‘Then it’s not too surprising that the Spanish economy is in such a deep hole at the moment, is it? I read one report that said about five million new homes had been built in Spain that nobody wanted, because the Spanish population is falling, not increasing, and it now probably stands at less than forty-five million. It’s a bloody shambles!’
The hotel was located in a narrow side street close to a small square. It had its own dedicated parking area on the two underground levels beneath the building. Bronson drove down the ramp and easily found a vacant space, then he and Angela took the lift to the reception on the ground floor.
Their room was on the third floor, overlooking the street. It didn’t take them long to put away the few clothes they’d brought with them, and as soon as they’d done that, Bronson suggested going downstairs for a drink.
‘Bring your laptop,’ he said. ‘We can probably log in to the hotel Wi-Fi system in the bar, and then you can check your emails and see if that guy has come back to you. Here,’ he added, taking hold of her computer bag. ‘I’ll carry it for you.’
Angela looked at him suspiciously.
‘You’re being particularly nice to me at the moment. What do you want?’
‘Only your body, much later, if you’re willing to share it.’
Angela looked at the large double bed which dominated the room.
‘Well, we’ll obviously be sleeping together because there’s only one bed, but I haven’t yet decided whether or not we’ll be sleeping together. It all depends on how well you treat me and where we go out to eat tonight. And I don’t want bloody paella.’
56
Bronson ordered ‘Dos cafés con leche’ from the slim, dark-haired young man standing behind the bar. He immediately replied in fluent English: ‘Two white coffees coming right up.’
Bronson guessed he must look very English. Either that or the accent of his rudimentary Spanish had given him away.
‘You’ve got Wi-Fi here?’ Bronson asked the barman, abandoning all attempts at conversing in Spanish, as he placed two large cups on a machine.
The young man nodded, reached into a drawer and took out a piece of paper. He passed it over to Bronson and pointed at the letters and numbers printed on it.
Bronson passed the paper to Angela, then returned to the bar, where the barista was putting a couple of paper wraps of sugar on each saucer.
‘Your English is very good,’ he said.
‘It should be. My father’s English but my mother is Spanish, so I grew up speaking both languages. Don’t pay for this,’ he went on as Bronson pulled out his wallet. ‘I’ll just stick it on your room bill. Much easier for all of us.’
‘Do you work here full time?’ he asked, then gave him the room number.
The young man shook his head.
‘Not really. I’m trying to decide what to do with my life, and while I’m making up my mind my father thought working here would be a good idea. He owns the hotel, you see, so I’m just cheap labour, I suppose. Enjoy your coffee.’
Bronson carried the cups over to the table where Angela was sitting, the laptop open in front of her.
‘Anything from our mystery seller?’ he asked.
‘Nothing yet,’ she said, sounding downcast.
‘I hope this doesn’t mean we’ve wasted our time flying out here,’ Bronson said. ‘Or that your anonymous correspondent has met with some kind of an accident, like walking into the path of a bullet.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ Angela said, with a slight shudder. ‘What did you do with that man’s gun, by the way? Will you hand it in when we get back to Britain?’
‘Probably not. I’ve never understood why New Labour thought it was such a brilliant plan to disarm all sections of the British population apart from the criminals. In my opinion, having the odd unlicensed weapon about the place is actually quite a good idea.’
Angela looked worried. ‘But if you get caught with it you’ll be in a lot of trouble.’
‘You’re quite right there, so I’ll just have to make sure I don’t get caught.’
Before Angela could reply, her computer emitted a musical tone and she turned back to look at the screen.
‘It’s him,’ she said excitedly, and clicked the touchpad to open the message.
‘What’s he said?’
‘He hasn’t said anything, actually. The only thing that’s in this email is an address of a website.’
She moved the mouse pointer over the underlined address and clicked the button. Her browser opened almost immediately, and a couple of seconds after that she and Bronson were both staring at the contents of the website.
Bronson was the first to speak.
‘Well,’ he murmured, with a glance at Angela, ‘that’s a bit of a bugger, isn’t it?’
57
Bronson and Angela sat side by side and stared at the screen, their coffees forgotten beside them. What they were looking at wasn’t, to be honest, much of a website. The homepage had a simple title — ‘Ancient parchment for sale’ — and contained a single colour photograph of the relic itself. The second page contained slightly more in the way of illustrations, pictures which had clearly been cropped from those taken by Ali Mohammed. Each picture showed just a small section of the text which had been revealed by his sophisticated techniques.
The third page contained no pictures, and simply gave an email address — the same address that Angela had already used in communicating with the hitherto unidentified owner of the parchment — and a name. The mysterious owner was at last revealed to be a man called Anum Husani.
‘I don’t understand,’ Angela said. ‘The only thing this tells us that we didn’t know before is his name. I’ve already got copies of all these pictures, so why is he bothering to load them onto a website and then suggesting I view them?’
‘Let’s take another look at the email.’
Angela called it up again.
‘That’s what I thought he might have done,’ Bronson said, pointing at the top of the screen. ‘He didn’t just send this email to you. It looks as if he’s sent it to every museum in America and Western Europe. He created the website just to show people what he’s got for sale. He’s obviously trying to generate a kind of auction for the relic. Is that likely to happen?’
Angela shook her head.
‘That’s difficult to say, because there are two things he hasn’t mentioned. The first is what the text on the parchment actually says, so perhaps he doesn’t know. I certainly don’t, not fully. I doubt if any museum or collector would stump up much money without a full translation.’
‘And the other thing?’ Bronson asked.
‘In a word, provenance. A lot of museums won’t touch any object if they can’t establish full details of its history, because in the world of antiques and antiquities there are an awful lot of very accomplished counterfeiters. Some of them have managed to fool acknowledged experts in their fields, time and time again, like Tom Keating. He fooled almost everybody. He painted Old Masters, including Gainsborough, Renoir and Degas, as well as Samuel Palmer watercolours, and almost all of them were certified as genuine by art experts of the day.’
‘And nobody twigged?’
‘No. Or, at least, not for a long time, and they really should have been picked up right from the start, because Keating always left a clue in his forgeries, something so blatant that any competent art examiner should have detected it immediately.’
‘What sort of clues?’ Bronson asked.