To me? No, he had no need to send a message to me because I was right there at his side on the day of the crash.

Part of a telephone number?

A security box access code?

I knew of course that it was neither. On my bedside table lay my copy of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. It was old and dog-eared, its pages well-thumbed and soft as peach-skin. I sat cross-legged on the bed with it on my lap, as I had hundreds of times before as a child, and opened its pages.

The first number on the raw leather of the wallet was 511609. I split it up into pairs and turned quickly to page 51. Line 16. The ninth word. It was TAKE.

The second number was 271314. My fingers retraced their steps to page 27. I counted down to line 13. Across to the fourteenth word. It was ME.

TAKE ME.

Take me where?

When André and I were children, Les Misérables had been our cipher book. André had taught me how to use a simple cipher code and we had left secret messages for each other all over the house and barns. To say where we were hiding. Where we were going. What mood we were in. The key to it all had been Les Misérables. Now he had used it again with someone else. Old habits die hard.

901906 was the third number.

I skipped forward to page 90. Familiar names flashing past my eyes – Jean Valjean, Madeleine, Javert, Fantine. A powerful tale that examines the nature of good and evil. As a child I was screwed up in knots by it but I’d clung to its final offer of redemption like a life raft. Now I clung to its pages again. Page 90. Line 19. Sixth word.

OUT. The word was out.

Take. Me. Out.

Who was the message meant for and what did it mean? It had been written before his stay in hospital when he was well, I reminded myself. Was the message incomplete?

Take me out – but out of where?

I walked over to the window and focused my attention on the yard, on the white horses being saddled up for their day’s work. I thought about the person who had driven the van that smashed into my brother. Was he preparing for his day’s work? I tried to conjure up a picture of him. Are you lazing in bed, curled around your wife’s warm buttocks, no thought in your head for the man whose life you ruined? Or sipping your first coffee? Smoking a cigarette? Walking your dog through the cool morning shadows of the statuary in the Tuileries Garden?

You think you are safe.

But you are wrong. Wherever you are hiding, whatever plans you are hatching, I promise you this. I will find you.

*