When the Windows desktop was displayed, Rogan used the mouse to open Internet Explorer. He selected “Internet Options” and cleared the history of recently visited Web sites. He also checked the “Favorites” list, looking for anything resembling the Web sites Carlotti had specified, but found nothing. Then he scanned the sent and received e-mails in Outlook Express, again following Carlotti’s precise instructions, but once more his search was fruitless. Rogan checked his written instructions one final time, shrugged and then shut down the computer.
He took a last look around the room, switched off the light and walked out. Alberti was waiting in the hall.
“We’ll check the living room again,” Rogan said, and led the way. The new plaster over the fireplace was still slightly damp to the touch, but was a good match for that on the adjacent wall.
The two men inspected the room thoroughly, looking for pictures or drawings that might show the now-invisible inscription, but found nothing.
“I think that’s it,” Rogan said. “We’ve done everything the
capo
wanted. Let’s get out of here.”
They were twenty-five minutes and nearly thirty kilometers away from the house when Rogan suddenly realized that he’d forgotten to open the curtains in the study. He eased his foot off the accelerator pedal while he debated whether or not they should go back, but eventually decided it didn’t matter. After all, what could anyone possibly deduce from a set of drawn curtains?
6
It was almost midnight when the taxi turned into the gravel drive, the car’s headlights washing over the old stone walls of the Villa Rosa and startling a fox that was making its solitary way through the garden. Mark looked wrecked, staring at the house with a kind of horrified fascination as the car pulled to a halt. They lifted their bags out of the trunk and watched as the taxi drove away.
“Wait here, Mark. I’ll go in first.”
Hampton nodded, but didn’t respond. He pulled a bunch of keys from his jacket pocket and passed it over. Bronson left his bag on the drive, walked over to the front door of the property and undid the lock. The door swung open and he stepped inside, turning on the hall lights as he did so.
Inevitably, the first place he looked was the stone floor at the foot of the wide oak staircase. It wasn’t anything like as bad as he’d feared: the mark where Jackie’s head wound had bled was still just visible as an almost circular discoloration, but somebody—probably the cleaning woman, Maria Palomo—had cleaned off the blood. There was an oblong rug beside the hall table, and Bronson dragged it over the floor until it completely covered the mark on the flagstones.
Waves of sadness rolled over him. He imagined Jackie, her body crumpled on the floor, unable to call out for help and probably knowing that she was dying. What a terrible, lonely, appalling way to die. He felt the tears welling up, and angrily brushed them away. He had to be strong. For himself, for Jackie and especially for Mark.
The stairs and hall had obviously been cleaned, and every attempt made to conceal the fact that a fatal accident had occurred in that part of the house. There was even a vase of fresh flowers on the table. Bronson made a note to give the cleaner some extra money.
He quickly walked around the rest of the property, upstairs and down, checking that the Italian police and forensic people hadn’t left any debris or equipment, then went back outside.
“OK, Mark?”
Mark nodded, quite obviously anything but “OK,” and followed Bronson to the door of the house.
“Go through to the kitchen,” Bronson suggested. “We’ll have a drink and then get to bed. I’ll sort out the bags.”
Mark didn’t respond, just stared at the staircase and the hall floor for a few seconds, then walked down the short passage that led to the rear of the property. Bronson stepped back outside, collected their two bags and returned to the house.
He left the bags in the hall and walked through to the kitchen. Mark was sitting in an upright chair, staring at the wall. Bronson opened cupboards, finding tea and coffee, then a tin of drinking chocolate and a half-full jar of Horlicks. That wasn’t what he wanted, but in a floor-level cupboard he found a selection of bottles of spirits and pulled out two of them.
“Whiskey or brandy?” Bronson asked. “Or do you want something else?”
Mark looked up at him, almost as if he was surprised to see him there. “What?”
Bronson repeated the question, holding up the bottles for emphasis.
“Oh, brandy, please. I can’t bear that other stuff.”
Bronson sat opposite his friend and slid a half-full tumbler across the table.
“Drink that, then get up to bed. It’s been a long day and you must be exhausted.”
Mark took a sip. “You should be exhausted as well.”
“I am,” Bronson said with a slight smile, “but I’m more concerned about you. Which bedroom do you want to use?”
“Not the master suite, Chris,” Mark said, a distinct tremor in his voice. “I can’t face that.”
Bronson had already checked the master bedroom. Someone had tidied it—probably the cleaner—because the bed was made and Jackie’s clothes neatly folded on a chair.
“No problem. I’ll take your bag up to one of the guest rooms.” Bronson put down his tumbler and left the kitchen, but was back in a few minutes, a small brown tablet bottle in his hand. “Here,” he said, “take one of these. They’ll help you sleep.”
“What are they?”
“Melatonin. I found them in the bathroom. They’re good for jet lag because they relax you and help you get to sleep. And they’re nonaddictive, not like normal sleeping pills.”
Mark nodded, and washed down the tablets with the rest of his brandy.
Bronson rinsed their glasses and put them in the sink. “Go on up. I’m just going to check the house, make sure all the doors and windows are locked, then I’ll follow you.”
Mark nodded and left the room. In the hall, Bronson bolted the main door, then walked around the ground floor, room by room, checking that all the windows were locked and the outside shutters bolted.
He finished his security check back in the kitchen and, as he made sure the key was turned in the back-door lock, he glanced down at the floor. There was something on it, some small brown particles. He bent down to look more closely, picked up a couple of the larger fragments and rolled them between his forefinger and thumb. They were obviously small pieces of wood, and Bronson glanced up at the ceiling above him, wondering if the old house had a woodworm or termite problem. But the beams and floorboards were blackened with age and looked absolutely solid. The fragments weren’t residue from insects either. Boring insects reduce wood almost to dust, and what he was holding in his hand were more like small wooden splinters.
Bronson unlocked the door to check the outside of it and immediately noticed on the doorframe, and level with the lock itself, a small section of compressed wood about one inch square. He knew immediately what had caused it—he’d been to enough burglaries in his short career as a police officer to recognize the marks made by a jimmy or crowbar. Obviously someone had forced the door, and fairly recently. The fragments of wood had almost certainly been ripped out when the lock was torn off.
He examined the lock carefully. Even with his bare hands, he could move it very slightly—all the original screws were there, but had barely enough purchase to keep the lock in position on the door. Somebody had broken into the house—that much was obvious—then replaced the lock and presumably left the property by the front door, which would self-lock because of the Yale. He guessed that the burglars had done this—if the cleaning woman had found the lock ripped off, she would presumably have left a message or told the police, and if the police had found it, they would hopefully have done more than just shove the screws back in the holes.
What puzzled Bronson was why any burglar would waste his time replacing the lock. In his experience, most people who broke into houses chose the easiest point of entry, picked up every item of value they could carry, and then left by the simplest route. Fast in, fast out. But in the Hamptons’ property they must have taken several minutes to refit the lock. The only possible reason he could come up with was that the burglars hadn’t wanted anyone to know they’d been inside the house, and that really didn’t make any sense. Why should they care? The homeowner would know immediately that he’d been robbed. Unless, of course, the burglars didn’t take anything, but if that were the case what was the point of them breaking in?
Bronson shook his head. He was tired after the flight and could no longer think clearly. He’d try to work out what the hell was going on once he’d got some sleep.
He looked around the kitchen and selected one of the upright chairs that flanked the wooden table. He picked it up and wedged its back under the door handle, kicking the legs to jam it firmly into position. He placed another chair behind it, so that even if somebody did force the door, the noise they’d make getting in would awaken him.
Then he went up to bed. The forced door was a puzzle that would have to wait until the morning.
7
I
Bronson woke early. His sleep had been restless and his dreams peopled with unaccountably vivid pictures of Jackie on her wedding day, smiling and radiant, contrasting with his constructed image of her crumpled body lying dead on the cold and unyielding flagstones of the hall floor.
He padded down the staircase at just after seven and went straight into the kitchen. While he waited for the kettle to boil, he removed the chair he’d used to jam the door the previous night and looked again at the damage. In daylight, the marks were even more clearly visible.
He walked around the room, opening cupboards and looking for a screwdriver. Under the sink he found a blue metal box where Mark kept a good selection of tools, a necessity in any old house. But there were no screws, which were what he needed to secure the lock properly.
Bronson made a pot of coffee, and ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast, then took a set of keys and went out to the garage. He found a plastic box half full of woodscrews on a shelf at the back. Ten minutes later, he’d fixed the lock back on the door using thicker screws about half an inch longer than the originals, but because the screws had been torn out of the wood when the door was forced, the holes had been enlarged and the wood weakened. He was certain that, even with the bigger screws in place, quite gentle pressure on the door from the outside would probably rip the lock off again. He could find a couple of bolts to fit on the door but he would have to check that with Mark before he did it. Next, he inspected the entire building for other signs of forced entry, but found nothing else.
The property stood on the side of a hill, honey-colored stone walls and small windows under a red-tiled roof, in the center of a pleasantly overgrown garden of about half an acre, a satisfying mix of lawns, shrubs and trees. Beside the house a lane snaked away up the hill to a handful of other isolated properties. The closest town—Ponticelli—was about five kilometers distant.
Bronson had visited the house twice before, once when the Hamptons had just bought it but hadn’t yet moved in, and a second time, a month or so later, before all the renovation works began. He remembered the property well, and had always liked the feel of it. It was a big, rambling, slightly dilapidated farmhouse, which displayed its advanced age with a mix of charm, solidity and eccentricity. The blackened beams and floor timbers contrasted with the thick stone walls: some plastered, but many not. Jackie always used to say, her voice tinged with both pleasure and irritation, that there wasn’t a straight wall or a square corner anywhere in the house.
Bronson smiled sadly at his memories. Jackie had loved the old house from the first, adored the relaxed Italian lifestyle, the café society, the food and wine, and the weather. Even when it rained, she’d said, it seemed somehow less wet than British drizzle. Mark had pointed out the logical impossibility of her argument, but that hadn’t swayed her.
And now, it finally hit Bronson that he’d never hear her cheerful voice again, never be carried away by her infectious enthusiasm for all things Italian, from the cheap Chianti they bought from a small and dusty shop in the local village to the mind-blowing beauty of the lakes.
He could feel the tears coming, and quickly brought that train of thought to a halt. He forced himself to concentrate on checking the building, looking for any sign that a burglary had occurred.
Of course, with builders’ tools and equipment, bags of plaster and pots of paint stacked up in almost every room, the property looked very different from his recollection. Most of the furniture had been shifted into piles and covered in dust sheets to allow the builders space to work, but Bronson was still able to identify most of the more valuable items—the TV, the stereo and computer, and half a dozen decent paintings—and even, in the master bedroom, nearly a thousand euros in notes tucked under a bottle of perfume on Jackie’s dressing table.
As he walked around the house, he wondered if Mark would want to keep it, and its tragic mix of memories, or just sell the place and walk away.
A few minutes later, Bronson sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the wall clock. If Mark didn’t get up soon, he was going to have to go and wake him: they had things—unpleasant things for both of them—to do today. But even as the thought crossed his mind, he heard his friend’s footsteps on the stairs.
Mark looked dreadful. He was unshaven, unwashed and haggard, wearing an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt that had seen better days. Bronson filled a mug with black coffee and put it on the table in front of him.
“Morning,” he said, as Mark sat down. “Would you like some breakfast?”
His friend shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll just stick to coffee. I feel about as sharp as a sponge this morning. How long have we got?”