Part 23 (1/2)

Oxford Destrier left the car at the end of the street and walked back to the address he'd been given. He forced himself to walk at a moderate pace he didn't want to draw attention to himself. The Aston Martin was memorable enough.

He found the house. The curtains were drawn but the lights were on good. He slipped a pair of bra.s.s knuckles over his right hand and knocked with his left.

No one came.

He got out Ellie's mobile and dialled Doug's number. He lifted the letterbox flap and heard the phone ringing inside. There was no answer, and no sound of movement either.

He waited through another minute's silence and decided to go in. It was a college house, used by generations of students: the lock was a joke. It took him thirty seconds to get in, another ninety to establish no one was home.

But only recently. The kettle was still warm. In the bathroom, steam still fogged the mirror; wet footprints walked across the carpet, and the towel on the door was damp. In the corner, beside the laundry basket, he found a woman's sock.

He ran outside and looked up and down the road. It was empty.

Three streets away, Doug and Ellie sat in a borrowed Nissan and waited for the windscreen to demist. On the pavement, a pet.i.te girl in tight jeans and a figure-hugging top watched anxiously.

'She's just a friend,' Doug said. Ellie hadn't asked. She sat in the pa.s.senger seat, hunched forward, willing the wall of fog in front of her to clear. She wasn't going to judge Doug.

A half-moon gap appeared in the windscreen. Doug rolled down his window.

'Thanks again,' he said to Lucy.

'Drive carefully.'

They pulled away before she could have second thoughts. Halfway down the street, Doug jammed on the brakes.

'What is it?' Panic was never far from the surface.

'I left the lights on at home.'

'Leave it,' Ellie pleaded. 'I promise you, I'll pay for it.'

If we ever come back. She didn't say it, but Doug picked up the sentiment. He put the car in gear and started moving.

'Where are we going?'

MV Noordwind, North Sea They sat at a plastic table and picked at the food in front of them: eggs, beans, anaemic bacon and sausages, slowly congealing in grease. Outside, a grey swell heaved and pressed under a grey sky.

It would have been faster to go from Dover, but Ellie insisted on avoiding London and the motorways. Doug rolled his eyes, but didn't argue: he drove through the night, crossing the country on B-roads and backroads until they rolled into Harwich with the dawn. The wait for the ferry had been agonising, sitting in the concrete lanes constantly checking the mirrors while Doug got some sleep. She'd almost been sick when they had to show their pa.s.sports, though the immigration officer had barely glanced at them. Only when the bow had slammed shut, when she'd scanned the faces of all the pa.s.sengers coming up the gangway and watched the piers recede behind them, did she allow herself to relax.

Doug squinted at a piece of sausage and decided it was worth the risk.

'Let me get this from the beginning.'

Ellie put down her coffee. 'There are two sides to this. There's Monsalvat, Blanchard and all them and there's ... a rival organisation.'

Call it a brotherhood, though we've nothing against women.

'Behind Monsalvat, there's a French billionaire named Michel Saint-Lazare. Your Mr Spencer. Whatever's in that box, Saint-Lazare's ancestors took it from the brotherhood centuries ago.'

'According to your friend Harry.'

'I have to believe him.' Two months ago, she'd never have believed she'd be saying that. 'I can't do this by myself.'

Doug gave her a weary look. Exhaustion bruised the skin around his eyes; his face looked grey where stubble poked through, but he still tried for a smile.

'You're not by yourself.'

Ellie reached across the table and squeezed his hand. 'I know. But we won't survive on the run for long. We'll run out of money, for a start. All my bank cards come from Monsalvat. As soon as they work out I'm with you, they'll probably find a way to cancel yours too or track us if you use them.' Doug looked sceptical. 'They're a bank, remember. They can do that kind of thing. Whatever we stole from them, they'll move heaven and earth to get it off us.'

'You could give it back.'

'I've chosen my side. This organisation, the brotherhood, whatever you call them they're the only ones who can protect us.' She crossed her fingers and prayed that was true. 'We have to find them.'

'How do we do that?'

Ellie sipped her coffee and made a face. It tasted of detergent.

'I don't know,' she admitted. 'Harry was my only contact.' She'd tried the phone number he'd given her three times from the pier at Harwich. If no answer, leave a message for Harry from Jane. The voicemail had kicked in, but she hadn't left a message.

'Now he's probably dead or worse.'

The boat rocked up and down in the swell. A toddler with a yellow balloon staggered down the aisle between the tables, fell flat on his face and started to wail. Ellie felt a kick of sympathy.

'There's a company in Luxembourg that Monsalvat have just taken over.' A mid-ranking European industrial concern. By an accident of history, they own something that belongs to us. 'They've got something that links to Harry's people. If we can find it, maybe we can find our way to them.'

'If we can find it?' Doug repeated. 'Are we just going to walk in there and ask if they've got an address for an ancient, secret brotherhood?'

Ellie allowed herself a pale smile. 'Something like that. Unless you've got a better idea.'

But across the table, Doug's eyes had closed and his face nodded forward. Driving all night had exhausted him; he couldn't stave off sleep any longer. Ellie shot out her arm just in time to stop him toppling into his breakfast.

Near Bastogne, Belgium Doug drove; Ellie sat with two sheets of paper laid out on the map book on her lap. One gave a transcription of the poem, the other was a translation.

'Mr Spencer asked me to make the translation,' Doug explained. 'I wanted to keep the form of the original, so it's written in rhyming octosyllabic couplets. Eight syllables per line it's the standard form for early French romance poetry.'

'Romance as in ...'

'As in romance language. In ancient Rome there was written Latin and there was a b.a.s.t.a.r.dised, colloquial form called Romanice. As the empire fell apart, Latin stayed pretty much the same, but Romanice devolved into the languages that became French, Spanish, Italian and so on. In the twelfth century, when people started writing in those languages, the stories they wrote were called romances, to differentiate them from stuff written in Latin. Nothing necessarily to do with romantic love. Even today, the French word for a novel is ”roman”.'

'OK.' Ellie bent forward and read the translation, trying not to feel carsick.

On mazy paths a Christian knight

Sought n.o.ble turns: it was his right.