clearly. The caller had used a code incomprehensible to an eavesdropper, but the meaning was clear enough to Mandino. He frowned, dialed a number on his Nokia, held a brief conversation with the man at the other end, then sat back in his leather chair to consider the news he’d been given. It wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, what he had wanted or expected to hear.
The call was from his deputy in Rome, a man whom he had come to trust. The task he had given Antonio Carlotti had been simple enough. Just get a couple of men inside the house, get the information and get out again. But the woman had been killed—whether it had been a genuinely accidental death he neither knew nor cared—and the information the men had obtained added almost nothing to what he already knew.
For a few minutes Mandino sat at his desk, his irritation growing. He wished he’d never become involved in this mess. But it hadn’t been his choice, and the instructions he’d been given years ago had been both clear and specific. He couldn’t, he rationalized, have disregarded what they’d found out through the Internet, and the Latin phrase was the most positive clue they’d ever unearthed. He had no choice but to get on with the job.
Just, in fact, as he had no real choice about what to do next. Distasteful though it might be to him, in view of what had happened, at least one man would have to be informed.
Mandino crossed to his wall safe, spun the combination lock and opened the door.
Inside were two semiautomatic pistols, both with loaded magazines, and several thick bundles of currency secured with rubber bands, mainly U.S. dollars and middle-denomination euro notes. At the very back of the safe was a slim volume bound in old leather, its edges worn and faded, and with nothing on the front cover or the spine to indicate what it contained. Mandino took it out and carried it across to his desk, released the metal clasp that held the covers closed, and opened it.
He turned the handwritten pages slowly, scanning the faded ink lettering and wondering, as he did every time he looked at the volume, about the instructions it contained. Almost at the end of the book one page contained a list of telephone numbers, clearly a fairly recent addition, as most had been written using a ballpoint pen.
Mandino ran a finger down the list until he found the one he was looking for. Then he glanced at the digital clock on his desk and picked up his cell phone again.
III
In his office in the City, Mark Hampton had shut down his computer and was about to go off for lunch—he had a standing arrangement with three of his colleagues to meet at the pub around the corner every Wednesday—when he heard the knock. He shrugged on his jacket, walked across the room and opened the door.
Two men he didn’t recognize were standing outside. They didn’t, he was certain, work for the firm: Mark prided himself on knowing, if only by sight, all of the employees. There were stringent security precautions in place in the building as all four companies housed there were involved in investment and asset management, and their offices held financially critical data and programs, which meant that the men must have been properly checked in by the security staff.
“Mr. Hampton?” The voice didn’t quite match the suit. “I’m Detective Sergeant Timms and my colleague here is Detective Constable Harris. I’m afraid we have some very bad news for you, sir.”
Mark’s mind whirled, making instant deductions based on nothing at all, and almost immediately dismissing them. Who? Where? What had happened?
“I believe your wife is at your property in Italy, sir?”
Mark nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
“I’m afraid there’s been an accident there. I’m very sorry to have to tell you that your wife is dead.”
Time seemed to stop. Mark could see the police officer’s mouth opening and closing, he even heard the words, but his brain completely failed to register their meaning.
He turned away and walked across to his desk, his movements mechanical and automatic. He sat down in his swivel chair and looked out of the window, seeing but not seeing the familiar shapes of the high-rise buildings that surrounded him.
Timms had continued talking to him. “The Italian police have requested that you travel out there as soon as possible, sir. Is there anybody you’d like us to contact?
Someone who can go with you? To handle the—”
“How?” Mark interrupted. “How did it happen?”
Timms glanced at Harris and gave a slight shrug. “She was found by your cleaning lady this morning. It looks as if she had a bad fall on the stairs sometime last night.
I’m afraid she broke her neck.”
Mark didn’t respond, just continued to stare out of the window. This couldn’t be happening. It must be some kind of mistake. It’s somebody else. They’ve got the name wrong. That must be it.
But Timms was still there, still spouting the kind of platitudes Mark assumed policemen had been trained to say to bereaved relatives. Why didn’t he just shut up and go away?
“Do you understand that, sir?”
“What? Sorry. Could you say that again?”
“You have to go to Italy, sir. You have to identify the body and make the funeral arrangements. The Italian police will collect you from the nearest airport—I think that’s probably Rome—and drive you to the house. They’ll organize an interpreter and whatever other help you need. Is all that clear now?”
“Yes,” Mark said. “I’m sorry. It’s just—” A racking sob shook his whole body, and he sank his face into his hands. “I’m sorry. It’s the shock and . . .”
Timms rested his hand briefly on Mark’s shoulder. “It’s quite understandable, sir.
Now, is there anything you want to ask us? I’ve a note here of the contact details for the local police force in Scandriglia. Is there anyone you’d like us to inform on your behalf? You need somebody to stand by you at a time like this.”
Mark shook his head. “No. No, thank you,” he said, his voice cracking under the strain. “I have a friend I can call. Thank you.”
Timms shook his hand and handed him a single sheet of paper. “Sorry again, sir.
I’ve also included my contact details. If there’s anything else you need that I can help with, please let me know. We’ll see ourselves out.”
As the voices faded away, Mark finally let himself go, let the tears come. Tears for himself, for Jackie, tears for all the things he should have said to her, for all that they could and should have done together. In an instant, a few words from a well-meaning stranger had changed his life beyond all recognition.
His hands shaking, he flicked through his Filofax and checked a cell phone telephone number. Timms, or whatever his name was, had been right about one thing: he definitely needed a friend, and Mark knew exactly whom he was going to call.
3
I
“Mark? What the hell’s wrong? What is it?”
Chris Bronson pulled his Mini to the side of the road and held the cell phone more closely to his ear. His friend sounded totally devastated.
“It’s Jackie. She’s dead. She—”
As he heard the words, Bronson felt as if somebody had punched him in the stomach. There were few constants in his world, but Jackie Hampton was—or had been—one of them. For several seconds he just sat there, staring through the car’s windshield, listening to Mark’s tearful explanation but hearing almost none of it.
Finally, he tried to pull himself together.
“Oh, Christ, Mark. Where did . . . ? No, never mind. Where are you? Where is she?
I’ll come straight over.”
“Italy. She’s in Italy and I have to go there. I have to identify her, all that. Look, Chris, I don’t speak the language, and you do, and I don’t think I can do this by myself. I know it’s a hell of an imposition, but could you take some time off work and come with me?”
For a moment, Bronson hesitated, sudden intense grief meshing with his long-suppressed feelings for Jackie. He genuinely didn’t know if he could handle what Mark was asking him to do. But he also knew his friend wouldn’t be able to cope without him.
“I’m not sure I’ve got a job right now, so taking time off isn’t a problem. Have you booked flights, or what?”
