“This bloke,” the girl behind the counter asked, “if he does come in, what should I do? Run away and hide in the loo, or make him a drink? I mean, is he dangerous, or what?”
The constable considered the question for a few moments. “We don’t think he’d pose any risk to you personally, miss, but you should telephone the Park-side station as soon as possible. In case you need it, the number’s 358966.”
Angela returned to her computer and forced herself to remain at the machine for several more minutes, then stood up.
“Find what you were looking for, love?” the girl behind the till asked.
Angela shook her head. “I’ve never found exactly what I’m looking for,” she replied, with a slight smile, thinking about her taste in men.
“The bloody police are looking for you, Chris,” Angela announced, the moment she’d closed the hotel room door behind her. Quickly, she outlined what had happened in the cafe’.
“So they knew I’d been using the Internet?” Bronson said.
“Yes, I told you. They even had your photograph, and they said you’d been in the area this morning.”
“Jesus, these guys are good,” Bronson muttered. “They even have the police doing their dirty work for them. They’re a lot more dangerous than we thought.”
“I can understand that the police are looking for you because of Mark’s death, but how can they possibly know you’ve been using cybercafe’s?”
“I thought from the start that these Italians had an Internet-monitoring system running—that’s why Jackie died. They must have a contact in the British police and be feeding him details of the searches we’re running, which means we must be on the right track. We’re going to have to get away from here, and quickly.”
“Where to?” Angela asked.
“The answer must lie in Italy, where all this started.”
“But don’t you think that if the police are already looking for you in cybercafe’s, they’ll be checking the ports and airports as well?”
“Yes, of course,” Bronson said, “but I made sure I left my passport inside the house, and I’ve no doubt that by now they’ll have got inside and seen it. They might have a token watch in place at the ports, but without a passport, they won’t be expecting me to try to leave the country.” He grinned suddenly. “Which is exactly what we’re going to do. It’ll be a lot harder for them to find us in Europe.”
“I thought Interpol helped international cooperation between police forces.”
“Dream on. Interpol is a wonderful concept, but it’s also a huge system. To get anything useful out of it, you’ve got to fill in the right forms and talk to the right people, and even then it will take time to get the information disseminated. Anyway, it’s not that difficult to get in or out of Britain without being detected, if you know how. You have got your driving license and passport with you?”
Angela nodded.
“Good. Now, what I need you to do is take this money”—he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a wad of notes and counted out a sum on the table—“that’s just over fifteen hundred pounds. Use that as a deposit and go out and buy an old minivan. A Chrysler Voyager, Renault Espace, even a Transit van as a last resort, in your name, and get it insured for driving on the Continent.”
“Then what?”
“And then,” Bronson replied, grinning again, “we’re going shopping for a new bathroom.”
16
I
A little after six, Jeremy Goldman walked out of the museum gates and glanced in both directions before heading east along Great Russell Street. Angela’s telephone call had bothered him more than he liked to admit and his feeling of unease had been increased by the incident with the Frenchman.
Earlier that afternoon, in response to a call from one of the reception staff, he’d gone down to meet a French archaeologist named Jean-Paul Pannetier who apparently knew him. The name hadn’t been familiar to Goldman, but he’d worked all over the world with specialists from a number of disciplines, and such unannounced visits weren’t that unusual.
But when he’d introduced himself to the visitor, the Frenchman had appeared confused and explained that he was looking for a Roger Goldman, not Jeremy Goldman, and then left the building. He’d been fiddling with a cell phone the whole time he’d been in the museum, and Goldman suspected that Pannetier had used it to photograph him.
That was peculiar enough, but what concerned him more was that he’d checked his academic directories and been unable to find any reference to a Roger Goldman. Or, for that matter, to a Jean-Paul Pannetier. There was a Pallentier and a Pantonnier, but no Pannetier. Of course, he could have misheard—the museum had been quite noisy—but the incident, in conjunction with Angela’s warning, did concern him.
So as he emerged into the evening bustle of Great Russell Street, Goldman was—for once—paying attention to his surroundings. But spotting anyone who might be lurking in wait for him was virtually impossible, simply because of the sheer number of people on the pavements.
At least he didn’t have far to go—only to the tube station at Russell Square. He walked down Great Russell Street, casting occasional glances behind him, checking the traffic and the pedestrians, then turned up Montague Street.
Until that point, Goldman had seen nothing to concern him, but when he glanced back once more, he saw a dark-haired man starting to run directly toward him. More alarmingly, he locked eyes with a bulky man sitting in the driving seat of a slow-moving car, a man he instantly recognized as the “Jean-Paul Pannetier” who’d visited the museum that afternoon.
Goldman didn’t hesitate. He stepped off the pavement and began running across the road, dodging through the traffic. A barrage of hoots followed him as he swerved around cars, taxis and vans, sprinting for the far side of the street and the safety—he hoped—of the tube station.
He almost made it.
Goldman glanced behind him as he ran around the back of a car, and simply didn’t see the motorcyclist coming up fast on the vehicle’s nearside. When he did see it, the bike was just feet away. The rider braked hard, the front suspension of his bike dipping, and Goldman instinctively leapt aside to try to avoid him.
The front wheel of the bike hit Goldman’s left leg and knocked him sideways. Waving his arms to try to regain his balance, he stumbled and almost fell, then recovered himself. Again he risked a quick look behind him as he resumed his weaving run, still slightly unbalanced. The man he’d spotted was just a few feet away, and Goldman increased his pace.
But when he looked ahead again, all he saw was the front of a black cab. To Goldman, it was as if everything was happening in slow motion. The driver stamped on the brakes, locking the wheels, but the taxi just kept coming, straight toward him. Goldman experienced a moment of sheer terror, then the solid impact as the front of the skidding vehicle smashed into his chest. He felt a sudden searing pain as his ribs broke and organs ruptured, then only blackness.
II
Less than ninety minutes later, Angela stepped back into the hotel room.
“That was quick,” Bronson said, looking up from the book he was studying.
“I found a garage on Newmarket Road selling secondhand cars,” she said. “I got a Renault Espace, seven years old. It’s a bit scruffy around the edges, but it’s got a decent rating, good tires and most of its service history, all for two nine nine five. I haggled the salesman down to two and a half and told him to forget about the warranty, which was almost worthless anyway. Five hundred deposit and the rest on credit.”
“Excellent,” Bronson said, as he began packing away the reference books Angela had bought. “That’s ideal. Right, let’s get this show on the road.”
While Bronson carried their few bags out to the car, Angela handed back the room key and paid the hotel bill in cash.