The Moses Stone

'Thank God for London cabbies.'

She nodded enthusiastically. 'If he hadn't been there, they'd have caught me. There were people about, Chris, lots of pedestrians, but these guys just didn't care. I was terrified.'

'Well, you're safe out here – I hope,' he said.

Angela nodded and sat back in her seat. Explaining what had happened had been almost cathartic, and she felt herself regaining her normal composure.

'The good news is that my laptop seems to have survived the impact. And then I enjoyed a bit of retail therapy at Heathrow, hence the new suitcase and stuff.'

'I hadn't noticed,' Bronson admitted.

'I'm not surprised,' Angela said. 'You're only a man, after all.'

Bronson grinned at her. 'I'll ignore that. I'm really glad you're here, you know.'

'Now, before we start,' Angela said, her face suddenly serious, 'we need to establish the ground rules. You and me, I mean. You're out here because you're trying to find out what happened to the O'Connors, and I'm here because I was frightened about what had happened in London.'

'So what are you saying?'

'We've been getting along better these last few months, but I'm still not ready for the next step. I really don't want to get hurt all over again. So separate rooms – OK?'

Bronson nodded, although Angela could almost taste his disappointment.

'Whatever you want,' he muttered. 'I did book you a separate room at the hotel.'

Angela leant forward and reached for his hand. 'Thank you,' she said. 'I want it to be right for us both.'

Bronson nodded, but still looked concerned. 'One thing you need to understand, Angela. Morocco might not be any safer for us than London,' he said and explained what had happened at the Philips' hotel. 'I told you about that gang of thugs who chased me. I've moved to a different hotel, just in case they'd managed to find out where I was staying, but we'll have to keep a low profile.'

Angela smiled at him. 'I expected that,' she said. 'How's David Philips?'

'He's OK – he didn't even need stitches. He's got a nasty bruise on his forehead, and I guess he's nursing a weaponsgrade headache. Whoever attacked him used something like a cosh.'

'And you don't think it was just a typical hotel theft?'

'No. I checked their room afterwards, and it had obviously been thoroughly searched. The laptop was the only thing missing, and the thief ignored their passports, which were on the desk in the room, and didn't touch their money or the credit cards that David Philips had in his pocket. The theft was almost exactly the same, in fact, as the robbery at their home in Kent. In both cases, it looks as if the thieves were after their computers, nothing else.'

'And that means?'

'Well, neither computer had much intrinsic value, so the thieves must have been after the data on the hard disks, and that means the pictures of the tablet. Can you trust your guy at the British Museum? Because no matter what he thinks about that lump of fired clay, somebody – apparently with international connections – obviously thinks it's important enough to mount almost simultaneous burglaries in two countries, and knock David Philips out cold when he got in their way.'

Angela didn't look entirely convinced. 'I asked Tony Baverstock to take a look at the pictures, and he's one of our most senior ancient-language specialists. You're not seriously suggesting that he's involved, are you?'

'Who else knew about the pictures of the clay tablet? At the museum, I mean?'

'I see what you're getting at. Nobody.'

'So suspect number one has to be Baverstock. Which means he could even have been involved in your burglary as well. More to the point, it also means everything he told you about the tablet might be deliberate misdirection. What did he say, by the way?'

Angela shrugged. 'He thinks the tablet was most likely used in a teaching environment, something like a basic textbook, and he was adamant that it's not valuable.'

Bronson shook his head. 'But it must have some value, because I still think it's likely the O'Connors were killed to recover it.'

'But Margaret O'Connor took pictures of an argument in the souk. Couldn't the killers have wanted to silence her for that reason, and stole the camera to remove the hard evidence?'

'That might well be a part of it,' Bronson conceded. 'It would explain why the camera and memory stick weren't found in the wreckage. But unless Margaret O'Connor threw away the clay tablet before they left Rabat, somebody took that as well.'

'And you don't think she just chucked it away?'

'No. Kirsty told me her mother was going back to the souk the next morning to return the tablet to the man – the Moroccan – who'd dropped it, and if she couldn't find him she was going to take it back home with her as a souvenir of their holiday. She put all that in the email she sent to Kirsty the evening before she and Ralph left the hotel. But by then the Moroccan was lying dead outside the medina with a stab wound in his chest – Kirsty got a final message from her mother the following morning, telling her she'd actually seen the dead man. Talabani's confirmed he was one of the people Margaret O'Connor photographed.'

'Margaret didn't say what she was going to do with the tablet, though?'

'No. Her last message was very short, just a couple of lines, probably sent while her husband was paying the hotel bill or getting the car or something.' Bronson paused and leant forward. 'Now, the tablet. What did you manage to find out about it?'

'As I told you on the phone,' Angela replied, 'it's a lump of clay of almost no value. The writing is Aramaic, but Baverstock told me he could only translate one line. And I think he was probably being honest in that at least, because he knows I can read a little Aramaic. If he was trying to mislead me, all I'd have to do to check that would be to compare his translation with the original.'

'And have you?' Bronson asked.

'Yes. I looked at a couple of the lines on the photograph, and I came up with the same words.'

'OK,' Bronson said grudgingly, 'for the moment, let's assume he is being accurate. Tell me what he said.'

'On that single line of text, the words are clear but they don't make sense. I've got a translation of that line and another couple of words written out for you.'

'Is there anything special about the tablet? I mean, anything that would make it worth stealing, let alone killing someone because of it?'

'Nothing. Baverstock found a part of a word that might refer to the Essene community at Qumran, but even that's not conclusive.'

'Qumran? That's where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls, isn't it?'

'Yes, but that's probably irrelevant. As far as Baverstock could tell, the tablet didn't originate at Qumran, but simply mentions the place. What's interesting is that one of the few other words he translated was 'cubit'.'

'And a cubit was what?' Bronson asked.

'It was a unit of measurement equivalent to the length of a man's forearm, so it was pretty variable – there were at least a dozen different sizes, ranging from the Roman cubit of about seventeen inches up to the biggest, the Arabic Hashimi cubit of nearly twenty-six inches. But the fact that there's a mention of a cubit could mean that the tablet is written in a type of code, and it might be indicating the location of something that's been hidden. Maybe that's why it's important.'

'Let's face it,' Bronson said, 'if Baverstock was being accurate, the inscription has to be a code of some sort. Nothing else makes sense.'

'I agree. Here' – Angela opened her handbag and fished around inside it – 'this is the translation of the Aramaic.'

Bronson took the single sheet of A4 paper from her and quickly scanned the list of about half a dozen words.

'I see what you mean,' he said, looking at the text more carefully. 'Did Baverstock think this might be encrypted?'

'No, but his field of expertise is ancient languages, not ancient codes, and that's something I