‘Probably guilt,’ said Ignatius. ‘Did you feel anything when you held it?’ he asked.
‘No,’ replied Zur.
‘So what did Salicus do about it?’ asked Ignatius.
‘He went to Publius and owned up. He handed the sword over and begged for forgiveness. Publius was furious because of the shame Salicus had brought upon him and the island but decided that he had suffered enough. He’d lost just about everything that mattered to him. He decided that the whole affair should be kept quiet and that he would take care of the sword until it could be returned to Paul.’
‘But it was never returned to Paul,’ said Ignatius.
‘Publius hid it in a secret place so no one else would be tempted to steal it. There was a well in the courtyard of his house. It had a chamber hollowed out of the stonework about two thirds of the way down.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘Because I put the sword there.’
‘You? A convicted thief and a cheat?’
‘Salicus was pardoned by Publius but I wasn’t. I was to be executed for my part in stealing the sword. The execution was to be carried out immediately after I had hidden it so that I could never tell anyone.’
‘But?’
‘Publius relented at the last moment and let me live.’
‘That was a very dangerous thing to do. You were dishonest and knew too much.’
‘Publius was a good man. He didn’t want my blood on his hands. He had me put on board a Roman vessel bound for the east.’
‘As a passenger?’
‘As a galley slave. In many ways that was worse than being executed.’
‘So you never returned to Melita?’
‘Yes, I did.’
It wasn’t the answer Ignatius had expected. He looked to Stroud with renewed excitement. ‘When? How?’
‘After two years of living hell in the galleys, I escaped. We got caught in a sudden squall coming into Syracuse. It threw our vessel against the harbour wall and damaged the hull. I and three others were freed from our chains to repair it. That was when I got away. I swam under the ship when our guard’s back was turned and made it to the shore. I had no money and no possessions and only the slave’s rags I stood up in but I was free. I stole food and clothing from local houses to survive then I got work on a ship bound for Africa. It stopped in Melita to take on water and it was then that I had the idea.’
‘You would return to Publius’s house and steal the sword?’ said Ignatius, his eyes wide with excitement.
Benny snorted. ‘I didn’t want the sword. What good was a sword to me? It was the gold I was after. When they sent me down the well to hide the sword, I saw the big box that was sitting there. I had a look inside. It was full of gold.’
‘So you returned to Publius’s house?’ said Ignatius, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘What happened then?’
‘I came to the house after dark... I climbed over the wall and lowered myself into the well...’
Benny stopped and closed his eyes as if trying to remember something. He didn’t respond when Ignatius shook him. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
Stroud pushed up Zur’s eyelids and turned pale. He looked at Ignatius. ‘He’s dead.’
‘He can’t be!’ fumed Ignatius. ‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Stroud with a shrug. ‘But surely he’s told us enough. If that sword is still there, it must be worth...’
‘You don’t know what you are talking about,’ said Ignatius.
‘But we just have to excavate the site of the well in the grounds of Publius’s house...’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. The governor’s house was destroyed centuries ago.’
‘But there must be some record of where it stood,’ said Stroud.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Ignatius bitterly. ‘There is and now something else stands in its place.’
‘What?’
‘Mdina Cathedral,’ replied Ignatius.
‘The cathedral!’ exclaimed Stroud, ‘But we...’
‘Exactly,’ interrupted Ignatius. ‘We cannot excavate the entire floor of a cathedral looking for a two thousand year old well. Not only that, Mdina Cathedral is the second cathedral to have stood on that site since Roman times. The first was destroyed in an earthquake hundreds of years ago.’
‘But there must be old documents in the island’s records house,’ suggested Stroud. ‘There must be some information there about the original positioning of the house.’
‘Then I suggest you start looking,’ said Ignatius coldly. ‘In the meantime I’ll make sure that we get a new supply of protease. We’re going to need it when we start all over again.’
Nineteen
‘Is it ready?’ asked Ignatius.
Macandrew said not.
‘What’s the hold up?’
‘It’s not pure,’ said Simone. ‘We’ve hit a problem with a contaminating substance: we can’t seem to get rid of it.’ She held up a chromatogram that she’d faked up, using filter paper and black ink, and pointed to one of the blots on it.
‘This means nothing to me,’ said Ignatius, waving it away. Stroud just shrugged. Ignatius looked at Macandrew and Simone in turn as if trying to decide whether or not to believe them. ‘What difference would this substance make?’
‘If it’s toxic,’ said Simone, ‘it might kill anyone injected with it.’
‘You said, “if”.’ Ignatius turned to Stroud. ‘Well, Doctor, does that mean there’s an equal chance it might not be?’
Stroud stalled, uncomfortable with his lack of knowledge. ‘If the identity of the substance is not known, there’s no way of telling without trying it.’
‘I thought I’d try passing it through an acid cleaning column to see if we can get rid of it,’ said Simone.
‘How long would that take?’
‘Two, maybe three days.’
‘What do you think, Doctor?’
‘It might work,’ said Stroud. ‘I really don’t have a feel for this sort of thing. It’s outside my area.’
‘Ah yes,’ murmured Ignatius, ‘the age of the specialist.’ After a few moments of silent consideration he said to Simone, ‘You can have until tomorrow. You can work through the night. After that, we will test the compound, pure or not.’
Simone tried protesting but to no avail.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Ignatius.
When they were alone again, Macandrew sighed and rested his forehead on the back of the door. ‘So now we know. Tomorrow they’ll find out we’ve been conning them. The protease is nothing more than salt water.’
‘We were deluding ourselves to ever think that we were going to escape before they got a chance to test the stuff,’ said Simone. ‘It just isn’t going to happen.’
‘At least we’ll have a clear conscience,’ said Macandrew. ‘No one is going to die because of anything we did.’
‘I don’t think I’m big enough to take comfort from that,’ said Simone. ‘Sorry but I’m scared. I am so scared.’
Macandrew wrapped his arms around her. ‘It’s not over yet,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s do something positive. What d’you say we dispense the saline into vials and get rid of absolutely everything else; pour all the chemicals away and make it as difficult as possible for them to try on their own?’
Simone considered for a moment and then picked up a reagent bottle to empty its contents down the sink with symbolic slowness. ‘Agreed,’ she said.
The desperate nature of their position was eclipsed for the next few minutes by their gesture of defiance as they started flushing all the chemicals down the lab sink. Macandrew was just about to start disposing of a bottle of hydrochloric acid when he stopped. He turned and looked at the barred window, as if trying to work out something.
‘What is it?’ asked Simone.