“Nous sommes sous surveillance,” he told the others, telling them that the police had been watching Saint Augustin’s from somewhere outside.
Brother Bénédict was outraged and paced the small room deep in thought, biting at the stubs of his fingernails and twirling the rope belt of his cassock.
Alberon lifted his head in a moment of inspiration, wondering whether the events of the previous night might have some bearing on his discovery of the dirty boots outside the back porch some nights ago. It was possible, he thought, that Brother Ernest had been going out on a regular basis, although the biggest mystery was to where, and for what reason. If Brother Alberon had voiced his opinion at that very moment, he would have laid his bet on a pretty young local woman being involved, but as it was, he chose to remain silent.
“Well, he’s as stubborn as a mule,” Jack told his colleagues as he returned to the incident room. “I’ve left the boss to it as Brother Ernest doesn’t speak English.”
“Do you think I should join him for the interview?” Gabriella asked, standing up to show Hobbs her and Luc’s recent paper trail of discovery.
“Nah, leave him to it, you’d scare the life out of that young novice monk. Oh, what’s all this then? Have you two found something?”
“Have a read,” Luc interjected. “It’s very, very interesting, Monsieur Hobbs.”
“You’ve found a connection, haven’t you?” The Yorkshireman grinned as he sank down into his chair to look through the finer details.
The French detectives watched as Jack’s eyes grew wider with each piece of new information, finally letting the papers drop through his fingers onto the desk. He was slightly dumbfounded.
“Well done, you two. The fact that Annalise Van Beek was a nun in her younger days cannot be a coincidence, can it?”
“I certainly don’t think so,” Luc admitted, “although we can’t find anything to suggest that Abbot Arnaud was also in the Gambia at the same time. Perhaps the baby was someone else’s, but maybe the abbot knew about it.”
“Certainly plausible,” Hobbs replied, “but there’s not much of a trail to trace Arnaud’s whereabouts so we might never know if their paths crossed.”
Just then, Gabriella’s mobile phone trilled and she snatched it off the desk at once. The conversation was short and sweet.
“Vraiment? Comme c’est interessant. Merci, Thierry.”
After hanging up, the blonde detective paused for effect, her perfectly plucked eyebrows lifted to feign shock.
“Well?” Luc tutted, becoming impatient. “What is it? Any news?”
“That was Thierry. Abbot Arnaud has had a visit from Annalise Van Beek. And…” she tapped out a drumroll on the desktop, “it was two hours!”
“I bloody knew it!” Hobbs shouted, high-fiving Luc. “There’s a long history between that pair. You just wouldn’t spend two hours sitting at a complete stranger’s bedside, would you?”
An hour later, Inspector Mallery reconvened with his team to update them on the situation with Brother Ernest. He was frustrated and craving a caffeine fix.
“Do you want me to give Commissioner Ozanne a call? He might be expecting to hear what we’ve got,” Luc asked, pointing upwards towards the top floor.
Max looked at his watch. “No, I don’t think so. It’s Saturday afternoon so Ozanne will most probably be at the golf club by now.”
“In this weather?” Jack scoffed, his eyes darting to the rain-splattered windows.
His boss laughed. “Well, if not on the course, he’ll definitely be in the club house. I’ll send him an email with what we’ve got so far, although we’re closer to solving the grave-digging business than poor Noel Van Beek’s murder. He’s not going to be happy when he hears how slowly we’re progressing.”
“Did Frère Ernest confess anything?” Luc asked, turning as Thierry entered the room. “What did he say about being out so late at night?”
Mallery nodded his head at the late arrival and folded his arms. “He’s scared. Wouldn’t tell me who he was with or what they were doing. Somebody has that young novice just where they want him. We can’t keep him, as we don’t have any evidence that he was actually at the church in Riberon last night, so I’ve arranged for one of the patrol cars to take him back to Saint Augustin’s.”
“Perhaps Brother Cédric will have more luck interrogating him,” Jack piped up. “He’s quite fearsome when he wants to be. He had a right temper earlier.”
“Maybe it was Cédric who was out in the van with him,” Gabriella pointed out. “It’s possible. Luc described the figure as being big.”
The four men agreed that Brother Cédric was still a suspect and there was no proof that he had spent the night fast asleep in the monastery.
“On the positive side,” Luc smiled, passing a handful of printouts over to Mallery, “we’ve found some very interesting information on Madame Van Beek. Take note of the dates in particular, and her profession.”
Max looked down at the highlighted sections and his lips widened into a broad grin. “Well done, this is excellent. Maybe not relevant yet, but perhaps one more piece of our very complicated puzzle. Good work, guys.”
“Does that mean we can go home and get some proper rest?” Hobbs asked.
“If you can find a very fast hedgehog, Jacques, yes it does!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN – CONFESSION TIME
Max Mallery’s first task on Sunday morning was to call Annalise Van Beek to see if she would agree to meet him. The conversation was brief, an underlying tension on both sides, although the elderly woman confessed that she had been going to call the inspector herself that very day, and the pair agreed to rendez-vous in a café near the Grand Hotel. Max had initially offered to go to the woman’s suite but, in need of a change of scenery, the grandmother had insisted upon speaking to him elsewhere.
“Hopefully, we can now begin to work out the motive for Noel’s death,” Mallery told the team, as he prepared to leave a little before ten, dressed smartly in grey trousers and a crisp white shirt. “If Madame Van Beek doesn’t hold the clues, then we’re well and truly…”
“Screwed,” Jack supplied, filling in the blank in his boss’s English. “Yes, I’m afraid we might be, sir.”
“Dig deeper into those profiles while I’m away,” Max instructed, pulling on a black woollen jacket. “There must be something, somewhere. And don’t worry, I’ll bring pastries.”
“Yes!” Luc chirped from behind his computer screen. “Excellent.”
Annalise Van Beek arrived fifteen minutes early at the elegant café and chose a seat next to the window, so that she could both people-watch and be seen by the police inspector as he approached. After a sleepless night, she’d known that it was only a matter of time before the handsome detective and his team would need to know more about her past. She could just imagine the looks on the youngsters’ faces as they read of the scandal she had caused in her youth. And now, today, on this blustery November morning, she was about to lay her cards on the table in order to help find her grandson’s killer.
Annalise had twice waved away the hovering waiter before Mallery arrived, not wanting to order before the detective had settled beside her. There was so much to tell him, she thought, that perhaps they had better reserve the table for several hours. There were a few occupied seating areas, some with lone newspaper readers, others with laughing groups and couples. The Dutchwoman looked at her watch, wondering why these people weren’t in church on a Sunday morning, but the same could be said for herself and she let the thought pass.
Taking out her purse, the Dutchwoman extracted the two photographs, once more checking that they hadn’t disappeared, as they were her sacred, most treasured possessions. She had shown the same two pictures to the abbot, her dear Benoît, yesterday and he’d smiled at the memory of her youthful image running through the red African dust. The other, the square colour photo of her baby, he had never set eyes on before and a deep sadness had overcome the old man, alm
ost as though a curtain was being drawn across his features. There had been so much they desperately needed to say to one another, the explanations, the fears, but no amount of time could undo the lost years that had seen them parted.
Annalise had told the abbot about her father’s decision to move, relocating his family and new grandson to a different town, away from local gossips that might tarnish his well-respected reputation as a parish preacher. She dwelled on her mother’s advice too, which had been to break off all contact with the man who had got her pregnant, a man of the cloth who should have known better. Being young and naïve, Anna had followed her parents’ guidance, believing that they had her best interests at heart and those of her newly born child. She’d also told herself that she was going along with the changes for Benoît, her lover and confidante, who she thought could find his pathway back to God if she were not there to tempt him.
“Madame Van Beek?”
Annalise jolted from her reverie, her eyes now watery with grief, and looked up at the handsome figure who was pulling out a chair on the opposite side of the neatly laid table.
“Oh, Inspector Mallery, I’m sorry, I was deep in thought.”
“Please don’t apologise.” He smiled, showing perfect white teeth and nodded at the glossy prints in her hand. “Special memories?”
“Yes,” she told him, splaying the photos on the table like a pair of playing cards. “Shall we have coffee?”
Max gestured to the waiter, who was still poised with notepad in hand, and ordered two cappuccinos and a plate of fresh pastries, taking the decision out of the preoccupied woman’s hands.
“At least it is warm in here,” he commented, eyes wandering down to the snapshots. “Perhaps we can now speak openly with one another. I sense there are things that you haven’t yet told me, facts that could be of relevance.”
Annalise nodded. It was easy to relax in the inspector’s company. He had a way of making you feel as though you had his full attention. “When the waiter has brought our coffee, I promise I will tell you everything you need to know.”
“I took my vows to become a novice nun at the age of sixteen. There was never any question of my choosing another vocation, having been brought up in the ministry,” Annalise explained, looking steadily into Max’s eyes. “Then, just after my eighteenth birthday, I was asked to join a mission in Africa. It was based in the Gambia, a country and language that I knew well, as my parents had taken me over there with them many times during my childhood.”
Mallery remained silent, clasping his hands around the warm coffee cup and allowing the woman to reveal her story strand by strand.
“Work can be very demanding, and very tiring,” she continued. “Conditions in the Gambia are difficult – so many children with sickness and mothers lacking medical facilities. We worked long hours with the most minimal facilities. Sometimes I felt very lonely, despite the other nuns and medical staff, and in places like that, away from family and friends, you tend to become close to those around you very quickly.”
She paused to sip at the hot coffee, gathering the sequence of events in her mind. “The mission was organised by a very handsome French monk, his name was Brother Benoît.” Annalise paused to look up into her companion’s face. “You would recognise him now by the title Abbot Arnaud.”
Max silently breathed in, feeling a flutter of surprise. He bit his lower lip in order to stop himself from jumping in with a flurry of questions.
“There is no other way to describe what happened,” Annalise told him boldly, lifting her head as though in defiance of those who had criticised her, “but, against all of our vows and promises to the church, and God, Benoît and I fell in love. We knew it was a sin. Benoît felt it harder than I, being so devout in his beliefs, but we… we just couldn’t help ourselves.”
Mallery gave a faint smile, understanding how it felt to be absolutely and unconditionally in love with something so totally forbidden. A brief image of Vanessa flashed into his mind and fluttered out again.
“You became pregnant?” he asked gently, watching the woman in front of him closely.
“Yes, although I wasn’t absolutely sure until I returned to the Netherlands. I used to be so slim, it was hard to tell, I was so young.”
“Did you go back to your parents?”
Annalise brushed back a strand of hair and sipped again at the hot drink. “Yes, and do you know what, Inspector? Despite their devout religious lifestyle, they made everything all right. I don’t think they really understood why I had behaved so… so disgracefully, but they accepted what had happened and allowed me to bring up my son at home with them. They were the perfect grandparents to my little Noel.”
“Noel? The name of your son?”
“He was born on Christmas Day, you see,” she supplied, closing her eyes briefly at the happy memory, “and with his father being French, well, I thought it was a fitting name.”
“Did Benoît, Abbot Arnaud, know that you were pregnant?”
There was a fleeting sigh and Annalise wrung her fingers together. “Benoît was, is, ten years older than I and, having studied medicine, he knew about such things as women’s courses, whereas I was much more naïve. I think he knew before I did.”
“Yet he didn’t leave the mission. You returned home alone.”
Anna let out a girlish laugh. It sounded forced. “Ah, I can see your team have been doing their homework, well done.”
Max ignored the remark and lifted his eyebrows. “You never reconciled?”
“Not until now, Inspector. Benoît sent me the Bible when Noel was born, but my father insisted that we move to avoid further contact, for both our sakes. At that time, I remember, the package arrived just before we relocated, simply addressed to Sister Anna.”
“So, your son never met his father?”
Overcome with emotion at the words, the woman lifted a lace handkerchief from her bag and dabbed gently at her eyes and nose.
“No, Noel didn’t want to meet him and, as far as I was aware, Benoît returned to his duties at a monastery in the Midi-Pyrenees. As you must know, my son and his wife were killed in a car accident three years ago. That’s when his son, also named Noel, decided to trace his ancestry and look for his grandfather.”
“You say that Abbot… sorry, Benoît, was at Saint Lucien’s monastery in the Midi-Pyrenees, so is that why your grandson headed there first, to look for him?”
“Yes, that was the only real clue I had, you see. It was all I could remember.”
Max lifted a finger, indicating that Annalise pause for a moment, and hurriedly took out his phone. “Madame, excuse me, one moment.”
Annalise Van Beek politely averted her gaze whilst Max spoke to Jack Hobbs.
“Jacques, which monastery was Brother Bénédict inducted into?”
A look of revelation crossed the detective’s face as he finished the call.
“Sorry, Madame, but that was very important. I think we can connect one of the monks to the abbot, from his past. Could you tell me about the Bible now?”
Returning to the police station in record time, Max Mallery raced up the stairs to the incident room and flung the door wide. All heads were bent over their desks as the detectives worked and only Luc glanced over.
“Erm, have you forgotten? The pastries?”
The inspector flapped a hand at the computer whizz and sat down on an empty desk.
“Brother Bénédict attended the same monastery that Abbot Arnaud returned to after his time in Africa. Also, there’s something very important you all need to know. Arnaud, previously known as Brother Benoît, sent the Bible to Madame Van Beek to keep for his son. You’ll never believe what it leads to!”
“Buried treasure?” Thierry joked, feigning surprise.
“Exactly!” Mallery returned, his face deadly serious. “Treasure that might be so valuable that we could all retire and go to live on the Côte D’Azure.”
It took Max no more than three minutes to tell his te
am of Annalise’s revelation. The map enclosed in the pocket at the back of the Bible was one of two halves, the other being carefully kept by the abbot, hoping that his son would come to find him and claim the missing half.
“Now, all that Annalise knows is that when Arnaud, Benoît, sent the Bible to her, he enclosed a note telling her that the map would lead to gold. It also mentioned a grave that he would reveal to his son when they met and put the two sections of the map back together.”
“A grave?” Jack repeated. “No name?”
Mallery shrugged. “You can’t have everything, Jacques.”
“So, now we need to find the other half of the map,” Gabriella jumped in, “and whoever has it, is probably our killer.”
“Yes!” her boss shouted. “With the connection of Brother Bénédict to Arnaud, I think we can guess where we need to look first.”
Hobbs bit his thumbnail and frowned. “Sorry, sir, but if the Abbot can only find the grave when the map is complete, how would the killer know where to dig for the gold?”
“That’s the point,” Max replied triumphantly. “He doesn’t. That’s why so many different graves have been dug up.”
“So, what do we do now?” Luc asked, being the most practical team member.
“We have to find both halves of the map,” the inspector explained, “and also find out exactly what is buried in the grave.”
“I guess whoever pulls the short straw will get the job of finding the two halves of the map?” Jack muttered, wondering whether tossing a coin might be more appropriate.
“Non, not at all, Jacques. You have just volunteered, and you can all help. I’m going to visit the abbot while he’s still able to talk. Luc, I want you to put in for a search warrant, we need to check out the senior monks’ rooms. While we’re waiting, I think we need to put the place back under surveillance.”
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