Into The Fire (36 page)

‘A precaution.’

‘In case they were real?’

‘You could say that.’

‘What would you say?’ She is growing tired of this. It must show on her face. He looks down at his feet.

‘I would say that Dr Iain Holloway was a very intense, focused and driven man; that he had an agenda and would have followed it anywhere; that he would have made his facts fit his narrative, and his facts were not ones that would be useful to France.’

‘What facts?’

The priest studies his nails. She waits; she can wait all day if she has to. In time, he says, ‘The doctor was a man for whom the identification of ancient remains was a vocation. Accordingly, he was given unprecedented access to bones of our royal lineage, in part to establish the exact identities and relationships therein. He read into the collection theories that fitted his own inclination. They were not necessarily based in historical veracity. Capitaine—’ He reaches out a clawed hand. ‘I will not say more, and whoever they once were, the bones in question are now gone. You can make as much of a fuss as you like, but in the end, hounding a dying man may not help your husband’s appeal to the people. The elections are on Sunday and it matters to all right-thinking people that Christelle Vivier not win. Do not add to her chances. Instead, do what you do well: find the arsonists who would burn Orléans. And know that nobody in this church was responsible for the death of Iain Holloway.’

He takes a step back, lays his right hand on the copy of the scripture that lies on the altar. ‘On that, I give you my word.’

He’s right at least in the first part; it takes no imagination at all for Picaut to see what the headlines will say if she drags a dying priest to the station and charges him with … what? Destruction of ancient relics of questionable provenance? She would have to prove they existed in the first place. Already, she can hear Ducat’s laugh.

‘Where can I find you?’ she asks. ‘Apart from here.’

He pulls a small card from his inner pocket, scribbles a mobile phone number on it. ‘I sincerely hope you never have occasion to use this.’

She calls Garonne as Patrice pulls out on to the Orléans road. ‘Can you still see Susong?’

‘Three cars ahead. She’s going straight back to Orléans.’

‘Good. Bring her in.’

ANOTHER DEMONSTRATION FILLS
the streets. Orléans’s youths are not just taking back the night in the name of the
Front National
by their thousands, they are taking back the days, too.

They are marching peacefully thus far, but are creating monstrous tailbacks in the evening traffic. Patrice and Picaut are caught in the mother of all queues when Garonne calls in to say that he and Rollo have arrested the Susong woman and will hold her incommunicado until Picaut can reach them.

‘You might want to come in the back way,’ he says. ‘The entire French press is camping out on the front steps, waiting to smother you in media-love. They know you went to see Cheb Yasine. If they thought you might be our national hero before, they’re bloody certain of it now.’

‘Oh, Jesus,
fuck
!’ Her fist bounces off the dashboard. ‘How the fucking hell do they know that? Garonne, if you told them …’

‘Do I look like I want to wear my balls for a necklace?’ She can see his grin in her mind’s eye. Truly, he is thawing. He says, ‘Trust me, I want to see Yasine brought down, and telling the media is a fast way to see him skip the country. My money’s on your ex-husband. The Bressard media machine knows everything.’

‘Whoever it is, I’ll kill him.’

‘We’re right behind you, chief.’

She throws her phone in her pocket. ‘Fuck them all.’

Patrice rolls his eyes, but he flicks on the indicator and pulls out into the left lane. They are at least moving forward when her phone rings again: Luc.

She is ready to eviscerate someone and here is the perfect target. ‘What the
fuck
are you playing at? Who told you, and why the hell did you have to spew it to the press?’

‘I haven’t told anyone anything, Inès, I swear. The first I knew of it was from the Deux–Quatre bulletin. You shouldn’t—’

‘Luc Bressard, if you even think you have the right to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do, I’ll break your—’

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ He is close to panic, which is novel. She’s heard him irritable, sullen, morose, exultant, frivolous and happy, but never within touching distance of panic. ‘Please, you must believe me, I didn’t say anything to anyone.’ He swallows. She can hear the breaths he takes to calm himself. He says, ‘I don’t want to lose you.’

She has no answer to that. Beside her, Patrice murmurs,
My Precioussssss
… She fights not to laugh.

‘Why are you calling?’

‘To make amends. Don’t go to the police station; it’s mayhem. If you can get to the hotel where we held the press conference, we can try to divert the press mob. At the very least, you and I can do another small event and calm them down.’

‘“Small” being a hundred and fifty men and women in a dining room suite with television cameras on every wall? Get real. I might fall for that once, but never again.’

‘Please. Think about it. We’ll keep it really, really small. On-the-steps small, with Landis keeping it tight. No more than a couple of sentences each. Inès, they’re scared and they want someone to rescue them and you’re their hero of the moment. They’re ready to crown you saviour of Orléans and you know what comes after that. It’s madness out there. Someone has to do something.’

‘Fuck you.’

She hangs up.

‘Fuck. Fuck.
Fuck!
Fuck him and his fucking mind games. I hate that man, and all his family, did I mention?’

‘Not in words, but your body language is pretty eloquent.’ Patrice is manoeuvring through a chicane of parked cars, still heading towards the station. ‘Shall we book a flight to somewhere safer? Iraq maybe? Or Syria? You’d have to wear a black sack with an eye slit and they’d cut my hands off with a blunt pair of scissors for having wrong-coloured hair, but the press would probably find they had better things to do than follow you around.’

It’s impossible to be angry for long in his company. Picaut leans her fist on the glass and her head on her fist and stares out of the window. ‘And let whoever is pretending to be Monique Susong get away with it? I don’t think so. We’re going to the—’

Her phone rings again, and, again, it’s Luc.

She answers wearily this time. ‘Luc, give up. I’m not doing another press conference however much you beg, so do us both a favour—’

‘Inès, please. I hate this as much as you do, believe me. But you
can’t
go back to the station. There are over a hundred paparazzi waiting outside and they’ve gone way beyond sanity. They’ll beatify you on the steps and then tie you to a stake in a marketplace. If you come to the Maison, I’ll see you’re kept safe, I promise.’

‘Oh, God …’ She raises a brow to Patrice, who shrugs and starts to cut back across the traffic.

To Luc’s taut, waiting silence, Picaut says, ‘We’re on our way.’

They park two blocks south of the Hôtel Jeanne d’Arc and walk up. Picaut takes off her leather jacket and slings it over her shoulder; it’s not as good as swapping with Lise, but it’s better than nothing.

It works until they draw into sight of the front steps of the Maison de la Pucelle, but there’s a TV camera crew hanging around outside with no obvious intent but an eye to the main chance. Picaut sees them just too late, a fraction after she has been seen.

‘Captain!’

‘Capitaine Picaut! Is it true that you went—?’

‘Inès!’ A woman’s voice: friendly, assured. ‘In here!’

The sound pulls her into the narrow doorway to her left: the entrance to the museum of the Maison Jeanne d’Arc, where the Maid is reputed to have stayed during the lifting of the siege. After the cathedral, this is the second most famous building in Orléans.

Patrice bundles in beside her. The door closes. A lock turns. They are in darkness only briefly. Lise Bressard flips a light switch.

‘I’m so, so sorry.’ Luc’s cousin is standing by the door wearing a five thousand euro Saint Laurent biker jacket that is nothing at all like Picaut’s, but is probably as close as Lise can get. It suits her.

She is crisply, blisteringly angry and that, oddly, suits her too, particularly given that Picaut is not the focus of her ire.

‘Inès, my entire family should be lined up against a wall and shot. I swear to you, if we get through this in one piece, I’ll have Landis and Luc deported to a penal colony.’

‘I don’t think we have any of those left.’ Picaut is amused, in spite of herself. ‘They went out of fashion after the last war.’

‘Then I’ll create one. The Americans will help me; they know how. In the meantime, can the two of you wait here and trust me if I lock you in? I know it feels like a dungeon, but the door’s thick enough to keep the press out, at least for a bit.’ She gives a brisk smile. ‘I’ll bring you Luc’s head on a plate when I come back.’

Picaut and Patrice are laughing as she leaves. And then not. The interior of the Maison turns out to be a short, dimly lit hallway with a reception desk just inside the door and an oak-panelled display room to the left where the lighting is barely worth the name. Stairs lead up from the end of the hall, but they are roped off and Picaut has no reason to think that she’ll find anything more interesting up there than down here.

‘Down here’ is the museum, a place oddly muted in its praise of the city’s saviour. A short film runs in a continuous loop with commentary in English or French –
your choice!
– describing the myth of the peasant girl who saw visions of saints and angels that ordered her to save Orléans, and so France, from the depredations of the English. Moving on from that are depictions of her life and death and all that has grown from them.

‘You’d think they could do better than this.’ Patrice makes a circuit of the room, lifts things from the walls, stares through thin glass at mock-ups of Orléans under siege. Next to one of these is a presentation showing the many images of the saint herself as she has been seen in the time since her death: always lean, brightly armoured, monumentally over-horsed. Only her hair changes: sometimes long, sometimes short, sometimes dark, sometimes fair. As Christelle Vivier pointed out, at no time has anyone suggested she was a redhead.

Picaut slides down the wall to sit on the floor by the entrance. Patrice gazes at her, owl-eyed, then back at the pictures. ‘The resemblance is perfect.’

‘Drop dead.’

‘Just saying.’

Cheerful as ever, he abandons the displays and folds down on to the floor across from Picaut. Her skin prickles in a way she has nearly forgotten. There is a moment’s stillness that lengthens as she scours her memory for other times when they have been alone in each other’s company like this. In the car, obviously, but that doesn’t count; they were both looking at the road.

She tries to think of something to say. He doesn’t rescue her until the silence has stretched for too many heartbeats. Then his eyebrows flick up and down (does he pluck them? She thinks not, they are too strong) and, pulling his laptop from his bag on to his crossed knees, sets to work.

Within half a dozen keystrokes, vivid, vibrant colours – cerise, magenta, emerald, citron – leak up from the display to throw kaleidoscope patterns across his face and the metallic blue of his hair. Eerie orchestral music fills the small room.

Today’s T-shirt proclaims that Real music rocks above a photograph of a long-haired rock climber – it could be a woman, Picaut hasn’t decided – executing a move that defies the laws of physics.

Picaut screws up her face. ‘Am I supposed to believe that’s real music you’re playing?’

‘Sorry.’ Patrice hits a button. The noise stops. The cascading colours don’t. ‘Jewelcrafting dailies.’

He says it in English. It doesn’t make any more sense when her brain parses it to French. He helps her out. ‘Warcraft.’

She gives a strangled laugh. ‘You’re playing a computer game in
here
? Is that not some kind of sacrilege?’

‘I wasn’t really playing. More like housekeeping. Finished.’ He hits a few more keys and the swirling colours mute to a faint pearlescent white.

He studies this a while, clicking an occasional key. ‘The comments on TripAdvisor totally slate this place. “The most boring museum in Europe.” Shall we add something to spice it up?’

‘Mostly boring?’

‘Yes!’ His smile is measured in megawatts.

Picaut feigns nonchalance. ‘I had an English teacher who thought the
Hitchhiker’s Guide
was a better way to learn than reading Shakespeare or Dickens.’

‘Now I have teacher envy. We had Sherlock Holmes. It wasn’t quite the same.’

‘It brought you to the police, though, didn’t it?’

‘I think that was more a deal my father made to keep me out of gaol.’

‘Do I want to know the details?’

‘You really don’t.’ He types two words, dizzyingly fast. ‘“Mostly boring” it is.’

With a flourish, he kills the power and closes the lid. The colours in the room die away. His wild kingfisher hair is lying free today, not braided. He pulls it from its band, shakes it out, runs his fingers through, loops it up again. The whole movement is completely unselfconscious. He catches her looking. She feels like an intruder.

He gives the half-smile she is growing to know. ‘So we could talk about our English teachers, or—’

‘Or we could find out what Iain Holloway’s obsession was. The priest said he came with his own agenda. It might not be what killed him, but we need to know what it was before I talk to Monique Susong. How many forums was he on? What else was he doing?’

‘He was one of the eight thousand people who downloaded your father’s paper when he made it open source.’

‘You can find that out? How?’

His smile is sad, and guarded. ‘I have a friend who works for TAO, also known as Tailored Access Operations, the cyber-warfare wing of the NSA.’

‘You mean he’s a hacker,’ she says. ‘Like you.’