The Messiah Secret - James Becker [70]
Selecting a utility knife, he slid out the blade and, with one swift movement, cut down the entire length of one side of the stretcher. Then he turned the painting and repeated the operation on the other three sides. The canvas fell away and Killian eagerly studied the clean wood his action had revealed.
Again, he could see no marks of any sort. He picked up his screwdriver again and worked the end of the blade under the strip of canvas that was still attached to the stretcher. He levered up the fabric until he could grip it firmly, then ripped the canvas away from the stretcher and tossed it aside. There was nothing on the wood; no marks of any sort.
Killian stood looking down at the stretcher, turning the wooden oblong over in his hands. He knew he must have missed something. The statement by Bartholomew could only be interpreted in one way. The translation of the lost parchment had to be hidden somewhere in the paintings, in the ‘Montgomerys’. Nothing else made sense.
Groaning with frustration, he tossed the stretcher aside and picked up the painting he’d cut out of it. He examined the back of the canvas but could see no marks of any sort. Only then did he turn the fabric round and look at the painting itself.
Ten minutes later he screwed the canvas into a ball. There was nothing, no clue at all, anywhere on the painting. There was only one possible conclusion he could draw, and he belatedly realized there was one vital question he hadn’t asked Suleiman al-Sahid.
He’d badly underestimated Bronson and Lewis. They’d obviously studied the contents of the leather-bound box before he’d snatched it off them, and made the same connections he had. Then they’d flown out to Egypt, visited al-Sahid and removed the clues Bartholomew had hidden in the paintings years earlier. His own exhaustive and destructive search of the pictures, he now realized, had been a complete waste of effort, and more importantly of time. Most likely, Bartholomew had written down the full translation of the Persian text on a couple of bits of paper, sealed the pages in envelopes and tucked them away at the backs of the paintings.
And then Bronson had come along, spun Suleiman some line, and helped himself to what they’d all been looking for.
Killian cursed long and fluently, then gave the wooden debris a vicious kick that scattered pieces of the frames in all directions. The clues simply weren’t there.
He bent down and rummaged through the bits and pieces one more time, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette lighter and touched the flame to the edge of the canvas. In the extreme midday heat, the old and dry fabric caught almost immediately. Killian waited a few moments, making sure that the fire was well established, piled the remains of the picture frames and stretchers on top of the flames, then walked back to his car.
At least he now knew exactly what he must do. Bronson and Lewis obviously had the information he needed and they had to be somewhere in Cairo. He simply had to find them and recover the clues. And then he’d kill them. He smiled, the pain from his ear receding a little. The deaths he was planning would be long and lingering.
34
JJ Donovan had watched the excitement of the house fire – an event which made no sense to him – and the arrival of the fire engines, and then started his car and eased out after Bronson as they drove away from the scene.
Now he watched with irritation as Bronson pulled off the road. He daren’t stop there as well, because it was too small a place, and Bronson was a police officer, which meant he’d been trained in observation skills. Donovan knew that if he stopped at the bar Bronson would notice and remember him, and he definitely didn’t want that to