The Mozart Conspiracy

by Scott Mariani

  ‘How did they know we were there?’ she asked softly.

  He didn’t reply.

  She seemed to read his thoughts. ‘It was my fault, wasn’t it? They were tapping his phone.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. I tried to call him too. Don’t think about it. You need to rest.’

  ‘But I gave my name,’ she went on. ‘You told me to keep it quiet, but I used it. I didn’t listen to you, and now because of me that poor old man is dead.’

  ‘You didn’t pull the trigger,’ he said.

  ‘I might as well have.’ She sighed. ‘Who are these people? They’re everywhere.’ She looked up at him with frightened eyes. ‘They’re going to kill us, too. I know it.’

  He reassured her and his voice was calm, but his mind was working hard and fast. They’d come about twenty kilometres from Arno’s place. There was no way anyone could have followed them, and they were safe for the moment. But they wouldn’t be safe for long, and he had no idea where to go next. They still didn’t know where the letter was. Oliver’s trail seemed to have gone cold.

  Arno’s words echoed in his mind. It has gone home. He’d put the letter somewhere safe-but where? Where could be home to the Mozart letter? Maybe the place it had been written. Austria?

  Leigh slept eventually, her fingers still curled around the base of her empty wine glass as her body rose and fell gently. Ben took the glass away, covered her with a blanket and watched over her for a while as he sat on the other bed and finished the second bottle of wine with the last of his cigarettes. His mind was a swirl. All questions. No answers.

  It was after eleven thirty when he stepped outside to clear his head in the cold night air. The frost was hard under his feet, making the grass crunch. He looked up into the night sky, orientating himself with the North Star out of long habit.

  Across from the row of cabins, on the far side of the moonlit yard, was a range of stone outbuildings, stables and ramshackle corrugated-iron sheds. A dog barked in the distance. One of the sheds had a light on in its dusty window, and Ben could hear the metallic sounds of someone working with tools inside. He approached and peered through a gap in the rust-streaked corrugated sheets. The shed was a rough workshop filled with battered farm equipment and racks of tools. A young curly-haired man was working on an old Fiat Strada, clattering around under the bonnet.

  Ben walked round to the open doorway. ‘Ciao,’ he said. ‘I’m Steve.’

  The young man turned. He was a younger version of Gino Rossi, about nineteen or twenty.

  Ben pointed at the car. ‘Problems?’ he asked in Italian.

  ‘Ciao, Steve. Sandro.’ Sandro grinned and waggled a spark-plug wrench to show the foreigner. ‘Changing the plugs, that’s all. I’m selling her, and I want her to go well.’ He finished tightening up the plugs, replaced the caps and slammed the rusty bonnet shut, then walked around to the open door and fired up the engine. Ben listened. There were no unhealthy rattles and the exhaust note was clean. No gaskets gone, not sucking air. No blue smoke.

  ‘How much are you asking?’ he said.

  Sandro wiped his hands on his jeans. ‘She’s old, but good. Say a thousand and a half.’

  Ben took cash from his pocket. ‘Is she ready for a run right now?’ he asked.

  He drove quietly out of the farmyard and up the rutted drive, then turned right to follow the winding country road back the way they’d come. The yellowed reflectors of the old Strada picked out the lopsided road-signs and the landmarks he remembered from earlier. He passed the forest where they’d dumped the farm truck, and wished he had a weapon.

  He hated going back to Arno’s place. It was tactically sloppy and possibly dangerous. But it was the only way. He bitterly regretted not having pressed the old man to say more about where he’d hidden the letter. He was making too many mistakes. Was the damn thing even worth finding? Maybe not, he thought, but clutching at straws was his only option right now. He had to hope he was clutching at the right one.

  It was half past midnight by the time he found Arno’s villa. The front gates were set back from the road, across a neat border. He slowed. The driveway and gardens were lit up with the swirling lights of police cars and two fire engines.

  As he swore and accelerated past the gates he looked past the vehicles at the house.

  It wasn’t there any more. Hardly a wall was still standing. The villa was a levelled mess of blackened rubble and smoking timber, the collapsed roof lying like the twisted spine of a giant carcass, tiles and charred woodwork and smashed windows scattered over a wide circle.

  The fire had obviously raged a long time. The crews were calling it a night, packing up their equipment. There was nothing left worth saving.

  Ben drove on, thinking about the options left open now. Either the blaze in the study had spread, or someone had made sure the place was thoroughly torched. It was more likely to be the latter. Whoever they were, these people liked their tracks to be covered. And fire was the best cleanser.

  After a kilometre or so he turned into the farm entrance and followed the bumping, stony lane as far as the deserted yard where they’d stolen the truck earlier that day. Other than the shattered barn, there was no visible trace of what had happened there.

  He turned off the engine and stepped out. He waited in the dark for a while. There was nobody around. He searched the buildings by the thin beam of his Mini Maglite but found nothing, not a single shell case left uncollected. They’d even cleaned the blood off the tool-shed door where he’d nailed the man to the frame. The nails had been pliered out too, leaving four neat holes in the wood.

  There was a sudden movement behind him, and a crash of something falling. He whirled around in the darkness, every muscle tensing.

  The black cat leapt down from its vantage point on a high shelf, landed next to the old nail tin it had knocked over, and darted out through a hole in the planking.

  Ben cut across the dark farm and found the gap in the crumbled stone wall leading into Arno’s rambling parkland. He stayed back among the trees, watching the fire crews leave and the police strolling up and down the sides of the gutted villa. He knew he was wasting his time here. It was worthless.

  He turned to go, heading back for the gap in the wall, picking his way between the slender tree trunks by moonlight. A cloud passed across the face of the moon, casting the woods in shadow.

  He stopped. Lying among the leaves, half-hidden behind a mossy knot of tree roots, a man’s body was lying crumpled and grey on the ground with his arms flung out to the sides.

  There was no head on the body.

  He waited, perfectly still, watching it until the cloud passed and the moonlight brightened. He went over to it and nudged it with his foot. It wasn’t a body. It was something the clean-up team had missed.

  Arno’s tweed jacket. He remembered Leigh dropping it as they ran across the grounds.

  He picked it up. It felt cold and damp, and it was empty apart from an oblong shape in the left inside pocket.

  He fished it out. It was a slim wallet.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Her voice sounded frightened in the darkness.

  ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’ He shut the door of the cabin behind him.

  ‘Where were you?’

  He told her.

  ‘You went back?’

  ‘The place has been torched, Leigh. There’s nothing left. But I found something.’ He held up the wallet. ‘It’s Arno’s.’

  Leigh sat up in bed as he flipped on a sidelight. He sat on the edge of the bed next to her and she brushed the thick black hair out of her eyes. ‘Where did you find it?’ she asked sleepily.

  ‘Where you dropped his jacket, in the woods,’ he said. He opened the slim calf-leather wallet and unzipped one of the internal pockets. ‘There’s not much here,’ he said. ‘A library membership card, out of date. A couple of old cinema tickets. Fifteen euros in cash. And this.’ He took out a small slip of paper and showed it to her.

  She took
it and looked at him quizzically. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s a receipt.’

  ‘The Museo Visconti in Milan,’ she said, reading the crumpled print.

  ‘Ever heard of it?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘This is an acknowledgement of something Arno donated to the museum,’ he said. ‘The receipt doesn’t say what it is, but it’s dated last January, just a few days after Oliver’s death.’

  She looked up from the slip of paper. ‘You think—’

  ‘The letter has gone to Milan? I don’t know,’ he said. ‘We’ll soon find out. Get some sleep. We’re moving on at five.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The kid had been right about the car. It was old, but it was dependable. It took them to Milan in a little over four hours. On the way they stopped at an autostrada service station where Leigh picked out a headscarf and a pair of wide sunglasses, new jeans and a warm jacket.

  The Milan traffic was insane, and it was mid-morning by the time they found the Museo Visconti, an imposing eighteenth-century museum of music in the city suburbs. Its high porticoes overlooked a walled garden away from the street and the traffic rumble.

  They went inside and breathed the old museum smell of must and wood polish. The place was almost empty, with just a few middle-aged visitors strolling quietly around the exhibits, talking to each other in subdued voices. The parquet floors were varnished and waxed to a slippery mirror sheen. Classical music played softly in the background. The doorways to each room were flanked by thick velvet curtains. The security guard on patrol looked about eighty.

  They walked from room to room under the sweeping gaze of cameras, past displays of period brass instruments and a collection of magnificently ornate antique harps. Ben peered through a doorway into a large gallery space filled with old oil portraits of famous composers. ‘Nothing in here,’ he said. ‘Just a bunch of dead men in powdered wigs.’

  ‘Philistine,’ Leigh whispered at him.

  From the main hall a curved flight of wooden stairs led up to the next floor. Ben went up, and Leigh followed. The creaking stairs took them to a long room whose walls were lined with tall glass cabinets displaying period opera costumes and other exhibits. Leigh stopped at one of them and read the small brass plaque. ‘This is the gown that Caruso wore in his first ever public appearance in 1894,’ she read out. She walked along and stopped at another. ‘Wow. Look. The dress that Maria Callas wore when she sang Norma in Milan in ’57. Incredible. How come I never knew about this place?’

  ‘Leigh. Please. We’re not here to gape at some old dress. The letter, remember?’

  Back in the entrance foyer, the old security guard shook his head. ‘We do not have any letters or documents.’

  ‘Is there another Museo Visconti?’ Ben asked. He knew what the answer would be.

  The old man shook his head again, like a mournful bloodhound. ‘I have been here for fifty years,’ he said. ‘There is only one.’

  They walked away.

  ‘I had a feeling this wouldn’t lead anywhere,’ Leigh said.

  ‘But Arno donated something. The receipt proves it.’

  They walked down a long corridor. On either side were rows of antique violins, violas and cellos behind glass. ‘He was a collector,’ she said. ‘He could have donated anything. A painting, an instrument.’ She pointed at the violins behind the glass. ‘Could have been one of these, for all we know.’

  He stopped. ‘We’re idiots.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s gone home,’ he said.

  She stared at him in confusion.

  ‘It’s gone home,’ he repeated. ‘Arno said the letter had gone home. It’s gone back to where it came from. He didn’t mean the museum itself. It’s never been here before.’

  ‘We’re in the wrong place?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ he said, looking up and down the corridor. ‘We need to find the piano exhibit.’

  Understanding dawned on her face. ‘Shit, I think you might be right.’

  ‘Would you recognize your dad’s old piano if you saw it?’

  ‘You bet I would.’

  Their footsteps rang fast off the parquet as they hurried back up the corridor to find the keyboard instruments section. Through an archway to the side, flanked with red drapes, they found it. The big room was full of old keyboard instruments, pianos, spinets and harpsichords, all highly restored and gleaming. They stood on plinths, cordoned off with DO NOT TOUCH signs on them.

  Ben walked in among them. ‘Can you see it anywhere?’ he asked.

  ‘This is it,’ she said, pointing. She ran over to the old instrument near the window. It was big and ornate. Its woodwork gleamed dully under the museum lights. She circled it. ‘Christ, last time I saw this it was half restored, all stripped down to the bare wood and bits chipped off everywhere. But it’s definitely the one.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’d know it anywhere.’

  Ben studied the piano carefully, running his eye over the heavily varnished surface, the mother-of-pearl inlays and the gleaming ivory and ebony keys. Over the top of the keyboard, in gold letters, was the maker’s name: Josef Bohm, Vienna. It had three intricately carved legs, two at the front and one holding up the long tail at the back. It was about twelve feet long, solid and heavy. ‘So remind me,’ he said. ‘Which leg was hollow?’

  Leigh put her finger to the corner of her mouth, thinking. ‘It was one of the front ones.’

  ‘Left or right?’

  ‘Right, I think. No, left.’

  Ben leaned over the security cordon, but he couldn’t get close enough to examine the piano properly. He glanced around. There was nobody in sight. He could hear the footsteps of the old security guard pacing through one of the adjacent rooms.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Definitely the right front leg.’

  ‘You don’t sound too certain.’

  ‘I’m certain.’

  Mounted on a bracket high in a corner, the small black eye of a security camera was watching them. Ben stepped away from the plinth and looked casual as he slipped into the camera’s blind spot and along the wall beneath it. He looked up. Then he walked back to the piano and stepped straight over the cordon. ‘The camera’s useless,’ he said to Leigh with a smile. ‘It’s almost as old as these pianos, and half the wires are disconnected at the back.’

  ‘That’s so typically Italian,’ Leigh replied.

  ‘Don’t knock it.’ He knelt down next to the piano and examined the front right leg up close. The instrument had been carefully restored and was in such perfect condition that it was hard to believe it was almost two centuries old. Ben couldn’t see anything. But then his eye picked out a small crack in the varnish three-quarters of the way up the leg. He scratched with his nail. Tiny scales of varnish flaked away to reveal what seemed to be a hairline saw-mark. He scratched a bit more. The saw-line extended right round the leg, but it was barely visible. Had someone been at the instrument since the last restoration, removed the hollowed-out leg, replaced it and then painted over the join with clear varnish?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Belgium

  The same day

  Philippe Aragon had been reading policy documents and signing letters at his study desk all morning, and the stack of papers at his elbow was a foot high. He liked to work from home whenever he could. He’d designed and built the house himself, back in his architect days. The Aragon family home near Brussels was simple and modest by his father’s billionaire standards, not at all like the fabulous chateau in which Philippe had spent his childhood. But Philippe was tired of opulence. Opulence was anyone’s for the money. It meant nothing.

  As he worked, his eyes drifted from time to time to the framed pictures that sat on his desk. He had a whole collection of them, clustered together. His parents, his wife Colette. Vincent, his boy, riding the bicycle he’d had for his tenth birthday. Delphine, the
ir beautiful four-year-old daughter, swinging on her swing with a glittering smile. And Roger. Dear old Roger.

  Philippe was suddenly filled with sadness all over again as he thought about him. He laid down his pen and picked up the framed picture, studying it. His old friend and mentor looked up at him. He’d had such kind eyes. It was still hard to accept what had happened. Or to understand it.

  To the political world, the man in the photo had been the Swiss-French former politician and highly respected statesman Roger Bazin. To Philippe, who had known him all his life, he was like an uncle. He’d taught Philippe a great deal, even though their political stance had radically diverged as Philippe got older. Roger hadn’t ever been completely comfortable with his protégé’s socialist and environmentalist leanings, and they’d spent many a night debating over a bottle of cognac. They might have agreed on less and less as time went by, but those intellectual wrestling matches with the elder statesman had proved an immensely valuable training ground for the young politician, shaping and sharpening his mind for the battles to come. Philippe had always considered Roger as part of the bedrock of his life, something that would never go away, like the old oak tree he could see from his study window.

  It still hurt that he was gone. It hurt a great deal. And it hurt even more to think that Roger might have been involved in what had happened that night.

  Those events of the previous winter were still, and would always remain, fresh and sharp in Philippe Aragon’s mind. He remembered the chalet in Cortina as though he’d been there just yesterday.

  It had been one of those rare moments in his hectic new political career when he’d been able to reserve a whole six days to get away with Colette and the children. He’d been so happy to see the kids looking forward to it. He’d been planning to teach them to ski. More than anything, he’d been looking forward to spending time with Colette, the way they used to before things had got so crazy.