The Alchemist's Secret (26 page)

Then he picked up the knife up from the sink with a clink of steel against ceramic, and walked slowly over to Anna Manzini. He nudged her body with his foot. She groaned, stirring painfully. Her eyes half-opened. Then widened in horror as she saw him looming over her.

He smiled. The knife glittered, and so did his eyes.

‘Now the pain will begin,’ he whispered.

Ben turned the Renault into Anna’s driveway, its worn tyres crunching on the gravel and its headlights sweeping the front of the villa.

‘Look, she’s got visitors,’ said Roberta, noticing the shiny black Lexus GS parked in front of the house. ‘I told you we should have phoned first. It’s awfully rude, you know, just landing on people like this.’

He was out of the car, not listening. He’d noticed something lying on the ground, sticking out from the shadow of the Lexus. He realized with shock that it was an arm. A man’s dead arm, the hand clawed, bloody.

He ran round the side of the car, scenarios flashing through his mind. He crouched down beside the body and ran his eye over the gaping wound in the man’s throat. He’d seen enough cut throats in his life to recognize the work of a professional. He touched the skin; it still had some warmth left in it.

‘What is it, Ben?’ she asked, coming up behind him.

He rose up quickly and took her by the shoulders, turning her away. ‘Best not to look.’ But Roberta had seen it. She pressed her hands to her mouth, trying not to gag.

‘Stay close to me,’ he whispered. He raced to the villa, leaping up the steps. The front door was locked. He ran around the side of the house, Roberta following, and found the french window open. He slipped into the house, drawing the Browning. Roberta caught up with him, ashen-faced, and he motioned to her to stay still and quiet.

He stepped over the twitching, broken body of a canary in its death throes, its yellow feathers stained red. A small statue lay on the floor at the foot of the stairs. He could see light from upstairs, music playing. His face hardened. He took the steps three at a time, flipping off the Browning’s safety.

Anna’s bedroom was empty, but the bathroom door was ajar. He burst in, bringing the gun up to aim, not knowing what he was going to find inside.

Franco Bozza had been enjoying himself. He had spent the last five minutes slowly slicing the buttons off her blouse one at a time, slapping her back down into the puddle of her blood when she struggled. A glistening crimson rivulet trickled down the valley between her breasts. He ran the flat of the blade down her skin to her quivering stomach, hooked the razor point behind the next button and was about to slice it off when the sudden sound of running footsteps startled him out of his trance.

He whipped round, saliva on his chin. He was a big, heavy man but his reactions were fast. He grabbed the woman by the hair and yanked her screaming to her feet as he leapt up, twisting her body round in front of him as the door swung open with a juddering crash.

Ben’s horror at the scene in front of him slowed him down half a second too long. Anna’s eyes met his, wide and white in a mask of blood. The powerful grey-haired man had his arm around her throat, using her as a shield.

Ben’s finger was on the trigger.
You can’t shoot.
His sights wavered, the target uncertain. He slackened the pressure on the trigger.

Bozza’s arm jerked and the blade flashed across the room in a hissing blur. Ben ducked. The steel passed an inch from his face and embedded itself with a thud in the door behind him. Bozza’s hand whipped across his chest and through the neck of his plastic overall, ripping the little Beretta .380 from his holster. Ben took a chance and fired off a shot, but his bullet went wide for fear of hitting Anna. At almost the same instant Bozza’s pistol cracked and Ben felt the bullet turn on the hip-flask in his pocket. He staggered back a step, momentarily stunned, but recovering fast and bringing the Browning back up to aim as his rage exploded and his sights fell square on Bozza’s forehead.
Got you now.

But before Ben could fire, Bozza flung Anna across the room towards him like a limp doll. Ben caught her, saving her from crashing on her face on the bloody floor tiles. He lost his aim.

The big man flipped backwards out of the window like a diver. There was a ferocious ripping and rustling from outside as he scrabbled down the flimsy trellis. He dropped to the ground, torn and bedraggled. A shot rang out and a bullet went past his ear, tearing a furrow in the tree-trunk next to him.

Ben leaned out of the window and fired again, blind into the darkness. The attacker was gone. For a second he thought about giving chase, but decided against it. When he turned back to Anna, Roberta had arrived and was bending over her still body. ‘Oh, my God.’

He felt her pulse. ‘She’s alive.’

‘Thank Christ. Who the…’ Roberta’s face was white. ‘This isn’t just a coincidence, is it, Ben? This has something to do with us. Jesus, did
we
bring this on her?’

He didn’t reply. He knelt down and checked Anna for injuries. Apart from an ugly gash on her face, its edges drying up and crusted with brown blood, she wasn’t cut anywhere.

He took his phone out of his pocket and tossed it to Roberta. ‘Call an ambulance,’ he said. ‘But not the police, and just say there’s been an accident. Don’t touch anything.’

Roberta nodded and ran into the other room.

He reached up to the chrome rail on the bathroom wall and brought down a fluffy white towel. He gently lifted Anna’s head, then placed the towel underneath to cushion her. He covered her body with a bathrobe and another towel to keep her warm, and shut the window. Kneeling back down beside her, he gently caressed her hair. It was stiff and sticky with blood. ‘You’re going to be all right, Anna,’ he murmured. ‘The ambulance won’t be long.’

She stirred, and her eyes opened. They slowly focused on him, and she mumbled something.

‘Shh, don’t try to speak.’ He smiled, but his hands were shaking with fury and he silently vowed that he was going to kill the man who’d done this.

The attacker had dropped his pistol as he’d thrown himself at the window. Ben decocked it and stuffed it into his waistband. There were some empty cartridge cases lying on the floor. He picked them up and tucked them into his pocket. He could hear Roberta in the bedroom, talking urgently on the phone.

That was when he noticed the black jacket hanging on the back of the chair.

The manor-house hotel was visible through the trees from the road, floodlit and inviting in the darkness. Ben swerved the Renault off the road and down its long, winding driveway into the wooded grounds. They pulled up in the front, next to some other cars and a touring coach.

‘Bring your bag, we’re staying here tonight.’

‘Why a hotel, Ben?’

‘Because two foreigners in a hotel is a normal thing, but two foreigners staying with a priest in a village gets talked about. We can’t go back to Pascal’s after tonight.’

Inside, Ben approached the reception desk and rang the bell. A moment later the receptionist appeared from an office.

‘Have you got any rooms?’ Ben asked.

‘No, monsieur, we are full.’

‘No rooms at all? It isn’t even high season.’

‘We have a group of English tourists here for the
Tour Cathare.
Almost everything is taken.’

‘Almost?’

‘The only accommodation left is our best suite. But it is normally…that is to say…it is reserved for-‘

‘We’ll take it,’ he said without hesitation. ‘Shall I pay you now?’ He reached in his pocket. Took out the fake Paul Harris passport and his wallet. He laid the passport down on the desk and showed her the cash. There was enough in the wallet to rent the whole hotel for a month. The receptionist’s eyes widened. ‘N…no need to pay now,’ she stammered.

She rang a bell on the reception desk. ‘Joseph!’ she called out in a bellowing voice, and a wizened old fellow in a bellboy’s uniform instantly appeared at her side. ‘Show Madame and Monsieur ‘Arris to the honeymoon suite.’

Old Joseph led them up the stairs, opened up a door and shambled into their room carrying their bags. ‘Just leave them on the bed,’ Ben told him, and tipped him with a large note, which was all he had by way of change.

Roberta looked around her at their accommodation. The ante-room, with sofa, armchairs and coffee-table, opened out into a huge square space dominated by a four-poster bed adorned with a giant red love-heart. On a large walnut table were flowers, chocolates tied up with ribbons, and statuettes of little brides in white dresses and grooms in tuxedos.

Ben sat on the bed and kicked off his shoes, leaving them where they fell on the Cupid rug.
What an absurd room
, he thought. If it hadn’t been for Roberta, he’d be sleeping in the car, hidden in some secluded forest somewhere. He took off his jacket and holster and tossed them on the bed, then lay back, stretching his tired muscles. As an afterthought he reached into his pocket and took out the flask. It was dented where it had deflected the bullet earlier. If the .380 round had hit it square on, it would have gone straight through.

He gazed at it for a few seconds.
That’s another life gone
, he thought, took a swig and put the flask away.

‘Will Anna be OK?’ Roberta asked in a faint voice.

He bit his lip. ‘Yeah, I think so. She might need a few stitches and treatment for shock. I’ll phone around in the morning and find out what hospital she’s at.’ At least he could rest easy knowing she was safe. The minute the ambulance had got there, the cops would have been alerted and she’d be under protection in hospital.

‘How did they get to her, Ben? What did they want with her?’

‘I’ve been wondering that myself,’ he muttered.

‘And the dead man outside her house? Who was he?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe a friend of hers who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

She sighed loudly. ‘I can’t stand thinking about it. I’m going to take a shower.’

He sat and thought as he listened vaguely to the splashing water in the background. He was disgusted at himself. It was pure luck that they’d got to Anna in time. He’d seen an awful lot of death and suffering in his life, but he didn’t even want to imagine the way she would have died if they’d arrived five minutes later.

Long ago, he’d promised himself that he’d never again allow his mistakes to harm the innocent. But it was happening, somehow. These people were getting close again, and the stakes were rising much too high.

He made a decision. Tomorrow he was taking Roberta to the nearby town of Montpellier and putting her on a flight to the States. And he was staying at the airport until he saw the plane leaving the ground with her in it. He should have done it days ago.

He sank his head into his hands, trying to shut out the gnawing feelings of guilt. Sometimes it seemed that no matter how hard he tried to do the right thing, everything he did in his life-every move, every decision-was somehow inexorably, magnetically impelled to return to haunt him. How much regret and self-reproach could one man carry?

A knock at the door disrupted his thoughts. As he walked into the ante-room to answer it, he slipped the Browning into his belt, against the flat of his lower back. He untucked his shirt to cover it. ‘Who is it?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘The food you ordered, Monsieur ‘Arris,’ came Joseph’s muffled voice. ‘And your champagne.’

‘I didn’t order any champagne.’ Ben unlocked the door, his hand hovering near where the pistol nestled coldly against his skin. When he saw the shrivelled old man standing alone outside with the service trolley he relaxed and pulled the door open.

‘Monsieur, the champagne is complimentary,’ Joseph said as he wheeled the trolley into the room. ‘It comes with the suite.’

‘Thanks, just leave it there.’

With his large tip from earlier on still nestling in his pocket, and the promise of more to come, the old man’s step seemed more sprightly as he wheeled in the trolley. There was
charcuterie
and a selection of cheese, fresh baguette and champagne on ice. Ben gave Joseph some more cash, showed him out and locked the door behind him.

The champagne took the edge off their mood. They ate in silence. In the background the radio was playing soft jazz. By the time the bottle was empty it was nearly midnight. Ben grabbed a pillow from the four-poster and tossed it on the leather couch near the window at the opposite end of the room. He took some spare blankets from the wardrobe and threw down a rough bed for himself.

The radio had moved on to playing an old Edith Piaf song. Roberta moved close to him. ‘Ben, will you dance with me?’

‘Dance?’ He looked at her. ‘You want to dance?’

‘Please. I love this song.’ She took his hands, smiling uncertainly, and could feel him tensing up.

‘I don’t know how to dance,’ he said.

‘Oh yeah, that’s what they all say.’

‘No, really, I don’t know how. I’ve never done it.’

‘Never?’

‘Never once in my life.’

From his wooden, awkward movements she could see he was telling the truth. She looked up at him. ‘It’s OK, I’ll show you. Just take my hands and relax.’ She moved towards him gently and rested one hand on his shoulder, taking his hand with the other.

‘Put your free hand here on my waist,’ she prompted him. His hand was rigid. She moved with him, and he tried to follow her motion, shuffling stiffly with her steps.

‘See? Feel the rhythm.’

‘OK,’ he said hesitantly.

The song ended and another followed straight on:
‘La Vie en Rose’.

‘Oh, this is a good one too. OK, here we go again…that’s it…enjoying it?’

‘I don’t know…maybe.’

‘I think you could be good at this, if you could relax a bit more. Ouch, my foot.’

‘Sorry. I did warn you.’

‘You’re thinking about it too much.’

From a simple dance he could feel a million conflicting emotions. It was the strangest sensation, and he couldn’t decide whether it was pleasant or not. A warm and inviting world seemed to beckon to him. He wanted to embrace the warmth, let it into his heart again after so many years alone in the cold. Yet the moment he began to feel himself giving in to it, he stiffened, and a barrier seemed to come crashing down somewhere inside him.