The Tenth Chamber

TWENTY-FIVE

Wednesday

Luc had only one suit and fortunately it was dark, appropriate for funerals.

There were two in rapid succession, Jeremy’s in Manchester and Pierre’s in Paris.

There was an interesting bond between a graduate student and a thesis adviser. Part parental, part filial, part comradeship. It didn’t always work out that way. Some professors were stand-offish. Some students were immature. But Jeremy and Pierre were good students and close friends and he thought he would never fully recover from their murders.

That morning, with a thick head, dry mouth and pangs in his chest, he caught one of the few direct flights from Bordeaux to Manchester.

Jeremy’s funeral was a rather bloodless Church of England affair. The family and parishioners were stoical. It wasn’t clear that the minister, a high-pitched Irish fellow, had ever met Jeremy judging from his generalities and platitudes about a man being plucked from the flock at such a young age.

Outside the church, in a gritty central Manchester neighbourhood, a cold rain was falling and no one wanted to hang about too long. Luc waited for his turn and introduced himself to Jeremy’s family, an older couple who had clearly conceived their boy at the edge of female fertility. They seemed confused by it all, almost post-concussive, and Luc didn’t put any demands on them. They had heard of him through Jeremy and acknowledged that and his father thanked him for coming all the way from France. Then his mother asked, ‘Were you there, Professor Simard?’

‘No ma’am. I was in England.’

‘What on God’s earth happened?’ she said. It wasn’t clear from the glassy look on her face, she really wanted to know.

‘The police think it was a robbery. That’s all I was told. They don’t think he suffered.’

‘He was a good boy. I’m glad of that. He’s at peace.’

‘Yes, I’m sure he is.’

‘He was keen on this archaeology,’ his father said, snapping out of his daze, long enough to start crying.

Rather than fly directly back to Paris, he took a commuter jet to Heathrow and jumped in a cab. Sara was still in communicado, but he couldn’t let it stand. He was in England. He’d exert the effort and try to make amends.

She lived in St Pancras, a stone’s throw from the British Library and a short enough walk to her job at the Institute of Archaeology.

At Ossulston Street, he got out of the cab into the driving rain of a muddy-skied evening. He had no umbrella and his suit jacket soaked through in the time it took to figure out which entrance to the block of flats was hers. From the directory, Flat 21 was on the third floor. Its entrance was in a well of sorts, protected from the rain, which was fortunate because there was no answer to his persistent buzzing.

He was about to call it quits when a woman came to the door. It wasn’t Sara. The woman, about Sara’s age, was stringy-haired and wore no make-up. A long baggy sweater hid her figure.

‘I’m sorry, were you ringing Sara Mallory’s bell?’

Luc nodded.

‘I’m her neighbour, Victoria. The walls are frightfully thin. Actually, I’ve been worried about her. Do you know where she is?’

‘No, that’s why I’m here.’

‘You’re French, aren’t you?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I am.’

She looked at him like a robin about to pluck a worm from its hole. ‘Are you Luc?’

She took him up to Flat 22, gave him a towel and made tea. She was a freelance writer who worked from home. As she told it, Sara and she had become friends from the day Sara moved in. When Sara was in town, they had dinner at each other’s flats or the local curry house once or twice a week. They’d been emailing and texting sporadically during the dig. She was clearly clued into Sara’s life and she looked Luc over with knowing eyes that seemed to proclaim: So that’s the famous Luc! That’s what all the fuss is about!

She poured the tea and said, ‘She texted me Saturday night from France. She said she was coming back to London Monday night. Now it’s Wednesday. I saw what happened at Ruac on the news. I’ve been frantic but no one’s been able to tell me anything. Please tell me she wasn’t caught up in that.’

‘No, no, she wasn’t there when it happened, thank God. She was with me in Cambridge Monday morning,’ Luc explained. ‘We were visiting a man in hospital when I was called away to deal with the tragedy. I went back to France and left her in Cambridge. I haven’t heard from her since.’

‘Oh my,’ she said, with a look of fright.

‘Are you positive she couldn’t have come back to London without your knowledge?’

She confessed she couldn’t be sure and volunteered that she had a key to Sara’s flat. Perhaps they might check together.

Sara’s flat was identical in size and shape to her neighbour’s but it was a world apart in atmosphere. Unlike Victoria’s drab décor of lumpy furniture in greys and whites, Sara’s vibrated with colour and energy and he recognised it straight away as a re-creation of sorts of her old Paris apartment he knew so well. They’d made love on that red sofa. They’d slept under that peacock-blue bedspread.

Victoria buzzed around, checking the flat, and announced, ‘She’s not been back. I’m sure of it.’

Luc had another card in his wallet from the investigating officers in Cambridge.

‘I’m going to call the police.’