‘That’s right. Near Lyon…We never managed to work out what it meant.’ ‘Please take another look.’
Simon could hear the obedient unfolding of paper, and traffic in the background. David was obviously using a land-line. An anonymous payphone in a little Basque city.
David came back on.
‘Here’s the star. What do you want to know?’
The moment of tension dilated.
‘Tell me,’ Simon said. ‘Where exactly it is. What, ah, village, what town…’
The journalist could almost hear David peering closely at the map.
David came back on.
‘It’s quite distinct. It’s next to a tiny village called Eveux.’
‘Eveux?’
A pause.
‘Yes, Eveux…that’s near L’Arbresle…northwest of Lyon.’ David’s voice was now sharpened. ‘
Why do you want to know this?
’
Simon didn’t answer, because he was stooping to look at his computer screen, at the entry on La Tourette. The website gave the monastery its full and sonorous French title.
Le Priore de Sainte Marie de La Tourette.
De Eveux-sur-L’Arbresle.
The hire car was slotted in row 3B of the airport car park at Lyon Saint Exupéry. Bags stowed, Simon pulled out into the midday traffic, and made for the autoroute that took him away from Lyon.
North along the Rhone valley.
He considered his moody impulsiveness. Was this all a mistake? He had asked Suzie what she thought of this journey, this sombre adventure; and she’d told him, with a certain languish in her eyes, that she’d agree to him going because she loved him. And because they were safe with the policeman anyway. And because he was going mad in the house doing nothing, he might end up drinking again, and she was worried about that.
Simon stared at the cars ahead. The autoroute was busy.
He knew almost everything Suzie had said had been a lie. She
didn’t
want him to go. She thought it was
irresponsible
of him to go. The only reason she agreed to his going was indeed because she loved him. He was lucky to have her.
And he was an idiot.
But he was here now. And, whatever his motives, the
excitement of the chase
was
stimulating, energizing. What would this place be like? The monastery that sent people mad? Would he find the infamous archives? Simon glanced at the autoroute signs as he slowed the car: Ecully, Dardilly, Charbonnieres-les-Bains.
There.
He slowed to check a road sign: this was it. The N7 to L’Arbresle.
Simon spun the wheel and headed left. He was motoring through the verdant depths of the Beaujolais. His thoughts wandered as he reached for the big road atlas of France, to check his route. A few hundred miles southwest from here, in Biarritz, David and Amy were hiding, hoping, waiting, flying out to Namibia.
What could he do to help them? Maybe nothing, maybe something, maybe what he was doing right now. His mind was a turmoil of confusion – and curiosity.
The last of the route took him past more vineyards, and yellowing copses of oak. Then the lane gave out, onto a wide sweeping meadow. And in the middle was the monastery of La Tourette.
Alone in the car, he said:
‘Wow.’
He’d done a few hours’ research on this modernist building, quizzed his architect father about the designer, Le Corbusier, but the reality was still pretty startling.
In the middle of the greenery was this…
thing
. It looked like the offspring of a multi-storey car park mated with a sour medieval castle. The building was almost uniformly grey. The only colour came from the various big windows, adorned with bright red and orange curtains.
Slowly he rolled the car towards the priory complex. More unusual aspects came into view. A surreal concrete pyramid jutted primly from the centre. Several grey corridors seemed
to be angled, haphazardly. The whole edifice was supported on one side by a bank of grass, and on the other by spindly, irregular concrete legs.
Simon parked, and sought the entrance: it was a kind of concrete gantry that led to the core of the building.
The exterior may have been shocking, but his induction into Sainte Marie de La Tourette was simple, almost flippant. The monastery and the monks were obviously used to visitors and pilgrims, especially people interested in architecture. Simon was greeted by a monk in blue jeans and grey T-shirt, in a concrete side room.
As Simon confirmed his bogus, telephone-booked identity – Edgar Harrison, a visiting British architect – he twitched with apprehension, and searched the monk’s face for a hint of curiosity, or scepticism, or suspicion.
But the monk just nodded.
‘Monsieur Harrison.
Un moment
.’
The monk jotted down the name and details,
on a computer.
Simon scanned this side room as he waited to be processed. The space was humdrum, an average office, with files and paperwork, cordless phones and a fax machine, and a big glass case with keys for various rooms, hanging from hooks with neat little labels.
Le Refectoire, Le Libraire, La Cuisine.
Le Libraire?
At least there
was
a library. But if its contents were so secret why was it just casually mentioned here?
Le Libraire?
The monk had done his work; he stood and took a key from another case, then escorted Simon to the concrete upper floors to show him his allotted room, the monastic cell where he would spend his three days on ‘retreat’. The stairs were steep. They didn’t speak. They reached their upper-level corridor.
The doors were lined up and down the concrete corridors like tall soldiers on parade. It really was like a prison.
The monk handed over the key, then left the pilgrim to his own devices. Simon entered the room, chucked his bag on his narrow bed, and gazed around – in dismay. The cell was homicidally oppressive: little wider than a coffin, with a low, damp concrete ceiling. The room terminated in a glass door and window with rusted surrounds. And there were sullen noises everywhere. Rattles of water in the pipes. A cough.
Then a phone call: on his new mobile. When Simon pressed
Accept
, the worry in his chest was like an incipient heart attack. Only his wife had this new number. What had happened?
But it was David.
‘Simon…Where are you? Suzie gave me the new number.’
The journalist looked around. At the grey concrete walls. Patched with ugly dampness. He stepped outside into the corridor, to get a better signal.
‘I’m in that monastery.’
‘With the archives?’
‘Well I hope so, David. I hope so.’
A monk came striding down the corridor. A wooden cross hung around his neck, contrasting with the surfing T-shirt underneath. He smiled, vacantly, at Simon. Who smiled keenly in return.
David was whispering into the phone. ‘We’re going to Namibia. Now.’
‘Eloise is already there? Correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK. Well…’ The journalist sighed. ‘Please be careful. It’s, ah, clearly ludicrous. You’re being pursued by a bloody madman. But…
Be careful!’
A silence. Then David said: ‘Same for you, Simon. I know I never met you, but…y’know…take care of yourself?’
‘Thank you.’
The journalist closed the call. And began his exploration of the building.
Le Priore de Sainte Marie de La Tourette.
Two hours of wandering told him that the rest of La Tourette was as bizarre, and intimidating, as the cells. Odd doors opened into misshapen rooms. Occasional skylights showed the grey clouds from startling angles. Concrete joists thrust into empty space: they seemed to have no purpose other than to knock an unwary pilgrim on the head.
It was intriguing enough, but also disappointing. There was no intimation of mystery, no
sense
of any concealed archives. And the library was just a library – on the third floor of the building. It was not hidden at all and the contents were thoroughly ordinary
.
There were no ancient texts chained to shelves. No papal parchments in mahogany chests. No musty manuscripts bound in goatskin. There was nothing but racks of regular books and large metal tables. Even a drinks machine.
It felt positively municipal.
Sighing, heavily, Simon sat down at one of the tables, to search in some of the books – but his lifeless research was interrupted by another phone call.
Why so many?
He stepped outside into another bleak concrete corridor.
It was Bill Fanthorpe, the psychiatrist from St Hilary.
‘Hi, Bill, I –’
‘Hello, Simon. I’m sorry to bother you. But…’ The doctor’s voice was tinged with anxiety.
‘What is it, Bill?’
‘I’m afraid Tim has disappeared.’
A faint rumble echoed through the building. The sound of the Lyon–Paris TGV rumbling in the forested distance.
‘Disappeared?’
‘Yes. But please do not concern yourself, not overly.’
‘Jesus.
Bill
–’
‘This happens all the time, of course.’ Fanthorpe’s tone of worry had quickly faded, replaced by studied calmness. ‘Schizophrenics can be exceptionally perambulatory. And of course Tim wandered off before, two years ago.’
‘But when? When did he run away? How?’
The doctor hesitated.
‘We think last night. As I was saying –’ A thoughtful pause. ‘I understand you have personal concerns for the safety of your family. Your wife told me. Therefore…We have been in touch with the police but they assure us there is no question of…’ Another, slightly awkward pause. ‘No question of foul play, as it were. But it was a serious lapse in security. My apologies.’
‘Jesus
Christ
.’
‘Please. Calm down. We will find him. Quite likely by tonight. Just as we found him the last time.’
Simon stared at the damp grey patch on the opposite concrete wall. This was all his fault. He had run off. He had left his family unprotected
for no good reason
. Why was he even here?
He had quit the house in the early morning, not telling the cops what he was doing – taking a taxi, then the train, then the first plane from Heathrow to Lyon – just so he could chase the
wildest
of geese, the
ludicrous
dream that he was some Watergating superjournalist, going to crack the biggest story in a decade.
What a fool he had been. In reality he was just a second-division crime reporter, already in his forties, who’d wasted too many years on booze, and was all-too-desperate to catch up with his peers, by pursuing some deluded fantasy. He was going nowhere. And his brother was now…escaped, on the run, in the wilds. Doing what? How was he surviving?
Now he thought of Tomasky; he tried not to think about Tomasky. Tried very hard.
With a jolt, he realized he was still holding the phone in his hand – and Bill Fanthorpe was still on the line. He apologized to the doctor, rang off, and instantly called his wife.
She confirmed what Fanthorpe had said: it seemed innocent enough, Tim had indeed just wandered off, it was not the first time he’d gone walkabout, last time they found him within twelve hours…
But Simon was not reassured. He told Suzie he loved her, loudly, not caring who might overhear his conversation. Then he told her he was coming home as soon as he could.
‘OK, Simon. Of course…’ Her tone was solicitous. Loving. More than he deserved.
‘I’ll call you later, sweetheart.’
He made his second urgent call of the day. The airport. The information was not what he wanted. He had already missed the last flight of the day from Lyon to London.
The next flight was at dawn. That was the fastest way back to London. If he wanted to go back immediately – he would have to wait until dawn.
After the briefest hesitation, he booked the flight.
So that was it. He would stay today, then leave before sunrise, and fly home from Lyon. He had this afternoon, and the evening, to see if he could find anything. And then he must return to his family. Protect them.
Simon continued his doomed and hapless search. He felt like a jerk even as he explored. He made for the roof. The roof was flat as his mood. It was grassed over. Odd, boxlike structures formed modernist gargoyles.
Then he took the lift down. The depths of the building comprised the religious core of the monastery: a large, dark, enigmatic chapel, semi-submerged into the slope underneath, and illuminated by slender stained glass windows on one side only.
And that was it, that was the chapel, and that was the
monastery. Acceding to his nerves, he retreated to a concrete cloister and frantically texted Suzie the question:
any news?
She texted back:
no news.
Anguished, almost furious, he aimed himself at the library, yet again. Maybe there
was
something here. There were certainly lots of books. But they were boring books. French books. Irrelevant books. Books by Aquinas. A history of the Blackfriars. A life of St Dominic. A selection of architectural monographs for the architectural pilgrims. One slim French biography of Pope Pius the Tenth did pique his interest, but then he noticed maybe three hundred other books in the same series: lives of all the other popes in history.
There were two other people in the concrete room, besides himself. A young woman was immersed in a yellow jacketed volume by Le Corbusier:
Vers un Architecture Libre.
The other companion was a monk, wearing a cardigan and slacks, and glasses so thick they made him look like a nervous treefrog.
Simon drove the thought of Tim from his mind. The thought climbed back into his brain, through the window of his soul. Where was Tim? Wandering some road? Asleep in a stairwell? Buying a big fat knife?
There was nothing Simon could do, not from here, not right now. He needed to distract himself with work. Pessimistically, he leafed another text: a glossy modern volume about the monastery’s unique design. It mentioned several interesting features: the book went into great detail about ‘light cannons’ and ‘pilotis’.
Sitting back, he sighed, and looked around. The large tall windows of the library gave onto the endless farms and vineyards. The monastery was very isolated. Squat and strange and lonely under the grey-black Lyonnais sky.
An autumn storm was brewing: a grandiose affair. The first thunderclaps drumrolled across the Rhone Valley, making
the building positively vibrate. Even the mute little monk looked up from his studies at the noise, his bug eyes rolling.
The noise of the booming thunder was like two parents arguing upstairs, overheard by a small and terrified child; it was like the muffled but ominous sounds of someone falling to the floor, in a bedroom.
Das Helium und das Hydrogen.
The journalist shuddered, and turned to the book at the end of the table. The visitor’s book. It was a huge leather job: at least a thousand pages thick, with entries dating back decades. He flicked through the most recent entries, at least those written in English.
‘The noises at night: unbearable.’
‘An expression of pure genius.’
‘The most beautiful building in the world. And also the ugliest.’
‘I have found serenity here.
Merci.
’
Lightning flashed across the darkling valley, briefly dazzling the grey walls and the orange curtains. Vast curtains of rain were marching down the valley. Drenching the little hamlet of Eveux-sur-L’Arbresle.