Scott Mariani - The Alchemist

‘You’re leaving? What about me?’

‘After last night, do you still want to come along with me?’

‘Yes, I do. Where are we going?’

‘South,’ he said, slipping Fulcanelli’s Journal carefully into the bag and wishing he had more time to read it. Then he opened a drawer of his desk and took out the passport he kept in there. He’d had it made for him in London, and it was indistinguishable from the real thing. The picture on it was his, but the name was Paul Harris. He slid it in the inside pocket of his jacket.

‘But Ben, there’s just one thing,’ she remembered. ‘I have to go back to my place first.’

He shook his head. ‘Sorry No chance.’

‘I have to.’

‘What for? If you need clothes and things, that’s all right-we’ll go and buy you whatever you want.’

‘No, it’s something else. These people who are after us-if they get into my apartment again they could find my address book. Everything’s in that book, all my friends and family in the States. What if they did something to my family to try to get to me?’

When Luc Simon returned to his office, he found the whole police station in an uproar as news came in about the quayside shooting. Violent crime was a normal thing in Paris, part of life. But when there was a bloodbath like this, with two cops gunned down and five more bodies littering the banks of the Seine, guns and spent cartridges everywhere, the police force was coming out en masse.

Simon found a brown envelope on his desk. The report inside was from handwriting analysis. The writing on the Zardi suicide note was a mismatch with other samples of his handwriting found in his apartment, shopping lists, memos and a half-written letter to his mother. It was pretty close, but it was definitely a forgery. And fake suicide notes pointed in one direction only. Especially when you already knew the victim wasn’t the shooter.

If it was a murder case after all, he’d really dropped the ball. He hadn’t paid enough attention to the Ryder woman. Too much on his mind, maybe, with his and Hélène’s relationship problems hanging over him on top of everything else. Trying to refloat a sunken marriage while trying to stop the whole of Paris from killing each other-the two just weren’t compatible.

But no excuses. The fact was, he’d fucked up. Roberta Ryder wasn’t just some crank. She was involved in something. What it was, and how she was connected, he’d have to find out.

But it was all questions, no answers. Who was the guy she’d turned up with on the night of Zardi’s death? Something odd about the way they were acting together. It had been as though the man was trying to stop her saying too much. Hadn’t he said she was his fiancée? They didn’t look that close. And hadn’t Roberta Ryder told him, just hours earlier, that she was single?

The guy was important, somehow. What was his name? If Simon remembered rightly, he hadn’t seemed too keen to give it and hadn’t looked too pleased when Ryder gave it for him. He opened up the file on his desk. Ben Hope, that was it. British, despite his near-perfect French. He’d need to check him out. Then search the Ryder woman’s apartment. He could easily get a warrant now.

Simon ran into his colleague Detective Bonnard and they walked down the busy corridor together. Bonnard looked serious, grey and haggard. ‘Just got the latest on this multiple homicide and cop-killing,’ he said.

‘Fill me in.’

‘We’ve got a witness. Motorist reported two people running from the scene of the incident, just around the time it was happening. Male and female Caucasian. Woman young, we think red hair, maybe early thirties. Male possibly a little older, taller, fair-haired. Looked as if the woman was struggling, trying to get away. Witness says she was covered in blood.’

‘A blond man and a red-haired woman?’ Simon repeated. ‘Was the woman injured?’

‘Doesn’t look like it. We think she’s the same woman our officers picked up just before they were killed. She left some blood traces on the back seat of the car, but it belonged to one of the bodies we found under the bridge, guy with his brains blown out by a rifle bullet. Pretty pictures all over the wall.’

‘So where did she go?’

Bonnard made a helpless gesture. ‘No idea. Looks like she just vanished. Either she got away on her own or someone took her away pretty damn quick before our boys got to the scene.’

‘Great. What else do we have?’

Bonnard shook his head. ‘It’s a mess. We recovered the rifle. Military weapon, untraceable and not a print on it anywhere. Same with the pistols we found. A couple of the victims we know-stints for armed robbery and so on. Usual suspects, won’t be missed. But we haven’t much of a clue what the hell this is about. Drug-related, maybe.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Simon said.

‘One thing we do know is that we’re missing at least one shooter. Nine-mil slugs were found in three of the bodies. Looks like they all came from the same gun, which the forensic guys tells us from the rifling pattern is a Browning type pistol. It’s the only gun we haven’t recovered.’

‘Right,’ Simon said, nodding, thinking hard.

‘There is one more thing,’ Bonnard went on. ‘Based on what we can figure out, the mystery nine-mil shooter isn’t your typical low-life crim. Whoever it is can hit high-speed one-inch groups on moving targets at twenty-five metres in the dark. Can you do that? I sure as hell can’t do that…We’re dealing with a serious pro.’

‘You’re sure it’s on the bedside table?’ Ben was saying as he parked the dented Peugeot a discreet distance from Roberta’s building.

She was wearing the baseball cap he’d bought her at a market earlier that morning, her hair tucked into it. With that and the shades she was unrecognizable. ‘Bedside table, little red book,’ she repeated.

‘You wait here,’ he said. ‘Key’s in the ignition. Any sign of trouble, get out of here. Drive slowly, don’t rush. Call me first chance you get, and I’ll meet you.’

She nodded. He got out of the car and put on the sunglasses. She watched with trepidation as he walked briskly up the street and disappeared into the doorway of her building.

Luc Simon had had enough of hanging around Roberta Ryder’s place. He’d been here half an hour now, waiting with his two agents for the forensic team to arrive. His impatient rage was giving him another one of his killer headaches. As usual, the forensic guys were keeping him hanging around waiting. Undisciplined bunch of bastards-he’d give them hell when they got here.

He thought about sending one of his uniforms out to get coffee. Fuck it. He’d do it himself-Christ knew what kind of shit they’d bring back. There was a bar across the street, Le Chien Bleu; stupid name but the coffee might not be too bad.

He thundered down the spiralling flights of stairs, trotted through the cool hallway and out into the sunshine, deep in thought. He was too preoccupied to notice the tall blond man in sunglasses and a black jacket coming the other way. The man didn’t slacken his stride but recognized the police inspector immediately, and knew there’d be other cops waiting upstairs.

‘That was quick,’ the two officers thought when they heard the doorbell of Ryder’s apartment. They opened the door, expecting Simon. If they were lucky, he’d have brought them a coffee and a bite to eat-though that was almost certainly wishing for too much considering that the chief was in an even fouler mood than usual.

But the man at the door was a tall blond stranger. He didn’t seem surprised to find two policemen in the apartment. He leaned casually against the doorway, smiling at them. ‘Hi,’ he said, taking off his sunglasses. ‘Wondered if you could help me…’