Scott Mariani - The Alchemist

Montpellier

‘More questions? Why aren’t you people out looking for my son, instead of coming around here all the time?’

Natalie Dubois showed Ben inside the simple, modest house and led him into a living-room. She was a small blonde woman in her thirties, pale and tense-looking with large black circles under her eyes. ‘It won’t take long,’ he promised her. ‘I just need a few details.’

‘I already told the other officers everything,’ she retorted. ‘He’s been gone for days-what more do you need to know?’

‘Madame, I’m a specialist. Please, if you co-operate with me I believe we have a much better chance of finding Marc quickly. May I sit down?’ He took out his pad and pen.

‘I just know that something awful has happened to him. I feel it. I think I’m never going to see him again.’ Madame Dubois’ face was drawn and haggard. She sobbed quietly into a handkerchief.

‘So, the last time you saw him, he was riding off on his moped. He didn’t say where he was going?’

‘Of course not, I would have mentioned it,’ she replied impatiently.

‘Maybe you could write me down the registration number of the bike. Has he ever done anything like this before? Disappeared for a few days, gone off somewhere?’

‘Never. He’s come home late a few times, but nothing like this.’

‘What about friends? Is there anyone he might have gone off with, or gone to see-like a music event, maybe, or a party somewhere?’

She shook her head, sniffing. ‘Marc isn’t that kind of boy. He’s shy, introverted. He likes reading and writing stories. He has friends, but he doesn’t go off with them.’

‘He’s still at school?’

‘No, he left earlier this year. He works with my brother-in-law Richard, as an apprentice electrician.’

‘Does Marc’s father live with you?’ He’d noticed she wasn’t wearing a ring.

‘Marc’s father walked out of here four years ago,’ she said coldly. ‘We haven’t seen him since.’

Ben noted down on his pad: Father involved in abduction?

She gave a bitter laugh. ‘If you’re thinking his father’s got him, you’re wrong. That man isn’t the least bit interested in anyone but himself.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘Is Marc religious? Did he ever talk about joining a Christian organization, anything like that?’

‘No. Are you asking because of that thing they found in his room?’

‘The medallion.’

‘I don’t know where that came from, I’d never seen it before. The cops-I mean, the other officers-think he stole it. But my Marc’s no thief.’ Madame Dubois rose defensively in her chair.

‘No, I don’t think he’s a thief either. Listen, do you think it’s possible I could talk to Marc’s uncle, Richard?’

‘He lives not far away, just up the road. But he won’t be able to tell you anything I couldn’t.’

‘I’d still like to pay him a visit. Will he be at home now?’

As he was getting up to leave, she gripped his wrist and looked into his eyes. ‘Monsieur, will you find my boy?’

He patted her hand. ‘I’ll try.’

‘The kid hasn’t been kidnapped , for Christ’s sake. He’s run off somewhere, probably got a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. Who fucking knows, these days?’ Richard offered Ben a beer. ‘First cop I’ve ever known who takes a drink on duty,’ he laughed as Ben cracked open the can and pulled up a chair at the kitchen table.

‘I’m what you might call an outside consultant,’ Ben said. ‘What makes you so sure he’s just run off?’

‘Look, between you and me, he takes after his father, my brother Thierry. Total waster. Guy never held down a job in his life, in and out of jail for all kinds of petty crimes. The kid’s going down the same road, I reckon, and his mother can’t see it. Thinks the sun shines out of his arse. Me, I rue the day I ever let her talk me into taking the little bastard on. He’s a complete waste of time and money, and if I don’t fire him pretty soon he’ll probably fry himself on a live wire and I’ll get the blame…’

‘I understand, but I still have to treat this as suspicious until we know better. You’re his uncle, and he’s got no father. Did he ever confide in you, maybe mention anything out of the ordinary?’

‘You kidding? Everything’s out of the ordinary with Marc. Talk about head in the clouds.’

‘Like what, for instance?’

Richard made an exasperated gesture. ‘You fucking name it. The kid lives in a dream world-if you believed half of what he told you, you’d think…I dunno…Dracula was your neighbour and aliens run the world.’ He slurped his beer, and drew the can away with a ring of foam on his upper lip. He wiped it away with his sleeve. ‘Like the job we did just before he ran away…’

‘Or disappeared.’

‘Yeah. Whatever.’ Richard told Ben about the cellar. ‘And then he wouldn’t stop going on about it. Convinced it was something weird.’

Ben leaned forward in his chair, setting down the beer can and taking out his pad. ‘This was a private residence?’

‘Nah, it’s some kind of place for Holy Joes.’ Richard grinned. ‘You know, a centre for Christian something or other. Like a school. Nice folks, friendly, decent. Paid cash, too.’

‘Have you got the address there?’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Richard went into the hall and came back leafing through a thick business diary. ‘Here it is. Centre for Christian Education, about fifteen kilometres from here, out in the sticks. But you’re wasting your time if you think that godless little turd went there.’ Richard sighed. ‘Look, maybe I’m sounding rough on the kid. If something’s happened to him, I’m sorry and I’ll eat my words. But I don’t believe it. Three or four days, he’ll have run out of whatever cash he lifted from Natalie’s purse, and he’ll be home again with a hangover and his tail between his legs. And this is what you guys spend our tax money on, instead of catching crooks?’

Roberta didn’t know how long she’d been lying there on the hard, narrow bunk. Her mind cleared slowly as she blinked and tried to remember where she was. Frightening memories came back. A big, strong guy dragging her out of a car. She’d been held down. Injected with something, screaming. Then she must have passed out.

Her head was throbbing and her mouth tasted bad. She was in a dim, cold, windowless cellar. The room was long and wide, but the cell she was locked in was tiny and cramped. On three sides she was surrounded by steel bars. The wall behind her was cold stone. A single naked bulb hung from a strand of wire in the middle of the cellar, its pale yellow light shining weakly off thick stone pillars.

In another cell a few metres away, a teenage boy was lying comatose on the concrete floor. He seemed heavily sedated, or dead. She tried calling out to him. He didn’t stir.

Her guard was a scrawny-looking man of about thirty. He had bulbous, shifting eyes and a straggly yellow beard. A submachine gun hung from a sling around his neck. He paced nervously up and down all the time. She watched him, measuring the cellar by the number of his steps. Every so often he shot a look at her, the bulging eyes scanning her from head to toe.

After a while the scrawny guard was replaced by a stocky man with a shaven head, older, more confident. He brought her a mug of thin coffee and some beans and rice in a tin dish. After that he ignored her.

The teenager in the next cell came to. He lifted himself groggily up on his hands and knees, and turned to look at her with bloodshot eyes.

‘I’m Roberta,’ she whispered across the gap. ‘What’s your name?’

The boy was too out of it to respond. He just stared at her. But the stocky guard obviously didn’t want them talking. He took a syringe out of a zipper bag, grabbed the boy’s arm through the bars of his cage and gave him a shot. After a minute the kid was slumped flat again.