The Boy Who Saw: A gripping thriller that will keep you hooked

by Simon Toyne

  She had ruined his son. Poisoned him. But he knew he could fix him again. It wasn’t Léo’s fault that he’d shot him, it was her fault. He would make him see that, in time. He just needed to get her out of the way. He held the gun steady, the sights wavering around the distant figure of his ex-wife.

  He closed one eye. And fired.

  101

  The car window exploded and Marie-Claude dropped instinctively to the ground then remembered Léo, trapped in his seat and now fully exposed. ‘Get down,’ she shouted, and slammed his door shut.

  The gunshot had come from behind her and she felt the tickle of something on her face. When she touched it, her hand came back bloody.

  Jesus. She’d been shot.

  She jackknifed in panic, scrambling across the road surface to the driver’s door, desperate to get away before the shooting started again. Maybe she hadn’t been shot. Maybe the flying glass had cut her.

  She wrenched open the driver’s side door. ‘Léo,’ she hissed as she crawled inside. ‘Speak to me, Léo.’

  ‘I’m OK, Mama. I’m keeping down. I took my belt off.’

  ‘Good boy. Stay down.’

  She got inside, staying as low as she could, dropped the gun in her lap and fumbled for the ignition. She looked back at the house. Saw the open shutter on the first floor, the bedroom they had been in, and realized what must have happened. She should have taken Baptiste’s gun but she had been too afraid and now they were in danger. She needed to get out of here fast because if she could see the window it meant he could see her. She fumbled for the ignition but couldn’t find it and panic rose again until she remembered that the hire car had a start button that worked when the keys were close. She found it on the dashboard, pushed it and muttered a silent prayer when the car started first time.

  New movement in the house caught her attention, an orange light flickering in one of the downstairs windows. Hamilton’s study.

  Where was Hamilton?

  His car was here but there was no sign of him. No sign of Solomon either. She needed to get away and call the police. She had no choice. As soon as they were safely away, she would call Amand and tell him everything.

  She put the car in gear and a fresh gunshot flickered and cracked in the upper window. The loud bang on her window made her scream.

  102

  The bullet caught Baptiste in the shoulder, twisting him round as he fell. He took a slurping breath and frowned when the smoke cleared and he saw who was lying on the floor with his gun pointing at him.

  ‘You lost weight,’ Baptiste wheezed.

  ‘About thirty kilos,’ Amand said, struggling for breath after his climb.

  ‘You look good on it.’ Baptiste smiled, then something cruel crept into his eyes. ‘You always wanted to be … alone in a bedroom with me … didn’t you, you fucking faggot? You had to go and shoot me … to finally … make it happen.’

  ‘I never wanted you,’ Amand said. ‘Not you. I don’t know who you are.’

  Baptiste felt pain in his shoulder where the bullet had hit him. The weight of his gun was pinning his hand to the floor. The idea of lifting it seemed impossible but he had to. He wanted to put a bullet right in Amand’s earnest, queer face. ‘How come you decided … to shape up?’ he said, his shallow, wheezing breaths fracturing his sentences. ‘You trying to muscle in … on Marie-Claude and Léo …? Fags don’t normally get to have families, do they … only if they steal … someone else’s.’

  ‘They’re my friends,’ Amand said. ‘And you love your friends as much as family. You look out for them.’

  ‘You didn’t look out for me.’

  ‘You’re not my friend. Not any more. I don’t know what you are. Do you?’

  Baptiste smiled and took as deep a breath as he could manage. ‘I know exactly who I am,’ he said. ‘I’m a fucking patriot.’

  He hauled his gun up from the floor and gunshots lit the room.

  103

  Marie-Claude jerked away from the window, fumbling for the gun in her lap. She found it and twisted towards where the bang had come from. Hamilton was standing by the car, his face creased in confusion as he looked between the gun in her hand and the fire rapidly taking hold of his house. ‘What happened here?’ he muttered.

  Marie-Claude reached into the back and opened the door. ‘Get in. Some people came. There’s been shooting. Solomon’s gone. I didn’t know where you were either.’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ Hamilton said, his eyes staring at the flames growing brighter. ‘I went to my friend’s place to get the keys to the museum.’ His face glowed orange as the fire took hold. ‘I need to go in—’

  ‘No, it’s too dangerous. They’re still in there. We need to get away and call the police and the pompiers. I smelled petrol inside.’

  Hamilton shook his head. ‘It’s like Herman Lansky all over again. They want to destroy all the evidence of what happened here. They want us to stay silent.’ He clamped his jaw shut and some steel returned to his eyes. ‘Let them try. They can burn my research but they can’t take away what’s in here.’ He tapped his head and pulled his phone from his pocket. ‘We should go to the museum, make sure they don’t destroy the Golem too. My car is parked down the street. I’ll call the police and the pompiers on the way to see if they can save what’s left of my house. You head to the museum. I’ll meet you there.’

  104

  Solomon vaulted a fence and saw flames flickering ahead of him. He ran on, across several gardens, on to the road and up the hill, the cold night air razoring his lungs. He could see Hamilton’s house now, fire framed in the ground-floor windows. The hire car had gone, but the one with Cordes plates was still there.

  He ran straight up to the house, dropped the Magellan file by the door and burst into the hallway, ducking beneath the thick smoke filling the upper part of the hallway and swirling up the stairs. The study was an inferno, paper curling and twisting in the updraught and sending glowing embers floating through the smoke-choked air.

  Solomon moved to the door leading to the gîte and saw a body beyond, dead eyes staring upward. He recognized the man from the vineyard and flexed his hand at the memory of his cane. He wondered why the man was here and how his story threaded into his own, but didn’t have time to stop. He could smell more blood up the stairs, coming from the bedroom where he had last seen Marie-Claude and Léo.

  He took the stairs three at a time and saw Amand lying on the landing, half-in and half-out of the door. The bedroom beyond was dark and reeked of blood. He moved closer, watching for movement but saw none. He reached the door, raised his hand to the hallway light-switch and flicked it on.

  Light flooded the hallway and bedroom and Solomon listened for a response – an intake of breath, a tightening of a hand on a gun – but heard nothing. He peered round the doorframe and saw Baptiste slumped against the far wall, two bullet-holes in his chest and one in his left cheek. The shot to the face had killed him, blowing out the blood vessels in one eye and turning it a deep red. Solomon scanned the room. No sign of Léo or Marie-Claude. The backpack had gone too. He knelt by Amand and felt for a pulse in his neck. He was bloodied and unconscious but alive. He slapped his face until his eyelids flickered and hauled him to his feet, threw one arm over his shoulder and half-carried, half-dragged him down the stairs and out of the smoke-filled house.

  ‘Where are they?’ Solomon said. ‘Where are Léo and Marie-Claude? Who took them? Where did they go?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Amand replied. ‘I heard a car drive away. I think it was them. Baptiste was shooting. I had to stop him. Had to …’ He grimaced and clutched his chest.

  Solomon remembered something from earlier, felt in Amand’s pocket and found the pill bottle. He took one and pushed it into Amand’s mouth. ‘Put it under your tongue,’ he said. ‘It will ease the pain until an ambulance gets here.’

  Amand nodded and looked up. ‘Where’s Magellan?’

  ‘Gone,’ Solomon said, looking at the car with
the Cordes plates. ‘Can you drive?’

  Amand shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘OK, don’t move.’ Solomon got up and ran back to the house, using his arms to shield his face against the flames and heat now pouring through the study door. He returned to LePoux’s body and patted him down, his eyes stinging from the smoke. He found some cash, a phone and a key fob before running from the house, gasping for air and blinking away smoke. He scooped the Magellan file from the ground, pressed the button on the key fob and the indicators lit up on the car with the Cordes plates.

  The inside of the car was littered with food wrappers, empty bottles and cigarette butts, and smelt of men and long miles. There was also a bag with a laptop. Solomon sat in the driver’s seat, placed the Magellan file on the seat next to him and opened the laptop. He squinted at the sudden brightness and saw a map on the screen showing the streets of Mulhouse with a logo saying ‘GeoTracker’ above it. The map widened and a small blue dot appeared to the northwest of him. This was how they had found them – not through car registrations or security camera footage but using some other device. It was still tracking them. He studied the map, realized where they were and ran back to Amand. ‘I need you to drive to the museum,’ he said, but Amand was unconscious and his pulse was weak and erratic. A siren wailed in the night, urgent and getting closer. He patted him down, found a pen and a notebook, scribbled a note in it before running back to the car.

  He sat behind the wheel and stared at the dashboard but nothing seemed familiar, no memories came flooding back. He found the slot for the key and twisted it to start the engine. He had sat next to Marie-Claude for long miles, casually observing her driving, and yet his mind could not conjure one single practical memory that might tell him now how to do it. All he got was a jumble of half-remembered things that swarmed and shifted the more he concentrated on them.

  He forced the car into gear with a horrible crunching sound and the car lurched forward and stalled. He turned the key again and the car hopped forward with each cough of the engine. He pulled it out of gear, got the engine started again and pressed one of the foot pedals down. This time the gear went in smoothly and he pressed another pedal that made the engine race. He raised his first foot and the car lurched forward and stalled again. Outside, the sirens grew louder and a new thought surfaced in his mind:

  Your journey is not supposed to be easy, it whispered. And he knew it was right.

  He pulled the keys from the ignition, grabbed the Magellan file from the passenger seat and ran from the car and the burning house.

  105

  They followed Hamilton’s car down the rain-glossed streets of Mulhouse, cold night air blowing in through the shattered window, until Die Schneider Lager slid into view again, framed by the tunnel of trees. Léo felt frightened at the sight of it. He’d been glad earlier when his mama had not wanted to go closer. Places didn’t usually have a colour but this one did, all purple and dark, like something bad and unhappy and secret, squatting in the middle of the forest.

  The car ahead of them pulled to a halt in front of the gates and the old man waved them over.

  ‘Park there,’ Hamilton said, pointing to a loading bay and handing his mama a set of keys, one large one small. ‘The big one disarms the alarm,’ Hamilton explained, ‘the control box is by the gate. Turn the key to the right and the red light should go green. The smaller key is for the padlock on the gate. We’ll go on in my car because the security cameras won’t recognize your registration plate and it’ll set the alarms off.’ He turned and smiled at Léo. ‘You want to hop in, little man?’

  Léo looked at his mama, feeling panicky at the thought of being separated from her.

  ‘It’s OK, Léo,’ she said, ‘I’ll only be a moment. And it’ll be warmer in Monsieur Hamilton’s car.’

  Léo opened his door and bits of shattered glass tinkled to the ground. He stepped out into the cold and across to the back seat of the old man’s car, which smelled like woodsmoke and hospitals. He watched his mama drive away, park their car and start fiddling around with a white box fixed to the fence. He could see she was scared from her colours. He was scared too. The only person who seemed calm was the old man. His colours were calm too, pale green and blue as the sky, although there was also something else there, something he’d never seen before, a dark patch, small and black, that shifted through the blue like a crow or a raven in flight. Hamilton reached over to the glove compartment and a small black feather floated to the floor as he opened it and began searching through the pill bottles inside. ‘You’re sick, aren’t you?’ Leo said, realizing what the old man’s dark spot must be.

  ‘Yes.’ Hamilton turned in his seat to face him. ‘Yes, I am. Why do you think that?’

  Léo bit his lip and thought about making something up, but figured someone who was really sick wouldn’t want to be fibbed to. ‘I can see people’s colours,’ he said. ‘Everyone has them. Yours are mainly blue, but you also have a piece of black in it.’

  Hamilton smiled. ‘You can see that in me – the egg?’

  Léo frowned. ‘It looks more like a bird to me.’

  ‘No. It’s an egg,’ Hamilton said, leaning in closer, ‘and it contains something wonderful. Would you like to see what’s inside it?’

  Léo pressed back in his seat, a little scared by what the old man was asking. He didn’t want to see what was in the egg, not at all, but before he could say anything the dark circle exploded, driving the pale blue away until all that was left was a complete and rustling blackness that Léo recognized. He had seen it before, outside his house, trying to get in.

  He opened his mouth to scream and warn his mother that the shadow was here but a hand clamped over his mouth and something sharp jabbed into his leg and the world began to melt all around him. He tried to bite the hand, like he had bitten his father, but his body was going slack, like someone had let the air out of him, and all he could do was stare at the blackness, so close and huge that it blocked out everything, until his eyes flickered shut and the darkness swallowed him entirely.

  106

  Marie-Claude twisted the key in the alarm panel, her hand shaking from cold and adrenaline. Seeing Baptiste again had lit a bonfire of fear inside her. She had spent years of therapy extinguishing and scattering all the flammable emotional material of what had happened to her until she’d finally felt safe and in control. Then there he was, sitting on a bed, holding their son, and the whole inferno had roared back into life again.

  She moved across to the gate, unlocked the padlock and pulled the chain free with a loud clatter that echoed away into the darkness. The camp was silent as a graveyard. It was a graveyard. There was no one here – no lights, no sounds. So where was Solomon? He’d said he was here to save Léo, but in the end she’d done it, and Léo had shot Baptiste to save her. She felt her face, the cold tips of her fingers soothing against the bruising and cuts. It wasn’t that bad. She’d heal. She did the last time.

  She turned and looked back down the road, half-convinced Baptiste might be shuffling towards her out of the dark, un-killable and unstoppable, but the road was empty. Nothing there. She started to walk back to Hamilton’s car and saw him, turned around in the driver’s seat, leaning over Léo and shaking him.

  She started to run. Léo was slumped in the back. Eyes closed. Hamilton holding his arms and trying to shake him awake. She grabbed the handle of the rear door and yanked it open. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. He said he felt hot, then had some kind of seizure.’

  Marie-Claude slapped his face to try and rouse him. ‘Léo, baby, wake up.’ He didn’t feel hot but he was floppy and unresponsive. It had to be shock. Hardly surprising, after he’d been forced to shoot his own father. ‘We need to get him to a hospital,’ she said. Something sharp stung her neck and she flinched away from it. Coldness spread out from the sting and she felt her whole body going slack and heavy. She slumped down in the seat, tried to get up but couldn’t. Sh
e looked up at Hamilton and saw the needle in his hand and the black scarf around his neck that he was pulling up over his face.

  ‘No doctors,’ Hamilton said. ‘No distractions. You must help me decipher the list, then it will all be over.’

  Marie-Claude felt like she was falling away from the world and Hamilton was talking to her down a deep well.

  ‘You need to help me,’ he said, his words growing faint and distant as the world around her went dark. ‘You need to help me finish what was begun.’

  107

  The fire truck pulled up in front of the burning house and steel-helmeted pompiers ran from it, pulling high-pressure water hoses behind them. The trained medics clustered around the body lying in the driveway as water arced through the night and hissed against hot stone.

  Louis LeVay stepped from his car and pulled his police cap on to his head. The house looked lost, fire roaring out of an open upstairs window as well as lighting up the whole of the ground floor. He moved over to the pompiers manning the hose. ‘Save the neighbours’ houses,’ he shouted above the roar of the fire, ‘this one’s finished.’ The man nodded and switched the jet to the wall of the neighbouring house closest to the inferno.

  LeVay moved over to the medics. ‘He OK?’

  ‘He’s had a heart attack,’ the medic replied. ‘We found this on him.’ He handed LeVay a notebook.

  LeVay angled the book towards the flickering light of the burning house and read the old-fashioned handwriting:

  This man is Commandant Benoît Amand, Cordes police.

  Two more dead in the house.