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Back The Guardian of Lies
Chapters (56)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. CHAPTER ONE
  4. CHAPTER TWO
  5. CHAPTER THREE
  6. CHAPTER FOUR
  7. CHAPTER FIVE
  8. CHAPTER SIX
  9. CHAPTER SEVEN
  10. CHAPTER EIGHT
  11. CHAPTER NINE
  12. CHAPTER TEN
  13. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  14. CHAPTER TWELVE
  15. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  16. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  17. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  18. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  19. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  20. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  21. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  22. CHAPTER TWENTY
  23. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  32. CHAPTER THIRTY
  33. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  42. CHAPTER FORTY
  43. CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
  44. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
  45. CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
  46. CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
  47. CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
  48. CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
  49. CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
  50. CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
  51. CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
  52. Acknowledgements
  53. ‘The Survivors’ Ad
  54. ‘The Betrayal’ Ad
  55. ‘The Liberation’ Ad
  56. Copyright

A higher price for André?

*

I reached under my bed a second time, pulled out my suitcase again and sat down beside it. From inside I extracted my magnifying viewfinder. I felt foolish, not quite sure why I was doing this. Both André and I had examined the film negative minutely, but there was something stuck in my mind, something that I couldn’t shake off.

I laid out the strip of film, bent over it with the viewfinder screwed to my eye and started again scouring each face in the pictures I’d taken of the street in Serriac yesterday. A jumble of heads. Of backs and arms. Faces with mouths open, frozen into silence.

Where? Where was it?

The something that had caught like a fishhook in my mind. It took me ten minutes to find it, and when I did, I knew who had killed Mickey. I felt my next breath catch in my throat and I wanted to reach into the tiny square of celluloid and tear out the person in it. Put a match to it. Watch him burn in hell.

I peered closer, my mouth dry. The face was obscured by a placard declaring NO TO NUCLEAR BOMBS. But his thick head of hair showed clearly, white as snow in the negative. And the eyebrows were evident. Spiky and unmistakable.

The last time I’d seen him was at the hospital in Paris and he’d almost ripped my face off. It was Gilles Bertin’s sidekick. Maurice Piquet. The one who liked to hurt.

*

The heart of the town of Arles is marked with blood. Today I could almost smell it on the hot and humid air that drifted up from the river. Violence and slaughter are etched into its stones, because towering over the twisting narrow street and casting a great shadow of darkness is one of France’s most magnificent Roman amphitheatres, where men, women, children and animals were killed for sport.

This was where I was headed. I parked up on the main road, the Boulevard des Lices. On a Saturday it would be heaving with the finest open-air market in all of Provence, the scents of exotic spices and local cheeses and live poultry drawing crowds to pick and poke among the colourful stalls. But today it was quiet, just the usual Monday morning workers and delivery vans. The summer’s tourists were still taking it easy over coffee and croissants, not interested in one extra grey Citroën 2CV nipping into the shade under one of the placid trees that lined the road.