As Alberti left the room carrying a bucket to collect some water, Rogan removed a high-resolution digital camera from his pocket and took half a dozen shots of the stone. He used the screen to check that they all clearly showed the inscription carved on it. Then, for good measure, he wrote down the words in a small notebook.
Alberti reappeared with the water. From the detritus left by the builders, he picked a wooden mixing board and trowel, then selected a bag of plaster from the pile stacked against one wall. A few minutes later, once he had a firm mix, he carried the board over to the fireplace.
The lintel rested on a steel plate, obviously a fairly recent repair to compensate for an unsightly crack that ran diagonally through the stone about two feet from the left-hand edge. The steel projected about half an inch in front of the lintel, and provided a firm base for the plaster.
Alberti clearly had some experience of the technique, and in about half an hour had produced a smooth and professional finish that neatly matched the new plaster on the right-hand side of the fireplace. The other side still had old plaster on it—the builders hadn’t got that far yet—but there was nothing they could do about that.
Fifty minutes after Jackie Hampton died, and almost ninety minutes after the two Italians had forced the rear door of the house, they walked away from the property, heading for the nearby lane where they’d left their car.
II
Chris Bronson swung his silver Mini Cooper into a space on the second floor of the Crescent Road multistory parking garage, which was directly opposite the police headquarters in Tunbridge Wells. For a few moments he sat in the driver’s seat, lost in thought. This morning, he anticipated, was going to be difficult, very difficult.
It wasn’t the first time he’d had problems with Harrison, though the way he was feeling it might well be the last. Detective Inspector Thomas Harrison—“Tom” to his few friends, and “the fat bastard” to almost everyone else—was Bronson’s immediate superior, and they hadn’t got on from day one.
Harrison considered himself to be an old-school policeman, who’d come up through the ranks, as he never tired of telling anyone who asked and most people who didn’t, and he resented Bronson for a number of reasons. The D.I. was particularly scathing about “smart-arse coppers”: officers who joined the force after university and enjoyed certain privileges as a result. He’d lumped Bronson in with this group, though he didn’t have a degree and had joined the army on a short-service commission straight from school. In short, Harrison believed that Bronson—whom he normally referred to as “Death Wish”—was just “playing” at being a policeman: the fact that he was clearly a highly competent officer cut no ice with him.
In the six months that Bronson had been stationed at Tunbridge Wells he’d been reprimanded virtually on a weekly basis by Harrison for something or other but, because he really did want a career in the police force, he’d tried his best to ignore the man’s obvious dislike. Now he’d had enough.
He’d been told to report to the station early that morning, and Bronson thought he knew exactly why. Two days earlier, he’d been involved with other officers—uniformed and plainclothes—in the apprehension of a gang of young men suspected of dealing in Class A substances. The gang’s normal turf was East London, but they’d recently expanded their operations into Kent. The arrests hadn’t gone as smoothly as everyone had hoped and in the resulting scuffles two of the young men had suffered minor injuries. Bronson suspected that Harrison was going to accuse him of using unnecessary force during the arrest, or even assaulting a suspect.
He climbed out of the car, locked it and walked down the stairs—the elevators in the parking garage didn’t start running until eight—to the street.
Ten minutes later he knocked on the door of D.I. Harrison’s office.
III
Maria Palomo had lived in the Monti Sabini area all her life, and still, at seventy-three years of age, worked a fifty-hour week. She was a cleaner, though it wasn’t work she enjoyed, and she wasn’t all that good at it. But she
was
honest—her clients could leave a pile of euro notes on a desk and be quite certain that all of them would still be there when Maria had finished—and reliable, in that she’d arrive more or less when she said she would. And if the odd corner remained unswept and the oven didn’t get cleaned more than once a year, well, at least the windows sparkled and the carpets were clean.
Maria, in short, was better than nothing, and in her voluminous handbag she had the keys to some thirty properties in the Ponticelli-Scandriglia area. Some houses she cleaned, others she simply checked for security while their owners were away, and in a few she watered the plants, sorted out the mail and checked that the lights and taps worked and that the drains hadn’t overflowed.
Villa Rosa was one of the houses she cleaned, though Maria wasn’t sure how long the arrangement was likely to last. She was fond of the young Englishwoman, who used Maria’s visits to polish her Italian, but her customer had voiced some dissatisfaction recently. On her last two visits, in particular, she’d pointed out several areas where the cleanliness could have been much improved, to which Maria had responded as she always did, with a smile and a shrug. It wasn’t easy, she’d explained, to keep everything clean when the house was full of builders and their tools and equipment. And dust, of course.
That clearly hadn’t pleased Signora Hampton, who’d urged her to try a little harder, but Maria was beyond the stage where she took very much notice of what people asked her to do. She’d go to the house every week, do as little as she thought she could get away with and see what happened. If the Englishwoman sacked her, she’d find work somewhere else. It really wasn’t much of a problem.
A little after nine that morning, Maria pottered up the drive to Villa Rosa on the elderly Vespa she’d used to get around the area for the last fifteen years. The scooter didn’t belong to her, and she’d been lent it so long ago that she barely remembered who did own it. This confusion extended to the Vespa’s documentation—it wasn’t licensed and hadn’t been tested for roadworthiness in a number of years, but that didn’t concern Maria, who’d never bothered applying for a driving license. She just took care to avoid the
Polizia Municipale
and the less frequently seen
Carabinieri
when she was riding it.
She stopped the scooter in front of the house and pulled it onto its stand. Her helmet—she complied with the law to that extent—went onto the seat, and she strode across to the front door. Maria knew Jackie was at home, so she left the keys in her bag and rang the bell.
Two minutes later she rang it again, with the same lack of response. That puzzled her, so she walked over to the double garage that stood to one side of the house and peered behind the partially open door. The Hamptons’ car—an Alfa Romeo sedan—was there, just as she had expected. The house was too far from Ponticelli for her employer to go there on foot, and in any case she knew Jackie wasn’t much of a walker. So where was she?
The garden perhaps, she thought, and walked around the side of the house to the rear lawn, studded with shrubs and half a dozen small flower beds, that rose gently away from the old building. But the back garden was deserted.
Maria shrugged and returned to the main door of the house, fishing in her bag for her bunch of keys. She located the Yale, slid it into the lock and turned it, ringing the bell again as she did so. “Signora Hampton?” she called, as the door swung wide open. “Signora . . .”
The word died in her throat as she saw the sprawled figure lying motionless on the stone floor, a pool of blood surrounding the woman’s head like a dark red halo.
Maria Palomo had buried two husbands and five other relatives, but there was a world of difference between the anticipation of seeing a sheet-draped figure in a mortuary chapel and what she was looking at. A scream burst from her throat and she turned and ran out of the house and across the gravel drive.
Then she stopped and turned to face the building. The door was fully open and, despite the brightness of the early-morning sun, she could still see the shape on the floor. For a few seconds she stood unmoving, working out what she should do.
She had to call the police, obviously, but she also knew that once the
polizia
were involved, everyone’s life would be placed under the microscope. Maria walked over to the Vespa, pulled on her helmet, started the engine and rode the scooter down the drive. When she reached the road, she turned right. Half a mile away was a house owned by one of her numerous extended family, a place where she could safely leave the Vespa and get a lift back to the Hamptons’ house.
Twenty minutes later Maria stepped out of the front passenger seat of her nephew’s old Lancia and led the way over to the still-open front door of the property. They walked into the hall and looked at the body. Her nephew bent down and felt one of Jackie’s wrists, then crossed himself and took a couple of steps backward. Maria had known what to expect, and barely reacted at all.
“Now
I can call the
polizia,
” she announced. She picked up the phone that stood on the hall table and dialed 112, the Italian emergency number.
2
I
“You’ve really screwed up this time, Death Wish,” Harrison began.
Right, Bronson thought. That’s it. He was standing in front of the D.I.’s cluttered desk, a swivel chair beside him that Harrison had pointedly not invited him to sit in. Bronson glanced over his shoulder, a puzzled expression on his face, then looked back.
“Who are you talking to?” he asked quietly.
“You, you little shit,” Harrison snapped. This was laughable, as Bronson stood three inches taller than his superior, though he weighed substantially less.
“ ‘My name’s Christopher Bronson, and I’m a detective sergeant. You can call me Chris. You can call me D.S. Bronson, or you can just call me Bronson. But, you fat, ugly bastard, you can’t call me ‘Death Wish.’ ”
Harrison’s face was a picture. “What did you call me?”
“You heard,” Bronson said, and sat down in the swivel chair.
“You’ll bloody well stand when you’re in my office.”
“I’ll sit, thanks. What did you want to see me about?”
“Stand up!” Harrison shouted. Outside the glass-walled cubicle, the few officers who had arrived early were starting to take an interest in the interview.
“I’ve had it with you, Harrison,” Bronson said, stretching out his legs comfortably in front of him. “Ever since I joined this station you’ve complained about pretty much everything I’ve done, and I’ve gone along with it because I actually like being in the force, even if it means working with incompetent arseholes like you. But today, I’ve changed my mind.”
Small gobbets of spittle had gathered around Harrison’s mouth. “You insubordinate bastard. I’ll have your warrant card for this.”
“You can certainly try. I suppose you’ve worked out some scheme to charge me with assaulting a prisoner or using excessive force during an arrest?”
Harrison nodded. “And I’ve got witnesses,” he growled.
Bronson smiled at him. “I’m sure you have. I just hope you’re paying them enough. And do you realize that’s almost the first sentence you’ve spoken since I walked in here that didn’t have a swearword in it, you foulmouthed, illiterate idiot?”
For a few moments Harrison said nothing, just stared at Bronson, his eyes smoldering with hate.
“It’s been lovely, having this little chat,” Bronson said, standing up. “I’m going to take a day or two off work now. That’ll give you time to decide whether you’re going to carry on with this charade or start acting as if you really were a senior police officer.”
“You can consider yourself suspended, Bronson.”
“That’s better—you actually got my name right that time.”
“You’re bloody well suspended. Give me your warrant card and get the hell out of here.” Harrison held out his hand.
Bronson shook his head. “I think I’ll hang on to it for the moment, thanks. And while you decide what you’re going to do you might like to take a look at this.” Bronson fished in his jacket pocket and pulled out a slim black object. “To save you asking, it’s a tape recorder. I’ll send you a copy of our conversation, such as it was. If you want an inquiry, I’ll let the investigating officers listen to it.
“And this,” Bronson extracted a buff envelope from another pocket and tossed it on the desk, “is a formal request for a transfer. Do let me know what you decide to do. You’ve got my numbers, I think.”
Bronson clicked off the recorder and walked out of the office.
II
The telephone in the apartment in Rome rang just after eleven thirty that morning, but Gregori Mandino was in the shower, so the answering machine cut in after half a dozen rings.
Fifteen minutes later, shaved and dressed in his usual attire of white shirt, dark tie and light gray suit, Mandino prepared a large
café latte
in the kitchen and carried it into his study. He sat down at his desk, pressed the “play” button on the machine and leaned forward to ensure he heard the message clearly. The caller had used a code incomprehensible to an eavesdropper, but the meaning was clear enough to Mandino. He frowned, dialed a number on his Nokia, held a brief conversation with the man at the other end, then sat back in his leather chair to consider the news he’d been given. It wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, what he had wanted or expected to hear.
The call was from his deputy in Rome, a man whom he had come to trust. The task he had given Antonio Carlotti had been simple enough. Just get a couple of men inside the house, get the information and get out again. But the woman had been killed—whether it had been a genuinely accidental death he neither knew nor cared—and the information the men had obtained added almost nothing to what he already knew.