CHAPTER 64
Julian broke the seal on a new bottle, poured a generous measure, then sat heavily down at his desk with the reproduction pack in front of him.
Pointless exercise.
He’d studied the reproduction Bousquet Tarot deck over many years, always looking for something, a hidden key or a code he might have missed. The search for the original cards had occupied him ever since he first came to the Aude valley and heard the rumours about the undiscovered caches of treasure buried beneath the mountains, the rocks, even the rivers.
Having acquired the Domaine de la Cade, Julian had quickly come to the conclusion, like many before him, that all the stories surrounding Rennes-le-Château were a hoax and the renegade nineteenth-century priest at the heart of the rumours – Saunière – was prospecting for more material than spiritual treasures.
Then Julian started to pick up stories about how a deck of cards revealed the location not of a single tomb, but allegedly the entire treasury of the Visigoth Empire. Perhaps even the contents of the Temple of Solomon, looted by the Romans in the first century AD, then in turn plundered when Rome itself fell in the fifth century to the Visigoths.
The cards were rumoured to be hidden within the estate itself. Julian had sunk every penny into trying to find them through systematic searching and excavation, starting with the area around the ruins of the Visigoth sepulchre and working out from it. It was difficult terrain and the effort was extremely labour intensive – and therefore expensive.
Still nothing.
When he’d exhausted his credit at the bank, he’d begun borrowing from the hotel. It was useful that the hotel was – at least in part – a cash business. But it was also a tough market in which to make money. The overheads were high. The place was still finding its feet when the bank called in its loans. But he kept taking money out all the same – gambling that, soon, he’d find what he was looking for and everything would be all right.
Julian drained his glass in one.
Only a matter of time.
It was his brother’s fault. Seymour could have been patient. Should have trusted him. Not interfered. He knew he nearly had it.
I would have repaid the money.
Nodding to himself, Julian flipped the lid of his Zippo with a snap. He took out a cigarette, lit it and inhaled deeply. Julian had spoken with the police commissariat in Couiza just after Hal had left the station, who had suggested that it would be better if the boy stopped asking questions. Julian had promised to have a word and invited the commissaire for a drink the following week.
He reached for the bottle, pouring himself another two fingers. He cast his mind back over the conversation in the bar. He had been deliberately clumsy, hardly subtle in his technique, but it had seemed the easiest way to flush the American out. She had been reluctant to talk about the Tarot. The girl was sharp. Attractive, too.
‘What? What does she know?’
He realised the sound he could hear was the sound of his fingers drumming on the desk. Julian looked down at his hand, as if it didn’t belong to him, then forced it to be still.
In a drawer of his locked desk, the deeds of the transfer of ownership lay ready to sign and return to the notaire in Espéraza. The boy wasn’t stupid. He didn’t want to stay at the Domaine de la Cade. He and Hal couldn’t work together, any more than he and Seymour had been able to. Julian had been leaving a decent interval before talking any further to Hal about his plans.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he said. There was a slur in his voice.
He should talk to her again, the American girl. She must know something about the original Bousquet deck, why else was she here? Her presence was nothing to do with Seymour’s accident or his pathetic nephew or the hotel finances, he could see that now. She was here for the same reason he was. He hadn’t done all the dirty work to see some American bitch come in and take the cards from him.
He gazed out at the darkened woods. Night had fallen. Julian reached out and turned on the lamp, then screamed.
His brother was standing right behind him. Seymour, waxy and lifeless as Julian had seen him in the morgue, the skin on his face scarred from the crash, lined, his eyes bloodshot.
He leapt up out of his chair, sending it hurtling back behind him to the ground. The whisky glass went flying across the polished wood of the desk.
Julian spun round.
‘You can’t be …’
The room was empty.
He stared, uncomprehending, his eyes darting around the room into the shadows, back to the window, until he realised. It was his own pallid reflection, stark in the darkened glass. It was his eyes, not his brother’s.
Julian took a deep breath.
His brother was dead. He knew. He had spiked his drink with Rufenol. He had driven the car to the bridge outside Rennes-les-Bains; struggled to manoeuvre Seymour into the driver’s seat; released the handbrake. He had seen the car fall.
‘You made me do it,’ he muttered.
He lifted his eyes to the window, blinked. Nothing there.
He exhaled, a long, exhausted breath, then bent down and righted the chair. For a moment he stood with his hands gripping the back, knuckles white, his head bowed. He could feel the sweat running down his back between his shoulder blades.
Then he pulled himself together. He reached for his cigarettes, needing the hit of the nicotine to calm his nerves, and looked back out to the black woods beyond.
The original cards were still out there, he knew it.
‘Next time,’ he murmured. He was so close. He could feel it. Next time, he’d be lucky. He knew it.
The spilt whisky reached the edge of the desk and started to drip, slowly, on to the carpet.
