The stranger swung the scourge again, sending a second bolt of pain lancing through the old man’s thin frame. Then he walked back, resumed his seat and waited until Wendell-Carfax stopped screaming.
‘I’ll ask the questions,’ the stranger said, his voice still soft and controlled. ‘The scourge will encourage you to speak the truth, as it has done through the ages.’
Wendell-Carfax nodded.
‘I want the parchment,’ the man said. ‘You know the one I mean.’
‘I don’t have it,’ Wendell-Carfax gasped.
‘Don’t play games with me. I know it’s here. Somewhere.’
‘You don’t understand-’
‘No, you don’t,’ the man said, raising his voice very slightly. ‘I will have that parchment, wherever it is.’ He took two swift strides forward and again swung the leather scourge.
Wendell-Carfax shrieked in pain, then sobbed his agony.
The man stepped in front of Wendell-Carfax again. ‘I can do this all night. The scourge will cut you to shreds unless you tell me what I want to know. Where’s the parchment?’
‘I don’t have it,’ Wendell-Carfax whispered. ‘It’s gone.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It fell to pieces. It was two thousand years old. My father didn’t know how to look after it. It discoloured, then it just fell apart years ago. It’s gone for ever.’
For the first time the stranger’s expressionless face changed. It was as if a cloud passed across his eyes, to be replaced by a kind of cold fury.
‘You stupid, stupid old fool. Didn’t you know what you had in your hands?’
Once more he stepped behind Wendell-Carfax and swung the whip, again and again, the old man’s thin pyjamas turning deep red as the skin of his back split open.
The assault stopped as suddenly as it had begun, leaving Wendell-Carfax dazed and barely conscious, bleeding from dozens of wounds, his back flaring with the agony of ripped skin and torn flesh. Then Wendell-Carfax felt a new pain as a hand grabbed what little hair remained on his scalp and pulled his head up.
‘But you copied it?’ the stranger demanded. ‘Your father must have made a copy of the parchment?’
‘Yes.’ Wendell-Carfax’s voice was slurred and faint, his eyes virtually closed. ‘Yes, he did.’
‘Where is it?’
Wendell-Carfax’s mouth moved but no sound emerged.
‘Where is it? Say that again.’ The stranger stepped closer to Wendell-Carfax, turning his head so that his ear was virtually touching the old man’s lips.
Wendell-Carfax’s eyes flickered open, and in that instant he knew what he should do.
‘It’s. .’ he began, the words scarcely audible, and the stranger leaned closer still. Then Wendell-Carfax bit down on the stranger’s ear with all the strength he could muster. Blood spurted into his mouth and he felt his teeth meet through the thin flesh.
The stranger howled his own agony. He dropped the leather scourge and jerked away involuntarily and, as the flesh of his ear tore further, the pain reached a new crescendo. He reached up to Wendell-Carfax’s face, trying desperately to force the old man’s jaws apart, but he couldn’t reach, couldn’t get a purchase.
But he had to get free.
He swung his fist, hitting Wendell-Carfax in the stomach, but the blow was badly aimed and weak, and had no apparent effect. So he hit him again, and again, until at last he managed to land a solid punch on the old man’s solar plexus.
Wendell-Carfax gasped with the pain, and his jaw muscles relaxed, allowing the stranger to escape.
‘You bastard,’ the stranger snapped. He grabbed the whip and swung it savagely against Wendell-Carfax’s body, lashing him mercilessly.
But even as the first blows landed, Wendell-Carfax’s face changed. A kind of spasm, a rictus of agony resonated through him, and a sudden gripping, clenching pain exploded in the centre of his chest. And in that instant, at the very last moment of his life, Oliver Wendell-Carfax knew he’d achieved a kind of victory, knew he’d defeated the violent psychopath facing him.
He gasped a breath, grunted once and his head slumped to one side. Finally he hung motionless, his eyes wide open, the grimace on his face slowly softening.
Cursing softly, the stranger stood still, his gaze locked on the body of the elderly man he’d travelled so many thousands of miles to find. Then he shrugged, swung the scourge once more across Wendell-Carfax’s chest — a last, pointless act of violence — before folding it up and putting it into his pocket. He needed to refocus.
Three hours later, he gave up his search. Wherever the copy of the parchment had been hidden, he couldn’t find it, and now dawn was approaching. He had to get away from the house before anyone — a gardener or a cook — turned up.
His best hope was that the copy of the ancient parchment would never be discovered. If it was, he’d have to recover it at any cost, even if it meant killing those who got in his way.
2
‘This really isn’t my field, Roger,’ Angela Lewis said, irritation showing in her voice.
‘You work with ceramics.’
‘I’m a conservator, not an assessor. My job is putting the broken pieces back together again. You need a specialist, somebody who can identify and value the relics — someone like Jane or Catherine.’
Roger Halliwell leaned back in his swivel chair and looked at his subordinate across his cluttered desk.
‘I can’t spare either of them,’ he said simply. ‘They’re both working on important projects for me here at the museum.’ Halliwell lifted his arm in an all-encompassing gesture that appeared to include the entire premises of the British Museum, rather than just his fairly small section of it. His domain encompassed only pottery and ceramics, and he was in nominal charge of a small staff of about a dozen people.
‘More important than anything I’m doing, you mean?’ Angela snapped.
‘You said it, Angela, not me.’ Halliwell sat forward and rested his hands on his desk. ‘Look, I never intended to ask you to do this. Jane was supposed to be the ceramics expert on this team, but something else came up on Friday afternoon and I’ve had to re-assign her. Right now, there’s nobody else here with enough experience to do the job.’
He smiled at her across the desk. ‘I know it’s not your specialization, but you certainly know enough about ceramics to identify the pieces that have any real value. All I want you to do is be a part of the team we’re sending to the estate and separate the good stuff from the dross. We don’t need you to assign accurate values. That can be done later, when whoever ends up in charge of this decides what to do.’
‘So you want me to do a sort of ceramics triage?’
‘Exactly. It’ll take a week of your time, no more. Look at it as a kind of working holiday in the country. And there’s something else that might interest you. A story about the house, especially after all that time you spent digging about in Jerusalem and Megiddo.’
‘What story?’
‘Apparently the deceased owner’s father claimed that he knew where a really valuable treasure was hidden. He told anyone who’d listen that it was the most important treasure of all time.’
‘Which is what, exactly?’
‘I haven’t the vaguest idea. Anyway, he spent a long time somewhere out in the Middle East, digging for this hoard in several different places.’
In spite of herself, Angela felt a tingle of interest.
‘And did he find it?’
‘No, obviously not.’ Halliwell leaned forward again. ‘But there might be some clues left in the house, clues that you and Chris could follow, I mean — if you’re interested.’
Angela sighed. ‘Look, Roger, I’m not some adolescent schoolgirl you can send off on a treasure hunt. I’ll go to Carfax Hall and look at these ceramics, but that’s all I’ll do. If you want somebody to waste their time looking for buried treasure, you’d better look elsewhere.’ She paused, irritated by Halliwell’s look of relief.