by Tony Moyle
Ally had tried multiple times to contact Bernard by phone to arrange a meeting. Every one of those calls had ended with her leaving a simple and abrupt message on his voicemail, which as yet he’d not replied to. This wasn’t atypical. She knew he was screening her. When she arrived at his office the look on her contemporary’s big-headed face would be a suitable payback.
Bernard’s office address, which was published in his books and publicly available, was situated in a side street in the centre of town next to the cathedral. There was a car park adjacent to it, but every single space was occupied. It seemed unlikely that anyone was going to get a ticket today. In an almost perfect manoeuvre, Gabriel double-parked the Renault so that it stuck out diagonally into the road and caused the most disruption possible. The car gasped with relief as she switched off the engine.
“You’re leaving it like that, are you?” said Ally.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t start a scene,” replied Antoine, looking at Ally in particular whose ears were brewing steam.
Gabriel stayed in the car, citing her main reasons for not joining them as laziness, lack of interest and a desire not to die.
The place was a ghost town. No shops were open and it definitely wasn’t a Sunday. Even the church had locked its doors firmly. They spotted the occasional forehead peering over the top of second-floor window frames, but that was the nearest they came to seeing Mâcon’s residents. Even the wildlife was absent, kidnapped for their own protection. The trees were the only living organisms to put up any sort of resistance. Their branches swayed in the wind, flicking a two-fingered woody defiance to the oncoming apocalypse.
Sandwiched between a boulangerie and a charcuterie shop was a dull, glass-fronted building with brown shutters masking its windows. The florist shop on the ground floor was empty and a doorway up the side led up some steps. At the top a panel of doorbells indicated each of the small offices on the floors above. Bernard Baptiste’s was number three. They pressed the bell and waited. No answer. They tried again. Still nothing. Determined not to leave empty-handed they tried number four, Mr. Wang’s Hypnotherapy Clinic, and after some delay a strong Chinese accent came through the speaker.
“Wah you wan?”
“Oh hello, very sorry to disturb you…Mr. Wang,” said Antoine checking the small tag above the bell. “We’re looking for Mr. Baptiste.”
“You sell?”
“No, we’re not selling. We’re searching…for Mr. Baptiste.”
“Me Wang, no Baptist here, only Buddhist. Go away.”
“I know he’s not there, but as he’s your neighbour we thought…”
“You wan hypnotherapy!” shouted Mr. Wang aggressively.
“Not unless you can do millennials,” stated Ally ironically.
“Ah Wang do all. Old, young, broken, unbalanced, confused, addict, stag do’s…”
“No, thank you, we’re only interested in trying to find Bernard. B-e-r-n-a-r-d.”
“Crazy bastard. Wang no deaf. If no wan hypnotherapy, ah fuck off please.”
“Charming. Just tell us what we need to know and we’ll be gone,” said Ally. “You must have seen him come and go: you own the same stairwell.”
“Woman, you really sleepy,” said Mr. Wang in a softer more manipulating tone which was now accompanied by some psychedelic music played in the background. “More you focus on Wang’s words, more sleepy you feel. Relax now, you so comfy, you forget Bernie, you gonna turn around, walk…”
“Mr. Wang, are you trying to hypnotise us without our permission.”
“No! Sleep now, listen to Wang.”
“Look, do you know where Bernard is or not?” said Ally on the edge of her patience spectrum.
“He no here, you no listen.”
“Did you hypnotise him, too?”
“No, not hypnotise…he dead.”
“Dead! How?”
“Catch cold,” said Mr. Wang.
“Do you mean N1G13?”
“All lies. No such thing! It don’t exist,” said Mr. Wang. It was followed by silence.
“I think he might have hypnotised himself into denying the existence of the pandemic,” said Antoine. “Not sure it’ll protect him, but it’ll stop him from panicking.”
“I don’t believe it. Bernard can’t be dead. N1G13 was only discovered in Europe last week and there would need to be an incubation period before it killed anyone. Plus, if the flu has reached Mâcon where’s the cordon?”
The hunt for answers had returned them to square one. Bernard held the key and they had no way of verifying whether he was dead or alive. The trail felt as cold as an Eskimo’s nose. What now? She was stuck in a foreign ghost town with a septuagenarian being hunted by unknown threats and an egomaniac prepper. Even answers weren’t worth this much hassle. Maybe it was time to give up the ghost and head back home to the safety of the Shakespearean exhibition and a country with a lot less people living in it than when she left. As they made their way back to the car Ally’s mobile phone rang in her bag.
“I bet that’s Bernard,” she said. “I bet this was all some prank to irritate me.”
The number on her phone was unrecognised, but it had the French country code at the beginning. She answered it with an unfriendly bark.
“Bernard you horrible little shit…”
“Ms. Oldfield?” said the professional sounding voice on the other end.
“Yes,” she snapped. “What do you want?”
“I’m ringing in relation to one of our clients, a Bernard Baptiste.”
“Oh, do leave off. Did he put you up to this?”
“Who?”
“Bernard.”
“No, madam, as I said, he’s one of our clients.”
“Clients. What do you mean clients?”
“I represent Lamy and Veron Associates and we are Mr. Baptiste’s lawyers.”
“Oh, I get it. He’s trying to sue me for something I’ve said about him, is he? That’s why he hasn’t been answering my calls. That’s why he set up Mr. Wang the crazy hypnotherapist to yank our chains…”
“No, Ms. Oldfield, I don’t know any Mr. Wang. That’s not the reason for my call. Mr. Baptiste is in no position to sue anyone, or answer calls, or anything else in fact.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s dead.”
“You’re not the only one who thinks so, but I’ll believe it when I see it. No doubt this is just another part of the ruse.”
“Madam, this is no ruse,” replied the woman sternly on the other end of the line, getting a little impatient.
“Then what do you want?”
“He’s left you something in his will.”
“His will? What has he left me?”
“I can’t tell you over the phone. You need to come to the office and sign the paperwork. Oh, and you might need to bring a large van, too.”
“I don’t have a van. I have a borrowed beige Renault 16 in almost no condition to drive. I swear to God if this is a wind-up I’m going to blow a fuse.”
“Just come to the office and I can explain everything.”
Once Ally had finished the call she explained the conversation to Antoine as they strolled briskly back to the car. Neither of them knew what to make of it. Bernard was no friend of Ally’s and there was a general agreement that whatever had been bequeathed wouldn’t be very significant. Unless it was the coffer and neither of them thought the possibility was very likely. When they got back to the place where they’d left the car it was no longer there.
“What a bitch!” screamed Ally, certain that Gabriel had made the decision to abandon them.
“I’m sure she’ll be back,” said Antoine optimistically.
“Do you know your problem, Antoine? You’re much too trusting. You believe there is good in people when they regularly demonstrate that there isn’t. It must be all this charity work that you do, it’s made you think that everyone in the world is a victim, when actually they’re all arseholes.”
“And you are quite the opposite,” he replied more sternly than she was used to. “You have no faith in other humans whatsoever. To you, they’re all idiots, criminals or losers. It’s why you have never married and why you never will in my opinion. Your life will never truly be whole until you do. Give Gabriel a chance, you may just find she surprises you.”
“She had that chance the first minute she met me and she blew it. The girl’s a bimbo with the intellectual capacity of a piece of stale bread. She’s vain, egocentric, deluded, stupid, lacking in gumption, one-dimensional, self-involved, gullible and possibly the worst driver I have ever had the misfortune to travel with.”
“Ahem.”
Behind the pair of bickering adults, Gabriel was holding three steaming paper cups of coffee in a cardboard tray. It was quite some miracle how she’d sourced them in a town so completely devoid of human activity.
“I thought you might appreciate a coffee, but obviously if I’m too selfish I’ll take them back. Normally of course a girl of my era would burst into tears on hearing insults like that, but I can assure you I’m more robust than you think.”
“See, what did I say?” said Antoine, patting Gabriel warmly on the shoulder.
“How did you get coffee out here?” said Ally in genuine surprise and avoiding any offer of gratitude.
“I used my entrepreneurial skills, perseverance and intelligence. Plus I parked the car in a proper space as I could see how much it annoyed you.”
“Right,” said Ally, rather embarrassed.
“And they say millennials never apologise.”
- Chapter 22 -
Lamy & Veron Associates
Lamy and Veron Associates, Bernard’s lawyers, were situated in a remote renovated watermill alongside the river on the outskirts of town. The grandiose reconstruction of the property featured landscaped car parks, a plush, glass-fronted reception area and a monstrous piece of gaudy artwork that stretched up the space in the middle of the staircase. The best description for it would be that the sculptor took nine different coloured cubes, relentlessly threw them down a cliff until they were completely mashed, and then piled them one on top of the other. It was more proof, if any were needed, of the exorbitant fees demanded by lawyers and their poor judgement in spending them.
All three of them left marched towards the foyer, leaving the Renault to spoil the otherwise perfect exterior. Although the front doors to the shiny reception area were open there was no sign of any staff, continuing the apparently normal trend repeated through the rest of the town. A sign on the desk instructed them to present themselves to the first-floor boardroom. Once there, Ally knocked firmly on the door and a woman’s head appeared on the other side of a small window.
“Identification please?” she called through the door.
Ally reached inside her handbag and held her opened passport to the window.
“Thank you, Ms. Oldfield. And who are the other two with you?”
“Mr. Palomer and Miss Janvier,” she replied gruffly, still convinced this visit was some elaborate hoax. “Let us in.”
“Not yet. As you may gather from walking around our town, people are trying to avoid contact with those affected by the virus. On the table to your right you’ll see some testing kits. Please administer them on yourselves and present the results through the window.”
Each testing kit looked like a small television remote control. The small silver plastic pod had a screen at the top and a flap at the bottom. Under the flap was a small needle and a tube. The instructions, written on the underside of the flap, required each of them to blow into the small tube, use the needle to prick their fingers to obtain a drop of blood, and finally to place their foreheads against the top part where an inbuilt thermometer would take their temperatures.
Once they’d complied with the machine’s instructions they waited impatiently for the results to present themselves on the LED screen. Gabriel had taken the most persuasion. Needles, she told them, made her faint and the whole practice was very much against her human rights. Ally swiftly told her to shut up, shove her rights where the sun didn’t shine and get on with it. Once the results had flashed up on the screen like Saturday’s football scores they took it in turn to lift the devices to the window so that the woman behind the glass could check the results.
“Ms. Oldfield, you are clear of the infection. As are you, Mr. Palomer. Miss Janvier on the other hand…”
The other two in the hallway suddenly felt their stomachs sink. They didn’t really know anything about Gabriel or her background, other than she owned a crap caravan and had decided to hide in a forest until the global pandemic blew over. She certainly hadn’t demonstrated any symptoms of the virus, but how close had they looked? There was no obvious fever, no coughing, no breathing difficulties and no complaints of headaches. But if she was incubating N1G13 there was a very good chance they would contract it too, given how much of the day they spent cooped up in confined spaces.
“I knew she was going to be trouble,” said Ally, prodding Antoine in the arm to further make her point. “She’s got the flu and now we’re all going to die, thanks to you!”
“Miss Janvier doesn’t have the flu,” replied the woman’s insulated voice from the other side of the panelled door. “But she has tested positive for an overactive thyroid, excessive cocaine use, a staggeringly high level of alcohol in her bloodstream, a low iron level and chlamydia.”
“That’s so unfair!” said Gabriel sobbing. “Why did it have to happen to me?”
“It’s not the world’s fault,” Ally replied disdainfully. “You don’t catch these things. You have them because you’re a promiscuous, drug-taking pisshead! I mean how can you have alcohol in your system today?”
“I did a couple of shots this morning before we left…a couple more in town before I went on the coffee run…and one while I was doing the test,” she said, waving a little hip flask from the top of her bag. “I might not have prepped well in terms of food and security, but I have enough vodka in the boot of the car to outlast Armageddon.”
Gabriel might have needed a counsellor, pharmacist and legal aid as a result of the tests, but she didn’t have the flu, and that’s all their host really cared about. The woman unlocked the door to the boardroom and welcomed them more formally.
“I’m Marian Lamy, one of the partners of the firm. I’m sorry for the unusual measures we’ve had to force upon you at this time. Normal everyday life is not what it once was.”
She directed them to sit around the oval table where a number of documents were laid out at one end. The left side of the room was made entirely from glass and looked out over the river. Part of the watermill was built into this feature, the wheel revolving through the water now for no other purpose than dramatic effect. The other side of the room was consumed by an object covered in sheets and leaning at an angle against the wall.
“What really happened to Bernard?” asked Ally once they were all sitting comfortably.
“He was one of France’s first N1G13 victims.”
“But how can that be? It can’t kill that quickly,” added Antoine.
“Not normally, no. But he didn’t catch it through the air like most victims,” replied Marian.
“Then how did he get the infection?”
“The coroner is working on the theory that he was injected with it. There was a small needle mark in the back of his neck and toxicology reports prove he had a huge amount of the virus in his system.”
“He was murdered!” gasped Antoine.
“Almost certainly,” replied Marian. “If you discount suicide, which you have to given the region where the needle mark was found. There’s no way a man of that size and limited mobility could have done that. A gymnast maybe, but not a short, obese man.”
This revelation sent most of the room into silence. Everyone except Gabriel, who was noisily chewing on a piece of gum not the slightest bit interested in the conversation happening around her. She didn
’t know who they were talking about and didn’t particularly care either. But the others did. They could only think of one motive for murder. Someone had already tried to kill to retrieve it. It had to be about the coffer. Having tried to steal it from Antoine’s house the perpetrators must have followed the trail to Bernard. Clearly they were dealing with serious people. Not only had they chosen to kill Bernard for it, they’d ruthlessly done so using the very substance projected to wipe out the human race. Ally knew symbolism when she saw it.
“Are there any suspects?” asked Antoine.
“No. He was found alone and there was no sign of a struggle or forced entry.”
“Clearly he knew who they were then,” said Gabriel still staring aimlessly out of the window and only picking up snippets of what was said. She’d watched enough crime dramas for conclusions to burst out of her mouth without her ever meaning to.
“I believe so,” replied Marian. “Obviously it’s not my job to catch and prosecute, only to deal with the affairs afterwards.”
“Can I ask you about his will?” said Antoine to see if there was a connection between his death and the coffer.
“Of course.”
“Bernard had ownership of a sixteenth-century black, oak coffer which he bought from me less than two weeks ago. Who was it left to?”
“I’m not at liberty to tell you that specific information, but I can tell you if such an item was in the will.”
“If you would.”
Marian opened a blue folder and scanned down the inventory with her finger. When she arrived at the bottom of the third and final page she gently shook her head. It was another dead end. The final two clues, Bernard and the coffer, were gone and with it the answers they needed.
“The search is over,” added Ally, standing up from her seat. “It’s time to go home.”