‘That will be forty-five euros,’ the driver said. Harker gingerly lowered his head to hand over the notes.
‘Thank you, monsieur,’ the driver said, cracked off one final screeching fart, then apologized. ‘Sorry, it’s been a long day.’
‘It’s been a long ride!’ Harker managed to reply as the driver, with an apologetic laugh, slowly turned the car around and headed back along the street, leaving Harker standing under a solitary street light as a plume of street dust enveloped him.
The address Shroder had given him was located in the Cordo district of Bastia, which was right at the base of the mountain and thus allowed a magnificent view over the town. Being only ninety kilometres from the eastern coast of Italy meant that on a clear day one could make out that country’s shoreline. Of course, all he was getting now was the occasional flickering porch light and a low hum emanating from the electricity masts overhead. As Harker enjoyed the salty air nipping at his tongue, he made a promise to himself that he would visit here another time and properly enjoy the splendour now shrouded in darkness.
With an about-turn he began to make his way up a dusty driveway lined with blue-tinted ground lights that lit up towering eucalyptus trees on either side, allowing privacy for the owners he now hoped to meet. The drive was S-shaped, and as he cleared the final bend, what he saw made his jaw drop in awe. The building ahead of him was less of a house and more akin to a mini-castle, with two bastion towers augmented by thick stone corbels, which supported them, and a three metre stone wall that ran around it and offered complete privacy to the lower levels. The entrance was a stone arch, and above it the square merlons and embrasures only added to the fortified appearance.
Harker approached the sturdy wooden door, then paused underneath the dim porch light as he began to rehearse the fake identity he had already constructed for himself on the journey over.
‘My name is Alphonse Dulac and I am from the French Department of Justice,’ he recited in his mind. ‘I am here at the request of my UK counterpart to help with a case. Why am I turning up here so late? Because it is of the utmost urgency. Why do I not have any ID? Because it was in my luggage which unfortunately was sent to Lisbon by mistake.’
Reassured he had his cover story straight, Harker reached over and pressed the round brass button, whereupon a deep chime rang out. After another few minutes, and a second ring, a light came on high up on the second floor, and Harker waited as the sound of footsteps began to echo closer from inside.
As they approached, a feeling of apprehension began to grip him and suddenly the concept of the character he had concocted for himself began to crumble.
Alphonse Dulac! From the French Department of Justice! What the hell had he been thinking? With every footstep he heard, he felt increasingly more stupid.
As the door was unlocked and swung open, Harker found his mind going completely blank. He began to fidget uncontrollably with his hands as an old lady wearing a white nightgown greeted him with a startled expression.
‘Oui?’
‘Hi, I’m a friend of your son’s.’
The way he just blurted it out was near comical, and by the way the old lady was looking at him he expected the door to be just slammed in his face.
‘My son? Who are you?’
‘Sorry, I’ve just woken up after a long trip,’ Harker explained, now making it far worse. ‘My name is Alex Harker and, like I said, I’m a friend of your son’s. Would it be possible to talk?’ Of course, without knowing what Lucas’s real name was, never mind if this woman even knew the man, he was forced to keep his explanation vague.
The old lady peered past him as if to check there were no other unexpected visitors and, once satisfied they were alone, she turned her attention back to him. ‘You know Simone? But he’s overseas, in the UK.’
Bingo, Harker thought as he took a step back so as not to impose on the woman’s personal space, because she was still eyeing him with suspicion and, given the time of night, it was hardly surprising. ‘That’s why I’m here, because I’m afraid I have some rather bad news. May I come in?’
She was now looking worried and, after a few moments’ thought, nodded and waved him in with a shaking hand. ‘You better had.’
Harker gratefully made his way inside, entering a spacious hallway with expensive-looking oak panelling, gold-coloured horseshoe lamps running its entire length and lighting the interior warmly.
‘Please follow me.’ The old woman locked the door behind him, then headed for an open doorway on the opposite side of the hallway, with Harker close behind her.
The room they then entered was dark, and the old lady reached over to turn a small silver knob poking out from the wall. At first the overhead light was soft, but she swivelled the dimmer to its brightest, and Harker found himself standing in one of the grandest rooms he had seen in a long while. Unlike most Corsican homes, the furnishings had a distinctly Victorian feel to it. An exquisite three-piece gold-trimmed sofa set with walnut legs and red upholstery surrounded a round, gold-streaked, inlaid table with a glossy lacquered top. Dominating the room was a Gothic, blue-grey marble fireplace with intricate carvings of two lions’ heads on either side and, above it, a lavish French Neo-Renaissance overmantel mirror hung from a mercury-black wall-plate.
The old woman motioned for Harker to take a seat, which he did. As she sat down carefully on the sofa opposite him, he scanned the various paintings hanging from the walls. They depicted individuals he did not recognize but it was clear that they were either a visual record of the family history, or maybe put there to make one think they were.
‘Please, monsieur, tell me, is Simone all right?’ she asked, looking dreadfully concerned. ‘I have not heard from him in some weeks.’
By this point Harker was not totally sure they were talking about the same person, and he felt compelled to get that out of the way before proceeding.
‘Forgive me, madame, but do you have a picture of Simone I might see?’ This request was met with a look of disbelief, so he immediately continued, ‘I just want to be sure I’ve found the right address.’
Without hesitation she slid open a drawer under the polished coffee table and retrieved a pile of photos, which she began flicking through. When she found what she was looking for, she placed the rest back in the drawer, then passed it over to Harker, who gently took and examined it. It was a head shot of a smiling fellow with long black hair and, even though he looked younger, it was definitely the man he knew as Lucas.
‘That’s Simone,’ Harker declared confidently, and he passed the photo back to her. ‘I’m sorry, but I had to be sure.’
She nodded and then clasped the photo to her chest. ‘Is he OK?’
‘I’m afraid your son is dead.’
Harker’s tactless approach produced a look of sheer horror from the old woman and he immediately wanted to swallow back his words and try again with something a bit more compassionate. In truth he was as nervous as hell and the fact that he had torpedoed his own cover story from the start was making him edgy. ‘I’m so sorry to be the one to have to tell you.’
She still looked horrified but said nothing and only clutched the photo tighter before placing it in her lap. Then, reaching over to an antique black telephone resting on the table next to her, she pressed the receiver to her ear.
Harker stayed silent, unsure what was happening, as the woman inserted her finger into the dialling disk and rotated it a single time and then waited. If she was calling the police, then he had a major problem, but a single number? No way.
‘Carlu, you’d better come down. It’s about Simone,’ was all she said before hanging up. She then turned back to Harker who could already hear a shuffling of feet somewhere upstairs. ‘Simone is my grandson, so you need to speak with his father.’
Harker could now hear heavy footsteps descending the stairs and he managed a smile towards the old lady before turning his attention to the open doorway. She herself seemed easy to deal with but he had
no idea what to expect from the father. The good news was that whatever Lucas, or Simone, had been involved in, his family appeared to have no idea. But having to explain to them now that their son had died, and requesting to know everything about him without getting the police involved, could prove extremely difficult.
I knew I should have come as Alphonse Dulac, Harker cursed to himself just as a heavy-set six-foot man with short cropped black hair and wearing an embroidered red silk dressing gown appeared at the doorway.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Carlu demanded, already clenching his fists.
‘My name is Alex Harker.’ He jumped to his feet with his hand outstretched. ‘I’m a friend of your son Simone.’
Carlu ignored the gesture and turned to the old lady. ‘Mama, are you OK?’
She was now welling up with tears. ‘It’s Simone, he’s dead.’
‘Dead!’ Carlu growled, his focus now solely on Harker. ‘What the hell are you talking about? I spoke to him just a few days ago. He was fine.’
‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ Harker continued, maintaining the most calming tone he could manage given that the six-foot man was now bearing down on him aggressively. ‘I’m afraid he was involved in a shooting back in the UK.’
Carlu looked unconvinced and pushed Harker back onto the sofa as Mama began to wail uncontrollably. ‘Don’t you move!’ he instructed and made his way to the phone. ‘I don’t know who you are, but my son is not dead. The police would have contacted me.’
Carlu picked up the phone and began to dial. ‘You turn up in the middle of the night with some bullshit story about my son,’ he continued. ‘You’re lucky I don’t take you outside and beat the shit out of you.’
‘Please, sir, I am just a friend trying to make good on a promise I made to your son,’ Harker pleaded, attempting to make Carlu at least curious as to why he was there and to distract him from the call he feared he might be making. But he was having none of it and began to speak into the telephone.
‘Yes, I need the police urgently. I have an intruder in my house.’
Carlu was in the process of giving his address when a young woman in a white silk nightdress bounded through the doorway and then skidded to a halt on seeing Harker.
‘Who are you?’ she yelled and was immediately waved away by Carlu.
‘He’s crazy. Stay away from him,’ Carlu ordered. ‘He says your brother is dead.’
‘Dead!’ the girl exclaimed, wide-eyed, as her grandmother continued to sob.
‘He’s been shot,’ Mama croaked, with tears pouring down her face. ‘And no one told us.’
It was at about this point, as the young girl’s eyes also began to fill with tears, that Harker decided that he was frankly crap at undercover work. He had only been in the house a few minutes and already had two women bawling over their dead grandson and brother, police on the way, and a father who looked set to beat the living daylights out of him. Fine work, Alex, he thought, as Carlu slammed down the receiver and assumed a protective position between Harker and the young woman.
‘The police are on their way, so you can deal with them,’ Carlu spat angrily, as his daughter peeked over his shoulder. ‘Coming here in the middle of the night and upsetting my family with your lies… You don’t even know my son.’
A curious thought now came to Harker and he straightened himself in his seat and eyed the father sternly. ‘Did you know your son was interested in the Gigas Codex?’
The question lessened the anger in Carlu’s face by a fraction, but whether this was due to curiosity or bemusement was impossible to tell. ‘What?’
‘I say interested, but in fact he was obsessed with it. Did you know that?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Carlu replied, then he took a step backwards as Mama’s wailing began to diminish.
‘It’s just I notice you have a picture of it over there.’ Harker was pointing to a glass-covered frame containing a photograph of the Gigas Codex which he had noticed moments earlier as Carlu had leant menacingly closer to him.
Carlu glanced towards the image. ‘That is Simone’s. He has much interest in such things. So what?’
‘“So what” is that such interests have led, inadvertently or not, to a kidnapping and even a few deaths.’
When Harker first entered the house he had noticed a silver cross hanging next to one of the lamps in the hallway and, even as he spoke, he could see another one – brass this time – hanging next to the mirror above the fireplace. Whoever Simone’s family were, they were without a doubt religious; could it be that they knew or suspected Simone had been delving into the darker side of such things?
Carlu remained quiet and Harker took this as a sign that they did know the kind of man Simone was. To some extent at least.
‘Your son, sir, has caused the deaths of more than just a few of my friends, and my real reason for being here is to find out why, and in doing so try to stop any further acts of violence from occurring.’
The whole room now went silent and Carlu’s shoulders began to sag. After a few uncomfortable seconds of Harker looking back and forth between all three members of the family, the daughter tugged at her father’s arm.
‘You should tell him, Daddy,’ she said softly and, with a slight nod, Carlu let out a sigh and rested one shoulder against the wall.
‘My son is a troubled man. He was brought up to believe in everything that is pure and right, but always found himself distracted by other things.’ He gestured to his daughter. ‘Sofia was only sixteen when Simon tried to strangle her to death.’
‘Carlu!’ Mama yelled, obviously upset with her son’s disclosure to an outsider, but he waved her aside dismissively and continued.
‘We have covered this up for long enough, Mama. If Simone has been hurting people, as this man suggests, then it is time we accepted some responsibility by putting a stop to it.’
When Harker had first drawn attention to the framed picture of the Gigas Codex, it had been done out of desperation but, as Carlu began to explain further, he had by sheer luck, it seemed, stumbled upon everything he hoped to discover.
‘Ever since he was a young boy, we knew that Simone was not altogether normal. He would regularly ignore his religious teachings and set about doing the exact opposite. As a result, he was a lonely child.’ Carlu looked saddened at the thought as he gazed over at Harker. ‘Corsica is a small place and its people are unique. They don’t feel comfortable with strangers, and less so with any of their own people who seem strange to them. As such, Simone became something of a social outcast, but it wasn’t until he tried to hurt his sister Sofia that we were forced to take action.’
Sofia placed her hand on her father’s shoulder and squeezed it, whereupon he patted it with his own before continuing.
‘We sent him away to a boarding school in Switzerland, but when he came back he was fully adult and worse than ever. He said he had met a group that had offered him everything he had ever sought, and then we learnt of his obsession with the Gigas Codex. It was a book I had never even heard of until that moment. He then left home and turned to travelling, where and who with I have no idea, but a few months ago he called to let me know he was in the UK and that he’d found all he was looking for. And that’s the last time I heard about him until you turned up tonight.’
Carlu’s account did not help Harker much, but he could tell how its simple retelling was clearly painful to the man and his family. ‘It must have been extremely difficult for you, given that you are clearly a religious family.’
Carlu said nothing but just nodded his head, as did Sofia. And then, after a moment, he looked up with tears in his eyes. ‘Tell me, Mr Harker, is my son really dead?’
‘I’m afraid he is, sir. I’m so sorry.’
Carlu hung his head and Sofia wrapped her arms around him as Mama shakily rose from her seat and joined in the group hug. It was a heart-warming sight and Harker suddenly felt like he was intruding.
‘I know it must come as a terri
ble shock,’ he said, standing up. ‘I’m sure you need some time alone. May I use your toilet?’
‘Just off the hallway,’ Mama explained, nodding back towards the front entrance.
‘Thank you.’ Harker slipped past the grieving family and out in to the hallway. If they had all calmed down by the time he returned, he considered asking if Simone had a room he could inspect, or if they knew anything at all that could help him track down Winters. Perhaps Simone could have met the old man, or someone connected to him, in Switzerland.
Harker poked his head through one of the open doorways leading off the hallway and reached for the light switch. Two overhead lights flickered into life, illuminating the room. Though of modest size, the toilet was just as lavish as the other rooms, its red wallpaper embossed with gold swirls, and the brass taps shiny. As Harker reached for his zip, something else caught his eye. On the walls there were framed photographs of various people, one of whom looked familiar. The black and white image showed a blond man in his thirties wearing a spiffy black-tie ensemble and holding a half-bent Dublin pipe in one hand, which he held towards the camera proudly. Harker couldn’t place the face exactly but there was something familiar about it, so he leant in closer and scrutinized it. Finally, at a loss, he turned his attention to the next black and white photo which showed another man, dressed in hunting gear and topped off with a domed safari hat, kneeling next to a dead jaguar.
That face also looked familiar yet, after a few moments of further inspection, Harker was still at a loss. But it was the photograph next to it that sent Harker’s heart soaring as he suddenly realized who he was looking at. The image was in colour and a close-up of a man raising a glass of champagne towards the camera in a toasting gesture, and the man’s distinctively square jaw and beady eyes had him thinking back to Lucas’s house and the photos of seven dead and terribly mutilated men that he had seen on the wall.
These were the same people.
‘They all died screaming, you know?’
Harker spun around to see Carlu standing in the open doorway, his eyes wide and a manic grin on his face as he brandished an ivory-handled gutting knife in his left hand, the small hook glinting as he rotated it.
The Last Judgement Page 23
