old house had a woodworm or termite problem. But the beams and floorboards were blackened with age and looked absolutely solid. The fragments weren’t residue from insects either. Boring insects reduce wood almost to dust, and what he was holding in his hand were more like small wooden splinters.
Bronson unlocked the door to check the outside of it and immediately noticed on the doorframe, and level with the lock itself, a small section of compressed wood about one inch square. He knew immediately what had caused it—he’d been to enough burglaries in his short career as a police officer to recognize the marks made by a jimmy or crowbar. Obviously someone had forced the door, and fairly recently. The fragments of wood had almost certainly been ripped out when the lock was torn off.
He examined the lock carefully. Even with his bare hands, he could move it very slightly—all the original screws were there, but had barely enough purchase to keep the lock in position on the door. Somebody had broken into the house—that much was obvious—then replaced the lock and presumably left the property by the front door, which would self-lock because of the Yale. He guessed that the burglars had done this—if the cleaning woman had found the lock ripped off, she would presumably have left a message or told the police, and if the police had found it, they would hopefully have done more than just shove the screws back in the holes.
What puzzled Bronson was why any burglar would waste his time replacing the lock. In his experience, most people who broke into houses chose the easiest point of entry, picked up every item of value they could carry, and then left by the simplest route. Fast in, fast out. But in the Hamptons’ property they must have taken several minutes to refit the lock. The only possible reason he could come up with was that the burglars hadn’t wanted anyone to know they’d been inside the house, and that really didn’t make any sense. Why should they care? The homeowner would know immediately that he’d been robbed. Unless, of course, the burglars didn’t take anything, but if that were the case what was the point of them breaking in?
Bronson shook his head. He was tired after the flight and could no longer think clearly. He’d try to work out what the hell was going on once he’d got some sleep.
He looked around the kitchen and selected one of the upright chairs that flanked the wooden table. He picked it up and wedged its back under the door handle, kicking the legs to jam it firmly into position. He placed another chair behind it, so that even if somebody did force the door, the noise they’d make getting in would awaken him.
Then he went up to bed. The forced door was a puzzle that would have to wait until the morning.
7
I
Bronson woke early. His sleep had been restless and his dreams peopled with unaccountably vivid pictures of Jackie on her wedding day, smiling and radiant, contrasting with his constructed image of her crumpled body lying dead on the cold and unyielding flagstones of the hall floor.
He padded down the staircase at just after seven and went straight into the kitchen.
While he waited for the kettle to boil, he removed the chair he’d used to jam the door the previous night and looked again at the damage. In daylight, the marks were even more clearly visible.
He walked around the room, opening cupboards and looking for a screwdriver.
Under the sink he found a blue metal box where Mark kept a good selection of tools, a necessity in any old house. But there were no screws, which were what he needed to secure the lock properly.
Bronson made a pot of coffee, and ate a bowl of cereal for breakfast, then took a set of keys and went out to the garage. He found a plastic box half full of woodscrews on a shelf at the back. Ten minutes later, he’d fixed the lock back on the door using thicker screws about half an inch longer than the originals, but because the screws had been torn out of the wood when the door was forced, the holes had been enlarged and the wood weakened. He was certain that, even with the bigger screws in place, quite gentle pressure on the door from the outside would probably rip the lock off again. He could find a couple of bolts to fit on the door but he would have to check that with Mark before he did it. Next, he inspected the entire building for other signs of forced entry, but found nothing else.
The property stood on the side of a hill, honey-colored stone walls and small windows under a red-tiled roof, in the center of a pleasantly overgrown garden of about half an acre, a satisfying mix of lawns, shrubs and trees. Beside the house a lane snaked away up the hill to a handful of other isolated properties. The closest town— Ponticelli—was about five kilometers distant.
Bronson had visited the house twice before, once when the Hamptons had just bought it but hadn’t yet moved in, and a second time, a month or so later, before all the renovation works began. He remembered the property well, and had always liked the feel of it. It was a big, rambling, slightly dilapidated farmhouse, which displayed its advanced age with a mix of charm, solidity and eccentricity. The blackened beams and floor timbers contrasted with the thick stone walls: some plastered, but many not. Jackie always used to say, her voice tinged with both pleasure and irritation, that there wasn’t a straight wall or a square corner anywhere in the house.
Bronson smiled sadly at his memories. Jackie had loved the old house from the first, adored the relaxed Italian lifestyle, the cafe society, the food and wine, and the weather. Even when it rained, she’d said, it seemed somehow less wet than British drizzle. Mark had pointed out the logical impossibility of her argument, but that hadn’t swayed her.
And now, it finally hit Bronson that he’d never hear her cheerful voice again, never be carried away by her infectious enthusiasm for all things Italian, from the cheap Chianti they bought from a small and dusty shop in the local village to the mind-blowing beauty of the lakes.
He could feel the tears coming, and quickly brought that train of thought to a halt.
He forced himself to concentrate on checking the building, looking for any sign that a burglary had occurred.
Of course, with builders’ tools and equipment, bags of plaster and pots of paint stacked up in almost every room, the property looked very different from his recollection. Most of the furniture had been shifted into piles and covered in dust sheets to allow the builders space to work, but Bronson was still able to identify most of the more valuable items—the TV, the stereo and computer, and half a dozen decent paintings—and even, in the master bedroom, nearly a thousand euros in notes tucked under a bottle of perfume on Jackie’s dressing table.
As he walked around the house, he wondered if Mark would want to keep it, and its tragic mix of memories, or just sell the place and walk away.
A few minutes later, Bronson sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the wall clock. If Mark didn’t get up soon, he was going to have to go and wake him: they had things—unpleasant things for both of them—to do today. But even as the thought crossed his mind, he heard his friend’s footsteps on the stairs.
Mark looked dreadful. He was unshaven, unwashed and haggard, wearing an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt that had seen better days. Bronson filled a mug with black coffee and put it on the table in front of him.
“Morning,” he said, as Mark sat down. “Would you like some breakfast?”
His friend shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll just stick to coffee. I feel about as sharp as a sponge this morning. How long have we got?”
Bronson glanced at his watch. “The mortuary is about a fifteen-minute drive, and we need to be there at nine. You’d better drink that, then we should both go and get ready. Do you want me to ring for a taxi?”
Mark shook his head and took another sip of his coffee. “We’ll take the Alfa,” he said. “The keys are on the hall table, in the small red bowl.”
They left the house thirty minutes later. The temperature was already climbing steeply and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky, a beautiful day. It would have suited their moods better if it had been raining.
II
Joseph Cardinal Vertutti stared at the ancient text in front of him. He was in the archives of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the most secret and secure of the Vatican’s numerous repositories. Most of the texts stored there were either Papal documents or material that would never be made public because it was protected by the Seal of the Confessional, the promise of absolute confidentiality for Roman Catholic priests for any information gleaned during the confessional. Because access to the archives was strictly controlled, and the contents of the documents never revealed, it was the ideal place to secrete anything the Vatican considered especially dangerous. Which was precisely why the Vitalian Codex had been stored there.
He was sitting at a table in an internal room, the door of which he’d locked from the inside. He pulled on a pair of thin cotton gloves—the fifteen-hundred-year-old relic was extremely fragile and even the slightest amount of moisture from his fingertips could do irreparable long-term damage to the pages. Hands trembling, he reached out
