Ben led her through into the living-room, stunned and lost for words. Roberta Ryder, PhD, effortlessly attractive and beguiling, brilliantly intelligent, frequently cantankerous, the most opinionated and headstrong woman he’d ever known: the American scientist had once meant a great deal to him and she was someone he’d always known he would never forget.
The last time they’d been together had been on a bittersweet snowy day in Canada, a long time ago. He’d never expected to see her again. And certainly not like this.
‘What are you … doing here?’ was all he could say.
‘Looking for you,’ she replied. ‘What else would I be doing here?’
Ben noticed how agitated she seemed. Her face was pale and tight. She kept peering nervously through the window at the gravelled driveway and the road beyond. Ben followed her eye and saw the empty blue Vauxhall parked outside the gates.
‘I called your old place in France,’ she said. ‘Someone called Jeff told me where I could find you. Said if you weren’t at the address in Oxford you might be at the vicarage in Little Denton.’
‘You found me,’ he said. ‘But why?’
Roberta turned away from the window to face him. ‘I wouldn’t have come here, Ben. But I didn’t know what else to do. Who else to turn to. Something’s going on. I think I’m in danger. Hell, I know I am. It’s serious.’
She tensed as the living room door suddenly swung open. Jude walked in, took one look at her, stopped in his tracks and broke into a beaming smile. ‘Oh. Hi.’
‘This is Jude,’ Ben told her. ‘He’s my … never mind.’ Turning to Jude, he said, ‘How about making a cup of coffee, Jude?’
Roberta shook her head. ‘I don’t want any coffee.’
‘Then go make one for yourself,’ Ben said, giving Jude a stern look.
‘I don’t really w—’ Jude began, then got the point and turned to leave the room. ‘Nice to meet you, whoever you are,’ he called back over his shoulder.
‘What do you mean, danger?’ Ben asked her when they were closed in the room alone. ‘What kind of danger?’
‘The kind where I’m being followed,’ she said seriously.
He blinked. ‘Followed by who?’
‘All I know is that these people are after me, Ben. That’s why I’m here. I’m scared.’
Ben let out a long sigh. This wouldn’t be the first time Roberta, an incurable maverick with an apparently irresistible penchant for researching into areas of science that were liable to draw all kinds of the wrong attention, had got herself into trouble. And it had been big trouble that had brought her and Ben together in Paris that memorable autumn – a scrape that both of them had been lucky to escape from with their lives.
‘Please don’t tell me it’s alchemy again,’ he said.
‘It’s not alchemy.’
‘Or some other hocus-pocus. Go on, then. What’s it this time?’
Her eyes flashed defensively. ‘Hocus-pocus?’
‘Whatever. It got you into a bit of a mess, if you care to remember.’
‘Yeah, well, this time it’s different. This isn’t even about me.’
‘Then what the bloody hell is it about?’ he demanded.
Her defensive look was undiminished. ‘Wouldn’t folks of your, uh, persuasion consider it blasphemous to say that word when you’re togged up in that outfit?’ she fired at him.
‘Never mind the outfit,’ he said irritably. ‘It’s just …’
‘Fancy dress?’
‘A long story, Roberta. I don’t think you’ve come all this way to hear it.’
Somewhere in the house, the landline phone was ringing. Ben faintly heard Jude pick up and talk to someone.
Roberta nodded, swallowed and then began to talk all in a rush. ‘All right. Listen. It’s about my friend. Her name’s … her name was Claudine, Claudine Pommier. In Paris. She was killed. Murdered. The cops say it was the maniac they’re calling le bricoleur.’
‘The “handyman”?’ Ben said, trying to make sense of her flurry of words.
‘A serial killer,’ Roberta explained agitatedly. ‘He’s claimed four victims in different parts of Paris. The cops say Claudine was his fifth. He’s a sick piece of shit who creeps into women’s homes and murders them.’
‘Slow down. Why do they call him the “handyman”?’ Ben asked.
‘Because of the way he kills them,’ she replied with a grimace. ‘You want me to draw you a picture? Power tools. Nail guns. Hammers and chisels.’
‘I get the idea,’ Ben said, repelled. ‘Go on.’
‘Claudine was found with … Jesus, it’s too awful. With her lungs full of expanding foam, the kind builders use to fill wall cavities and things. She suffocated.’
Ben had seen a good number of people die in a good many unpleasant ways, but this was almost too gruesome to imagine, even for him. He felt disgusted.
‘It happened three days ago,’ Roberta said. ‘I only found out this morning. I’d just flown in from Ottawa to see her.’ She paused to wipe away the tears of grief and rage that had clouded her eyes.
‘I’m very sorry. All I can say is that they’re sure to catch this guy. If there was anything I could do …’
Roberta shook her head vehemently. ‘You’re not understanding me. Let me finish. There’s more to it, a lot more. I—’
At that moment the living room door swung open again and Jude stepped in, interrupting Roberta’s flow. ‘Ben?’ he said. ‘Brooke just called. Says a lorry shed its load on the motorway. Be here as soon as she can.’
‘Fine,’ Ben said, not taking his eyes off Roberta.
‘So, you here for the wedding?’ Jude asked her cheerily, appearing not to have noticed the tense mood in the room.
‘Wedding?’ she said, arching an eyebrow.
‘Listen,’ Ben said quickly. ‘Why don’t we go for a drive? There’s a quiet park on the other side of the village. We can talk in peace there,’ he added, throwing an icy look at Jude, whose face dropped.
Outside, Roberta looked around her. ‘Can we go in your car? My ass aches from driving.’
‘I don’t have one,’ Ben said. ‘I came on the bus.’
‘What about that there?’ she said, pointing at the rusted heap that Jude somehow managed to get about in.
‘We’ll be lucky if we get it out of the gate,’ he said.
‘So you dress like a priest and you travel around by bus,’ she snorted. ‘That doesn’t sound like the Ben Hope I used to know.’
‘Vicar,’ he corrected her. ‘And you’re right. I’m not the same man you used to know.’
Chapter Four
Ben and Roberta left her blue Vauxhall and followed the footpath that skirted the edge of the sunlit park. They’d spoken little during the short drive through the village. Ben could feel the tension emanating from her. Whatever was scaring her, it seemed genuine, but he didn’t know what to say. He waited for her to speak first.
Perhaps because of the unseasonal heat, or perhaps because the new generation of British kids preferred to sit stuffing their mouths at the computer rather than play outdoors any longer, the park was almost deserted. In the distance, a petite young mother was lifting her son of four or five onto one of the swings. An elderly, fragile-looking couple were making their slow way arm-in-arm along the footpath towards Ben and Roberta. As they passed, they both smiled at Ben and greeted him with a reverential ‘Good day to you, Vicar’. Taken aback for an instant, Ben managed to mumble a reply that seemed to please the old folks before they hobbled on.
‘Sure fooled them,’ Roberta said drily. After a pause she added, ‘So if you’re not an ordained minister—’
‘I’m not.’
‘—isn’t it against their rules to wear that outfit? Kind of like impersonating an officer or something?’
‘It was only meant to be … oh, never mind. Just don’t look at me.’
‘That’s hard to do. You have no idea how weird it is for me to see you dressed like that.’
‘That makes two of us,’ Ben replied. ‘But it’s a sight we may all have to get used to.’
‘You’re not kidding, are you?’
‘This is the future I’m set on now, Roberta. It always was, I think. Just took me a long time getting there.’
‘I had no idea there was this side to you.’
‘There are a few things you don’t know about me.’
‘Pretty major life change,’ she said. ‘Especially for you, of all people.’
‘I just want a life of peace,’ he said. ‘I made a vow to Brooke that that’s how things would be from now on. Settle down, try to do something better with my life. No more crazy stuff.’
‘You doing it for yourself, or for her?’ Roberta asked a little too sharply, then immediately made an apologetic gesture. ‘I take that back. None of my business, I guess.’
Ben didn’t reply. The footpath ran alongside an old stone wall, through the trees on the other side of which could be seen the heavy machinery and distant half-erected buildings where a construction company were putting up the new housing estate after the villagers’ protracted protests against expansion had been overruled by the local council. The workmen seemed to be packing up early for the day, vehicles rumbling out of the site’s mesh gates.
‘Let’s sit,’ Ben said a few yards further on, motioning towards a green park bench under the shade of the trees.
Roberta nodded. She sat on the bench beside him and gazed across the park in the direction of the kiddies’ roundabout and swings in the distance. They could hear the child’s gurgling laughter as his mother began to swing him gently back and forth.
Ben said, ‘Start from the beginning.’
‘Claudine and I went back a long way. When I was teaching in Paris years ago, she used to lecture at the Sorbonne. We met through some mutual acquaintance I don’t even remember now. We hit it off, became friends, stayed that way ever since. After I went to live in Canada she used to call me every so often, birthdays, Christmas, and emailed me now and then to keep me updated about her work projects. Some of them were real fascinating. I hadn’t heard from her in a little while, just assumed she must be busy at work or something. Then yesterday, I get this letter from her by registered mail.’ Roberta glanced anxiously at Ben. ‘I thought it was strange that she’d write me that way, instead of the usual email. When I opened it I saw it was more like a note, real short, and you could see it was written in a hurry. She said she was in deep trouble, that she was certain she was being followed and that something bad was going to happen to her. Said not to contact her by email or phone because they’d know. They were watching every move she made.’
‘Who was?’ Ben asked.
‘If she knew, she didn’t say.’
‘Have you got the letter with you? Can I see it?’
She shook her head. ‘The Paris cops have it now.’
‘Did it say any more than that?’
‘She asked me to go to Paris to help her. To hurry before … before it was too late.’ Roberta gave a bitter laugh.
‘No indication what it was about?’
‘No, she said she’d explain everything once I got there. Said I was one of just two people in the world she could turn to.’
‘Why not the police?’
‘Something else was going on, Ben. Something that meant she couldn’t go to the police. The last line she wrote was this rushed scrawl that just said “If something happens”. That was it. Underneath were a bunch of figures. She didn’t even sign her name.’
‘Figures?’ he asked.
Roberta dug a crumpled sheet from her handbag and handed it to him. ‘I copied them out before I passed the letter on to the cops. Still have no idea what they mean, though.’
Ben looked at the paper and studied the three lines of what appeared to be some kind of cipher.
4920N1570E
6982
2715651291
Codes weren’t his favourite things. He stared at the sheet for a few moments, completely baffled, until the two letters in the top line suddenly flew out at him and he realised what they were. They stood for North and East.
‘I don’t know about the rest,’ he said, ‘but the top line’s definitely a set of GPS co-ordinates, scrambled together. If you teased it apart it’d pinpoint a geographical location.’
‘You’re sure? What location?’
‘I’m sure. But that’s something we can come back to afterwards. Keep talking.’
‘What could I do?’ Roberta continued. ‘She was my friend. I cancelled everything. Managed to get on a late flight to Paris. I was so worried, all I could do on the plane was sit there trying to understand what those goddamn numbers meant, but it was no use. I got into Paris just after seven this morning and took a cab straight to Claudine’s apartment in Montmartre. She lived alone on the top floor of this crumbly old building in Rue des Trois Frères. When I arrived, there was a police car and a van parked outside but I didn’t think anything of it at first. Then as I was heading up the stairs, these cops and forensics people were coming down, with the concierge who looks after the building. I asked if everything was okay. They asked me who I was coming to see. I said “Claudine Pommier”. They told me what happened.’
Roberta paused for a moment to compose her emotions. ‘It was her neighbour, Madame Lefort, who found her the morning after she was killed. The door was open, and there she was on the bed. Old lady had to be hospitalised for shock. It’s so … so horrible.’
‘It’s bad,’ Ben said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Roberta sniffed, dabbed away a tear and went on. ‘It happened on the same day as the postmark on the letter. She must have posted it just a few hours before she died.’
‘Did she have family?’ Ben asked.
‘She lived alone. Lost touch with her relatives a long time back. Parents were a couple of religious assholes who disapproved of her career in science … oh, shit, Ben. I didn’t mean—’
‘It’s okay.’ He smiled.
‘The only person in her life was a bum of an ex-boyfriend, Fabien. But he was never around even when they were together. The cops couldn’t trace him, had to get a work colleague to identify the body in the morgue. Thank Christ I didn’t have to do it. You can imagine …’ Roberta shook her head, as if trying to clear the horrific picture from her mind. ‘Meanwhile, they were still combing through her apartment for evidence, DNA. Nothing was stolen, apparently. The cops asked me all these questions, who I was, what I was doing there. I gave them the letter she’d sent me, but they didn’t seem interested that Claudine had known beforehand she was in danger. All they could talk about was this bricoleur. Then I talked to the concierge, Madame Bunuel. Gave her my card and said to call me right away if there were any developments. That was when I noticed him the second time.’
Ben narrowed his eyes. ‘Noticed who?’
‘About thirty, tall, dark hair. I thought he was a plain-clothes detective at first. He was hanging around in the background while I was talking to the other cops. Then while I was talking to the concierge, there he was again. Looking at me kind of strangely. But I didn’t think much about it at the time. I left there soon afterwards and just started walking. I was so badly shaken up about what happened to Claudine, I barely knew where I was, let alone where I was going. Before I know it I’m heading into a metro station. Abbesses, I think. Then I noticed the guy from the apartment building again, following me down the escalator, through the tunnels, hanging back like he didn’t think I’d spotted him and didn’t want me to. I kept walking. Tried to lose myself in the crowd. By the time I got to the platform I couldn’t see him anymore. I was thinking I must have imagined it. But then as the train pulled into the station, there he was again, just a few steps away. Staring at me. It totally freaked me out, Ben.’
‘He didn’t do anything?’
‘Not then,’ she said. ‘He never came any closer, didn’t speak to me. I got on the train and he boarded the same carriage. I didn’t l
ook at him directly but I could see his reflection in the window. Just standing there at a distance, still watching me in this real creepy way. He had his arm up to hang onto the safety strap, and his jacket was hanging open. He had a gun in there, a black handgun, like a Glock or something. I didn’t imagine it.’
Ben felt like pointing out that French plain-clothes detectives routinely carried concealed sidearms in shoulder holsters on, or even sometimes off, duty – but he kept quiet and let her go on talking.
‘I was terrified the carriage would empty and I’d be left alone with him. I waited a couple of stops, then at Saint-Georges I got off. He did the same. Then just as the doors were about to close I pushed through the crowd and jumped back on again – like the trick they do in movies? Worked. I left the sonofabitch standing there on the platform.’
‘And then?’
‘Then nothing. I stayed on the line all the way to Concorde and then ran like hell back up to the street and hailed the next cab I saw.’
Ben was silent for a moment. ‘You mean that’s all that happened?’
Roberta stared at him. ‘What did you want to hear? That he abducted me at gunpoint? Tried to punt me onto the electrified rail in front of all the crowds?’
‘I thought perhaps—’
‘Ben, you weren’t there,’ she said imploringly. ‘It was obvious what was happening. I was so scared. That’s when I had the idea of calling you.’ She paused, blushed a little. ‘I … I’ve looked you up a few times. Maybe more than a few times. So I knew you were in France. At least, I thought you were. When I called, this Jeff person told me you’d moved to England. Gave me an address in Oxford but said you’d been spending a lot of time at this village called Little Denton. Anyway, I didn’t know what else to do except jump on the next Eurostar. Arrived in London a couple of hours ago, rented that car and drove like crazy all the way to Oxford. Took me forever to find your place, then you weren’t home, so I found this place on the map and came out here hoping I’d find you. Ben, please. I’m exhausted and I’m terrified. You’ve got to help me.’