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‘The madman of Saint-Jean,’ he translated. ‘It’s dated October 2001…OK, listen to this…’

An injured man was discovered wandering semi-naked in the forest outside the village of Saint-Jean, Languedoc. According to Father Pascal Cambriel, the local village priest who found the man, he was babbling in a strange language and appeared to be suffering from severe dementia. The man, identified from his papers as Klaus Rheinfeld, a former resident of Paris, is believed to have inflicted serious knife wounds on himself. An ambulance worker told our reporter: ‘I have never seen anything like it. There were strange markings, triangles and crosses and things, all over him. It was sickening. How could someone do that to themselves? Rumours have suggested that these bizarre wounds are linked to Satanic rituals, though this was rigorously denied by local authorities. Rheinfeld was treated at the Hospital of the Sainte Vierge…

‘Doesn’t say where they took him after that. Damn. He could be anywhere.’

‘He’s alive, though,’ she pointed out.

‘Or was alive six years ago. If it’s even the same Klaus Rheinfeld.’

‘I bet you anything it’s the same guy,’ she said. ‘Satanic markings? Read alchemical markings.’

‘Why was he all cut up?’ he wondered.

She shrugged. ‘Maybe he was just crazy.’

‘OK…so we’ve got one crazy German covered in knife wounds, who may or may not be carrying import ant secrets connected to Fulcanelli, and who could be anywhere in the world. That narrows things down nicely.’ He sighed, cleared the screen and started a fresh search. ‘While we’re online we might as well check this out.’ He typed in the name of Michel Zardi’s email server, waited for the site to load up and entered the account name. He just needed the webmail password to access the messages, and he knew that most people use some word from their private life. ‘What do you know about Michel’s personal life? Girlfriend, anything like that?’

‘Not much–no steady girlfriend that I know of.’

‘Mother’s name?’

‘Um…hold on…I think her name is Claire.’

He typed the name in the password box.