Conspiracy Thriller 4 E-Book Bundle. Scott Mariani

      Chapter Forty-One

      It wouldn’t have been the first time Ben had broken into a house in the dead of night, but having a key to the place did make matters far easier. After coasting the Laguna to a halt a long way down the road, he crept silently through the garden of Fabrice Lalique’s former home. He was wearing a pair of tight-fitting calfskin gloves borrowed from Jacques Rabier, and carried a small flashlight in his pocket. His bag, containing the precious letter that he was determined to keep from Jude’s eyes, was hidden under the driver’s seat of the Laguna.

      Crouching in the shadows of the bushes, Ben peeled back his sleeve and checked the luminous dial of his watch. It was just after three. The wind was coming up, blowing cold from the north and rustling the trees. Ben paused under cover for a moment to scan the top floor windows which, according to Rabier’s detailed sketch of the house’s layout, were those of the formidable housekeeper’s quarters in the converted attic. The windows were all in darkness. Cerberus was, seemingly, tucked up for the night and fast asleep.

      Ben padded across to the back door. The old iron key Rabier had given him was heavily greased to deaden its sound in the lock. He slipped it in and turned it slowly, easing the lock open millimetre by millimetre. The door opened without a creak. Ben let himself inside and waited a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the near-total darkness. He listened. Except for the ticking of a grandfather clock in the hallway and the whistle of the wind around the eaves outside, the place was in utter silence.

      Ben had the layout of the house committed to memory. At the end of the hallway was a back staircase flanked either side by two doors. The door on the right led through to the salon, the one on the left to another staircase that descended to the wine cellar, part of which Fabrice Lalique had converted into his office. That was where Ben was heading. With the door closed silently behind him, he turned on the flashlight and crept down the well-worn stone steps.

      The cellar still housed an impressive collection of wine, with well-stocked racks of dusty bottles stretching away into the shadows. Old Lalique had certainly enjoyed a tipple, Ben thought, casting the beam of his torch on an empty glass and a half-full recorked bottle of Bordeaux sitting on a little table next to a chair among the wine racks. The dead man’s last drink.

      At the other end of the cellar was the priest’s home office, which had been decorated with typical French flair. The desk was a fine old oak antique, the sofa was luxuriously scattered with cushions, and the Persian rug was tastefully frayed around the edges. An ornamental velvet curtain was tied back with a tasselled rope.

      Shining the flashlight around the office, Ben noticed the collection of framed drawings that hung on the walls – a pastel of some horses in a meadow, a charcoal sketch of a country church, a couple of landscapes – which all bore the same signature, F. Lalique. The priest had been quite a gifted artist. The same couldn’t be said for the painter of the gaudily-mounted portrait of the Pope that hung over the desk, next to a large crucifix.

      Ben shone the torch down to the desk. Its top was bare apart from a portable phone, but the marks were visible where the rubber feet of the priest’s computer had worn against the varnish on the oak surface. The machine was probably still sitting in an evidence room in the nearest Préfecture de Police, thoroughly fingerprinted, gutted of its hard drive, the offending material all logged and stored as a testament to the deceased’s undying shame.

      At that moment, Ben thought he heard a sound from upstairs. He instantly turned off the torch and froze immobile in the darkness, listening. Had it been the sound of a door, somebody moving about in the house? Or just a loose shutter banging in the wind? He waited several minutes and heard no more, then turned the torch back on and continued examining Lalique’s desk. It was a double-pedestal type, with a wide middle drawer and four smaller ones in columns either side. Nine in all. He slid open the middle drawer and spent a while combing through the papers untidily stuffed inside. Nothing of interest there.

      The next seven drawers Ben tried were just as messy. Either Lalique had been the world’s worst organiser, or the cops had already rifled carelessly through his stuff, searching for further evidence relating to his crimes. But if they’d thought they were going to uncover hot leads to the paedophile networks of the entire Midi-Pyrénées region among all this routine church paperwork, letters from parishioners, bills and receipts and a ton of miscellaneous rubbish, they must have been bitterly disappointed. It looked as if they’d taken virtually nothing away except the computer.

      The last drawer Ben tried was the bottom left. It was stiffer than the others, and he had to give it a jerk to open it. The drawer was comparatively empty. As it slid open, a handsome old ebony fountain pen rolled to the front. The drawer contained a few other miscellaneous items like a spare pair of bifocal spectacles, a box of ink cartridges for the fountain pen and another of paper clips. Among the junk was a slim leather wallet containing the dead man’s passport and national identity card. Shining his torch on the pages of the passport, Ben found the Israeli customs and United States Immigration stamps in the back, showing the dates of Lalique’s visits. He hadn’t been anywhere else out of Europe in the eight years since the passport had been issued.

      It was interesting information, as far as it went – which wasn’t nearly far enough and didn’t tell Ben anything he hadn’t already known. He was beginning to worry that he wasn’t going to find anything helpful here. He put the passport and ID card back in their wallet, replaced them where he’d found them and pushed the stiff drawer firmly shut. There was a soft rumble and clunk as the fountain pen rolled to the back of the drawer and came to a rest against the rear partition.

      Ben was about to move away from the desk – frustration rising as he thought about where to look next – when he stopped. Hold on, he thought. Something odd there. He opened the drawer again. The fountain pen rolled forwards again to the front. He shone the torch inside, then reached in with his hand, all the way so that his fingers touched the back partition. It was a deep desk and he could get his arm into all the other drawers right up to the elbow. Not this one. For some reason, the bottom left drawer appeared to be about four inches shorter.

      When Ben tried to slide the drawer out completely, he found that something was preventing it from coming free. Groping blindly around inside, his fingers touched against a little spring catch. When depressed, it allowed the drawer to be removed completely from the desk.

      And now Ben saw why the drawer was shorter than the others. At the back was a hidden compartment, four inches deep. He smiled to himself. Good old police inefficiency could be a blessed thing sometimes.

      The secret compartment contained just two items. One was a pocket-sized artist’s sketch pad, the other a little address book. Curious, Ben picked up the sketch pad first and opened it. On the first page was a rough version of Lalique’s drawing of the horses; on the second an early draft of one of his landscapes. Thinking he’d hit another dead end, Ben flipped one last page before giving up.

      The next sketch was something very different. It was a simple pencil line drawing of an object that was unmistakably a sword, but one of a kind Ben had never seen before. A strange-looking weapon, plain and simple in design, with a definite Middle-Eastern style to its peculiar sickle-shaped blade and curved hilt. He was by no means an expert, but from the proportion of handle to blade he guessed the real-life sword wasn’t huge, perhaps three to four feet long overall, not much larger than some big machetes he’d seen.

      Ben turned over another page and found another sketch of the same weapon, this time drawn in more careful detail, down to the tiny inscriptions running the length of the blade. He peered closely at them, but couldn’t make them out.

      It couldn’t be a coincidence. This had to be the sword.

      As Ben was staring at the drawing, he heard the sound again. This time, it definitely wasn’t the wind. Somebody was