Dry Bones by Peter May Read Free Book Online Page A

ambulatory turned to look.
    Enzo returned the plastic bag to his satchel and walked back to the north ambulatory, stepping over the rope to rejoin Raffin. ‘No need to shout.’
    Raffin lowered his voice self-consciously. ‘What are you playing at, Macleod? You can’t just go digging up the floor of a fifteenth century church.’
    Enzo steered the journalist towards the back of St. Étienne du Mont and the small door to the left of the main entrance. ‘I don’t know if you’re familiar with idiomatic English. But we have an expression in which we describe the process of trying to get information out of someone who refuses to talk, or even money out of a Scotsman, as like trying to get blood out of a stone. It’s another way of saying that it’s impossible.’
    Raffin shrugged. ‘We have a similar expression, except that it’s oil from a wall—
on ne saurait tirer de l’huile d’un mur
. I’m surprised you haven’t heard it.’
    ‘Well, I don’t know about oil and walls, but these days it’s perfectly possible to get blood out of a stone.’
    Raffin frowned. ‘Even blood that’s ten years old?’
    Enzo nodded. ‘And even from the floor of a fifteenth century church.’ He smiled. ‘The wonders of modern forensic science. It will be a fairly straightforward matter to extract DNA from the sample scrapings I’ve taken and subject it to some basic precipitin tests.’
    ‘Precipitin?’
    ‘You mix the DNA on a glass slide with some anti-pig globulin. If there’s a positive reaction, there will be a visible clot, or clump—or “precipitate” form—and we’ll know whether or not it was pig’s blood.’
    ‘But we already know that it’s pig’s blood. You heard the
curé
. They left the butchered beast behind.’
    ‘That’s right. And I confidently predict that we will indeed confirm the presence of pig’s blood. But we’ll also mix the DNA with some anti-human globulin, which will tell us if there is any human blood amongst it.’
    Raffin’s face darkened, and he glanced around self-consciously. A sign on a stand next to them urged them to SILENCE . He lowered his voice. ‘Gaillard’s blood?’
    ‘Well, we’ll be able to tell that, too, from the DNA.’
    ‘You think Gaillard was murdered here?’’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Enzo paused. ‘Yet. But this was his church. Even although it was another ten days before he was actually reported missing, he made a rendezvous to meet someone the same night that intruders broke in here and slaughtered a pig. He drew a cross next to the rendezvous in his diary. A lot of coincidences there.’
    ‘It’s a bit of a leap, though.’
    ‘Perhaps. But sometimes you have to make those kinds of leaps.’ Enzo paused for reflection. ‘And think back to earlier this morning. His mother told us that his favourite film was
La Traversée de Paris
. Two men smuggling the pieces of a dismembered pig across Paris. Another coincidence?’
    ‘What are you suggesting?’
    ‘Suppose that someone lured Gaillard here and murdered him in front of the altar.’
    ‘Why?’ Raffin frowned. ‘Why would they?’
    Enzo raised his hands. ‘That’s another question altogether. But make the leap with me. Suppose that’s what happened. Suppose he was murdered right there….’ He turned and looked back down the church towards the cross and the screen and the bloodstained flags. ‘Suppose he was hacked to pieces in front of that altar, some bizarre, ritualistic killing, and then the pieces of a pig and its blood strewn about to disguise the fact that it was a human being who had been murdered. Who would ever think to check that there was human blood with the pig’s? You heard the
curé
. They were shocked, horrified by the thought of an animal sacrifice being performed in their church. They called the police, yes, but I’ll bet you it was all cleaned up before anyone would even have thought to question it.’
    The notion seemed to shock Raffin. ‘What makes you think he