by Peter May
‘It’s a date,’ Enzo said. ‘1816.’ And he went to mark it up on the board beside the stethoscope. He heard Nicole tapping away at the keyboard behind him. And then an exclamation.
‘Oh, my God!’
Enzo turned, alarmed. ‘What is it?’
Her face was flushed with excitement. ‘I put Laennec’s full name into the search engine, and the first of about a thousand links that came up was for the Catholic Encyclopaedia. You’re not going to believe this. The entry for Laennec says that while studying in Paris he became a pupil of a Doctor Corvisart, who is described here as Napoléon’s great physician.’ She looked up, eyes shining. ‘Napoléon!’
Enzo grinned. ‘Clever girl.’ He immediately turned and, in the centre of the whiteboard, wrote in bold letters, Napoléon’s Doctor. Underneath it, the name Corvisart. He drew a circle around the names and pointed arrows to the circle from both the stethoscope and the bee.
‘What about the thigh bone?’ Nicole said. ‘If it’s really a piece from an anatomical skeleton, then that’s a medical allusion, too, isn’t it?’
‘You’re right,’ Enzo said, and he drew another arrow from the femur to the circle in the centre of the board. So there were now three arrows pointing to it. ‘It’s working,’ he said. ‘This is what’s supposed to happen.’
And then they hit a dead end.
Nicole spent the next hour chasing down dozens of websites about the physician. In the space of that hour they learned nearly everything about the man there was to know, but nothing that brought enlightenment. Napoléon was quoted as saying of him: “I do not believe in medicine, but I believe in Corvisart.”
‘I think I remember reading somewhere that Napoléon had an ulcer, and suffered terribly from piles,’ Enzo said.
Nicole made a face. ‘Monsieur Macleod! Too much information!’
Enzo retired to his recliner and stared at the whiteboard, listening to the clackety-clack of Nicole’s keyboard tapping away the seconds of his life. What possible relevance could Napoléon’s doctor have? He let his eyes wander to the Ordre de la Libération. Perhaps it had a website. He made a mental note to ask Nicole to check when she had finished with Corvisart. And then he thought about the date engraved on the back of the medal. 12 May, 1943. Perhaps it was a famous date in French history. He’d ask Nicole to check that as well. Sometimes streets or squares in France were named after important dates. He went in search of his Paris street planner among the clutter of books, eventually finding it and scanning through it for a street named 12 May, 1943. But without success.
Sophie emerged from her room late morning, bleary-faced and puffy-eyed. She barely acknowledged Nicole. ‘I’m off to Bertrand’s,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you later, Papa.’ And she was gone before Enzo could tell her to take the metal detector with her.
‘There’s a Rue Corvisart in Paris,’ Nicole said suddenly, as if her thoughts had been running along the same lines as Enzo’s. She was staring at the screen. ‘And a Hotel Corvisart. And a Lycée Corvisart, all in the same street. Oh, and there’s a métro stop called Corvisart. On the Green Line. Just one stop away from Place d’Italie.’
Enzo sat up. ‘Place d’Italie?’ He jumped out of the recliner and crossed to the whiteboard and wrote up, Street, Hotel, School, Métro, one below the other, and circled them. Then he pointed an arrow to them from Corvisart. ‘We’re getting somewhere, Nicole. If the head was buried in the catacombes beneath Place d’Italie, maybe the rest of him is also somewhere down there. Is there any way we can find out if there are tunnels below the Rue Corvisart?’
‘Let’s see….’ Nicole called up Google and entered Catacombes and then info, bringing up a list of around two and a half thousand links. Top of the list was a site advertising the official catacomb tour at Denfert-Rochereau. But they struck gold with the one below it. The link took them to www.catacombes.info, and eerie music immediately began to fill the room.
‘What the hell’s that?’ Enzo asked.
‘They’ve put a soundtrack on the website for a bit of atmosphere,’ she said.
Enzo came around to have a look at it. The site displayed vivid orange and white lettering on a black background. Nicole moved her cursor over a photograph of a manhole cover with a circle of blue around the letters IDF. She clicked on it, and the manhole cover slid aside, prompting a fresh page to appear with links to a welcome page, a history page, a page of photographs, and several others.
‘Try the photos page,’ Enzo said. Nicole clicked on the link, which took them to a page with a map tracing the peripheral boundaries of Paris and the route of the Seine through the city. It also delineated areas where the largest number of tunnel networks were to be found. Enzo pointed to the thirteenth arrondissement. ‘That’s where the Place d’Italie is.’ Nicole moved her cursor over it, and the area of tunnels on the map was immediately highlighted in green. She clicked, and they were taken to another page with a detailed map of the tunnel network below. Enzo gasped. ‘Salle des carriers! I was there.’
Nicole move her cursor over the salle des carriers, clicked on it, and they were taken to another page filled with photographs of tunnels leading to the room, all spookily lit by strategically placed candles.
‘This is extraordinary,’ Enzo said. ‘Someone’s gone to a huge amount of work to put this site together.’
Nicole took them back to the map and located Place d’Italie on it. Almost all of the network was immediately north or east of it. None of the tunnels extended far enough west to take in the Rue Corvisart. ‘It doesn’t look like there are any tunnels under Corvisart,’ she said. ‘At least, not if this map’s to be believed.’
Enzo was disappointed. ‘Maybe I’m going to have to go back to Paris and look at this Rue Corvisart myself.’
‘It’s a pretty long street.’ Nicole looked at the map. ‘And anyway, aren’t you getting a bit ahead of yourself? I mean, we still don’t know the relevance of the scallop shell, or the Ordre de la Libération, or the date on the back of it.’
Enzo nodded. ‘No, you’re right.’ It was good to have someone else there to keep him focused. He felt his stomach growling and checked the time. It was midday. After twenty years in France he had acquired that quintessentially French biological clock which told him when it was time for lunch. ‘I’m going downstairs for some pizza. Are you coming?’
But Nicole’s attention was still riveted on the screen in front of her. ‘Um…no, thanks. I’m on a diet.’
‘Oh. Okay. Well, there’s stuff in the fridge if you get hungry.’
II
Enzo had a simple Margarita at La Lampara restaurant below the apartment. He washed it down with a quart de vin rouge and a half bottle of Badoit and stared through the trees opposite, past the cars in the square, to the arches of La Halle, closed now for lunch. Tables at all the restaurants and cafés were filled, groups and couples, locals and holidaymakers enjoying the food and the company. Even after all these years, Enzo had never quite got used to eating alone, and he had developed the habit of eating quickly and settling up. There was never any reason to linger. But today he had a more pressing reason for speeding up the process. He had a sense that they were almost within touching distance of Gaillard’s killer.
When he got back to the apartment, he found Nicole in a state of excitement, her breasts heaving hypnotically as she told him that she thought Corvisart had taken them up a blind alley.
‘Why?’ Enzo asked.
‘Because we thought all this medical stuff leading us to Napoléon was supposed to take us to Corvisart, because he was Napoléon’s personal physician.’
‘So?’
‘So Napoléon had another doctor. A much more famous one.’ She scrolled through the history of recently visited websites and recalled a page she had found during lunch. ‘Doctor Dominique Larrey.’
‘What’s so remarkable about Larrey?’
‘He revolutionised medical treatment on the battlefield. He pioneered amputation surgery, introduce
d ambulances to remove the wounded from the field, and the concept of triage in their treatment. Napoléon appointed him Surgeon-in-Chief to the French army, and he accompanied Napoléon on his expeditions to Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Germany, Poland, and Moscow. He was made a baron in 1810.’
Enzo shrugged. ‘Why do you think he’s more relevant than Corvisart?’
‘Okay, just listen.’ And she started reading. ‘Larrey’s name remains associated with an amputation of the shoulder joint, Mediterranean yellow fever, and ligation of the femoral artery below the inguinal ligament.’ She looked up, her face shining. ‘Femoral artery. That’s what you called the thigh bone, wasn’t it? The femur.’
Enzo inclined his head in doubtful acknowledgement. ‘Well, yes. But that seems a bit thin, Nicole.’
‘Ah, but wait, that’s not all. Here’s the best bit. He was born in the Pyrénées, and studied medicine under an uncle who was a surgeon in Toulouse.’
For the first time, Enzo’s interest was aroused. ‘Toulouse?’
Nicole grinned at him. ‘I thought that might get you. I checked. Toulouse was one of the most important stopping places on the pilgrim’s route to Compostela.’ She left the computer and brushed past Enzo to the whiteboard. She took a different coloured marker, scored out Corvisart under Napoléon’s Doctor. ‘If we make that Larrey instead…’ and she wrote up the name, ‘…we can point arrows to it from the femur, the bee, the stethoscope and the scallop shell.’ She drew in the arrows.
Enzo took the pen from her. ‘And we can add something else.’ He wrote Toulouse up on the board, circled it, and drew arrows to it from Larrey and from the scallop shell. ‘So now we have four arrows pointing through Larrey and a second from the shell, all going to Toulouse.’ Which was much closer to home than Enzo could ever have imagined — just an hour south of Cahors. Was it possible that Gaillard’s remains had been brought all the way to Toulouse? And if so, why?’ He stood back and examined the board afresh. ‘We haven’t looked at the Ordre de la Libération yet.’
‘They’ve got a website,’ Nicole said, and she started back to the computer. ‘I found it while you were out.’ She began tapping at the keyboard. ‘It didn’t seem very interesting, though.’ She brought the site up on screen, and read, ‘The Ordre de la Libération is France’s second national Order after the Legion of Honour, and was instituted by General de Gaulle, Leader of the Free French movement, with Edict Number Seven, signed in Brazzaville on November 16, 1940. Admission to the Order is meant to reward individuals, military, and civil organisations for outstanding service in the effort to procure the liberation of France and the French Empire.’ She sighed and clicked on a link to the site map, which brought up dozens more links. ‘There are links to all sorts of pages about the history of the Order, the chronology, official texts…You can download a PDF file with the names of all one thousand and thirty-eight recipients of the Order. There’s even a list of only those recipients who are still alive. Which no doubt needs regular updating.’
Enzo thought about it. ‘And the date? May 12th, 1943?’
‘There’s no reference to it on the site.’
‘Can you search Google just for the date?’
‘Sure.’ She tapped the date into the search window and hit the return key.
Enzo stood by her shoulder as the first ten results of three hundred and fifty-nine appeared on the screen. He groaned. ‘That’s a lot of links to wade through.’
‘We only need to look at ones that seem interesting.’ She began scrolling quickly through them, seemingly able to read them much more quickly than Enzo. The first site she brought up was about the capitulation of German and Italian forces in Tunisia on May 12th, 1943. Many of the other sites also related to the same event. But Enzo couldn’t see any connection. Nicole carried on scrolling. There was some Nazi documentation on anti-semitism issued on that day, an Italian army commander who received his promotion, a Swiss composer whose date of birth it was. Nicole moved on to the second page. Several of the links led to German websites which neither of them could read. Nothing seemed relevant until Nicole moved on to page number three. And it leapt off the screen at them — the second last link. ORDRE DE LA LIBéRATION. Nicole let out a tiny shriek and clicked on the link.
They found themselves back on the website of the Ordre, on the biography page of one of the medal’s recipients. A soldier in the French army called Édouard Méric. There was a black and white photograph of him, wearing what looked like an old sackcloth coat over his uniform. He had a cigarette burning between his fingers, and a slight, enigmatic smile below a thick mop of untidy hair. Nicole scrolled quickly through his life. He had been trained at Saint-Cyr military school in the nineteen twenties. He had spent two years in Germany before being transferred to Morocco, where he was wounded in action in 1926. He seemed to have remained, then, in North Africa, in various capacities, until the Second World War when he led a Moroccan unit of the French army to victory over the Germans in Tunisia. On May 11th and 12th, 1943, he and his men crushed the final resistance of German and Italian troops, capturing a large number of prisoners and a significant amount of equipment.
Both Enzo and Nicole were disappointed. ‘Is that it?’ Nicole asked.
‘It looks like it.’ Enzo scratched his head. ‘It’s not even very specific about the date. It’s May 11th and 12th. And I’m not sure what Tunisia has to do with anything else we’ve come up with.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I’ll mark the name up anyway, since we’ve not come up with anything else.’ And he went to the board and wrote Édouard Méric next to the medal. He heard Nicole still tapping away at her keyboard.
‘Do you know what’s odd?’ she said, and then answered her own question. ‘You can get back to the main website from Méric’s page, but there doesn’t seem to be a link to it from the site. Which is very strange. I mean, I’m assuming that if there’s a biog page for Méric, there must be pages for all the others. But I can’t see any way of accessing them.’
‘Maybe we’re both tired, Nicole,’ Enzo said. ‘My brain hurts, so maybe I’m not thinking too clearly. And maybe you’re not either. Why don’t we take a break?’
‘Good idea.’ Nicole seemed to brighten. She put the computer to sleep. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘I don’t want to do anything. That’s the point.’ Enzo slumped into his recliner. A couple of glasses of red wine with lunch always made him sleepy in the afternoon. ‘I’m going to close my eyes for a bit. Maybe you want to go shopping or something.’
Nicole shook her head gloomily. ‘Haven’t got any money.’ And Enzo felt a stab of guilt. ‘Maybe I’ll go and see Audeline. You remember Audeline, don’t you?’
Enzo was already starting to drift. ‘No.’
‘She’s in your first year biology class. We always sit together. Her parents live here. She’s got a summer job at a filling station….’
* * *
He felt soft breath in his face, and the back of a hand gently running down his cheek. He opened his eyes and saw her just as she had been all those years before. Just as he remembered her.
‘Pascale,’ he whispered, and she kissed him gently on the forehead.
‘It’s Sophie, Papa,’ he heard her say, and he sat up with a start. Sophie was sitting on the arm of his recliner. The air was very warm, the square below still crowded, although the shadows of the trees were lengthening towards the east. ‘How long have you been asleep?’ she asked.
He blinked, still groggy. ‘What time is it?’
‘After six.’
And he realised with a shock that he had been asleep in the chair for nearly four hours. His trip to Paris had taken more out of him than he thought. ‘Too long.’
‘Where’s the Amazon?’
‘What?’
‘Nicole.’
‘She’s not an Amazon.’
‘She looks like one.’
‘She can’t help the way she’s built. And, anyway, Amazon women cut off their right breasts so as
not to hinder the action of drawing back their bow strings.’
‘Right enough,’ said Sophie. ‘She’s not lacking anything in that department.’
‘She’s gone to visit a friend.’ He heaved himself out of his chair.
‘Are you two planning a cosy evening in together, then?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Sophie.’ His sleep had done nothing to improve his mood. ‘And I don’t suppose you’ll be gracing us with your company tonight?’
‘I’m going to a concert with Bertrand.’
‘Of course you are.’ His voice was laden with sarcasm. He picked up a crumpled linen jacket and pulled it on over his tee-shirt, and headed out to the hall.
Sophie followed him. ‘Papa, why are you so down on Bertrand?’
But he didn’t want to get into that right now. He spotted the metal detector and poked it with his foot. ‘Because he leaves booby-traps for me in my own house.’ He turned to face her. ‘Sophie, if that thing is not out of here by the time I get back, I’m going to throw it out of the window.’ He opened the door to the landing.
‘Aw, Papa….’
‘I mean it.’ And he headed off down the stairs.
III
The night could hardly have been clearer. The Milky Way was like smoke smeared across the sky. Pinpricks of light burned through the darkness, encrusting it like jewels, each one a sun with its own solar system. Millions of them. The possibilities of other life forms existing somewhere out there in the universe seemed infinite. And yet Enzo’s sense of being alone in it was almost crushing.