The Chaplin Conspiracy

by Stewart Ferris

  ‘Such a pity about their insistence on the need for a general anaesthetic, though,’ complained the Patient. ‘I was unable to have any input on the surgical decisions made, which is a pity because I have an idea for a new method of pinning the bone. It involves fewer screws by placing them further—’ He stopped himself. He could tell that Ratty was starting to lose the colour in his cheeks. ‘It is too late now, of course, barring further accidents.’

  ‘Are you a doctor or something?’ asked Justina.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Just a patient.’

  ‘Well, Patient chappy, whilst it would be spiffing to discuss your bionic implants all day, I have to inform you of something of much importance. It turns out that I have been kidnapped.’

  ‘Indeed?’ asked the Patient, sitting up straighter and starting to fuss around with his pillow and bedsheets.

  ‘Rather a funny story, actually. You see it turns out-’

  ‘Listen up,’ interrupted Winnifred. ‘We are taking him hostage. Tell your friends, when they visit you, that they have forty-eight hours to find Justina’s inheritance, Saunière’s gold, whatever you want to call it, and deliver it to us at the castle. Otherwise. Well, you don’t want to know. Got it?’

  ‘And by what means are you maintaining a consistent threat against my very good friend?’ asked the Patient.

  ‘You know perfectly well,’ said Winnifred. ‘My knife and me make a fearsome partnership.’

  ‘Your knife? Which knife would that be?’ he asked.

  ‘This one,’ she replied, reaching to her side where she expected to find it tucked into her belt. It was missing. ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Ratty, I advise you most vehemently to run away without delay. It will take Winnifred a few moments to work out where I have secreted her knife, and by then the nurses will have alerted the hospital security staff, so I will be safe.’

  Ratty tried not to look as disappointed as he felt. The concept of being kidnapped was frankly rather exciting. Running away did not have the same appeal.

  ‘Let’s not be hasty,’ he said, ‘for whilst I applaud your intentions and your rapid actions, Patient chappy, I really don’t think these charming ladies mean to harm me. Perhaps we could do the kidnapping thing but without the knife? Just a kind of gentleman’s agreement doodah. What do you say, ladies?’

  ‘No one makes a fool out of me,’ Winnifred hissed at the Patient. ‘Just because I saved your ass doesn’t mean I won’t kick it. You understand?’

  ‘Explicitly,’ the Patient replied. ‘Though if I may say so, your defensiveness and lack of good humour suggest an unresolved inferiority complex. Would you care to tell me about your childhood? Maybe we can get to the bottom of some of the issues that seem to be causing you problems in adulthood.’

  ‘Fuck you, asshole. Where’s my damn knife?’

  ‘Excellent. That is a perfect representation of the kind of attitude that your condition can be expected to present. I think I have a clear idea of your psychological state, and I think I possess the means to cure it.’

  ‘Never mind the knife,’ suggested Ratty. ‘Why don’t we tootle off and wait for the others to find the treasure?’

  ‘If I may be so bold,’ added the Patient, ‘there is another flaw in your plan, ladies. If your ransom is not a specific amount, merely the sum of whatever Saunière’s treasure may happen to come to, which nobody knows, then how would you know if the treasure that eventually reaches you is the full quantity available?’

  ‘Good point, Patient chappy. It seems to me as though this kidnapping malarkey is not as viable as we initially thought.’

  ‘You’re forgetting one thing, bozos,’ grunted Winnifred, lifting the sheets and retrieving her knife from beneath the protective arch over the Patient’s legs. ‘The power of fear.’ She pointed the knife towards Ratty. ‘The kidnapping will go as planned. And if anyone keeps back so much as a penny of Saunière’s money, Ratty gets it. Right?’

  ‘The penny?’ asked Ratty.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Justina, suppressing a sigh.

  They nudged Ratty to another corridor lined with doors leading to private rooms. As they neared the far end, a door opened beside them. They looked around and Justina’s eyes met with those of Henri, the Templar. He was bloodied and bruised, limping and dirty, but he was mobile and walked towards them unaided.

  ‘A certain brevity in our step might be advisable,’ whispered Ratty.

  ‘Shh,’ said Justina, walking towards the Templar. ‘You’re alive. What happened?’

  ‘Compared to what is about to happen, nothing.’

  ***

  Convinced that Ratty was no longer in the town, Ruby declared a pause to their search and invited Scabies to a café in the main square. This area had remained safely above the water line even while the river was at its most swollen. Here, life continued normally, other than for the excessive presence of firemen and gendarmes, plus a newly arrived television news team. She ordered coffees and croissants and they watched the unusually busy world around them.

  ‘Come on Ruby, what would you do?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Put yourself in Saunière’s shoes. You’ve got money you shouldn’t have. The Vatican is breathing down your neck. You’ve got Calvé up the spout in Paris and she’s going to have the brat. You can’t stick around Rennes any more because it’s getting too dodgy. So you fuck off to Switzerland to get some of your dosh. Where do you go from there? What do you do in 1917 with all the money you could hope for?’

  ‘Bearing in mind that the north of France is off-limits with the war, and the south of France is equally risky for him because of his past, that still leaves a huge swathe of land in which to occupy himself. And that’s assuming he doesn’t go abroad.’

  ‘Forget the location, Ruby. What would you do in his situation? You’re pissed off. Resentful towards the Vatican.’

  ‘I see where you’re heading. Right, so if the Vatican gave me a hard time, I’d consider a way to get revenge. If only for fun.’

  ‘Cool. Me too. I can think of a hundred ways to have that kind of fun.’

  ‘And then I’d want to see the kid,’ she said.

  ‘The kid? You think he’d give a shit about it?’

  ‘It’s a human impulse. Of course he’d want to see it. He would also want to set the child up financially. He would find a way to ensure his wealth was channelled towards the kid after he was gone. And that’s the tricky thing when you’re dealing with money from iffy sources being handed over by someone who is officially dead and whose job ought to preclude him from fatherhood in the first place. How would he get that arranged?’

  ‘We need to know who he could have trusted,’ said Scabies. ‘A friend, a lawyer, another priest, a family member?’

  ‘A secret society with a similar grudge against the Vatican?’ suggested Ruby.

  ‘You mean like the Templars?’

  ‘I mean the Templars. Precisely.’

  ‘You think they might have been involved since he was still alive?’ asked Scabies.

  ‘It’s possible, but we don’t have much to go on. I hate it when historical research is based on wild speculation. We have to get some facts to build our hypothesis. All we’ve done since we got here is run around chasing our tails and getting nowhere. Randomly charging in and out of old tunnels is pointless. Any existing tunnel can only lead to somewhere that’s already been plundered, if indeed it ever contained anything. I know you think it’s fun to explore them, and they have historical merit in a sense, but they are a distraction. The Templars wouldn’t keep a valuable hoard in Rennes. If they’ve been guarding it for almost a century, they would have moved it out of the village the moment the treasure hunters started using dynamite in the sixties. They’re hardly likely to sit around and wait for someone to find it.’

  ‘Unless they kept a close eye on everything, making sure no one got too close with their tunnels, and then they introduced the ban on excavations in 1965 an
d from then on they could relax.’

  ‘But we all know the ban didn’t stop the digging,’ said Ruby. ‘It merely drove it underground, if you’ll forgive the pun. Everyone just carried on discreetly. That bloke, what did they call him? The mole. You told me all about him. He was tunnelling right up until he died a few years back, convinced he was about to discover a major religious artefact.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Scabies, ‘and you can take your pick of those round here. We’ve got holy grails, Mary Magdalenes, the ark of the covenant and a couple of Jesuses. It all depends whose book you read. Plus there’s the lost treasure of Jerusalem, the Cathars’ hidden gold, and one or two other fortunes sitting around in the caves and the crypts. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone claimed Lord Lucan and Amelia Earhart were hiding in the woods round here, too. And don’t forget the aliens. This place has it all. Only trouble is, no one’s ever found any of them.’

  ‘Which is what I tried to explain to Ratty all along. But when his head fills with ideas about treasure he becomes unstoppable.’

  ‘So we’ve established,’ said Scabies, ‘that the Templars may or may not be guarding Saunière’s money, and that they might be keeping it somewhere around here or in any other part of the world. So that narrows it down a bit.’

  ‘Sometimes I wish I did something normal for a living. This is impossible.’

  ‘And it’s not a living.’

  ‘I wish I could just be a tourist,’ she continued, ‘passing by without getting involved. It never seems to work out that way.’

  ‘Let’s go to Vatican City and eat pasta and ice cream and take photos and do nothing else.’

  Ruby sat upright, and planted her coffee cup on the table with excessive force.

  ‘The Vatican. I should have thought of it earlier!’

  ‘Thought of what?’ asked Scabies.

  ‘We need facts, right? And we have none. But that’s because we’re looking at this back to front.’

  ‘Back to front? You mean we should look at Saunière’s arse?’

  ‘Shut up, moron. Listen. We both agreed that Saunière might have had a motive to play out some kind of revenge on the Vatican after he faked his death, OK?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And that is nothing more than idle speculation on our part based on circumstantial evidence. In fact, there’s not even circumstantial evidence, just ideas based on very little. But there’s something we can do if we come at the problem the other way. All we have to do is check established historical facts in relation to the Vatican from 1917 onwards. If anyone threw rocks at it, rang its doorbell and ran away, poisoned the water, put rats down the Pope’s cassock, started rumours or anything else, that should be our starting point. We will then be investigating from an established fact, and we may then find that the trail points back to Saunière or the Templars. It’s a long shot, but at least it follows better principles than all this dumb tunnelling.’

  Scabies’ eyes lit up. He knew she was right. This might be the best chance of advancement in the mystery of Saunière that anyone had made in years.

  ‘We need the Internet,’ he said. ‘Our phones are fucked. There’s not a decent library for miles and half the phone lines in this valley were knocked out by the storm, so we’re not going to get online here anyway.’

  ‘Maybe we don’t need the Internet,’ said Ruby.

  ‘I think you’ll find we do.’

  ‘You’re forgetting our secret weapon. The walking, talking Wikipedia that is the Patient.’

  ‘Only without so much of the walking.’

  ‘Drink up. We need to pay him a visit in hospital. Where do you think they took him?’

  ‘It would have to be Quillan,’ said Scabies. ‘Whenever I got smashed up after a drink and a fight in Rennes, I’d always wake up in Quillan.’

  ‘I really don’t want to know,’ said Ruby, waving at the waiter for the bill.

  ***

  The reception desk at the hospital in Quillan was not adequate to cope with the exceptional number of visitors. The glass shelf on which enquirers would lean looked as if it might shatter under the weight of elbows. Rocco looked at Charlie.

  ‘We should see the Patient later, when it’s not so busy,’ said Rocco. ‘Let’s get on with what we’re supposed to be doing and find who the Templars hired to flatten Ratty’s home. It sounds much more fun than waiting in this queue.’

  ‘I don’t understand queues,’ said Charlie. ‘I believe in every man for himself. Survival of the fattest. I can find the Patient. Follow me.’

  They squeezed past the line of relatives waiting to find where their injured loved ones were located, turned a corner and found a staircase.

  ‘He won’t be on the ground floor,’ said Rocco. ‘Patient wards are always upstairs in buildings like this.’

  On the next level they found a nurse.

  ‘No Charlie,’ said Rocco, ‘don’t ask that question.’

  ‘Can you tell me where I can find the Patient?’ sniggered Charlie.

  ‘Yes?’ answered the nurse.

  ‘You just had to try it, didn’t you?’ said Rocco.

  ‘Felt good. It’s OK. We can go now. Let’s just check each ward until we find him.’

  ‘Wait,’ said the nurse. ‘Do you mean the man with the leg injuries who calls himself the Patient?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rocco replied, eager for news. ‘Is he OK? Where is he?’

  ‘Right here,’ she answered, pointing to the centre of the ward behind her.

  ‘Here?’ asked Charlie, failing to spot the Patient.

  The nurse looked around. The bed she was pointing at was empty. ‘That’s impossible,’ she replied. ‘He cannot walk. And he was here just a few minutes ago.’

  Rocco sprinted to the far end of the ward, checking behind its closed door.

  ‘Bathroom?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘He has a bedpan,’ the nurse explained.

  ‘Gross. Did you give him a wheelchair?’

  ‘Of course not. He’s just had a complex and delicate operation on his legs. He needs complete rest for at least two weeks so the bone can start to heal around the pins.’

  Rocco ran back to them. ‘Nothing. I checked behind the curtains and doors. He’s gone.’

  The nurse inspected the empty bed. ‘It is his bed. No one has wheeled him away in it.’

  ‘Could he drag himself to a wheelchair and use that?’ asked Rocco.

  ‘The pain would be unbearable,’ the nurse replied.

  ‘But he’s just had surgery,’ said Rocco. ‘The anaesthetic will mask the pain, at least for a few more hours.’

  ***

  The Patient was counting on the same theory. His legs were numb weights, useless, providing him with nothing but a dull ache. He was perfectly aware of the medical implications of forgoing the prescribed bed rest he was due. The list of risks to which he was now exposed was long, ranging from mild side-effects such as bending the metal pins in his femur which could lead to a curvature of the bone when it started to heal, all the way to potentially lethal complications including the rupture of an artery from the uncontrolled movement of unfused chunks of metal and bone.

  With a blanket on his lap to hide his hospital robe, he had pushed himself determinedly in the wheelchair straight to the elevator and down to the busy reception hall where kind strangers had helped him through the main doors to the road. In his haste he had actually arrived outside ahead of the Templar he was attempting to follow. He reversed himself against the wall and waited for the injured man to limp through the door. No one paid any attention to the lone wheelchair user, and when Ratty, Winnifred and Justina emerged seconds later, followed by the Templar, they didn’t notice him either. A shape in the Templar’s pocket suggested a gun was being employed. The Patient knew instantly that was the focus of their attention.

  He waited until the party had walked a reasonable distance ahead of him before pushing himself along in pursuit. Every bump in the path rocked his delicate legs. Th
e sensation was not painful, but he could tell that his nerves were attempting to inform him of the crisis they were suffering.

  At the car park he paused. The Templar waited with his hostages. The Patient was incredulous. A kidnapping was taking place in which the criminal was waiting for a ride. Taxi or colleague, he wasn’t sure. He wheeled himself as close as possible without revealing his presence to them.

  A car arrived and halted in front of the Templar. He pushed Ratty and the women into the back, then climbed stiffly into the front passenger seat. The Patient inched closer and memorised the licence plate, make, model, colour and distinguishing marks of the vehicle. It was a black BMW 740i bearing an ‘11’ plate to show it was from the local region, Aude. He couldn’t see the driver clearly. Still, assuming he could gain access to the appropriate police database, he was confident of tracing the address to which the car was registered.

  His legs were throbbing more consistently now. He wheeled himself back towards the hospital building, repeating the number plate of the car in his head until it was as familiar as an old friend. He needed to return to his bed and lay his legs out straight. And he needed painkillers. Lots of them. He could sense every agonising screw, every crack, every gap and every damaged muscle in his legs. His synapses shrieked with pain so frequently that everything started to merge into an agony that was without end. He closed his eyes, trying to focus his mind away from these feelings, but instead of decreasing, they worsened. Seconds later his brain threw in the towel and he passed out.

  ***

  ‘Impressive motor car,’ said Ratty as they sped along the twisting country roads. ‘Must have cost quite a few of those little Euro wotsits. Very refined engine. Seems built for this kind of road. Is it your vehicle – I’m sorry, I don’t know your name,’ he said, addressing the driver, who gave no response. ‘Or is it a company car?’ This time he interpreted the silence to mean something. ‘I was wondering what is the name of your organisation. Must be fairly well off to have transport like this for its staff.’

  ‘I know who you are,’ said the Templar.

  ‘Jolly good,’ replied Ratty. ‘Marvellous. Tremendous. So nice to know I haven’t been spirited away at random.’