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
Angela stepped out of the cramped shower cubicle, wrapped a towel around her and walked across to the sink. As she dried her hair, she stared at herself critically in the small mirror and again wondered just what the hell she was doing.
In the last twenty-four hours her world had been turned completely upside-down. Before, her life had been ordered and predictable. Now, one of her best friends had been killed and her ex-husband was apparently the prime suspect, and she was on the run with him, trying to avoid both the police and a gang of Italian killers.
But, strangely, she was beginning to enjoy herself. Despite the failure of their marriage, she still liked Chris, and enjoyed being in his company. And, though she would never admit it to anyone else, she found his dark good looks just as attractive now as when she’d first met him. It still gave her a thrill inside when he walked into a room, instantly commanding attention.
Perhaps, she reflected as she dressed, that was part of the problem. Chris
was
attractive, and perhaps that had clouded her judgment when he’d proposed. Maybe if she’d looked at him more carefully she’d have realized that his real affection was directed elsewhere, at the unattainable Jackie. It would have saved her a lot of heartache if she’d deduced that at the time.
She jumped slightly at the knock on the door.
“Good morning,” Chris said. “Have you had breakfast yet? Because we need to get to work.”
“I’ll grab something later,” Angela replied. “I’ll go and make the calls, and take a look around. You stay here until I get back.”
Outside the hotel, she walked briskly down the street until she found a working public telephone, fed a phone card into the slot and dialed the number of her immediate superior at the British Museum.
“It’s Angela,” she croaked. “I’m afraid I’m going down with something, Roger. Flu or something. I’m going to have to take a couple of days off.”
“God, you sound like death. Don’t you dare come anywhere near here until you’re better. Seriously, is there anything you need—food, medicine, anything like that?”
“No, thanks. I’m just going to stay in bed until it’s gone.”
Angela and Bronson had discussed their plan on the train to Cambridge the previous evening. She was using a public phone because that left no trace—Bronson knew that switching on their cell phones would locate them to the nearest few yards immediately, so both of their Nokias were in his overnight bag, their batteries removed as a precaution.
Angela made one more call, then she walked back along East Road, stopping at the bakery along the way.
“Here,” she said, as she walked into Bronson’s hotel room and passed him a small paper bag. “I bought a couple of pastries to keep us going until lunch.”
“Thanks. You made the calls?” Bronson asked.
Angela nodded. “Roger will be fine. He’s paranoid about any kind of cold or flu.”
“And Jeremy?”
“Well, I called him and passed on the message. I explained about Mark and that we think his death had something to do with the inscriptions. I warned him he might be a target too but he laughed it off. He still thinks that the verses are meaningless to anyone in this century.”
Bronson frowned. “I wish I could believe he’s right,” he said. “Well, you did your best.”
“Right,” Angela said, brushing crumbs off her lap. “Let’s get started. Have you had any thoughts?”
“Not really. The problem with the Occitan verses is that they seem tantalizingly clear in what they say, but I’ve got no idea about their actual meaning. So I did just wonder if our best option was to start with the Latin inscription—or rather with the initials below it—and see if we can identify the man who ordered the stone to be carved.”
“That makes sense,” Angela said. “There are a couple of cybercafés not far from here, full of unshaven, scruffy students probably accessing high-quality porn sites.” She paused and looked critically at him. “You’ll fit right in.”
Bronson had opted for a rudimentary disguise. He’d stopped shaving, though it would take a couple of days before his beard became really noticeable, and had discarded his usual collar and tie for a sloppy T-shirt, jeans and trainers.
Ten minutes later they entered the first of the Internet cafés Angela had identified. Three machines were available, so they ordered two coffees and started trawling the Web.
“Are you happy with Jeremy’s suggestion about the ‘PO’ standing for
per ordo
?” Angela asked.
“Yes. I think we should just take that as established and try and find out who ‘LDA’ was. The other thing he suggested was that the carving was probably first century A.D. And, Angela, we have to be quick. After what happened to Jackie, I’m only staying on this machine for an hour. Whether or not we’ve found anything by then, we get up and leave. OK?”
Angela nodded her agreement. “Let’s start the simple way,” she said, typed “LDA” into Google, pressed the return key and leaned forward expectantly.
The result didn’t surprise them: almost one and a half million hits, but as far as they could see from a quick scan, none of any use unless you
were
searching for the London Development Agency or the Learning Disabilities Association.
“That would have been too easy,” Bronson muttered. “Let’s refine the search. Try and find a list of Roman senators and see if any of them fit the bill.”
That was easier said than done, and by the end of the hour Bronson had allotted, they’d found details about the lives of numerous individual senators but no list they could peruse.
“OK,” Bronson said, with a quick glance at his watch. “One last try. Put ‘Roman senate LDA’ and see what comes up.”
Angela input the phrase and they waited for the search engine to deliver its results.
“Nothing,” Angela said, scrolling down the page.
“Wait,” Bronson said. “What’s that?” He pointed at an entry entitled “Pax Romana” that included a reference to “LDA and Aurora.” “Try that,” he said.
Angela clicked on it. On the left-hand side was a long list of Roman names, below the title “Regular members.”
“What the hell is this?” Bronson wondered aloud.
“Oh, I know,” Angela said, scrolling up and down. “I’ve heard of this. It’s a kind of online novel about ancient Rome. You can read it, or write material for it, if you want. You can even learn quite a bit.”
Bronson ran his eyes down the list of names, then stopped. “I’ll be damned. Look—is that serendipity or what?” And he pointed at the name “Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus” about three-quarters of the way down. “The contributors must be using the names of real historical Romans.”
Angela copied the name and input it into Google.
“He certainly was real,” she said, looking at the screen, “and he was a consul in sixteen B.C. Maybe Jeremy was wrong about the age of the inscription. It could have been fifty or so years older.”
Bronson leaned over and clicked the mouse. “It might be even simpler than that,” he said. “It seems this was a fairly common family name. On this list there are nine people all called Domitius Ahenobarbus, five of them with the first name Gnaeus, and the other four Lucius. Three of the four named Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus were consuls: the one you found in sixteen B.C., plus two others, in ninety-four B.C. and fifty-four B.C.”
“What about the fourth Lucius?”
Bronson clicked another link. “Here he is—but he looks a bit different. ‘Like the others, this man was born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, but his full name was Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, also known as Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus. Just to complicate things, when he ascended the imperial throne in fifty-four A.D., he took the name Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus.’ ”
He scrolled down, then chuckled. “But he’s better known to us as the emperor who fiddled while Rome burned.”
“Nero? You think that inscription might refer to Nero?”
Bronson shook his head. “I doubt it, though that does fit better with Jeremy’s estimated date. He suggested that the initials probably referred to a consul or senator. Just say for a moment that the inscription
was
prepared on Nero’s orders—wouldn’t it be more likely to read ‘PO NCCD,’ to reflect his imperial name?”