And too conveniently timed for the burglary attempt to have been a coincidence. There was no doubt left in Bens mind now: the car crash had been no accident. Someone had wanted the Arundels out of the way, and it had something to do with the contents of Simeons safe.
Ben looked closely at the shotgun. It was a Mossberg pump-action with a folding stock and a barrel not much more than a foot long, making it a seriously prohibited weapon in Britain and most other countries of the world. It still had four rounds in the magazine plus another five in a shell holder attached to the butt. The ammunition was solid slug, as hed suspected. But that wasnt what interested him most.
While the majority of weapons of its kind in circulation among the criminal underworld tended to have been made for civilian use originally, before their crooked new owners adapted them for purpose by sawing the barrels, this one was different. The matt finish and MOD serial numbers and proof marks told him this one clearly had started life as a military weapon. Guns like this didnt generally fall into just anyones hands, and combined with the way the man holding it had shown such skill in sneaking up on him, it confirmed his impression that he was dealing with a former soldier. And a good one, too. Not many guys could have upped and run from the blow Ben had dealt him.
Ben wondered whether he should call the cops, then decided against it. Theyd muddy the ground like a herd of cattle and ask too many questions. In any case, he was disinclined to hand them over the shotgun knowing the British police, it would be treated as though it were a live nuclear warhead, and he as a terror suspect.
No, it was better to keep this incident to himself and follow up whatever leads he could, on his own.
Ben let the dog out of the annexe. Sniffing everywhere and growling to himself, Scruffy followed him as he carried the thieves duffel bag through to the kitchen. Ben laid the bag on the old oak kitchen table and pulled up a chair. The numbing sense of grief was losing its bite now, replaced by a mixture of burning rage and adrenaline that made his hands shake as he emptied the bags contents onto the table.
There was nothing inside but the brown envelope and the small black Toshiba laptop that Ben had seen the thief take from Simeons safe. He laid the computer aside for the moment and picked up the envelope.
It didnt contain a lot. He found an air ticket to Jerusalem dating back to eighteen months earlier, a hotel bill printed in Hebrew and a collection of glossy photo prints that had presumably been taken while on the same trip to Israel. Most were typical tourist snaps: the Jerusalem skyline at night; the Wailing Wall; a variety of churches and mosques and synagogues; the desert, palm trees, a camel, some sandy ruins.
Ben went through them one by one until he arrived at a group shot of Simeon posing with three other men against a backdrop of the same ancient ruins. They appeared to be on friendly terms, all smiling. Simeons arm was around the broad shoulders of the man on the left, who was obviously Israeli, burly and grizzled, around sixty. To the right of Simeon stood a smaller man, perhaps European, with white hair and trim beard, in good shape but quite old, closer to seventy than sixty. The man on the far right of the group was about fifteen years younger, with curly salt-and-pepper hair, a round jovial face and the belly of a bon viveur.
Ben was unable to tell much from the photos, but he might have more luck with whatever was on the computer. He flipped open the laptops lid, turned the machine on and quickly discovered that it was virtually empty apart from a single Word document file titled TSS.
Whatever it was, it must have been important enough to Simeon to warrant keeping it in a safe. Ben clicked to open the document, and a new window opened on the screen.
The computer was asking for a passcode. Ben had just hit a brick wall.
TSS. It didnt look like an initial more like an acronym for something. But what? Then, after a few more moments reflection, he remembered what Michaela had told him that morning, and it hit him.
TSS. The Sacred Sword. The Word document was the unfinished manuscript of Simeons book. It could have told Ben a great deal but he didnt rate his chances of breaking Simeons security code. Knowing him, it would be some incredibly obscure Bible reference or an unguessable piece of Latin. It was a non-starter. Ben checked the documents properties, but it was like trying to see into a locked room from outside. The only data he could access were the documents size, half a megabyte or so, and the date and time it had last been saved: 15.04 on December 14th.
Ben swore to himself and reluctantly closed the laptop down. Remembering the PC in the study, he decided to see if he might find anything out from Simeons email.
There was no password to hurdle this time. Sitting at Simeons desk, Ben scrolled through hundreds of messages, mostly concerning everyday church matters. Some were from the TV production company, others from an outfit called Blackwood Entertainment Management who seemed to have been in the middle of negotiating an agency deal to represent Simeon in his newfound role as television celebrity.
After flicking through a few more emails, Ben felt a pang of shame and began to sense that he was prying uselessly into Simeons affairs. He was on the verge of giving up when another of the messages caught his eye.
It was from the man Michaela had talked about on their walk through the woods. Father Fabrice Lalique, the priest whose recent suicide had so upset Simeon. Ben opened the message. It was dated a couple of weeks earlier and read:
My Dear Friends
By the time you read this message, I will be dead. I ask you not to mourn for me, as I am unworthy of your grief.
The shame of my sins is a burden I can no longer bear. May God have mercy on me for the terrible things I have done.
Let his soul rot in hell for all I care, Ben thought. He clicked out of the emails and went online to run a Google search on the name Fabrice Lalique. It didnt take long to dig up a whole collection of French news reports about the priests suicide and the discovery, shortly after his death, of large amounts of obscene material on the personal computer at his home in Saint-Christophe, near Millau in the Midi-Pyrenees area of southern France.
Revelations about paedophilia had a way of wiping out anything positive that might have been said of a mans past life or career; not surprisingly, the news reports were full of disgust, even hatred. There were various quotes from members of his diocese, all of them expressing their shock at the appalling discovery and very little in the way of sympathy for the dead man. Some online commentators had dubbed Lalique the Paedo Priest. Ben came across forums and websites where the scandal had sparked a furious debate, with pressure groups demanding that governments step in immediately to end the secret culture of perversion and abuse within the Catholic Church or, better still, tear the whole rotten edifice down once and for all.
Most of the online articles had published the same image of Lalique, pictured at some official event wearing his priests garb. Ben immediately recognised him as the jolly-faced, full-bellied man whod been standing on the right of the group shot in Simeons photo. Other images online showed the scene under the Millau viaduct where officials had scooped up what little remained intact of Laliques body after the enormous fall from the bridge. As suicides went, it had been highly efficient.
Ben shut down the PC, left the study and made his way through to the living room, trying to make sense of it all and knowing he was a long way from succeeding. As he looked around him for inspiration, one of the books in the antique bookcase suddenly caught his eye. He opened the glass door and slipped the old Bible off the shelf. It was a beautifully leather-bound edition, and one that he hadnt seen since his first year at Oxford. Carefully turning the cover, he saw his own faded handwriting. To my friend Simeon, from Benedict Hope.
Ben was touched that Simeon had kept the birthday gift all these years, and saddened. He flicked through the pages of the book hed once known virtually by heart. He still remembered great chunks of it, though a lot had faded from his memory. Maybe I should read it again, he thought. Simeon wouldnt have minded if he borrowed it.
Ben set the Bible down on a table and was about to close the bookcase when he noticed the collection of videotapes and DVDs on the top shelf. Some were movies, some were documentaries, some were religion-themed programmes taped from TV, with handwritten labels stuck to their spines. The one that especially caught Bens eye was a home-recorded videotape labelled SIMEON VS THE ENEMY. He remembered Simeons words from the day before: I have many enemies. It had been hard to tell to what extent hed been joking when he said it.
The Arundels TV rested discreetly on a stand in the corner, with a DVD player and VCR nestling below it. Ben took the tape down from the bookcase and inserted it into the machine.
Chapter Fourteen
According to the date scrawled on the videotapes label with a marker pen, Simeon had recorded the TV programme a little over a year ago. It was one of those highbrow panel discussion shows that tended to be aired late at night, called The Monday Debate. The presenter was some tweedy type whose face looked vaguely familiar to Ben from one of the rare past occasions when hed ever turned on a TV. Since moving to France hed never bothered with it at all.
Tonight on The Monday Debate, the presenter announced, we ask the question that is becoming more topical every year: Is religion harmful, and would we be better off without it?
Poised behind twin lecture rostrums like two rivals in a political standoff were Simeon, on the right, wearing his white dog collar but otherwise casually attired, and a man on the left whom Ben had never seen before. He was somewhat older than Simeon, somewhere in his mid-to-late forties, with thick swept-back hair that could have been dyed to hide the grey. He was less casually turned out than his opponent, wearing an expensive-looking and immaculately pressed light grey suit, and gave the impression of a man who took himself extremely seriously. His eyes were darting and intense. The presenter introduced him as Penrose Lucas, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Durham and author of the recent Sunday Times number one bestseller God? What God?