But when he looked ahead again, all he saw was the front of a black cab. To Goldman, it was as if everything was happening in slow motion. The driver stamped on the brakes, locking the wheels, but the taxi just kept coming, straight toward him. Goldman experienced a moment of sheer terror, then the solid impact as the front of the skidding vehicle smashed into his chest. He felt a sudden searing pain as his ribs broke and organs ruptured, then only blackness.
II
Less than ninety minutes later, Angela stepped back into the hotel room.
“That was quick,” Bronson said, looking up from the book he was studying.
“I found a garage on Newmarket Road selling secondhand cars,” she said. “I got a Renault Espace, seven years old. It’s a bit scruffy around the edges, but it’s got a decent rating, good tires and most of its service history, all for two nine nine five. I haggled the salesman down to two and a half and told him to forget about the warranty, which was almost worthless anyway. Five hundred deposit and the rest on credit.”
“Excellent,” Bronson said, as he began packing away the reference books Angela had bought. “That’s ideal. Right, let’s get this show on the road.”
While Bronson carried their few bags out to the car, Angela handed back the room key and paid the hotel bill in cash.
“So, now where are we going?” she asked a few minutes later, as Bronson swung the Espace off the A10 and onto the London-bound M11, just south of Trumpington. “I know you want to cross the Channel, but what was all that about a new bathroom?”
“The plods may be trying to find me, but they shouldn’t be after you. And even if they are, hopefully they’ll be looking for a Mrs. Angela Bronson, not a Miss Angela Lewis. We’re going to fill the back of the car with flat-pack furniture and catch a ferry out of Dover. And I’ll be under all the boxes.”
Angela stared at him. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. The checks at Dover and Calais are rudimentary, to say the least. This is the simplest way I can think of to get across the Channel.”
“And if they stop me?”
“You deny all knowledge of me. Tell them you haven’t seen me for weeks. Act surprised that anyone’s looking for me. You haven’t heard about Mark’s death, and you’ve recently bought a tumbledown ruin in the Dordogne—just outside Cahors, say—and you’re taking a bunch of B&Q’s finest flat-packs over to refit the bathroom.”
“But what if they steer me into the inspection shed and start unloading the boxes?”
“In that case,” Bronson said, “the moment they find me, you leap out and hide behind the biggest customs officer you can find. You’re terrified, because I’ve forced you at gunpoint to help me escape from Britain. You’re a victim, not a collaborator. I’ll back you up.”
“But you don’t have a gun,” Angela objected.
“As a matter of fact, I have.” Bronson pulled the Browning from the pocket of his jacket.
“Where the hell did that come from?”
Bronson explained about the second, failed, burglary at the house in Italy.
“You do know that you could go to prison just for carrying a gun?”
“I do. I also know that the people we’re up against have already killed at least once, so I’m hanging on to this and taking my chances with the plods.”
“You
are
a plod, remember?” Angela pointed out. “Which makes carrying a weapon even worse.”
Bronson shrugged. “I know, but that’s my problem, not yours. I’ll do my best to protect you.”
Just more than an hour later, Bronson emerged from the B&Q warehouse in Thurrock with a laden cart. He loaded everything carefully into the back of the Renault, making sure that the upturned acrylic bath was in the center.
Then they were off again, crossing the Thames at Dartford and picking up the motorway for Dover. Bronson pulled off at the last service area before the port and parked the Espace in the most secluded section of the car park he could find.
“Time to pack me away,” he said lightly, his tone not entirely concealing his concern. There was no certainty that the police would accept that he had forced Angela to drive him out of the country if his hiding place was discovered. He knew very well that they could both end up as unwilling guests of Her Majesty if it all went wrong.
He climbed into the back of the Espace and slid under the bath. It was cramped, but by pulling his knees up to his chest he was able to make himself fit. Angela stacked boxes over and around the bath until it was covered, then climbed into the driving seat and pulled out of the service area.
At the port, she bought a five-day return ticket at one of the discount booking offices and drove into the Eastern Docks, following the “embarkation” signs. At the British Customs post she proffered her passport, which was swiped through the electronic reader with barely a grunt of acknowledgment. The French passport control officer glanced at the maroon cover and waved her through.
Just beyond the two booths was another “embarkation” sign, but as she accelerated toward it a bulky figure stepped in front of the car and pointed to his left, toward the inspection shed.
Angela cursed under her breath but smiled agreeably at him, and followed the road around into the shed. Inside, she dropped the driver’s door window as one of the officers walked toward her and glanced into the back of the car.
“The French dream?” the officer asked. People who bought goods in Britain to try to renovate French ruins were not exactly a rare sight at Dover.
“Sorry?” Angela replied.
“A little stone house on the edge of a village in Brittany?” he asked with a grin. “In need of some light restoration?”
“Substitute the Dordogne for Brittany,” Angela said, matching his smile, “and you’ve pretty much nailed it. And it’s a town rather than a village. Cahors. Do you know it?”
The officer shook his head. “Heard of it, but I’ve never been there,” he said. “So what’s in the back?”
“Most of the master bathroom, or at least that’s the plan, as long as I can persuade the builders to install it. Would you like to look at it?”
“No, thanks.” He stepped back and waved her forward. “Off you go, then,” he said.
Her heart thundering in her chest, Angela gave him a carefree wave, put the Renault into gear and drove toward the exit door, which opened automatically. They were through.
III
Angela milled about with the other passengers, wandered through the shop and finally sat down in one of the lounges to wait for the ferry to dock in Calais. But despite her appearance of absolute calm, inside she was almost frantic with worry.
What would she do if the French police were waiting for her on the other side of the Channel? Did Chris have enough air? Would she open up the back of the vehicle somewhere in France only to find she’d been accompanied by a corpse? What would she do then?
It was almost a relief when she heard the Tannoy announcement asking drivers to make their way to the car decks. At least the waiting was over.
Two hours after driving the Espace onto the ferry, Angela steered the car down the ramp onto French soil and joined the line of English cars heading toward the autoroute. She saw no police or customs officers, and nobody appeared in any way interested in her or anyone else disgorged by the ferry. Most of the drivers seemed to be taking the A26 Paris autoroute, but Bronson had told her to stay off the toll roads and head for Boulogne on the D940 instead. She was to look for a secluded parking place where he could escape from his pink—their choice of bath had been governed by size, shape and price, not color—acrylic prison.
As afternoon shaded toward evening, Angela drove along the coastal road past Sangatte and on to Escalles. Just beyond the village she found a deserted car park overlooking the sea and Cap Blanc-Nez. She parked the Espace in the corner farthest away from the entrance and checked that she hadn’t been followed before opening the trunk and pulling away the boxes that covered the bath. Bronson gave a low moan as he crawled out.
“Are you OK?” Angela asked.
“I feel like I’ve gone over the Niagara Falls in a barrel,” Bronson said, groaning and stretching. “Every joint and muscle in my body is aching, and I’m as stiff as a board. Have you got any aspirins or something?”
“Men!” Angela teased. “The slightest bit of discomfort and you turn into real moaners.” She opened her handbag and pulled out a cardboard packet of tablets. “I’d take a couple if I were you. Do you want to drive?”
Bronson shook his head. “No way. I’m going to sit in the passenger seat and let you chauffeur me.”
Twenty minutes later, they were heading south on the A16.
While she drove, Angela filled Bronson in on what she had found out before the police showed up at the Internet cafe’.
“It looks to me as if the second inscription could be connected to the Cathars,” she said.
“The Cathars? That’s what Jeremy Goldman suggested, but I’m not sure that makes much sense. I don’t know too much about them, but I’m certain they had nothing at all to do with first-century Rome. They came along about a thousand years later.”
“I know,” Angela said with a nod, “and their homeland was southern France, not Italy. But the verses do seem to have a strong and distinct Cathar flavor. Some of the expressions like ‘the good,’ ‘pure spirits’ and ‘the word becomes the perfect’ are almost pure Cathar. The perfects or
perfecti
—the priests—referred to themselves as ‘good men,’ and they believed their religion was pure.
“One of the problems about the Cathars is that virtually everything ever written about them was authored by their enemies, like the Catholic Church, so it’s a bit like reading a history of the Second World War written entirely from the perspective of the Nazis. But what we do know is that the movement was linked to, or maybe even derived from, the Bogomil sect based in Eastern Europe. That was another dualist religion, one of several that flourished in the tenth and eleventh centuries.”
“What did they believe? Why was the Catholic Church so opposed to them?”
“The Cathars thought that the God being worshipped by the Church was an impostor, a deity who had usurped the true God, and who was, in fact, the devil. By that definition the Catholic Church was an evil abomination, the priests and bishops in the service of Lucifer. And they pointed to the rampant corruption within the Church as a partial proof of this.”
“I can see that must have pissed off Rome. But surely the Cathars weren’t powerful enough to have any real influence?”
“That depends on what you mean by ‘powerful.’ Their power base, if you like, was in southern France, and there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that the people of that region embraced Catharism as a very real alternative to the Catholic Church, which most people saw as wholly corrupt. The contrasts between the two religions were enormous. The high-ranking Catholic clergy lived in the kind of splendor you’d normally associate with royalty or nobility. But the Cathar priests had no worldly possessions at all, apart from a black robe and a length of cord to use as a belt, and existed solely on alms and charity. When they accepted the
consolamentum,
the vow they swore on becoming priests or
perfecti,
they surrendered all their worldly goods to the community. They were also strict vegetarians, not even eating animal products like eggs and milk, and were absolutely celibate.”
“That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun.”
“It wasn’t, but that regime was only practiced by the
perfecti.
Followers of the religion—they were known as
credentes
—were allowed a lot more latitude, and most only accepted the
consolamentum
when they were actually on their deathbeds when celibacy, for example, wouldn’t have been much of a problem. I think the important point is that Catharism became popular in southern France precisely because the
perfecti
were so devout and humble. Significantly, the ranks of the Cathars were peopled by members of some of the wealthiest and most important local families. However you look at it, the mere existence of the religion
was
a real threat to the Catholic Church.”
“So what happened?”
“At the end of the twelfth century, Pope Eugene III tried peaceful persuasion. He sent people like Bernard of Clairvaux, Cardinal Peter and Henry of Albano to France to try to reduce the influence of the Cathars, but none of them had any real success. Decisions by various religious councils had no effect either, and when Innocent III ascended the papal throne in 1198 he decided to suppress the Cathars by any means possible.
“In January 1208 he sent a man called Pierre de Castelnau, a papal legate, to Count Raymond of Toulouse, who was the then leader of the Cathars. Their meeting was very confrontational, and the next day de Castelnau was attacked by unidentified assailants and murdered. That gave Innocent the excuse he needed, and he called for a crusade against the religion. The Albigensian Crusade—the Cathars were also known as Albigensians—lasted forty years, and was one of the bloodiest episodes in the history of the Church.”
“All very interesting,” Bronson pointed out, “but I still don’t see what any of that has to do with a couple of inscribed stones cemented into the wall of a house in Italy.”
“Nor do I,” Angela said. “That’s the problem. But I’ve got a few more books to look at, so I might have some answers by tomorrow.”
As the light began to fade, they started looking for somewhere to stay for the night.
“Our best bet is a small, family-run hotel somewhere. We don’t want anywhere that we’d have to use a credit card.”
“Don’t they want to see your passport?”
“Those old French government regulations were abolished some time ago. These days the only thing that matters is whether or not you can pay the bill.”
Twenty minutes later, they checked into a small hotel close to the center of a village not far from Evreux.