No one knows where? Really? How about a strange Dominican monastery, built after the war, and associated with Vichy and the Nazis?

The mystery was now a nightflower, slowly opening beneath the moon. Scenting the midnight garden.

But he needed one more confirmation. He had to reach David Martinez and confirm the star on the map. Had to reach him now.

Simon tried to calm himself. He stood up, walked to the kitchen, and made himself a cup of camomile tea, as he had once heard that camomile tea was calming.

Fuck camomile tea. He hurled the tea in the sink, ran back to his study and pointlessly called Martinez’s phone number. The tone was dead. He tried again three seconds later, as if that would change something. The tone was dead. As he well knew, David had junked his phone: very sensibly.

So what now? Surely David Martinez would ring again at some point, from Biarritz, unless he was unable?

Simon paced his study, from one wall to the other. Fretting about David and Amy, trying not to remember the attack of Tomasky.

Walking from wall to wall took him three and a half seconds. Their house was so damnably tiny. It was way too small. Maybe if Simon cracked this remarkable story he could write that great book and buy a bigger house and…

Enough. Simon sat down at the computer and sent David Martinez an email. Then he exited his study, and joined his son on the sofa in the living room, and they watched, for the seventeenth time, Monsters, Inc.

Then they watched it again.

It was seven p.m. and Conor was in bed when his mobile rang – with a French number on the screen. Trying to convince himself that his heart wasn’t beating like a Burundi drum, Simon took the call.

‘Yes…hello?’

‘Simon?’

‘David? Thank God you called. Are you OK? Are you and Amy OK?’

‘Yes – we’re OK – we’re still in Biarritz, but we’re flying out. But what about y-’

‘Nothing. I’m fine, I mean, ah, there’s something I need to know.’ Simon felt guilty for cutting so brutally to the chase, but his anxiety allowed him no option. ‘David, tell me – do you have the map on you?’

‘Yeah, of course. Everyone wants to look at this map…’

‘Please. This is important. Get it out. You said there was

a star, marked near Lyon…’

‘That’s right. Near Lyon…We never managed to work out what it meant.’ ‘Please take another look.’

Simon could hear the obedient unfolding of paper, and traffic in the background. David was obviously using a land-line. An anonymous payphone in a little Basque city.

David came back on.

‘Here’s the star. What do you want to know?’

The moment of tension dilated.

‘Tell me,’ Simon said. ‘Where exactly it is. What, ah, village, what town…’

The journalist could almost hear David peering closely at the map.

David came back on.

‘It’s quite distinct. It’s next to a tiny village called Eveux.’

‘Eveux?’

A pause.

‘Yes, Eveux…that’s near L’Arbresle…northwest of Lyon.’ David’s voice was now sharpened. ‘Why do you want to know this?’

Simon didn’t answer, because he was stooping to look at his computer screen, at the entry on La Tourette. The website gave the monastery its full and sonorous French title.

Le Priore de Sainte Marie de La Tourette.

De Eveux-sur-L’Arbresle.

30

The hire car was slotted in row 3B of the airport car park at Lyon Saint Exupéry. Bags stowed, Simon pulled out into the midday traffic, and made for the autoroute that took him away from Lyon.

North along the Rhone valley.

He considered his moody impulsiveness. Was this all a mistake? He had asked Suzie what she thought of this journey, this sombre adventure; and she’d told him, with a certain languish in her eyes, that she’d agree to him going because she loved him. And because they were safe with the policeman anyway. And because he was going mad in the house doing nothing, he might end up drinking again, and she was worried about that.

Simon stared at the cars ahead. The autoroute was busy.

He knew almost everything Suzie had said had been a lie. She didn’t want him to go. She thought it was irresponsible of him to go. The only reason she agreed to his going was indeed because she loved him. He was lucky to have her.

And he was an idiot.

But he was here now. And, whatever his motives, the excitement of the chase was stimulating, energizing. What would this place be like? The monastery that sent people mad? Would he find the infamous archives? Simon glanced at the autoroute signs as he slowed the car: Ecully, Dardilly, Charbonnieres-les-Bains.

There. He slowed to check a road sign: this was it. The N7 to L’Arbresle.

Simon spun the wheel and headed left. He was motoring through the verdant depths of the Beaujolais. His thoughts wandered as he reached for the big road atlas of France, to check his route. A few hundred miles southwest from here, in Biarritz, David and Amy were hiding, hoping, waiting, flying out to Namibia.

What could he do to help them? Maybe nothing, maybe something, maybe what he was doing right now. His mind was a turmoil of confusion – and curiosity.

The last of the route took him past more vineyards, and yellowing copses of oak. Then the lane gave out, onto a wide sweeping meadow. And in the middle was the monastery of La Tourette.

Alone in the car, he said:

‘Wow.’

He’d done a few hours’ research on this modernist building, quizzed his architect father about the designer, Le Corbusier, but the reality was still pretty startling.

In the middle of the greenery was this…thing. It looked like the offspring of a multi-storey car park mated with a sour medieval castle. The building was almost uniformly grey. The only colour came from the various big windows, adorned with bright red and orange curtains.

Slowly he rolled the car towards the priory complex. More unusual aspects came into view. A surreal concrete pyramid jutted primly from the centre. Several grey corridors seemed to be angled, haphazardly. The whole edifice was supported on one side by a bank of grass, and on the other by spindly, irregular concrete legs.

Simon parked, and sought the entrance: it was a kind of concrete gantry that led to the core of the building.

The exterior may have been shocking, but his induction into Sainte Marie de La Tourette was simple, almost flippant. The monastery and the monks were obviously used to visitors and pilgrims, especially people interested in architecture. Simon was greeted by a monk in blue jeans and grey T-shirt, in a concrete side room.

As Simon confirmed his bogus, telephone-booked identity – Edgar Harrison, a visiting British architect – he twitched with apprehension, and searched the monk’s face for a hint of curiosity, or scepticism, or suspicion.

But the monk just nodded.

‘Monsieur Harrison. Un moment.’

The monk jotted down the name and details, on a computer. Simon scanned this side room as he waited to be processed. The space was humdrum, an average office, with files and paperwork, cordless phones and a fax machine, and a big glass case with keys for various rooms, hanging from hooks with neat little labels. Le Refectoire, Le Libraire, La Cuisine.

Le Libraire? At least there was a library. But if its contents were so secret why was it just casually mentioned here? Le Libraire?

The monk had done his work; he stood and took a key from another case, then escorted Simon to the concrete upper floors to show him his allotted room, the monastic cell where he would spend his three days on ‘retreat’. The stairs were steep. They didn’t speak. They reached their upper-level corridor.

The doors were lined up and down the concrete corridors like tall soldiers on parade. It really was like a prison.