The Marks of Cain Page 24

  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.

  Eveux and L’Arbresle?

  Eveux…sur…L’Arbresle.

  A stir. Something stirred in the middle of his whirring anxiety, centred on Tim; he realized he was forgetting something.

  The star on David’s map: the asterisk so carefully inscribed by David’s father, Eduardo. The monastery might be a narrative cul de sac, but Eduardo had thought it was important.

  Could
he? Had he?

  Quick and urgent, Simon paged back through the visitor’s book, working out dates in his head. When was the accident that killed the Martinez couple? He recalled the information, and fixed the date in his mind, and then he turned to the correct page in the visitor’s book. Fifteen years ago.

  He was at the correct page. He looked down the list of names. People from France, America, Spain, Germany…Then a lot of people just from Germany and France. And then…

  There?

  His heartbeat matched the booming thunder in the valleys of the Beaujolais.

  He’d found a piquant comment in English. The comment said: To search is to find?

  Then came the details of the pilgrim. City: Norwich. Country: England. Date of visit: August 17th.

  Then finally the name.

  Eduardo Martinez.

  31

  It took three days for them to arrange flights to Namibia. At last they headed out of the hotel for their furtive evening flight to Frankfurt. From Germany they made the nightflight eight thousand miles south.

  Across the equator, across all the darkness of Africa – to Namibia.

  They remained quiet and subdued, even with each other. Even when they were safely on the plane to Africa they hardly spoke, as if the momentousness of what they were doing barely needed explaining. Flying into the unknown.

  While the plane traversed the vast and lightless Sahara David wondered what they would find in Africa – would they locate Angus Nairn and Eloise? What if something had happened to them? What if they couldn’t find them? What then? Just hide on a beach? Forever? That’s if they survived any infection they had caught. From the corpses in the cellar.

  He tried to stifle his fears. Whatever their fate, this mystery needed to be resolved – so seeking out the centre of the mystery was the right thing to do. If they were being chased they may as well try and outflank their pursuers, get to the solution first. Another reason to take the gamble, to fly to Namibia.

  Amy was dozing next to him. David picked up the inflight magazine and flipped to the atlas pages: Namibia was a huge country. A big orange rectangle. He scrutinized the names of the few towns indicated.

  Windhoek. Uis. Luderitz. Aus. Very German. Relics of the German Empire. But there were so few towns? A big empty nothingness.

  For most of the twelve-hour flight, Amy slept. Sheer exhaustion. David watched her beloved face, and draped her with an airline blanket to keep her warm. Her breathing slowed into deeper unconsciousness.

  Eventually David, too, shut his eyes, and waded into sleep.

  The next time he woke, the sun was blazing hot through the opened portholes, and they were landing in an airport the likes of which he had never seen before.

  It was desert. Even the airport was desert. A couple of pathetic palm trees fringed the grey dusty runway, but immediately beyond the tarmac huge sand dunes rose, like frozen orange tidal waves, with wisps of dust whipping off the top.

  The groggy passengers descended the ladder – into the furious heat. The African sun burned as soon as it touched the skin. Amy lifted a magazine to shield her face, David turned up his shirt collar to protect his neck. The airport – the island of baking asphalt in a sea of hot sand – was so tiny they could walk to the terminal in two minutes.

  Passport control was three impassive guys apparently speaking English; ten minutes later they were on Namibian territory. A smiling black taxi driver approached them as they exited the terminal building into the starkly sunlit car park. Where did they want to go?

  Their furtive researches in the cybercafes of Biarritz had yielded some results: Swakopmund, the place Eloise was directing them, was on the coast, in the centre of the Namibian littoral. It was also, it seemed, where they might find people willing to take them into the deserts and the mountains. Trekkers and outfitters.

  David said to the cab driver, ‘Swakopmund. Please?’

  ‘OK! Swakop!’

  The bags were thrown casually in the boot. The taxi spun out of the car park and onto a road that cut through the desert. Through the dazzle of the clear African air, David could see a thin horizon of blue.

  ‘Is that the sea?’

  ‘Yes sir!’ the taxi driver said. ‘Walvis and Swakop by the sea. By the sea with many many flamingoes. But do not make schwimmen, very jellyfish and many many sharks.’

  The car swerved, they were being buffeted by a fierce wind. The driver laughed.

  ‘You come wrong season!’

  ‘We have?’

  ‘Winter is cold. Windy and maybe even rain.’

  ‘Cold?’

  ‘Yes sir. But Swakop always windy. But cold now. Benguela current.’

  David stared out at the endless enormous undulating dunes; they were a harsh yellow-white in the remorseless sun. Sand was blowing across the road – orange snakes of dust, writhing and dissolving.

  Now they were here, the desire to find Eloise seemed a rather forlorn decision, almost quixotic. They were in a land of nothingness, a country of mighty desolation, with a population of barely two million scattered across a sun-crushed vastness the size of France and Britain combined; they were looking for one man and one woman. In the wilderness. Would this hotel even exist?

  The cab driver was pointing. ‘Swakop!’

  David stared at the cityscape as they rolled down the streets. The sense of dislocation was profound. Looming suddenly from the sand was a pastiche Bavarian town: gingerbread houses, spired German churches, little Teutonic shops with curlicued Gothic signs for German newspapers and Becks bier. Yet the pavements were busy with black people, and orangey-beige people, and a few couples that looked American or maybe Australian, as well as obviously German people wearing…lederhosen?

  The cab driver took them to the hotel Eloise had named; he approved of their choice because of his brother who had once stayed there and ‘had so many oysters he was sick’. The hotel was big, white, scruffy and the paint was blistered by the wind but it was right on the sea, overlooking the pier and the wild, blue-grey ocean.

  Some white guys were fishing off the pier, in thick anoraks and jumpers. Bloodstained buckets of oily fish showed their success. They were talking in German and laughing. They were munching black cake.

  When David saw the fish in the pail he thought of the elvers that José had cooked: his last meal. Then the gunshots, the suicide, the obscene blurt of blood on the wall. The body liquor squelched across the cellar floor.

  They bought fleeces at the hotel shop. Then they showered and changed and began their quest. At once. They were tired, to the point of exhaustion – but the need to find Eloise was urging them on. Driving the weariness away with two strong coffees, each, they attempted to do what they had come for. Find safety, find Eloise, find an answer.

  Their ‘contact’ was a deputy manager at the hotel: Raymond. After a few minutes’ searching they located him, a small, rather sad looking Namibian, peering at an aged computer screen in the office behind Reception.

  He took one quick look at them – a white man and a white woman asking for information about Eloise – and he nodded, gravely. Then he said:

  ‘I know what you have come for. But first you must tell me.’ He almost bowed. ‘What was Eloise doing the moment you first saw her?’

  David came right back with the answer:

  ‘She was in her house, with a shotgun, pointed at us.’

  A knowing nod was their response. Raymond turned, and reached down to the drawer of his desk to retrieve, and hand over, a slip of paper. Written on it was a row of digits and letters. David recognized the style.

  ‘GPS coordinates.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But where?’

  The deputy manager shrugged.

  ‘Damaraland? The bush. That is all I know…Now please I work, I am sorry – we are very busy. Swiss tourists.’

  He glanced at them – with a sharp, wary expression. He obviously wanted these worrying people with these strange arrangements out of his
office. This was fair enough, but it didn’t leave Amy and David much better off than before. A bunch of coordinates, pointing them into the wilderness? David knew from his reading that Damaraland was a truly vast expanse of desert and semi desert, north and east of Swakop. How could they find someone, one or two people, in the middle of that? Even with GPS?

  They got straight to work, finding someone to take them in-country. But it was hard; it was impossible. They stepped into travel shops, car hire companies, outfitters for treks. When they explained their requirement, the shop managers and outdoorsmen openly laughed. One Australian guy, in shorts despite the cold, threw a manly arm around David’s shoulder, and said: ‘Listen, mate, Damaraland? There are no roads. You need an expedition. You need two or three fourbys, and a fucking bunch of guns. This isn’t Hyde Park. Try kitesurfing.’

  And so it went, and so it continued, and then the fog came. They’d been there for two days of increasing anxiety and it was windy and cold throughout; and then the weather worsened. The Swakopmund fog descended: the infamous mists of the Skeleton Coast.

  It was like Scotland in December: thick and dismal, shrouding the gay little cakeshops in dankness, sending the lederhosened German tour groups into their warm snug hotels, veiling completely the black factory boats that floated inert on the cold Namibian sea; only the yellow-orange men sitting on their haunches seemed impervious: narrowing their sunburned eyes, and sitting in their cardigans and holey jeans, staring at the grey damp nothing. They looked like the Basque men, in berets, staring at the mountain fog in the villages of the high Pyrenees.

  On the foggiest night of all, as they were getting truly desperate, when they were shivering their way along Moltkestrasse, they found a bar they hadn’t seen before: Beckenbauer Bar.

  It was tiny and gabled and Bavarian-looking, and it was noisy, even from fifty metres away. Keen to escape the shrouding dampness they stepped inside the bar, which was giddy and packed; people were singing in German and ordering steins of lager and clashing the steins together. Chortling.