The Sacred Sword bh-7

by Scott Mariani

  Ten minutes later the hole was filled in, with the dead men inside it. ‘After a few seasons they will make excellent fertiliser,’ Rabier yelled over the clatter of the engine as he drove the digger back to its storage shed.

  When they returned to the house, Jude had finished cleaning himself up and was changed into a pair of jeans and a bright yellow tracksuit top from his rucksack. He smelled of antiseptic lotion and there was a sticking plaster over the cut on his neck. Looking a little pale, he sat quietly in the kitchen as Rabier slammed three shot glasses down on the table and grabbed an unlabelled bottle containing some clear liquid that Ben suspected wasn’t water. Rabier wrenched the cork from the bottle with his teeth and glugged out three brimming glasses.

  Ben took a sip and his tongue was instantly ablaze. Swallowed, and a burning trail ignited violently all the way through his body like a length of high-explosive detonation cord going off. Another sip too soon afterwards would probably be fatal. It was like the moonshine he’d tasted once in Montana, only about double the strength.

  ‘You make this stuff yourself?’ he asked Rabier when he could speak again.

  The Frenchman shrugged. After helping to kill and bury four men tonight in front of Ben and Jude, he didn’t have a lot more to hide. ‘It is my business. Not strictly legal, naturellement. But very popular with the after-hours clientele, when the bars have closed and the fascists are at home in their beds.’

  Ben took another sip and decided he could get to like this stuff. ‘Let’s talk about Fabrice. You knew him well?’

  ‘He was my best friend,’ Rabier said. ‘We grew up together. I knew him like nobody else. Well enough to know that he was no child molester. He loved children, but only in the proper way, and any man who says otherwise is a lying piece of shit.’

  ‘The night he was killed, he telephoned his colleague in England, my friend, Jude’s father. He left a message saying he was being followed.’

  Rabier nodded. ‘This is correct. He was being followed, and in his panic he came here to the farm, hoping to hide from his pursuers.’

  Ben was surprised by the confidence of Rabier’s assertion. ‘You saw him?’

  ‘If I had seen him, he would still be alive now. I was not here.’ Rabier reached into his pocket and drew out a little silver crucifix on a broken chain. He laid it gently on the table. ‘This belonged to Fabrice. It was a gift from his mother when he was nine years old and he had worn it ever since. He would have been buried with it.’ He paused a while, gazing at the tiny cross. ‘That night I had been making my delivery to some of the local bars. To avoid the police, my customers prefer to carry out such business after nightfall, so it was not until late that I returned home and noticed something unusual. Come. I will show you.’

  Rabier led them outside and across the yard, towards a large wooden barn that stood behind the house. ‘Here,’ he said, pointing at the ground, ‘I found the tracks of a car. Also in the dirt were the footprints of several men, and some marks made by another man’s shoes as he fought them and was dragged to the car from over here.’ Rabier pointed at the barn. He stepped up to the tall wood-slat doors and pushed them open with a creak, switching on a light as he led Ben and Jude inside.

  Rabier pointed at the straw-covered floor of the barn. ‘The same signs of struggle were also in here. And here,’ he said, reaching down and hauling up a trapdoor set into the floor, ‘is where I found Fabrice’s chain.’

  Ben stepped to the edge of the trapdoor and looked down at the space below the floor.

  ‘I have lived on this farm all my life,’ Rabier said, crouching by the square hole. ‘As children, Fabrice and I used to hide down here for many hours; as young men, to smoke and fool around with girls.’ He smiled his crooked smile, which then dropped to a look of sadness. ‘Fabrice returned to the same place to hide from his enemies, but they found him and took him away. There is where I found his cross, on the floor inside the hole. It is as if he had left me a sign.’ Rabier straightened up and closed the trapdoor.

  Ben started explaining to Jude. ‘He said he found-’

  ‘I get the gist,’ Jude said. ‘Why didn’t he call the police?’

  Rabier picked up on the word ‘police’. ‘ Le jeune doesn’t understand,’ he said in French. ‘If these men could murder my friend and make it appear like suicide, what could they do to me? It was not safe to speak a word to anyone. Besides, I cannot afford to have the bastard cops crawling all over my place. They discover my distilling equipment, it’s prison for old Jacques Rabier.’

  ‘Was Fabrice’s home broken into that night?’ Ben asked as they headed back towards the house.

  ‘If it was, it was done without leaving a trace,’ Rabier said. ‘You are thinking of the porno? How it found its way onto his computer?’

  ‘The people who murdered Fabrice are as interested in discrediting their victims as they are in killing them,’ Ben said. ‘Take away a man’s life, questions get asked. Destroy his reputation at the same time, everyone goes quiet. The bigger the scandal, the better the smokescreen.’

  ‘Putain de salauds,’ Rabier muttered in disgust. ‘What is going on here? What had poor Fabrice got himself mixed up with?’

  ‘Fabrice was a member of an international group, based in France, England and America and maybe also in Israel. They were working together on some kind of research project, for which they travelled out to the Israeli desert together.’

  ‘I knew that Fabrice had gone there,’ Rabier said. ‘He was gone for two weeks, but he never explained why, as though he was unwilling to discuss it. He also went to America. Again, he seemed anxious to keep the reasons for his journey there to himself.’

  Ben remembered Michaela had said that Simeon had twice travelled to the States to see an ‘expert’. Ben wondered if the expert had been this man called Wes. ‘Did Fabrice say what part of America he’d gone to?’

  ‘No, he was evasive about it. I thought at the time that it was unusual he would not share it with me. The only secrets he kept otherwise were the ones he was told in the confessional.’

  ‘The project had to do with a sword,’ Ben said. ‘A sacred sword. He never mentioned that either?’

  ‘Une epee sacree,’ Rabier muttered, shaking his head. ‘No, I have no idea about that.’

  ‘What about the names of the other members of the group?’ Ben asked. ‘Simeon Arundel in England? An American named Wes, a woman called Martha, and an Israeli who travelled with them to the desert?’

  Rabier shook his head again. ‘He never spoke of them. This Simeon in England — you said he is your friend.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Ben said. ‘They killed him, too, along with his wife. That’s why I’m here.’ He motioned to Jude, who was sitting staring into space, lost in his own thoughts. ‘This is their son.’

  ‘Merde,’ Rabier breathed. ‘I am sorry. But these people, they are after this sword? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know why. All I know is that they’re organised and they mean business. They knew that my friend Simeon was in possession of the bulk of the research material, which means they most likely had been tapping his phone conversations with Fabrice and his other associates. The moment Simeon was out of the way, they tried to steal the material from his home.’

  Rabier thought for a moment. ‘This is why there was no robbery from Fabrice’s house.’

  ‘And it’s the reason why they killed him the way they did,’ Ben said. ‘If they’d needed to rob his home, a suicide at almost exactly the same time would have looked suspicious. They’d have done what they did to my friend, stage an accident instead. I’m sure that’s also what they were planning for me and Jude, if they’d managed to get us yesterday. Tonight wasn’t the first time they tried.’

  Rabier raised an eyebrow. ‘You are taking risks, my friend. These men we buried, they were professional killers, no?’

  Ben nodded. ‘At least one was ex-military. Possibly all of them. I’d say they were hired on a private contract.’ />
  ‘Des mercenaires? Putain de merde.’ Rabier looked at Ben and his eyes narrowed. ‘And you intend to pursue them. Which tells me something about you. You are not afraid. You are soldat?’

  ‘I was, once.’

  ‘I can see it in you,’ Rabier said. ‘But one man against so many… How do you intend to go about it?’

  ‘My best chance of tracking them down is through the sword,’ Ben said. ‘If I knew what it was, where it was, why it was so important, it might tell me who’s after it and is prepared to kill to get it. That would give me the advantage I need.’

  ‘And then it is payback time, yes?’ Rabier said.

  Ben said nothing.

  ‘What about this boy here?’ Rabier said, pointing at Jude. ‘Can you take him with you?’

  Garcon was a word Jude understood, and it snapped him out of his reverie. ‘Will you tell him I am not a boy?’ he said, flushing.

  ‘I don’t have a lot of choice,’ Ben said to Rabier in French, ignoring Jude. ‘He’s headstrong. Like his father was at his age,’ he added wistfully. ‘I can’t trust him to stay put.’

  ‘You want to leave him with me? I will make sure he comes to no harm.’

  ‘I appreciate the offer,’ Ben said. ‘And I’ll certainly take you up on it for tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  Ben nodded. ‘If the killers didn’t steal anything from Fabrice’s house, that means there’s a chance I might find something there, some information that could be useful. I’m going to pay the place a visit.’

  ‘There is the matter of Madame Lamont,’ Rabier said. ‘She is as alert as a guard dog, even at the age of seventy-two.’

  ‘We’ve already encountered Madame Lamont,’ Ben said, and smiled. ‘She seems quite a robust lady.’

  ‘Robust? She is a force of nature. For over twenty years, Fabrice lived in fear of her. The woman is evil. Worse, she has a grandson in the gendarmerie.’

  ‘Does she have a gun?’

  ‘I would not put it past her. It will have to be done very carefully.’

  ‘House-breaking isn’t exactly new to me,’ Ben said.

  Rabier grinned. ‘Did you say you were a soldier or a thief? In any case, there is no need to break in. The time Fabrice went to Israel, Madame Lamont had to visit her sick sister in Perpignan. Fabrice asked me to go over to the house to feed his cat, Lafayette. The cat was old. It is dead now. But I still have the back door key.’ He went over to a drawer and fished out a large iron key. ‘Then it is agreed? We go tonight.’

  ‘Not we,’ Ben said. ‘I do this alone. Jacques, I need you to draw me a plan of the house.’

  Chapter Forty-One

  It wouldn’t have been the first time Ben had broken into a house in the dead of night, but having a key to the place did make matters far easier. After coasting the Laguna to a halt a long way down the road, he crept silently through the garden of Fabrice Lalique’s former home. He was wearing a pair of tight-fitting calfskin gloves borrowed from Jacques Rabier, and carried a small flashlight in his pocket. His bag, containing the precious letter that he was determined to keep from Jude’s eyes, was hidden under the driver’s seat of the Laguna.

  Crouching in the shadows of the bushes, Ben peeled back his sleeve and checked the luminous dial of his watch. It was just after three. The wind was coming up, blowing cold from the north and rustling the trees. Ben paused under cover for a moment to scan the top floor windows which, according to Rabier’s detailed sketch of the house’s layout, were those of the formidable housekeeper’s quarters in the converted attic. The windows were all in darkness. Cerberus was, seemingly, tucked up for the night and fast asleep.

  Ben padded across to the back door. The old iron key Rabier had given him was heavily greased to deaden its sound in the lock. He slipped it in and turned it slowly, easing the lock open millimetre by millimetre. The door opened without a creak. Ben let himself inside and waited a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the near-total darkness. He listened. Except for the ticking of a grandfather clock in the hallway and the whistle of the wind around the eaves outside, the place was in utter silence.

  Ben had the layout of the house committed to memory. At the end of the hallway was a back staircase flanked either side by two doors. The door on the right led through to the salon, the one on the left to another staircase that descended to the wine cellar, part of which Fabrice Lalique had converted into his office. That was where Ben was heading. With the door closed silently behind him, he turned on the flashlight and crept down the well-worn stone steps.

  The cellar still housed an impressive collection of wine, with well-stocked racks of dusty bottles stretching away into the shadows. Old Lalique had certainly enjoyed a tipple, Ben thought, casting the beam of his torch on an empty glass and a half-full recorked bottle of Bordeaux sitting on a little table next to a chair among the wine racks. The dead man’s last drink.

  At the other end of the cellar was the priest’s home office, which had been decorated with typical French flair. The desk was a fine old oak antique, the sofa was luxuriously scattered with cushions, and the Persian rug was tastefully frayed around the edges. An ornamental velvet curtain was tied back with a tasselled rope.

  Shining the flashlight around the office, Ben noticed the collection of framed drawings that hung on the walls — a pastel of some horses in a meadow, a charcoal sketch of a country church, a couple of landscapes — which all bore the same signature, F. Lalique. The priest had been quite a gifted artist. The same couldn’t be said for the painter of the gaudily-mounted portrait of the Pope that hung over the desk, next to a large crucifix.

  Ben shone the torch down to the desk. Its top was bare apart from a portable phone, but the marks were visible where the rubber feet of the priest’s computer had worn against the varnish on the oak surface. The machine was probably still sitting in an evidence room in the nearest Prefecture de Police, thoroughly fingerprinted, gutted of its hard drive, the offending material all logged and stored as a testament to the deceased’s undying shame.

  At that moment, Ben thought he heard a sound from upstairs. He instantly turned off the torch and froze immobile in the darkness, listening. Had it been the sound of a door, somebody moving about in the house? Or just a loose shutter banging in the wind? He waited several minutes and heard no more, then turned the torch back on and continued examining Lalique’s desk. It was a double-pedestal type, with a wide middle drawer and four smaller ones in columns either side. Nine in all. He slid open the middle drawer and spent a while combing through the papers untidily stuffed inside. Nothing of interest there.

  The next seven drawers Ben tried were just as messy. Either Lalique had been the world’s worst organiser, or the cops had already rifled carelessly through his stuff, searching for further evidence relating to his crimes. But if they’d thought they were going to uncover hot leads to the paedophile networks of the entire Midi-Pyrenees region among all this routine church paperwork, letters from parishioners, bills and receipts and a ton of miscellaneous rubbish, they must have been bitterly disappointed. It looked as if they’d taken virtually nothing away except the computer.

  The last drawer Ben tried was the bottom left. It was stiffer than the others, and he had to give it a jerk to open it. The drawer was comparatively empty. As it slid open, a handsome old ebony fountain pen rolled to the front. The drawer contained a few other miscellaneous items like a spare pair of bifocal spectacles, a box of ink cartridges for the fountain pen and another of paper clips. Among the junk was a slim leather wallet containing the dead man’s passport and national identity card. Shining his torch on the pages of the passport, Ben found the Israeli customs and United States Immigration stamps in the back, showing the dates of Lalique’s visits. He hadn’t been anywhere else out of Europe in the eight years since the passport had been issued.

  It was interesting information, as far as it went — which wasn’t nearly far enough and didn’t tell Ben anything he hadn’t already know
n. He was beginning to worry that he wasn’t going to find anything helpful here. He put the passport and ID card back in their wallet, replaced them where he’d found them and pushed the stiff drawer firmly shut. There was a soft rumble and clunk as the fountain pen rolled to the back of the drawer and came to a rest against the rear partition.

  Ben was about to move away from the desk — frustration rising as he thought about where to look next — when he stopped. Hold on, he thought. Something odd there. He opened the drawer again. The fountain pen rolled forwards again to the front. He shone the torch inside, then reached in with his hand, all the way so that his fingers touched the back partition. It was a deep desk and he could get his arm into all the other drawers right up to the elbow. Not this one. For some reason, the bottom left drawer appeared to be about four inches shorter.

  When Ben tried to slide the drawer out completely, he found that something was preventing it from coming free. Groping blindly around inside, his fingers touched against a little spring catch. When depressed, it allowed the drawer to be removed completely from the desk.

  And now Ben saw why the drawer was shorter than the others. At the back was a hidden compartment, four inches deep. He smiled to himself. Good old police inefficiency could be a blessed thing sometimes.

  The secret compartment contained just two items. One was a pocket-sized artist’s sketch pad, the other a little address book. Curious, Ben picked up the sketch pad first and opened it. On the first page was a rough version of Lalique’s drawing of the horses; on the second an early draft of one of his landscapes. Thinking he’d hit another dead end, Ben flipped one last page before giving up.