The Lost Testament

65

It was the noise that she noticed first. It sounded strangely distant: an intermittent thumping and rumbling sound, and another more constant hum that rose and fell. For some time — it could have been minutes or seconds — she didn’t move, just stayed as still as she could, trying to make sense of what had happened to her. But it made no sense. There seemed to be huge gaps in her memory.

She gradually became aware of a voice — a familiar voice — close to her. A voice that seemed to be saying her name.

And then, slowly, things started to fit together. She realized that she was in a car, lying crumpled across the back seat. That explained the noises she could hear. But how had she got into a car? And whose car was it?

With a rush, she remembered the café. She remembered talking to Anum Husani, remembered examining the parchment. And then her normal, lineal memory seemed to fail her, and it was as if she was seeing individual frames from a movie inside her head.

Husani no longer sitting beside her, but flat on his back on the ground, his shirt deep red in colour. Grabbing the briefcase. A man dressed all in black. And then the gun. The gun he was holding. And then the man firing the gun.

She gasped with shock as she relived the moment, and struggled to sit up. As she did so, a throbbing pain pulsed through the back of her head, and she cried out involuntarily, reaching up to hold the place where it hurt.

‘Angela. It’s me, Chris. Don’t try to move. Just lie there. Just for a few more minutes.’

‘What happened?’ she asked, her voice weak and slurred. ‘Where are we?’

‘Madrid. We’re still in Madrid, but we won’t be for long. We’re going to have to move quickly, but first I need to take a look at that head of yours. You cracked it pretty hard when you fell.’

‘I don’t remember that,’ Angela said, ‘but I do know that my head hurts.’

Suddenly, the world outside the car went dark as the vehicle angled downwards.

‘Where are we going?’

‘We’re at the hotel. As soon as I’ve parked the car we’re going up to our room. Then I’ll explain what happened.’

Moments later, Bronson pulled the car to a halt.

‘Can you get out by yourself?’ he asked.

‘Did I get in by myself?’

Bronson gave her a slight smile.

‘Not exactly. I’m afraid I had to more or less chuck you in there. There wasn’t time to do anything else.’

Angela turned round on the seat to face the open door and, with legs that suddenly seemed to be made of rubber, crawled clumsily towards his waiting hands.

As soon as he could, Bronson seized her under the armpits and gently lifted her body out of the car. Once he was sure that she could stand, albeit leaning against the side of the vehicle, he let go of her.

‘Just hang on there for a couple of seconds,’ he said.

Bronson glanced round the garage, but he and Angela were entirely alone there, and so far he hadn’t spotted any surveillance cameras. Nevertheless, he used his own body to screen what he was doing from any possible observer. He bent forward, reached down into the passenger-side foot well and removed four objects. The first was a briefcase; and the others a mobile phone and a Beretta semi-automatic pistol with a lengthy suppressor attached to its muzzle, plus a pistol magazine. He snapped open the two catches on the leather-covered briefcase and put the phone, the magazine and the pistol, complete with the suppressor, inside it. Then he closed the briefcase and locked the car.

Holding the briefcase in his left hand, he wrapped his right arm around Angela, pulling her close to him, and then the two of them began slowly walking across the garage floor towards the two lifts.

Bronson ushered Angela inside one of the lifts and pressed the button for their floor. Less than three minutes later, he was able to lock the door of their room from the inside and watch Angela sit down gratefully on the wide double bed.

Bronson put down the briefcase and walked across to where she was sitting.

‘Just lean forward very slightly,’ he said, ‘so that I can see the back of your head.’

He examined the wound on the back of her scalp. It was more bruised than cut, and he didn’t think it would need stitches, just a dressing and a pad, neither of which, of course, he had.

‘I need to clean and dress that wound,’ he told her. ‘Just stay here on the bed while I go and find a medical kit from somewhere. Don’t open the door to anybody. I’ll take the key with me.’

Angela silently nodded her agreement.

Bronson descended in the lift to the ground floor. There was nobody at the reception desk, so he walked through into the bar. About half a dozen people were sitting at tables in there, drinks in front of them and, as he’d hoped, the same friendly waiter he’d spoken to before was standing behind the bar industriously wiping the countertop.

Bronson immediately walked over to him.

‘Do you have a medical kit I could borrow?’ he asked. ‘My wife’s bashed her head, and I just need a dressing or something to cover it.’

The man looked concerned.

‘If you want,’ he suggested, ‘I can call a doctor for her. An English-speaking doctor, I mean.’

Bronson shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that bad. It’s just a graze, really. I just need to clean and dress it.’

‘If you’re sure?’

He walked to the opposite end of the bar and reached below it, and then handed Bronson a small white plastic box with a red cross on it.

‘Thanks. I’ll bring it back as soon as I can.’

The waiter nodded.

‘Take as long as you need. Just make sure she’s OK.’

Back in their bedroom, Bronson opened the medical kit, took out what he thought he would need, and then tenderly washed the wound on the back of Angela’s head in warm water. Once he’d removed most of the dried blood from the hair around the injury, it looked a lot smaller and a lot less serious than he’d thought at first. But blows to the head, even quite minor injuries, can be dangerous. There’s the possibility of concussion or, less likely, a fractured skull or damage to the blood vessels inside the brain.

‘How does it look?’ Angela demanded.

‘It’s not too bad,’ Bronson said truthfully. ‘It’ll still need a small pad or something to cover it, but otherwise it’s fine.’

He organized a pad and, as a temporary measure, loosely tied a bandage around the back of Angela’s head and around her forehead, just to keep it in place.

‘Right,’ Angela said, ‘now you’ve done your impersonation of Florence Nightingale, why don’t you tell me what the hell happened in that café.’

‘What do you remember?’

‘It’s mostly clear in my mind up to the point when you started the car. I recall turning to look over towards you, but after that I can only remember flashes. I saw Husani lying on the floor.’

Angela stopped talking and her eyes widened in a delayed-shock reaction as her brain processed the implications of what she was saying.

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ she said.

Bronson nodded.

‘I’m afraid he is, but it’s thanks to him that you’re not.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Let me tell you what happened, as I saw it. As soon as I got back to the car I started the engine, so I could move immediately, and started watching you, and checking the street in both directions. I really didn’t think there would be any trouble, but it just seemed like a sensible precaution.’

‘Which it was,’ Angela remarked.

‘I saw Anum Husani approaching. He was difficult to miss, because he was on my side of the road, but I guessed it was him because he was carrying the briefcase. Then he crossed the road and approached you at the table, and that more or less confirmed who he was. Quite a few people walked past the café, and a couple even went in and took a table on the opposite side of the terrace to where you were sitting, but I thought they all seemed entirely innocent. And then I saw a man walking along the pavement, dressed in black. He looked like a priest. Anyway, he didn’t appear to be in any way threatening, and seemed occupied talking on a mobile phone.’

‘The man in black,’ Angela shuddered. ‘Him, I do remember.’

Bronson nodded. ‘He stopped walking a few yards away from the café terrace, the way people sometimes do when they’re concentrating on a particular subject being talked about during a telephone call. All of that seemed perfectly normal, but then I noticed that he seemed to be looking towards the café, and possibly even staring towards your table. That rang alarm bells. Then he slid the phone into his pocket, reached inside another pocket and pulled out the gun. It all happened very quickly. It turns out you can hide a lot of stuff underneath a cassock.’

Angela tried a laugh that ended up a hoarse croak.

‘So what did you do?’

‘I knew I couldn’t run across the street and grab hold of him before he fired, so I did the next best thing. I used the car as a weapon. I sounded the horn to try to distract him, and then drove straight towards him. But I wasn’t quite quick enough. He must have been a professional, because he didn’t even glance in my direction. He was totally focused on completing the job, and we’re just lucky that the first part of the work he did was killing Anum Husani, not you.’

Bronson looked at Angela’s face and saw her eyes misting.

‘He seemed like a decent man,’ she said, her voice breaking as she spoke. ‘He really didn’t deserve that.’

‘The first shot the killer fired took Husani in the middle of the chest, and he was probably dead even before he hit the ground. Then I saw him switch his aim towards you. I accelerated as hard as I could, but I was a couple of seconds too late. I saw you fall down, flat on your back.’

Bronson stopped talking for a moment, and Angela could see the emotion coursing through him, his eyes glistening. She’d never seen him quite this close to tears before. She reached out and gently squeezed his hand.

‘At that moment I was quite certain that you were dead, that he’d just murdered you, right in front of me. So I didn’t slow the car. In fact, I accelerated even harder. He tried to jump to one side, but I caught his legs with the right front of the vehicle, and he went straight down.’

‘Oh, God,’ Angela murmured.

‘I jumped out, and checked to see if he was still a threat. But I’d done a good job. It looked as if both his legs were broken, and he was unconscious. He was bleeding from his nose and ears, so he’d probably smashed his head onto the pavement. If I’m honest, at that moment I very much hoped I’d killed him. I grabbed his pistol and his mobile, then searched him quickly, but the only other thing he had on him was a spare magazine for the pistol. Then I ran over to you.’

For a few seconds Bronson again visibly struggled with his own emotions, then he resumed his narrative.

‘You were just lying there,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know if you were still breathing, and there was some blood on the back of your head, but I couldn’t see any sign of a bullet wound. Then I looked at the briefcase. There was a small hole torn in the leather, and I could see the glint of metal behind it. The bullet knocked you to the floor, but somehow it didn’t make it through the case.’

Angela nodded weakly.

‘Husani was really proud of that case. He bought it specially. He said it’s lined with Kevlar. He actually told me it was bulletproof.’

‘Really lucky for you that it was. As soon as I saw that, I knew that you had to be alive, so I just picked you up, put the briefcase under my arm, and ran back to the car. There were people screaming and shouting, and it was only going to be a matter of minutes before the Spanish police pitched up. I really didn’t want to have to answer a lot of questions from them.’

‘But what about the assassin? You probably killed him.’

Bronson shook his head.

‘If I’d stayed, I would have been the only person involved in the incident who was still alive, apart from you, and I can absolutely guarantee that the very first thing the Spanish police would have done was arrest me, and possibly you as well. My other worry was that whoever’s trying to recover the parchment had obviously hacked into Husani’s email — and probably yours as well — and if they can do that, arranging for somebody to attack you or me in prison wouldn’t greatly tax their ingenuity. The only safe thing I could do was get us — and the parchment — away from the scene as quickly as possible.’

‘But surely somebody will have noticed the car number?’

‘Maybe, but witnesses to violent action very rarely remember anything particularly clearly. And with any luck we’ll be long gone before they get around to checking.’

‘So where should we go now?’ Angela asked.

‘We get out of Madrid, and Spain, as quickly as we can. The parchment is in that briefcase, along with the pistol and the killer’s mobile phone, and there’s nothing to keep us here. I won’t feel safe until we’re back in Britain. Possibly not even then.’

‘I should really tell George Stebbins what’s happened,’ Angela said. ‘He could be in danger as well.’

‘From what I saw of your Mr Stebbins, he seems to be quite good at taking care of himself, or at least at staying out of any kind of trouble or danger.’

‘I know, but I’d still feel better if I told him.’

Bronson nodded. ‘OK. While you make the call, I’ll pack our things so we can leave here as soon as possible.’

But as Angela reached into her handbag for her mobile, another phone — the one Bronson had taken from the assassin — began to ring.