The Lost Testament

46

‘I definitely think you did the right thing,’ Chris Bronson said.

They were sitting side by side on a somewhat tattered leather sofa in the lounge of Bronson’s house in Royal Tunbridge Wells, an unremarkable crime thriller that contained a large number of technical errors being played out on the flat-screen television. Bronson had got so fed up with the programme’s obvious mistakes and clumsy dialogue that a few minutes earlier he’d muted the sound and they’d been half-watching it in silence ever since.

‘As soon as I’d called you I felt so stupid,’ Angela replied. ‘I mean, how can a couple of murders in Egypt possibly be a problem to me here in southern England? How would the killer know anything about me?’

‘Ah, well, that’s the thing,’ Bronson replied, not sounding happy at all. ‘After you rang me, I popped into the station and sent a message to the Cairo police, asking for any information they could supply about the killing of Ali Mohammed. It’s the kind of thing we do all the time with other police forces, though not usually with one as far away as Egypt. I just said that the crime might possibly have links to an on-going investigation here in Britain. I asked if they had recovered the man’s laptop and mobile phone.’

Angela was staring at him with a peculiar intensity.

‘And had they?’ she asked.

‘His mobile, yes, but there was no sign of his laptop in his office. One of the museum security staff recalled that the impostor, the fake police officer, had walked out of the building carrying a bag, quite possibly a laptop case. If Mohammed’s computer was in the bag, it wouldn’t take him more than a couple of minutes to discover that Mohammed had emailed the pictures to you.’

‘But do you really think that the man who’s murdered those two people in Cairo would come after me in England? I mean, wouldn’t an Arab assassin stand out a bit in London?’

Bronson smiled grimly at her.

‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but about the only language you don’t hear spoken on the streets of central London these days is English. Arabic, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian and a whole flock of Eastern European languages, yes, but English, no. I don’t think an Egyptian killer would be any more noticeable than any other type of killer in this city. But, actually, I doubt very much if that man will be heading this way any time soon, because he probably won’t need to.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve already told me that what’s written on that parchment might have potentially significant connotations, and would certainly attract international attention if knowledge of it ever became public. And if—’

‘I don’t know that for certain, because there’s still a lot of the text I can’t even see, far less translate.’

‘OK, but you are quite certain it’s an important find. What’s happened in Cairo is proof positive that some person or organization is actively looking for it, and eliminating anyone who knows too much about it. If they decided that you knew too much to be allowed to live, I imagine that some local contractor would be appointed to carry out the job here in Britain.’

Angela shivered.

‘A “contractor”? You make hiring an assassin sound like arranging to have an extension built on your house.’

There was no trace of humour in Bronson’s expression or voice when he replied.

‘That’s the terminology which is used. A contract is offered, and the man who accepts it is, logically, the contractor. And the really sad part about it is that it can actually cost less, sometimes quite a lot less, to have somebody murdered than to build an extension. It all depends on the profile of the victim. Killing a politician or somebody who’s nationally known will be expensive because it’s risky. The assassin will possibly be going up against armed and trained bodyguards, and there are far more likely to be witnesses around if the victim has a face that everybody knows. But I’m afraid that you, my dear, are a nobody in this kind of context, and to arrange for your demise would cost no more than a few thousand pounds.’

‘That’s absolutely disgusting! Are you actually saying that London is full of murderers for hire?’

‘No, not really. Britain isn’t anything like as bad as some other countries, but if you decide you do want somebody to vanish permanently, and you’ve got the money to pay for it, it’s not that difficult to find somebody to do the job. I can’t remember who said it — it might even have been Agatha Christie — but the reality is that the only reason anybody is alive today is because nobody wants them dead badly enough.

‘People vanish from Britain’s streets every single day. Usually, it’s an entirely voluntary act, but there are lots of cases where the disappearance is involuntary and permanent. For children and young women, the obvious suspects are paedophiles and the kind of lowlifes who run prostitution rings, but when it’s an adult male or female, and there are no apparent family problems, in many cases we suspect that they’ve been done away with, even if we never find the body.’

‘Is it that easy to get rid of a body?’ Angela asked.

Bronson nodded.

‘There are lots of places where you can hide a corpse so that it will probably never be found. A good deep grave in the middle of a wood isn’t a bad choice, but that’s quite hard work for the murderer. Easier options are under a new road or in a concrete bridge support. Or if the killing takes place near the coast you provide the corpse with a set of concrete boots or a length of heavy chain and then drop the body a few miles offshore. Human remains don’t last very long in the sea. Or you can even bury it in a graveyard. Find a fresh grave where the coffin’s only been in the ground a day or two.’

Bronson leaned forward.

‘But when it’s a case of an assassin working for hire, it’s different and they don’t get rid of the body, because there’s no point. They actually want the corpse to be found, because that proves that they’ve carried out the contract and then they can collect the fee. So when we find somebody shot or knifed to death with an absence of witnesses and the body left pretty much where it fell, we always cast a very wide net to try to find anyone who might have wanted that person out of the way.’

Angela looked at him for a moment, then reached for her mug of coffee.

‘You’re not exactly filling me with confidence here, you know.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Bronson said, ‘there is one difference.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Here, they’ll have to go through me first to get to you.’