Matrioshka

MATRIOSHKA

Copyright 2012 Daniel Kennedy

Smashwords Edition

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Cover designed by Daniel Kennedy. ‘Clown’ artwork with grateful thanks to Aaron Florento. aaronflorento@gmail.com

For Zac

1.

The voice of Rod Stewart issued in the background from the Bose speakers mounted on the walls. The song was For All we Know, from the first of the series of Great American Songbook recordings.

Jekyll was asleep on the sofa in the living room area. He’d decided December was indoors weather, only to be tested outside with his nose at about eleven in the morning and later before he jumped on her bed around midnight. His head had fallen over the side of the comfortable couch and his ears dangled almost to the floor. From time to time a rumbling noise came out of his nose or throat, part bark, part whine and part the sound caused by his jowls jittering as the air passed by them.

Kate Bannon stood in the inner courtyard of the hacienda style house, the living areas in front of her and bedrooms in wings to either side. The courtyard was open to the sky and above her the heavens shimmered with a vivid blue.

Despite the cool temperature the wide double doors were open and through them she could see the village clearly. The squat olive and orange trees in the foreground enhanced the scene, extolled its serenity.

She’d been trying to paint the scene but it wasn’t working. The scenery was too beautiful. It needed a master to capture its serenity.

She’d picked up the mail from Manolo, the village postman, but hadn’t opened it yet. The two items lay on the kitchen table as an unwanted intrusion into her calm composure. One would be a bill or a Christmas card, although she received few of those. No one emailed her. She disliked modern communications technology and didn’t even have a laptop. The phone was too much in itself.

Her house was on a hillside opposite the church and from it she could see more than 2,000 square kilometres of some of the finest scenery in Europe. Today was offering views of the snow covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada to the north east, while to the south west were mountains that stood guard over the edge of the Mediterranean. At night the lights of the towns along the Guadalahorce valley twinkled like stars placed upside down into an earthly environment.

She packed up the painting and put her equipment away, then went to the living area to open the mail.

As she expected, an electricity bill. Every year the amount got bigger.

The other item was a large envelope with an array of English stamps, sent to a bookshop in Girona and forwarded.

She slid out the contents. A card and a package.

The card was simple. A large grinning picture of Noddy Holder from Slade and inside the message.

‘This is my number. I’m doing nothing for Christmas.’

She opened the card. ‘Here’s to you, Merry Christmas’ Noddy screamed. She burst out laughing. An old Christmas joke. They’d both always said it sounded like Mary Christmas.

She took the wrapping paper off the package. A small book, bound in red leather. The gold lettering on the cover read: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayamm. As translated by Edward Fitzgerald.

There was no inscription. She didn’t need one. The book was old and Adam had once told her he had a first edition of the Rubaiyat. This was it. He wouldn’t want it defiled by handwriting.

Bannon took it to sit and read in her armchair, memories flooding back. The time she told him the Ceasefire was coming and she was going home to Ireland. She’d lied. She knew it couldn’t work between them: both with histories on the opposite side of the political and international fence. She came here, telling no one except her closest friend on the now defunct Council.

But somehow Adam had found her.

But he had to be cautious. So did she. The IRA might belong in the past but now there was R-IRA, the Real IRA and they were more vicious, more dedicated and with better Intelligence than the Provos.

She laid the card on the table but kept it closed. Noddy was fun but it annoyed Jekyll. Slade would be an acquired taste for a grumpy black Great Dane.

It was Jekyll’s growl that she heard first. His hearing was acute, even though by Dane standards he was getting old. It was a second or two later before she heard the crunch of the vehicle drawing up outside on the gravel.

Jekyll rumbled and slumped off the sofa onto the tiled floor, shaking himself awake but made no attempt to get up.

‘Some watchdog,’ she said, wagging a finger at him, shaking her head.

She walked over to the open door as the man came up the steps.

‘Niall,’ she said in surprise. ‘What on Earth are you doing here?’

Niall Ryan was dressed in a full length coat, too heavy for the temperature in Spain. Fine for Dublin. He took it off and held it over his arm. He wasn’t wearing a jacket. His blue and white striped shirt appeared to be of sufficient warmth, collar open, no sign of a tie. His lined face looked as though it had taken a little sun or wind.

‘Old friends pay people visits, Katie,’ he said with a smile. ‘Especially at Christmas.’

‘You never were the Santa Claus type,’ Bannon replied. ‘Or much of the visitor. It’s got to be years. But come on in.’ She went to take his coat but he shook his head.

‘It’s not a long visit. A drink and I’ll be on my way.’

‘I was about to open a bottle of cava. Want to join me?’

‘I’m not big on the fizzy stuff. A stiff jolt of Jamieson’s would do fine.’

He followed her in, closing the doors behind him but halted near the chair when he saw Jekyll lying beside it. The dog eased himself up, squinting at the newcomer through a rheumy eye.

Bannon poured him a drink and handed it to him, then went to the fridge, pulled out a bottle and popped the cork from the cava. She poured a glass for herself and sat down in the chair.

Ryan was still staring at the dog.

Bannon reached out to Jekyll and tickled him behind an ear. ‘It’s okay big fella.’ Jekyll leaned against her to encourage more. ‘This is Niall. He’s a friend.’ She looked up at Ryan and grinned: ‘He’s harmless. That’s not what we tell anyone else, mind. Most people think he’s the Devil. The Spanish don’t like big dogs.’

‘I’m not too sure of him, myself,’ muttered Ryan, watching the dog as he slumped down in front of her feet.

Bannon chuckled and sipped her cava. It was crisply cold. ‘Merry Christmas,’ she toasted herself then looked up at Ryan. ‘Sit down Niall and tell me what this is about. And don’t say you want to take me out carol singing.’

‘There’s not been much singing for a long time, has there Katie?’ he answered, sitting in the other chair and laying the overcoat carefully across his lap. ‘But we had some good times along the way.’

‘Now don’t get maudlin on me,’ she answered with a light laugh. ‘I spoke to Declan a few months back but he never mentioned you. I thought you’d gone to America.’

‘I didn’t go anywhere. I stayed around.’

‘Doing anything particular?’

‘Waiting mostly.’

‘What for?’

‘The right time and new people who haven’t forgotten the old days.’

‘That was so long ago I hardly remember. Are you trying to tell me you’re back with the Cause? You’ve joined up with R-IRA?’

‘I’ve not joined up with anything. I never dropped out. The names changed, that’s all. The Provos, the Continuity, the Real IRA. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any name would smell as sweet.’ He smiled at her. ’And its thorn will tear the body as readily.’

‘I remember you quoted poetry at the flick of a hand.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘But I don’t know what you want with me, Niall. You’ve come a long way for nothing if you’re trying to recruit me. I’m out of the business and staying out.’

‘That’s a pity. You were a good operative. People remember that, Katie. They remember how you worked Grace. Some thought the results you got from your arrangement with him were too good to be true. Did you know they checked up on Grace? He’s still in business.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘The thing is, now they’re wondering about you.’

‘There’s nothing to wonder about.’ There was something about this she didn’t like. Niall was uneasy. She was uneasy. Jekyll stirred and he had a low rumble in his throat. He sensed the unease in both. ‘I did what the Council told me. When they said to lay down our arms I did. I’ve no intention of taking them up again. So thanks for coming, finish your drink. I think you should leave.’

‘Ah, Katie, Katie,’ he sighed. ‘We never laid down our arms. We only laid them aside, waiting for politicians to make another about turn, so we could pick them up again and finish it for ever.’

‘I’m not fighting.’

‘We all are. We’ll fight until Ireland’s free and whole again.’

‘Then you’re mad.’

‘I know that,’ said Ryan. ‘But I suppose I’m what we all used to call a fanatic. Loyal to the Cause and our friends. They think you were a spy, Katie, hand in hand with Grace. You remember that bookshop in Girona? The owner’s dead.’

‘Jordi? Dead!’

Ryan nodded. ‘He worked with Grace and you. He had to go.’

‘I haven’t seen Grace since before the Ceasefire.’

Ryan shook his head. ‘Maybe not seen, but we know you’ve been communicating. We don’t like that. The new Army Council doesn’t want to recruit you Katie.’

‘So what do you want?’

‘It’s not what I want,’ he answered. ‘I like you. I always did but I have to do what they want.’ Ryan laid down his now empty glass. ‘You know how it is. They don’t forget or forgive.’

Bannon sat tensely watching him, silent now.

He stood up, slipping the gun from the overcoat on his lap and placing it on the chair. He carefully fitted the noise suppressor into the rifled barrel, while she sat there, still not believing.

The first shot took her in the left shoulder, throwing her upwards in the chair. It happened without her truly acknowledging that it could. Never forget. Never forgive. Her eyes widened with the shock and disbelief.

The second shot slammed into the other shoulder and she twisted around, blood flowing down, over her clothing, her glass falling and shattering on the tiles.

Jekyll shoved himself up by her side, frightened by the noise. His hackles raised, his growl rumbled like a low tremor of thunder in the distance.

The third bullet smashed into the left knee.

Now she screamed, unable to control the pain. Her body convulsed. She rocked herself from side to side.

The fourth struck in the other kneecap.

Ryan lifted the gun for the final shot between the eyes.

He heard the roar and saw the thing racing across his vision, huge, and black, with yellow-white fangs hanging down from a dripping mouth.

Jekyll hit Ryan with the standing jump he’d perfected as a puppy, all seventy-eight kilos of him smashing into the man, flinging him backwards, sending him sliding along the tiles, the gun still clutched in his fingers.

Jekyll followed, pouncing on him. Ryan screamed as the dog sank his teeth into his arm. There was a confusion of sounds and forms. Jekyll’s muscled body pressing. Ryan’s arms flailing, trying to hit him in the face and the eyes, tearing at his ears. Jekyll’s deafening growls and Ryan’s penetrating cries of terror. Jekyll was clawing at Ryan’s face and eyes with his huge paws, the uncut claws ripping great gaping gouges in the flesh.

For a moment, through her blurred vision, Bannon saw the canine fury vented on the rolling, quivering, shaking flesh that was Ryan.

She caught a glimpse of shreds of blue and white from his shirt waving in the wind their twisting bodies was generating. His shirt was stained with red and there were puddles of the same colour on the floor.

The gun fired again but Jekyll was standing astride him, back feet either side of the jerking legs, his front paws on Ryan’s chest. He changed tactic and lunged for the throat.

Blood sprayed in the air as he ripped into the artery. There was the sound of flesh and clothing tearing in unison. Ryan was screaming and bubbling, a peculiar frothing sound coming from his mouth and suddenly Jekyll stood up, his teeth still sunk deep into Ryan’s throat, lifting him effortlessly despite the man’s weight, shaking him like a greyhound shakes a dead rabbit.

Then he let go and the remains of the body crumpled on the floor.

Jekyll lifted one leg and, growling in that low rumble, carefully urinated on the body. Then he turned and trotted back to Bannon, a smug look on his face. His jowls were covered in blood and tissue and he nudged Bannon with a wet red-stained nose.

But it had been a bullet too many. The last, fired in desperation as Ryan died, took her in the head. The full five pack of IRA execution.

She slid from the chair and lay there, motionless, on the tiles.

Jekyll dropped beside her, lifted his huge head and laid it across her bloodied chest. He nuzzled her with his nose but there was no response. He stretched out alongside her and began to lick at the blood leaching from her face but there was no life left. He flopped his head back on the body lying there, pressing his side into hers

Across the mist-filled valleys of the Guadalahorce, Jekyll’s mournful howl began to cry out in the now-silence of the afternoon.

2.

He’d lain awake, tossing and turning, counting sheep, using every relaxation method he could remember, but the mind was circuiting in top gear and all he could do was go along for the ride.

Grace was aware of the insistent low ringing of the phone. He shook himself out of the last remnants of the recurring dream he’d been having for the past week and reached for the phone.

‘You took long enough,’ Trescott snapped.

‘Bad dream,’ Grace said. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘You can tell me when you get chance. Right now just listen. I’ve had a phone call from the Embassy in Madrid. Someone’s dead. They wouldn’t say who.’

‘But…’

‘No buts,’ Trescott repeated. ‘No time. There’s an airline ticket waiting for you on the seven a.m. flight from Gatwick to Malaga. There’ll be a rental car at Malaga airport with directions and money in an envelope for you at the ticket office. You may need ready cash. That’s all I know. You’ve only got an hour to get to the airport.’

The phone was down before Grace had chance to say anything.

Madrid? Trescott, his boss, refusing to tell him more? The secrecy, the urgency?

His stomach was already churning.

Three metre high walls surrounded the cemetery on four sides but not in an accurate rectangle. It seemed as though stones had been dropped in a rough measure and cemented where they fell. No one side equalled any other. Like many of the village houses he’d seen today they were hand made, hand designed and hand-cared for. Utilitarian. Meant for use, not visual satisfaction. The cemetery seemed the same to him.

It was, in fact, a mausoleum, as utilitarian as peoples’ homes. Inside the walls, rows of tombs formed aisles four stories high, painted white. Each’ tomb a concrete box in which a coffin was interred within forty-eight hours or so of death.

The huge black dog sat in front of him, his head settled on his paws, the long body stretched out blocking the aisle between two of the tomb walls. He had one bloodshot eye on the wall and the other was closed as if in grievous contemplation.

Christopher Powrie bent down and whispered in his ear.

‘It’s all right, Jekyll,’ he said in his slow Queensland drawl. ‘We’ll go home after all of this and find a bone.’

Jekyll sighed, the folds of his silky skin ruffling as he shuddered with the slight pleasure.

Powrie was a tall man, well over six foot two, with a body built like an old time Western cowboy, which indeed he resembled, in his blue jeans jacket, his wide straw brimmed Stetson style hat, and moleskin trousers held up by a wide leather belt dominated by a heavy brass buckle. His hair and beard had long since turned closer to white than grey and the transformation would soon be complete.

‘Not much to see is there?’ he said, turning to Powrie.

Grace was shorter by three inches and younger by thirty years. His face was tanned but more by wind than sun. Beneath the dark suit he was wearing the body was firm and well built, without being over muscled. His hair had once been blond but now it was darkening. It was cut in conventional style, not too long, not too short. It was his eyes that Powrie had initially noticed. They started out cold as black ice but now were blurred with the emotion he made no attempt to hide.

‘Not a lot,’ Grace answered. Not anything really, he thought. It was all done, the body interred, and the first he’d known of it was when he got here. Now there was nothing more to do. Not here, anyway.

‘Let’s go.’ His voice was low. It might have been the aura of the cemetery. ‘Can we find somewhere for a coffee and talk?’

Powrie nodded. ‘Looks to me like you need a drink. There’s a bar five minutes away.’

‘You’re the tour guide.’ Grace was wrapped in his own thoughts.

‘C’mon Jeykll.’ As Powrie said his name the dog looked up and began to move, levering his front legs up. He shook himself slowly as if ridding himself of his sins. A drool of dribble fell from his jowls. ‘Stupid bastard dog,’ Powrie grumbled, leaning over to wipe him gently with a piece of kitchen towel he took from a pocket. He brought out a plastic bag and dropped the dribble-soaked towel into it. ‘Tools of the trade,’ he grinned. ‘I’ll dump it in a basura as we go past.’

He was still pulling it together. The telephone call, the hire car employee advising him where to find Powrie, the Australian breaking the news about Bannon and telling him she was already interred. That was it.

Powrie had been waiting close to an archway in the old part of the village, the Great Dane placidly on a lead at his side. Now they sat outside the bar, the sun beating down on them, Jeykll seemingly asleep, Powrie watching the young Spanish girls go chatting by.

Apart from Powrie and Grace the only others outside the bar were four women and two men, sitting at the plastic topped tables, drinking café con leche and talking over each in English voices.

‘Estranjero society,’ said Powrie. ‘Every Tuesday there’s the street market. They come here when they’ve done their shopping. They don’t come out much at night. Stay home with Sky telly and booze there.’

‘Was that what Kate did? Street market once a week? Drink at home?’

‘Katie? No. She spoke Spanish like a lot of the Irish in the village. She’d be out watching the football, be up all night until after dawn at fiesta. She knew more about bullfights than most of the Spanish. She could even sing flamenco.’

Jekyll raised his head at the sound of the word Kate, looked with a glint of disgust in his eyes at the people at the tables, then laid his head down again sadly.

Powrie dropped a chunk of spicy sausage by the dog’s mouth and watched it disappear, like a shark swallows minnows.

‘You love that dog,’ said Grace watching the Dane lay his head on Powrie’s foot.

‘Love him,’ snorted Powrie, leaving the foot where it was. ‘Not bloody likely. Snores all night, shits all day.’ He noticed the shocked looks coming from across the tables and deftly lifted his hat and bowed his head to them. ‘Excuse the language, ladies. It’s just too fucking early to be in polite society.’

He turned back to Powrie. ‘Yeah. What were you saying?’

Grace smiled. ‘Nothing. I was going to ask about Kate.’

It was too fast. Grace had accepted that she wanted no part of his life after Christmas passed without her calling him. Now he was trying to bring himself to terms with the reality that he could never be with her again.

‘You said she was murdered.’ He leaned closer to Powrie, speaking quietly.

‘Executed, more like.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I told you there are some Irish here. When they’ve had a bit too much to drink they’re off singing Fenian songs and nobody can stop them.’ He paused. The women were quieter now, he suspected because they were trying harder to hear him. ‘Kate didn’t do that. She joked with them, drank with them but kept her politics to herself. I didn’t tell you exactly how they killed her.’

‘You said she was shot.’

‘Yeah. But it’s how she was shot. One bullet in each shoulder, one in each kneecap and one through the centre of the eyes. That’s what I heard. That’s what they did in the old days, in an IRA execution, or so I’ve read.’

‘No one heard anything?’

‘Not a thing. Jekyll was howling all day and through the night then Maria Elena, who used to help Katie out with cleaning went up to see if anything was wrong. She found Katie. Jekyll was lying across her lap. He’d got blood all over him from where he’d rolled in it, trying to wake her.’

‘No other signs?’

‘The Guardia were here most of the day but they say there was nothing.’

‘What about this Maria Elena?’

‘She thought the house was a bit too clean for normal. Katie wasn’t a tidy person. The only thing other than the blood was that the CD player was still on. The music was over but the power was on and the CD was in the tray. That’s not like Katie. She used to put CDs in their boxes right away when she finished. It was a bit of a fetish. She said CDs got ruined by the sand and gritty dust. There’s a lot of that here.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s all I was told. But it seems to me whoever did it walked in, maybe talked a bit with her with the music in the background, then shot her and walked out again. Into thin air. Not that it would’ve been difficult. Katie’s place is across the valley from the village and if they’d had one of those silencer things on, the sound wouldn’t have carried. No one goes to the house if they don’t have to. Jekyll prowls in the olive grove so everyone keeps away.’

‘There was no sign of anyone else?’

Powrie shook his head. ‘The Spanish see everything except what they don’t want to see, but I don’t think that’s the case here. Katie was well liked.’

‘Nobody saw anyone drive up, or away?’

‘Not that I’ve heard about.’

‘What about outside her house? No one saw anyone sitting there?’

‘Look mate,’ said Powrie, a scowl beginning to creep across his grizzled face. ‘I’m not a bloody policeman. Go ask the Guardia. They handle crime this size. There’s a Guardia post up the road in Yunquera. The local police only read the water meters and stop double parking at procession time.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Grace apologised. ‘I’m just trying to make some sense of it.’

Powrie shrugged and his grin came back. ‘No offence taken,’ he said. ‘It took me a long time to get to grips with it too. Did you know she left me the house? Along with Jekyll? And another house she had up in Catalunya. She used to go up there quite a lot. A place in the hills she said, but close enough to the coast when she wanted it. Just like here. She said the hills were at peace with each other and with us if we wanted them to be.’

‘I guess she hadn’t got anyone else,’ Grace said.

‘Nobody we knew about anyway,’ Powrie admitted. ‘You’re the first non-villager I’ve come across who’d met her.’

‘She’s from my past. We were close once.’

‘I figured as much. So ask away. Anything I can tell you I will.’

Grace thought about it. So many questions. So many unknowns about her life. And now no one would ever know.

‘What about the door? How did they get in?’

‘Nobody in the village locks doors,’ Powrie said. ‘And with Jekyll there no one in his right mind would go in the house alone. The Spaniards are terrified of him. Look at him now. The waiter won’t even bring the drinks over to us. I had to go inside to fetch them. By rights dogs aren’t allowed in bars anyway but who’s going to order him out?’

Jekyll raised his head, acknowledging Powrie’s comment.

‘There’s one thing that does puzzle me,’ Powrie added. ‘Maria says Katie wasn’t shot in the doorway. She was in an armchair. The blood showed that. Her back was to the door and it was shut. So my guess is that she let the killers in. They wouldn’t have got past Jekyll otherwise. I suppose I’m saying whoever did it knew Katie and she allowed them in, almost like friends. Then they shot her. That’s what I don’t understand.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t understand why the dog didn’t go for them," said Powrie.

One of the women at the tables was standing up. She had a small poodle in her arms. It had a collar with a bell, tinkling now. Jekyll heard the sound and looked up. The woman tucked the poodle tightly to her bosom and slid past, giving Jekyll a wide berth.

‘Luego, Beryl,’ Powrie called out. She ignored him and Powrie grinned.

‘I don’t drink as much as I used to,’ he said, lowering his voice again. ‘But they don’t know that. They think I’ll keep drinking from now on until the small hours like a drunken old fart. I prefer to let them think it.’ He looked Grace in the eyes. ‘I said I’m not a policeman but I’ve been around. I think you are a policeman. That’s what you look like to me.’

Grace nodded. ‘Detective Inspector,’ he said. ‘New Scotland Yard.’

‘Special Branch?’

‘It doesn’t exist any more.’

‘But you knew Katie when it did.’

Grace looked up sharply. It was a statement, not a question.

‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ Powrie said. ‘Alcohol hasn’t eaten all of the grey cells. They killed Katie IRA style. You admitted you’re a copper so I added two and two and that makes you and Katie together in my book.’

Grace sat there, saying nothing.

Powrie shook his head as if not understanding the silences. He leaned closer. ‘So what are you going to fucking well do about it?’

‘Find them,’ Grace answered, almost without thinking.

‘And then?’

Grace tightened his lips.

Powrie sat back, waiting for words that didn’t come.

It was a minute or so before he spoke again. ‘There’s supposed to be a humdinger of a storm coming through here from the North, any day now. They’re forecasting snow like they haven’t had it since Antarctica was created. It might not come this far down but it’ll ground the planes over all of Spain so you’d better get your arse into gear and fly back to England.’

Grace thought about it, then stood up.

‘Keep some flowers by Kate,’ he said. He took out the envelope of cash that Trescott had arranged to have given to him at Gatwick airport, pulled out several £50 notes and shoved them across the table. ‘That should cover it for a little while.’

Powrie shoved it back.

‘Keep your money,’ he said. ‘Kate wouldn’t want flowers but I was going to do it anyway.’

‘Thanks. Is there anything else I can do?’

‘You know what I want.’

‘No. I don’t know anything about you. Least of all what you want.’

‘I want what you want.’ Powrie leaned back in his seat, his blue eyes glistening in the winter sun. ‘I want you to find the bastards who killed Katie. Then I want you to kill them. Every last fucking one.’

3. Northern Spain.

The snow began about two a.m., starting life as chunks of ice falling from high above the Pyrenees but whittled away to the size of granulated sugar by the time it pattered on the rooftops of the weathered clay roofs of the villages.

As the cloud layer thickened the temperature rose and the snow turned into the friendly soft flakes of a million childrens’ snowfield dreams, drifting and dancing in the breeze, riding thermals like gliders in the black of night, sighing gently as they finally finished the dance and lay exhausted on whatever surface was close.

Slowly but surely each layer of snow built up on the flakes beneath them, suffocating them in their innocence.

Across the breadth of Northern Spain the snow invaded the silence.

It reached down into Andalusia, playing hide and seek with the alleyways and broad avenues of timeless Granada, driving on to the Sierra Nevada and even dusting Kate’s village with a post Christmas miracle of snow.

It was wonderful. But relentless.

The fog came down on the evening of the fifth day.

A clammy, impenetrable fog that covered Figueres, about forty kilometres south of the French border and wrapped it in a shawl of white invisibility. Nothing moved. Even the street lights couldn’t penetrate the gloom.

Through the night there were sounds. The snapping of a telephone line, the ping of breaking wire, the soft hiss of snow sliding off pine tree, the crunch of something that might be passing but no one wanted to know.

At eight o’clock or thereabouts next morning Carlos Vicente left his small apartment near the town centre to check out the weather and see if finally, after a week, he could get to work at the café on the edge of the town square

The snow had stopped and atop the cupola of the Dali Museum he could actually see the red glow of the simulated flickering flames inside.

He walked down a narrow lane to the back of the Museum and as he did the fog began to clear. First the cupola emerged into full view, then the fourteen giant eggs that dominated the parapet and finally the building itself.

Vicente stopped in his tracks, unable to believe what he was seeing.

From the base of five of the eggs, hooded figures, dressed in the rough woollen smocks of priests, dangled motionless by their necks at the end of ropes, their shapes and faces hidden by hoods. His face went white and hurriedly he made the sign of the cross over his body.

Then he saw that there was something different to one of the hanging figures. He moved closer to get a better view.

One hooded priest was upside down, ropes fastened at the ankles. The robes had fallen over the legs and the hips and frozen in folds as though it were a white sculpted statue, symbolically placed amid the equally strange structural embodiments of Dali’s ideas.

He began to tremble in fear.

Dressed like a priest it might be. Dead it certainly was, but even with the hood and most of the gown frozen below the head so that it could not be seen, one thing was obvious. It was not a priest.

It was unmistakably the torso of a naked, hanging woman.

Two days later.

Jeanne de Belcier was trapped in the darkness.

She’d fallen from the cliffside, scrabbling frantically at passing trees to break her fall, rolling over and over through the prickly scrub, twigs and spiny leaves tearing at her legs, flesh scraping from her body as she came into contact with the sharp flint like stones, and then hit the road and lain still.

How long she lay there she didn’t know. Any moonlight there might have been was obliterated by the mist that had slid up the Pyrenees from Spain and over Albi, in Southern France, but when she came around she could see the tunnel ahead of her.

It offered safety. An escape from the terror.

The dull light that shone from its mouth as she entered had long since vanished and the counterpart light, that reason told her must be at the other end was still not visible. There was only the blackness.

Something brushed at her legs as she ran. A rat? A bird? A snake? She shuddered. Snakes were creatures of her worst nightmares.

It wasn’t a snake.

The ground was covered with broken granite, too rough for snakes. The bed of an old railway line, the sleeper and iron rails long since removed.

There were sounds. Her feet crunching in the granite chips, the kerplonk of a drop of water seeping through the ceiling into a puddle, her own noisy breathing.

How long had it been?

How long since they seized her and bundled her into the van like a sack of potatoes?

How long since they threw her onto the bed in a room that was bare of furniture except a mattress laid over the iron bedspring and they’d stripped her?

How long since she fled from the room, naked except for the rough robe they’d pulled over her?

She’d jumped through the window, oblivious to the glass. The only imperative was to get away.

She’d heard them pursuing her and she fled without any sense of direction.

Now she was here in the blackness with no light in sight.

There hadn’t been time to find shoes. She could feel the granite chips tearing at the soles of her bare feet but she had to keep going. Her hands were moving backwards and forwards, palms open as if she were swimming through the air, using the hands to propel herself forward.

Then she saw the light.

A pinprick in the distance but growing brighter with every passing second. She increased her stride, her run fuelled by panic, her hands outstretched and her baggy robe flapping around her.

The light was brighter, too bright, burning into her eyes and her scream finally emerged, terrible in its anguish.

Because Jeanne de Belcier knew it was all for nothing.

She stopped short of the tunnel exit, the flashlight playing unwaveringly on her face.

She turned but there was no escape. They stood behind her, no more than two metres away, barring her way.

She turned to face the flashlight. It was impossible to see who was holding it but she knew. In whatever guise he might take, it was the Devil.

Hands wrapped around her throat. She felt the windpipe crushing beneath strong fingers.

She made the sign of the Cross in front of her face.

‘No point,’ he said laughing. ‘Make as many crosses as you like. It won’t save you.’

Curiously, in the final seconds before she died, her thoughts were not of her past, or her future whether it be in Heaven or Hell.

Jeanne de Belcier was thinking how atrocious his French grammar was.

The next day.

Emil Salier flexed his muscles as much as he could inside the confines of the small Citroen C1 but it was difficult. He was already over sixty five years old and the days when he could spring out of a vehicle, and do cartwheels if he wished, were long since over.

But he had an urgent need to get to Paris and hadn’t expected to find fog on the A 75 autoroute, at least not fog like this. It had taken everyone by surprise.

It seemed to have ascended from the River Tarn below him and engulfed even the giant towers of the Millau Bridge. Traffic had been at a standstill for nearly an hour and no matter how much he banged on the horn, no one seemed to pay any attention. He could see a couple of cars in front of them and their doors were open. Fools, he thought. When it starts up again I’ll be kept here waiting for them to come back and get into their vehicles.

An hour later the fog began to clear, but none of the traffic moved. Even when he could see half a kilometre or so, the cars stayed where there were, many doors still open. Reluctantly he put on his jacket and got out, closing the car door and locking it behind him. It was better for him to be safe than sorry.

By the time he got to the bridge the crowd was deeply packed with people talking to each other in whispers, or staring at the cobweb of steel girders that supported the road from its pylons.

Salier stood on tiptoe trying to see, until a taller man in front of him realised he was there, and ushered him politely through.

Salier almost fainted.

Not more than ten metres away, wrapped inside the cocoon of the steel stays, were the unmoving figures of four people, dressed in the black robes of monks. Three of them were hanging by their necks and their arms had been splayed out as if to reach the stars.

The fourth was upside down, the robes fallen over the face.

The underwear had been removed, her ankles tied with ropes and her legs splayed. She was most definitely a woman.

Paul Lafrage sat on the edge of the driver’s seat, the door to the long Renault Megane open, puffing at a Gitanes. An ordinary policeman needed to rest whenever he got chance.

Half a dozen more senior policemen were going over the area again, re-examining the bodies, searching for the proverbial needle in some kind of haystack, but he’d been the first one there and seen all he wanted.

Under their Dominican habits, the men were dressed in normal clothing, or at least in trousers and shirts. Someone had removed socks and shoes and replaced them with rope sandals but that was all.

The woman was different.

The woman was covered with cuts and grazes, as though she’d fallen from a great height. Her legs and thighs were scraped and bruised and there were cuts across the face, which he’d looked at only briefly, raising the draped cassock over her features so that he could check.

All he saw at first was a pretty young face, grazed and scratched like the rest of the body. The he saw her eyes, wide open in a terrified stare.

He’d let the clothing fall back in a hurry.

He was after all, just a small town gendarme. The big fish could handle this, and good luck to them. He preferred to be able to sleep at nights. But he could not help but wonder about one thing.

Why had someone pinned a scrap of paper to her habit?

A scrap of paper on which were scribbled the words ‘Jeanne de Belcier.’

4. England.

The wind was blowing from the north west, with sleet falling over the coastal slopes but turning to snow as the cloud crept over the Wessex Downs and the tip of Oxfordshire towards Wiltshire.

It had affected much of Continental Europe for the past three weeks. Now it was southern England’s turn. The snow now gusted over the mysterious White Horse at Uffington and flirted with Dragon Hill before driving on relentlessly towards Salisbury Plain.

Barry Porter, sitting behind the reception desk at the Porton Down facility, was watching the screens from the battery of CCTV cameras. At the moment he was focussed on Dr. Rhoda Aidan, the name on the plastic tag on her gown quite visible, going methodically about her work, tidying up the surgery area, checking that all files were securely locked away. Dr. Aidan was known as a meticulous and careful person, and as far as the security staff was concerned, she was one of the few shining lights in their otherwise dour staff environment.

There wasn’t a lot of laughter these days in Porton Down, Porter thought. He’d been there thirty years and had seen it change, from the days when it was fully contained by the Department of Defence and the Department of Health, to now being part privatised.

He switched attention to the screen showing the half dozen protestors huddled outside the gates. There had been protestors at the Chemical and Biological Warfare complex at Porton Down for as far back as he could remember,