by LJ Ross
More voices, now. More people dressed in uniform, then a plastic mask around his face, pumping air back into his body.
* * *
Predictably, Ryan refused a stretcher.
It had taken ten minutes to bring him back to full consciousness, back from what he knew to have been the very brink of death. His throat burned with the effort of breathing, let alone talking, but he could still be understood by the sheer force of his steely-eyed glare.
Sergeant Banotti had been true to her word, arriving at the scene only moments behind Anna.
“You need to go to the hospital for a check-up,” she told him, and Anna happened to agree. “Rest assured, we will find whoever did this to you.”
“Know…did this…” Ryan managed.
Banotti strained to hear him, subconsciously raising a hand to her own neck as she caught sight of the angry red line against his throat and the deep finger marks that were already blooming into vivid bruises.
“I’ve got officers combing the building,” she said. “We’ll take a full statement from you, when you’re ready.”
“Arrest…him,” Ryan tried again, unable to understand why Banotti hadn’t already slapped Armstrong in handcuffs.
For their part, Anna and Sergeant Banotti knew it could not have been him, so failed to understand the urgency.
“Let’s go to the hospital,” Anna tried again to persuade him.
Ryan looked between the pair of them and shook his head, standing up suddenly to make for the door leading back into the corridor. A couple of police officers looked across in surprise and moved to stop him.
“Ryan, it’s not a good idea for you to return there,” Banotti told him. “There has been enough drama for one evening.”
“Have you…checked?” he looked between them in frustration, wanting to know if they’d checked amongst the guests for any sign of Nathan Armstrong. Surely, somebody would have noticed his absence?
“Checked for what? The assailant? Yes, Inspector Ricci is on his way to the main entrance now, he will conduct discreet enquiries—”
Discreet? Ryan thought, incredulously. After what he’d just been through, he wanted Armstrong’s head served up on a platter.
Anna watched him with worried eyes, noting the way Ryan gripped the edge of the door for support, his other hand rubbing the back of his neck to ease the pain that was growing more intense with every passing minute.
She turned to Banotti.
“We’ll go home,” she said, quietly. “I’ll get a doctor to come out and check him over.”
Banotti nodded.
“We’ll keep looking and come by in the morning.”
Physically and emotionally exhausted herself, Anna walked across the room and simply took Ryan’s hand in hers.
“I nearly lost you, this evening,” she said. “I won’t lose you again.”
Ryan needed no further bidding. Everything inside him screamed for vengeance, to find the man who had almost robbed him of life, but Anna was right. He was physically exhausted, his body still racked by shock and he could already feel the effects of the strong anti-inflammatory drugs on his addled mind.
Tomorrow was a new day and, besides, Armstrong would be ruined, after this.
Slowly, clutching his head, Ryan turned towards the front door of the apartment and saw a figure standing in the doorway.
Armstrong.
He had removed his mask and the gaudy gold and silver party piece dangled from his finger as he struck an affronted pose.
“How dare you?” he demanded, of the room at large. “The police require a warrant before entering a person’s private residence!”
Ryan could hardly believe his ears.
Less than twenty minutes earlier, the man had almost killed him, almost choked the life out of him, and he had the audacity to return to the scene to front it out?
He saw red.
Illness and trauma pushed angrily aside, Ryan broke free of Anna’s hand and crossed the room in seconds, hauling Armstrong up onto his tiptoes and slamming him against the nearest wall.
“You’re…finished,” he choked out, before two of Banotti’s men pulled him away.
“I couldn’t make that out,” Armstrong said, tugging his tuxedo jacket back into place. “Got a frog in your throat, Ryan?”
Ryan bared his teeth, surging forward as if to go at him again.
“Well, sergeant, I think I will press charges, this time,” Armstrong turned casually to address Banotti, who stood nearby. “I assume one of these officers can take down my statement and will bear witness to what just happened. As an innocent, law-abiding citizen, the last thing I expect when I return home is to be attacked by the very people one expects to protect.”
Banotti opened her mouth to say something but Anna was quicker.
“On that topic, I wonder if one of your officers might be able to take down my statement,” she said, very calmly. “As you can see from the bruising on my wrist, I was assaulted earlier this evening by Mr Armstrong and would like to press charges against him.”
The look that passed over Armstrong’s face was unpleasant.
“That’s nothing more than a desperate, ridiculous lie,” he shot back. “Nobody will believe it.”
“Where did the alleged incident occur, Mrs Ryan?”
“In the Niobe Room of the Uffizi Gallery. I happened to notice at least one CCTV camera nearby, so I would be surprised if it didn’t capture the incident in its entirety. It will be embarrassing for me, when the story is reported, but at least I’m just a humble university lecturer. It would be much worse if I were, let’s say, a minor celebrity...”
Banotti turned back to Armstrong and stuck her tongue in her cheek.
“And, ah, you also wish to make a statement, Mr Armstrong?”
His eyes swept over Anna and she felt a jolt of fear that was purely primal, a recognition that there may be repercussions for the challenge she had just laid down.
“No,” he drawled, at length. “I suppose we can put it down to a misunderstanding on both sides.”
Anna gave Sergeant Banotti a short nod to indicate the matter was closed.
Ryan was released, and he walked across the room, past Armstrong, past his wife and the police, to stand beside the bed. At his feet, the end of a length of kettle cord was just visible.
“Bag this,” he said, and, sweeping his gaze around the room, turned to look directly at Armstrong. “Swab everything.”
With that, he reached for Anna’s hand again.
CHAPTER 30
“I could get used to this.”
Phillips was just polishing off his fifth cannoli of the evening as they sat around the marble breakfast bar in what was, to all intents and purposes, Magda’s kitchen at the Villa Lucia.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” MacKenzie warned him. “The closest thing you’ll be getting to homemade pastries is a multi-pack of rice cakes, from now on.”
Phillips licked the sugar off his thumb.
“Wouldn’t mind a dip in that pool tomorrow,” he said, spinning around on the bar stool like a kid on the night before Christmas. “D’ you think it’s heated?”
“It doesn’t matter, since we’re not here to splash about sunbathing. I thought you said you hated sunshine holidays, anyway?”
MacKenzie gave him a searching look and Phillips cleared his throat.
“Aye, well, I do. But, since we’re here, y’ nah, we might as well make the best of it.”
She glanced around the opulent kitchen.
“Right enough, Frank. Since we’re in this hell hole, better make the best of a bad lot, eh?”
“Make do and mend,” he agreed, massaging the back of his hand as she slapped it away from the platter of cannoli.
Just then, they heard a car pulling into the driveway outside and, a moment later, the sound of muted voices and footsteps in the hallway.
“Magda?”
“In the kitchen!” she called out, with a wink for Phi
llips and MacKenzie, who prepared to surprise their friend.
But their smiles fell into lines of shock and dismay when Ryan stepped into the kitchen, his skin almost the same shade as the marble floor against the black suit he still wore, and his neck battered and torn.
For his part, he took one look at the tableau and broke into a lopsided grin.
“Might have known you’d be enjoying yourselves, while I’m being strangled half to death,” he wheezed.
Phillips was the first to recover.
“Aye, and I might have known you’d be getting yourself into scrapes without me here to keep you on the straight and narrow.”
He slipped off his stool and walked over to greet his friend, pausing awkwardly for a second before pulling the younger man into his bear-like embrace.
“Com’ ’ere, y’ daft bugger,” he muttered, blinking away sudden, unexpected tears before anybody should see them. “Looks like we landed in the nick of time.”
* * *
It was almost midnight by the time they settled in the drawing room, where Phillips built a fire. The heatwave that had swept through most of mainland Europe had finally retreated, making way for more usual wintry Mediterranean temperatures.
“Looks like we brought the weather with us,” he joked.
“It’s still warmer than Northumberland,” MacKenzie said, wriggling her toes in the hope of a foot rub. “But we didn’t come to talk about the weather. We came to see how you’re getting on.”
Ryan sank onto the sofa opposite, having changed into a high-necked sweater to hide the worst of the damage, including the brace the doctor had insisted he wear.
“You mean, Morrison sent you?”
“She sent in the cavalry to help, that’s all,” Phillips wanted that to be clear from the start. “Seems some bigwig in the Rome office got in touch with her and started making noises about reining you in.”
“Oh?” Ryan was amused by the thought. “I must be making them nervous. I wonder why.”
“Could be something to do with the fact you barged into Armstrong’s place without a warrant and started making noises about him being a deranged killer,” Phillips said, scratching the side of his nose. “Just because it happens to be true, doesn’t mean everybody’s convinced. The bloke’s a bloody celebrity and he’s using it.”
“The fact is, there’s no way that the person who tried to strangle you in Armstrong’s apartment could actually have been Armstrong,” Anna said, tucking her legs up onto the sofa as she settled beside Ryan. “The timings are all wrong.”
He watched the flames flickering in the grate and then nodded his agreement.
“Whoever it was had a similar build, wore a black tuxedo—although, so did every man in the room—and wore the same ridiculous mask.”
“Are you sure?” MacKenzie had to ask.
“We both saw him—or her—slip inside the corridor through the Uffizi doorway,” Anna said. “I saw the mask, too.”
“If the person inside Armstrong’s apartment was somebody else, it changes everything,” Ryan said, reaching for the cup of soothing honeyed tea Magda had left for him, to ease his throat.
He took a long sip, then chose his words with care.
“To gain access to the apartment, they’d have to know there was a link to the Vasari Corridor, and that Armstrong was using it.”
“Armstrong knew it was in use,” Anna agreed. “He almost said as much, when he cornered me in the gallery.”
“So, this second person needed to know that Armstrong was using it,” Ryan said. “They also needed to know the mask Armstrong planned to wear tonight, either to buy a second one or have it copied, to look like him. All of this suggests long-term planning, well ahead of the party. This isn’t a last-minute, opportunistic grab.”
“But, if that’s the case, how could they have known you would follow them down the corridor?” Phillips asked.
Ryan’s lips twisted.
“They knew I would follow Armstrong and that we would make the link with the Vasari Corridor. That leads me onto another important point: the postcards. What if—just if—Armstrong didn’t send them after all? What if somebody else did? The fact Armstrong was arrested months ago was reported in the national press, although his lawyer managed to get a gagging order pretty quickly. Still, word travels. What if this second person found out about Armstrong and the fact he hadn’t been charged? Easy enough to find out the name of the investigating team, or to find out that I hadn’t let the matter drop, if you talk to the right people.”
Ryan looked amongst their faces, swallowing the pain in his throat.
“Sending me those postcards was a taunting gesture, one I mistook as coming from Armstrong, but they might have come from somebody who wanted me to follow the trail of breadcrumbs. They wanted me here, on this day, in this city.”
“What about the DNA on the postcards?” MacKenzie said. “How would they manage it?”
“Just because Armstrong is a killer, doesn’t mean he killed those people,” Anna murmured, taking the words out of Ryan’s mouth. “It could be that somebody else is responsible for Luc Bernard and Riccardo Spatuzzi going missing.”
“It never really struck me as Armstrong’s style,” Phillips admitted. “Y’ know, sending postcards. Oh, I know he sent that one to Duncan Gray’s mother, but that was years ago, to cover his tracks. It isn’t like him to send postcards to the man he knows wants his arse in jail. If anything, he’d want to protect himself and put distance between you. He cares about his reputation.”
“Nothing is more important to him,” Ryan agreed. “So, somebody else brought me in. The question is, why?”
“Why try to kill you in Armstrong’s apartment?” MacKenzie said. “Why set it up so that it looks like Armstrong’s responsible?”
“To frame him,” Anna said, and the other woman nodded.
“It’s the second time,” Phillips said. “The first time with that Italian lass—”
“Martina,” Ryan murmured.
“Aye, Martina. What if that was done for the same reason—to set Armstrong up?”
“If our theory is right, then it goes back further than that,” Ryan said. “Luc, Riccardo and whoever else we haven’t found yet, all of them might have been attempts to stage a murder implicating Armstrong.”
“Why wouldn’t he report it?” Anna asked. “Why wouldn’t he call the police and report a body found in his place? Why would he hide it and pretend to know nothing about it?”
Firelight danced in Ryan’s eyes as he looked around the room at the small collection of people he could trust.
“He didn’t report it because he has something to hide, something that implicates him. We already know what he’s capable of,” Ryan said. “What if this other person knows it, too, and wants to unmask him? It’s much easier to plant a body than to wait around trying to catch Armstrong in the act. They wouldn’t have any idea when he might strike next, and he’s careful—unlike them,” he tagged on.
“It’s the same MO,” Phillips said, suddenly.
“What’s that?”
“They used a kettle cord to try to strangle you this evening and you told us Martina Calari was strangled in a similar way. That seems quite a specific choice,” he said. “There are plenty of easier ways to do somebody in.”
“You’re right,” MacKenzie said. “The murders up at Kielder were committed in a variety of ways, by reference to what Armstrong had at hand, whereas that’s two for two. I wonder why they like a kettle cord, so much?”
“Who knows what drives these fruitcakes,” Phillips said, with his usual sage wisdom. “Probably has a grudge against kettles, as well as people.”
That gave them a much-needed laugh.
“What we really need to know is, why do they hate Armstrong so much?” Anna said, after a pause. “What’s driving them to do all of this? It doesn’t seem as simple as showing him to be a killer because if they have any dirt on him, they could just come to the police,
again. This seems like something more deep-rooted, like a vendetta.”
“Why else choose the twentieth anniversary of his most famous work, unless the object is to cause maximum damage to Armstrong’s reputation?” Ryan said. “It must be personal.”
“It’s a killer hunting a killer,” Phillips said, casting concerned eyes over his friend. “And you’re caught up in it all.”
“Better me than another young mother,” Ryan said softly, thinking of the baby girl who would now grow up without one of her parents.
There was another long pause while the four people in the room watched the orange flames licking at the logs on the fire, considering what might drive a man to murder and how to catch him when he did.
“The biggest task now is finding out who this unknown person is,” Ryan said, breaking the silence. “Armstrong will never tell us, even presuming he knows himself.”
“Must have been a right pain in the backside for him, coming home to find bodies lying around,” Phillips remarked, in a flash of dark humour. “Must have really put his nose out of joint.”
Ryan didn’t answer directly.
“I wonder if he’s running scared, or whether it’s just one more person to find and put down?” he said. “Nathan Armstrong doesn’t feel emotions the same way we do; he doesn’t experience fear like we do, or feel scared of what the consequences might be if he’s discovered. He only cares about his persona, the careful ideal he’s woven for the past forty-odd years.”
“I think the only person who understood Armstrong’s motivations before us, was the person who’s trying to ruin him,” MacKenzie put in. “They understood, long before we did, that the best way to bring him down was to attack the only thing he cares about, which is himself.”
There were nods around the room.
“But who is Kaiser Sose?” Phillips said, earning himself an eye-roll from his future wife. “What?” he shrugged. “It’s from that movie, The Usual Suspects. I’ve waited years for the opportunity to say that during an investigation.”
“What’s next on the list?” Ryan asked.
