But most likely there’d be dogs, too. And guards. There might even be a night shift, in which case he’d have to think again.
But as the sky darkened, and one by one the warehouse staff walked out to their cars, shrugging on jackets or overcoats, and drove away, Tillman became more sanguine about his chances.
The forecourt was empty now, but he still waited. After fifteen minutes, a man in a black uniform came out through the rear door, locking it behind him, did a perimeter walk that took him two and a half minutes, and went back in again. He did the same thing again an hour later.
This time, when the door closed, Tillman got to his feet, massaging his aching muscles, and started to walk towards the building.
Diema watched him as she had watched Kennedy, from far enough away that he could only be made aware of her through some gross error of her own. She was sitting a quarter of a mile away, behind a rampart of discarded crates and boxes on a piece of wasteground left to stand between two identikit business units — one dedicated to anti-theft devices for cars, the other to the manufacture of breast implants from medicalgrade silicon. The whole logic of the Adamite world, served up like the moral in a fable.
She liked that simile. But she wasn’t feeling the detached contempt and superiority that it implied. The truth, though it exasperated her to see such weakness in herself, was that Tillman made her uneasy.
She knew who he was, of course. Kuutma had told her everything, arming her in advance against surprises. Tillman was the father of her flesh. It was him who had impregnated Diema’s mother, Rebecca Beit Evrom, when she was sent into the world as one of the Kelim, completing a purpose that was above and beyond him. He was, in this, like a donkey carrying one of the faithful to pray. The donkey has no clue what the weight on its back really signifies, the meaning of its labour. It plays its part, controlled by whip and words, and then it’s put to pasture.
Diema had spent her whole life among the People, the fathers and mothers of her soul. Though her sire was a heathen and her mother had died when she was too young even to grieve for her, she dwelled among the chosen and she was of their number. The least of their number, it was true, and she had been made to feel that. But still, that truth outweighed all other truths. It was the grounding and the purpose and the very meat of her. So it wasn’t that she felt any kinship with Tillman, because of some animal task he’d performed adequately nineteen years before. If anything, the contemplation of his role in her conception filled her with disgust and something like shame — the sense of having touched, at one remove, something foul.
But she couldn’t help herself. She was surprised and even a little shaken at what he had managed to do here. He had realised that she was following him and somehow he’d found out enough about her to follow her right back. Except that by good fortune, she hadn’t been back to the safe house even once in the last three days. She’d divided her time between following Tillman and the rhaka and watching this place — which she was almost certain was Ber Lusim’s.
So now Tillman was investigating her investigation, which, of course, was all part of Kuutma’s master plan. But still, he made her uneasy. And the unease and the disgust were like oil and water: they didn’t mix.
She imagined killing him. That helped a little.
30
Most of the drive from Rennes to Avranches was on main roads through the ruined industrial hinterlands around Fougères. But when Kennedy got to the coast, she saw the vast expanse of the estuary stretching away on both sides and the fairy-tale castle of Mont Saint-Michel hanging behind her shoulder.
She stole a look out across the bay, a tidal plain so wide she couldn’t see its edges. Mont Saint-Michel guarded it with anachronistic zeal, its lower slopes crusted with the barnacles of cheap restaurants and souvenir shops, but the abbey of La Merveille standing proud and clean at the top like an angel on a dunghill.
She should have brought Izzy here. Izzy wouldn’t have gone walking on that pottery-clay beach for a million euros and a pink Cadillac, but she would have trudged up to the abbey and back, complaining all the way, and she would have drunk apple brandy with Kennedy in one of the local dives until Kennedy had to half-carry her back to the hotel for holiday sex that was wild and clumsy and heart-stopping like the first time ever.
The Scriptorial wasn’t hard to find. The road took Kennedy straight into town, and the building was right there in front of her. An angle of the old city wall enfolded it on two sides, and an ancient square tower rose right behind it, but the Scriptorial itself was a triangular tumulus with rounded corners, like a man-made anthill.
The bulk of the space, Kennedy knew, was a standing exhibition devoted to the history of books and book-binding, and the literally crowning glory on the building’s top floor was a selection of the books rescued from the library of La Merveille around the time when the revolutionary government decided that bibles made good kindling.
Kennedy reported to the desk, and while she waited, cast her eye over the exhibits. There were models of La Merveille showing the stages by which it had been built over the space of a handful of centuries, stone sculptures and wooden carvings looted from its chapel, and maps of the area at different times in its history. But she was too tired from the drive and too restless to take in much of what she was seeing.
‘Miss Kennedy.’
The voice was cultured and with the merest trace of an accent — just enough to turn the i of miss into an ee. Kennedy turned and Gilles Bouchard extended a hand.
Long acquaintance with Emil Gassan had conditioned her to expect someone both dry and dapper. But Bouchard was young — maybe her own age — robustly built and dressed very casually in a grey polo neck sweater and snow-white jeans. His hair was long, fine and blond, his narrow face tanned like a movie star’s.
She took the hand and shook it. ‘Yes, I’m Heather Kennedy. And you’re Dr Bouchard?’
‘Gilles.’
‘Gilles. Thank you for agreeing to see me at such short notice.’
‘It’s my pleasure. I believe I may be repaying a favour, by a fairly Byzantine route.’
Kennedy grinned. ‘Yes, so I was led to believe.’
‘I was also told you might not have much time.’
‘I’m here on your terms. But if you’ve got the book ready to hand, I’d love to take a look at it.’
‘The book,’ Bouchard said. He gave the word a slightly satirical edge. ‘Yes. Well, I’ll show you what we have, and I’ll explain how we come to have it. Please, come this way.’
He led her away from the timeline and the lower slopes of the exhibition to a door, which opened onto a stairwell with red-painted walls. The stairs were steel, and rang under their feet.
‘The Scriptorial within the Scriptorial,’ Bouchard said. ‘It runs clockwise, where the public rooms run counter-clockwise — or widdershins, to use the charming English word. We call this space le filetage administratif; the administrative thread. You understand the metaphor? Like the thread of a screw.’ He gestured with his index finger, moving it in a spiral.
‘I understand the metaphor,’ she confirmed.
‘This is where we keep the bulk of our collection,’ he told her, ‘along with facilities dedicated to their preservation and repair. Many of our books came from the abbey, as you probably know — and our bias, perhaps for that reason, is towards religious works. Here. I have set this room aside for you.’
He unlocked a door and ushered her into a room that was no more than a cubicle. The desk and straight-backed chair that it contained more or less filled it. Behind the desk there was a single wall-mounted shelf. The walls and ceiling were painted in a soul-sapping hospital green.