'Who raised the alarm?' he asked.
'One of the neighbours thought she'd pop in and offer her condolences for the loss of her parents. She went to the side door, saw Kirsty lying dead on the floor, and ran screaming up the road to her own house to dial triple nine. We've already done a door-to-door but we haven't found anyone who saw Kirsty arriving, and only two people noticed the neighbour doing a four-minute mile and howling like a banshee.'
'Right,' Bronson said. 'I can't think what connection this has to Morocco. My guess is she might have disturbed a burglar, one of those sick bastards who find out who's died and then target their houses. And because she was only hit once, he might not have intended to kill her. If he thought the house was empty and she suddenly stepped out in front of him, he might have just swung his jemmy as a kind of reflex action, and hit her harder than he meant to. In my opinion, I think it's most likely that you're looking at a totally unrelated crime.'
Robbins nodded. 'Makes sense to me. And this is probably another bugger we're never going to solve. We've found no useful forensic stuff here apart from a few fingerprints that might or might not belong to the intruder. As far as we can see the killer jemmied the door, walked in, hit Kirsty Philips on the side of the head and then walked out again. There might be some more trace evidence somewhere, but if there is, we haven't found it yet. There's no sign of anything having been taken, or disturbed in any way. No forensics, no witnesses, no suspects, no motives. And that means no nothing.'
'Yep,' Bronson agreed, 'it's every cop's worst-case scenario. Look, unless there's anything else I can tell you or help you with, I'll get out of your way.'
'OK, Chris, thanks for that,' Robbins said and stood up. 'Leave the front door open on your way out, would you?'
The two men shook hands and left the dining room, turning in opposite directions – Robbins right towards the back of the house where the SOCOs were still working, and Bronson left. As he stepped into the hall, Bronson glanced down at the rug just inside the front door and saw a scatter of envelopes lying there. Obviously the post had been delivered while they had been talking in the dining room, and the postman had placed everything on the mat rather than sliding it through the letterbox, simply because the door was still ajar.
'The post's here,' Bronson called out, and automatically bent down to pick it up.
He noticed the package immediately, one end protruding slightly from under a white junk-mail envelope. It was bulkier than everything else there, and the Moroccan stamps were extremely distinctive.
Suddenly, he knew exactly what had to be in the small parcel, and saw clearly what the 'burglar' must have been doing in the house – he'd just broken in a couple of days too early.
Bronson knew it was wrong, knew he was tampering with evidence, and knew that what he was doing might easily be sufficient to get him kicked off the force, but he did it anyway. As DI Robbins turned round and walked back towards him, Bronson hunched down over the mat, reached out, seized the packet and slid it into his jacket pocket with his left hand. With his right, he collected the rest of the mail, then stood up and glanced behind him.
Robbins was approaching, his hand outstretched. Bronson gave him the post and turned to leave.
'Typical,' the DI muttered, flicking through the envelopes. 'All bloody junk mail, by the looks of it. OK, see you around, Chris.'
When Bronson sat down in the driving seat of his car he found that, despite the chill in the air, there was a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. For a few seconds he wondered if he should take the package back, leave it outside the door or maybe put it on the carpet. But he told himself that the presence or absence of a two-thousand-year-old clay tablet at a crime scene in Canterbury would have no impact whatsoever on Robbins' success or failure in solving the murder. He also knew Angela would be delighted to get her hands on it.
Feeling a sudden jolt of pure adrenalin, he turned the key in the ignition and drove quickly away.
44
'I've got something for you,' Bronson said, walking into the lounge of his small house in Tunbridge Wells.
'What?' Angela asked, as he handed her the package.
She glanced at the unfamiliar stamps that plastered one end of it as she turned it over in her hands. 'Morocco,' she murmured, and ripped open the envelope. She peered inside it, shook out a small object covered in bubble-wrap and carefully unwrapped it.
'My God, Chris, you found it!' Angela said, her voice high with excitement. 'This is the missing tablet.'
'I should bloody well hope it is,' Bronson said, sitting down opposite her and looking curiously at the relic. It was much less impressive than he had expected, just a small, grubby, greyish-brown lump of fired clay, one surface covered in marks and squiggles that were completely meaningless to him.
Angela pulled a pair of latex gloves from her handbag before she touched the tablet itself. Then she picked it up and examined it carefully, almost reverently, her eyes sparkling.
'You were right,' she said, glancing at the address on the envelope. 'The O'Connors did post it to themselves.'
'Yes, and I've just nicked it from a crime scene.'
'Well, I'm really glad you did, as long as you won't get into trouble over it.'
'It should be OK,' Bronson said, with a shrug of his shoulders. 'Nobody saw me take it, and the only people who know it exists probably think it's still somewhere in Morocco. I'll bet my pension that, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, this object has simply disappeared. As long as nobody actually knows we've got it, I don't think we're in any danger – and my meagre pension should be safe as well.'
Angela spread a towel over the coffee table and gently laid the tablet on it.
'It doesn't look like much,' Bronson said.
'Agreed,' she replied, 'but it's not the relic itself that's important – it's what the inscription means.' Her latexcovered fingertips lightly traced the incised markings on the face of the tablet, then she looked up at her exhusband. 'Don't forget how many people have died already. The stall-holder, the O'Connors, probably Kirsty Philips, and even Yacoub and his thugs in Rabat – the reason they're all dead is something to do with this rather dull-looking lump of two-thousand-year-old fired clay.'
Bronson nodded. 'It's a bit different when you put it like that. So now what?'
Angela looked back at the tablet. 'This could be the biggest break of my career, Chris. If Yacoub was right, this inscription could lead us to the hiding place of the Silver Scroll and the Mosaic Covenant. If there's even the slightest chance of finding either relic, I'm determined to follow the trail, wherever it leads me.'
'So what are you going to do? Suggest that the museum mounts an expedition?'
'No way,' Angela said firmly. 'Don't forget I'm still a very junior member of staff. If I walk in and tell Roger Halliwell what I've found, he'll be absolutely delighted and no doubt he'll congratulate me. Then he'll politely push me to one side and in a couple of weeks the Halliwell–Baverstock expedition will arrive in Israel to follow the trail of the lost relics. If I managed to get involved at all, they might let me examine any bits of pottery they find.'
Bronson looked slightly quizzical. 'I thought you were all brothers – and sisters – in arms in the halls of academe? All striving together for the advancement of knowledge and a better understanding of human history?'