The Messiah Secret

On the third impact, the door finally gave, crashing back on its hinges, and Bronson immediately smelt the petrol. The sudden rush of air into the room seemed to act like the bellows in a furnace, fuelling the fire. A tongue of flame crawled up the inside surface of the interior door opposite, followed almost immediately by a river of fire that snaked across the room, arrow-straight towards the inert figure.

Bronson dropped the stone and raced inside, getting to the unconscious man a bare second before the burning petrol reached him. He grabbed him by the arm and dragged him bodily away from the flames, heading towards the door to the garden.

But even as he hauled him across the floor, the end of the man’s trousers brushed against one of the flaming pools of petrol, and instantly caught fire.

Bronson heard a sudden gasp of pain from the man he was trying to rescue, and looked down. Dropping his arm, he wrenched off his jacket and flung it on to the man’s lower legs, pressing it down hard to smother the flames. Then he grabbed his shoulders and dragged him as quickly as he could to the door and out of the blazing room, the flames licking behind them all the way.

Outside, Bronson paused for breath, then bent down and lifted the man to his feet, draping his arm over his shoulder to support him.

‘Do you speak English?’ he asked, as he half-dragged, half-carried, the man out to the road.

‘Yes,’ he gasped. ‘My legs—’

‘You were burnt,’ Bronson said flatly, ‘and your clothes are soaked with petrol. Somebody tried to kill you, and they very nearly succeeded. Is there anyone else in the house?’

‘No. Nobody.’

‘Chris!’ Angela cried, running over to him. ‘Oh, thank God you’re alive!’ The smell of petrol was strong. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I think so,’ he said, leaning the man against the side of the car. ‘Did you call the fire people?’

Angela nodded, and pointed across the road, where an Egyptian couple stood outside the house watching the fire. ‘I got them to call,’ she said.

Bronson turned back to the man. ‘Can you talk?’ he asked.

Suleiman nodded, shakily. ‘Yes. Thank you,’ he said. ‘I owe you my life.’

‘I take it you are Suleiman al-Sahid?’ Angela said. ‘You look terrible. Why don’t you sit down here on the kerb, so we can take a look at your leg.’

Al-Sahid obediently sat down, and Bronson rolled up his trouser leg, the material badly singed. The burn ran most of the way up his shin, but Bronson had obviously killed the flames before there was any serious tissue damage.

‘That’s not too bad,’ Bronson said, and turned his attention to Al-Sahid’s head injuries. ‘You’ve got a split lip and you took a punch on the nose, by the looks of it, and that’s a nasty bump on your forehead, but I don’t think there’s any lasting damage. Head and face injuries always bleed a lot and look worse than they really are.’

A sudden roar from the house caught their attention. The roof had just caved in and, even if the fire brigade appeared immediately, it looked to Bronson as if the house was going to be a total loss.

Al-Sahid stared at the doomed building.

‘I grew up there,’ he said, a catch in his voice, ‘and it was my father’s house before me. He and my mother died in there.’

‘And today you nearly joined them,’ Bronson said softly. ‘What happened?’

‘Was the fire anything to do with a priest?’ Angela asked.

Suleiman’s head snapped round. ‘How did you know that?’ he demanded.

‘I know about the priest,’ Angela said simply, ‘because he tried to kill me as well, back in Britain.’

Suleiman shivered. ‘He looked like a priest, and he was smiling and friendly until he got inside the house. But his eyes – I’ll never forget his black eyes. But who are you?’

‘Chris here is a British police officer, and I’m a kind of archaeologist. We got involved with the Wendell-Carfax family by accident, and we’re trying to follow the clues Bartholomew left. You knew about his expeditions out here, I suppose?’

Suleiman nodded. ‘My father was Bartholomew’s gang master.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘You probably won’t thank me for saying this, but you’re almost certainly wasting your time. My father tried to persuade Bartholomew to give up his expeditions, to stop wasting his money, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He remained convinced that the treasure was almost within his grasp, and that he’d find it on the very next expedition, or on the one after that.’

They all turned as two fire engines announced their noisy presence and headed straight towards them. A crowd was starting to gather, people staring at the burning building.

‘The paintings?’ Bronson asked.

Suleiman nodded. ‘My father agreed to store them here for Bartholomew. He told my father that the clues to the location of the treasure were hidden in the paintings. I actually looked for hidden compartments, where he might have tucked away a copy of that old parchment, but I never found anything, so I’ve always wondered if they were just another one of Bartholomew’s eccentricities. But they were all that priest was interested in.’

‘Did he take them?’