'It could open anywhere,' said Amy. 'Someone's house. The boulangerie. boulangerie.'

'We're gonna surprise them '

David climbed the earthen steps and shoved a shoulder violently upwards; the doorflap began to yield, a slant of light striped his face, and the trap door slapped open, with a bang. He looked across as four faces stared back at him, grinning.

What?

But it wasn't four faces. It was four rag dolls: Campan mounaques. mounaques. The family of rag dolls installed in the front pew of the church. The family of rag dolls installed in the front pew of the church.

The dolls smiled forever. Smiling at David's soiled face as he hoisted himself out of the trap door, then leaned down and hauled Amy to the surface. She gazed about.

'The church of course. of course.'

David nodded. 'We better get out of these clothes now, get out of them now let's use these '

He pointed at the rag dolls. Within a minute they had stripped themselves, extracted money and possessions, and jumped into the ordinary clothes of the rag dolls, the baggy jeans and jumpers; David kicked away his clothes, trying not to imagine what kind of...things...what kind of fetid silt...had touched his skin.

'OK?' he said.

Amy was using her discarded jumper to wipe her head. She shivered.

'Jesus. David. What...was...that stuff? In the cellar?'

'Body liquor.'

'What?'

'If you store bodies in an airtight s.p.a.ce, for centuries, they decay...in a certain way. But '

'They turn to liquid liquid ?' ?'

'Eventually.' He glanced around the church, trying to work out what to do next. Amy pressed him: 'Explain!'

'The corpses slowly become adipocere corpse wax. A sort of cheesy wax. Grave wax. Then over centuries they turn again, into...a...' He was trying not to think about it. 'A sort of soup. With flesh. I'm sorry. But that's what we found '

'How do you know that that ?' ?'

'Human biochemistry.'

She was trembling.

'Oh G.o.d. Oh G.o.d. Oh G.o.d.'

Her eyes were shut, absorbing the ghastliness. He decided not to tell her his darkest fears. One of the reasons you might store human bodies so diligently and carefully was if you feared they carried severe disease. Infectious disease.

'OK,' she said, opening her eyes. 'I'm OK. But Jose...' She inhaled deeply, to calm herself. 'Poor Jose.' Then she said: 'What now?'

'We get the f.u.c.k out of Campan.'

He crept to the main door, and creaked it open. They stealthily walked the path through the overgrown churchyard to the main iron gate. And gazed. There was not a person or a car to be seen; the only sign of humanity was one solitary old woman hurrying under an umbrella, way down the grey and lonely main street.

'Run for it '

They sprinted out of the churchyard, hurling themselves down the humble main street of Campan, beyond the last dilapidated villa, running into the countryside. And still running.

After twenty minutes Amy called a halt, she had her hands on her knees. Gasping and gulping. Almost puking. David stopped, exhausted, and looked around, they had reached a junction, where traffic slashed past, burning down the main road.

But now Amy was running on.

'We can hitch! We need to hitch a lift '

'Where?'

'Biarritz. Somewhere busy, with lots of people, where we can get lost. This road goes to Biarritz.'

He followed her, as she ran to the road, with her thumb out, hoping for a lift. David was desperate: who the h.e.l.l would stop for them? Dressed like scarecrows, faces frightened, half smeared with some unspeakable effluent.

Five minutes later a French apple truck stopped; the driver leaned over, pushed the door open. They climbed in, profusely thanking the man. He glanced at their clothes, he sniffed the air, and then he shrugged. And drove.

They were escaping. Down the thundering autoroute to Biarritz. David sat back, his arms aching, his mind spiralling, waiting for the sense of relief. But then he heard a beep. A message. He patted his scarecrow jeans: his phone! He'd forgotten that he'd turned his phone on, to use the light: he'd been keeping the phone off all this time, just in case Miguel was tracing his own number, too.

As he took the phone from his pocket, he felt the wild incongruity, a clash of modernity, and madness. He had been drenched with the vile distillation of many dead bodies, and yet his phone was bleeping.

The flashing number was British. He clicked.

And then he had one of the strangest phone calls of his life. From a journalist in England. A journalist called Simon Quinn. The phone call lasted an hour; by the time it was done they were in the depths of the Gascon hills, near Cambo-les-Bains.

David shut the call down. And then he rang a random number: and as soon as it answered he opened the window, and he threw the damp and mudded phone into the long gra.s.s of the verge, with a fierce relief. If anyone was tracing his calls, they would trace them to Cambo-les-Bains.

Amy was asleep in the seat next to him. The truck driver was furiously puffing a cigarette, oblivious.

He sat back, pensive. The phone call from the journalist. What did it all mean? Murders in Britain? Scientists? Genetics?

Deformity?

25.

At the end of the bizarre phone call, his hand weary from scribbling notes, Simon thanked David Martinez and clicked off, falling back on the bed, his eyes bright with thoughts and ideas.

Extraordinary. It was truly extraordinary. And the tension in the young man's voice. What was he going through? What was happening down there, in the Pyrenees?

Whatever the answer, the phone call was a revelation. A breakthrough and it needed celebrating. He almost ran downstairs. He needed to speak to Sanderson, and he needed a cup of triumphant coffee.

Spooning dark brown Colombian coffee grounds into the cafetiere, he called New Scotland Yard. It occurred to him, as he did so, that Sanderson might be angered by Simon's persistent pursuit of the story; it occurred to him that Sanderson would be mightily mightily interested in this latest information. interested in this latest information.

But he couldn't reach Sanderson. Instead he was put through to Tomasky. The young DS seemed to listen with appreciative and gratifying interest; as he told the story, Simon felt almost exultant at his success. The best bit was the toes. They now had an explanation: the syndactyly. Yes.

Even as Simon explained his discoveries, he cursed himself for his own failure in not making this connection before as soon as Emma Winyard had mentioned the Cagots, he should have looked them up! Then he could have strung the pearls himself: webbed toes. Cagots. The Pyrenees.

Still, he had at least got there in the end.

The coffee had brewed and the mug was full. It was Tomasky's turn to talk, as the journalist sipped.

'So, Simon,' the DS said, 'you're saying these people, the...Cackots...'

'Cagots. Ca-gots.'

'Right. You're saying these Cag...ots are all deformed deformed ? They all have webbed fingers or toes?' ? They all have webbed fingers or toes?'

'Not all. But some, certainly and it is one of the characteristics of the Cagots. Since medieval times. That's why they were given the, ah, goose's foot to wear. To symbolize and epitomize their malformation.'

'Why? Why do they have webbed fingers and toes?'

'Genetics. They are a mountain people, inbred! Deformities like this are common in isolated communities with smaller gene pools. They don't get bred out. Fascinating right?'

'Sure.' Tomasky went quiet. Then he added. 'And you're saying our victims...are Cagots then. Someone is killing the Cag...ots?'

'Seems that way, Andrew. We don't know why, but we know that some of them are Cagots, and the ones who are Cagot and deformed get tortured. And the killings are happening all over. France, Britain, Canada.' He paused. 'And some of them are old, and they were in Occupied France during the war, maybe in this camp called Gurs. Maybe that's what links them as well. And some of them have lots of money...' Simon wanted to laugh at the bewildering evidence, but at least it was evidence. 'I need to speak to Bob Sanderson. He needs to know know this.' this.'

'Sure. I'm on it. I'll tell the DCI as soon as I see him.'

'Excellent. Thanks, Andrew.'

Simon rang off. He set down the mobile and stared out of the window. For half an hour he exulted in his discovery. Then his hymn of happiness was joined by the chime of the doorbell. The journalist breezed down the hall and opened the door. Behind it was Andrew Tomasky. Surprising.

'h.e.l.lo, DS. I thought '

The policeman pushed through the door and kicked it shut behind. Simon stood back.

Tomasky had a knife.

26.

Tomasky growled with anger as his first stab of the knife missed Simon's neck by an inch.

The journalist gasped as he sensed another slashing cut, and he swerved, again, batting away the blade but Tomasky came at him for a third time, jumping forward, and this time he got a hand on his victim's throat and the knife was aimed directly at an eye.

Choking and spitting, Simon caught the stabbing arm at the last moment. The knife was poised just millimetres from the pupil, shaking with the violence of their struggle.

Tomasky was thrusting down, his victim was holding the wrist and grinding the hand upwards. They were on the floor. The knife was too close to see, it was just a menacing silver blur in his vision: a looming greyness. The knifepoint came closer, the journalist shuddered he was going to be blinded, then killed. Drilled into the brain through the optical bone.

His eye was blinking reflexively, shedding tears. Loud noises rumbled behind. The bladepoint trembled with the strength of two men opposed. Simon screamed and made a final effort to force the blade away, but he was losing the battle. He shut his eyes and waited for the steel to sink into the softness, popping open the eyeball, then crunching into his brain.

Then his face was covered with splattering wetness, like he'd been slapped with heavy blancmange: and suddenly Tomasky was just a body, dead weight, sagging down, and he forced the dead policeman off his chest and he stared upwards.

Sanderson.

DCI Sanderson was standing in the door; next to him was a policeman with chest armour. The door had been kicked open. The chest-armoured cop had a gun.

'Shot, Richman.'

'Sir.'

Sanderson reached a hand down and pulled the journalist to his feet. But when he stood up he felt his knees go, trembling and buckling with the fear and the shock; he crumpled to the floor again. He was staring at Tomasky's body. The head had been blown apart, by a sidelong shot, at close range. The skull was in pieces. Actual pieces scattered across the hallway.

Then he sensed the wetness on his face. Smeary wetness. He had Tomasky's blood and maybe his brains on his face. His throat tightened with nausea as he stood; without a word to the policemen he hurled himself upstairs to the bathroom, where he averted himself from the mirror: he didn't want to see himself covered with brains and blood. Splashing water and more water on his face, he used a box of tissues, and half a bottle of handsoap, and finally he rinsed and nearly gagged, and rinsed again.

Now he checked the mirror. His face was clean. But there was something stuck in his cheek, lodged in its own little wound. Like a small piece of gla.s.s, burrowed in his flesh. Leaning close to the mirror he plucked the thing from his cheek.

It was one of Tomasky's teeth.

'League of Polish Families.'

The voice was familiar. DCI Sanderson was standing right behind, at the hallway door.

'What?'

'Tomasky. We've been watching the b.a.s.t.a.r.d for a while. Sorry it got that close. We've been monitoring his calls but he slipped out of the building '

'You '

'Sorry, mate. Had to use lethal force. Waited too long '

Simon's hands were still trembling with fear. He extended one into the air, experimentally. Watched it shaking. He grabbed a towel and dried his face. Trying to be calm and manly. Largely failing.

'Why did did you suspect him?' you suspect him?'

Sanderson offered a sad, sympathetic smile.

'Odd little things. The knotting. Remember that?'

'Yes.'

'You found out it was a witch torture, in an hour. Tomasky didn't. I put him on the job before you, and he turned up nothing like that. Yet he was a smart copper. That didn't quite...fit.' The DCI pointed at Simon's face. 'You're still bleeding.'

He switched his attention to the mirror once more. The wound where the tooth had impacted was indeed bleeding. But not badly. Rifling the bathroom cabinet, he found some cotton wool. He swabbed himself with water, then rinsed the woollen bud. White wool, red wool, clear water, stained water. Blood in the water. Sanderson carried on talking.