Last off the train came a curious couple – a man of about thirty in jeans and a long black coat, and a young woman in a high-necked red coat and bright red shoes. The policeman watched them. They were clearly travelling together, but there was an awkwardness between them that suggested unfamiliarity. They spoke without looking at each other; when the man had to squeeze past a pillar and brushed the woman’s arm, both apologised. A one-night stand, the policeman decided – two colleagues who had got drunk on business, too young to have made a habit of it yet. The man probably counted himself the luckier of the two. The girl was beautiful, in a prim sort of way. The policeman undressed her with his eyes, following the curve of her slim legs to the hem of her coat, then to the small, tightly belted waist and the full breasts above, to the dark eyes, disarranged hair and provocatively scarlet lips. The man just looked scruffy and dazed. Perhaps he had a wife to face.
Nick’s stomach tightened as he caught the policeman watching them. Had he been recognised? Was he on some sort of watch list? Had the NYPD circulated his photograph to Interpol? His movements felt more and more unnatural as he walked towards the policeman, his body seizing up under the pressure. He half-turned towards Emily and muttered something irrelevant; she nodded and looked uncomfortable.
At least the jet lag helped: it was hard to look too tense when you were still half asleep. Nick had spent the short night cramped upright on the plane while Emily dozed under a blanket next to him. Fear kept him awake right across the Atlantic: fear of what he had left behind, fear of what he would find waiting for him. Just as he’d begun to nod off, the cabin crew had turned on the lights to begin their descent into Brussels. Then it had been a rush through the airport, a taxi into the city and the first train to Paris. That had been Emily’s idea. From Brussels they could travel anywhere in Europe without having to show their passports again. Though there were other ways to be discovered.
Nick looked around and realised they were past the policeman. He was too tired to be relieved. At the back of the station they queued ten minutes for a taxi.
‘Cent soixante dix-sept rue de Rivoli,’ Emily told the driver. Nick looked at her in bleary-eyed surprise.
‘I spent six months here for my doctorate,’ she explained. ‘It’s hard to do much original research if you can’t speak the language.’
It reminded them both how little they knew each other. Emily clutched her bag on her lap and leaned against the door; Nick looked out the car window.
Number 177 rue de Rivoli was an anonymous building, a bank sandwiched between an American chain store and a shoe shop. A guard was just rolling back the iron security gate when they arrived. They got a coffee and a croissant in a café across the road and waited for other customers to arrive. Lost in their weary thoughts, they barely spoke to each other. Nick felt as if he was limping over the finish line of a long nightmarish race. All he wanted to do was give up and sleep.
At half past nine they walked into the bank. A receptionist behind a grey desk greeted them, and listened patiently while Emily explained that she had a valuable necklace her grandmother had given her and needed somewhere safe to store it while she pursued her studies in Paris for six months.
The receptionist nodded. They had deposit boxes available for just such a purpose.
‘Are they secure?’
The receptionist gave the sort of shrug they surely taught in all French schools. ‘Oui, je pense.’ She saw Nick looking blank and switched seamlessly to English. ‘You have a card which opens the door to the safe room, and a pin number to open your box.’
‘Et ça coûte combien?’ Emily persisted in French. ‘Now you pay five hundred euros, and then each month one hundred euros.’
Emily affected indecision. ‘Is it possible to see the safe room?’
The receptionist pointed to a glass-panelled door in the back wall. ‘C’est là.’
They walked over and peered through. Behind the door was a small carpeted room with rows of anonymous steel cabinets running from wall to wall. Red numbers glowed from digital readouts on their faces. Nick tried to find box 628 but couldn’t make out the numbers through the thick, bulletproof glass. Though the door looked like wood it was cold to the touch – three-inch steel.
‘I guess we’re not breaking in there,’ he muttered.
They went back to the receptionist. Emily reached in her purse and pulled out five hundred-euro notes and her passport.
The receptionist gave an apologetic smile. ‘You have to pay in advance six months. Another six hundred euros.’
Nick winced. Emily handed over the money and waited while the receptionist tapped the details into her computer. A machine under the desk spat out a plastic card, which she handed to Emily with her passport and a sheet of paper.
‘That is your PIN number. You have box 717. Merci beaucoup.’
Emily swiped her card. The steel door opened with a hiss of air, then closed with a heavy click the moment they’d stepped through. They walked silently across the carpeted floor. The red numbers on a thousand doors blinked from the sidelines, every one slightly out of sync with the others. Together with the harsh fluorescents above, Nick felt as if he’d stepped into a migraine.
Emily stopped in front of one of the deposit boxes. ‘This is 628.’
Nick angled himself so that he stood between Emily and the door, fighting back the urge to check if anyone was watching. Emily pulled on a pair of black leather gloves. With sharp, birdlike movements, she pecked out the number: 300481.
The door swung ajar. Emily reached in.
Hans Dunne the goldsmith took the card from my hand and glanced at it.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘A nobleman in Paris.’ A vision of Jacques’ broken face flashed before me. ‘He said it came from here.’
Dunne laid the card on his counter. ‘Not from me.’
Four months’ pent-up hope tottered on its foundations. Before it could crash, Dunne continued, ‘That was one of Kaspar Drach’s. The painter.’ A strange look crossed his face. ‘Among other things.’
‘Is he here?’
He saw me peering over his shoulders at the apprentices in the workshop behind him. ‘Not now. Come back tomorrow if you still want to see him.’
‘Where is he today?’
‘At the crossroads of St Argobast.’ He glanced at the sun. ‘You’ll struggle to get there and back before dusk.’
‘How will I recognise him?’ I persisted. ‘Look for a man on a ladder.’
There are many days, perhaps most, when destiny eludes us, slipping from our grasp while we bump around like blind men. There are days, few and rare, when it runs to meet us like a mother gathering her children. And then there are days when it taunts and teases but holds out the promise of victory to the persistent. That day I would not be denied. I felt it in my soul, a trembling excitement that only grew as I wound my way back across the bridges and canals, past the mills and farms that lined the banks of the Ill. Canvas sails spun the sun into flashes of light. Yellow-downed ducklings teetered in the mud at the water’s edge.
I reached the crossroads an hour before sunset. The labourers had left the fields and the road was empty. Haze filled the air. A few birds chirruped in the hedgerows, but otherwise all was still. A little beyond, I could see a few timber-framed houses that made the hamlet of St Argobast.
A copse of three rowans, just coming to bud, stood where the roads met. A panel showing the Virgin had been raised on a high pole in front of them, a shrine for travellers. A man with a palette in one hand and a brush in the other stood on a ladder against it, apparently careless of the height. Though he had his back to me, I knew at once he was the man I had come to find. I only had to look at the Madonna he had painted. The crown had been smudged into a halo, and instead of a deer there was a docile child sitting on her skirts, but otherwise she was the queen from the cards. The same abundant hair, one raised hand carelessly stroking it; the same full lips and coquettish eyes admiring her reflection in the hand mirror – which in this incarnation had become the face of her child. With her full hips, her swelling breasts and her legs spread wide open under the folds of her gown, she was the most brazen Virgin I had ever seen.