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Ben swore and ran back into the house. He hurried to the kitchen and opened the pantry door.
Leigh flew at him with a scream and swung the long steel Maglite torch at his head with all her strength. If it had landed it would have put him in a coma. He dodged it and caught her wrist. She was panting. Her eyes were wild. She didn’t seem to recognize him.
He shook her. ‘Leigh-it’s me. It’s Ben.’
She came to her senses and looked up at him. Her face was white.
‘We’ve had some unexpected visitors,’ he said. ‘You’re safe now. But we need to leave quickly. More of them will be coming back here.’ He turned to head out of the room.
She was shaking. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Get your things together,’ he said. He picked up his bag and carried it to the study. Closing the door behind him, he knelt down and gathered up the fire-damaged papers. He sighed as some of them crumbled apart in his hands.
Among the documents was a small padded envelope, about four inches square, light and slim. One of its corners was singed from the fire but otherwise it was undamaged. It hadn’t been opened. It was addressed to Leigh in Monte Carlo. The postmark was Vienna-stamped just the day after Oliver’s death.
Ben tossed everything together into the box-file. Across the label THE MOZART LETTER, a spatter of blood was still wet and glistening. He unbuckled the straps of his bag and put the file inside.
He collected the two identical .45 pistols from the dead men and took the spare magazines from the pouches on their tactical rigs. Clearly these men had been professionals. He searched them. No papers, no ID of any kind.
He looked up to see the door handle turning. Before he could stop her, Leigh had stepped into the study.
She froze as she took it all in. The three dead men lying there with their eyes glazed and staring through the holes in their ski-masks, arms and legs out-flung. The pool of blood on the floor. The long smear of it on the far wall. The handle of the skillet still protruding from the head of one of the corpses. She reeled, swaying a little on her feet.
‘I didn’t mean for you to see this,’ he said, steadying her. He took her by the elbow and guided her out of the room.
‘Did you do this?’ Her voice was barely audible.
‘Look, we haven’t got time to discuss it now. Are you ready to leave?’ She nodded weakly.
He checked his watch. Ten minutes had gone by since the attackers had fled. ‘We’ll have to cut across the meadow and see where we can get some transport.’
‘I have a car here,’ Leigh said. ‘It’s in the garage out the back.’
Chapter Ten (#ulink_174e8977-1aa1-5904-99e2-35335c62577f)
Austria
Eve locked the bedroom door behind her and leaned against it for a few moments with her eyes tightly shut. How long had the big cop been tailing her? What was his name? She remembered. Kinski. Detective Markus Kinski.
Two big screw-ups. They wouldn’t be happy with her. First, she should have left the café the moment she recognized him. She should have acted casual, walked away. Taken a cab and got out of there before she left any traces.
The traces were the second big mistake. She’d failed to carry enough cash on her, the way they’d always told her to. She’d panicked in her rush to get out of there, and had had to use the Erika Mann credit card. That cover would be blown now. Kinski was bound to chase up the false name, and when it led him down a blind alley he’d become even more suspicious. She’d been lucky this time and managed to lose him-but if he was on to her he’d be back.
Eve’s neck and shoulders felt rigid and her mouth was dry. What was he doing following her? Was he sniffing around the Llewellyn case again? Why wouldhe? It had been closed months ago, and as far as the police were concerned it had stayed closed. Only a small number of people knew differently.
She reached inside her handbag and brought out the tiny Black Widow .22 Magnum revolver. She turned the miniature stainless-steel pistol over in her hands. It was only six inches long and weighed just eight ounces, but the five slim cartridges in its cylinder would drill straight through a man’s skull. She’d never shot anyone with it, but she knew how to use it.
She wondered what it would feel like to point the gun at a living person and pull the trigger. She’d do it if she had to. She was in too precarious a position to risk exposure.
Maybe it would have been better to let Kinski follow her, she thought. She could have lured him somewhere. Used her charms. That was something she had done before. Then killing him would have been easy.
She thought of Oliver Llewellyn and wondered how long it would be before they caught up with the sister. There was no escape from these people. Eve knew that.
She walked to the bed, still holding the little pistol. There was something lying on her pillow, red velvet against the white silk. It was a jewel case. She opened it. It was the Lalique Art Nouveau brooch she’d admired in the antique-shop window in Vienna the week before. It was exquisite. Gold, inlaid with diamonds and sapphires. There was a note inside, neatly folded. She opened it.
It was from him. ‘Wear this tonight,’ it read.
Eve closed the jewel case and tossed it away across the bed. She lay down as the darkness closed over her.
Slowly, she brought the Black Widow revolver up until she could feel the coldness of its muzzle against her temple. She closed her eyes and listened to the snick-snack of its oiled action as she thumbed back the little hammer. Just a flick of a finger and she could be free of the whole thing.
Her fingers relaxed around the gun and she let out a long breath.
She couldn’t do it.
No escape.
Chapter Eleven (#ulink_16290a67-94f7-52e5-a136-6c0c29be4735)
Oxfordshire
The TVR Tuscan skidded out of the drive and Ben accelerated hard away from Langton Hall. He didn’t know where he was going. Traffic was thin on the country roads and he drove fast for six miles, keeping the revs high and the gears low, constantly checking the mirrors. He saw nothing.
He pulled up in a lay-by and turned off the engine. Leigh was sitting quietly beside him, ashen-faced. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. He twisted round and grabbed his haversack from behind the seat. There was still some whisky in his flask. ‘I know you don’t like this stuff very much,’ he said, trying to smile. ‘But it’ll take the edge off.’
Leigh took a sip of the whisky and winced at the burn on her lips. She coughed. ‘Thanks.’ She screwed the cap of the flask back on and handed it back to him.
He finished what was left. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked as she took out her phone.
‘Calling the police.’
He grabbed the phone from her before she could finish dialling 999. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Until last night nobody knew where we were. Then you told the police where to find us, and the next thing we have company.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying I don’t like coincidences,’ he replied. ‘And there’s also the slight problem of three dead men lying in your house, Leigh. I killed them, and you’re an accomplice. I’m not sticking around to be arrested.’ He took the file out of the bag and showed her. ‘This is what they were looking for,’ he said. The spots of blood on the label were turning russety-brown.
‘The Mozart letter? Oliver’s work? But…’ She looked at him helplessly. ‘Why would anyone want—’
‘I think it’s time we had a look at this stuff,’ he said. He pushed the haversack to his feet with a dull metallic clunk from the guns inside, and rested the box-file on his lap against the steering wheel. He popped the catch and opened the lid of the file.
‘What happened?’ Leigh gasped. ‘They’re all burnt.’
The small padded envelope fell out and landed in the foot-well. Ben ignored it and sifted carefully through the rest of the file’s contents, trying not to damage the brittle papers any further.
Some of the documents had been handwritten, some computer-printed. Many were barely legible any longer, just singed fragments showing names, dates, and scraps of what looked like historical information. Here and there he could make out the name Mozart.
Leigh reached across and lifted out a badly singed sheet. It crumbled into pieces as she lifted it up. ‘This was Oliver’s writing,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘One of the notes he sent me during his travels.’
‘They’re ruined,’ Ben muttered. He laid the fragments back inside the file and closed the lid. He turned to her. ‘So what’s this about, Leigh? What did they want with Oliver’s stuff?’
‘How should I know?’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘You told me last night you’d had the notes for months. Now all of a sudden someone’s very interested in them. Why? What was in here? And how would they know you even had them?’
She looked blank.
‘Who else knows about this book project?’
There was sudden realization in her eyes. ‘Oh shit’
‘What?’
She turned to look at him. ‘About two million people know about it.’
‘What the hell are you on about?’
‘The TV interview. I was on a BBC music programme talking about next year’s European tour. I told them about my plan to carry on with the book. How Oliver had been sending me his research material, right up until the day he died, and that I’d always been too upset to look at any of it.’
‘And when was this programme on?’
She made a face. ‘Two days before they tried to snatch me in London.’
Ben felt something resting against his foot and remembered the fallen package. He leaned down and picked it up.
‘God. I recognize this,’ Leigh whispered, taking it from him. ‘It’s the package I told you about. The last one he ever sent me.’ She turned it over in her hands. ‘It was there waiting for me after the funeral. I had Pam put it in the box with the rest of the stuff.’
‘It’s got to be opened now,’ he told her.
‘I know.’
Ben tore open the singed envelope. Inside the thin layer of bubble-wrap, undamaged by the heat of the fire, was a CD case. He took it out. ‘It’s music,’ he said, showing her the cover. ‘Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. Why did he send you this?’
She sighed. ‘It’s mine. He’d borrowed it from me. He must have been returning it.’
‘So that’s all it was.’
She slumped in her seat. ‘What’s happening, Ben?’
He opened the CD case. The yellow and silver Deutsche Grammophon disc had come loose from its fastening. It dropped in his lap. Behind it was another disc. Printed on its surface was the legend
CD-Recordable.
Underneath it, in marker pen, was an urgent scrawl:
LEIGH—Do NOT RUN THIS DISC UNDER ANY
CIRCUMSTANCES.
KEEP IT HIDDEN. I’M COMING HOME.
OLLY.
‘What the…’ Leigh reached out and pressed a button on the dashboard. The car’s CD player lit up. ‘Let’s play it.’
‘It’s not an audio disc,’ Ben said. ‘We’ll need a computer.’
An hour later they were checked into a small nearby hotel as Mr and Mrs Connors. On the way there, Ben had made a quick shopping detour. He ripped the protective wrapping off the new laptop and laid it down on the hotel-room table. In a few minutes he had the machine set up and ready to play the disc. He took the CD-ROM out of the Magic Flute case and inserted it into the computer’s disk drive. The machine whirred into action, and after a few seconds a window opened on the flat screen.
As he waited for the disc to load, Ben went to the minibar and found two miniatures of Bell’s Scotch. He cracked them open and poured them both into a single glass.
Leigh sat at the desk and peered at the screen. ‘These all seem to be photo files taken in different parts of Europe,’ she said. ‘It’s like a photo diary of Olly’s research trip.’
Ben frowned. ‘Why would he put a CD of travel snapshots into your Mozart box?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ She clicked, and the face of an old man appeared on the screen. He was in his late seventies. His face was grey and deeply scoured with wrinkles, but there was an inquisitive twinkle to the eyes. Behind him was a tall open-fronted bookcase, and Ben could make out titles of volumes bearing the names of famous composers-Chopin, Beethoven, Elgar.
‘Who’s that?’ Ben asked.
‘I don’t know him,’ she said. She clicked again. The old man disappeared and a new picture filled the screen. It was of a white stone building that looked to Ben like a small temple or some kind of monument. It had a domed top and a classical frontage. ‘This I recognize,’ she said. ‘Ravenna, Italy. That’s Dante’s tomb. I’ve been there.’
‘Why would Oliver go to Italy if his research was in Vienna?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did Mozart spend a lot of time in Italy?’
She thought for a moment. ‘If I remember rightly from music school, I think he spent some time in Bologna in his teens,’ she said. ‘But apart from that, I don’t think he did more than travel there occasionally.’
‘This isn’t helping us,’ Ben said. ‘Move on to the next one.’
Click. The next picture showed Oliver at a party with two pretty girls, one on each arm. They were kissing him on the cheeks as he happily toasted the camera with a cocktail.
Leigh clicked again. It was another shot from the same party. This time Oliver was sitting at a piano. On the double stool next to him sat a younger man, mid-twenties or so, and the two were playing a duet together. They seemed to be having a good time, Oliver’s face caught in mid-laugh as he hammered the keys. Around the piano there were women in party dresses, resting on it, watching him play, smiling at him, smiling at one another, drinks in their hands. Faces were glowing. It was a very natural shot of happy-looking people enjoying themselves.
Leigh couldn’t look at it for long. She clicked and moved on.
A shot of a snowy village flashed up. There were trees and mountains in the background, laced with white. Leigh frowned. ‘Switzerland?’
Ben studied it. ‘Could be. Or it could be Austria.’ He reached across, clicked and scrolled down to reveal the properties of the picture. It had been taken three days before Oliver’s death.
Leigh sighed. ‘Still doesn’t tell us anything.’
Ben walked away from the desk and left her to browse through the rest of the photographs. He went over to the bed, sat down and drained his glass in one swallow. Beside him, spread out on sheets of newspaper laid across the bed, were the charred remnants of the box-file’s contents. Sifting through them gingerly, he turned over one of the papers and winced as it crumbled away at the edges.
