The British Museum is simply huge: it has to be to accommodate the one thousand permanent staff who work there and the five million visitors who pass through the doors every year. The structure covers about 75,000 square metres – that's four times larger than the Colosseum in Rome, or the equivalent of nine football pitches – and contains 3,500 doors. It's one of the most spectacular public buildings in London, or anywhere else, for that matter.
Angela stared at the photographs she'd printed, then shook her head. The quality of the images was nothing like as good as she'd hoped and expected. The object in the pictures was clearly some kind of clay tablet, and she was reasonably sure she could identify the language used, but transcribing it was going to be difficult because all four photographs were so badly blurred.
After a minute or so, she replaced the pictures on her desk and sat in thought for a few seconds. Looking at the images had inevitably started her thinking about Chris and that, as usual, revived all the confusion and uncertainty she felt about him. Their marriage had been brief but it hadn't been entirely unsuccessful. They had at least remained friends, which was more than a lot of divorced couples could say. The problem had always been the unacknowledged third person in their relationship – the shadowy presence of Jackie Hampton, the wife of Bronson's best friend. And that was almost a cliché, she realized, a wry smile playing across her lips.
Bronson's problem had been his unrequited desire for Jackie, a desire that she knew he had never expressed, and that Jackie had been blissfully unaware of. There had never been any question of his being unfaithful to her – Bronson was far too loyal and decent for anything like that – and in one way the failure of the marriage had been Angela's fault. Once she'd realized where his real affections lay, she had found she simply couldn't cope with playing second fiddle to anyone.
But now Jackie was dead and Bronson's feelings had inevitably changed. He'd been trying – trying hard – to get closer to her, to spend more time with her, and so far Angela had done her best to keep him at arm's length. Before she would allow him to re-enter her life, she had to be absolutely sure that what had happened before would never be repeated, with anyone. And so far, she didn't feel she had that assurance.
She shook her head and looked back at the photographs.
'I was right,' she muttered to herself. 'It is Aramaic.'
Angela could understand a little of the language, but there were several people working at the museum who were far better qualified than her to translate the ancient text. The obvious choice was Tony Baverstock, a senior member of staff and an ancient-language specialist, but he was far from being Angela's favourite colleague. She shrugged, picked up two of the printed photographs, and walked down the corridor to his office.
'What do you want?' Baverstock demanded, as Angela knocked, walked in and stood in front of his extremely cluttered desk. He was a stocky, grizzled, bear-like individual in his late forties, who had the indefinably scruffy appearance common to bachelors everywhere.
'And good morning to you, too, Tony,' Angela said sweetly. 'I'd like you to look at these two pictures.'
'Why? What are they? I'm busy.'
'This will only take you a few minutes. These are a couple of pretty poor photographs of a clay tablet. They're not good quality, and don't show the text – which is Aramaic, by the way – in enough detail to be fully translated. All I need from you is an indication of what the inscription is about. And if you could hazard a guess at its date, that could be useful.'
Angela passed the pictures across the desk and, as Baverstock glanced at them, she thought she detected a glint of recognition in his eyes.
'Have you seen it before?' she asked.
'No,' he snapped, glancing up at her and then quickly dropping his gaze back to one of the images. 'You're right,' he said grudgingly. 'The text is a form of Aramaic. Leave these with me and I'll see what I can do.'
Angela nodded and left the office.
For a few minutes Baverstock just sat at his desk, staring at the two photographs. Then he glanced at his watch, opened a locked drawer and pulled out a small black notebook. He slipped it into his jacket pocket, left his office and walked out of the museum and down Great Russell Street until he came to a phone box.
His call was answered on the fifth ring.
'This is Tony,' Baverstock said. 'Another tablet's turned up.'
16
Alexander Dexter was reading a magazine article about antique clocks and didn't bother looking at his phone when the text came in. When he finally read it, he sat back and muttered a curse. It read: CH DML 13 CALL ME NOW.
He noted the originating number, grabbed his car keys, bolted the shop door and spun round the sign so that 'CLOSED' was displayed. Then he took a pay-as-you-go mobile phone and its battery – he always removed the battery when he wasn't using it – from his desk drawer and walked out of the back door of his shop.
Dexter ran a perfectly legitimate antiques business, one of several in the small Surrey town of Petworth, which had become known as something of a Mecca for antique dealers and buyers. He specialized in early clocks and chronometers, and small pieces of good furniture, though he would buy anything he thought he could make a profit on. His turnover was faithfully reported to the Inland Revenue on his tax return every year. His VAT returns were similarly accurate and he kept his books impeccably, recording every transaction, every purchase and every sale. The result of his meticulous care and attention to detail was that he'd never been audited by the Inland Revenue, and only once by a VAT inspector, and he didn't expect to receive a second visit any time soon.
But Dexter had a second business, one that most of his customers – and certainly the tax authorities and the police – knew absolutely nothing about. He had assiduously built up an impressive list of wealthy clients who were always on the lookout for 'special' items, and who were unconcerned about their source, cost or provenance. These clients always paid in cash and never expected a receipt.
He called himself a 'finder', although in truth Dexter was a handler of upmarket stolen property. Granted, the property was usually looted from unrecorded tombs and other rich sources of antiquities in Egypt, Africa, Asia and South America, rather than stolen from an individual, a private collection or a museum, but he was happy to handle those goods as well, if the price was right and the risk was sufficiently low.
He walked round to the rear of his building, climbed into his 3-series BMW saloon and drove away. He stopped at a garage on the outskirts of Petworth, filled the tank and bought a copy of the Daily Mail, then drove about ten miles out of the town and pulled over in a lay-by.
Dexter flipped through the newspaper until he reached page thirteen. He glanced at the slightly fuzzy picture and immediately began reading the article. Clay tablets were neither particularly rare nor very desirable, but that wasn't why he read what the Mail reporter had written with increasing excitement.
He finished the article and shook his head. Clearly the family of the dead couple had been badly misinformed – or, more probably, not informed at all – about the likely value of the artefact. But this left one very obvious question: if the theory suggested by David Philips – the son-in-law – was correct, and the couple had been murdered as part of a robbery, why would the thieves leave such obviously juicy pickings as their cash and credit cards behind and just take an old clay tablet? It very much looked, Dexter mused, as if his client – a man named Charlie Hoxton, a brutal East End villain with a surprisingly sophisticated taste in antiques who had frankly terrified Dexter from the moment they'd first met – wasn't the only person who had recognized the possible significance of the tablet.