Who knew she was here? Noubel, Paul Authie, Karen Fleury and her staff, Shelagh. To her knowledge, no one else.

“No,” she said quickly. “No police. Since nothing’s gone. But I want to move to another room.” He started to protest that the hotel was full, then stopped when he saw the look on her face.

I’ll see what I can do.“

Twenty minutes later, Alice was installed in a different part of the hotel.

She was nervous. For the second or third time, she checked the door was locked and the windows fastened. She sat on the bed surrounded by her things, trying to decide what to do. Alice got up, walked around the tiny room, sat down again, got up again. She was still not certain she shouldn’t move to a new hotel.

What if he comes back tonight?

An alarm went off. Alice jumped out of her skin, before realising it was only her phone, ringing in her jacket pocket.

“Allo, oui?”

It was a relief to hear Stephen’s voice, one of Shelagh’s colleagues from the dig. “Hi, Steve. No, sorry. I only just got in. I haven’t had time to check my messages yet. What’s up?”

As she listened, the colour drained from her face as he told her the dig was being closed down.

“But why? What possible reason did Brayling give?”

“He said it wasn’t up to him.”

“Just because of the skeletons?”

“The police didn’t say.”

Her heart started to thump. “They were there when Brayling announced this?” she said.

They were partly there about Shelagh,“ he said, then stopped. ”I was just wondering, Alice, if you’d heard from her at all since you left.“

“Not a thing since Monday. I tried her several times yesterday, but she’s not returned any of my calls. Why?”

Alice found herself on her feet as she waited for Stephen to answer.

“She seems to have gone off,” he said in the end. “Brayling’s inclined to put a sinister interpretation on it. He suspects her of stealing something from the site.”

“Shelagh wouldn’t do that,” she exclaimed. “No way. She’s not the sort to…”

But as she was speaking, the thought of Shelagh’s angry white face came back to her. She felt disloyal, but Alice was suddenly less confident.

“Is this what the police think too?” she demanded.

“I don’t know. It’s just all a bit odd,” he said vaguely. “One of the policemen at the site on Monday has been killed by a hit-and-run driver in Foix,” he continued. “It was in the paper. It appears Shelagh and he knew each other.”

Alice sank down on to the bed. “Sorry, Steve. I’m finding this hard to take in. Is anybody looking for her? Doing anything at all?”

“There is one thing,” he said tentatively. “I’d do it myself, but I’m heading home first thing tomorrow. No point hanging about.”

“What is it?”

“Before the excavation started, I know Shelagh was staying with friends in Chartres. It did occur to me that she might have gone there, just forgotten to let anyone know.”

It seemed a long shot to Alice, but it was better than nothing.

“I did call the number. A boy answered and claimed not to have heard of Shelagh, but I’m sure it’s the number she gave me. I had it stored in my phone.”

Alice picked up a pencil and paper. “Give it to me. I’ll have a go,” she said, poised to write.

Her hand froze.

“I’m sorry, Steve.” Her voice sounded hollow, as if she was speaking from a long way away. “Run that by me again.”

“It’s 02 68 72 31 26,” he repeated. “And you’ll let me know if you find out anything?”

It was the number Biau had given her.

“Leave it with me,” she said, barely aware of what she was saying. “I’ll keep in touch.”

Alice knew she should call Noubel. Tell him about her non-burglary and her encounter with Biau, but she hesitated. She wasn’t sure she could trust Noubel. He’d done nothing to stop Authie.

She reached into her rucksack and pulled out her roadmap of France. The idea’s crazy. It’s an eight-hour drive at least. Something was niggling at the back of her mind. She went back to the notes she’d made in the library.

In the mountain of words about Chartres Cathedral, there had been a passing reference to the Holy Grail. There, too, was a labyrinth. Alice found the paragraph she was looking for. She read it through twice, to sure she hadn’t misunderstood, then she jerked the chair out from the desk and sat down with the book by Audric Baillard and poened it at the page marked.

“Others believed it to have been the final resting place of the Graal. It has been suggested that the Cathars were the guardians of the Cup of Christ…‘

The Cathar treasure was smuggled away from Montsegur. To the Pic de Soularac? Alice turned to the map at the front of the book. Montsegur to the Sabarthes Mountains was not far. What if the treasure was hidden there?

What connects Chartres and Carcassonne?

In the distance, she heard the first growls of thunder. The room was now bathed in a strange orange light from the streetlamps outside bouncing off the underside of the night clouds. A wind had blown up, rattling the shutters and sending bits of rubbish scuttling across the car parks.

As Alice drew the curtains the first heavy drops of rain started to fall, exploding like spots of black ink on the windowsill. She wanted to leave now. But it was late and she didn’t want to risk driving through the storm.

She locked the windows and doors, set her alarm, then climbed fully clothed into bed to wait for the morning.

At first, everything was the same. Familiar, peaceful. She was floating in the white weightless world, transparent and silent. Then, like the trap door clattering open beneath the gallows, there was a sudden lurch and she fell down through the open sky towards the wooded mountainside rushing up to meet her.

She knew where she was. At Montsegur, in early summer.

Alice started to run as soon as her feet hit the ground, stumbling along a steep, rough forest track between two columns of high trees. The trees were dense and tall and towered above her. She grabbed at the branches to slow herself, but her hands went straight through and clumps of tiny leaves came away in her fingers, like hair on a brush, staining the tips green.

The path sloped away beneath her feet. Alice was aware of the crunch of stone and rock, which had replaced the soft earth, moss and twigs on the track higher up the mountain. Still, there was no sound. No birds singing, no voices calling, nothing but her own ragged breathing.

The path twisted and coiled back on itself, sending her scuttling this way and that, until she rounded the corner and saw the silent wall of fire blocking the path ahead. She put her hands up to shield her face from the billowing, puffing, red and orange and yellow flames that whipped and swirled in the air, like reeds under the surface of a river.

Now the dream was changing. This time, rather than the multitude of faces taking shape in the flames, there was only one, a young woman with a gentle yet forceful expression, reaching out and taking the book from Alice’s hand.

She was singing, in a voice of spun silver.

“Bona nueit, bona nueit.”

This time, no chill fingers grabbed her ankles or shackled her to the earth. The fire no longer claimed her. Now she was spiralling through the air like a wisp of smoke, the woman’s thin, strong arms embracing her, holding her tight. She was safe.

“Braves amics, pica mieja-nueit.”

Alice smiled as together they soared higher and higher towards the light, leaving the world far beneath.