The Memory Man Read online

  ‘And if I fail? Do you intend to kill me?’

  ‘I will not stand in the way of a true believer who makes his peace with the Almighty,’ the stranger said. It wasn’t an answer.

  ‘You presume to act as His vessel? To take my confession?’

  ‘He already knows. He has already seen. Is that not so?’ It was a rhetorical question. ‘You need to say the words, Jacques. That is all. Not for my benefit, for your own. What happens once you have admitted your sin is on your conscience.’

  ‘You seem to know me, so tell me, what do you think I have to confess? What laws have I broken?’

  ‘You know as well as I do. Your sin is silence. Your guilt is complicity. You saw but said nothing. That is on you.’

  ‘Hence the tongue?’

  ‘You could have prevented it. All you had to do was speak out. I am giving you a second chance.’

  ‘Who would listen? The police? Is that what you want? After all this time? If I offer my confession as a truly penitent soul and receive God’s forgiveness isn’t that enough?’

  ‘You must live with your choices, Jacques. Others may speak out even if you do not.’

  ‘I’m not the only one? Of course I’m not,’ he answered himself. ‘Whose tongue was it?’

  But his would-be father confessor didn’t answer him. Instead he retreated from the makeshift cell and closed the door, locking Tournard once more in the half-dark. Until that moment he hadn’t really believed his captor was a killer; he had no such doubts now. He clasped his hands in prayer, though thought better of sinking from the stinking mattress to the hard floor, and instead bowed his head, looking for guidance. His mumbled entreaties fell upon deaf ears.

  God was not listening to him.

  SEVEN

  Ernesto Donatti was glad to be off the plane. He was not a good flier. The flight from Rome had taken a little over two hours, which in the cramped confines of the discount airline compression chamber in the sky was more than long enough. By choice he was a train man. There was an elegance to that form of travel, though the journey to Paris would have taken closer to eleven hours, passing through spectacular countryside, including the mountains of northern Italy, which were proof if any were ever needed of God’s great design. If time had not been so pressing he would have welcomed the solitude of the journey as an excuse to be alone with his thoughts and perhaps work a little. Instead, he walked through the arrivals gate, diplomatic papers in hand, and straight through the customs control without so much as a backwards glace.

  With the wonders of on-board WiFi he had been able to procure both a hire car and a hotel room from thirty thousand feet, which was truly a miracle of the new gods of this modern world. He could, of course, have left the task to one of the secretaries, but he rather enjoyed browsing the listings and looking for something a little bit different from the run-of-the-mill tourist fare, though he was never extravagant in his choices. He had paid in advance for three days and trusted he would need neither the car nor the room for longer than that.

  During the flight he had familiarized himself with Monsignor Tournard, his iPad another of the joys of the modern world. There was plenty to read, but nothing to really make the man stand out from any of his brethren. He was unremarkable in many ways. Perhaps the most interesting thing about him was that he had only taken up his position in the last forty-eight hours. It was more than likely their paths had crossed more than once in the Holy See, but Donatti did not recall ever having spoken directly with him. Tournard’s rise had been slow and steady; he was well liked and respected without ever being considered a rising star, and was well into his sixties before being appointed cardinal. This latest position, although prestigious, was more about him returning to the city of his childhood as a reward for years of faithful service than anything else.

  There were, he realized, gaps in his history.

  It was not uncommon to come across missing months. It often signified the occurrence of some event or scandal the Church preferred to remain secret and thus excised from history as though it never happened. It was less common now in this age of accountability, but forty years ago, fifty, it was no great difficulty to make time disappear. Which made Jacques Tournard infinitely more interesting.

  He scrolled back quickly to the front of the file and noted the redaction code he’d missed first time. Access to everything the Vatican had on the Monsignor would need special authorization, and without a very good reason for the request he wasn’t going to get it. In so many regards his employers were arcane, preferring to gather all shreds of evidence to some uncomfortable truth to themselves and hide them away in the deepest darkest vaults where they would never see the light of day again. In other words, if the truth was uncomfortable enough they’d want it to stay buried, and the fact that Tournard was missing wouldn’t be considered a pressing enough need to grant access to whatever happened during those missing months.

  And more likely than not, whatever they were hiding almost certainly bore little or no relation to the man’s disappearance. It was a long time ago.

  Even so, why send him a tongue? What was the significance? Because it had to mean something, surely? The Monsignor’s man, Blanc, was convinced it was human in origin. Donatti wasn’t familiar enough with his animal anatomy to know which other creatures possessed tongues of the same relative weight and form that they might be mistaken for human, a dog seemed unlikely, but perhaps a sheep?

  His best hope was that the Monsignor turned up alive and well, dishevelled perhaps, disorientated after his adventure, and perhaps suffering from the lingering effects of an episode, dementia, Alzheimer’s, there were credible reasons he might not have returned to work after all, but with every passing hour they became less and less likely, and coupled with the tongue the fact that it was a full twenty-four hours since anyone had seen Tournard was the prime motivation behind his hasty journey from Rome.

  It was mid-afternoon before he was behind the wheel of the hire car; a small Citroën with a boot space that barely held his overnight bag. It would suffice. He keyed the address into the sat nav and drove slowly out of the airport into the endless jam of Parisian traffic. It took another hour from leaving Charles de Gaulle before he made the left on Rue de la Cité and pulled up in front of the building opposite the grand cathedral. He showed his identification to the security guard who approached the window, ready to move him on. Recognizing the seal of the Holy See, the man retreated to the warmth of his booth, leaving Donatti to find his own way.

  Henri Blanc did not cut an imposing figure; indeed, he was utterly unremarkable. He was a skittish little man who didn’t seem to know how to occupy his hands whilst he waited for Donatti. He had no doubt worn a smooth path in the plush pile of the carpet with his endless pacing back and forth since their brief telephone conversation.

  He met Donatti at the door to the receiving room and led him through to the Monsignor’s chambers. Beyond an initial handshake and an exchange of names he said nothing until they were behind closed doors, where he struggled to frame the question.

  ‘Would you like to see the …?’

  ‘The tongue. Yes. Along with all packaging and anything that might have come with it.’

  ‘I shall return presently,’ Blanc assured him, and returned to his own office.

  Donatti took the opportunity to acquaint himself with the room. The cleaner had already taken care of the waste-paper basket, which didn’t bode well for the fate of the package’s wrapping material. He sat behind the Monsignor’s desk, running his fingers across the thick white paper lining the blotter. There were no obvious indentations from the pressure of writing.

  He looked up to see Blanc carrying a small plastic container in one hand and a sheet of brown waxed wrapping paper in the other. He placed both on the desk and took a step back.

  ‘No note?’

  He was obviously about to say no but caught himself in the middle of shaking his head and said instead, ‘The Monsignor pushed something beneat
h the blotter as I first entered chambers. I had completely forgotten …’

  ‘Understandable,’ Donatti said, lifting the leather blotter. ‘It isn’t every day you open the mail on something like that. You did well calling me.’ There was a single folded sheet of paper lying on top of the desk’s green leather inlay.

  Donatti picked it up by one corner and teased it open, careful not to smother what might prove to be key evidence with his own greasy fingerprints. It was one thing to claim the authority of the Papacy within the Holy See, but quite another to pretend at any sort of jurisdiction out here in the real world. Assuming the worst, he was going to need the cooperation of the gendarmerie. Backs needed to be scratched, it was just a fact of life. In Rome, he had contacts with law enforcement. There were people he knew and trusted to be both discreet and relentless in their investigation, and those same people knew and trusted him. This was half a world away. Here he was a stranger, and there was no denying Paris was a strange land. Trust the wrong man and every salacious detail would end up in the tabloids.

  Pulling the cuff of his shirt down over the heel of his hand, Donatti smoothed out the paper well enough to read the words written on it. The address meant nothing to him, but that didn’t matter. It wouldn’t be too difficult to discover whether the sender expected Tournard to find it.

  ‘You know this place?’

  Blanc nodded. ‘Yes, I do. It is a little way from here, but very much walking distance. It is one of the older cafes in the city. There is a wonderful chocolatier next door. You really must indulge …’ Blanc broke off, remembering the purpose of the other man’s visit. ‘Forgive me. I can show you, if you like?’

  ‘That would be helpful.’

  Blanc waited for a moment then left the Monsignor’s chambers and returned a moment later with a gaudy tourist map with oversized cartoonish drawings of all the major landmarks. Donatti studied the simple two-word message below the address: Memini Bonn. Remember Bonn. Those words were enough to send a shiver step by step down the ladder of his spine. He carefully folded the piece of paper and slipped it inside his pocket, turning his attention to the waxed paper the parcel had come wrapped in. There was no blue par avion sticker, meaning the sender had been inside France when they mailed it, and although the franking across the stamps was blurred it was possible to distinguish the city of origin. Calais. Which, Donatti reasoned, made sense in terms of flight, either to the United Kingdom on the ferry, or into the landmass of Europe across the unpatrolled borders. There were thousands of miles of unprotected borders across mainland Europe. He’d once travelled from Verona to Oslo, taking in both Vienna and Prague along the way, without having to produce any form of identification. It was a decent place from which to disappear.

  Or to come closer, hiding in plain sight. That possibility could never be discounted.

  Henri Blanc unfolded the street map and laid it out on the desk.

  ‘The cafe is here,’ he said, drawing a circle to mark its location, ‘and we are here,’ he jabbed a finger at where the cathedral was unmistakably marked. It promised to be a circuitous route at best, an hour or more trapped in the rat’s maze of Parisian back alleys at worst.

  ‘Would the Monsignor have known where to go?’

  ‘Yes. Remember, he grew up in the city and this cafe is amongst the oldest.’

  ‘Popular with the tourists?’

  Blanc shook his head. ‘Not particularly. It is rather off the beaten track. I would suggest it is more the kind of place where the young scholars drawn to Paris can pretend to be in touch with the thinkers of the city’s past.’ For a city that had harboured some of the most creative souls of centuries gone by in her literary salons it was no surprise the young students would be drawn to her cafes in the hopes of capturing some of that spent magic.

  Donatti nodded. In the sender’s place he would have chosen somewhere public to lure Tournard, but more likely a tourist-friendly place that would be used to seeing hundreds of guests pass through its doors every day rather than the kind of place that thrived on a returning clientele. You didn’t want to go somewhere you’d be remembered. He took the choice of venue to mean the sender knew the city. Plenty of people knew Paris, of course, it wasn’t exactly an exclusive club, but it was a first background trait on the profile he was slowly constructing.

  He picked up the container, peeling back the plastic lid to look at the tongue inside. If he had been a gambling man Donatti would have put good money on it being a man’s tongue. A man with a rich diet and relatively poor dental hygiene. There was a white furring around the edges that was almost certainly thrush, and some damage to the taste buds where the webbing had been carved away to cut the meat from the hyoid bone. He was no expert, but Donatti knew that while anyone could exhibit the symptoms, thrush occurred mainly in the mouths of the young or the elderly, or those on immuno-suppressants. He closed the lid and gave it back to Blanc.

  The other man took it reluctantly, holding it at arm’s length as though he expected it to move.

  ‘Put it back in the refrigerator. I shall have someone collect it, but they won’t be able to do anything until tomorrow morning, now. When you’ve done that I want you to go home. I will meet you back here in the morning.’

  Blanc nodded, looked like he was about to ask another question, then thought the better of it, and retreated.

  Donatti waited until he had closed the door behind him before he called in a favour.

  EIGHT

  Familiarity bred contempt. The first time Peter Ash had travelled on the Eurostar it had been the most marvellous thing, a train hurtling through a tunnel carved into the bedrock of the English Channel. It was a feat of engineering unlike anything else he’d ever experienced. There was a palpable sense of billions of tonnes of water pressing down on them. The weight was just there. He’d even smiled as they hit the exact halfway and all the electronic signs shifted language. Now it was just a train. It was funny how quickly incredible things became ordinary.

  Like a phone call from the Vatican, or at least a representative of the tiny state. Strictly speaking the Holy See was outside his jurisdiction despite being in the heart of Rome. Ash had crossed paths with Ernesto Donatti before, but would hardly have called him a friend. He was a good man, a clever man with a sharp mind and a healthy grasp of irony, but his loyalties were such that he’d have to be a fool to trust him. The Catholic Church was the be-all and end-all of Donatti’s world, and he would move heaven and earth to protect it. Still, Ash couldn’t help but like the man, so when he called asking for a second pair of eyes he booked himself on the next train out of St Pancras.

  Donatti hadn’t given much away during their brief conversation, but the simple act of asking for his help meant he was into something big.

  A missing person fell outside Ash’s normal remit, even a missing priest.

  ‘I’m not seeing what makes this an international matter,’ he said. ‘The gendarmerie are going to be better placed to hunt for your missing Monsignor.’

  ‘It needs to be someone I trust,’ Donatti said. ‘And there are very few people who have earned my trust, Peter. Very few.’

  ‘OK, no need to get mushy, mate. What have you got?’

  ‘Tournard disappeared yesterday afternoon, first day in the job. Just after receiving a gift in the post. There was a short note that included an address and two words: Memini Bonn.’

  ‘Memini Bonn?’

  ‘“Remember Bonn.” Latin.’

  ‘Bonn as in Germany?’

  ‘Are there any others? Hence my thought that this might stir some interest with your people,’ Donatti said. ‘As far as I can ascertain, the Monsignor’s career hasn’t taken him to Germany.’

  ‘You want me to run immigration checks to see if he has visited there for any other reason?’

  ‘I was hoping you would.’

  ‘Assuming he arrived by air it’s easy enough, but frictionless borders make it just about impossible to know for sure.’


  ‘You can only do what you can,’ Donatti assured him. ‘I’m the one in the business of miracles.’

  Ash laughed at that. It summed the other man up perfectly. ‘So, what about this gift? I take it it wasn’t socks.’

  ‘It’s best we save that until you get here.’

  Ash didn’t press the point. ‘OK. I’ll need to make a call,’ he said. ‘Just to let people know I’m not actually deserting. I’ll be with you in the morning.’

  ‘Tonight would be better.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘OK. Book me a room. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  ‘Already taken care of,’ the other man said. ‘What can I say? I knew you couldn’t resist. I’ll text you the details.’

  ‘Thanks. I think.’

  The call to Control was straightforward enough. They’d asked if he was ready and took his yes at face value.

  He had checked the Division’s intranet before heading out, updating the system to show that he was en route to Paris and creating a case file for Monsignor Tournard, with the alert missing person tagged onto it. He wasn’t the only missing person on the list. The missing Swedish politician had moved up from an item of interest to an active part of their caseload with Frankie Varg as the officer assigned to the case.

  He’d never met his Swedish counterpart, but he’d heard plenty about her from Mitch after they’d worked a case together last year. His chosen adjective when Ash asked what she was like was ‘fearsome’. It was hardly surprising given her background; she’d been assigned to the Division after a decade in the military police. In a world of men, ranks, and discipline, she more than held her own. Mitch had told him stories of his time up in Stockholm. The one that stuck in his mind was a wilderness chase out in the forests somewhere. Middle of winter, knee-deep snow, minus ten temperatures not factoring in the wind chill, and Mitch dressed like it was the middle of spring freezing his tits off as he slipped and slid on the ice – not realizing the huge expanse of white he was running across was actually a frozen lake until the first deep crack resonated and he felt the entire ground shift beneath his feet. He’d heard Varg yelling at him to get off the ice, the only problem was she was yelling in what amounted to a rush of syllables that crashed together into a single nonsensical word that sounded like: gawvizon. The guy he’d been chasing had gone under within thirty seconds, a huge plate of ice tearing away and very nearly taking Mitch with him into the black water. She hadn’t hesitated. She’d fallen to her knees, brushed away huge sweeps of soft snow with her arms until she could see the face of the man pressed up against the ice desperately clawing at it as he tried to breathe, and put a dozen bullets into the ice around him to break off a huge block, then she’d gone in after him. She’d saved the man’s life, despite everything she knew about him. The pair of them had nearly died of hypothermia on the way back to the car.