We travel east. The other monks pretend to ignore me, though every so often I catch them giving me nervous glances. They talk freely when they think I’m not there, and fall silent when they see me. I keep my eyes on the road and don’t take it personally. When you’ve killed as many men as I have, the good opinion of your fellow-travellers doesn’t matter so much.
All the way to Rennes, I pretend to myself that there’s nothing special about this trip. I’ll copy the manuscripts, load them on my mule and trudge back. I know it’s a lie, but it helps contain my fears. South of Rennes, as the road takes us up the River Chère valley, I start to admit the idea. Day by day, step by step, it overtakes me until I can’t conceive any alternative. By the time we reach Châteaubriant, I know what I have to do.
The abbey is only two days away from the town. The Cellarer and his assistants will stay there to sell our wool, while I travel on alone. I make a brief and insincere goodbye. As soon as they’re out of sight, I double back into the market. The cloth fair has brought plenty of tailors to town, all vying to offer the best price. The coins the Abbot gave me for ink and vellum easily stretch to a new tunic, hose and coat. For an extra few pennies I buy a cap that comes low down the sides of my face, and a pair of stout boots.
I’ve got a long way to go.
XXXVII
The door said ‘ALARMED’, but Doerner had told the truth: it was disabled. Ellie slipped out across a no man’s land of cigarette butts and rubbish bins, down an alley and into freedom. No one saw her. She found Doug parked down a sidestreet where she’d left him.
He looked at her dishevelled hair, the dust-streaks and the blood where the paper had cut her. ‘What happened to you? I was about to call the police I was so worried.’
Ellie slumped down in the passenger seat so that only the top of her head showed. ‘Just drive. I’ll tell you later.’
‘Did you get what you wanted?’
‘Let’s find a phone box. Somewhere out of the way.’
Directory enquiries gave her the number she wanted and put her straight through. ‘Mr Lechowski, please. It’s Ellie Stanton.’
She supposed he could have been anywhere, but luck — if you could call it that — was on her side. Lechowski came on the line.
‘Ellie — this is an unexpected surprise. I thought perhaps you forgot me.’
She shuddered; she almost slammed the phone back in its cradle. Lechowski was her past, far too close to Monsalvat. Just talking to him felt like stepping into the jaws of a trap.
What if Blanchard’s got to him?
‘The acquisition’s gone through. I’m ready to honour our agreement.’
She tried to sound businesslike, like it was no big deal. Down the line, she could almost hear Lechowski licking his lips. Perhaps it was just the sound of his chewing gum.
‘You are staying at the Sofitel? Will I meet you there?’
‘I was thinking we could go somewhere more … intimate.’
He laughed. ‘You are worried about reputational risk. Lechowski is not offended.’ He named a restaurant in the old town. ‘I look forward to our evening.’
Ellie put the phone down and wanted to vomit. Even in the Underground tunnel she hadn’t felt this dirty.
You did it with Blanchard, she reminded herself. Somehow, in a way she didn’t want to consider, that had been different.
She turned around and saw Doug watching her warily.
‘What was the deal?’
She was too tired to lie. ‘He had leverage over the Talhouett takeover deal that could have derailed the whole thing. I told him if he let it go ahead, I’d sleep with him.’
The bleakness on Doug’s face was almost too much to bear. Right reaction, wrong reason. She reminded herself of Lucy, and found herself getting impatient. ‘Don’t be such a boy scout. I’d never have gone through with it.’
‘But now you are. To get the Mirabeau file.’
‘To get to the brotherhood. Without them, we’re really screwed.’
The restaurant was bright and busy, filled with corporate types. Ellie scanned the room from the door, looking for danger. Lechowski might have been on the other side of the Talhouett deal, but that didn’t mean a thing. If Blanchard had offered him a price, he’d give Ellie up in a moment.
Lechowski was the only face she recognised, and he wasn’t hard to spot. He wore a black-and-white check sports jacket, so loud it made Ellie’s head swim, though it had probably cost several hundred pounds. He ordered for her without asking what she wanted.
‘All seductions succeed through audacity,’ he remarked, with the authority of something he must have read in a book. ‘As soon as the seducer hesitates, he breaks the charm. “There is not one woman who does not prefer a little rough handling to too much consideration.” You know who said that? A woman.’
Ellie had never been out with a man who gave her a running commentary on his tactics. She squeezed her legs together and tried not to think of what was coming.
The waiter brought champagne, which Lechowski tasted with a great show of fussiness. He tipped his glass to her.
‘So why are you in Luxembourg?’
‘Talhouett.’
Lechowski took a gulp. Champagne dribbled down his chin. ‘Now you have won your prize, you have come to poke around her.’
The innuendo was entirely intentional. Ellie took a sip of champagne and wondered how she’d manage to stay sober that evening.
‘I’ll tell you a secret.’ She leaned forward, giving him an eyeful of her cleavage. ‘Blanchard bribed the president of the privatisation commission to tell us how much you’d bid. You were always going to lose.’
Lechowski spluttered; champagne sprayed on to Ellie’s cheek. ‘If I was recording this conversation, you could go to prison for saying that.’
The mock outrage on his face dissolved into a smirk. ‘But since we are being honest, I will tell you a secret in return. We never bid for Talhouett. An hour before the final offers were due, we informed the president of the commission that we had withdrawn our interest.’
Was it the champagne? All Ellie could do was stare at him in confusion.
‘If we had made this public, our withdrawal, it would have been a scandal. Very embarrassing to the commission, that they reduced the field to two bidders and then one dropped out. To preserve appearances, we agreed we would submit a bid five million euros less than whatever Monsalvat offered.’ He ripped a bread roll in two and dabbed butter on it. ‘Whatever he told Blanchard, it was a fiction.’
She still didn’t understand. ‘Why? To avoid the Romanian lawsuit?’
‘Mr Lazarescu, the obliging judge? So keen to tell me about his case.’ Lechowski stretched back in his chair. His shirt-tails pulled loose from his waistband, showing a tuft of hair sprouting above the belt buckle. ‘You think Lechowski is such a fool he cannot smell the rat?’
‘If you knew the Romanian problem was overplayed, why not bid?’
‘I found something everyone else missed — so secret, even the management did not know about it. A liability that could destroy the company.’
‘What?’
Lechowski opened his mouth — then snapped it shut with a cruel grin. ‘You own the company — you find out. If you can find the file.’