Free The Blood Lance by Craig Smith Page B

in anger. Besides, I'm not going to be doing anything other than sitting behind a desk and talking to bankers.' A tired smile, 'Same old same old.'
    'I think it's exciting anyway. I mean this guy is primetime!'
    'They want me on the next plane to Hamburg, Gwen. I've got to go.'
    'No time for a proper goodbye for my crime fighting forensic accountant?'
    Malloy looked at his watch, 'They get real touchy if you're not there two hours early.'
    'You want the airline mad at you. . . or your wife?'

Chapter Four

    Carcassonne, France
    Summer 1931.

    'I invited a young man to meet us for drinks in the lobby bar. I hope you don't mind.'
    Dieter Bachman spoke to his wife from the bathroom through the half-opened door, but her husband's offhanded manner excited her curiosity. 'What sort of young man?'
    'His name is Otto Rahn.'
    'A German?' Elise was vaguely disappointed. She had come to France for new experiences. Bachman, on the other hand, could find a fellow German in Mongolia.
    'German or Austrian is my guess, but to tell you the truth I'm not sure. His French was so good I could not place the accent. Magre introduced us.'
    Maurice Magre was a novelist of modest reputation they had met on the previous day through a fellow German's introductions. Magre played the celebrity to cadge drinks from the tourists. 'And how does Magre know him?' she asked.
    'I didn't ask. All I know is that Magre told me after he had gone that Herr Rahn is a treasure hunter.' Elise was not impressed. Adventurers were as common in the Languedoc as aspiring writers in Paris, all of them looking for Cathar gold and a free drink.
    Elise picked up an apricot-coloured dress and held it beneath her chin as she turned to face the foggy hotel room mirror. She was not sure about it. The colour seemed to accentuate her tan. She actually liked the effect with her black hair and darkbrown eyes, but Bachman had begun to complain that she was soon going to be mistaken for an African. If he had his way her skin would be as pale as snow, her hair white-blonde, her eyes crystal blue. She had asked him once why he had proposed if he did not care for her colour. Her colour was fine, he told her, but if she must know he proposed because he had fallen in love! She had not bothered responding to that. Their marriage had been about money and family. Whatever love there might have been had long ago turned into a comfort friendship.
    She tossed the dress aside. Too many wrinkles, anyway. 'And why did Monsieur Magre think we would like to get to know this young man? I hope it wasn't because he's German. We can see all the Germans we want when we're back in Berlin.'
    'I thought we might enjoy getting to know him, actually.' Elise cast a speculative glance at her husband. He was still standing before the bathroom mirror, razor in hand. Bachman was a tall man with slightly hunched shoulders and a bit of a paunch. He had a round common face with thick cheeks and dark eyes. He had favoured a moustache since she had known him, but had decided to cut it recently, thinking he looked younger without it. His hair was already thinning and touched with grey, but the moustache had to go! She had been kind enough to lie and tell him he looked much younger without it. What had instigated the removal was a remark by a Swiss woman a few days ago in Sète. She had mistaken them for father and daughter. They had all laughed self-consciously at the mistake. Bachman asked if his wife really looked so young, but Elise had not been the source of the woman's confusion. Bachman was thirty-eight, a decade older than she, but he looked like a man pushing fifty. What was worse, he acted it as well.
    'Tell me,' Elise said. 'Have you properly enquired into Herr Rahn's political sympathies?'
    Bachman managed a smile as he came into the room. He was holding a towel in both hands. He knew Elise was teasing him, which he hated desperately, but he tried not to show hisfrustration. In Berlin Bachman endured no one who