The Alchemist

31

Paris

The pieces of the puzzle were virtually flying together for Luc Simon. The description that the two seriously embarrassed officers had given of the man who’d bundled them into Roberta Ryder’s cupboard exactly matched Ben Hope.

Then had come the report about the Mercedes limo involved in the recent railway incident. The car itself was hot as hell. No registered owner. False plates. Numbers filed off both engine and chassis. Its internal locking system had been altered like a kidnap car. It looked as though it had been used for that kind of purpose too, as someone had obviously been trying to shoot their way out of it with a 9mm handgun.

Whoever that someone was, judging by the analysis report on the spent 9mm case found in the back, they were the same person as the mystery shooter from the scene of the riverside killings. And who was he? It had seemed impossible to find out. But then the cops at the scene of the railway incident had found a business card inside the Mercedes. The name on the card was Benedict Hope.

There was more. In the parking lot of a nearby bar-restaurant they’d found the Citroën 2CV that had been mixed up in the railway incident. The missing grille badge, traces of paint from the Mercedes, even the dirt on the wheels, all matched the railway scene. The 2CV was registered to Dr Roberta Ryder.

And it got even better. When the forensic team had gone through Ryder’s apartment with a fine-tooth comb, they’d found something. Right in the spot where she’d claimed her attacker had been lying dead, a speck of blood that whoever had cleaned the place up had missed. Simon bullied forensics into the fastest DNA test they’d ever done, comparing it against samples from Ryder’s hairbrush and other personal effects. The blood wasn’t hers. It did, however, match DNA samples from a grisly find that had turned up in the Parc Monceau. A severed human hand.

The hand’s previous owner had been one Gustave LePou, a criminal with a long history of sex offences, aggravated rape, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary and two suspected murders to his credit. It looked as though Ryder had been telling him the truth after all. But why had LePou been in her apartment? Was it just burglary? No chance. Something bigger was going on. Someone must have hired LePou to kill her, or to steal something from her-or maybe both. Simon felt like kicking himself that he hadn’t taken her seriously at the time.

More questions. Who had covered up the traces of LePou’s death, removed his corpse from Ryder’s apartment, chopped it up and tried, rather unsuccessfully, to dispose of it? What was the connection with Zardi, the laboratory assistant, and had the same people killed him? Where did Ben Hope fit in-was he the Englishman who Roberta Ryder had told him was in danger? If the railway incident had been meant to kill Hope, when Simon had seen him later that evening he looked pretty cool for someone who’d just narrowly escaped a horrific death. Where were Hope and Ryder now? Was Hope predator or prey? The thing was a complete enigma.

Simon was sitting in his cramped office drinking a coffee with Rigault when the expected fax came through from England. He tore it out of the machine. ‘Benedict Hope,’ he muttered as he read. ‘Thirty-seven years of age. Oxford educated. Parents deceased. No criminal record, not a parking-ticket. Squeaky clean, the bastard.’ He slurped his coffee.

He passed the sheet to Rigault as the fax started churning out a second page. It spat the paper into his hand and he read it, his eyes darting along the lines. Across the top of the sheet was the British Ministry of Defence letterhead. There was a lot of text below. Official stamps and confidentiality warnings in large bold print everywhere. The second page was more of the same. So was the third. He whistled.

‘What’s that?’ Rigault asked, looking up.

Simon showed him. ‘Hope’s military record.’

Rigault read it and his eyebrows rose. ‘Fuck me,’ he breathed. ‘This is serious stuff.’ He looked up at Simon.

‘He’s our mystery shooter, no doubt about it.’

‘What’s he doing? What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ Simon said, ‘but I’m going to bring him in and find out. I’m putting out an alert on him right now.’ He picked up the phone.

Rigault shook his head and tapped the fax printout with his fingers. ‘You’re going to need half the French police force to catch this fucker.’