The Lost Testament

56

Bronson ordered ‘Dos cafés con leche’ from the slim, dark-haired young man standing behind the bar. He immediately replied in fluent English: ‘Two white coffees coming right up.’

Bronson guessed he must look very English. Either that or the accent of his rudimentary Spanish had given him away.

‘You’ve got Wi-Fi here?’ Bronson asked the barman, abandoning all attempts at conversing in Spanish, as he placed two large cups on a machine.

The young man nodded, reached into a drawer and took out a piece of paper. He passed it over to Bronson and pointed at the letters and numbers printed on it.

Bronson passed the paper to Angela, then returned to the bar, where the barista was putting a couple of paper wraps of sugar on each saucer.

‘Your English is very good,’ he said.

‘It should be. My father’s English but my mother is Spanish, so I grew up speaking both languages. Don’t pay for this,’ he went on as Bronson pulled out his wallet. ‘I’ll just stick it on your room bill. Much easier for all of us.’

‘Do you work here full time?’ he asked, then gave him the room number.

The young man shook his head.

‘Not really. I’m trying to decide what to do with my life, and while I’m making up my mind my father thought working here would be a good idea. He owns the hotel, you see, so I’m just cheap labour, I suppose. Enjoy your coffee.’

Bronson carried the cups over to the table where Angela was sitting, the laptop open in front of her.

‘Anything from our mystery seller?’ he asked.

‘Nothing yet,’ she said, sounding downcast.

‘I hope this doesn’t mean we’ve wasted our time flying out here,’ Bronson said. ‘Or that your anonymous correspondent has met with some kind of an accident, like walking into the path of a bullet.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ Angela said, with a slight shudder. ‘What did you do with that man’s gun, by the way? Will you hand it in when we get back to Britain?’

‘Probably not. I’ve never understood why New Labour thought it was such a brilliant plan to disarm all sections of the British population apart from the criminals. In my opinion, having the odd unlicensed weapon about the place is actually quite a good idea.’

Angela looked worried. ‘But if you get caught with it you’ll be in a lot of trouble.’

‘You’re quite right there, so I’ll just have to make sure I don’t get caught.’

Before Angela could reply, her computer emitted a musical tone and she turned back to look at the screen.

‘It’s him,’ she said excitedly, and clicked the touchpad to open the message.

‘What’s he said?’

‘He hasn’t said anything, actually. The only thing that’s in this email is an address of a website.’

She moved the mouse pointer over the underlined address and clicked the button. Her browser opened almost immediately, and a couple of seconds after that she and Bronson were both staring at the contents of the website.

Bronson was the first to speak.

‘Well,’ he murmured, with a glance at Angela, ‘that’s a bit of a bugger, isn’t it?’