Bronson put down the phone, ran upstairs, pulled an overnight bag from his wardrobe, grabbed clean clothes from his wardrobe and chest of drawers and stuffed them into it. He made sure he left one particular item on the bedside table, then went back downstairs.
His computer bag was in the living room, and he picked that up, checked that the memory stick was still in his jacket pocket, seized Jeremy Goldman’s translation of the inscription from the kitchen table and shoved that into his pocket as well. Finally, he opened a locked drawer in his desk in the living room and removed all the cash, plus the Browning pistol he’d acquired in Italy. He slipped the weapon into his computer bag, just in case.
And all the time he was doing this he was checking outside the windows of his house, watching for either Mark’s killers or the police to turn up. The Met now knew he was a serving officer with the Kent force, and it would take only a few phone calls to find his address. Whether or not his agreement to drive over to the apartment in Ilford had actually served to allay their suspicions he had no idea, but he wasn’t prepared to take any chances.
Less than four minutes after he’d called Angela, he pulled his front door closed behind him and ran across the pavement to his Mini. He put his bags in the trunk and drove away, heading north toward London.
About two hundred yards from his house, he heard sirens approaching from ahead of him, and took the next available left turn. He drove down the road, made another left at the end, and then left again, so that his car was pointing back toward the main road. As he watched, two police cars sped through the junction in front of him. He guessed that he’d got out of the house by the skin of his teeth.
An hour later, Bronson parked the car in a street just off Shepherd’s Bush Road and walked the short distance to the café. Angela was sitting alone at a table in the back, well away from the windows.
As Bronson threaded his way through the tables toward his ex-wife, he felt a rush of relief that she was safe, mingled with apprehension as to how she might be feeling. And, as always when he looked at her, he was struck anew by her appearance. Angela wasn’t a beauty in the classical sense, but her blond hair, hazel eyes and lips with more than a hint of Michelle Pfeiffer about them gave her a look that was undeniably striking.
As she pushed her hair back from her face and stood up to greet him, she drew appreciative glances from the handful of men in the cafe’.
“What the hell is going on?” Angela demanded. “Is Mark really dead?”
“Yes.” Bronson felt a stab of grief, and swallowed it down quickly. He had to stay in control—for both their sakes.
He ordered coffee, and another pot of tea for Angela. He knew he should eat something, but the thought of food made him nauseous.
“I rang Mark’s apartment,” he said, “and a man answered the phone. He didn’t identify himself, but he sounded like a police officer.”
“What does a policeman sound like?” Angela asked. “Still, I suppose you would know.”
Bronson shrugged. “It’s the way we’re told to use ‘sir’ and ‘madam’ when we’re talking to members of the public. Almost nobody else does that these days, not even waiters. Anyway, when I gave him my name, he told me that Mark was dead, and they were treating the death as suspicious. Then another man—definitely a copper, and probably a D.I.—asked if I could drive over to Ilford and help explain some things.”
He put his head in his hands. “I can’t believe he’s dead—I was with him earlier today. I should never have left him alone.”
Angela cautiously reached for his hand across the table. “So why didn’t you just drive over to Ilford, as the policeman asked?”
“Because everything changed when they found out my name. The second man—the D.I.—told me they knew I was a friend of Mark, because they’d found my Filofax in the apartment, and that there were notes about the trip to Italy in it.”
“But why did you leave your organizer with Mark?”
“I didn’t, that’s the point. The last time I saw my Filofax was in the guest bedroom of Mark’s house in Italy. The only way it could have been found in his apartment was if the killers had dropped it there in a deliberate attempt to frame me for his murder.”
He went on to explain about the “burglaries” at Mark’s house following the uncovering of the first inscription, and the possibility that Jackie had been killed during the initial break-in.
“Oh, God. Poor Jackie. And now Mark—this is a nightmare. But why are you and I in danger?”
“Because we’ve seen the inscriptions on the stones, even if neither of us has a clue why they’re important. The fact that Mark was killed in his apartment—or at least, that’s where the body was found—means the killers found out where he lived. And if they found his address, they could just as easily find mine and, more important, yours. That’s why I wanted you to get out of your apartment. They’re going to come after us, Angela. They’ve killed our friends and we’re next.”
“But you still haven’t explained why.” Angela banged the table in frustration, spilling some of her tea. “Why are these inscriptions so important? Why are these people killing anyone who’s seen them?”
Bronson sighed. “I don’t know.”
Angela frowned, and Bronson could tell that she was thinking it through. She had a fierce intellect—it was one of the things that had attracted him to her in the first place. “Let’s just look at the facts here, Chris. I talked to Jeremy about these stones and he told me that one inscription dates from the first century and contains exactly three words written in Latin. The second is fifteen hundred years later, written in Occitan, and appears to be a kind of poem. What possible link can there be between them, apart from the fact that they were discovered in the same house?”
“I don’t know,” Bronson repeated. “But the two people who owned the house where the stones were hidden are now dead, and the Italian gang that I believe is responsible has made a pretty professional attempt to frame me for Mark’s death. We have to stop them. They can’t get away with this.”
Angela shivered slightly, and took a mouthful of her tea. “So, what’s your plan now? You have got a plan, haven’t you?”
“Well, we’ve got to do two things. We have to get ourselves out of London without leaving a paper trail, and then we have to sit down and decode those two inscriptions.”
“Got anywhere in mind?”
“Yes. We need somewhere not too far from London, but with easy access to a reference library and where a couple of researchers like us won’t stand out. Somewhere like Cambridge, maybe?”
“Bicycle city? Yes, OK. That sounds as good as anywhere. When do we leave?”
“As soon as you’ve finished your tea.”
A couple of minutes later they stood up to leave. Bronson glanced at Angela’s luggage.
“Two bags?” he asked.
“Shoes,” Angela replied shortly.
Bronson paid the bill and they walked out of the cafe’. He turned right, not left toward where he’d parked the Mini Cooper, but to an ATM machine outside a bank off the Uxbridge Road.
“I thought guys on the run didn’t use plastic?” Angela said, as Bronson took out his wallet.
“You’ve been watching too many American films. But you’re right. That’s why I’m using this machine, not one up in Cambridge.”
Bronson withdrew two hundred pounds. He wasn’t bothered that the transaction would pinpoint his location, because they wouldn’t be staying in the area for more than a few minutes.
He stuffed the cash in his pocket and led the way to his Mini. He repeated the process, each time drawing a few hundred pounds, at four further ATMs about a mile apart, but always staying in the Shepherd’s Bush-White City area. He reached his credit limit at the last one.
“Right,” he said, as he got back into the driving seat of the Cooper after the final withdrawal. “Hopefully that will convince the Met that I’ve gone to ground somewhere in this area. From now on, we’re only going to use cash.”
15
I