The Messiah Secret - James Becker [17]
‘No one knows. As for what it said, when Bartholomew received the various bits of translated text and tried to assemble them into a whole, he discovered that it was part of a much larger text that described a journey in an unnamed part of the world called the “Valley of the Flowers”, which was presumably somewhere in Persia or modern-day Iran.’
‘Because of the language the writer used?’
‘Yes. But what also caught Bartholomew’s attention was a phrase. Something the writer referred to as “the treasure of the world”.’
‘Of course,’ Angela said. ‘Roger Halliwell told me there was a kind of lost treasure story attached to this family, I presume this is it?’
Mayhew laughed. ‘Yes. And because Bartholomew was such a nutter, it was enough to send him off on a whole series of expeditions to the Middle East that—’
‘Whereabouts in the Middle East?’
‘Iran, obviously, because of the Persian text, but quite possibly Iraq and God knows where else in the region. All his expeditions were completely fruitless, of course. Anyway, that’s what became known as “Bartholomew’s Folly”, because he ran through most of the family’s fortune searching for this so-called treasure. When he finally popped his clogs, he left his son with massive debts, and Oliver had to sell off a whole lot of antiques and most of the land he’d inherited just to stave off bankruptcy. The couple of hundred acres around the house is all that’s left of the estate now.’
‘But how does that relate to the damage here in the house?’
‘Bartholomew told his son that he’d fashioned a secure hiding place for the parchment he’d found. According to what Oliver wrote – he supplied the text for the guidebook, of course – his father had promised to tell him where the hiding place was, and also to give him a complete translation of the text, but he never did because he died suddenly of a massive heart attack, here in the house.’
‘So I presume Oliver made the holes in the wall and ripped off the panelling?’ Angela asked. ‘Looking for this piece of parchment or papyrus?’
‘Exactly. Oliver spent the last few years trying to discover where his old man had hidden it. And as far as I know, he never did find it.’
By now, they were downstairs again in the hall. Angela looked around her, at the bloodstained flagstones and the missing banister, and shivered. The house felt sad and lonely, there was no doubt about that. But there was something else – an air of lurking evil – that she didn’t like at all.
7
‘Where did this come from?’ JJ Donovan asked, pointing at his system display.
Jesse McLeod barely glanced at the screen. He knew exactly which of the twenty or so search results his boss would be most interested in.
‘The on-line version of a local newspaper.’
‘Not encrypted or protected, then?’
McLeod shook his head. ‘Nah. It’s a town news-sheet – you know, births, deaths, marriages, all that sort of stuff, strictly local news. It’s entirely open-source and terminally boring if you don’t know any of the names, and pretty boring even if you do. The whole thing’s a waste of time and in my opinion a total misuse of space on the web.’
He paused for a second or two, then again voiced a suggestion he’d made to Donovan a couple of times before. ‘Look, JJ, I know what keywords you gave me, but it was a real broad search and I’ve still got no idea what you’re looking for. If you could tell me why this stuff’s so important, I’d be able to get you more targeted results.’
Donovan shook his head. ‘Right now, I don’t even know if it is important. It’s just an idea I’ve got, a possibility of something that could change everything. But I’ll tell you this. If I am right about what I’m looking for, it could be the single most significant discovery in the history of science. After this, nothing would ever be the same again.’
McLeod was thoughtful as he rode the elevator back down to the computer suite on the first floor. It sounded like Donovan had flipped, and that was a