There was nothing Simon could do, not from here, not right now. He needed to distract himself with work. Pessimistically, he leafed another text: a glossy modern volume about the monastery’s unique design. It mentioned several interesting features: the book went into great detail about ‘light cannons’ and ‘pilotis’.

Sitting back, he sighed, and looked around. The large tall windows of the library gave onto the endless farms and vineyards. The monastery was very isolated. Squat and strange and lonely under the grey-black Lyonnais sky.

An autumn storm was brewing: a grandiose affair. The first thunderclaps drumrolled across the Rhone Valley, making the building positively vibrate. Even the mute little monk looked up from his studies at the noise, his bug eyes rolling.

The noise of the booming thunder was like two parents arguing upstairs, overheard by a small and terrified child; it was like the muffled but ominous sounds of someone falling to the floor, in a bedroom.

Das Helium und das Hydrogen.

The journalist shuddered, and turned to the book at the end of the table. The visitor’s book. It was a huge leather job: at least a thousand pages thick, with entries dating back decades. He flicked through the most recent entries, at least those written in English.

‘The noises at night: unbearable.’

‘An expression of pure genius.’

‘The most beautiful building in the world. And also the ugliest.’

‘I have found serenity here. Merci.’

Lightning flashed across the darkling valley, briefly dazzling the grey walls and the orange curtains. Vast curtains of rain were marching down the valley. Drenching the little hamlet of Eveux-sur-L’Arbresle.

Eveux and L’Arbresle?

Eveux…sur…L’Arbresle.

A stir. Something stirred in the middle of his whirring anxiety, centred on Tim; he realized he was forgetting something.

The star on David’s map: the asterisk so carefully inscribed by David’s father, Eduardo. The monastery might be a narrative cul de sac, but Eduardo had thought it was important.

Could he? Had he?

Quick and urgent, Simon paged back through the visitor’s book, working out dates in his head. When was the accident that killed the Martinez couple? He recalled the information, and fixed the date in his mind, and then he turned to the correct page in the visitor’s book. Fifteen years ago.

He was at the correct page. He looked down the list of names. People from France, America, Spain, Germany…Then a lot of people just from Germany and France. And then…

There?

His heartbeat matched the booming thunder in the valleys of the Beaujolais.

He’d found a piquant comment in English. The comment said: To search is to find?

Then came the details of the pilgrim. City: Norwich. Country: England. Date of visit: August 17th.

Then finally the name.

Eduardo Martinez.

31

It took three days for them to arrange flights to Namibia. At last they headed out of the hotel for their furtive evening flight to Frankfurt. From Germany they made the nightflight eight thousand miles south.

Across the equator, across all the darkness of Africa – to Namibia.

They remained quiet and subdued, even with each other. Even when they were safely on the plane to Africa they hardly spoke, as if the momentousness of what they were doing barely needed explaining. Flying into the unknown.

While the plane traversed the vast and lightless Sahara David wondered what they would find in Africa – would they locate Angus Nairn and Eloise? What if something had happened to them? What if they couldn’t find them? What then? Just hide on a beach? Forever? That’s if they survived any infection they had caught. From the corpses in the cellar.

He tried to stifle his fears. Whatever their fate, this mystery needed to be resolved – so seeking out the centre of the mystery was the right thing to do. If they were being chased they may as well try and outflank their pursuers, get to the solution first. Another reason to take the gamble, to fly to Namibia.

Amy was dozing next to him. David picked up the inflight magazine and flipped to the atlas pages: Namibia was a huge country. A big orange rectangle. He scrutinized the names of the few towns indicated.

Windhoek. Uis. Luderitz. Aus. Very German. Relics of the German Empire. But there were so few towns? A big empty nothingness.

For most of the twelve-hour flight, Amy slept. Sheer exhaustion. David watched her beloved face, and draped her with an airline blanket to keep her warm. Her breathing slowed into deeper unconsciousness.

Eventually David, too, shut his eyes, and waded into sleep.

The next time he woke, the sun was blazing hot through the opened portholes, and they were landing in an airport the likes of which he had never seen before.

It was desert. Even the airport was desert. A couple of pathetic palm trees fringed the grey dusty runway, but immediately beyond the tarmac huge sand dunes rose, like frozen orange tidal waves, with wisps of dust whipping off the top.

The groggy passengers descended the ladder – into the furious heat. The African sun burned as soon as it touched the skin. Amy lifted a magazine to shield her face, David turned up his shirt collar to protect his neck. The airport – the island of baking asphalt in a sea of hot sand – was so tiny they could walk to the terminal in two minutes.

Passport control was three impassive guys apparently speaking English; ten minutes later they were on Namibian territory. A smiling black taxi driver approached them as they exited the terminal building into the starkly sunlit car park. Where did they want to go?

Their furtive researches in the cybercafes of Biarritz had yielded some results: Swakopmund, the place Eloise was directing them, was on the coast, in the centre of the Namibian littoral. It was also, it seemed, where they might find people willing to take them into the deserts and the mountains. Trekkers and outfitters.

David said to the cab driver, ‘Swakopmund. Please?’

‘OK! Swakop!’

The bags were thrown casually in the boot. The taxi spun out of the car park and onto a road that cut through the desert. Through the dazzle of the clear African air, David could see a thin horizon of blue.

‘Is that the sea?’

‘Yes sir!’ the taxi driver said. ‘Walvis and Swakop by the sea. By the sea with many many flamingoes. But do not make schwimmen, very jellyfish and many many sharks.’

The car swerved, they were being buffeted by a fierce wind. The driver laughed.

‘You come wrong season!’

‘We have?’

‘Winter is cold. Windy and maybe even rain.’

‘Cold?’

‘Yes sir. But Swakop always windy. But cold now. Benguela current.’

David stared out at the endless enormous undulating dunes; they were a harsh yellow-white in the remorseless sun. Sand was blowing across the road – orange snakes of dust, writhing and dissolving.

Now they were here, the desire to find Eloise seemed a rather forlorn decision, almost quixotic. They were in a land of nothingness, a country of mighty desolation, with a population of barely two million scattered across a sun-crushed vastness the size of France and Britain combined; they were looking for one man and one woman. In the wilderness. Would this hotel even exist?

The cab driver was pointing. ‘Swakop!’

David stared at the cityscape as they rolled down the streets. The sense of dislocation was profound. Looming suddenly from the sand was a pastiche Bavarian town: gingerbread houses, spired German churches, little Teutonic shops with curlicued Gothic signs for German newspapers and Becks bier. Yet the pavements were busy with black people, and orangey-beige people, and a few couples that looked American or maybe Australian, as well as obviously German people wearing…lederhosen?