The Lazarus Vault by Tom Harper Read Free Book Online

gold stud gleamed in his ear.
    ‘Of course, you didn’t see anything.’
    Lemmy nodded. He realised he was still holding the open envelope.
    ‘Can I keep this?’
    The man shrugged. ‘Sure.’
    Without warning, strong arms grabbed Lemmy from behind and hugged him tight, pinning his hands to his sides. Before he could draw breath to scream, they dragged him to the edge of the parapet, lifted him up and dropped him over the rail. He fell fifty metres and landed in the concrete canal that was all that remained of the Pétrusse river. The men, including the tramp, drove away in their minivan. The tourist in the white raincape had vanished.
    Lemmy’s body was discovered half an hour later, by a French businessman jogging through the park. It didn’t take long for the police to gather the basic facts: his name, his address, his occupation and the envelope stuffed with five-hundred-euro bills still clutched in his hand. Further investigation added the information that he drove a high-specification German sedan and held documentation for a number of bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The fact that he had visited the Monsalvat bank the day before was noted but not thought relevant. There were no next of kin.
    A passing driver came forward to say he might have seen a taxi pulled up, and a gang of men in a brawl on the pavement. But the taxi company in question could prove that none of its drivers had been nearby at the time, and the descriptions of the men were so vague as to be meaningless.
    Two days later a small notice in the newspapers reported that Lemmy Maartens, a respected civil servant in the Ministry of Finance, had leaped to his death off the Pont Adolphe. He left no note. The police speculated that he had been under a lotof stress, brought on by the financial crisis and the recent wave of bank failures. Perhaps he felt responsible. He was, his colleagues all agreed, devoted to his work.

VI
    Wales, 1128
    You can conquer the Welsh, but you can’t defeat them. My father says it’s because of the land: mounted knights can’t pursue the rebels up mountains and through forests, or into the deep marshes. My mother also says it’s because of the land – but she doesn’t mean it the same way.
    My mother is a Breton – which, she says, makes her a cousin to the Britons who plough fields and cut wood for my father. She says Brittany is like Wales, a wild realm on the rim of the world. In these places, the borders between worlds grow thin and permeable; we scuttle across the surface like a spider on a pond. In England and Normandy, rocks are rocks and trees are trees, or they are iron and firewood. In Wales, every rock and tree might hide the door to an enchanted land. Once, when I was playing on the mudflats by the river estuary, I saw a shimmering wall of air, as you get over a fire. Another time, I put my ear to a crack in the rocks and heard laughter far below.
    Last August, three of my father’s hayricks burned in thefield. In October, someone broke into the stable and cut the hamstrings on his warhorse. My father had to slit its throat himself: when he came out of the stable, up to his elbows in blood, it was the only time I ever saw him cry. He blames brigands, but behind his back the servants whisper about the faerie people.
    My mother knows many stories of the faeries. Sometimes, when the fire has burned low in the hall and my father has drunk his fill, she takes out her little harp and sings the tale, while I sit by the fire and the dogs lick fat off the hearth. Sometimes we sit together on the grassy bank under the willow by the river. All the ones I like best begin the same way: ‘A long time ago, when Arthur was king …’
    I ask my mother when Arthur was king, but she just frowns and repeats that it was a long time ago. I ask Brother Oswald, who has been teaching me history. Was it before Duke William? Before Alexander? Before King Solomon? I think he will cuff me and tell