The Moses Stone Read Online Free PDF Page B

and peered down into the wadi .
    The driver of the Toyota nodded in satisfaction, pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and scrambled swiftly down the slope to the wreckage. The trunk of the Renault had burst open, and the luggage was strewn about. He opened the suitcases and picked through their contents. Then he walked to the passenger side of the car, knelt down and pulled out Margaret O’Connor’s handbag. Reaching inside, he extracted a small digital camera. He put this in one of his pockets, then continued rifling through the bag. His fingers closed around a small plastic sachet containing a high-capacity memory card for a camera and a USB card-reader. He pocketed that as well.
    But there was obviously something else, something that he hadn’t found. Looking increasingly irritated, he searched the suitcases again, then the handbag and, his nose wrinkling in distaste, even checked inside the O’Connors’ pockets. The glove box of the Renault had jammed shut, but after a few seconds the lock yielded to the long blade of a flick-knife that the man produced from his pocket. But even this compartment was empty.
    The man slammed the glove box closed, kicked the side of the car in annoyance, and climbed back up to the road.
    There, he spoke briefly to the other man before making a call on his mobile. Clambering down the slope again, he jogged back to the remains of the car, pulled Margaret’s handbag out of the wreckage, searched through the contents once more and took out her driving license. Then he tossed the handbag inside the Renault and climbed back up to the road.
    Three minutes later, the Toyota had vanished, heading toward Rabat, but the old white Peugeot was still parked on the side of the road above the accident site. The driver was leaning casually against the door of his vehicle and dialing the number of the emergency services on his mobile phone.

5
     
    “So what do you expect me to do when I get there?” Chris Bronson asked, his irritation obvious. He’d been summoned to his superior’s office at the Maidstone police station as soon as he arrived that morning. “And why do you want me to go? Surely you should be briefing one of the DIs for something like this?”
    Detective Chief Inspector Reginald “Dickie” Byrd sighed. “Look, there are other factors to consider here, not just the rank of the officer we send. We’ve been tasked with this simply because the dead couple’s family lives in Kent, and I’ve chosen you because you can do something none of the DIs here can; you speak French.”
    “I speak Italian,” Bronson pointed out, “and my French is good, but it’s not fluent. And didn’t you say the Moroccans were going to provide an interpreter?”
    “They are, but you know as well as I do that sometimes things get lost in translation. I want a man out there who can understand what they’re really saying, not just what some translator tells you they’re saying. All you have to do is check that what they’re claiming is accurate, then come back here and write it up.”
    “Why do you think their report won’t be accurate?”
    Byrd closed his eyes. “I don’t. My own view is that this is just another bloody British driver forgetting which side of the road he was supposed to be on and losing it in a big way. But I need you to confirm this or see if there’s any contributing factor—maybe there was a fault with the hire car, the brakes or the steering, say? Or perhaps another vehicle was involved, and the Moroccan authorities are glossing this over?
    “The family—it’s just the daughter and her husband—live in Canterbury. They were told about the accident first thing this morning and I understand from the local force that they’ll be going out to Casablanca themselves to arrange the repatriation of the bodies. But I’d like you to get out there before them and run some checks. If they haven’t left here by the time you get back, I’d also like you to go and see them, just to