IAIN PEARS
THE LAST JUDGEMENT

To my parents

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

About the Author

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Some of the pictures and buildings mentioned inthis book exist, others are invented and all thecharacters are imaginary. There is an Italian artsquad in a building in central Rome, but I havearbitrarily shifted its affliction from theCarabinieri to the Polizia to emphasize that minehas no relation to the original.

1

Jonathan Argyll stared transfixed at the scene of violence that suddenly presented itself as he turned around. The dying man, tormented by agony but bearing the pain with fortitude, lay back in a chair. On the floor beside him was a phial that had dropped from his hand; it took little intelligence to realize it had contained poison. The skin was pale and his hand, clenched into a fist, hung down loosely towards the ground. To the left was a group of onlookers, friends and admirers, variously weeping, angry or merely shocked at the sight.

It was the face, though, that grabbed the attention. The eyes were open and glazed, but it had dignity and tranquillity. It was the face of a martyr, who died knowing that others would mourn him. Death would not end his renown, but merely extend and complete it.

‘Nice, eh?’ came the voice at his side.

‘Oh, yes. Very.’

He squinted in a professional fashion. Death of Socrates, at a rough guess, complete with disciples in attendance. Just after the old buffer has been sentenced to death for corrupting youth and drinks the hemlock. Not bad stuff, on the whole, but liable to be expensive. French school about 1780, or thereabouts, and much more pricey bought in Paris than elsewhere. The thought, as so often, dampened his ardour. He looked again, and reassured himself that maybe it wasn’t so desirable after all. Evidently not a well-known artist, he told himself. Needed a bit of a wash and brush up. Come to think of it, the treatment was quite cold and stiff as well. The fact that he didn’t have much money to spare at the moment completed his transformation of opinion. Not for him, he decided with relief.

Still, one must make conversation. ‘How much are you asking for this?’ he asked.

‘Sold already,’ the gallery-owner replied. ‘At least, I think it is. I’m just about to send it off to a client in Rome.’

‘Who did it?’ Argyll asked, mildly jealous to hear of anybody managing to sell a painting. He hadn’t managed to unload one himself for months. Not at a profit, anyway.

‘It’s signed by Jean Floret. Who he was I have no idea, but not what you might call a major figure. Fortunately that doesn’t seem to bother my client, God bless him.’

The man, a distant colleague of Argyll’s who had taken one or two drawings off him in the past, gazed with a satisfied expression at the painting. He was not a hugely pleasant character; a bit too sharp round the edges for Argyll’s taste. The sort of person where you made sure to check your pockets when leaving his company, just to make certain all the chequebooks and credit cards were still in place. Not that he’d ever done anything bad to Argyll, but the Englishman was determined to make sure he never got the chance, either. He was learning fast about the art business. People were friendly enough, and helpful enough, but occasionally came over a bit funny when money was involved.

He was standing in Jacques Delorme’s gallery about halfway up the Rue Bonaparte, a few hundred yards from the Seine. A noisy, fug-filled street, lined with booksellers and print shops and the lesser sort of art dealer; the sort of people who sold cheaper paintings but knew a lot about them generally; unlike the wealthy lot in the Faubourg St-Honoré, who unloaded vastly expensive tat on gullible foreigners with more money than sense. It made them more agreeable company, even though the surroundings were less chic. Delorme’s gallery was a little dingy, and outside the cars tooted their horns alarmingly close to the main entrance, this being one of those Parisian streets where pavements were more concept than reality. The weather didn’t help the slightly gloomy atmosphere either; the sky was leaden, and it had been raining more or less since he’d arrived in Paris two days before and was still splashing quietly but persistently into the gutters then gurgling down the drains. He wanted to go home, back to Rome where the sun was still shining, even in late September.

‘Just in the nick of time, frankly,’ Delorme went on, blithely unaware of Argyll’s disapproval of the northern European climate. ‘The bank was beginning to become very troublesome. They were muttering about the size of my loans. Reconsidering their position. You know how it is. Once I get the money for this, I should be able to fend them off for a while.’

Argyll nodded as sympathetically as he could manage. He didn’t have a gallery himself, but even in his low-cost, working-from-home venture, it was tough earning a decent living. The market was bad. The only thing worse was conversation with colleagues, as they managed to talk about nothing else except how dismal life was at the moment.

‘Who is this man with money, anyway?’ he asked. ‘He doesn’t want any nice baroque religious pieces, does he?’

‘Got a surfeit, have you?’

‘One or two.’

‘Sorry. Not as far as I know, anyway. He particularly wants this one. The only problem is how to bring him and it into contact soon enough to satisfy my creditors.’

‘I wish you luck. Have you had it for a long time?’

‘No. I wouldn’t spend money on something like this unless I knew I could unload it fast. Not at the moment. You know how it is …’

Argyll did indeed. He was in something of the same position himself. A properly disciplined art dealer would act like any other business. Small stock, high turnover. The picture trade didn’t seem to work like that, somehow. Paintings just demand to be bought, even though there may be no client in sight. So Argyll had lots of them now; many had been hanging around for months, and almost no one was buying anything.

‘Now, about these drawings,’ Delorme continued.

And so they got down to some hard bargaining. It wasn’t so difficult, considering that Delorme’s bank was pressuring him to sell something and Argyll was more or less under orders to buy the drawings whatever the price. It was the only thing keeping him going at the moment, his part-time post as European agent for an American museum. Without that he would have been in real trouble. It had been decided months ago that it really ought to have a Prints and Drawings collection, as it had a Prints and Drawings room with nothing to put in it. So when Argyll mentioned that he’d heard of a Boucher portfolio wandering around the Paris market, he’d been instructed to go and get it. And if he saw anything else …

He had. He’d dropped in on Delorme, whom he’d met a year or so back, and the Frenchman mentioned this Pontormo sketch. A quick telephone call to California and the bargaining could get under way.

The mutually enjoyable haggle ended satisfactorily; more than the drawing would have fetched on the open market, but a decent price none the less. A little ruthlessly, Argyll exploited the fact that Delorme evidently needed the cash. One thing about the Moresby Museum, it paid fast. Business was concluded with a promise of cash on delivery, a cup of coffee, a shake of the hand and a mutual sense of well-being. All that was needed now was a rudimentary letter of contract.

The only snag was the tiresome business of getting all his drawings off to California. Argyll just about knew his way around the Italian bureaucratic labyrinth; the French one was entirely different. He wasn’t looking forward to spending the next couple of days hanging around offices in Paris, trying to get all the forms signed.

Then he – maybe it was a hint from Delorme that jogged his mind – had one of those little ideas which are devastatingly brilliant in their simplicity.

‘Tell you what,’ he said.

‘Hmm?’

‘That picture. Your Death of Socrates. How about me taking it to Rome for you, to deliver to this client of yours? In return, you could do the paperwork for these drawings and send them off for me.’

Delorme thought about it. ‘That’s not a bad idea, you know. Not bad at all. When would you go?’

‘Tomorrow morning. I’m finished here. The only thing keeping me was the prospect of getting all the export licences.’

The Frenchman nodded as he thought it over. ‘Why not?’ he said eventually. ‘Why not indeed? It would be more convenient than you can imagine, in fact.’

‘Will it need export permission as well?’

Delorme shook his head. ‘Well, technically, maybe. But it’s only a formality. I’ll deal with that, don’t worry. You just take it out and I’ll square it with the powers that be.’

OK, so it was a little bit dishonest. But not much. It was hardly as if he were taking out the Mona Lisa. The only tiresome thing was that it meant Argyll would have to carry it by hand. Packers and shippers require lots of formal bits of paper with stamps on them.

‘Who is the lucky buyer?’ Argyll asked, ready to write the name and address down on the back of a cigarette packet. Somehow he had missed the Filofax generation.

‘A man called Arthur Muller,’ replied Delorme.

‘OK. Address?’

Delorme fumbled around – he was almost as badly organized – then fished out a scrap of paper and dictated. It was a street Argyll didn’t know, up in the north where the rich folk live. No great trouble; of course, it was a little below his dignity as an up-and-coming international dealer to be running around acting as someone else’s courier, but that didn’t matter so much. Everybody’s life would be made a lot simpler; and that was what counted. With the feeling that he had accomplished something useful on this trip after all, he wandered off into the street for lunch.

The next morning, he was sitting in the great restaurant of the Gare de Lyon, drinking a coffee and sitting out the twenty minutes or so before his train left on the journey south. His early arrival – he’d been in the station for half an hour or so already – was due to a combination of factors. Partly it was because he was congenitally incapable of giving trains a chance to sneak off without him; he liked to have them under his eye well in advance just in case they got ideas.

Next, the Gare de Lyon was, of all the stations in the world, his favourite. It brought a touch of the Mediterranean into the gloomy, north-European air. The tracks stretched off into the distance, heading for those magical places he had adored long before he ever ventured out of his wind-swept little island to see them for himself. Lyon, Orange, Marseille, Nice; on to Genoa, through the hills of Tuscany to Florence and Pisa, then across the plains of the Campagna to Rome before heading ever further south to Naples. Warmth, sun, terracotta-coloured buildings, and an easy-going, relaxed gentleness completely alien to the lands bordering the North Sea.

The station itself reflected this in its exuberant architecture and pompous, ridiculous and entirely lovable bar, covered with gilt and plasterwork and swags and paintings, all combining to evoke the earthly paradise at the far end of the track. It was almost enough to make the most hardbitten of travellers forget he was in Paris, and that the rain was still coming down in cold, wet, autumnal torrents.

The bar was fairly empty, so he was mildly surprised when he suddenly acquired some company. With a polite ‘May I …?’ a man in his late thirties sat down beside him. Very French, he was, with his green Alpine raincoat, casually expensive grey jacket. A very Gallic face as well, darkly handsome and marred only by a small scar above his left eyebrow that was partly hidden by the long dark hair that swept down from a high-domed forehead in the peculiar cut that France’s educated middle classes seem to favour. Argyll nodded politely, the man nodded back and, the requirements of civilization satisfied, both settled back to hide behind their respective papers.

‘Excuse me,’ said the man in French as Argyll was halfway through a depressing account of a cricket match in Australia. ‘Do you have a light?’

He fumbled through his pocket, fished out a bashed box, and looked in it. Then he took out his cigarettes and looked in that also. No cigarettes either. This was becoming serious.

They commiserated together for a while, and the Englishman considered the awful implications of a thousand-mile train journey without nicotine.

‘If you’d guard my bag,’ said the man opposite, ‘I’ll go and get some from the platform. I need a new packet myself.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Argyll.

‘Do you know the time, by the way?’ he said as he got up to go.

Argyll looked at his watch. ‘Quarter past ten.’

‘Damn,’ he said, sitting down again. ‘My wife is meant to be meeting me here at any moment. She always gets so upset if I’m not where I say I’ll be. I’m afraid we’ll have to go without.’

Argyll thought about this. Obviously, if this man was prepared to trust him with his bags, then it should be safe to reverse the process. ‘I’ll go instead,’ he offered.

‘Would you? That’s very good of you.’

And with an encouraging smile, he promised to guard the bags faithfully until Argyll returned. It’s one thing about the international confraternity of smokers. Members know how to behave properly. It’s what comes of being an embattled and persecuted minority. You stick together.

Argyll was halfway out of the door when he realized he hadn’t brought any money with him. All the small change he had was in the pocket of his overcoat, lying draped over the chair. So he cursed, turned round and mounted the cast-iron steps back to the bar.

As Flavia explained afterwards, not that he needed any explanation by then, it was the oldest trick in the book. Start up a conversation, win their confidence, distract their attention. Compared with someone as naturally trusting and gullible as Argyll, babies would probably put up a more spirited resistance defending their candy.

But fortune, this grey morning, decided to give him a break. He got to the entrance door just in time to see the man who was meant to be guarding his bags disappearing through the door on the far side of the room. Tucked under his arm was a brown paper package about three feet by two. Approximately the same size as paintings of the Death of Socrates tend to be.

‘Oy,’ called Argyll in some distress.

Then he ran like fury in pursuit, appalling consequences flowing through his mind. He was sure the painting wasn’t worth much; but he was equally sure he would have to refund more than his bank balance could withstand if he let it get away. It wasn’t courage that made him fly across the bar, then run three steps at a time down the stairs. It was simple terror at the thought of this painting escaping him. Some dealers are insured against this sort of thing. But insurance companies, even the most amiable, do not look very sympathetically on claims for thefts committed on paintings left unguarded in bars in the company of total strangers.

Argyll was no sportsman. While not badly coordinated, he had never really thought it worth his while to spend much time trotting around cold, muddy fields in pursuit of inflated bladders. A decorous game of croquet he could manage, but greater athleticism was not at all to his taste.

For this reason the flying tackle he produced, running at full tilt and launching himself from a distance at the legs of the disappearing Frenchman was all the more miraculous for having no forebears. One onlooker in the crowded railway concourse even burst into spontaneous applause – the French, more than most, appreciate elegance on the rugger pitch – at the perfectly timed way in which he flew at low altitude through the air, connected with the man’s knees, brought him down, did a half-roll, grabbed the parcel and stood up, clutching the prize to his chest.

The wretched man didn’t know what had hit him; the violence of Argyll’s assault, and the hard concrete floor, knocked the wind out of him and apparently did severe damage to the funny-bone of his right knee. Easy pickings, if Argyll had had the presence of mind to call for the police. But he wasn’t thinking about that; rather he was too busy clutching the painting, relief at his success and distress at his own stupidity over-whelming him.

By the time he had recovered enough, the thief had rolled over, hobbled off and disappeared into the early-morning crowd thronging the concourse.

And, of course, when he got back to the bar he discovered that some light-fingered lad had taken advantage of his absence to lift his suitcase. But it was only dirty underwear, books and things. Nothing serious, in comparison. He almost felt grateful.

2

‘All I can say is that you’re damn lucky,’ Flavia di Stefano said much later on the same day when Argyll, slumped in an armchair and refilling his glass, finished telling the story.

‘I know,’ he said, weary but content to be home at last. ‘But you would have been proud of me, none the less. I was magnificent. Never knew I had it in me.’

‘One day it’ll be more serious.’

‘I know that too. But that day was not today, which is all that matters at the moment.’

His friend sitting opposite, curled up on the sofa, looked at him with mild disapproval. It depended very much on her mood, whether she found his unworldliness comforting or profoundly irritating. This evening, because she’d been without him for five days, and because there were no serious consequences, she was in a forgiving frame of mind. It was very peculiar the way she’d missed him knocking around the place. They’d been living together for about nine months and this had been his first trip away without her. In that nine months she’d evidently got used to him. It was very strange. It was years since she’d minded being on her own, objected to having nothing to do for anybody but herself, and felt disrupted by having complete freedom to do whatever she wanted.

‘Can I see the cause of this athletic zeal?’ she asked, stretching herself and pointing at the parcel.

‘Hmm? I don’t see why not,’ he said, sliding off the chair and picking it up from the corner of the room. ‘Although I suspect it’s not really your taste.’

He busied himself for a few moments with knives and scissors, tore the parcel open then slid the painting out and propped it up on the desk by the window, knocking a bundle of letters, some washing, a dirty cup and a pile of old newspapers on to the ground in the process.

‘Damn this place,’ he said. ‘It’s like a junk-yard. Anyway,’ he continued, standing back thoughtfully to admire Socrates’ last moments, ‘what do you think?’

Flavia examined it in silence awhile, offering a brief prayer of thanks that it would be in their little apartment for only a few days.

‘Well, that knocks on the head the theory that it was a professional art thief,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I mean, who in their right mind would risk a jail term to steal that? It would have served him right if he’d got it.’

‘Oh, come on. It’s not that bad. I mean, it’s not Raphael, but it’s fairly decent, as these things go.’

The trouble with Argyll was that he did have this penchant for the obscure. Most people, Flavia had tried to explain, had simple, straightforward, tastes. Impressionists. Landscapes. Portraits of women on swings with a bit of ankle showing. Children. Dogs. That, she occasionally tried to persuade him, was how to make money, by selling things people liked.

But Argyll’s judgement was more than a little out of sync with popular tastes. The more obscure the classical, biblical or allegorical reference, the more captivating he found it. He was capable of going into raptures over a rare treatment of a mythological subject, and then was constantly surprised that would-be clients looked at him as though he were crazy.

Admittedly he was getting better, learning to subordinate his obscure preferences and make some attempt to provide customers with what they actually wanted rather than what he thought would improve their attitude to life. But it was an effort that went against his nature, and given the least opportunity, his bias towards the elliptical would resurface.

She sighed. The walls of their apartment were already covered in so many swooning heroines and posturing heroes that there wasn’t room to swing a cat. Argyll liked it like that; but she was beginning to find being surrounded by so many works of moral virtue a little oppressive. It was all very well his moving in to share her tiny apartment; that, somewhat to her surprise, she loved. It was just that she hadn’t banked on his stock-in-trade coming as well.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘But it’s saved me a lot of trouble. And time as well. By the way,’ he went on as he took a step back and put his foot on an old sandwich cunningly hidden under the armchair, ‘have you thought about seeing whether that new flat is still available?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, come on. We’re going to have to move sooner or later, you know. Look at this place, after all. It’s a positive health hazard.’

Flavia grumbled. Perhaps it was a bit messy, and very overcrowded, and maybe it was a health hazard. But it was her health hazard, and she’d grown fond of it over the years. What to Argyll’s objective gaze was a small, overpriced, under-lit, badly ventilated tip was home to her. Besides, the lease was in her name. Any new one would be held jointly. In Rome, considering the pressures of housing, that was more of a commitment than any formal marriage vows. Not that she didn’t look on such an idea sympathetically, when she was in a good mood, it was just that she was awfully slow about taking decisions. And, of course, she hadn’t been asked. No small point.

‘You go and see it. And I’ll think about it. Meantime, how long is it going to be before that thing is out of here?’

‘If by “that thing” you mean a most unusual treatment of the theme of the Death of Socrates in the French neoclassical style, then the answer is tomorrow. I’ll deliver it to this Muller fellow and you won’t have to look at it anymore. Let’s talk about something else. What’s been going on here in my absence?’

‘Absolutely nothing. The criminal classes are getting really lax. It’s been like living in a well-ordered, civilized and law-abiding country for the last week.’

‘How awful for you.’

‘I know. Bottando can always go around and fill in the time with silly meetings and lunches with colleagues. But the rest of us have been sitting and staring into space for days. I don’t know what’s going on at all. I mean, it can’t be that the criminals are too afraid we’ll catch them.’

‘You caught a couple a few months back. I remember it well. Everyone was awfully impressed.’

‘True. But that was only because they weren’t very good at it.’

‘Considering how much you complain about being over-worked, I think you should enjoy it while it lasts. Why don’t you tidy up? The last time I was in it your office was even more chaotic than this place.’

‘What are you doing?’ she asked, treating the suggestion with the contempt it deserved, as Argyll burrowed through a mound of papers and finally extracted the telephone.

‘I thought I’d give this Muller fellow a ring. Set up an appointment. Nothing like seeming efficient.’

‘It’s a bit late, isn’t it? It’s past ten.’

‘Do you want me to get rid of it or not?’ he said, as he dialled.

He presented himself at the door of Muller’s apartment just after ten the following morning, as arranged. Muller had been delighted when he’d rung, enthused about his efficiency and consideration and could scarcely contain his anticipation. Had Argyll not protested that he was completely exhausted and could barely move a muscle, he would have been summoned round immediately.

He wasn’t entirely certain what to expect. The apartment indicated a reasonable amount of money; Delorme had said that he was American, or Canadian, or something transatlantic. The marketing man for some international company. Muller ran the Italian operation. So he thought.

He did not appear to Argyll to be the epitome of the international salesman; the sort who eyes up whole portions of the world and coolly maps out master strategies for penetrating regions, grabbing market share or cutting out the opposition. For a start, he was at home at ten o’clock in the morning, and Argyll thought such people normally took off only seventeen minutes a day to do things like wash, change, eat and sleep.

Also, he was a little fellow, showing no obvious signs of hard-boiled commercialism. Across a vast middle there were all the indications of decades of eating the wrong sort of food. Arthur Muller was a model of how to die young, with the sort of weight-to-height ratio that makes dieticians wake up in the middle of the night screaming with terror. The type who should have keeled over thirty years before of clogged arteries, if his liver hadn’t got him first.

But there he was, short, fat and with every sign of living to confound the medical statisticians a while longer. On the other hand, his face let the image down a little: although he looked quite pleased to see Argyll standing at his door, parcel in hand, it didn’t exactly light up with glee. The habitual expression seemed almost mournful; the sort of face that didn’t expect much and was never surprised when disaster struck. Most odd; it was almost as if there’d been a mismatch in the assembly process, and Muller’s body had emerged with the wrong head on it.

But he was welcoming enough, at least.

‘Mr Argyll, I imagine. Do come in, do come in. I’m delighted you’re here.’

Not a bad apartment at all. Argyll noted as he walked in, although with definite signs of having been furnished by the company relocation officer. For all that the furniture was corporate good taste, Muller had, none the less, managed to impose a little of his own personality on the room. Not a great collector, alas, but somewhere along the way he had picked up a couple of nice bronzes and a few decent if unexceptional pictures. None of these indicated any great interest in neoclassical, mind you, still less in the baroque pictures cluttering up Flavia’s apartment; but perhaps, Argyll thought to himself hopefully, his tastes were expanding.

He sat down on the sofa, brown paper parcel in front of him, and smiled encouragingly.

‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am you’re here,’ Muller said. ‘I’ve been looking for this picture for some considerable time.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Argyll said, intrigued.

Muller gave him a penetrating, half-amused look, then laughed.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘What you mean to say,’ his client said, ‘was “why on earth would anybody spend time looking for this very ordinary painting? Does he know something I don’t?”’

Argyll confessed that such thoughts had scuttled across his mind. Not that he didn’t like the picture.

‘I’m quite fond of this sort of thing,’ he confessed. ‘But not many other people are. So a friend of mine says. A minority taste, she keeps on telling me.’

‘She may be right. In my case, I haven’t been looking for aesthetic reasons.’

‘No?’

‘No. This was owned by my father. I want to find out something about myself. A filial task, you see.’

‘Oh, right,’ Argyll said, kneeling reverently on the floor and trying to unpick the knot keeping the whole package together. He’d been too conscientious about packing it up again last night. Another where-are-my-roots? man, he thought to himself as he fiddled. A topic to be avoided. Otherwise Muller might offer to show him his family tree.

‘There were four, so I gather,’ Muller went on, watching Argyll’s lack of dexterity with a distant interest. ‘All legal scenes, painted in the 1780s. This is supposed to be the last one painted. I read about them.’

‘You were very lucky to get hold of it,’ Argyll said. ‘Are you after the other three as well?’

Muller shook his head. ‘I think one will suffice. As I say, I’m not really interested in it for aesthetic reasons. Do you want some coffee, by the way?’ he added as the knot finally came undone and Argyll slid the picture out of the packing.

‘Oh, yes, thank you,’ Argyll said as he stood up and heard his knees crack. ‘No, no. You stay there and admire the picture. I can get it.’

So, leaving Muller to contemplate his new acquisition, Argyll headed for the coffee-pot in the kitchen and helped himself. A bit forward, perhaps, but also rather tactful. He knew what these clients were like. It wasn’t simply the eagerness to see what they’d spent their money on; it was also necessary to spend some time alone with the work. To get to know it, person-to-person, so to speak.

He came back to find that Muller and Socrates were not hitting it off as well as he’d hoped. As he was a mere courier he could afford to be a little detached, but he was an amiable soul, and liked people to be happy even when there was no financial gain in it for himself. In his heart, he hadn’t really expected tears of joy to burst forth at the very sight. Even for the aficionado, the painting was not instantly appealing. It was, after all, very dirty and unkempt; the varnish had long since dulled, and it had none of that glossy air of well-cared-for contentment that shines forth from decent pictures in museums.

‘Let me see,’ said Muller non-committally, and he completed his examination, pressing the canvas to see how loose it was, checking the frame for woodworm, examining the back to see how well the stretcher was holding up. Quite professional, really; Argyll hadn’t expected such diligence. Nor had he expected the growing look of disappointment that had spread slowly over the man’s face.

‘You don’t like it,’ he said.

Muller looked up at him. ‘Like it? No. Frankly, I don’t. Not my sort of thing at all. I’d been expecting something a bit more …’

‘Colourful?’ Argyll suggested. ‘Well-painted? Lively? Assured? Dignified? Masterful? Adept?’

‘Interesting,’ Muller said. ‘That’s all. Nothing more. At one stage this was in an important collection. I expected something more interesting.’

‘I am sorry,’ Argyll said sympathetically. He was, as well. There is no disappointment quite so poignant as being let down by a work of art, when your hopes have built up, and are suddenly dashed by being confronted with grim, less-than-you-expected reality. He had felt like that himself on many occasions. The first time he’d seen the Mona Lisa, when he was only sixteen or so, he’d fought through the vast throng in the Louvre with mounting excitement to get to the holy of holies. And, when he arrived, there was this tiny little squit of a picture, hanging on the wall. Somehow it should have been … more interesting than it was. Muller was right. There was no other word for it.

‘You can always hang it in a corridor,’ he suggested.

Muller shook his head.

‘You make me a bit sorry I didn’t allow it to get stolen,’ he went on cheerfully. ‘Then you could have claimed on insurance and got your money back.’

‘What do you mean?’

Argyll explained. ‘As I say, if I’d known you didn’t want it, I’d have told him to take the thing away and welcome to it.’

Somehow his attempts to cheer Muller up didn’t work. The idea of such an easy solution having been missed made him even more introspective.

‘I didn’t realize such a thing might happen,’ he said. Then, jerking himself out of the mood, he went on: ‘I’m afraid I’ve put you to a great deal of trouble for nothing. So I feel awkward about asking you for something else. But would you be prepared to take it off my hands? Sell it for me? I’m afraid I couldn’t stand having this in the house.’

Argyll gave a variety of facial contortions to indicate the dire state of the market at the moment. It all depended on how much he’d bought it for. And how much he wanted to sell it for. Privately he was thinking dark thoughts to himself about people with too much money.

Muller said it had been ten thousand dollars, plus various commissions. But he’d be prepared to take less. As a penalty for buying things sight unseen. ‘Think of it as a stupidity tax,’ he said with a faint smile, an acknowledgement which made Argyll warm to him once more.

So a mild spot of negotiation ensued which ended with Argyll agreeing to put the picture in an auction for him, and seeing if he could get a better price elsewhere before the sale took place. He left with the brown paper package under his arm once more, and a decent cheque in his pocket for services rendered.

After that he spent the rest of the morning cashing the cheque, then went on to the auction house to hand over the painting for valuation and entry into the next month’s sale.

3

It was no good, Flavia thought to herself as she surveyed the debris all around her. Something will have to be done about this and soon. She had arrived late at her office in Rome’s Art Theft Department and, after an hour, had achieved nothing.

It was September, for heaven’s sake. Not August, when she expected everyone in Rome to be on holiday. Nor was one of the local football teams playing at home. She herself was rarely to be seen when Roma or Lazio were playing. What was the point? All Italian government came to an abrupt halt when an important match was on. Even the thieves stopped work for a really big one.

But today there were no excuses, and it was still impossible to get hold of anyone. She’d phoned the Interior Ministry with an important message only to be told that every secretary, under-secretary, deputy under-secretary, everyone, in fact, from minister to floor-sweeper, was busy. And what was the excuse? Some foreign delegation in town for a beano at the public expense. Top-level meetings. International accords. Mutterings of civil servants and lawyers in dark corners on legal and financial regulations and how to get round stipulations from Brussels. How to obey the letter, and disregard the meaning. All over the continent, similar meetings were taking place. That’s what unity is all about. Fiddlesticks. No wonder the country was going to the dogs.

And she’d arrived feeling enthusiastic for once, despite the lack of anything really interesting to do. Argyll had recovered from his excursion to Paris, more or less, and at last had something to occupy himself. His client had said yesterday he didn’t want the picture and, as he was getting 10 per cent of the sale price on commission, he’d decided to waste today seeing what he could find out about it. Some notion about trying to up its value a little. He’d come back fired with enthusiasm from at last having a task to undertake and had scuttled off first thing to the library.

She sympathized with his efforts to find himself something to do; she was in much the same position herself. Not only was the art market in a bit of a slump; the drop in prices had triggered a knock-on effect in the world of crime as well. Or maybe all reputable art thieves had bought package tours for Czechoslovakia, the one place in Europe now where it was even easier to steal art than Italy. Only the second-rankers were still in the country, it seemed. There were the usual break-ins, and all that; but it was petty-crime stuff for the most part. Nothing to get your teeth into.

And what did that leave? Filing, as Argyll had so maliciously suggested. In her own little room she could see several dozen miscellaneous files lying around on the floor. Her boss, General Bottando, had several dozen more in various states of disarray. And across the corridor, in the rabbit-warren of little rooms occupied by the other members of staff, probably about half the contents of what was laughingly known as their archives were being used to rest coffee-cups on, prop up desks and as improvised floor-coverings.

Organization and tidiness were not her strong points, normally, and she was quite prepared to admit that she was as bad as anyone else in the building – except for Bottando, but he was in charge so could do as he liked – at putting things away. But every now and then some faint echo of house-proud zeal would rumble in her deepest subconscious and she would develop, enthusiastically if only temporarily, a passion for method and order. Perhaps Jonathan was right, she said to herself reluctantly. Maybe I should do something about this place.

So she picked all the files off the floor and stacked them on her desk, and found underneath one of them a small pile of forms requiring Bottando’s immediate signature three weeks ago. No time like the present, she thought; so, both to get this little matter seen to and to inform her boss that all pursuit of the criminal element of society would cease until the files were put into order, she marched briskly and with an air of purposeful efficiency up the stairs to Bottando’s room.

‘Ah, Flavia,’ said Bottando as she marched in, omitting to knock as usual. That was all right; she never did manage to remember, and Bottando was used to it. Some people stand on their dignity. Many a senior Polizia man would produce a freezing look and remind himself – and his subordinates – that this was a general here who should have his door knocked on politely. But not Bottando. It wasn’t in his nature. Nor was it in Flavia’s, more to the point.

‘Morning, General,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Sign here, please.’

He did as he was told.

‘Don’t you want to know what it is you’ve signed? It could have been anything. You should be more careful.’

‘I trust you, my dear,’ he said, looking at her a little anxiously.

‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘You’ve got that look on your face.’

‘A little job,’ he said.

‘Oh, good.’

‘Yes. A murder. Peculiar thing, apparently. But we may have to stake out a minor interest in it. The Carabinieri phoned up twenty minutes ago, asking if we could send someone down.’

‘I’ll go,’ she said. She didn’t like murder at all, but beggars can’t be choosers these days. Anything to get out of the office.

‘You’ll have to. There’s no one else around. But I don’t think you’ll like it.’

She eyed him carefully. Here it comes, she thought. ‘Why not?’

‘Giulio Fabriano’s been promoted to homicide,’ Bottando said simply, an apologetic look on his face.

‘Oh, no,’ she wailed. ‘Not him again. Can’t you send someone else?’

Bottando sympathized. She and Fabriano had been very close at one stage. A bit too close for Flavia’s liking, and their friendship had degenerated into squabbles, fights and general dislike several years back. Shortly before Argyll had appeared on the scene, in fact. In ordinary circumstances, she wouldn’t have had much to do with him, but he was in the rival Carabinieri – doing surprisingly well, considering his relatively limited intelligence, but then there wasn’t a great deal of competition in the Carabinieri – and had developed the habit over the past few years of ringing her up every time he was on a case which had even the most tenuous connection with art. For example, a man has his car stolen. He once bought a picture, so Fabriano would ring to see if there was a file on him. Anything would do. He was tenacious, our Fabriano. The trouble was he also had a quite extraordinarily high opinion of himself and, as Flavia continued to keep her distance, and indeed had taken up with a ridiculous Englishman, his tone had turned decidedly hostile. Cutting remarks. Sneering comments to colleagues. Not that Flavia particularly cared or couldn’t deal with it. She just preferred not to, if possible.

‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ Bottando went on, with genuine regret, ‘But there really is no one else here. I’m sure I don’t know what they’re all doing, but still …’

In a toss-up between Fabriano and filing, Flavia was unsure which was the worse option. On the whole, she reckoned Fabriano was. The man just couldn’t stop himself from trying to demonstrate what a prize she’d let slip through her fingers when they’d broken up. But it seemed Bottando wasn’t going to give her any choice.

‘You really want me to go?’

‘I do. But I don’t imagine it will detain you overlong. Try and get back here as quickly as possible.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said gloomily.

It took about forty minutes before it dawned on her that Fabriano’s murder victim was the very same man that Argyll had been talking about the previous evening. To give her credit, thirty minutes of that delay was spent in a traffic jam trying to make her way out of the centre. Most of the remaining ten minutes was spent looking around aghast at the apartment. There was scarcely a book left on the shelves; all had been pulled off, many ripped apart then dumped in the centre of the little sitting-room. All the papers in the filing cabinets had similarly been removed and thrown on the floor; the furniture had been ripped, and the cushions cut up. Every picture had been pulled off the wall and slashed to pieces.

‘Hold everything,’ said Fabriano with fake amusement as she walked in. ‘Signora Sherlock’s here. Tell me quickly. Who did it?’

She gave him a frosty look and ignored the remark. ‘Jesus,’ she said, looking around at the chaos. ‘Someone did a good job here.’

‘Don’t you know who?’ he said.

‘Shut up, Giulio. Let’s keep this professional, shall we?’

‘I stand corrected,’ he said, standing in the corner of the room and leaning against the wall. ‘Professionally speaking, I don’t know. Must have taken several hours, wouldn’t you say? To make a mess like this, I mean. We can rule out simple vandalism, don’t you think?’

‘Curious,’ she said, looking around.

‘What? Do we have a blinding insight coming our way?’

‘All the furniture and stuff was just shredded. Very violently, and carelessly. The pictures were sliced precisely. Taken out of their frames, the frames broken and in a pile, and the canvas cut up. It looks as though with scissors.’

Fabriano delivered himself of an ambiguous gesture which was half sneer and half self-congratulation.

‘And you think that maybe we didn’t notice? Why do you reckon I called?’

Nice to know some people don’t change. ‘What happened to the occupant?’ Keep calm, she thought. Don’t reply in kind.

‘Go and look. He’s in the bedroom,’ he said with a faint and worrying smile.

She knew from the moment he spoke that it wasn’t going to be very nice. But it was much worse.

‘Oh, my God,’ she said.

The assorted specialists who gather round on these occasions hadn’t finished yet, but even after they’d tidied up a little the scene was horrific. It was like something out of Hieronymus Bosch’s more appalling nightmares. The bedroom itself was domestic, cosy even. Chintz bedcovers, silk curtains, floral-patterned wallpaper all combining to give an air of comfort and tranquillity. It made the contrast all the greater.

The man had been tied to the bed, and had been treated appallingly before he died. His body was covered in cuts and bruises and weals. His left hand was a bloody mess. His face was almost indistinguishable as anything that had anything to do with a human being. The pain he had suffered must have been excruciating. Whoever had done this had taken a good deal of time, a lot of trouble and, in Flavia’s instant opinion, needed to be locked up fast.

‘Ah,’ said one of the forensics from the corner of the room, reaching down with a pair of tweezers and putting something in a plastic bag.

‘What?’ said Fabriano, leaning as nonchalantly as he could manage against the door. Flavia could see that even he was having a hard time maintaining the pose.

‘His ear,’ the man replied, holding up the bag containing the bloody, torn object.

At least Fabriano turned and bolted first, although Flavia was hard on his heels in her attempt to get out of the room as fast as possible. She went straight into the kitchen and poured a glass of water.

‘Did you have to do that?’ she asked angrily as Fabriano came in after her. ‘Did sending me in there make you feel any better or something?’

He shrugged. ‘What did you expect? “This is no sight for a little woman,” or something?’

She ignored him for a few seconds, trying to maintain calm in her stomach. ‘So?’ she said, looking up at him again, annoyed that she had seemed so fragile with him around. ‘What happened?’

‘Looks as though he had a visitor, doesn’t it? Who tied him up, ransacked the house, then did that to him. According to the doctor, he was shot to death eventually.’

‘Reason?’

‘Search me. That’s why we asked you people along. As you can see, whoever it was seemed to have a grudge against pictures.’

‘Organized-crime connection?’

‘Not as far as we can tell. He was the marketing director for a computer company. Canadian. Clean as a whistle.’

It was then that Flavia got this nasty feeling. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Arthur Muller,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said. Damnation, she thought. A complication she didn’t need. She could see it now: if she said Argyll had been there yesterday, Fabriano would go straight round and arrest him. Probably lock him up for a week, out of pure malice.

‘Have you heard of him?’ Fabriano asked.

‘Maybe,’ she said cautiously. ‘I’ll ask around, if you like. Jonathan might know.’

‘Who’s Jonathan?’

‘An art dealer. My, um, fiancé.’

Fabriano looked upset, which made the small untruth worthwhile. ‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘Have a chat with the lucky man, will you? Maybe you should get him along here?’

‘Not necessary,’ she said shortly. ‘I’ll ring. Was anything stolen, by the way?’

‘Ah. This is the problem. As you see, it’s a bit of a mess. Working out what’s gone may take some time. The house-keeper says she can’t see anything that’s gone. None of the obvious things, anyway.’

‘So? Conclusions?’

‘None so far. In the Carabinieri we work by order and evidence. Not guesswork.’

After which friendly exchange, she went back into the living-room to phone Argyll. No answer. It was his turn to do the shopping for dinner. It didn’t matter; he’d be back in an hour or so. She rang a neighbour and left a message instead.

‘Yes?’ Fabriano said brusquely as another detective came in, a man in his mid-twenties who had already acquired the look of weary and sarcastic disdain which came from having worked for Fabriano for two hours. ‘What is it?’

‘Next-door neighbour, Guilio –’

‘Detective Fabriano.’

‘Next-door neighbour, Detective Fabriano,’ he restarted rolling his eyes in despair at the thought that this might turn out to be a long case, ‘she seems to be your friendly neighbourhood spy satellite.’

‘Was she in during the hours of the crime?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t come and tell you if she wasn’t, would I? ’Course she was. That’s why –’

‘Good, good,’ said Fabriano briskly. ‘Well done. Good work,’ he went on, thus removing from the policeman any pleasure he might have felt at his small discovery. ‘Wheel her in, then.’

There must be hundreds of thousands of women like Signora Andreotti in Italy; quite sweet old ladies, really, who were brought up in small towns or even in villages. Capable of labours on the Herculean scale – cooking for thousands, bringing up children by the dozen, dealing with husbands and fathers and, very often, having a job as well. Then their children grow up, their husbands die and they move in with one child, to do the cooking. A fair bargain, on the whole, and much better than being confined to an old folks’ home.

But in many cases, the children have gone a long way from home; many have made it big in the city, made money on a scale their parents could scarcely even imagine in their day; la dolce vita, eighties style.

The Andreotti household was one such; two parents, one child, two jobs and no one in the house from eight in the morning to eight at night. The elder Signora Andreotti, who once spent her spare time gossiping to neighbours back home, was bored silly. So much so that she felt her mind going with the tedium. And so she noticed everything. Every delivery van in the street, every child playing in the backyard. She heard every football in the corridor, knew the lives of each and every person in the apartment block. She wasn’t nosy, really, she had nothing better to do. It was the closest to human comradeship she came, some days.

So, the previous day, as she explained to Fabriano, she had seen a youngish man arriving with a brown paper packet, and seen him leaving again, still with the packet, some forty minutes later. A door-to-door salesman, she reckoned.

‘This was what time?’ Fabriano asked.

‘About ten. In the morning. Signor Muller went out about eleven, and didn’t come back until six. Then in the afternoon another man came, and rang the bell. I knew Signor Muller was at work, so I popped my head around the door to say he was out. Very surly look he had.’

‘And this was when?’

‘About half-past two. Then he went away. He may have came back again, if he was quiet. I didn’t hear anything, but I sometimes watch a nice game show on the television.’

She explained that in the evening – the crucial time, as far as Fabriano was concerned – she was too busy preparing dinner for the family to see anything. And she went to bed at ten.

‘Can you describe these men?’

She nodded sagely. ‘Of course,’ she said, and went on to give a perfect description of Argyll.

‘This was the one in the morning, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the afternoon visitor?’

‘About one metre eighty. Age about thirty-five. Dark brown hair, cut short. Gold signet ring on the middle finger of his left hand. Round metal-rimmed spectacles. Blue and white striped shirt, with cufflinks. Black slip-on shoes –’

‘Inside-leg measurement?’ said Fabriano in amazement. The woman was the sort of witness the police dream about, but rarely find.

‘I don’t know. I could make a guess if you like.’

‘That’s quite all right. Anything else?’

‘Let me see. Grey cotton trousers, with turn-ups, grey woollen jacket with a red stripe running through it. And a small scar above his left eyebrow.’

4

‘In that case I suggest you get him to trot down to the Carabinieri and make a statement. Do it now, in fact,’ Bottando said, drumming his fingers on the desk. A definite irritant. More than many, his department had to work closely with the trade; today’s witness was frequently tomorrow’s defendant. It was a fine business, not to get too close to people who were, at least, liable to come under suspicion. And in the world of Italian crime and politics, accusations of corruption were easily made. The connection of Argyll and Flavia, when allied to a murder and the wrath of Fabriano, had considerable potential for trouble. What was more, Flavia knew that very well. It was perfectly understandable that she should want to keep her private life away from Fabriano’s baleful gaze, but she should have known better.

‘I know. I should have come clean. But you know what he’s like. Jonathan would be locked up and emerge with bruises, just to teach me a lesson. Anyway, I’ve tried to get hold of him. He’s out. But I’ll see him and take a statement myself, not that there can be any connection of importance. I’ll send it to Fabriano tomorrow.’

Bottando grunted. Not perfect, but it would do. ‘Apart from that, is there anything for you to do on this case? Anything that concerns us?’

‘Not obviously so, no. At least, not yet. Fabriano’s going to do all the legwork. Talk to the people at Muller’s office, find out his movements, and so on. Apparently he has a sister in Montreal who may come over. If anything turns up which might concern us, I have no doubt he’ll let us know.’

‘Still as obnoxious, is he?’

‘Even worse. Getting into homicide seems to have turned his head.’

‘I see. Good. In that case, until you talk to Mr Argyll, you may as well amuse yourself with daily routine. Now, how do you fancy doing something with that computer?’

Flavia’s face fell. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Not the computer.’

He’d expected that. This awful machine was supposed, by the designers, to be the last word in detection techniques. The idea behind it was to be the Delphic oracle of art police around the world. Each force in each country could enter details of paintings and things into it, and even photographs of missing pieces. Other forces could then access this information, look through it, recognize objects that were on sale at dealers, go round, arrest, prosecute and return the stolen goods to their real owners. The committee behind it had fondly expected that art theft would dwindle away to almost nothing overnight when the forces of law and order were provided with such an awesomely sophisticated weapon.

But.

The trouble with the thing was that it was a bit too Delphic. Call up a picture of a lake by Monet, and you were likely to get a photograph of a Renaissance silver chalice. Other times it would produce rows of gibberish or, worst of all, the dreaded phrase in eight languages, ‘Service temporarily suspended. Please try again.’

According to a technician who had been called in to look at it, it was a marvellous product of European co-operation. A perfect symbol of the continent, he said in abstract philosophic vein as the machine had, yet again, insisted that a Futurist sculpture was a long-lost masterpiece by Masaccio. Specification by the Germans; hardware by the Italians; software by the British; telecommunication links by the French. Put it all together and naturally it didn’t work. Did anyone really expect it to? He left eventually, recommending the postal system. More reliable, he said gloomily.

‘Please, Flavia. We have to use it.’

‘But it’s useless.’

‘I know it’s useless. That’s not the point. This is an international venture which cost a fortune. If we don’t use it periodically we’ll be asked why not. Good heavens, woman, last time I went into the room the monitor was being used as a plant-stand. How would that look if anyone from the budget committee came around?’

‘No.’

Bottando sighed. Somehow or other he seemed to have trouble projecting his authority, despite holding the rank of general. Think of Napoleon, for example. If he issued an order, did his subordinates snort derisively and refuse to pay a blind bit of attention? If Caesar ordered an immediate flanking movement, did his lieutenants look up from their newspapers and say they were a bit tired at the moment, how about next Wednesday? They did not. Of course, the fact that Flavia was perfectly correct weakened his case a little. But that was not the point. It was time to exert control. Discipline.

‘Please?’ he said appealingly.

‘Oh, all right,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll switch it on. Tell you what, I’ll leave it on all night. How about that?’

‘Splendid, my dear. I’m so grateful.’

5

While the authorities in the Art Theft Department were dealing with crucial matters of international co-operation, Jonathan Argyll spent the morning coping with more basic matters of stock management. That is, he was doing a little work on his picture. He had been struck by a good idea. That is, Muller had said the picture was one of a series. Who more likely to want to buy it than the person, or museum, or institution, who owned the others? Assuming, that is, they were all together. All he had to do was find out where the rest were, and offer to complete the set. It might not work, of course, but it was worth an hour or so of his time.

Besides, this was the bit of his trade that he liked. Dealing with recalcitrant clients, and bargaining and extracting money and working out whether things could be sold at a profit were the bread and butter of his life, but he didn’t really enjoy them much. Too much reality for him to cope with comfortably. A meditative hour in a library was far more to his taste.

The question was where to start. Muller said he’d read about it, but where? He was half minded to ring the man up, but reckoned he’d have gone to work, and he didn’t know where that was. Anyway, a skilled researcher like himself could probably find out fairly quickly anyway.

All he knew about the picture was that it was by a man called Floret; and he knew that because it was signed, indistinctly but legibly, in the bottom left-hand corner. He could guess it was done in the 1780s, and it was obviously French.

So he proceeded methodically and with order, a bit like Fabriano only more quietly. Starting at the beginning with the great bible of all art historians, Thieme und Becker. All twenty-five volumes in German, unfortunately, but he could make out enough to be directed to the next stage.

Floret, Jean. Künstler, gest. 1792. That was the stuff. A list of paintings, all in museums. Six lines in all, pretty much the basic minimum. Not a painter to be taken seriously. But the reference did direct him to an article published in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1937 which was his next port of call. This was by a man called Jules Hartung, little more than a biographical sketch, really, but it fleshed out the details. Born 1765, worked in France, guillotined for not being quite revolutionary enough in 1792. Served him right, as well, according to the text. Floret had worked for a patron, the Comte de Mirepoix, producing a series of subjects on legal themes. Then, come the Revolution, he had denounced his benefactor and supervised the confiscation of the man’s goods and the ruin of his family. A common enough sort of story, perhaps.

But 1937 was a long time ago, and in any case the article didn’t say where any of his pictures were, apart from hinting strongly that, fairly obviously, they no longer belonged to the Mirepoix family. For their current whereabouts he had to work a lot harder. For the rest of the morning and well into his normal lunch-hour, he trawled through histories of French art, histories of neoclassicism, guides to museums and check-lists of locations in the hunt for the slightest hint that would point him in the right direction.

He was beginning to get on the nerves of the librarians who brought him the books when at last he struck lucky. The vital information was in an exhibition catalogue of only the previous year. It had just arrived in the library, so he counted himself fortunate. A jolly little show, put on in one of those outlying suburbs of Paris trying to establish a cultural identity for themselves. Myths and Mistresses, it was called, an excuse for a jumble of miscellaneous pictures linked by date and not much more. A bit of classical, a bit of religion, lots of portraits and semi-naked eighteenth-century bimbos pretending to be wood-nymphs. All with a somewhat overwrought introduction about fantasy and play in the idealized dream-world of French court society. Could have done better himself.

However flabby the conception, however, the organizer was greatly beloved of Argyll, if only for catalogue entry no. 127. ‘Floret, Jean,’ it began rather hopefully. ‘The Death of Socrates, painted circa 1787. Part of a series of four paintings of matching religious and classical scenes on the theme of judgement. The judgements of Socrates and of Jesus represented two cases where the judicial system had not given of its best; and the judgements of Alexander and of Solomon where those in authority had acquitted themselves a little more honorably. Private collection.’ Then a lot of blurb explaining the story behind the painting illustrated. Alas, it was not encouraging to Argyll’s hopes of finding a buyer wanting to reunite the paintings. The two versions of justice performed were out of reach, with The Judgement of Solomon in New York and The Judgement of Alexander in a museum in Germany. What was worse, The Judgement of Jesus had vanished years ago and was presumed lost. Old Socrates was liable to stay on his own, dammit.

And this catalogue didn’t even say who it used to belong to. No name, no address. Just ‘private collection.’ Not that it really mattered. He felt a little discouraged, and it was time for lunch anyway. What was more, he had to get to the shops before they shut for the afternoon. It was his turn. Flavia was particular about that sort of thing.

It stood to reason, he thought as he lumbered up the stairs an hour later, bearing plastic bags full of water, wine, pasta, meat and fruit, that this previous owner lived in France. Perhaps he should at least check? He could then construct a provenance to go with the work, and that always increases the value a little. Besides, Muller had said the work had once been in a distinguished collection. Nothing like a famous name as a previous owner to appeal to the snobbism that lurks inside so many collectors. ‘Well, it used to be in the collection of the Duc d’Orléans, you know.’ Works wonders, that sort of thing. And how better to go about tracking him down than to contact Delorme? Courtesy demanded that he should fill the man in about Muller’s decision, and pleasure indicated the need to tell him that, because of Argyll’s diligent labours in the library, he could well make more money on reselling the picture than Delorme did on flogging it in the first place.

Unfortunately, his telephone call to Paris went unanswered. Perhaps, one day, when the European Community has finished deciding on the right length for leeks, and standardizing the shape of eggs and banning everything that is half-way pleasant to eat, it might turn its attention to telephone calls. Every country, it seems, has a different system, so that all of them together make up a veritable songbook of different chirrups. A long beep in France means it is ringing; in Greece it means it’s engaged and in England it means there is no such number. Two chirrups in England means it’s ringing; in Germany it means engaged and in France, as Argyll discovered after a long and painful conversation with the telephone operator, it means that moron Delorme had forgotten to pay his phone bill again and the company had taken punitive action.

‘What do you mean?’ he said. ‘How can it have been disconnected?’

Where do they get them from? There is something about telephone operators – one of the universal constants of human existence. From Algeria to Zimbabwe, they are capable of imbuing an ostensibly polite sentence with the deepest of contempt. It is impossible to talk to one without finally feeling chastened, humiliated and frustrated.

‘You disconnect the line,’ she said, in answer to his question. Everybody knows that, she left unsaid. It’s your fault for having doubtful friends who don’t pay their bills – that passed by equally silently. She even refrained from saying that the chances were that Argyll’s line would probably be disconnected any day now as well, a shifty character like him.

Could she find out when it was disconnected? Sorry. What about if there was another line for the same name? No. Change of address? ’Fraid not.

Half enraged, half perplexed, Argyll hung up. Good God, he might have to write a letter. Years since he’d done anything like that. Rather lost the habit, in fact. Quite apart from the fact that his written French was a bit dodgy.

And so he flicked through his phone book to see who else he knew in Paris who might be persuaded to do him a favour. No one. Damn it, he thought as the phone rang again.

‘Hello,’ he said absently.

‘Am I speaking to a Mr Jonathan Argyll?’ came a voice in execrable Italian.

‘That’s right.’

‘And do you have in your possession a painting entitled The Death of Socrates?’ the voice continued in equally bad English.

‘Yes,’ said Argyll, a little surprised. ‘Well, sort of.’

‘What do you mean?’

It was a quiet voice, measured, almost gentle in tone, but Argyll didn’t like it. Something unreasonable in the way the questions were being put, without so much as a by-your-leave. Besides, it reminded him of someone.

‘I mean,’ he said firmly, ‘that the picture is currently at an auction house to be valued. Who are you?’

His attempt to regain control of the conversation went unheeded. The man at the other end – what was that accent anyway? – disregarded his question entirely.

‘Are you aware that it was stolen?’

Whoops, he thought.

‘I must ask who you are.’

‘I am a member of the French police. The Art Theft Department, to be precise. I’ve been sent to Rome to recover this work. And I mean to do so.’

‘But I …’

You knew nothing about it. Is that what you were going to say?’

‘Well …’

‘That may be so. I am under instructions not to lodge any complaint against you for your role in this affair.’

‘Oh, good.’

‘But I must have that picture immediately.’

‘You can’t.’

There was a pause from the other end. The caller evidently hadn’t expected opposition. ‘And why not, pray?’

‘I told you. It’s at the auction house. They’re closed until tomorrow morning. I won’t be able to get it until then.’

‘Give me the name.’

‘I don’t see why I should,’ Argyll said with a sudden burst of stubbornness. ‘I don’t know who you are. How do I know you’re a policeman?’

‘I would be more than happy to reassure you. If you like, I’ll come and visit you this evening. Then you can satisfy yourself.’

‘When?’

‘Five o’clock?’

‘OK. Fine. I’ll see you then.’

After the phone line had gone dead, Argyll stood around the apartment, thinking. Damnation. It was amazing how things can go wrong on you. It wasn’t much money, but at least it would have been something. Just as well he’d cashed Muller’s cheque.

But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed a little odd. Why hadn’t Flavia told him? She must have known there was a French picture-man wandering around Rome. There was no need to spring a nasty surprise on him like that. Besides, if it was stolen, then he had smuggled stolen goods out of France and into Italy. A bit awkward. If he handed the picture straight back, was that an admission of something or other? Should he not consult with people who knew what they were talking about?

He glanced at his watch. Flavia should be back from lunch and hard at work in the office. He rarely disturbed her there, but this, he reckoned, was a reasonable occasion to break the rule.

‘Oh, I am glad you’re here,’ she said as he marched in twenty minutes later. ‘You got the message.’

‘What message?’

‘The one I left with the neighbour.’

‘No. What was in it?’

‘Telling you to come here.’

‘I didn’t get any message. Not from you anyway. Something awful’s happened.’

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Awful’s the word. That poor man.’

He paused and looked at her. ‘We’re not talking about the same thing, are we?’

‘It doesn’t sound like it. What are you here for?’

‘That picture. It was stolen. I’ve just had a French policeman on the phone saying he wants it back. I want to ask you what I should do.’

The news was surprising enough to make her take her feet off her desk and concentrate a little harder.

‘When was this?’ she asked. Then, after he’d explained some more, she added: ‘Who was this?’

‘He didn’t tell me his name. He just said he would come round this evening to talk to me about it.’

‘How did he know you had it?’

Argyll shook his head. ‘Don’t know. I suppose Muller must have told him. No one else knew.’

‘That’s the problem though, isn’t it? Because Muller is dead. He was murdered.’

Agryll’s world was already a little disordered because of this picture. This piece of information turned it into complete chaos. ‘What?’ he said, appalled. ‘When?’

‘Closest estimate so far is last night. Come on. We’d better talk to the General. Oh, God. And I assured him your being with Muller was simple coincidence.’

They interrupted Bottando in the middle of his afternoon tea. He was greatly mocked by his colleagues for this habit, so un-Italian in style, and indeed he had adopted it many years back after spending a week with colleagues in London. He had taken to the custom. Not because of the tea itself, which Italians have never succeeded in brewing very well, but because it created an oasis of calm and reflection in the middle of the afternoon when the troubles of the world could be temporarily forgotten. He punctuated his days in this fashion. Coffee, lunch, tea and a quick drink in the bar across the piazza after work. All brief intervals when he put down his papers, sipped meditatively and stared into space, thinking of nothing.

He guarded these moments jealously. His secretary knew how to intone at such periods, ‘The General is in a meeting; can he ring you back?’ and it was a brave subordinate who dared burst in on him in mid-cup.

Flavia was one such, but even she needed a good reason. She took the good reason in with her, and told him to sit down on the chair opposite, while she calmed Bottando’s ruffled feathers.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know. But I thought you should hear this.’

Grumbling mightily, arms crossed in pique, Bottando bid farewell to his tea and meditation and leant back in his seat. ‘Oh, very well,’ he said crossly. ‘Get on with it.’

And Argyll told his story, slowly seeing that, however reluctantly, Bottando’s attention was being engaged by his tale. Eventually he came to a halt, and the General scratched his chin and reflected.

‘Two things,’ Flavia added before he could say anything. ‘Firstly, when you told me to play around with the computer earlier, I typed in this picture. Just for something to do. There’s no record of it being reported stolen.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ Bottando said. ‘You know as well as I do how unreliable the computer is.’

‘Secondly, are there any French policemen wandering about the place?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘At least, not officially. And I’d be extremely upset if there were any here unofficially. It’s not done. Courtesy. And, to give him his due, it’s not Janet’s style.’

Jean Janet was Bottando’s alter ego in Paris, the head of the French Art Squad. A good man, and one with whom the Italians had enjoyed cordial relations for years. As Bottando said, it was not the man’s way of doing things. Besides, there was nothing to be gained by it.

‘I suppose I’d better check, though. But we should assume this man on the phone is an imposter. Now, tell me, Mr Argyll, did anybody apart from Muller know you had this painting?’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I tried to tell Delorme …’

‘Who?’

‘Delorme. The man who supplied it in the first place.’

‘Ah.’ Bottando jotted down a little note. ‘Is he dubious in any way?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Certainly not,’ Argyll replied stoutly. ‘I mean, I don’t care for him much, but I hope I know my way about sufficiently to be able to tell who’s dishonest and who’s merely sharp.’

Bottando wasn’t so sure. He made a note to check out Delorme as well when he phoned Janet up.

‘Now,’ the General went on, ‘Flavia tells me that someone tried to steal this painting when you left Paris. Is that merely another one of her coincidences, do you think?’

He said it pleasantly enough, but it didn’t require a great deal of perception to detect the slightly acidic tone underneath. General Bottando was not pleased. And, Flavia thought, with good reason. Fabriano could make a real meal out of this, if he wanted. And he probably would, as well.

‘How should I know?’ Argyll said. ‘I assumed he was just a thief spotting an opportunity.’

‘Did you report this to the French police?’

‘No. There seemed little point and the train was about to leave.’

‘When you make your statement you’d better include these little details. Will you be able to give a description of this man?’

‘I think so, yes. I mean, he was pretty much standard issue. Average height, average weight, brown hair. Two arms and legs. The only sort of distinguishing feature was a small scar here.’

Argyll gestured to a spot above his left eyebrow, and Flavia’s heart sank again.

‘Oh, hell,’ she said again.

‘What?’

‘That sounds like the man seen trying to visit Muller yesterday.’

Bottando sighed. That’s what comes of trying to protect boyfriends. ‘So it seems we must at least entertain the possibility that you are going to receive a visit from a murderer. What time is he coming?’

‘Five, he said.’

‘In which case we should be there to meet him. And take no chances, either. If he’s a killer, he’s a nasty one. This picture is still at the auction house, you say?’

Argyll nodded.

‘It can’t stay there. Flavia, get Paolo to go down and get it. Put it in the strongroom downstairs until we decide what to do with it. Then get hold of Fabriano. A couple of armed men in the street, and another in the apartment should be enough. Discreet, eh? Make sure he understands that. When we’ve got hold of him, we can decide what to do next. Assuming he turns up, of course. Perhaps if we deliver a murderer we might skate over everything else.’

6

Such a simple scenario turned out to be too much to hope for. They waited an hour in the small apartment and received no visitors at all. Not even Fabriano, although to Flavia’s mind that was no bad thing. They had to make do with one of their own regular policemen who reluctantly admitted to knowing what end of a gun to point at a suspect; Fabriano was out on a case, so the Carabinieri said.

‘When is he coming back, then?’ she asked the man who answered. ‘This is important.’

He didn’t know. ‘Can you patch me through to his radio?’ she asked impatiently.

‘Patch you through?’ came the mocking response. ‘What do you think we are? The US Army? We’re lucky if we can get the things to work at all.’

‘Well, get a message to him, then. It’s urgent. He’s to come to my apartment as quickly as possible.’

‘You two getting back together again?’

‘Do you mind?’

‘Sorry. OK. I’ll see what I can do,’ said the voice from the other end. Somehow, he didn’t inspire confidence.

If this demonstration of planning skill was less than impressive, at least Bottando had managed to get through to Janet, who informed him that he had absolutely none of his people in Italy.

‘Taddeo,’ came the booming voice down the phone, ‘How could you think such a thing? Would I do something like that?’

‘Just checking,’ Bottando reassured him. ‘We must do things properly. Now, tell me about this painting. Is it stolen?’

Janet said that he didn’t know. He’d have to look it up. He’d ring back with the information as soon as possible.

‘And now we wait,’ said Bottando. He looked around the apartment. ‘Charming place you have here, Flavia.’

‘You mean it’s untidy and minuscule and bleak,’ Argyll said. ‘I quite agree. Personally I think that we should move.’

If he had hoped for support from Bottando, though, Argyll was disappointed. Not that the General didn’t agree, but the ringing of the doorbell prevented him from saying so. An expectant hush fell. Argyll turned pale, the uniformed policeman took out his gun and looked at it unhappily, Bottando went and hid in the bedroom. Unfair, in Argyll’s view. He’d been planning to hide in there himself.

‘OK, then,’ Flavia whispered. ‘Open the door.’

And gingerly, expecting to be attacked at any moment, Argyll edged towards it, unlocked it, and retreated back out of the line of fire. The policeman waved his gun around, looking nervous. It occurred to Flavia that she hadn’t actually asked if he’d ever fired one before.

There was a pause from outside, then the door swung slowly open, and a man stepped in.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ Flavia said with relief and disappointment.

Fabriano, still framed by the doorway, looked at her with irritation. ‘Don’t sound so pleased. Who were you expecting?’

‘You didn’t get my message, either?’

‘What message?’

‘One of those days,’ she said as she explained.

‘Oh. I see.’ He waggled his little radio. ‘Batteries flat,’ he explained. ‘What was it about?’

Flavia provided a brief summary. Edited version only. Some aspects of the story were covered a little fast. By the end, she’d given the impression that her relationship with Argyll was based on mutual lack of communication.

‘This man’s a bit late, isn’t be?’ Fabriano said.

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps because he was busy doing other things.’ Fabriano had that ‘I know something that you don’t’ look on his face.

She sighed. ‘Well? Like what?’

‘Like committing another murder, perhaps.’ Fabriano went on. ‘Of a harmless Swiss tourist. Who just happened to have Muller’s and your addresses written on a piece of paper in his pocket.’

He explained that he’d been called out at four to the Hotel Raphael, a quiet, pleasant hotel near the Piazza Navona. A hushed and shocked manager had called to report what he said was a suicide in one of the rooms. Fabriano had duly gone along. Not a suicide, he said. That was wishful thinking on the part of the manager. There was no way the dead man could have shot himself like that. Not with the gun wiped clean of fingerprints, anyway.

‘I’m afraid, my dear, that you are going to have to look at this hotel room,’ Bottando said. ‘I know you don’t like bodies, but still …’

She agreed reluctantly, noting as she prepared to go that Bottando himself had slithered out of it. He thought he ought to go back to the office. People to telephone, he said.

Argyll wasn’t so lucky. Not only did he have no desire to see this scene, he’d taken something of a dislike to Fabriano as well; largely because Fabriano had so obviously taken a dislike to him, admittedly, and he had this strong feeling it would be best to steer well clear. However, Fabriano, after eyeing him with a slight sneer of contempt around his upper lip for a few seconds, said he wanted a statement, so he’d better come too. They could deal with him later.

Flavia had described her morning in Muller’s apartment and, even though she had spared him most of the worst, he had a sufficiently agile imagination to be apprehensive long before they reached the third floor room in the hotel. Fabriano, of course, was laying it on thick; so much so that, when he did finally walk into room 308, he was almost disappointed, and certainly relieved. If there were individual styles in murder, then this was one that had not been committed by the person who killed Muller.

Instead of chaotic devastation this particular scene of crime was almost domestic. The occupant’s clothes were still laid out in neat piles on the table; a newspaper lay neatly folded on top of the television. His shoes were lined up and poking out from underneath the bed, which had been turned down evenly and with care.

Even the body itself conformed to this pattern. Surprisingly, there was no horror; even Argyll found it impossible to feel sick. The victim was fairly old, but evidently well preserved; even dead – a state which rarely brings out the best in people – he looked only in his sixties. His passport, however, suggested he was seventy-one, with the name of Ellman. The bullet that had killed him had done so through a neat, round hole, perfectly and symmetrically placed at the top of his bald and shiny head. There was not even much blood to get the stomach-heaves about.

Fabriano grunted when Flavia noted this, and pointed to yet another of the inevitable plastic bags lying in the corner of the room. It was green. With quite a lot of red.

‘Odd thing,’ he said. ‘As far as we can make out, the victim was sitting in the chair. His killer must have come up behind him’ – here he approached the chair from the rear to illustrate the point – ‘put the towel around his head and shot. Right through the top of the head. The bullet went straight down; no exit wound at all, that we can find. It must have gone straight down his neck and ended up near his stomach. I suppose we’ll find it eventually. So, not much mess. And as the gun had a silencer, not much noise either. Do you know this man as well, Argyll? Been selling pictures to him, too, by any chance?’

‘No, I’ve never seen him before,’ Argyll said, peering at the sight with an odd interest. He decided to ignore the less than courteous way Fabriano chose to address him. ‘He rings no bells at all. Are you sure he wasn’t the one who telephoned me?’

‘How should I know?’

‘So what was he doing with my address? Or Muller’s?’

‘I don’t know that, either,’ he replied a little testily.

‘What about his movements? Where does he come from?’

‘Basle. Swiss. Anything else I can tell you? To help you with your enquiries?’

‘Shut up Giulio,’ Flavia said. ‘You brought him here. The least you can do is be polite.’

‘Anyway,’ Fabriano continued, manifestly irritated at having to waste time explaining things to hangers-on, ‘he arrived yesterday afternoon, went out in the evening, came back late and after breakfast spent the rest of his life in his room. He was found just after four.’

‘And Jonathan was rung up at about two,’ Flavia said. ‘Is there a record of any calls?’

‘No,’ said Fabriano. ‘He made no outside calls. Of course, he may have used the public phone in the lobby. But no one saw him leave his room.’

‘Visitors?’

‘No one asked for him at the desk, no one noticed any visitors. We’re interviewing the staff and the people in neighbouring rooms.’

‘So there’s no reason to think either that he had anything to do with the death of Muller, or with this painting.’

‘The addresses, and the gun which is the same type as the one used to dispatch Muller. Apart from that, no. But it’s not bad as a beginning. Although perhaps an élite specialist like yourself has some better idea?’

‘Well …’ began Flavia.

‘And besides, I’m not really interested in what you think. You are here to assist me, when I ask for your assistance. And your friend here is a witness, nothing more. Understood?’

Argyll watched Fabriano’s performance with interest. What on earth had Flavia ever seen in this man? he thought huffily. He had a feeling Fabriano was thinking pretty much the same sort of thing.

‘You don’t know who killed him, though, do you?’ Flavia went on. ‘Or why? Or what this picture’s got to do with it? In fact, you don’t know much at all.’

‘We will. This isn’t going to be so difficult. Not when we work on it a bit,’ Fabriano said confidently.

‘Hmmph,’ Argyll commented from the corner of the room. Not, perhaps, the cutting repartee he would ideally have liked, but all he could think of. Somehow being browbeaten made him dry up. A weakness, and one he had never admired in himself.

And there they all were, standing around, getting on each other’s nerves. And not even accomplishing anything. Flavia decided she had better take the initiative. She would deal with Argyll’s statement about the picture. If Fabriano wanted anything more, he could ask tomorrow. It was evident from the look in Fabriano’s eye that he would do a good deal more than ask. But that, at least, had been postponed. So she ushered Argyll out, and suggested that Fabriano get on with whatever it was he was meant to do. She would send him round a copy of the interview when it was done.

They left to the sound of Fabriano calling down the corridor that he would call and collect it himself. And not to think he wouldn’t be asking supplementary questions. Lots of them.

Too much crime was making Flavia a bit callous; for some reason the evening’s events had put her in an exceptionally good mood. No more mucking about with minor thefts of gilt cups from churches, or trotting about interviewing petty thieves about disappearing jewellery. No. For the first time in several months, she had something half-way decent to have a go at.

She had, in fact, been hard-pressed to stop herself humming cheerfully as she and Argyll had sat in her office, taking down a detailed statement about his role in the affair. But she was professional enough to make Argyll a little unnerved; he had not had the busy police side of her directed at him for many years and had forgotten how intimidating she could be behind a typewriter. It was the little details that bothered him; having to give her, of all people, his passport number, and recite his date of birth and address.

‘But you know my address,’ he pointed out. ‘It’s the same as yours.’

‘Yes, but you have to tell me. This is an official statement. Would you rather dictate it to Fabriano?’

‘Oh, very well,’ he sighed and gave the information. Then there was the long process of going through the statement, his words being knocked into bureaucratically approved shape with her help. So he paid a business call on J. Delorme, picture dealer, rather than saw him; proceeded to the railway station to make his way back to Rome instead of heading for the station to catch a train. Had aforementioned person unknown attempt to abscond with said painting rather than was nearly suckered by a crook.

‘So you then caught the train and travelled straight back to Rome. And that’s it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I do wish you’d reported it to the French police. Life would have been much easier.’

‘It would have been much easier if I’d never seen it in the first place.’

‘True.’

‘At the very least I would never have come across this Fabriano creature. What did you ever see in him?’

‘Giulio? He’s not so bad, really,’ she said absently. Why she was defending him temporarily escaped her. ‘In a good mood he’s fun, lively and quite good company. He tends to be a bit possessive, mind you.’

Argyll produced one of his non-committal grunts; the sort that indicated that he could scarcely disagree more profoundly.

‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘we’re not here to talk about my youth. I must retype this thing. Keep quiet for a few minutes while I do it.’

So Argyll fidgeted and looked bored while she put the finishing touches to her work, tongue between her teeth, frowning slightly, intent on making as few errors as possible.

‘Now in Rome …’ she went on. And so the enterprise continued, for nearly an hour until she had it down to her satisfaction. Eventually, she leant back, took the piece of paper out of the machine and handed it to him.

‘Read this, assure yourself it’s a full and accurate account,’ she said formally. ‘Then sign it, whatever you think. I’m not going to retype it.’

He gave her a grimace, and read it over. There were bits missing, of course, but in his judgement they were scarcely relevant. Full and accurate seemed to be the right description. He put his mark on the dotted line and handed it back.

‘Pouf. Thank God that’s over,’ she said with relief. ‘Splendid. Didn’t take long at all.’

‘How long does it normally take?’ he asked, looking at his watch. It was nearly ten o’clock, they’d been cooped up for over two hours and he was getting hungry.

‘Oh, hours and hours. You’d be surprised. Come on, let’s go and see Bottando. He’s waiting for us.’

He was waiting patiently and placidly, staring at the ceiling, with a pile of miscellaneous papers spread over his desk. His initial instinct when Fabriano had turned up had been to rush off himself and take on the department’s end of the investigation. Reason, however, intervened. This was a Carabinieri matter and, much as he wanted to get involved, it would never do for someone as senior as himself in the rival Polizia to end up as the virtual assistant of a mere detective. So Flavia would have to do that bit. He was a bit uneasy about her clear personal involvement; hence his desire to find out as quickly as possible in her absence about Argyll’s picture. If it was stolen and he, in effect, had smuggled it out of France, the matter would be clear; whoever took on the investigation it could not possibly be her. Think of the headlines in the papers. Think of the disapproving frowns on the faces of superiors. Think of the pleasure of his assorted rivals in making sure everybody knew that he had sanctioned the investigation of a series of linked offences by an officer who was the girlfriend of one of the felons.

On the other hand, the problem was how to stop Flavia investigating. What could he say? If he gave the case to someone else her reaction would be predictable and none too agreeable. If he did give it to her …

A conundrum. An ambiguity in the universe, and Bottando didn’t like imponderables. He was thus even more irritated and perplexed when the long-awaited phone call from Paris came through and, despite his hopes, muddied the waters still further.

Was the picture stolen or not? A straightforward question, surely, and one that should produce a straightforward answer. Like yes. Or no. Either would do. What he did not anticipate, or approve of, was Janet’s response.

‘Maybe,’ the Frenchman said.

‘What do you mean? What sort of answer is that?’

There was the uncomfortable sound of Janet clearing his throat at the other end. ‘Not a very good one. I have been trying my best, but not with a great deal of success. We did have a note from the police proper notifying us that a picture of this description had been stolen.’

‘Ah. There we are, then,’ said Bottando, clutching at the information.

‘I’m afraid not,’ Janet replied. ‘You see, we were then told that no action by our department was required.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s the problem, isn’t it? It means either that it has already been recovered, or that it’s too unimportant to bother about, or that the police investigating know what happened and don’t require our special skills.’

‘I see,’ Bottando said, not at all sure that he did. ‘So what, exactly, is the status of this picture that is leaning against my desk? Does it have a right to be here or not?’

Can you give a perfectly honed and practised Gallic shrug down a telephone? Perhaps you can. Bottando could almost see his colleague delivering a masterly demonstration of the art.

‘Officially, this painting has not been notified to us as stolen, so as far as we’re concerned it hasn’t been stolen. We have no interest in it. That’s all I can say at the moment.’

‘You couldn’t do something simple and ask the owner?’

‘If I knew who the owner was, I could. But that is one of the little details that we were not given. To be on the safe side, it would be best if Mr Argyll brought it back, but I’m not in a position to say whether we have a right to it or not.’

And that was that. How very intriguing. No further on at all, Bottando put the phone down and thought. Damn picture, was all he came up with. And odd Janet. Normally the most effusive of people, but this time he had not gone out of his way to help. Normally, with any sort of request, the man swamped them with details. Usually he would put somebody on to it to dig up everything he could. But not this time. Why not? Perhaps he was just busy. Bottando knew the problem. Priorities. If you are really strapped, you can’t waste too much time on minor stuff. But still …

Then he went and sat on his armchair, cupped his chin in his hands and looked carefully at the painting. As Flavia had said, it was decent enough, quite well done, in fact. If you like that sort of thing. But nothing special. Nothing to kill for, not that they had any real reason to think that it had been anything other than an innocent bystander, so to speak. Besides, since it had arrived in the department a couple of hours previously, a specialist from the National Museum had been summoned to examine it carefully, and concluded that it was exactly as it seemed. Nothing underneath the paint, and nothing behind the canvas and nothing hidden in the frame. Bottando sometimes had a vivid imagination in this regard. Many years ago he had caught some drug-smugglers shipping heroin hidden in holes drilled in a picture-frame, and he dearly wanted to catch someone at it again. Not in this case; despite all efforts it was resolutely still just a middling picture in an ordinary frame.

He was still looking and shaking his head when Flavia and Argyll came in.

‘So? What is there to report?’

‘Quite a lot, really,’ she said as she sat down. ‘This man Ellman was probably shot with the same gun that killed Muller. And you already know that he had both Muller’s and Jonathan’s numbers and addresses in his book.’

‘What about this mysterious character with the scar? No chance he was seen wandering around the lobby?’

‘’Fraid not.’

‘Who was he? Ellman, I mean.’

‘According to the documentation he had on him, he was German, naturalized Swiss. Lived in Basle, born 1921, and a retired import – export consultant. What that is I don’t know. Fabriano is contacting the Swiss to find out more.’

‘So, we are in the position of having information without explanation.’

‘That’s about right. Still, we can play around with some ideas.’

‘If we must,’ Bottando said dubiously. He disliked playing around with ideas. He preferred ordering facts. More professional.

‘OK, then. Three events: an attempted theft and two murders, combined with the possibility that the picture was stolen. First thing we have to do is find out who the last owner was.’

‘Which Janet says he doesn’t know.’

‘Hmm. Anyway. All these events are linked. The picture and the man with the scar link the first two; the gun links the second and third. Muller is tortured, and unless his killer was mad, that can only have been to find something out. His pictures were cut up into pieces, and afterwards someone phones Jonathan asking about Socrates.’

‘Yes,’ said Bottando patiently. ‘So?’

‘So nothing, really,’ she said, a little crestfallen.

‘There is also another little question,’ Argyll said. If the whole business was going to be complicated he didn’t see why he shouldn’t put in his contribution as well.

‘And that is?’

‘How did this man know about Muller? And how did he know I was going to be at the railway station in Paris? I didn’t tell anyone. So the information must have come through Delorme.’

‘We will have to ask this colleague of yours,’ Bottando said. ‘And do quite a lot of other work as well. Muller’s sister arrives tomorrow, I gather. And someone will have to go to Basle.’

‘I can go after I’ve seen the sister,’ Flavia said.

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Why not?’

‘Ethics,’ he said ponderously. ‘That’s why.’

‘Just a second –’

‘No. You listen. You know as well as I do that you really ought to take a low profile in this matter. However unwittingly Mr Argyll here may have been handling stolen goods, none the less that is what he may well have been doing. He is also a major witness and you concealed that from the Carabinieri.’

‘That’s overdoing it a bit.’

‘I am merely stating what it would look like in the hands of someone like Fabriano. You cannot be seen to be involved in the investigation.’

‘But –’

‘Be seen to be involved, I said. There is also another problem, which is that, for the first time in our acquaintance, brother Janet is not being entirely frank with me – and until I know why, we will have to proceed with some caution.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He said that it would be best if Mr Argyll brought the picture back.’

‘So?’

‘I never told him Mr Argyll had the picture. Which leads me to suspect that maybe there was a Frenchman working here without official notice. Which I don’t like. Now, Janet never does anything without a good reason; so we have to try and work out what that reason is. I could ask, but he’s already had the opportunity to tell me, if he was so minded.’

‘So,’ he continued, ‘we must plod along methodically. Mr Argyll, I must ask you to return that picture. I hope you won’t find that too much of a burden?’

‘I suppose I could manage,’ he said.

‘Good. While there, you might arrange a tactful meeting with your friend Delorme and see if he can shed any light on this. But do not, under any circumstances, do anything else. This is a murder case, and a nasty one. Don’t stick your neck out. Do your errand and come straight back. Is that understood?’

Argyll nodded. He had not the slightest intention of doing anything else.

‘Good. In that case, I suggest you go and pack. Now, Flavia,’ he went on, as Argyll, realizing he was no longer wanted, got up to go, ‘you will go to Basle and see what you can find out. I will tell the Swiss you are coming. You will then come straight back here as well. Anything else you do will be unofficial. I don’t want your name on any report, interview or official document of any sort. Understood?’

She nodded.

‘Excellent. I will tell you what Muller’s sister says when you get back. In the meantime, I suggest you go round to the Carabinieri to deliver Argyll’s statement, and see if you can persuade them to let you have a look at what they’ve accumulated so far. You don’t want to miss something in Basle because you don’t know what to look out for.’

‘It’s nearly eleven,’ she pointed out.

‘Put in an overtime claim,’ he replied unsympathetically. ‘I’ll have all the bits of paper you need in the morning. Come and get them before you go.’

7

Six o’clock in the morning. That is, seven hours and forty-five minutes since he got in, seven hours and fifteen minutes since he went to bed. Not a wink of sleep and, more to the point, no Flavia either. What the hell was she doing? She’d gone off with the Carabinieri. And that was the last he’d heard. Normally Argyll was a tranquil soul, but Fabriano had irritated him beyond measure. All this muscular masculinity in a confined space, the sneering and posturing. What, he wondered for the tenth time, had she ever seen in him? Something, evidently. He rolled over again, eyes wide open. Had she been there, Flavia would have informed him dourly that all he was suffering from was a bad case of over-excitement, dangerous in someone who liked a quiet life. Murders, robberies, interviews, too much in a short space of time. What he needed was a glass of whisky and a good night’s sleep.

With which diagnosis he would have agreed, and indeed he had been agreeing with it all night, as he tossed and turned. Go to sleep, he told himself. Stop being ridiculous. But he couldn’t manage either and, when he could no longer endure listening to central Rome’s limited bird population saluting the morn, he admitted final defeat, got out of bed and wondered what to do next.

Go to Paris, he’d been told, so maybe he should. If Flavia could absent herself in such an inconsiderate way, he could demonstrate this was no monopoly of hers. Besides, it would get an unprofitable task over and done with. He looked at his watch as the coffee boiled. Early enough to get the first plane to Paris. There by ten, get the four o’clock back and be back home by six. If planes, trains and air-traffic controllers were in a co-operative mood, that is. He only hoped the nightman at the Art Theft Department had instructions to allow him to take the painting away. If he was fortunate, he could be back by evening. And then he could go and see about that apartment. If Flavia didn’t like the idea, then tough.

So, his decision made, he scrawled a hurried note and left it on the table as he walked out.

About twenty minutes after he went out, Flavia came in. She too was utterly exhausted, although for different reasons. A long haul. It was amazing how much paper these police could generate in such a short time, and Fabriano had fought hard to avoid giving it to her. It was only when she’d threatened to complain to his boss that he reluctantly gave way. Had she been in a better mood, or less tired, she would just about have seen his point. He was working long hours on this case. It was his big chance, and he wasn’t going to let it get away. He certainly wasn’t going to share the credit with her if he could avoid it. The trouble was, his attitude had the effect of hardening hers. The more he resisted, the more she demanded. The more he – and Bottando, in fact – wanted to keep her out, the more she was determined to take it further. So she’d sat and read. Hundreds of sheets of paper, of interviews and documentation and snapshots and inventories.

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