He nodded to Rogan, who slipped the rolling pin into the loop of cord and began twisting it to form a simple but effective garrotte. Mark immediately began to struggle in a desperate effort to free himself.
When the cord tightened around the Englishman’s neck, Rogan paused for a moment, awaiting final confirmation.
Mandino nodded again, and watched Mark as the noose began to bite, seeing the flush rise in the man’s face as his struggles intensified.
Rogan grunted with the effort as he held the rolling pin tight, waiting for the end.
Mark jerked violently once, then a second time, then slumped forward as far as the rope would allow. Rogan maintained the pressure for another minute, then released the cord and checked for a pulse in Mark’s neck. He found nothing.
Mandino finished his coffee, then stood up and carried the mug through into the kitchen where he washed it thoroughly. He wasn’t too bothered about the possibility of his DNA being found in the apartment, as there was nothing whatsoever to link him or Rogan to the killing, but old habits died hard.
Back in the living room, Rogan had already released Mark from the chair and dragged his body to one side of the room. Then they trashed the place, trying to make it look as if a violent struggle had taken place. Finally, Mandino produced a leather-bound Filofax, opened it, tore several pages and smeared the organizer with blood from Mark’s broken finger, then dropped it beside the body. The name in the front of the document was “Chris Bronson,” and it was one of the items Mandino’s men had found when they searched the house in Italy.
They made a final inspection of the apartment, then Rogan opened the door and checked up and down the corridor. He nodded to Mandino and they left the apartment, pulled the door closed behind them and walked to the elevator.
Outside, they strode unhurriedly down the street to their rental car. Rogan started the engine and pulled away from the curb. As they neared the end of the road, Mandino pointed to a public phone booth.
“That will do. Stop beside it.”
He got out, stepped across to the phone, checked he still had his gloves on, then lifted the receiver and dialed “999.” The call was answered in seconds.
“Emergency. Which service do you require?”
“Police,” Mandino replied, speaking quickly and with what he hoped was the sound of panic in his voice.
“There’s been a terrible fight,” he said when the officer came on the line. He gave the address of Mark’s apartment, then ended the call just as the officer began asking for his personal details.
“Drive back up the road. There’s a side street not far from the apartment building. Take that turning.”
Rogan parked the car where Mandino directed, facing the main road. Mark’s building was just visible from their position.
“Now what?” Rogan asked.
“Now we wait,” Mandino told him.
Twenty minutes later they heard the unmistakable sound of a siren, and a police car drove swiftly past the end of the road and squealed to a stop outside the apartment block. Two officers ran toward the building.
“Can we go now?” Rogan asked.
“Not yet,” Mandino said.
After about another fifteen minutes, three more police cars, sirens screaming, tore down the street. Mandino nodded in satisfaction.
He
hadn’t been able to find Bronson so far, but he had no doubt that the British police force would be able to track him down quickly. They would almost certainly have enough evidence to arrest him on suspicion of the killing of Mark Hampton.
Faced with the possibility of a murder charge, deciphering an ancient Occitan inscription would be the last thing on Bronson’s mind. Mandino’s organization had good contacts within the Metropolitan Police, and he was certain he would be able to find out where Bronson was being held and, more important, when and where he would be released.
“Now we can go,” he said.
III
Bronson unlocked the front door of his house and stepped inside. He’d caught one of the fast trains out of Charing Cross, and had got back home quite a bit sooner than he’d expected. He walked through into the kitchen and switched on the kettle, then sat down at the table to study the translation of the inscription again. It still wasn’t making any sense.
He looked at his watch and decided to give Mark a call. He wanted to show him the translation, and suggest that they meet up for a meal. He knew his friend was in a fragile emotional state. He’d feel happier if Mark wasn’t left alone on his first evening back in Britain immediately after his wife’s funeral.
Bronson picked up the landline phone and dialed Mark’s cell phone, which was switched off, so he called the apartment. The phone was picked up after half a dozen rings.
“Yes?”
“Mark?”
“Who’s calling, please?”
Immediately, Bronson guessed something was wrong.
“Who is this?” the voice asked again.
“I’m a friend of Mark Hampton, and I’d like to speak to him.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, sir. There’s been an accident.”
The “sir” immediately suggested he was talking to a police officer.
“My name’s Chris Bronson, and I’m a D.S. in the Kent force. Just tell me what the hell’s happened, will you?”
“Did you say ‘Bronson,’ sir?”
“Yes.”
“Just a moment.”
There was a pause, then another man picked up the phone.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you that Mr. Hampton is dead, Detective Sergeant.”
“Dead? He can’t be. I only saw him a few hours ago.”
“I can’t discuss the circumstances over the telephone, but we are treating the death as suspicious. You said you were a friend of the deceased. Would you be prepared to come over to Ilford to assist us? There are several matters that we think you could help us to understand.”
Bronson was in shock, but he was still thinking clearly. It was far from normal procedure to ask an officer from another force to just pop over to the scene of a suspicious death.
“Why?” he asked.
“We’re trying to establish the last movements of the deceased, and we hope you can assist us. We know you’re acquainted with Mr. Hampton, because we found your Filofax here in his apartment, and the last few entries suggest you’ve just returned from Italy with him. I know it’s not the usual routine, but you really could be of great assistance to us.”
“Yes, of course I’ll come over. I’ve got a couple of things that I’ve got to do here, but I should be there within about ninety minutes, say two hours maximum.”
“Thank you, D.S. Bronson. That’s very much appreciated.”
The moment Bronson put down the phone, he dialed another number. It rang for a very long time before it was answered.
“What do you want, Chris? I thought I told you not to ring me.”
“Angela, don’t hang up. Please just listen. Please don’t ask questions, just listen. Mark’s dead, and he’s probably been murdered.”
“Mark? Oh my God. How did—”
“Angela. Please listen and just do as I say. I know you’re angry and you don’t want to have anything to do with me. But your life is in danger and you have to get out of your apartment right now. I’ll explain why when I see you. Pack the minimum possible—enough for three or four days—but bring your passport and driver’s license with you. Wait for me in that cafe’ where we used to meet in Shepherd’s Bush. Don’t say the name—it’s possible this line has been bugged.”
“Yes, but—”
“Please, I’ll explain when I see you. Please just trust me and do what I ask. OK? Oh, and keep your cell phone switched on.”
“I . . . I still can’t believe it. Poor Mark. But who do you think killed him?”
“I’ve got a good idea, but the police have a completely different suspect in mind.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
14
I
Though he was used to the traffic in Rome, Mandino was still surprised at the sheer number of cars on London’s streets. And at the treacle-slow pace at which the traffic moved, from red light to road works to another red light.
The distance between the apartment in Ilford and Angela Lewis’s apartment in Ealing was only about fifteen miles, about a quarter-hour drive on an open road. But it had taken them more than an hour so far. Rogan was inching his way down the Clerkenwell Road, silently cursing the traffic, and the navigation system for bringing them this way.
“We’re coming up to Gray’s Inn Road,” Mandino said, consulting a large-format London A-Z he’d bought at a newsagent’s fifteen minutes earlier, when they had been stationary for even longer than usual. “When we reach the junction, ignore what that piece of electronic junk tells you and turn right, if you’re allowed to.”
“Right?”
“Yes. That’ll take us up to King’s Cross, and if we turn left there we’ll be able to get on the Euston Road, and that will take us straight to the motorway. That’s a longer way around, but it has just got to be faster than staying in this.” Mandino gestured at the nearly motionless traffic all around them.
A mere ten minutes later, Rogan was pushing the Ford sedan up to fifty on the A40.
“If there are no more holdups,” Mandino said, calculating distances on the map, “we should reach the Lewis woman’s building in under twenty minutes.”
In her north Ealing apartment, Angela replaced the telephone and stood in the living room for a few seconds, irresolute. Chris’s phone call had scared her, and for a moment she wondered if she should ignore what he’d asked her to do, bolt the doors and simply stay inside the apartment.
Chris was right—she
was
still angry with him, because in her opinion the breakup of their marriage had been his fault, due entirely to the fact that he’d always been in love with his best friend’s wife. He’d never talked about his feelings for Jackie—but then again, Chris had never been very good at talking about
any
of his feelings. But you only had to watch his reaction when Jackie appeared—his whole face would light up. The sad reality was that in her and Chris’s marriage there had
always
been three people.
And Mark was dead! This shocking news, coming so soon after Jackie’s fatal accident in Italy, was almost unbelievable. In just a few days, two people she’d known for years were dead.
Angela felt the tears coming, then shook her head angrily. She wasn’t going to turn into a weeping wreck, and she knew what she had to do. Chris had many faults that she could—and indeed had—expound in great detail during their brief marriage, but he’d never been given to flights of fancy. If he said her life was in danger, she was perfectly prepared to believe him.
She walked briskly into the bedroom, pulled put her favorite bag from under the bed—it was a Gucci knockoff she’d picked up in a Paris street market years earlier—and quickly stuffed clothes and makeup inside. She took a smaller bag and grabbed a selection of her favorite shoes, checked her cell phone was in her handbag, unplugged the charger from its usual socket by the bed and tucked that in the overnight bag as well, then chose a coat from her wardrobe.
Angela made a final check that she’d got everything, then picked up her bags, locked her door and took the two flights of stairs down to street level.
She’d only walked about a hundred yards down Castlebar Road when she spotted a vacant black cab in the northbound traffic. She waved her hand and whistled. The cabbie made a sharp U-turn and stopped the vehicle neatly beside her.
“Where to, love?” he asked.
“Shepherd’s Bush. Just around the corner from the Bush Theatre, please.”
As the cab gathered speed down Castlebar Road toward the Uxbridge Road, a Ford sedan made the turn into Argyle Road from Western Avenue, and stopped outside Angela Lewis’s apartment building.
II
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.