The Chaplin Conspiracy Read online

  ‘I know your identity,’ continued the Templar, ‘but the question remains, do you?’

  ‘Do I what?’

  ‘Do you know your true identity?’

  ‘Got it written down somewhere. So many names I can never remember them all. Ballashiels, St Clair, Lord this, that and the other, Justin, one or two other bits and pieces. Far easier to stick with Ratty. Everyone does.’

  The car stopped at the entrance to a remote olive farm clinging to the side of a steep hill.

  ‘I know this place,’ said Justina. ‘If you carry on up the hill it leads to Bézu peak. It’s an old Templar lookout point. Used to be a little castle or something there. It looks out across the valley at Rennes-le-Château.’

  ‘So you Templar chappies are still doing your wotsits up here, eh?’ asked Ratty.

  ‘We do as we have always done,’ said the driver. ‘We know who we are and we know why we are.’

  ‘Always advisable,’ Ratty said, and climbed out at the invitation of the Templar.

  ***

  ‘Hey, Mr Victim!’

  ‘Shh,’ whispered Ruby. ‘Let’s get him inside. He needs help.’

  ‘Nah, he’s just sleeping,’ said Scabies. ‘Probably tired after all that excitement this morning.’

  The Patient’s eyes flickered. As they stabilised and stayed open, his face twisted with pain.

  ‘Look at him,’ said Ruby. ‘He needs painkillers.’

  ‘No time,’ whispered the Patient. ‘Ratty has been taken. We have to find him.’

  ‘But, why would anyone want to take him?’ asked Scabies. ‘What’s he useful for?’

  The Patient tried to speak, but couldn’t overcome the pain shooting through his legs. Ruby couldn’t watch him suffer like that and pushed him into the building in search of drugs. While she spent time explaining the apparent situation to a nurse, Scabies slipped into a stock room and emerged with a vial of morphine and a set of syringes. He found Ruby in the middle of an argument with the nurse, who refused to provide any pain relief to the Patient until he had been seen by a doctor. Scabies whispered in Ruby’s ear. She smiled and simply walked away from the nurse, pushing the Patient before her.

  ‘How did you find the drugs cupboard so quickly?’

  ‘I told you. I’ve been here many times before.’

  Ruby prepared a measure of morphine in a syringe as they stood at the side of the car park.

  ‘You ready, Patient?’

  ‘I should probably perform the injection,’ he replied. ‘I appreciate that you are a doctor of sorts, Ruby, but I know that archaeological medicine is concerned with those who are already dead, not with the living.’ He took the syringe from her and jabbed himself in the upper thigh. Seconds later the stress lines vanished from his face and he breathed deeply.

  ‘Feeling better?’ asked Scabies. ‘Don’t you go becoming a junkie as well as a victim, right?’

  ‘I have memorised the registration number,’ said the Patient, ignoring Scabies. ‘We must access the police database immediately. Ratty is in danger. Let’s take a taxi to the police station.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m not sure that’s the best thing to do,’ said Scabies. ‘The police might have some difficult questions for us.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Ruby. ‘But we have to do something. Even if we risk getting arrested ourselves. We have to help Ratty.’

  ‘I have a solution,’ said the Patient. ‘If we can’t ask the police for the information, we can make them give it away without realising.’

  ‘And how do you propose to do that?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘It’s shockingly easy,’ replied the Patient. ‘If you report their registration number and claim they failed to stop after running me over, the police will go to their address. And if we wait near the police station with our engine running, we can follow them there. All the way to their hideout.’

  ‘Right, with our engine running …’ said Scabies. ‘Which engine would that be?’

  ‘Take your pick of the staff cars,’ said the Patient. ‘Choose a car from the staff section of the car park and I will tell you how to open it and get it started, but you must do as I say: I cannot contribute any physical labour.’

  Half an hour later they waited outside the police station in a stolen Renault Clio that they guessed belonged to a nurse and which, if luck was on their side, would not get reported stolen for a few more hours. Ruby had made the hit-and-run call and it was just a matter of seeing which direction the next car would head off to and then following it.

  ‘What if they send a car that’s already out on patrol?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘No plan is perfect,’ replied the Patient from his reclined position across the back seat.

  ‘While we’re waiting,’ said Ruby, ‘we were talking about what Saunière might have done after January 1917. We think he might have tried to take some kind of revenge on the Vatican, and we wondered if you had read about anything like that. Something that might have happened from 1917 onwards?’

  ‘Of course,’ the Patient replied.

  ‘That was quick,’ said Scabies, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited to spot a police car. ‘What was the little scamp doing, then?’

  ‘There is no written evidence for Saunière’s involvement in this, but later in 1917 there was the Fatima event.’

  ‘Fatima? Who was she?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘I can tell you’re not Catholic,’ said Scabies.

  ‘Fatima is a town in Portugal,’ explained the Patient. ‘A young girl reported seeing the Virgin Mary and being told three secrets about the future. It was widely reported as a miracle. The first two secrets were said to predict world wars, and the third one was suppressed for decades. This third secret is said to have predicted the downfall of the Vatican, the murder of a pope, and a fundamental shift away from allowing the church to dictate to its brethren in favour of a more direct and personal approach to a relationship with God.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Ruby. ‘There’s no such thing as a miracle, so either the girl invented the whole thing or she was fooled into believing what she saw, even though it might have been faked.’

  ‘Saunière in a dress?’ asked Scabies.

  ‘He was wealthy, remember. He could afford an actress, costumes, even primitive special effects. I’m not saying he did, I’m just saying it’s possible. Or the Templars might have helped him. Right?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Scabies. ‘A practical joke, I suppose. Never did get French humour. Making the Vatican think their days were numbered is pretty cool. Might give that a try some time.’

  ‘Fatima is a possible link,’ said Ruby, ‘and it’s somewhere he could have spent his last years in hiding – reasonable climate, two countries away from France – but I just don’t think it fits what we know about him. Saunière built a castle as his study. Most people use a spare room or a shed. He spent a fortune on personal construction projects to impress his visitors. We’re talking serious ego, here. He’s not the kind of character that wants to hide in remote Portugal. He must have gone to Paris. And if not Paris, then …’ She paused, wondering if anyone else might be thinking along the same lines.

  ‘London,’ beamed the Patient, slipping into a deeply relaxing catatonic state.

  ‘Police car,’ said Scabies, pulling away after it. ‘Here we go.’

  ***

  Charlie and Rocco emerged through the hospital doors. They were sweating and agitated.

  ‘What is it with this Patient dude?’ shouted Charlie. ‘We’ve searched every room. How can he just disappear when he’s got no damn legs?’

  ‘Forget about him, Charlie. There’s nothing we can do. He might have been transferred to another hospital, or he might have died. Either way we can’t help him right now. Let’s get a cab into town and find that address in the Templar notebook.’

  They walked to the taxi rank and read the address to the driver. Rue de la Mairie wasn’t far. When they arrived, Charlie looked up and down the picturesque
street, a narrow terrace of ancient townhouses with wooden shutters painted in bright blues and yellows, broken up by cafés and antique shops and window boxes bursting with blooms. He found it hard to believe that the hired thug they were looking for would live in such a pretty street.

  ‘This is the place,’ said Rocco, looking at the small plaque adjacent to the door. It had a name engraved on it: ‘A. Boyer’. The name matched the handwritten scrawl in the notebook, but the modest nameplate gave no hint as to the person’s profession. The building was well maintained, its cerulean-painted shutters were open, and loud guitar music escaped from an open window.

  ‘What if he’s violent?’ asked Charlie. ‘I’m not sure this is a good idea.’

  ‘He can’t be any bigger than you. So what is there to be scared of?’

  ‘We don’t have weapons. I didn’t bring my sword.’

  ‘We don’t need swords, Charlie. A mindless brute like this can easily be outsmarted by a superior intellect.’

  ‘Huh?’

  Rocco pressed the buzzer. The music stopped midriff.

  ‘Oui?’ came a high-pitched voice from the intercom. Charlie relaxed.

  ‘Stiperstones Manor,’ Rocco replied, curtly.

  ‘OK,’ the voice answered.

  There was a buzz and a click. Rocco pushed the door open and led the way inside. They could hear footsteps thumping down the tiled stairs towards them.

  ‘Oui?’ repeated the short, brown-haired girl standing before them, Fender Stratocaster in hand.

  ‘You speak English?’ asked Rocco, for Charlie’s benefit.

  ‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘We do have schools in this country, you know.’

  ‘Right. Well, we’re looking for Monsieur Boyer. Is he home?’

  ‘There is no one of that name here. Who are you?’

  ‘There is according to the plaque next to your door,’ said Rocco.

  ‘And where does it say Monsieur?’ she asked, her attitude making her seem taller than she was.

  Rocco stepped outside and looked again. She was right. There was no indication of whether the person named on the sign was male or female.

  ‘You are A. Boyer?’ he asked, closing the door behind him.

  ‘Oui. I am Aurelia. And you are?’

  ‘I’m Rocco. This is Charlie.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Aurelia told them. ‘And you want to talk to me about Stiperstones?’

  ‘If you have a few minutes, yes,’ said Rocco.

  ‘Won’t you come in?’ She led the way up the steps to her living room. A sofa was hiding beneath loose throws and a couple of cats. A coffee table was littered with laptops and coffee mugs and a paperback copy of So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish. A Marshall stack hummed softly in the centre of the room, waiting for reconnection with the guitar. ‘It’s not tidy. I am too busy composing. There is no time for housework when you are creating music.’

  ‘Composing?’ asked Charlie. ‘Like, songwriting?’

  She nodded and studied her visitors. They were unshaven, their clothes were stained with mud, and their hair was unkempt. They smelled as bad as they looked.

  ‘You can sit on the sofa with the cats,’ she told them.

  They sat down. No one said anything. Charlie stroked the cat nearest to him and it hissed.

  ‘Aurelia, thank you for speaking to us. We want to find out about the work you have done for the Templars, with regard to Stiperstones. Can you tell us about that?’

  ‘Why? What is your interest?’

  ‘We’re friends of the owner of the house,’ Rocco told her. ‘Lord Ballashiels has received an unsettling letter regarding his property and I wanted to know if there was any substance behind it and whether you have any connection to it.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ she replied.

  ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but how come someone like you is involved in all this?’

  ‘Someone like me? You don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘I mean someone so young. How old are you?’

  ‘I may be small but I am not a child. I am almost twenty-two.’

  ‘OK, but to be working for a secret society? Do you even know who you’ve been dealing with?’

  ‘I am not stupid,’ she stated. ‘And it is not as if I had any choice.’

  ‘Have they threatened you? Did they hurt you?’

  ‘Why would they do that? I am a songwriter. I do freelance marketing to make extra money. And if my father asks me to help with a publicity and information campaign, I would never refuse him.’

  ‘You’re a freelance publicist? Is that all?’

  ‘We thought you were some kind of tough guy, hitman dude,’ said Charlie, unable to drag his eyes away from her.

  ‘And clearly you were mistaken,’ she replied. ‘Listen, my work for my father—’

  ‘Wait, did you say “father”?’ asked Rocco.

  ‘Yes. He is a Templar. I sometimes do work for him and some of the other guys in their silly club.’

  ‘Silly club?’ asked Rocco. ‘I never expected to hear it called that. You’re talking about the most powerful, the most feared, and probably the wealthiest organisation in the whole of France. And who is your father?’

  ‘He is Monsieur Boyer. Surely that is not a surprise?’

  ‘Ah, sure. That works,’ said Charlie.

  ‘As I tried to explain before, the nature of my work for him and his organisation has always been secret. I’m afraid I can’t disclose any of it, other than to say I think it’s all pointless what they get up to. But if you have something you want to tell me about Stiperstones Manor, then I am happy to listen.’

  ‘Well,’ said Rocco, ‘only that it would be really helpful if you could make sure that it doesn’t get destroyed, if that is within your power.’

  ‘Do I look like a destroyer of buildings?’

  ‘With that Marshall stack you could probably turn it to dust with a loud solo,’ said Charlie, as if he would like to try such a thing himself. ‘Does it go up to eleven?’

  ‘Any other dumb questions?’

  ‘Only to ask if your father is OK after last night’s storm?’ said Rocco.

  ‘Why would you ask me that? Why would he not be?’

  ‘You didn’t hear about the flood?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s happened before. We are used to it.’

  ‘I heard that a Templar house was destroyed in Rennes-les-Bains.’

  ‘So? Bricks can be rebuilt. My father does not live there, anyway.’ Despite her bravado she looked concerned.

  ‘Have you heard from him today?’ asked Rocco.

  ‘No. Just been writing songs all day.’

  ‘So you didn’t hear about the car crash last night?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘A car hit a fallen tree just outside Rennes-les-Bains. This notebook was inside.’

  Aurelia snatched it from Rocco’s hands. ‘Let me see!’ she shouted, her veins starting to flood her with the colour of anxiety. ‘This is my father’s notebook. How did you get it?’

  ‘We found it in the smashed up car this morning,’ said Rocco. ‘But we don’t know where he went. It’s possible someone took him to the hospital already, since the car was empty when we found it.’

  ‘Please go. Now. I have to find my father.’

  ‘Yes, of course. But we can help you find him.’

  ‘How? You don’t even know where he lives. Do you have a car?’

  ‘Not any more,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Do you have any idea where to look for him?’ she sighed.

  ‘Since you must know his address,’ said Rocco, ‘yes I do: I would simply ask you. But first we need to check out the hospitals.’

  ‘Why are you so stupid? First I will just telephone him. Be quiet, both of you.’

  She picked up her iPhone and walked into the kitchen. Rocco overheard the word ‘Papa’ but couldn’t make out anything more from the hushed conversation. When she returned a minute later
her demeanour had changed. The carefree twenty-two-year-old was now an adult bowing beneath a heavy burden.

  ‘My uncle is dead,’ she mumbled. ‘Papa is hurt. And he tells me you are connected to these things.’

  ***

  Scabies parked at the base of the hill among the olive trees and climbed out.

  ‘Why have you stopped?’ Ruby asked. ‘The police car is out of sight. We’ve lost it.’

  ‘Come on, hurry up. I know this road. It’s a dead end. Just leads to the olive farm and on to the ruins of the old Templar outpost at Bézu. So the police must be going to the farm.’

  ‘Wait. What about the Patient?’

  ‘He’s asleep. Leave him in the back.’

  ‘But the olive trees aren’t giving enough shade. You’re parked half in the sun. If dogs can die in hot cars, so can he!’

  ‘So leave the windows open and give him a bowl of water. Come on!’

  With the engine off the electric windows wouldn’t move, so Ruby simply left the passenger door wide open. She jogged up the hill towards Scabies.

  ‘Look. That’s the police car through the trees.’ She pointed towards the track leading to the farmhouse. ‘Let’s stop them when they leave and tell them about the kidnapping.’

  ‘So why didn’t you report a kidnapping to start with instead of a hit and run?’

  ‘I suppose I didn’t want Ratty to get mixed up with the police, given his situation in England with the body they found in his house.’

  ‘Right. I get that. So in that case, we wait until the police leave, then we go in alone and find Ratty.’

  ‘You think it’s that easy to foil a kidnapping plot?’

  ‘Ruby, anything is easy when you’ve made a career out of playing drums while they’re on fire. We go round the back of the farmhouse, find a way in, find which room they’re keeping him in, then get him out and back to the car.’

  ‘And nothing can go wrong,’ said Ruby, clearly thinking the opposite.

  ‘Why do you have to be such a pessimist? If they see us, just use that irresistible feminine charm of yours.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  ‘That’s the stuff!’

  ***

  The farmhouse library – though smaller in proportion – felt homely to Ratty. The bookcases were made from mahogany, just like at Stiperstones. The faded parquet floor shared the same scratches and patches as his home. The unlit fireplace was framed by stonework equal in grandeur and craftsmanship to the mantels he was used to. The sole alienating difference was the books. Whilst Ratty took pride in surrounding himself with the entire canon of classic English literature, every book in this library was French, scarred by aesthetically displeasing spines whose titles ran bottom to top instead of in the correct direction.