Three-quarters of an hour later he walked back into Goldman’s office.
If Bronson had been hoping for a clue that would lead them to the missing section of the first inscribed stone, or even a written description of its contents, he was disappointed. The verses that Goldman handed him appeared to be little more than rambling nonsense: GB?PS?DDDBE
From the safe mountain truth did descend
Abandoned by all save the good
The cleansing flames quell only flesh
And pure spirits soar above the pyre
For truth like stone forever will endure
Here oak and elm descry the mark
As is above so is below
The word becomes the perfect
Within the chalice all is naught
And terrible to behold
“You’re sure this is accurate, Jeremy?” he asked.
“That’s a fairly literal translation of the Occitan verses, yes,” Goldman replied. “The problem is that there seems to be a lot of symbolism in the original that I’m not entirely sure we can fully appreciate today. In fact, some of it would be completely meaningless to us, even if we knew exactly what the author of this text was driving at. For example, there are some Cathar references, like the statement ‘As is above so is below,’ which, without a thorough grounding in that religion, would be impossible to understand completely.”
“But the Cathars were prevalent in France, not Italy, weren’t they?”
Goldman nodded. “Yes, but it’s known that after the Albigensian Crusade some of the few survivors fled to northern Italy, so maybe this verse was written by one of them. That would also explain the use of Occitan. But as to what it actually means, I’m afraid I haven’t got a clue. And I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a Cathar you could ask. The crusaders did a very efficient job of exterminating them.”
“What about the title—this ‘GB PS DDDBE’? Is that some kind of code?”
“I doubt it,” Goldman replied. “I suspect they refer to some expression that would have been familiar to people who saw the stone back in the fourteenth century.”
Bronson looked blank.
“There are a lot of initials in common use today that would have been completely meaningless a hundred years ago, and might be just as incomprehensible to future generations. Things like . . . oh, ‘PC’ for ‘personal computer’ or even ‘politically correct’; ‘TMI’ for ‘too much information’; that kind of thing. OK, a lot of these kind of initials refer to slang terms, but nobody today would have any trouble telling you that ‘RIP’ stands for ‘rest in peace,’ and that’s the kind of thing you’ll frequently find carved on a piece of stone. Maybe the initials we have here had a similar significance in the fourteenth century, and were so familiar to people that no explanation was ever needed.”
Bronson looked again at the paper in his hand. He’d hoped that the translation would provide an answer, but all it had done was present him with a whole new list of questions.
II
Early that evening, and a mere five hours after they’d landed at Heathrow, Rogan braked the rental car to a halt about a hundred yards from Mark Hampton’s Ilford apartment.
“You’re sure he’s here?” Mandino asked.
Rogan nodded. “I know somebody is. I’ve made three telephone calls to that apartment and they’ve all been answered. I did one as a wrong number, and the other two as telesales calls. In all three cases, a man answered, and I’m reasonably certain it was Mark Hampton.”
“Good enough,” Mandino said. He picked up a small plastic carrier bag from the footwell of the Ford sedan, opened the passenger door and headed along the street, Rogan at his side.
Time was of the essence. With every hour that passed, Mandino knew that more people would be likely to see copies of the inscriptions as Hampton and Bronson tried to work out what they meant.
He and Rogan walked the short distance to the building. At the entrance door, Mandino glanced in both directions before pulling on a pair of thin rubber gloves, and then pressed the button on the entry-phone. After a few seconds there was a crackle and a man’s voice issued from the tiny speaker grill.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Mark Hampton?”
“Yes. Who is it?”
“This is Detective Inspector Roberts, sir, of the Metropolitan Police. I’ve got a few questions to ask you about your wife’s unfortunate death in Italy. May I come in?”
“Can you prove your identity?”
Mandino paused for a few seconds. In the circumstances, Hampton’s response was not unreasonable, or unexpected.
“You don’t have a videophone, sir, so I can’t show you my warrant card. But I can read you the number, and you can check it with either the Ilford police station or New Scotland Yard. The number is seven four six, two eight four.”
Mandino had not the slightest idea what number or numbers might be found on a Metropolitan Police warrant card, but he was prepared to bet that Hampton wouldn’t either. It all depended on whether the Englishman would bother to check.
“What questions?”
“Just some simple procedural matters, sir. It will only take a few minutes.”
“Very well.”
There was a buzz and the electric lock on the front door of the building clicked open. With a final glance up and down the street, Mandino and Rogan stepped inside, walked straight to the elevator and pressed the button for Mark’s floor.
When the doors opened, they checked the apartment numbers, then strode down the corridor. At the correct door they stopped and Mandino knocked, then stepped to one side.
The moment the door came off the latch, Rogan kicked against it, hard. The door flew backward, knocking Mark off his feet and sending him sprawling onto the floor of the narrow hallway. Rogan stepped forward quickly, knelt down and hit him on the side of his head with a bludgeon. The blow was just hard enough to knock Mark unconscious, and was sufficient to disable him for the few minutes they needed.
“There,” Mandino said, walking into the living room and pointing at a carver dining chair. “Tie him in that.”
Rogan pulled the chair into the center of the room. Together, the two men dragged Mark over to the carver and sat him in it. He slumped forward, but Mandino pulled his shoulders back and held him in place while Rogan did his work. He took a length of clothesline from the bag Mandino had been carrying, looped it twice around Mark’s chest and tied it behind the back of the chair, holding him upright. Then he took some cable ties, wrapped one around each wrist and used a pair of pliers to pull them tight. He repeated the process around Mark’s forearms and elbows, and then secured his ankles in the same fashion to the chair legs. In less than three minutes, he was completely immobilized.
“Check the place,” Mandino ordered. “See if he brought a copy of the inscription back with him.”
While Rogan began looking around the apartment, Mandino walked through into the kitchen and made himself a mug of instant coffee. It was nothing like the Italian latte he was used to, but it was better than nothing, and the last drink he’d had was a can of orange juice on the flight from Rome.
“Nothing,” Rogan reported, as Mandino walked back into the room.
“Right. Wake him up.”
Rogan stepped across to Mark, lifted his head and then roughly forced his eyes open. Their captive stirred, then regained consciousness.
When Mark came to, he found himself staring at a well-dressed and heavily built man sitting in an easy chair opposite him, sipping a hot drink from one of his own mugs.
“Who the hell are you?” Mark demanded, his voice harsh and slurred. “And what are you doing in my apartment?”
Mandino smiled slightly. “I’ll ask the questions, thank you. We know about the two inscribed stones you found in your house in Italy, and we know you or your friend Christopher Bronson decided to obliterate the carving in the dining room. Now you’re going to tell me what you found.”
“Are you the bastards who killed Jackie?”