II
Early that evening, and a mere five hours after they’d landed at Heathrow, Rogan braked the rental car to a halt about a hundred yards from Mark Hampton’s Ilford apartment.
“You’re sure he’s here?” Mandino asked.
Rogan nodded. “I know somebody is. I’ve made three telephone calls to that apartment and they’ve all been answered. I did one as a wrong number, and the other two as telesales calls. In all three cases, a man answered, and I’m reasonably certain it was Mark Hampton.”
“Good enough,” Mandino said. He picked up a small plastic carrier bag from the footwell of the Ford sedan, opened the passenger door and headed along the street, Rogan at his side.
Time was of the essence. With every hour that passed, Mandino knew that more people would be likely to see copies of the inscriptions as Hampton and Bronson tried to work out what they meant.
He and Rogan walked the short distance to the building. At the entrance door, Mandino glanced in both directions before pulling on a pair of thin rubber gloves, and then pressed the button on the entry-phone. After a few seconds there was a crackle and a man’s voice issued from the tiny speaker grill.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Mark Hampton?”
“Yes. Who is it?”
“This is Detective Inspector Roberts, sir, of the Metropolitan Police. I’ve got a few questions to ask you about your wife’s unfortunate death in Italy. May I come in?”
“Can you prove your identity?”
Mandino paused for a few seconds. In the circumstances, Hampton’s response was not unreasonable, or unexpected.
“You don’t have a videophone, sir, so I can’t show you my warrant card. But I can read you the number, and you can check it with either the Ilford police station or New Scotland Yard. The number is seven four six, two eight four.”
Mandino had not the slightest idea what number or numbers might be found on a Metropolitan Police warrant card, but he was prepared to bet that Hampton wouldn’t either. It all depended on whether the Englishman would bother to check.
“What questions?”
“Just some simple procedural matters, sir. It will only take a few minutes.”
“Very well.”
There was a buzz and the electric lock on the front door of the building clicked open.
With a final glance up and down the street, Mandino and Rogan stepped inside, walked straight to the elevator and pressed the button for Mark’s floor.
When the doors opened, they checked the apartment numbers, then strode down the corridor. At the correct door they stopped and Mandino knocked, then stepped to one side.
The moment the door came off the latch, Rogan kicked against it, hard. The door flew backward, knocking Mark off his feet and sending him sprawling onto the floor of the narrow hallway. Rogan stepped forward quickly, knelt down and hit him on the side of his head with a bludgeon. The blow was just hard enough to knock Mark unconscious, and was sufficient to disable him for the few minutes they needed.
“There,” Mandino said, walking into the living room and pointing at a carver dining chair. “Tie him in that.”
Rogan pulled the chair into the center of the room. Together, the two men dragged Mark over to the carver and sat him in it. He slumped forward, but Mandino pulled his shoulders back and held him in place while Rogan did his work. He took a length of clothesline from the bag Mandino had been carrying, looped it twice around Mark’s chest and tied it behind the back of the chair, holding him upright.
Then he took some cable ties, wrapped one around each wrist and used a pair of pliers to pull them tight. He repeated the process around Mark’s forearms and elbows, and then secured his ankles in the same fashion to the chair legs. In less than three minutes, he was completely immobilized.
“Check the place,” Mandino ordered. “See if he brought a copy of the inscription back with him.”
While Rogan began looking around the apartment, Mandino walked through into the kitchen and made himself a mug of instant coffee. It was nothing like the Italian latte he was used to, but it was better than nothing, and the last drink he’d had was a can of orange juice on the flight from Rome.
“Nothing,” Rogan reported, as Mandino walked back into the room.
“Right. Wake him up.”
Rogan stepped across to Mark, lifted his head and then roughly forced his eyes open. Their captive stirred, then regained consciousness.
When Mark came to, he found himself staring at a well-dressed and heavily built man sitting in an easy chair opposite him, sipping a hot drink from one of his own mugs.
“Who the hell are you?” Mark demanded, his voice harsh and slurred. “And what are you doing in my apartment?”
Mandino smiled slightly. “I’ll ask the questions, thank you. We know about the two inscribed stones you found in your house in Italy, and we know you or your friend Christopher Bronson decided to obliterate the carving in the dining room. Now you’re going to tell me what you found.”
“Are you the bastards who killed Jackie?”
The smile vanished from Mandino’s face. “I said I’ll ask the questions. My associate will now emphasize the point.”
Rogan stepped forward, the pliers in his hand, reached down and placed the jaws around the end of the little finger on Mark’s left hand and slowly levered backward.
With a snap that was audible to both Italians, one of the bones broke, the sound followed immediately by a howl of pain from Hampton.
“I hope the soundproofing here is good,” Mandino remarked. “I wouldn’t want to disturb your neighbors. Now,” he continued, raising his voice above Mark’s groans,
“just answer my questions, quickly and truthfully, and then we can get you proper medical attention. If you don’t tell us what we want to know, you’ve seven more fingers that my associate can work on.”
Rogan waved the pliers in front of Mark’s face.
Through a red haze and tears of pain, Mark stared in disbelief at the Italian.
“OK,” Mandino said briskly, “let’s begin. What did you find on the second inscribed stone? And don’t even think about lying to me. My colleague here was watching through the window of the house when Bronson uncovered it.”
“A poem,” Mark gasped. “It looked like a poem. Two verses.”
“In Latin?”
“No. We thought it was a language called Occitan.”
“Did you translate it?”
Mark shook his head. “No. Chris tried, but he could only find a few of the words on the Internet, so we’ve no idea what the verses were about.”
“What did you manage to translate?”
“Only a couple of words about trees—oak and elm, I think—and there was a Latin word as well. Something about a cup or chalice. That’s all we could do.”
“Are you quite sure?” Mandino asked, leaning forward.
“Yes, I—” Mark screamed as Rogan tapped the pliers sharply on his fractured finger, already badly swollen and bleeding.
Mandino waited for a few seconds before continuing. “I’m inclined to believe you,”
he said, in a conversational tone. “So where is the inscription? I presume you copied it or something before your friend destroyed it.”
“Yes, yes,” Mark sobbed. “Chris photographed it.”
“And what’s he doing with it?”
“His ex-wife put him in contact with a man named Jeremy Goldman at the British Museum. He’ll be taking the pictures to show him, to try to get it translated.”
“When?” Mandino asked softly.
“I don’t know. We only got back from Italy today. He’s been driving for two solid days, so he’ll probably go there tomorrow. But I don’t know,” he added hastily, as Rogan lifted the pliers threateningly.
Mandino raised a calming hand. “And do you have a copy of those photographs?”