He was lying face-down.
His black skin was as cold as the cave floor. Billeter went through the motions of trying to find a pulse and declared that rigor mortis had already set in.
‘Search him,’ Toucas ordered, and Billeter donned gloves and began the task while Luc collapsed on his haunches to watch the nightmarish scene.
Another student murdered.
At the feet of the bird man.
In this mystical place.
He heard Abbot Menaud’s words in his head: ‘I’m afraid they’re all gone.’
Billeter was saying something that he missed. Luc looked up and asked him to repeat it. ‘I said he had one key in his pocket. Is this the original or the copy?’
‘It’s the original. It’s my keychain.’
Billeter resumed his inspection. ‘There’s a stab wound in his right flank. We’ll see what the coroner says but that’s the probable cause of death.’
‘What do these mean, these plants and that man or whatever he is with this erection of his?’ Toucas asked.
‘I don’t know if we’ll ever know what they mean,’ Luc answered wearily. ‘I’m sure people will have theories.’
‘What’s your theory?’
‘Right now, I couldn’t say. My best student is dead. My people are dead. The women…’
Toucas didn’t pretend to be empathic. ‘This isn’t idle chatter, Professor. I’m conducting an investigation! Do you want justice? I’m sure you do! How well did you know this man?’ He pointed at Pierre with a jut of his chin.
‘I knew him very well. He was with me for four years. He was a good archaeologist. He might have become a great one.’
‘Where was he before he was your student?’
‘Paris. University of Paris. He was Parisian.’
‘From Africa.’
Luc keyed on the accusatory way the man spat that out. ‘So what?’
‘Did he ever have friends or relatives come visit him here?’
‘No.’
‘Did he have any bad habits, drugs?’
‘No. Not that I know of.’
‘Money problems?’
‘Beyond what all students face? I wouldn’t know. What are you driving at?’
Toucas rubbed his fleshy cheeks with the heels of his hands in a show of fatigue or maybe exasperation. ‘A crime has been committed. A great crime. All crimes have motives and opportunities. Why do you think Pierre Berewa was in this cave, professor?’
‘I don’t know. He shouldn’t have been.’
‘Well then. We have a motive. There’s been a theft. Your equipment is gone, the purses and wallets of the victims were taken. There was a sexual assault. Spontaneous perhaps. The women were there. The perpetrators were men. It happens. And your Pierre had a key to the cave. Maybe…’ He stopped long enough to respond to Luc’s growing anger. He had risen from his squat and was towering over the colonel, growing red with rage. ‘Just maybe, Professor, please listen to me, this student had some shady dealings with bad people. Maybe he was their opportunity. We must keep an open mind.’
‘There was another key!’ Luc shouted, the words echoing in the chamber. ‘It’s gone. Maybe Pierre was trying to stop them from – I don’t know what.’
‘Well, maybe. Of course, there are other explanations. A drug gang. Travellers. Gypsies. Your presence down here wasn’t exactly a secret. Scientists are rich. They have fancy gear. I know how crooks think. This was an easy target, whether or not Pierre Berewa was involved.’
Luc was half-listening, half-watching the lieutenant lifting Pierre up by a stiff shoulder to see if anything was under his body. He saw something. An archaeologist’s eye. ‘What’s that?’
‘Where?’ Billeter asked.
‘Near his left hand.’
With Toucas moving in to keep Pierre’s shoulder and upper body off the ground, Billeter shone his torch underneath and pulled out a block of brown cakey material, the size of a dozen pencils bundled together.
Toucas put on a single glove to receive it and sniffed at it. ‘What is this, professor?’
Luc had no clue and said it wasn’t anything to do with his excavation.
‘I have some ideas, but I’d rather not say for now. We’ll have it analysed. Everything will be analysed, you can be sure of that,’ Toucas said.
‘You need to know something,’ Luc said suddenly.
‘Go on.’
‘Last night I was in England, in Cambridge. Someone tried to run me over with a car. He got away.’
‘And what do the police think?’
‘They thought it was probably a drunk driver.’
Toucas shrugged.
‘This morning, I was on my way to an appointment with a scientific collaborator. There was an explosion at the office park before I got there. There were many casualties.’
‘I heard something on the radio. I’ve been busy today,’ Toucas sniffed. ‘Other than the fact you’ve had a bad run at the tables, Professor, why are you telling me this?’
‘Because, maybe there’s some kind of connection. All these things just don’t happen.’
‘Why not? Things happen all the time. Conspiracy theorists make a living of stringing random events like different-sized beads into one ugly necklace. This is not what we do in my command.’
‘Could you at least talk to the police in England?’ Luc asked. He fished a business card from his wallet that one of the Cambridge officers had given him. Toucas took it and slipped it in his breast pocket as if he had no intention of ever looking at it again.
There were faraway calls from inside the cave.
‘Despite everything,’ Luc said miserably, ‘we’re going to have to protect the integrity of the cave. We can’t have people just walking around with no safeguards.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Toucas said, dismissively. ‘You can help us strike a balance between our needs and yours, I’m sure. A protocol, perhaps.’
A head popped through the tunnel into the Vault of Hands but it wasn’t a member of the gendarmerie.
It was Marc Abenheim.
He had a sweet-and-sour look on his officious face. In the face of all this horror, something was pleasing him.
‘There you are!’ Luc cringed at his nasal smugness. ‘I was told you were down here.’ He looked around, blinking nervously and sniffed, ‘Oh dear!’ at the sight of Pierre’s body. When he had visited during the excavation, Luc recalled he had trouble making eye contact. Now he was latching on with laser beams. ‘I didn’t expect to be back so quickly. It’s good to see the cave again but not under these circumstances. What a tragedy! The Minister herself sends her condolences.’
‘Thank you, Marc. You didn’t have to come all the way from Paris. It’s a matter for the authorities.’
Abenheim tried not to look at Pierre’s body. Luc knew they’d met. He had assigned Pierre to take Abenheim on his obligatory cave tour. ‘I’m afraid I did have to come. Can we speak in private?’
They withdrew to the adjacent vault. The bright, almost gaily painted hands all around them were discordant, bordering on absurd, considering the circumstances.
‘I seem to be seeing you only on unfortunate occasions,’ Abenheim said.
‘It seems so.’
‘These kinds of things are unprecedented in French archaeology. One excavation, so many deaths. It’s a very serious matter.’
‘I assure you, Marc, I know that.’
‘Professor Barbier is concerned. The Minister is concerned. There’s a danger of the image of this spectacular national monument being tarnished by these human tragedies.’
Luc was almost amused that Abenheim was parroting his words from the first ministry meeting – ‘spectacular national monument’. ‘I’m sure it will be a footnote to every report and popular article about Ruac in the future,’ Luc replied. ‘That much is unavoidable, I’m sure, but I’m also sure that now is not the right time to think of these matters.’
‘The ministry depends on me to think about these matters!’
‘What do you want us to do, Marc? What do you want me to do?’