across the top of it – but no, here it was, just as he remembered it, lightly buried under dust and straw. His trembling fingers found the edge of the trapdoor lid and lifted it with a creak.
It was a tighter squeeze than it had been in his youth. As he was forcing his bulky shoulders through the hole, he felt a sharp painful tug as something cut into the back of his neck. The little silver crucifix he wore around his neck had got snagged on a piece of rough wood and the slim chain had snapped. But there was no time to start hunting around for it. Fabrice hastily lowered the trapdoor above his head and clambered clumsily down the ladder into the hidden pitch-dark space below. He could barely breathe for terror.
This was crazy. He was a respected church official, not some criminal on the run. He had nothing to hide. His conscience was as immaculate as his professional record and he had no reason whatsoever to flee from anyone – yet some overwhelming primal instinct, so strong he could almost taste it between his gritted teeth, told him he was in appalling danger.
The barn door opened. Footsteps sounded overhead. Three men, it sounded like: they spread out and paced the length of the barn, the darting beams of their torches visible through the cracks in the floorboards as they searched the place briskly and methodically.
Who were these men? What did they want? Fabrice swallowed back his panic, terrified to breathe, convinced that they must be able to hear the hammer-beat of his heart. He inched his way deeper into the shadows, away from the torchlight.
Something moved against his arm and he almost cried out in shock. A rat: he brushed the filthy thing away and it slithered up a beam and through a gap in the floorboards overhead, claws scratching on the wood as it scuttled away. The torchlight suddenly swung towards the sound. Fabrice’s heart stopped as the light lingered over the trapdoor, catching the drifting dust particles in the air.
The footsteps came closer. ‘Just a rat,’ said a voice, and he realised the men were speaking English. ‘He’s not here. Let’s go.’
Fabrice let out a silent, trembling sigh of relief as the footsteps headed back towards the entrance to the barn. They were leaving. Once their car was gone, he’d wait a few minutes before climbing out of here. Should he go back to the car? Get away on foot and alert the police? Wait for Jacques to come home?
The sudden ringing of his phone shattered his thoughts and tore through the silence. He plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled it out with horror, the damn thing screeching like a siren as his trembling fingers groped for the button to turn it off. The phone’s screen showed the name of the caller: Simeon Arundel.
The shrill ringtone shut off, but it was too late. The footsteps were pounding the floorboards overhead as the men came running back inside the barn. Torchlight shining directly down through the cracks; the trapdoor lid lifting; a dazzling beam right in his face.
Father Fabrice Lalique wasn’t a fighting man. Never in his adult life had he had to defend himself physically, and his resistance against three strong and determined attackers was as feeble as his cries of ‘Who are you? What do you want with me?’ as they dragged him through the barn and outside to the waiting Mercedes. His phone was taken from him. Powerful hands bundled him inside the car’s open boot and slammed the lid shut.
Seconds later, Fabrice was being jolted around in his confined space as the Mercedes took off down the bumpy farm track. He beat against the bare metal lid, screamed until his throat was raw – then, completely spent, he gave in to the numbness of despair and curled up in the darkness, barely conscious of the movement of the car or the passage of time.
It was only when the boot lid opened and he looked up to see the faces of the men gazing down impassively at him that he realised the journey was over. The men hauled him out of the boot. He felt the night air clammy on his brow, solid concrete under his feet. The Mercedes was pulled over at the side of a broad, empty motorway. Through the fog that drifted like smoke across the road, Fabrice saw that his own Volkswagen was parked a few yards behind it.
Fabrice searched the faces of his captors for any trace of expression, of humanity, and saw none. ‘Who are you?’ he croaked, fighting for breath. ‘What’s happening to me?’
Fabrice quickly saw which of the men was in charge. His face was lean, the eyes quick and cold. His receding hair was cropped to the same length as the dark stubble on his jaw. As two of the others held Fabrice tightly by the arms, the leader slipped his hand inside his plain black jacket and produced a pistol. Without saying a word, he waved the gun towards the side of the road. The thugs holding Fabrice’s arms began to frog-march him in that direction. He blinked and shook his head in bewilderment as the edge of the road came nearer step by step; beyond it nothing but swirling mist.
Then he saw the steel barrier and he knew where he was.
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘No no no …’
The Millau Viaduct. The highest bridge in the world, carrying a long stretch of the A75 autoroute three hundred metres above the Tarn Valley.
And he was headed right for the edge.
Fabrice struggled desperately, but there was no resisting the force driving him towards the plunging abyss.
‘Why?’ he asked, but all that came out was an animal moan of terror.
A sudden gust of wind parted the mist and he caught a momentary glimpse of the drop into the darkness below, the supporting columns of the bridge like colossal towers, higher than cathedral spires. Fabrice’s breath was coming in gasps. He couldn’t speak. Managing to tear an arm free, he gripped the cold metal of the barrier and clung on. The leader of the men said nothing, reached across and unpeeled Fabrice’s clawed fingers with such brutal force that he broke two of them.
Fabrice didn’t even feel the pain. He was way past pain.
The men shoved him over the edge. Father Fabrice Lalique went tumbling down and down, cartwheeling in empty space, his scream fading into the night. The mist had swallowed him up long before he hit the distant ground below.
As the men turned away and started walking back to the Mercedes, the one in charge took out his phone. ‘It’s done,’ was all he needed to say. He climbed into the driver’s seat. His colleague who’d followed in Lalique’s car left it where it was with the door open and the key in the ignition, and got in the back of the Mercedes.
At the same moment, their associates inside the priest’s house were already downloading the material, several hundred megabytes’ worth of extremely illicit photographic images, onto his personal computer. Their anonymous source would never be found, and neither would any trace of the intruders’ presence in his home.
And soon after the Mercedes’ taillights had vanished into the mist, leaving the Volkswagen Passat standing alone on the empty viaduct, the last words of Father Fabrice Lalique had been composed and emailed to every contact in his address book:
My Dear Friends
By the time you read this message, I will be dead. I ask you not to mourn for me, as I am unworthy of your grief.
The shame of my sins is a burden I can no longer bear. May God have mercy on me for the terrible things I have done.
Chapter Two
Two weeks later
Storm
