Iain Pears
The Immaculate Deception

To Michael and Alexander

Contents

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Title Page

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1

One morning, a fine May morning in Rome, when the sun was beaming through the clouds of carbon monoxide and dust and giving a soft, fresh feel to the day, Flavia di Stefano sat immobile in a vast traffic jam which began in the Piazza del Popolo and ended somewhere near the Piazza Venezia. Many people, at least those with a different personality to her own, would have been unperturbed by this common occurrence, and would instead have contemplated their surroundings with something approaching patient smugness. Not many, after all, can call on a Mercedes, complete with chauffeur and obligatory tinted windows, to ferry them around town at the taxpayers’ expense. Fewer still at such a young age are the head (if only the acting head) of one of the more reputable departments in the Italian police force, complete with its own budget, personnel and expense accounts.

And virtually none of the small number of departmental potentates use their splendid forms of transport to go to unspecified meetings, called late the previous evening, at the Palazzo Chigi, the official residence of the Italian prime minister.

That, of course, was the problem, and the reason behind Flavia’s insensitivity to the early morning sunshine, and her disdain for all living things. For a start, her collar itched monstrously, and was a permanent, nagging reminder of her own inexperience and desire to create the right impression.

Instead of sitting quietly that morning eating toast and drinking coffee, she had run around showering, choosing clothes and, worst of all, applying copious amounts of make-up. Then having a fit of defiance and taking it all off again, then weakening with nerves and putting it all back on. Worse still, she stood peering out of the window into the little piazza below, anxiously waiting for the car to arrive, checking and re-checking the contents of her handbag. She had nightmare visions of grabbing her coat and running through the streets of Rome to get there. Breaking a heel on a cobblestone. Arriving out of breath, her hair in a mess. Creating entirely the wrong impression. Career destroyed, over in a moment, just because some damn fool driver didn’t turn up. And, what was more, she felt ill; stomach in a turmoil, the rest of her queasy. Bug. Flu, probably. Nervousness. Something like that. It was going to be one of those days. She knew it.

‘Flavia. Do stop jiggling about like that. You’re making me nervous.’ Jonathan Argyll, her husband of four weeks’ standing, and boyfriend-cum-flatmate of near ten years, sat at the kitchen table trying to read the newspaper. ‘It’s only the prime minister, you know.’

Flavia turned round to scowl at him.

‘I’m not being facetious,’ he went on calmly as he reached for the marmalade before she could tell him what she thought of his sense of whimsy. ‘You know as well as I do that bad news is always handed out by underlings. Besides, you haven’t done anything wrong recently, have you? Not misplaced a Raphael, dropped a Michelangelo, shot a senator, or anything?’

Another scowl.

‘There you are, then. Nothing to worry about,’ he continued, getting up to give her a quick pat to indicate that he sympathized. ‘Even less now that your car has arrived.’

He pointed downwards, waved cheerfully at the driver, whom he vaguely recognized, and even more cheerfully at Flavia, as she rushed for her bag and coat.

‘Calm. Remember?’ he said as she opened the door.

‘I remember.’

Calm, she repeated to herself thirty minutes later as she looked at her watch one more time. Stuck in a traffic jam, half a mile to go, five minutes late. At least it cut the unaccustomed car sickness. Calm, she thought.

It was Bottando’s fault, really, she reflected. Her erstwhile boss, now gone on to greater things, was one of those who liked formulating universal laws about life, which he delivered as aphorisms that came back to haunt you at inappropriate moments.

‘Politicians,’ he said once over a glass of brandy following a long lunch. ‘Politicians can ruin your day. Ministers, on the other hand, can ruin your week.’

‘And prime ministers?’ Flavia had asked.

‘Prime ministers? Oh, they can ruin your life.’

His little bon mot, for some reason, didn’t seem quite so urbane at the moment. She considered leaning forward to see if the driver could go any faster, but abandoned the idea. Another one of Bottando’s rules. Never let anyone see you are nervous; especially not drivers, who are notoriously the biggest gossips on the planet. So, like a condemned man who finally realizes his fate is inevitable, she gave a big sigh, leant back and gave up fretting. Immediately, the lights changed, the cars began moving and the palazzo came into sight. She was waved through the vast wooden gates into the courtyard with virtually no delay, and within minutes was being ushered into an ante-room to an ante-room to the office where Antonio Sabauda, prime minister now for a whole nine months, held his audiences. Fourteen minutes late.

Her guardian angel was on duty, working hard on her behalf. Sabauda was later still, and over the next forty minutes she allowed herself to work up a fine head of steam about the lack of consideration shown by unpunctual people. In fact, by the time the door was finally opened and she was shown in, the nervousness was gone, the deference dissipated, the stomach quiescent, and her character quite restored to its normal state.

So she marched into the surprisingly dingy office thinking only how stupid she had been to put on quite so much lipstick and wishing she hadn’t bothered, shook hands with the prime minister in an uninterested fashion, and sat down on a chair before she was asked. What did she care? She hadn’t voted for him.

He scored early points by referring neither to her age, nor to the fact that she was a woman, and then pushed his rating even higher by not indulging in any small-talk. Then he spoiled it all by expressing surprise that Bottando himself had not come. Flavia reminded him that she, not General Bottando, was now running the department on a day-to-day basis.

‘But he is still the head of it, is he not?’

‘Nominally. But he takes no active role in our operations any more. He is running this European venture, and that uses up all his time.’

‘And more of his patience,’ the prime minister added for her with a faint smile. ‘I see. And I am sure we are in safe hands with you, signora. I do hope so, anyway. I’m afraid there is something of a crisis on hand. I would tell you about it myself, but I know few of the details. Dottore Macchioli knows those, and he has just arrived. This, I’m afraid, is why you have been kept waiting for so long.’

Of course, Flavia thought. All was now clear. Guglio Macchioli was one of those endearingly lovable characters who sow disaster everywhere they go. Never on time for anything, however much he tried, always colliding with all manner of inanimate objects which leapt out at him as he passed, he was the very model of the unworldly scholar. And as a scholar he was very fine indeed, so Jonathan told her, as he knew more about this sort of thing than she did. But as the director of the National Museum he was, in Bottando’s opinion, one of the wonders of the world. His elevation had come on the rebound; his predecessor had been go-getting, dynamic, determined to drag the musty museum into modernity and was shortly to be let out of gaol. The embarrassment had been considerable, and Macchioli – who could not only resist temptation but probably wouldn’t even notice he was being tempted – had seemed the obvious successor, in the circumstances. A safe pair of hands; back to the traditional values of connoisseurship, erudition and old-time curating. A universally beloved figure, in fact, but quite incapable of defending his patch against the incursions of bureaucrats who wished to cut his funds, to ooze up to potential benefactors, or to manage his disorganized museum.

And deeply unhappy, Flavia judged from the nervous way he came in, thrusting his bicycle clips into the bulging pocket of his shabby suit. It was all most intriguing.

Macchioli sat down, fiddled with his hands and looked uncomfortable as the introductions were made.

‘Perhaps we might begin?’ The prime minister prompted.

‘Ah, yes,’ Macchioli said absently.

‘You have a problem you wish to tell the signora about?’

Persuading himself to divulge it was evidently a titanic struggle, almost as though he knew that, once he had spoken, all sorts of unpleasant consequences might begin to swirl around him. He rocked to and fro, hunched his shoulders, rubbed his nose, and then, in a sudden burst of decision, spoke: ‘I’ve lost a picture. The museum has. It was stolen.’

Flavia was puzzled. She could see why he was upset. Awkward business, losing pictures. That was not the problem, however. They went missing all the time; so often, in fact, that the routine for what to do was well established. You phoned the police. They went round, did their stuff and then you forgot all about it, on the reasonable grounds that it was unlikely ever to be seen again. All perfectly normal. It was hearing about it in the prime minister’s office that was not entirely orthodox.

‘I see,’ she said helpfully, but poor old Macchioli did not take it as a prompt to continue; instead he lapsed into another agonized silence.

‘For the last five years, you see, we have been planning an exhibition.’ He restarted, evidently deciding that a sidelong approach might be best. ‘To celebrate Italy’s presidency of the European Community, which begins in fifteen days’ time. Drawing on all aspects of European art, but I am afraid that some people’ – and here he gave a surreptitious glance in the direction of the desk at which the prime minister was sitting – ‘some people have sought to turn it into a nationalistic demonstration.’

‘Just a small reminder of our contribution in matters of culture,’ the prime minister purred.

‘This has made borrowing the works a little more difficult than it might have been,’ Macchioli continued. ‘Not that it is relevant to the disaster that has befallen us …’

The prime minister, showing more patience than his reputation would have suggested possible, sighed in the background. It was enough to bring Macchioli’s errant mind back to the immediate issue.

‘We did, however, finally arrange to borrow nearly all the paintings we wanted. Most from Italian institutions, naturally, but a good proportion from foreign museums and owners, many of which have never been seen in this country before.’

‘But I know about all this,’ said Flavia with more impatience than the prime minister was showing. ‘We’ve been involved in the planning for years. Members of my department escorted the first few paintings from the airport to the museum last week.’

‘Yes. And a very fine job you did, too. No mistake about that. Very fine. Unfortunately …’

‘The one you’ve had stolen. It was one of those?’

He nodded.

‘When?’

‘Yesterday. At lunchtime.’

‘Lunchtime? Then why are you only telling me about it now?’

‘It was very awkward, you see. I wasn’t at all sure what to do about it …’

‘Perhaps I might fill the signora in?’ The prime minister interrupted, glancing at his watch and realizing that unless something was done soon, this meeting might last for the rest of the day and Macchioli still wouldn’t have explained anything. ‘Please correct me if I get the details wrong. I understand the picture was stolen at around half past one yesterday. A hooded man reversed a truck into the store area, held up the people working there, forced them to load the painting, complete with its frame, into the back of the truck and drove off. Is that correct?’

Macchioli nodded.

Flavia, fidgeting around in her seat, opened her mouth to make the obvious protests about wasted time, trails going cold and so on.

‘Your department, signora, was not called because he left behind a message saying that the police should not be contacted.’

‘A ransom demand, is that it?’

A shrug. ‘Not exactly. Just that we’d be hearing more in due course. I suppose that means money.’

‘Maybe so. What, exactly, is the picture?’

‘It’s a Claude Lorraine. Landscape with Cephalis and Procris,’ Macchioli said reluctantly.

Flavia paused. ‘Oh, not that one, surely? Not the one where the government intervened officially to guarantee it?’

He nodded. You could see why he was upset, she thought. Not that it was such a great picture, although she always found Claude quite toothsome. Not a Raphael, or anything like that. But it had such a dodgy past. Its reputation as one of the most stolen pictures in the world ensured it a status beyond its simple quality. Argyll, no doubt, would remember the details better than she could, but she could recall the highlights. Painted in the 1630s for an Italian cardinal. Pinched by the Duke of Modena when he found it in a wagon after a battle. Pinched again by a French general a few years later. Looted and sold during the French Revolution, pinched again by Napoleon when he came across it in Holland. Stolen by thieves in the 1930s, by the Germans in the 1940s and by two more thieves in the 1950s and 1960s. Whereupon the exasperated owner sold it to the Louvre, in the hope that they would manage to hang on to it. Which they had. Until, it seemed, it had arrived in Italy.

‘Oh, dear,’ she said.

‘You see our problem,’ the prime minister continued. ‘It is exceptionally unpleasant for me, as I gave a personal guarantee of its safety. Quite apart from that, this exhibition is to be one of the cultural highpoints of our presidency. It would be very bad indeed if it was wrecked, and it would be wrecked if this news gets out. It is quite possible that other lenders would pull out, and even if they didn’t our reputation would be damaged badly. You can imagine what would be said. We would look quite ridiculous.’

Flavia nodded. ‘So? When you get the ransom demand you pay up.’

‘The only problem is that it is illegal. If we arrest people for paying ransoms to rescue their wives and children, we can hardly pay up for a mere painting.’

A silence fell on the room, and it seemed as though Flavia was expected to say something useful.

‘You mean you want me to find the painting.’

‘I would ordinarily be deeply grateful, but in this case, no. How many people would you use for such an inquiry?’

Flavia thought for a moment. ‘Everyone we had, if you wanted a quick result. Not that I can guarantee one.’

‘And could you at least guarantee to keep it out of the press?’

‘For about six hours, yes.’

‘Precisely. Secrecy in this matter is absolutely vital. Even if you were successful and recovered the painting swiftly, the damage would still be done.’

‘In which case, I confess to being defeated. You won’t pay a ransom and won’t look for the painting. What, exactly, do you want done?’

‘We cannot pay a ransom. The government cannot authorize such a thing. Taxpayers’ money cannot be used. Nor can any government employee be involved in its payment. Do I make myself clear?’

He did. But Flavia had not spent years watching Bottando take avoiding action without learning a thing or two.

‘I’m afraid I’m not with you at all. Sorry,’ she said blandly.

‘You will use your best abilities to recover this painting without any publicity. But I must make it absolutely clear that I cannot and will not condone the payment of a ransom from public funds.’

‘Ah.’

‘Should these criminals be paid off independently from a private source, a man willing to break the law for what he considers erroneously the public good, then that, of course, I cannot prevent, much though I might regret it.’

‘I see.’

‘You will keep me informed every day about your investigation, and will receive instructions as you proceed. Might I also say that the need for secrecy is absolute.’

‘You are rather tying my hands, here.’

‘I’m sure you will manage.’

‘And if I come across any other way of recovering this picture?’

‘You will restrain yourself. I want no risk at all of this coming into the open.’ He stood up. ‘I think that is all for the time being. Let me know of your progress every day, if you please.’

Two minutes later, both Flavia and Macchioli were in the ante-room once more, she a little perplexed about the whole business, the museum director seemingly lost in despondency.

‘Right, then,’ she said after a while. ‘I think you need to tell me a little more about what on earth has been going on here.’

‘Hmm?’

‘Robbery? Armed man? Remember?’

‘Yes, yes. What do you want to know?’

‘How about how to contact this person? If I am to hand over money to them in some way, I ought to know how to set about it.’

Macchioli looked blank. ‘What do you mean, hand over money? I thought you had just been told that you were to do no such thing?’

She sighed. The trouble with Macchioli was that there was no disingenuousness about him at all. He really did think that they had just sat through a meeting and been given instructions that no money was to be paid. That, of course, might well turn into a major problem.

‘Doesn’t matter. Forget it,’ she said. ‘This message, it gave no means of contact?’

‘No.’

‘Can I see it, please?’

‘It’s in my office.’

It was like talking to a particularly stupid child. ‘Why don’t we go to your office, then?’

‘There,’ he said, forty minutes later, after a silent voyage through the streets of Rome. ‘It’s not very informative.’

Flavia took the piece of paper – no point in worrying about fingerprints or anything like that now – and looked. True enough. She could hardly fault the analysis. Six words only. She even admired the economy of expression.

She leant back in her seat and thought. Did it tell her anything? ‘You’ll be hearing from me.’ Done on a computer printer, but who didn’t have access to one these days? The paper was standard-issue computer paper, of which there were several billion sheets consumed every day. No; it told her nothing; or, at least, nothing that the author didn’t want her to know.

‘The robbery itself,’ she said, turning her attention back to Macchioli.

He shook his head. ‘Very little to say I haven’t already told you. A small truck; the sort that traders use to deliver fruit and vegetables. A man dressed up as Leonardo da Vinci …’

‘What?’ she asked incredulously. He had said it as though people dressed as Renaissance painters or baroque popes were to be seen pottering about the museum every day.

‘One of those masks you buy in party shops. You know. And a sort of cape. And the gun, of course. Do you want to see that?’

She looked at him wearily. Mere expressions of incredulity seemed inadequate, somehow. ‘The gun?’

‘He dropped it when he drove off. Threw it, actually. At the head of the man who helped him load it. This was after he handed out chocolates.’

‘Chocolates?’ she said weakly.

‘Little boxes of chocolates. Belgian ones, I believe. You know, the ones that you buy in speciality shops. With a ribbon on the top.’

‘Of course. Where are they?’

‘What?’

‘The chocolates.’

‘The guards ate them.’

‘I see. Blood sugar levels low because of the shock, no doubt. Apart from that, no violence of any sort?’

‘No.’

‘I’d like to talk to these people in the store room.’

‘You’ll have to.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Someone has to tell them to keep quiet about this.’

‘You haven’t done that?’

‘Of course. But nobody ever listens to me.’

Flavia sighed. ‘Very well, then. Take me to them. Then you can show me the gun.’

She decided on the brutal approach. Not simply because it was one of those days, and she wasn’t feeling in the mood for subtleties, but because she knew that being young and a woman meant that it was sometimes difficult to persuade people – especially the sort of people who unload paintings – to take her seriously.

‘Right,’ she said, when the two men had come in and sat down. ‘I will say this once and once only. I am the head of the art theft squad, investigating the theft of this picture. You two are prime suspects. Got that?’

They didn’t answer but, judging by the way they turned a little pale, she assumed they had.

‘I want it back fast, and more important people than myself want there to be no publicity. If there is any, if anyone hears about what has happened here, and I trace it back to you two, I will personally ensure (a) that you go to gaol for aiding and abetting a crime, (b) that you stay in gaol for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, (c) I will have you fired from this job, and (d) I will ensure that neither of you ever gets a job again. Is that understood?’

More pallor.

‘In order to avoid this regrettable fate, all you have to do is keep your mouths shut. There was no theft, you know of no theft, nothing untoward happened yesterday. You may find that difficult, but you will find the self-discipline rewarding. Do I make myself absolutely clear?’

She was rather proud of the speech, delivered with all the cold conviction of a true apparatchik, able to call on untold occult powers to visit terrible consequences on the innocent. Anyone with a moment’s thought would have seen it was all nonsense, and that there was nothing she could do to them at all, but the two men seemed too dull to notice. She only hoped they were not so dull that they failed to grasp what she wanted of them.

That would become clear in the next few days; what was immediately apparent, alas, was that they were certainly too dim-witted to be much use as witnesses. Their description of the robbery was scarcely more detailed than the brief summary that Macchioli had already given her. The only facts they added were that the van was large enough to get a Claude in, was white, and wasn’t a Fiat. The man involved was of average height and might (or might not) have had a Roman accent. She dismissed them after twenty minutes with another dire warning, then was taken to see the gun.

Macchioli was keeping it in his safe. In a plastic bag. He was inordinately proud of himself about the plastic bag.

‘There,’ he said, putting it gingerly on his desk. ‘We were lucky it didn’t go off when it hit the ground.’

Flavia felt like weeping. Some days were just so abominable she didn’t know how she stood it. She took out her handkerchief, picked up the gun, looked at it for a few moments, then pointed it at her head.

‘Signora! Be careful!’ shouted Macchioli in alarm.

She looked at him sadly, closed her eyes and, to the older man’s horror, slowly pulled the trigger.

The sound of what was later identified by analysts – or rather by a secretary in payroll, who was an enthusiast for opera – as a jaunty version of Verdi’s ‘Teco io sto, Gran Dio’ from Act Two of Un Ballo in Maschera, rendered on a little widget buried deep inside the gun’s handle, drifted slowly across the room.

Flavia opened her eyes, shrugged, and tossed the gun on to the desk.

‘If we manage to find a shop that has recently sold a Leonardo da Vinci mask and a plastic singing gun to a man carrying chocolates, we might have a lead,’ she said, as she put the gun back into the bag and got up. ‘I’ll let you know.’

Five minutes later she was slumped in the back of the car, muttering darkly to herself. Then she reached a decision. Whatever injunctions other people needed to obey on keeping their mouths shut, she needed to ventilate. She gave her driver directions to head for the EUR.

2

Despite the morning, she thought little on the journey, or, at least, thought little about Claudes and their inconvenient disappearance. Rather, she thought about her old boss, General Taddeo Bottando, poor soul, consigned to opulent exile in this grim suburb, surrounded by office blocks and 1930s architecture and wastelands where nothing much seemed to happen. He had been stuck out here for a year now, heading some grandiosely-named European directive, as cut off from the mainstream of policing as his location suggested. Only bankers should have to work in this awful place, she thought; scarcely even a decent restaurant to go to at lunchtime, and Bottando was a man who liked his lunch.

Whereas the art squad building was run down but beautiful, underfunded but buzzing with activity, Bottando’s new empire was grand, dripping in cash but ugly and deathly quiet. Merely getting into the building required going through the sort of security procedures that usually defend classified government installations. Everybody was terribly well-dressed, the carpets were thick, the doors swished to and fro electrically, the computers hummed. A policeman’s paradise, enough resources to tackle the world. Poor, poor man, she thought.

But Bottando put a brave face on it, and Flavia smiled encouragingly, both going through the ritual of pretending that all was well as they did on every occasion they met. He talked about the splendid things his new operation would shortly accomplish, she made joking remarks about European expense accounts. Neither ever referred to the fact that Bottando was showing his age just a bit more, that his conversation was just that touch duller, that his jokes and good humour were now ever so slightly forced.

Nor was his heart in it any longer; he was away more often than he was behind his desk, constantly, it seemed, taking holidays. Winding down. Preparing his exit. It was only a matter of time before the holiday became permanent. A couple of years and he would have to retire anyway, although while in his old post he had fended off even the thought: there was nothing to retire to. He was one of those people whose very existence was inconceivable without his job and his position.

His promotion had lost him both, and maybe that was the intention. To ease him out by easing him up, and perhaps Bottando was ready to go; he would have fought more had he not been halfway there already. He had won bigger battles against greater odds in the past. Maybe he’d had enough.

Fairly often now, Flavia came to see him not because she wanted his advice but because she wanted him to give it. She had been running the department for a year and had settled in. Better still, she found she was good at it and no longer needed to be anybody’s protégée. She had leant on Bottando heavily in the earlier days, but needed to do so no longer. He had, she was sure, noticed this and was pleased for her. The last time he came to the department, a few months back to check some old files and gather some materials, she knew he was just checking to make sure all was well. She was also sure that the visit was for no real reason, and that he stayed most of the afternoon – pottering about, reading this and that, chatting to people in corridors, going out for a drink afterwards – largely because he had so little of substance to do in his own offices. She only hoped that he didn’t suspect that sometimes – just sometimes – she felt a little sorry for him.

This time, however, there was no artifice in her visit. She was entering dark and stormy waters, and needed a bit of navigational guidance. She half-knew already what the advice would be; she none the less still needed to hear it.

Bottando came out of his office to greet her, gave her an affectionate kiss, and fussed about making her comfortable.

‘My dear Flavia, how pleasant to see you. Not often we have you out in the provinces like this. What can I do for you? I assume, that is, that you haven’t come just to feast your eyes on a properly funded department?’

She smiled. ‘I always like to see how things should be done, of course. But, in fact, I am here for some more of your best vintage advice. Premier cru, if you please.’

Bottando grunted. ‘Always willing to put age at the service of enthusiasm,’ he said. ‘As you know. I hope it is a real problem this time, not just something constructed to make me feel less obsolete.’

He had noticed. Damn. Flavia felt genuinely, truly remorseful.

‘You once told me prime ministers can ruin your life,’ she said.

‘So they can. Especially if you get in their way. What have you got to do with prime ministers?’

With a brief preface about injunctions placed on her for silence, she told him.

Bottando listened intently, scratched his chin, stared at the ceiling and grunted as the tale progressed, just as he always did when they had talked over a problem in the old days. And as the story continued, Flavia saw the slightest gleam come into his eyes, like an old and battered flashlight given a new battery.

‘Aaah,’ he said with satisfaction as she finished, leaning back in his chair, gorged on the tale. ‘I can quite see why you want a second opinion. Most interesting.’

‘Exactly. The first question that strikes me, of course, is why such interest from on high? I mean, urgent meetings with the prime minister because of a picture?’

‘I suppose you have to take the explanation about the EU presidency at face value,’ Bottando said thoughtfully. ‘If I remember, they want to make law and order their top priority. Old Sabauda will have a hard time pontificating about security if everybody is sniggering at him behind their memoranda all the while. No politician likes to look silly. They’re very touchy on the subject; that’s why they confuse their egos with the national interest so often.’

‘Maybe. Nevertheless, it strikes me that should anything go wrong, and there is a good chance that it will, then I am in a somewhat exposed position.’

‘Nothing on paper, I take it?’

Flavia shook her head. Bottando nodded appreciatively.

‘I thought not. And the only other person to hear what was said was old Macchioli. Who is as malleable as a piece of lead sheeting.’

More thought. ‘Let’s say it goes wrong. Everything appears in the paper, big scandal. Indignant prime minister says that he gave you instructions personally to drop everything and recover the painting, yet you did nothing about it. Hmm?’

Flavia nodded.

‘Even worse, news takes some time to get out. Same indignant prime minister expressing shock that a policewoman should go around raising cash from unnamed sources to pay a ransom.’

Another nod. ‘I could go to prison for that.’

‘So you could, my dear. Two years, not counting anything that might be tagged on for corruption and conspiracy.’

‘And if everything goes well …’

‘If everything goes well, and you get the picture back, you will have performed a sterling service, which no one will know about. But you will know that the prime minister – a man who has many enemies and who has been around so long his skills as a survivor should never be underestimated – connived to get around the law so he could look good strutting the international stage. Knowledge, sometimes, can be a dangerous thing. Were you more ruthless, you could perhaps apply a little pressure on him, but he is more likely to see you as an ever-present threat and take the appropriate action. Something subtle, so that if you ever said anything, the response could be along the lines of “poor embittered woman, trying to create a fuss because she was dismissed for incompetence". Or corruption, or gross indecency, or something like that. Enough to make sure no one took you seriously. As I say, prime ministers can ruin your life.’

Flavia felt her heart sinking as he spoke. Everything he said she had known, of course; having it spelled out in quite such a bald fashion did not raise her morale.

‘Recommendations?’

Bottando grunted. ‘More difficult. What are your options, now? A strategic but untraceable leak to the press, followed by a public promise on your part to leave no stone unturned, etcetera? It would eliminate the prospect of going to gaol at some future date, but pretty much ensure that prime ministerial wrath would descend on you with full force. End of a promising career. Do as you are told? Bad idea, for obvious reasons, especially as Macchioli would say on oath that you had been specifically instructed not to pay a penny.’

‘Doesn’t leave much, does it?’

‘Not at the moment, no. Tell me, this ransom money, where is it to come from?’

‘I have no idea. Maybe an extremely wealthy patriot will suddenly wander through the door with a chequebook.’

‘Stranger things have happened. Let us assume that the money turns up. What then?’

‘Get the picture back. Then go after whoever was responsible. They might do it again, after all.’

Bottando shook his head. ‘Bad idea. What you must do is keep your head down. Do as you are told, and nothing else.’

‘But I’m not sure what I have been told to do. That’s the trouble.’

‘I am merely trying to indicate that, when faced with deviousness, you must be devious yourself. You might also consider the wisdom of putting everything down on paper in front of a lawyer, so that, if necessary, your understanding of the meeting is clear.’

Flavia grunted, in exactly the same manner as Bottando used to do himself when she had proposed a distasteful idea and he had acted the part of cautious superior. The general noticed the sound, and all it implied, and smiled gently. For he also, in his way, felt slightly sorry for Flavia. Position and authority were not without their disadvantages, and having to be careful and responsible were among the biggest.

‘I don’t suppose you would like to help …’

‘Me?’ Bottando chuckled. ‘Dear me no. I most certainly would not. I am too old, my dear, to be running around with suitcases full of money under my arm. Besides, I must plead self-interest.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I am bored, Flavia,’ he said mournfully. ‘Bored out of my head. I have been sitting here pushing little bits of paper around for a year. I give orders to people who give orders to people who do some policing occasionally but spend most of their time constructing international directives. So I have decided that enough is enough. I am going to retire. My pension will be very much less than I had anticipated but quite sufficient. And I do not want to risk it at the moment. I will willingly give you any advice you want. And when I am finally retired any assistance you want as well. But at the moment, I must keep my head down as much as you.’

‘I’m really sorry you’re going,’ she said, suddenly afflicted by an enormous sense of panic and loss.

‘You’ll survive without me, I dare say. And my mind is quite made up. Even the most fascinating job palls after a while and, as you may have noticed, what I’m doing at the moment is not especially fascinating. By the way, those chocolates. Did you say Belgian?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah.’

‘Why?’

‘No reason. Merely a detail. Always thought them overrated, myself.’

She stood up, looking at her watch. Late, late, late. Was it always to be like this now? Constant meetings, constant rush? Never time to sit and talk any more? After several decades of it, she’d be ready to give it all up as well. She gave Bottando a brief embrace, told him to keep himself ready to give more advice, and headed back to her car. The driver was sound asleep on the back seat, waiting for her. Lucky man, she thought as she prodded him awake.

3

She was home early, even before Jonathan, and drank a glass of wine on the terrace – her promotion, their marriage and the fact that even Jonathan now had a regular salary of a sort meant that, finally, they could afford an apartment they were happy to be in. Still in Trastevere, but four whole rooms now, high ceilings, and a terrace overlooking a quiet square. If you stretched you could just see a bit of Santa Maria. Flavia was too short, but Jonathan could see it, and it gave him a twinge of pleasure just to know it was there. Although the least houseproud of people, even she made something of an effort to keep it neat and tidy. A sign of age, perhaps.

She had left early because she wanted some time to think, and there were always too many distractions in her office. Phones, secretaries, people popping in and out to ask her opinion, or to get her to sign something. She loved it all, most of the time, but it made it difficult to reflect and consider. That was best done looking out at the ochre-coloured buildings opposite, watching people doing their shopping, listening to the quiet murmur of a city going about its business.

Bottando’s lack of practical advice had given her more than a little to think about. She had gone through it all, backwards and forwards, considering every option and possibility in a methodical way, and come up with nothing better. However, the essence of it – keep your head down, do nothing, but avoid any involvement – appalled her. And struck her as almost as dangerous as doing something. Her head was on the block, come what may. If something, anything, went wrong, she would be the one to take the blame. Acting head. Never yet confirmed in her post, even after a year. A matter of a moment to get rid of her; no noise, no fuss. Simply an announcement that a new and permanent chief, more experienced and fitted for the job, was being drafted in over her.

But what could she do? It was certainly the case that she couldn’t do anything practical without somebody finding out quickly. Nor could she go trotting round the wealthy of Italy asking if they had a spare suitcase full of unwanted dollars lying around. Fund-raising was hardly her job. If anyone could do it, it should have been Macchioli’s task. That’s what museum curators did these days. Or were supposed to. Alas, his talents notoriously did not lie in this direction at all. Still, it might be worth while having a serious talk with him, just in case a ransom note arrived.

Argyll came home an hour later, in a relatively good mood considering he’d spent the day trying to din the rudiments of art historical knowledge into his students, and plonked himself down beside her to admire the view. Once it had been as admired as was possible, he asked about the meeting with the prime minister. She didn’t want to talk about it yet, so she fended him off.

‘How’s the paper?’ she asked mischievously to take her mind off things. This was a sore point with Argyll. He had been taken on in his current job to teach baroque art to foreign students passing a year in Rome, a task he was eminently fitted to do. Then the administration – a baroque organization itself – had decided for reasons that no one really understood that salary levels would be partly determined by academic production as well as hours put in at the coal-face. Raise the reputation of the institution. Must be taken seriously as a university, not dismissed as a finishing school for rich kids. Which, of course, it was. The essence of the edict, however, was that if you want more money, produce articles. Papers. Better still, a book or two.

Not really that easy, and Argyll was of a stubborn disposition. The idea of being forced into writing things made his hackles rise. However, a bit more money would be agreeable. He was nearly there; he had ruthlessly exploited his old footnotes and conjured up two articles of extraordinary banality for minor journals, and had also been invited to give a paper at a conference in Ferrara in a few weeks’ time, and that would put him over the required limit.

Except that he didn’t have a paper to deliver and, while he did not hesitate to produce grandiose trivia in the comforting anonymity of a journal no one read, he hesitated to stand up in front of a live audience and parrot out obvious nonsense. So, no paper; not even the glimmer of one. He was beginning to get worried. Flavia did her best to sympathize when she was informed, again, that he still couldn’t think of anything, and eventually Argyll shifted to another topic, as dwelling on the matter risked ruining an otherwise pleasant evening.

‘I had a phone call today.’

‘Oh?’

‘From Mary Verney.’

She put down her drink and looked at him. Not today, she thought. It’s been bad enough already without her. She was retired, Flavia knew; she had said so last time they almost arrested her for theft on a grand scale. But she’d said that the time before last as well.

‘She asked me to ask you if you’d mind if she came back to Italy.’

‘What?’

Argyll said it again. ‘She has a house somewhere in Tuscany, it seems. She hasn’t felt comfortable going there for the last few years, what with you so keen to lock her up. So she simply wanted to know whether you had any outstanding business with her. If you do, she’ll stay away and sell the house, but if you don’t she wouldn’t mind coming and seeing if it still has a roof. I said I’d ask. Don’t look at me like that,’ he concluded mildly. ‘I’m the messenger. You know, the one you don’t shoot.’

Flavia huffed. ‘I really do have better things to do, you know, than reassuring ageing thieves.’

‘So it seems.’

‘What does that mean?’ she snapped.

‘You weren’t really listening to my fascinating anecdote about the coffee-machine in the staff room. My little joke about the tourist being taken to hospital when a piece of the Pantheon fell on his head didn’t make you smile at all, even though it was quite a clever play on words and would normally have produced at least a flicker of amusement. And you have twice dipped your olive into the sugar bowl and eaten it without even noticing.’

So she had. Now she thought about it, it had tasted odd. So she heaved a sigh and told him about more serious matters. By the time she finished, Argyll was dipping his olives in the sugar bowl as well. He, in contrast, found them quite tasty. He could see that it did really put the antics of the departmental coffee-machine in the shade.

Oddly, the more important matter was swiftly dealt with. Flavia didn’t want Argyll’s advice on this one, but got it anyway. It just wasn’t very good. ‘Your stomach,’ he said. ‘It’s been playing you up for days now. How about if we got Giulio downstairs to have you admitted to hospital for a week? Urgent tests? Suspected ulcer? Gastro-enteritis? You could blame my cooking. He’d be happy to oblige. Then you could sit it out in peace and security.’

Giulio was the doctor who lived on the grander first floor of their block. And Flavia was sure he would oblige. He was an obliging fellow. And her stomach – in fact, her entire internal system – was misbehaving shockingly, although it was better now, probably thanks to the wine. But this was one she could not duck out of, and Argyll knew it as well as she did.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘If you want to be useful, you can tell me about this Claude.’

‘What’s to tell? It’s a landscape. Not one of his huge ones, which is no doubt why it’s so popular with the thieves.’

‘What about the subject, though? Cephalis and Procris.’

Argyll waved his hand dismissively. ‘Wouldn’t worry about that. They’re just figures wandering around the canvas and put in to give it respectability. Claude couldn’t do people for toffee. Arms and legs too long. Bums in the wrong place. But he had to do them to be taken seriously.’

‘Still. What’s the story?’

‘No idea.’

And Flavia clearly wanted to say no more, so he switched the topic. ‘Tell me about Bottando. You’ll miss him, won’t you?’

‘Terribly. Father figure, you know. It gives you a shock when permanent fixtures are suddenly not so permanent. Also, he’s not happy about it, either. It’s not a good way to end after all this time.’

‘We should get him a present.’

She nodded. ‘Can you think of anything?’

‘No.’

‘Nor me.’

They paused. ‘What shall I do about Mary Verney?’

She sighed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I suppose there are so many thieves in the country, one more won’t make any difference. At least we can be certain she didn’t steal the Claude.’

4

Argyll was reluctant to criticize his dear wife, especially as she had been such for only a short time and it seemed premature to begin carping, but he found it hard to suppress a certain amount of irritation at the way she wouldn’t listen to reason – his reason – about this Claude. It was not that he didn’t see that it was her job to recover pictures, nor did he blame her for being worried. Normally it was her calm that amazed him. He knew quite well that he would have been incapable of doing what she did without being in a permanent state of panic. The omnipresent possibility of disaster that she seemed to live with was not the sort of thing that gave him pleasure; in his own line of work, now that being an art dealer was more of a hobby than an occupation, the worst that could happen was that he might lose his lecture notes. Getting rid of his remaining stock of pictures and covering his costs was more than enough stress to have in your life, in his opinion.

There were only about two dozen left now, ranging in quality from the moderately decent to the embarrassing; the rest he had either got rid of to a couple of clients, unloaded on to dealers, or decided to keep for himself. This last batch, in a fit of impatience, he had decided to sell at an auction and, as none were particularly valuable, he had arranged for them to go into a sale in London; they were not subject to any export restrictions and would get a better price there. They were, however, subject to a monumental amount of paperwork, which he had been sweating over for months. It was nearly all done now, most of the pictures were safely boxed and ready to go, but there still remained an alarming number of forms to fill in.

So he didn’t blame Flavia for being alarmed; the Italian state in one of its full-blown moods of cranky irrationality is an alarming thing. But she had a sort of absent-minded calm about her which was really quite unwise.

It was not that Flavia was ungrateful that made her dismiss his counsel with a touch of impatience, merely that she was preoccupied. Since being summoned to the prime minister’s office, she had been totally taken up with the Claude while also having to put on an air of not having a care in the world. A long, early morning phone call with the prime minister to try and extract more specific instructions produced nothing except a convoluted statement which gave the impression that he was unaware of anything to do with ransoms; after it was over, Flavia convinced herself that the call had been taped and would be used in evidence against her if need be. That started her day off badly, but even worse was the lack of any movement; the kidnapper did not follow up with any more details about how much money he wanted or how it was to be paid. Assuming that’s what he wanted. Time was short, after all; Flavia found the desultory approach quite surprising. Even the dimmest thief – and this character clearly was not dim – must realize that the longer he waited, the greater the risk of something going wrong, and that if the news came out then the price would go down dramatically.

At least it gave her time to do something, even though she had no great hopes of anything useful resulting. She could not send anyone out to ask questions, but at least she could comb through the records to see if any obvious candidates presented themselves. Again, she was hampered by not being able to say exactly what she wanted, but fortunately the department had been assigned another trainee who was, for once, unusually bright and keen. He had, she told him sternly when he came in, spent far too much time on the streets recently.

The trainee’s face fell so far Flavia thought she might have to help him pick it off the floor. ‘It’s all very well rushing about in flash cars kicking people’s doors down, Corrado, and don’t think I’m criticizing. You kick them down very well. But the essence of policing these days is intelligence. Forward planning. That sort of thing. Very interesting,’ she added encouragingly. ‘So I’ve constructed a little exercise for you.’

‘An exercise?’ he said in a scarcely concealed tone of disgust. ‘You mean, not even a real case?’

‘It might be one day. Got your notebook? Good. Take this down. Let’s see now. Armed robbery at a museum. Lone operator. Painting stolen.’

‘What painting?’

‘Doesn’t matter what painting,’ she said. ‘It never does in real life either.’

‘Oh.’

‘Ransom demand. Pay up or else. Right?’

Corrado nodded.

‘Good. Now assume this has all just happened. It’s your job to head into the records and construct a list of potential people who might have been involved. Do you know how to do that?’

‘Start with the computer, then go to the files, look for possibles for the theft itself, compare that with lists of people who are thought to have done kidnappings, etcetera.’ He sounded bored and annoyed. Flavia felt slightly sorry for him, but if she had just told him a pack of lies at least one part was true. Sitting on your rear end reading files really was now the stuff of policing.

‘Quite,’ she said brightly. ‘And I know you are going to grumble and moan about it. So the sooner you are done, and done properly, the sooner you can get back to the outside world. Off you go,’ she concluded in her best schoolmistressly tone, giving him an encouraging smile as he sloped out of her office.

That was all very well, and even cheered her up a bit, but the improving mood went into a sharp reverse shortly after she had finished her sandwich. As she brushed the crumbs carefully from her blotting pad into the wastepaper bin, her secretary – it was amazing how quickly you can get used to having a secretary – announced that a journalist was on the phone from Il Mattino. Common enough, quite a few checked in regularly to see if there was anything going on, and Flavia was very much pleasanter to them than Bottando had ever been. Ettore Bossoni was a new one to her, however; she vaguely knew the name, but he had never, as far as she was aware, had anything to do with art or theft before.

‘I was thinking,’ he said in a tone which had just a touch of insinuation about it, ‘about writing a story on security.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Yes. You know. Museums. Especially when pictures move around.’

‘You mean for exhibitions, things like that?’ Flavia asked drily.

‘Just that sort of thing. You know. Look at insurance, the way they are guarded, what might happen if anything went wrong and a picture was lost …’

‘Very good idea,’ Flavia said encouragingly. ‘Although I can’t give you chapter and verse on anything. We haven’t lost one that way for ages …’

‘Of course not,’ Bossoni said in an oily fashion. Flavia was beginning to dislike him. ‘But you must have plans about what you’d do if something like that happened.’

‘We’d run around and try to find it,’ Flavia said. ‘Same as usual. No story in that.’

‘But if there was a ransom, say.’

‘Paying ransoms’, Flavia pointed out severely, ‘is against the law.’

‘You mean you wouldn’t pay one?’

‘Me? Me personally? How could I? That’s not my department. All I would do in those circumstances is pass on the request to a higher authority. As quickly as possible, I might add, although if you quoted me on that I would strangle you. Your guess is as good as mine about how they’d react. As I say, it’s against the law.’

She got him off the phone as soon as possible, then leant back in her chair, a worried frown on her brow. He was clearly fishing. Someone had said something, but not enough for him to know what to do with it. Three possible sources: someone from the museum, someone from the prime minister’s office, or someone involved in the theft itself. Not much point speculating about which. She picked up the phone and talked to some contacts about having his phone tapped. Ten minutes later, she had the response.

No.

That was the trouble with being new at the job. She had no clout yet. No one would have refused Bottando. Although, come to think of it, no one had ever refused her before either. It put her in a bad mood which lay simmering inside her until Argyll once more proffered his well-meaning, and quite possibly sound, advice.

While she was thus unemployed, Argyll was left at home, feeling terribly left out, abandoned and slighted. On the whole he hit it off well with Flavia’s work; they had cohabited nicely for years and tolerated each other with only a few hiccups along the way. He endured the frequent absences, the preoccupations and the occasional flashes of ill-humour that it generated in her, and her work, in return, had provided him with a fairly constant diet of entertainment. He had even, so he prided himself and Flavia readily acknowledged, given material assistance on a few occasions. The three-way relationship had become a little more complex when the great promotion arrived, not least because Flavia spent more time on the drudgery of policing and less time looking for stolen works of art. She had also become more like Bottando in office, more prone to calculate risks, see dangers and watch for hidden traps. This occasionally gave her a furtive, not to say suspicious, air, and Argyll was interested to note that Bottando, relieved of his position, had become more like her – full of bright, if not always respectable, ideas.

He had been prepared for this and usually it was only an occasional problem. With this particular case, however, domestic life swiftly became all but unendurable. Information had to be winkled out of her, her usual good humour had vanished, she would not talk over, as she habitually did, even the outlines of what was going on. Quite apart from the fact that she was, in his opinion, taking an appallingly silly risk in having anything to do with it. The fact that it was her job, and that she had been brought in by the prime minister, seemed insufficient reason, in his opinion, for not ducking and diving for all she was worth.

So, while he waited for his wife to recover herself, he lay on the sofa, considering which of his own tasks he should tackle first. This used up a great deal of time which the more censorious might have considered better spent on actually doing one of them, but Argyll was particular on the matter and wanted to get it right. So his mind wandered from topic to topic. Papers. Export regulations. The weekly shopping. Back again.

And then he had an idea for Bottando’s farewell present. They would, of course, get him a conventional trinket of some sort to mark the occasion, but Argyll felt like producing something special. He liked the general, and Bottando liked him. He almost felt he’d miss the old fellow as much as Flavia would. And his idea was perfect. Not long ago they’d been to Bottando’s apartment for a drink; the first time Argyll had ever been there, as he rarely invited people. A dingy place it was, too, as Bottando’s bachelor existence had never had much space for housework. His apartment was the place he slept in, had showers in and kept his clothes in, little more. They’d only been there for twenty minutes before going to a restaurant nearby.

All the more remarkable, then, to see the little picture above the long-extinct fireplace, covering up the old stained wallpaper. The only thing in the entire place, in fact, that wasn’t strictly utilitarian; Bottando had spent much of his career recovering paintings, but never seemed to have wanted actually to have any himself.

But this one was lovely; oil on panel, 8 inches by 11, somewhat bashed and battered, and a representation of the Virgin with a baby flying around in the air just above her head. Unorthodox. Quirky. Not your average Virgin, in fact. Her face was uncommonly pretty, and the painter had added two extra characters on their knees before her, praying devoutly. It was nice, was in decent condition, and an asset to any mantelpiece. Little sign of heavy-handed restoration, though the inevitable bit of touching up was visible here and there. He guessed 1480s or thereabouts and central Italian in origin, although it was so far out of his usual area of operation he was incapable of being more precise. But, and it was an important but in his mind, it gave him a little tingle down his back.

‘What’s this?’ he’d asked, standing as close as possible.

Bottando had paused, and looked. ‘Oh, that,’ he said with a faint smile. ‘It was a present, given to me long ago.’

‘Lucky you. What is it?’

‘I’ve no idea. Nothing special in itself, I think.’

‘Where does it come from?’

Another shrug.

‘May I…?’ Argyll said, taking it off the wall before Bottando could say, no, I’d rather you didn’t…

He’d looked more closely and saw that the damage and wear and tear were more obvious. Flaking in one part, scratches in another, but not bad nevertheless. Then he’d turned it over. No useful scribbles, just a little piece of paper stuck on, with a little stamp that looked like a house, and a number – 382 – written in faded ink. Not one that Argyll knew. He’d shrugged, and put it back, and later jotted down the mark in a little notebook he kept for these things; it was one of his rare shows of organization. Useful things, owners’ marks; the only decent dictionary of them had been published three-quarters of a century previously and was so out of date and incomplete it was only occasionally helpful. Argyll had the vague notion that one day he might publish a supplement, and ensure his ever-lasting fame. ‘Is it in Argyll?’ People would ask in decades to come. Or they would, if he ever got around to doing it.

And now, nine months later, the picture and the mark came back to him. That could be his present. He could track it down. Figure out what it was, where it had come from, who had owned it. Make all the details up into a little report. A gesture, nothing more than that, but a nice thing to have, he thought. Personal. Individual. Better than the little print or watercolour the office whip-round would probably produce.

The iconographies were of little help, but a start. Virgins with airborne babies were generally taken to be an early representation of the Immaculate Conception, long before the doctrine took over the hearts and minds of the religiously-inclined. The two figures kneeling before her probably had the faces of the donors, but might well also represent Mary’s parents. And if it was an Immaculate Conception, then it had probably been painted for the Franciscans, who were early enthusiasts for the idea of Mary being born without sin. But he had no artist or even school to start with; just a guess at date and region. All he had was his note of the little stamp on the back. Great oaks from little acorns grow. Argyll phoned his old employer, Edward Byrnes, who said he’d ask around. He always said this, and rarely did anything about it.

This time it was different: within an hour Byrnes sent him a fax about an offer from a colleague for one of the pictures in his sale, saying that in his opinion the price was good and should be accepted, and added at the bottom of his note that he had tracked down the little house mark.

‘According to those people old enough to remember, it certainly refers to Robert Stonehouse, who formed a collection of some worth between the wars. This was broken up in the 1960s; I have looked through the catalogue of the sale for you, but the obvious match won’t take you much further. It is given as “Florentine school, late fifteenth century”, although considering how wayward these people can be sometimes on attributions it could be by Picasso. It sold for ninety-five pounds so we can assume that no one in London at the time rated it. Stonehouse’s villa in Tuscany went to some American university; they might know more.’

Another hour with the reference books, books of memoirs and other impedimenta of the trade brought some more details about the collection – enough at least to indicate that Byrnes’s description of the collection as being ‘of some worth’ was a trifle cool. It had, in fact, been a very good collection indeed. A standard story, such as he knew it; Grandad Stonehouse had made the money in jute or some such, son Stonehouse came over all artistic and retired to a magnificent villa in Italy, from which vantage point he not only bought his pictures but also kept a canny eye on the stock market, being one of the few to do very handsomely out of the great crash of 1929 – a calamity that caused art prices the world over to collapse, much to the delight of those collectors who’d hung on to their money.

The great and traditional cycle was completed in the third generation with the last Robert Stonehouse, who had his father’s expensive tastes but lacked his grandfather’s attention to financial detail. The result was the break-up of the collection, the dispersal of all those works of art to museums around the world, and the sale of the villa to the American university which established some form of summer camp in the building which had once echoed to the voices of the leading literary and artistic figures of Europe.

So far, so ordinary, and there was nothing in the tale which might help. The point that tickled Argyll’s interest was that the second Stonehouse, by repute, had seen himself as an artist-collector, whose accumulations were not merely an assorted lumping together of high quality bric-a-brac, but an artistic ensemble in their own right, every painting and tapestry and bronze and sculpture and majolica and print and drawing carefully acquired to form a perfect and complete harmony. An obscure achievement, certainly, one that virtually no one could ever appreciate, but a remarkable accomplishment none the less. A tragedy, in its way, that the whole thing was dispersed, but that was the point. In its way, Argyll thought loftily as he poured himself another drink and put his feet up on the sofa to contemplate his inspiration, collecting was the original performance art, transitory, fleeting and evanescent. Called into existence for one brief moment, then blown away on the winds of change as economics had their corrosive effect.

And theft. Seen in that way, theft could be presented as an aesthetic act, part of the never-ending process of breaking up and re-forming groups of pictures. Good heavens, he thought, I might even write my paper on this. Bottando’s little gift and the conference taken care of in one fell swoop. Kill two birds with one Stonehouse, so to speak. Windy, no doubt, insubstantial and vague, perhaps, but just the sort of thing that goes down well at conferences. Besides, time was running short. He really had to get on with it soon, and he had no other ideas at all.

His labours didn’t fill in any details about the little Virgin, however, although it gave him hope. If it had caught the eye of Stonehouse, there might be something to it; merely mentioning its provenance should add a fair amount to its value if Bottando ever wanted to sell it. Provenance hunting is a compulsive hobby in its own right, and once started it is difficult to stop. There is always the temptation to see if you can push the picture just a little bit further back into the past. Argyll had got back firmly only to 1966 and had pinned down only one previous owner. He still knew very little and in any case the idea for the paper had tickled his fancy. And Flavia was so preoccupied and grumpy that he would hardly be missed. Better to keep out of the way for a few days.

He thought about it, then got the number of the American university from directory inquiries, and rang them up. Charming people. Of course they had papers about Stonehouse; of course he could see them; of course they would be happy to put him up for a night if needed. Would that it was always so simple. Half an hour later he was packing his bag to be ready for an early train to Florence the next morning.

5

Corrado the trainee had done an exemplary job. Not only had he unearthed almost everyone in Italy ever involved in art theft, correlated them with those people known to have a penchant for art, then constructed another list of those connected with organized crime, and broken it down by region (on the reasonable ground that most criminals are remarkably lazy and don’t like commuting), but he had also typed it all up in two dozen typefaces, illustrated it with handsome (if largely meaningless) tables and bound it into a properly professional-looking report some forty-five pages long, complete with references to the case files. Flavia tried not to look impressed.

‘Very pretty,’ she said as drily as she could manage, tossing it on to her desk. ‘Now, if you would summarize your findings?’

‘None,’ he said with commendable directness.

‘None at all?’

‘No one in the files has the profile you need. That is, I was looking for people who work singly and have stolen something similar. I even separated that and assumed that the person who stole the painting might be acting for someone else, but still no one fits very well. I didn’t manage to check everything, of course, but … ’

Good, she thought. So he was fallible after all. A chance to be censorious. ‘Why not? Thoroughness is essential in these matters, you know. Without it …’

‘Not all the files were there,’ he interrupted, cutting the ground away from her just as she was getting into her stride. ‘A few were missing.’

Flavia ground her teeth. The sloppiness of some people was one of the few things that really made her annoyed, largely because she had once been the department’s worst offender in this regard. As a sign of her Damascene conversion, her ascent to the realm of responsibility, so to speak, her first act on moving into Bottando’s office had been to issue a severe memorandum to everyone about signing files out, putting them back afterwards and not resting coffee cups on them. The second had been to clear out all the old files from her office and send them back to the stacks herself.

The edict had as much effect as Bottando’s similarly worded commands had had on her. Great gaps continued to appear, files were placed in the wrong year or the wrong category even on the rare occasion they were put back at all, and every now and then a bellow of rage would echo through the building’s corridors as someone found a blank space where the answer to all their problems should have rested.

‘That’s your afternoon’s entertainment sorted out, then,’ she said. ‘You’d better find them. They must be somewhere in the building.’

‘Maybe. One isn’t, though.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The librarian said it’s down at the EUR. General Bottando borrowed it.’

‘Do without it, then, but find the rest.’ She had ruined his day, she knew that. The poor, crestfallen lad had hoped the splendid job he had done would have won her permission to get back to accompanying Paolo on his rounds.

‘The faster you find them, the faster you get out again,’ she added as he sloped out of the office. Then she leant back in her seat. Really she must get something for the nausea. The only reason she didn’t was her certainty that the doctor would find something wrong. The word ulcer hovered in the back of her mind; the sine qua non of all good bureaucrats. She couldn’t stand the idea. Then the phone rang. The ransom demand had shown up. And about time too.

It was classic stuff; so traditional that it caused a mental eyebrow to waggle up and down in suspicion. A telephone call to the museum – although it seemed that the poor robber had had a hard time getting anyone to listen to him initially – then a codeword to demonstrate his authenticity. Chocolates, the man had said. Fair enough; only someone who knew about the theft knew about the chocolates. Then the demand: three million dollars’ worth of mixed European currencies – how much simpler the Euro will make life for everybody in the ransom business – and a statement that the handover would be communicated tomorrow.

‘I think you should come down here, by the way,’ Macchioli said after he had relayed this information.

‘Why? There’s nothing else is there?’

‘Only this package.’

‘What package?’

‘The one a delivery man has just deposited in my office. I had to sign for it on your behalf.’

Flavia shook her head. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘It arrived five minutes ago. A courier. Don’t know where it comes from. It’s addressed to you, care of the museum.’

‘Why would anyone send me a package there?’

A silence from the other end.

‘Very well, I’ll come and collect it. While I’m on the way, could you see if you can remember anything else about the phone conversation. And get the tapes for me to listen to.’

‘What tapes?’

‘We sent someone round, remember? Just in case you had a phone call. Connected tape recorders to the phone system? Didn’t they?’

‘Oh. That.’ Macchioli sounded doubtful. A small bead of apprehensive sweat put in an appearance at the top of Flavia’s skull.

And rightly, too. For the technicians who fitted the equipment had done their job perfectly in all respects, except for trusting the switchboard operator of the museum to switch it on every morning. She had put it on for the first few days, the vastly obese woman explained, more angrily than was warranted in the circumstances, but the tape kept running out. What was she supposed to do? Didn’t people realize how tiring and stressful it was, answering phone calls all day and every day, without having to worry about changing tapes as well? It wasn’t as if she was paid very much, after all. How often, she asked rhetorically, how often had she told her supervisor that they needed at least two people a day on the switchboard? But did anyone ever listen to her …

Flavia found she wasn’t listening either, and she smiled politely at the indignant, quivering mass of blubber in front of her, and went back to Macchioli’s office.

‘No tape?’ he asked.

‘No.’

He smiled apologetically. Flavia resisted the temptation to throw something at him. ‘You’ve remembered nothing else?’

‘No. Except that we found the frame.’

‘Where?’

‘In the conservator’s office. What with all the excitement, we quite forgot we’d taken it out of the frame to give it a dust.’

‘I see. I suppose I’d better tell the prime minister about the ransom demand.’

‘Oh, I’ve already done that.’

‘When?’

‘When the call came in.’

‘And that was?’

Macchioli looked at his watch. ‘My, how time flies,’ he said. ‘A couple of hours ago.’

There was no point in mentioning that Flavia took it as a personal insult that she came so far down everybody’s list of priorities. Macchioli would, no doubt, have inquired what difference it made. And, of course, it didn’t make any difference at all.

‘Splendid,’ she said. ‘Splendid. Now, this parcel. Where is it?’

Macchioli pointed to a large, brown-paper-wrapped box in the corner. Flavia eyed it suspiciously. No one had ever sent her a bomb before, but there was always a first time. And, she supposed, a last time as well. On the other hand, why on earth would anyone send it here? She picked it up – it was surprisingly heavy, like a box of books – gave it a tentative shake, then shrugged and borrowed Macchioli’s scissors.

Inside was money. A lot of money. A huge amount of money. A gigantic amount of money. She shut the lid rapidly. How much? It wasn’t exactly hard to guess that there would be, in mixed denominations, precisely three million dollars. Nor that it had materialized as a result of Macchioli’s call to the prime minister’s office.

‘Good heavens,’ the director said, as he came across and peered over her shoulder. ‘What’s that?’ He specialized in redundant questions.

‘Well,’ Flavia explained, ‘it was my birthday a few days ago.’ She stood up and picked up the box. ‘Do you think you could have my car come into the courtyard at the back? I would hate to lose this. By the way, what’s the story of Cephalis and Procris?’

‘Pardon?’

‘The Claude. The subject?’

‘Ah. It’s Ovid, I think, although it was mainly known in the seventeenth century from the play by Nicolo da Correggio. Terribly complicated. The gods making mischief, as usual. Diana gives Cephalus a magic spear which never misses its mark; he aims at what he thinks is a deer in the forest and kills Procris by mistake. Then Diana brings her back to life again and everything ends happily. Why do you ask?’

‘Curiosity. I’ve never heard of it.’

‘Really?’ said Macchioli in surprise. ‘Now, when I was young, it used to be part of the school curriculum.’

‘What was?’

‘Mythology. Everybody had it dinned into them. Mussolini was terribly keen on it, I believe.’

‘I suppose it all changed in the sixties.’

‘I suppose,’ Macchioli said, clearly not thinking it was a change for the better. ‘Shows your age, though. I imagine everyone over forty knows it quite well.’

‘In that case,’ said Flavia, ‘I’ll stop looking for young thieves. Except that I don’t imagine the subject mattered to him much.’

6

The Rome to Florence bit was easy enough; simply a matter of going to the station, getting on the train and staring at the countryside getting ever more beautiful as the hours rolled by. An empty train as well, but not what it was. Argyll was getting old enough to feel nostalgic on the slightest pretext, and the replacement of the ancient, green wagons, which had once lumbered along stuffed with redundant conscripts, with shiny, new, fast and expensive super-trains offering the dubious delights of airline comfort made him sigh for a simpler age.

On the other hand, it was a much faster way of getting there; he hardly had time to read the newspaper before the train slowed down and pulled into Florence. Then the simpler age came back with a vengeance. Whatever innovations modernity has brought in its wake, they have, as yet, had little impact on the Florentine bus system which, though frighteningly thorough, is also incomprehensible to all except long-term residents.

So Argyll spent the next forty-five minutes shuttling between the dozens of stops outside the station in the hope that one driver would eventually admit to going in the right direction. Even when this hurdle was surmounted, all was not yet complete: the bus dropped him deep in the countryside at the junction of one small road and another even smaller, with no signposts and no one to ask. Just the freshness of the country in spring, before the terrible Tuscan summer has parched the landscape.

Simply being out of Rome was a remarkable tonic; he loved the place dearly, but there was no denying that it could be a touch smelly on occasion. And you only noticed the noise when it wasn’t there any longer, when all there was to hear was the lightest of breezes in the tall cypress trees and the sound of those few birds that had not yet been shot and eaten.

Very agreeable; but he couldn’t stand breathing in the fresh country air all day. He had a choice of two routes: to walk on along the road the bus had travelled, or to go down the little road to the right. Instinct told him to take the little path, so as was his wont he chose the other, on the grounds that his instincts in these matters were invariably wrong. Then, bag in hand and beginning to overheat, he trudged along for half a mile with not a house or a person in sight, until he paused to get his breath back. Only spring but it was already warm, and he was English. Anything more than tepid and he began to melt.

Silly to go back, daft to go forward. No phone. He cast around for inspiration, but there was none within reach, so he trudged round a corner and instead found salvation in the unlikely form of a man in a full three-piece pinstripe suit staring quizzically at an old Volkswagen with the front bonnet up.

‘Excuse me …’ said Argyll, in Italian.

‘Damnable thing,’ said this man in English, paying him no attention at all.

‘Pardon?’

‘Damn car. Damn people. D’ye see? Someone’s stolen the engine. Stop for a minute, come back, and it’s gone. No wonder it doesn’t go.’

Argyll looked in. True enough. No engine. ‘Isn’t it in the back?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘The back. That’s where they usually are.’

The man, tall and ramrod-straight with grey wispy hair and a look of astonishment on his face, gave up staring into the empty luggage compartment and turned to Argyll properly. ‘You a mechanic?’

‘No. But if you don’t believe me, have a look.’

Now ever more perplexed, he did as he was told, marched round to the back and lifted the rear compartment. ‘Good lor’,’ he said. ‘How extraordinary. Well, well.’

Then he turned back to Argyll. ‘How lucky of me to come across a mechanic. Perhaps you would be so kind as to get it going for me?’

‘I’m not a mechanic.’

‘You clearly have a way with these things, though.’

‘Well, hardly …’

‘Off you go, then.’

So Argyll did what he always did with recalcitrant cars: that is, make sure there was petrol, then tug every wire to see if any was loose. None was, but he must have done something, as the machine obligingly cemented his reputation as a wonder-worker by starting the first time he tried. His new-found companion was open-mouthed with admiration.

‘I won’t ask how you did that,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t understand, anyway. But my thanks, none the less.’

Argyll looked modest about his expertise. ‘Perhaps in return you could do me a small favour,’ he said. ‘Do you know a place called the Villa Buonaterra?’

The slightest of hesitations, and the smallest look of doubt crept across the older man’s face. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do. Why do you ask?’

‘I’m meant to be going there. But I can’t find it. The bus driver said he’d drop me off at the nearest stop, but I don’t know whether he did or not.’

‘Two hundred metres, turning on the left.’ He turned away abruptly, got into the little car and drove off without so much as a word of thanks. Then stopped, reversed back to his original place, and wound down the window.

‘Ungracious,’ he said sternly. ‘Always a fault of mine. Come and have a drink this evening, if you are free. A mile further on. My little cottage. Just before the village.’

Then he drove off again. Argyll watched him go, feeling that it was one invitation he would probably be willing to pass up.

Had he also mentioned that, although a mere hop to the entrance gate, it was a further mile down the drive to the house itself, then Argyll would at least have been prepared. As it was, it took another half hour before he arrived, tired and dusty, at one of the most comfortably handsome bits of Renaissance architecture whose door bell it had ever been his privilege to ring.

As he waited for an answer, he stood under the entrance portico between the columns of crumbling ochre stucco, grateful for the cool of the shade. Ahead of him was the gravel driveway, lined with lichen-covered statues, to the side the formal garden, laid out Italian-style, geometrical and disciplined, but with none of the severity and bleakness that the French version introduced later. Beyond were the trees, and he could just hear the slightest rustling of the leaves in the light breeze. Buonaterra, good land, indeed. If he had a lot of money, he would also live in a place like this, and fill it with the loveliest things he could find. A huge amount of money, rather: back in the 1920s when Stonehouse was buying, he was competing against only a few odd museums and a handful of eccentrics like himself prepared to lay out good money on fifteenth-century Madonnas and the like. Now the competition was internet billionaires and multinational corporations. He didn’t know how many items of the Stonehouse collection, which once hung on these walls, were now hidden away in darkened bank vaults, but he suspected it was probably a fair proportion.

So now the pictures were owned by the money men, and the villa, once the country hideaway of the Florentine nobility, was overrun by students playing with their frisbees on the lawns. Progress with a price.

His air of melancholy peacefulness was just getting into its stride when the door opened and the soft accents of the American south brought him back to the new millennium. Half an hour later he had unpacked his bags, washed and wandered back down to find his new-found friend who had made it all possible.

‘How many students do you have here?’ he asked curiously, gazing around at what, to all intents and purposes, resembled a deserted country house, decorated with fine furniture, with not a trace of the institutional about it. He had imagined the wafting smell of boiled cabbage, the walls washed down in battleship grey, and the distinct signs of overuse everywhere. Nothing of the like to be seen.

‘Virtually none,’ replied his host, whose name was James Kershaw. ‘I don’t know why it is, but the chance of several months lounging in the Tuscan countryside doesn’t seem to carry much appeal to our students. Although I suspect that the faculty who come every year do their best to discourage anyone from trying it. The whole operation,’ he continued, leading the way on to the terrace at the rear which was laid out for lunch, ‘seems to have been lost down some administrative black hole. It was bought with a donation and can’t be sold again, thanks to the eccentricity of the donor. The Italian department has shrunk in recent years and we insist that no one comes without speaking Italian. So apart from a few graduate students, we only get half a dozen a year. And they’ve not come yet.’

‘So the rest of the year you live like Renaissance gentry.’

‘That’s it. Someone will notice and put a stop to it eventually, but I intend to enjoy it as much as possible while it lasts. Champagne?’ he asked, before adding: ‘Not real champagne, of course. If eight people got through a case of champagne a week, we might draw attention to ourselves.’

Argyll agreed that restraint was perhaps wise in the circumstances.

‘I’m pleased to see you. It’s pleasant to have some company in our exile here. What do you want, exactly?’

‘I have to write a paper. It’s got to be done in a couple of weeks, and I want to use the Stonehouse collection as the central point of it all. And I want to look for a picture that used to be here. You did buy all his papers when you took this place over?’

‘Oh, yes. No one else wanted them. Twentieth-century collecting was not a hot topic among the art historical fraternity then. Still isn’t. I don’t recall anyone ever looking at them. What’s the picture you’re after?’

‘A Madonna. I think it’s a form of Immaculate Conception.’

‘By?’

‘By the Master of the Buonaterra Immaculate Conception. That is, I don’t know.’

‘And you want to find out. Are you a dealer?’

A loaded question. Confessing to being a dealer in academic circles is about as respectable as confessing to having academic interests at a gathering of dealers. You get nods of understanding, and brave smiles, but the air of disdain which enters the conversation is quite unmistakable. Neither entirely sympathizes with the other, as the scholars consider dealers to be interested only in money, while dealers hold that the academics are vague and inefficient. It is generally quite the other way around, but no matter. Argyll was instinctively reluctant to confess his shameful past, and so babbled instead.

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