Dry Bones by Peter May Read Free Book Online

way?’
    ‘To be honest, I really don’t recall. I’m sure the police must have asked me at the time. But there’s nothing that sticks in my mind. I do remember I was far more distracted that month by the defiling of the church. We’re just coming up to the tenth anniversary of it. I do hope the culprits don’t feel the need to deliver any reminders. I’ve asked for a police guard just in case.’
    ‘Defiling of the church?’ Enzo was intrigued. ‘What happened?’
    ‘I remember something about that,’ Raffin said suddenly. ‘It was in all the papers at the time. Someone broke in and sacrificed an animal in front of the altar.’
    The
curé
said, ‘It was a pig. They butchered it. Dismembered the poor creature. Blood and bits were everywhere.’
    ‘Why would anyone do something like that?’ Enzo asked.
    ‘God only knows.’ The
curé
raised his eyes to Heaven as if searching for belated enlightenment. ‘Some Pagan rite perhaps. Some Black ceremony, a sacrifice to the Antichrist. Who knows? No one ever owned up to it. But no matter how much we rubbed and scrubbed, we never could get the blood out of the stone. Here, see for yourselves….’ He walked briskly along the north ambulatory, past several of the chapels, to an altar beneath a delicately woven stone screen dominated by the figure of Christ on a large cross overhead. The area immediately in front of the altar was roped off at each side to keep tourists away. Rows of wicker chairs ranged off towards the back of the church. ‘There, you see.’ The
curé
pointed to the ancient stone flags and two steps leading up to the raised altar. ‘It’s faded over the years, but still quite visible.’ A large area covering the flags and the steps was discoloured. It would have been impossible to guess that it was blood. It was just darker where the blood had pooled and splashed and lain undisturbed long enough to be absorbed into the stone.
    ‘This happened during the night, then?’ Enzo said.
    ‘I discovered it myself the following morning. It made me physically sick.’
    ‘Can you remember what date that was?’
    ‘Monsieur,’ the
curé
puffed himself up indignantly, ‘it is a date burned into my memory for eternity. It was the night of the twenty-third to the twenty-fourth of August, 1996.’
    Enzo glanced at Raffin. The significance of the day was not lost on either of them.
    The shrill warble of a phone was just audible above the reverberating roar of the organ, and the
curé
reached beneath his cassock to retrieve the latest Samsung flip-open model. God’s work, it seemed, could now be done by cell phone. ‘Excuse me.’ The
curé
hurried away.
    Enzo gazed thoughtfully at the dark-stained flagstones. A group of tourists stood opposite, beyond the rope on the south ambulatory, staring up at the stone screen beneath the cross. They became distracted when suddenly Enzo stepped over the rope on the north side, walked to the centre of the church, and crouched down in front of the altar as if praying. But if he said a prayer at all, it was to the God of Science. He searched in his satchel and produced a sturdy, bone-handled knife, folding out its well-sharpened steel blade. He began scraping along the edge of one of the flagstones, breaking off splinters and flakes of crumbling stone, and digging out the dirt of centuries from the cracks between them. He very quickly accumulated a small pile of stone flakes and dirt, which he gathered together with his knife and dragged on to a sheet of clean paper torn from a notebook. He carefully folded the paper to seal in the scrapings, and slipped it into a plastic ziplock bag.
    Raffin was embarrassed. ‘What are you doing?’ he hissed, his voice almost drowned by the organ.
    Enzo looked round. ‘What?’
    ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he shouted, just as the organist finished his piece. Raffin’s voice reverberated around the church, chasing the dying echoes of the fugue. Tourists all along each