Scott Mariani - The Alchemist

Ben grunted and scrolled down further. Almost everything on the list was featuring reviews of the new movie Outcast or interviews with its director, a thirty-two-year-old Californian. Then there was Klaus Rheinfeld Exports, a wine merchant.

‘And here’s Klaus Rheinfeld the horse whisperer,’ she pointed out.

Several pages into the search results they came to a regional news item. It was taken from a small newspaper in Limoux, a town in the Languedoc region of southern France. The headline read

LE FOU DE SAINT-JEAN

‘The madman of Saint-Jean ,’ he translated. ‘It’s dated October 2001…OK, listen to this…’

An injured man was discovered wandering semi-naked in the forest outside the village of Saint-Jean, Languedoc. According to Father Pascal Cambriel, the local village priest who found the man, he was babbling in a strange language and appeared to be suffering from severe dementia. The man, identified from his papers as Klaus Rheinfeld, a former resident of Paris, is believed to have inflicted serious knife wounds on himself. An ambulance worker told our reporter: ‘ I have never seen anything like it. There were strange markings, triangles and crosses and things, all over him. It was sickening. How could someone do that to themselves? Rumours have suggested that these bizarre wounds are linked to Satanic rituals, though this was rigorously denied by local authorities. Rheinfeldwas treated at the Hospital of the Sainte Vierge…

‘Doesn’t say where they took him after that. Damn. He could be anywhere.’

‘He’s alive, though,’ she pointed out.

‘Or was alive six years ago. If it’s even the same Klaus Rheinfeld.’

‘I bet you anything it’s the same guy,’ she said. ‘Satanic markings? Read alchemical markings .’

‘Why was he all cut up?’ he wondered.

She shrugged. ‘Maybe he was just crazy.’

‘OK…so we’ve got one crazy German covered in knife wounds, who may or may not be carrying import ant secrets connected to Fulcanelli, and who could be anywhere in the world. That narrows things down nicely.’ He sighed, cleared the screen and started a fresh search. ‘While we’re online we might as well check this out.’ He typed in the name of Michel Zardi’s email server, waited for the site to load up and entered the account name. He just needed the webmail password to access the messages, and he knew that most people use some word from their private life. ‘What do you know about Michel’s personal life? Girlfriend, anything like that?’

‘Not much-no steady girlfriend that I know of.’

‘Mother’s name?’

‘Um…hold on…I think her name is Claire.’

He typed the name in the password box.

Claire

incorrect password

‘Favourite football team?’

‘Not a clue. I don’t think he was the sporty type.’

‘Make of car, bike?’

‘Used the Métro.’

‘Pets?’

‘A cat.’

‘That’s right. The fish,’ he said.

‘That asshole with his fish…how could I forget? Anyway, the cat’s name was Lutin. That’s L-U-T-I-N.’

lutin

‘Bingo.’ Michel’s messages scrolled down on the screen. They were mostly spam, selling Viagra pills and penis extensions. Nothing from any of his mysterious contacts. Roberta leaned forward and clicked on SENT ITEMS. All the messages containing Michel’s reports to ‘Saul’ flashed up in a long column in order of date sent.

‘Look at them all,’ she said, running the cursor up the list. ‘Here’s the last one, with the attachment I told you about.’ She clicked on the paper-clip logo again and showed him the JPEG photo files. He glanced through them before closing the box and clicking on COMPOSE NEW MESSAGE. A blank window flashed up.

‘What’re you doing?’

‘Resurrecting our friend Michel Zardi.’ He addressed the new message to Saul, like the others. Her eyes widened in alarm as he typed.

Guess who this is? That’s right, you got the wrong guy. You bastards killed my friend. Now, you want the Ryder woman, I have her. Follow my instructions and I’ll give her to you.

‘Not exactly Shakespeare, but it’ll do the job.’

‘What the hell are you writing?’ She jumped to her feet, staring at him in horror.

He took her wrist. She struggled against his grip. He slackened it, and guided her gently back into her seat. ‘You want to find out who these people are, don’t you?’ She sat down again, but he could see the mistrust in her eyes. He sighed and tossed a bunch of keys onto the desk. ‘There. Like I told you, you’re free to go any time you want. But you agreed to do this my way, remember?’

She didn’t say anything.

‘Trust me,’ he said quietly. She sighed. ‘OK, I trust you.’ He turned back to the screen and finished writing his message. ‘Bombs away,’ he said as he hit SEND.

Gaston Clément had been too slow to take Ben’s advice. Counting his newfound wealth, he poured himself a glass of cheap wine and drank to the strange foreign visitor.

When three other visitors found him he was dozing in his tattered armchair, the half-empty bottle by his side. Godard, Berger and Naudon dragged the pleading Clément down off his platform and threw him bodily to the concrete floor. He was seized and held down in a chair. A heavy fist slammed into his face and broke his nose. Blood poured from his nostrils, soaking his grey beard.

‘Who gave you this money?’ roared a voice in his ear. ‘Speak!’ The cold steel of a pistol pressed against his temple. ‘Who was here? What was his name?’

Clément racked his brain but couldn’t remember, and so they beat him harder. They hit him again and again until his eyes were swollen shut and blood and vomit were all over the floor around him, his beard and hair slick with red. ‘Il est Anglais!’ he let out in a garbled, bubbling scream, remembering.

‘What’d he say?’

‘The Englishman was here.’

Clément’s face was down hard to the cold floor with a heavy boot across his neck that threatened to break it. He groaned, and then passed out.

‘Go easy, boys,’ said Berger, looking down at the pitiful unconscious form on the floor. ‘We’re to deliver him alive.’

As the Audi sped away through the derelict farm with Clément stuffed in the trunk, flames were already appearing at the barn windows and black smoke billowed into the sky.

Monique Banel was walking through the Parc Monceau with her five-year-old daughter Sophie. Monceau was a pleasant little park, with a peaceful atmosphere where the birds sang in the trees, swans paddled in the picturesque miniature lake and Monique liked to unwind for a few minutes after she finished her part-time secretarial work and went to pick Sophie up from her kindergarten. Monique said a cheerfully polite ‘Bonjour, monsieur to the elegant old gent who was often sitting on the same bench around this time reading his paper.

The little girl, as always, was full of attention for all the sights and sounds of the park, her bright eyes sparkling with joy. As they walked down one of the paths that wound between the park’s lawns, Sophie exclaimed in delight, ‘Maman! Look! A little dog’s coming to see us!’ Her mother smiled. ‘Yes, isn’t he pretty?’

The dog was a small neat spaniel, a King Charles Cavalier, white with brown patches and wearing a little red collar. Monique looked about. His owner must be somewhere nearby. Many Parisians brought their dogs here for a walk in the afternoon.

‘Can I play with him, Maman ?’ Sophie was ecstatic as the little spaniel trotted up towards them. ‘Hello, doggie,’ the child called out to it. ‘What’s your name? Maman , what’s that in his mouth?’