by Glenn Cooper
‘Exactly!’ Fred said.
She was slowed down by the need to explain things to Luc. ‘It’s a fungus. It contaminates wild and cultivated grasses, like our wild barley. The fungus produces the ergot compounds. In the Middle Ages tens of thousands of Europeans came down with ergotism from naturally contaminated rye, causing hallucinations, madness, sometimes death. The Aztecs chewed Morning Glory seeds which contain natural ergots. It was their way of communicating with their gods. Christ, I studied ergotism in grad school! Ergot contamination of livestock grain is still a major problem.’
‘I’m a hundred per cent sure it was Claviceps -derived,’ Fred said with an excited look, seemingly forgetting his circumstances. ‘The predominant ergots were agroclavine and elymoclavine.’
She shook her head knowingly. ‘Did you find anything else?’
‘You bet I did. Ergots were only the beginning. Wait till you hear the rest!’
Luc’s mobile phone rang. When he opened it, someone with a hospital badge told him he couldn’t use it inside.
Luc excused himself and limped down the corridor towardsathe casualty department. ‘Hello?’
‘Is that Professor Simard?’
‘Yes, who’s this?’
‘It’s Father Menaud, from Ruac. I need to speak with you.’
‘Yes, one moment. Let me get outside.’
On the way out, Luc saw two large men heading towards him, shoulder-to-shoulder, and he thought he heard one of them say ‘Oui,’ which struck him as out of place in the corridors of the Nuffield Hospital. One was wearing a sweatshirt, the other a padded jacket. Both looked haggard. When he looked at them, he had the impression they deliberately looked away but it happened quickly and he was out the door.
The forecourt to the Casualty Department was crowded with ambulances, police cars and satellite trucks. Luc tried to find a relatively quiet spot.
‘How can I help you, Dom Menaud?’
It wasn’t a good connection. Syllables were dropping. ‘I’m afraid they’re all gone. I don’t know any other way to tell you.’
Luc was confused. ‘I’m sorry, what do you mean, gone?’
‘All your people at the camp. All of them are dead. It’s a terrible tragedy. Please, professor, come as soon as you can!’
TWENTY-TWO
Monday
Luc left Sara speechless and trembling at Fred Prentice’s side with nothing more than a few hurried words to tell her there’d been an accident in France.
Maybe it was a cruel thing to do to her, to leave so abruptly, but his mind wasn’t focused on anything but getting back across the Channel. He hailed a taxi and persuaded the driver to take him all the way to Heathrow for the cash in his wallet. He left his bag at the hotel; it was the last thing he cared about. He used his mobile until the battery went dead then sat in the cab with his hands in his head. The rest of the journey was a long, slashing blur, a journey to hell.
Hell was roped off with yellow incident tape.
The abbey grounds were the site of a major gendarmerie investigation. In the parking area, an officer recognised Luc and escorted him through the forensic cordon. In the distance, Luc saw the monks heading to the church. Which office of the day was it? He’d lost track of time. Then he noticed the sun was setting. Vespers. Nothing was going to interrupt the cycle of prayer.
Luc was like a foetus, suspended in murkiness, aware of his own heartbeat, his breathing, but primitively unaware of what was happening outside the womb.
Colonel Toucas was strutting around, very much in charge. By the cold ash of the camp fire pit, he immediately started peppering Luc with questions and confronting him with grim facts. The way he was so energised, almost giddy in the midst of all this calamity, angered Luc and brought him crashing back to the here and now.
But Luc had trouble looking into Toucas’s animated face when the policeman started describing the location of bodies, the nature of the wounds. Instead, he found himself staring furiously at the objects that adorned the colonel’s sky-blue shirt – his epaulets, his service patches, the dark-blue tie with its emblematic clip.
Luc began to fully absorb the horror. The three male under-graduate students and Jeremy were shot dead in the office, execution style. Marie, the female undergrad, raped and shot in one caravan. Elizabeth Coutard, raped and shot in another.
Finally, Luc was able to look at Toucas’s fleshy lips. ‘What about Pierre?’ he asked in little more than a whisper.
‘Who’s Pierre?’ the officer asked.
After Luc explained who Pierre was and that he was certainly there on Sunday night, Toucas began barking at his men, demanding an explanation for the incomplete body count, haranguing them to make another search of the camp site. Luc offered up the make and model of Pierre’s car and an officer was dispatched to locate it.
Toucas all but forced Luc to enter the Portakabin to give an accounting of what was missing. Mercifully, the bodies were covered, but the shrouds couldn’t hide all the blood.
‘My God,’ Luc muttered. ‘My God. Who could have done this?’
‘Who indeed,’ Toucas said. ‘We’ll find them, you can be sure of that.’
The office was completely ransacked. The computers were gone as were the scientific gear, the microscopes and environmental monitors. The file cabinets and desk drawers had all been emptied out into a great pile and by the looks of it, the intruders had set the pile on fire. About a quarter of the papers were burned through or singed.
‘Why would they burn the files?’ Luc asked numbly.
Toucas pointed to the charred remnants. ‘Perhaps they were using the papers to set the building off and destroy the evidence. The fire must have burned out on its own. These coated file folders don’t ignite easily. There’s no sign of accelerants. You light a match, start the fire, run away and it dies out. That’s what I think happened.’
An officer poked his head in. ‘That car isn’t around, Colonel.’
‘So where is this Pierre? What’s his last name, professor?’
‘Berewa.’
‘What kind of name is that?’
‘He’s from Sierra Leone.’
‘Ah,’ Toucas said suspiciously, ‘An African.’
‘No, a Frenchman,’ Luc responded.
Toucas half-smiled. ‘Well, we need to find Pierre Berewa. Do you have his mobile number? Can you call him?’
Luc’s phone was dead. He used the Colonel’s to no avail. Suddenly, he looked at his own desk. The drawers were tipped out. ‘We kept the spare key to the cave entrance in that drawer.’
‘See if you can find it,’ Toucas said. ‘But put these gloves on please.’ He pointed to a box of latex gloves left there by the forensics squad. ‘Fingerprints.’
Luc began rummaging through the files.
‘How many keys did you have?’ Toucas asked.
‘Two. Pierre had my key.’
‘Ah, Pierre, again.’
After an exhaustive search Luc declared the spare key missing and said, ‘I think we should check the cave.’
‘Very well, let’s do that.’
Lieutenant Billeter drove. On the way, Toucas took a call, mostly listening. When he was done he turned to Luc in the back seat. ‘The coroner tells me there was something interesting about the rape samples from the female victims.’
Luc didn’t want to hear but Toucas wasn’t attuned to his sensibilities.
‘The rapist had abnormal sperm. Short tails, apparently not good swimmers. The doctor used the term, ‘immotile’. Maybe this will be helpful, we’ll see.’
Luc could see Marie and Elizabeth in his mind. For the first time that day tears began to stream down his face.
At the end of the lane, they saw Pierre’s red car in the gravel parking area. Luc ran to it, but Billeter warned him off. ‘Don’t touch anything!’
They peered in but it was empty.
Luc led them down the ladder. On the ledge of the cliff the sight of the gate wide open sent him into fu
ry. ‘Someone’s been in there! Christ!’
Billeter used his walkie talkie to radio for more men.
‘Take us in there, Professor,’ Toucas said, unbuttoning his stiff leather holster.
There was still a cardboard box of shoe covers in the cave mouth. Luc hit the universal power switch and the entire cave lit up, front to back.
‘We should have protective clothes,’ Luc mumbled.
‘To protect us?’ Toucas asked.
‘No, the cave.’
‘Under the circumstances, let’s not worry about that,’ the colonel commanded.
Toucas and Billeter seemed irritably distracted by the cave art, as if it was put there to confuse a crime scene. Luc moved forward cautiously, checking each treasure, fearful he would find graffiti, or some ruinous act. Anyone capable of debasing human life would certainly be capable of that.
‘What are these?’ Toucas asked, pointing at a Roman Numeral III, affixed to the wall.
‘There are ten chambers in the cave. This is the third, The Chamber of the Red Deer.’
‘Which is the most important?’
‘They’re all important. But if I had to answer, I’d say the tenth chamber.’
‘Why?’
‘You’ll see.’
They finally got to Chamber 9. Luc took some comfort in seeing all the art untouched, as perfect as ever.
They entered the tunnel on hands and knees.
When they emerged from the tunnel into the tenth chamber and the Vault of Hands, Luc immediately saw Pierre’s long arm in the Chamber of Plants.
He shouted, ‘Pierre!’ and ran to him.
He was lying face-down.
His black skin was as cold as the cave floor. Billeter went through the motions of trying to find a pulse and declared that rigor mortis had already set in.
‘Search him,’ Toucas ordered, and Billeter donned gloves and began the task while Luc collapsed on his haunches to watch the nightmarish scene.
Another student murdered.
At the feet of the bird man.
In this mystical place.
He heard Abbot Menaud’s words in his head: ‘I’m afraid they’re all gone.’
Billeter was saying something that he missed. Luc looked up and asked him to repeat it. ‘I said he had one key in his pocket. Is this the original or the copy?’
‘It’s the original. It’s my keychain.’
Billeter resumed his inspection. ‘There’s a stab wound in his right flank. We’ll see what the coroner says but that’s the probable cause of death.’
‘What do these mean, these plants and that man or whatever he is with this erection of his?’ Toucas asked.
‘I don’t know if we’ll ever know what they mean,’ Luc answered wearily. ‘I’m sure people will have theories.’
‘What’s your theory?’
‘Right now, I couldn’t say. My best student is dead. My people are dead. The women…’
Toucas didn’t pretend to be empathic. ‘This isn’t idle chatter, Professor. I’m conducting an investigation! Do you want justice? I’m sure you do! How well did you know this man?’ He pointed at Pierre with a jut of his chin.
‘I knew him very well. He was with me for four years. He was a good archaeologist. He might have become a great one.’
‘Where was he before he was your student?’
‘Paris. University of Paris. He was Parisian.’
‘From Africa.’
Luc keyed on the accusatory way the man spat that out. ‘So what?’
‘Did he ever have friends or relatives come visit him here?’
‘No.’
‘Did he have any bad habits, drugs?’
‘No. Not that I know of.’
‘Money problems?’
‘Beyond what all students face? I wouldn’t know. What are you driving at?’
Toucas rubbed his fleshy cheeks with the heels of his hands in a show of fatigue or maybe exasperation. ‘A crime has been committed. A great crime. All crimes have motives and opportunities. Why do you think Pierre Berewa was in this cave, professor?’
‘I don’t know. He shouldn’t have been.’
‘Well then. We have a motive. There’s been a theft. Your equipment is gone, the purses and wallets of the victims were taken. There was a sexual assault. Spontaneous perhaps. The women were there. The perpetrators were men. It happens. And your Pierre had a key to the cave. Maybe…’ He stopped long enough to respond to Luc’s growing anger. He had risen from his squat and was towering over the colonel, growing red with rage. ‘Just maybe, Professor, please listen to me, this student had some shady dealings with bad people. Maybe he was their opportunity. We must keep an open mind.’
‘There was another key!’ Luc shouted, the words echoing in the chamber. ‘It’s gone. Maybe Pierre was trying to stop them from – I don’t know what.’
‘Well, maybe. Of course, there are other explanations. A drug gang. Travellers. Gypsies. Your presence down here wasn’t exactly a secret. Scientists are rich. They have fancy gear. I know how crooks think. This was an easy target, whether or not Pierre Berewa was involved.’
Luc was half-listening, half-watching the lieutenant lifting Pierre up by a stiff shoulder to see if anything was under his body. He saw something. An archaeologist’s eye. ‘What’s that?’
‘Where?’ Billeter asked.
‘Near his left hand.’
With Toucas moving in to keep Pierre’s shoulder and upper body off the ground, Billeter shone his torch underneath and pulled out a block of brown cakey material, the size of a dozen pencils bundled together.
Toucas put on a single glove to receive it and sniffed at it. ‘What is this, professor?’
Luc had no clue and said it wasn’t anything to do with his excavation.
‘I have some ideas, but I’d rather not say for now. We’ll have it analysed. Everything will be analysed, you can be sure of that,’ Toucas said.
‘You need to know something,’ Luc said suddenly.
‘Go on.’
‘Last night I was in England, in Cambridge. Someone tried to run me over with a car. He got away.’
‘And what do the police think?’
‘They thought it was probably a drunk driver.’
Toucas shrugged.
‘This morning, I was on my way to an appointment with a scientific collaborator. There was an explosion at the office park before I got there. There were many casualties.’
‘I heard something on the radio. I’ve been busy today,’ Toucas sniffed. ‘Other than the fact you’ve had a bad run at the tables, Professor, why are you telling me this?’
‘Because, maybe there’s some kind of connection. All these things just don’t happen.’
‘Why not? Things happen all the time. Conspiracy theorists make a living of stringing random events like different-sized beads into one ugly necklace. This is not what we do in my command.’
‘Could you at least talk to the police in England?’ Luc asked. He fished a business card from his wallet that one of the Cambridge officers had given him. Toucas took it and slipped it in his breast pocket as if he had no intention of ever looking at it again.
There were faraway calls from inside the cave.
‘Despite everything,’ Luc said miserably, ‘we’re going to have to protect the integrity of the cave. We can’t have people just walking around with no safeguards.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Toucas said, dismissively. ‘You can help us strike a balance between our needs and yours, I’m sure. A protocol, perhaps.’
A head popped through the tunnel into the Vault of Hands but it wasn’t a member of the gendarmerie.
It was Marc Abenheim.
He had a sweet-and-sour look on his officious face. In the face of all this horror, something was pleasing him.
‘There you are!’ Luc cringed at his nasal smugness. ‘I was told you were down here.’ He looked around, blinking nervously and sniffed, ‘Oh dear!’ at the sight of Pierre�
�s body. When he had visited during the excavation, Luc recalled he had trouble making eye contact. Now he was latching on with laser beams. ‘I didn’t expect to be back so quickly. It’s good to see the cave again but not under these circumstances. What a tragedy! The Minister herself sends her condolences.’
‘Thank you, Marc. You didn’t have to come all the way from Paris. It’s a matter for the authorities.’
Abenheim tried not to look at Pierre’s body. Luc knew they’d met. He had assigned Pierre to take Abenheim on his obligatory cave tour. ‘I’m afraid I did have to come. Can we speak in private?’
They withdrew to the adjacent vault. The bright, almost gaily painted hands all around them were discordant, bordering on absurd, considering the circumstances.
‘I seem to be seeing you only on unfortunate occasions,’ Abenheim said.
‘It seems so.’
‘These kinds of things are unprecedented in French archaeology. One excavation, so many deaths. It’s a very serious matter.’
‘I assure you, Marc, I know that.’
‘Professor Barbier is concerned. The Minister is concerned. There’s a danger of the image of this spectacular national monument being tarnished by these human tragedies.’
Luc was almost amused that Abenheim was parroting his words from the first ministry meeting – ‘spectacular national monument’. ‘I’m sure it will be a footnote to every report and popular article about Ruac in the future,’ Luc replied. ‘That much is unavoidable, I’m sure, but I’m also sure that now is not the right time to think of these matters.’
‘The ministry depends on me to think about these matters!’
‘What do you want us to do, Marc? What do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to resign as director of the excavation.’
To Luc, the stencilled hands seemed to be in motion, rotating in a slow clockwise swirl.
He heard himself answering this snivelling son-of-a-bitch. ‘Zvi Alon’s accident. Hugo Pineau’s car crash. This attack on the camp. These are random acts. Horrible random acts.’ He stopped for a moment to listen to his own argument. Minutes ago he was trying to convince Colonel Toucas to keep an open mind about connections. In exasperation he asked, ‘How will my resignation help explain anything or bring closure to anyone?’