel tray. Write your prayer, stick to the board. Harper tried to figure the odds on answered prayers. Million to one? A billion to one?

He stepped away, working out the layout of the cathedral. Chancels and altars always to the liturgical east according to History Channel. He’d recce up the north aisle, circle the ambulatory behind the chancel, come back down the south aisle. Not knowing what the hell he was looking for. Only knowing Yuriev was here, then he vanished.

Harper walked slowly, still thrown by the architectural illusion of unbound space. Wide stone columns every four paces forming seven huge arches either side of the nave. The columns then rising higher and branching into evenly spaced rows to form another level of smaller arches. The pillars looking like a forest of petrified trees, the carved capitals atop the pillars like unmoving leaves. Two levels of balconies set in the upper arches running the length of the nave. Just below the vault, another row of arches framing windows of leaded glass that filled the nave with grey light.

He stopped. Same feeling as before, that he wasn’t alone. He looked back, then up to the balconies, along the pillars. Nobody.

‘Huh.’

Down on the floor, thousands of wood chairs in well-ordered rows. Knock one over and they’d tumble one after the other for an hour. Make one hell of a racket, flush out anyone hiding in the shadows. Harper laughed to himself, shook it off.

Three-quarters of the way up the north aisle, the walls of the nave opened to the left and right where all cathedrals took the shape of a crucifix. What the hell was it? The transcross, no, transept, he remembered. Centre of the transept, three steps rose to the crossing square. Directly above the square, the vault of the nave gave way to a towering space that reached for the heavens, but, failing, fell back to form eight ribbed vaults and eight arches. Milk-coloured glass in the arches bled with dull white light, bringing out faded colours in the stone.

‘Lantern tower, that would be the lantern tower.’ Harper dug his hands in his mackintosh, chuffed he could remember so much from watching History Channel whilst pissed. ‘Little more effort, you’ll remember your bloody phone number. And won’t the Inspector be proud.’