Painting Death

by Tim Parks

  Gioletto? Sweet ass!

  ‘Signor Duckworth!’

  The secretary was back.

  ‘Just leaving Angelo a message, Mariella,’ Morris smiled. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to go now. Or I’ll miss a meeting.’

  ‘Please leave any messages with me, Signor Duckworth.’

  Glancing down Morris saw a drop of fresh blood on the white keyboard. So much for the professional criminal. But who uses white keyboards? He sighed, picked up the rag, wiped the space bar, wrapped his thumb in it again, pushed his hand back into his pocket and walked straight towards the plump woman at the door.

  ‘What would you like me to say to the professor?’ she insisted.

  ‘Just tell him to call me as soon as he can.’

  No sooner had Morris passed the line of desks—and he didn’t even bother to check whether people were smirking or not this time—he turned right rather than left, down the corridor that led to Volpi’s office.

  ‘Signor Duckworth! Per favore!’

  The secretary was coming after him again, running. He could hear her high heels clipping on the stone floor.

  ‘Dottor Volpi is also out, Signor Duckworth!’

  But Morris was at the door. He knocked and pushed. It swung open.

  For a moment it seemed the secretary had been telling the truth. The huge desk at the other end of the room and in particular the upholstered swivel chair were not occupied. Evidently Volpi had called Gioletto to his office and the two of them had gone out together for lunch.

  Then Morris heard a quick intake of breath. More than that. It was a sob. Without thinking, he stepped forward into the room and saw Zolla to his right sitting on the floor against the wall. The man’s carefully groomed head was in his hands and his body was shaking, uncontrollably. Morris stared. Zolla seemed completely stricken. What on earth was he doing on the floor? On an old display panel leaning against the wall beside him, red on black, were the words: ‘Devotees of the Bianchi made their pilgrimages barefoot, slept on straw, abstained from meat-eating, and scourged themselves while calling for mercy and peace.’ Why Morris should have taken the time to read this odd relic of a forgotten show and even to try to understand it, he couldn’t have said. But the unhappy man weeping in his smart suit and the old display panel with its strange caption somehow struck Morris as forming a single picture. Who were the Bianchi? Why did they scourge themselves? Above all, why was Zolla in this state?

  Morris hesitated. Behind him, too, he heard the secretary’s heels scrape to a halt, as if the fact that Morris had opened the door made any further intervention on her part superfluous. Clearly he had arrived at the heart of whatever it was made the office staff at Castelvecchio smile their interminable smiles. But what was it?

  ‘Signor Duckworth,’ a gravelly voice enquired, ‘did your good mother not teach you to knock and wait before entering?’

  Turning to his left Morris saw Volpi standing with his back to the room, looking out of the barred window. The fat man was so perfectly still, his eye hadn’t travelled that way. But how did he know it was Morris if he was looking out of the window?

  ‘Please be so kind as to leave at once,’ the director said. Still without turning, he added drily: ‘If you don’t want to end up like one of the victims in this ridiculous show of yours.’

  At which someone somewhere else in the room laughed. It was a rather unusual yet at the same time, Morris later felt, rather familiar laugh. But since he was already withdrawing and closing the doors he had no occasion to find out who that person might be.

  Chapter Eleven

  WITHOUT HIS CAR, MORRIS walked back to Via Oberdan, feeling perplexed and unsteady. At least he would now be able to access the addresses of the appropriate people to write to in the various museums. And now he knew things which of course other people would not want him to talk about. That was always useful in Italy. Next they would be asking him to join in whatever perverse nonsense they were into. Perhaps his morning had been more fruitful than it had seemed. Turning from Via Roma into Piazza Bra he became aware that someone was calling to him.

  ‘Morris!’

  Someone with an American accent.

  ‘Hey Morris, man.’

  ‘Stan, what a pleasure.’

  ‘You’re not going to believe this, Morris.’

  The Californian was breathless. He was carrying a small backpack.

  ‘I came straight from the airport.’

  Morris stiffened. All over his mind battle stations were ringing.

  ‘To see you.’

  ‘On foot?’ Morris enquired.

  ‘Bus,’ Stan explained. He was breathing hard. ‘You’re not going to believe what I found out. About Forbes. We’ve got to go to the police.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Morris said. He took the American’s arm. ‘Let’s sit and have a drink.’ As he moved toward the blue tables of La Costa, Stan was already talking ten to the dozen and far more loudly than was wise. Morris was struggling to imagine what was the properly innocent response.

  ‘Due prosecchi,’ he said, when the waiter passed. It was one-fifteen.

  ‘Incredible names they have in Wales,’ Stan was saying. ‘Pwllgwyngyll. Something like that. The old bird was about a hundred. The wife. Turned out she was much older than Mikey. Twenty years and more. Shades of the mother syndrome, I reckon. Anyway she was quite gaga. Couldn’t get anything out of her at all. Hardly seemed to know what I was talking about.’ Stan leaned forward across the table. ‘Fortunately, just as I was leaving, the daughter turned up.’

  Fortunate indeed. Morris looked around to see when the drinks were coming. ‘Forbes never mentioned a daughter to me,’ he said carefully.

  ‘Nice lady. Our age.’ Stan grinned. ‘Bit of a drinker, I’m afraid. Took me straight to the pub. Said there were things couldn’t be said in front of the mother.’

  ‘Who was gaga.’

  ‘Right.’

  How was it possible, Morris thought, that in the midst of all his other troubles he now had to deal with this?

  ‘So what did you learn?’

  The proseccos arrived. Morris sipped, looking at Stan over the rim of his glass. He was struck then by the leanness of his old acquaintance’s neck, the shiny bulbousness of the forehead. Not a handsome specimen.

  ‘From a psychological point of view, this is one of the weirdest stories you’ve ever heard.’ Stan scooped up a handful of the peanuts the waiter had brought.

  ‘I’m all ears,’ Morris assured him.

  ‘First thing is, although he hadn’t been back to Pwllwynwhatever for more than twenty years, Forbsey used to phone his old lady for about an hour every day, or rather night. Around midnight. An hour! Without fail.’

  ‘Astonishing,’ Morris said calmly. At least it explained where some of that money had been going. An hour a day from Verona to Pwllgwyngyll year in year out would run up quite a bill.

  ‘Wait till you hear why,’ Stan grinned, taking more peanuts and swallowing the wine.

  ‘Why?’ Morris obliged.

  ‘To confess,’ Stan munched. ‘To confess and be shriven.’

  ‘Confess what?’ Morris was steeling himself.

  ‘The daughter said her dad was an accident waiting to happen, the way he behaved. She said everyone knew.’

  ‘May we have the daughter’s name?’ Morris enquired.

  ‘Molly.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  ‘I can’t imagine Forbes calling a daughter Molly. You’d have thought at the very least Lucrezia or Cleopatra.’

  Stan scratched his thinning hair and shook his head. It was fascinating how easily he was distracted.

  ‘Weird,’ the American finally agreed, at random, Morris thought. ‘The thing is, Mo, it seems Forbes was attracted to boys. Can you imagine? Worse still, young boys. He’d been in trouble even. Anyway he confessed this stuff every day to his wife, his urges, if you get me and she . . . she . . .’ Stan seemed at a los
s.

  ‘Shrove him. Shrive-shrove-shriven.’ Morris smiled faintly.

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Perhaps in America they accept shrived.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Stan had got stuck again.

  ‘Anyway,’ Morris interrupted, ‘yes, I knew Forbes had this vice. That’s why I tried to keep him busy with the paintings.’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And didn’t say?’

  ‘I didn’t want a friend to go to gaol. I tried to keep him out of trouble.’

  Stan shook his head. ‘But think of the damage a guy like that could do.’

  ‘The older I get, Stan, the more it seems to me that all living is about damage. People have to learn to look after themselves.’

  Morris looked the American straight in the eye. Stan was undeterred.

  ‘But get this. It seems, according to Molly at least, that he was also working for some guy he knew was a criminal. Someone was giving him money just to keep him quiet. Apparently he had it on his conscience, but he needed the money. Anyway, she, the daughter, was convinced that something bad must have happened to him, otherwise, why would he just have stopped calling from one day to the next? He needed to make those calls and feel his wife had forgiven him.’

  Morris frowned. ‘He found some other confessor perhaps. Without the need for the expensive phone call.’

  Stan had already emptied his glass. He shook his head. ‘He was zapped, man. Must have been. You don’t change a twenty-year habit just like that. The daughter thought it would be one of these boys he was after. Or this guy he knew about.’

  Morris sighed. ‘I wonder who that can be.’

  ‘Maybe explains why he was in with so many priests,’ Stan said. ‘Maybe it was a priest even. The criminal guy. He knew about some priest who was more into the paedo stuff than he was. Anyway, we’ve got to go to the police.’

  ‘Do you really think they’ll be interested?’ Morris asked.

  Stan was surprised. ‘We’re talking about a disappearance. Possibly a murder.’

  Morris sipped. He still had more than half a glass. ‘It was five years and more ago, Stan. An awful lot happens in this country every single day. And Michael was not even Italian. Why should they care about him?’

  ‘I think we owe it to him to report it at least,’ Stan said. ‘A guy goes missing and no one even reports it.’

  They had finished their drinks. Morris stayed silent.

  ‘You know I went out to look at that last picture he copied. The Jezebel. That you have in your room.’

  ‘Oh right,’ Morris smiled. ‘Did you? How interesting.’

  ‘Amazing the job he did making it look even older than it was. I mean, quite a technique. The thing in the church looks new in comparison. Restored, the priest said.’

  ‘Michael had special skills.’ It occurred to Morris that if only Stan would drop the idea of going to the police, he could indeed rely on him never to put two and two together.

  ‘The nearest questura is along the river beyond Ponte Nuovo, right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Morris agreed. ‘If you like, I’ll go for you. In the end your time here’s nearly up, isn’t it? You don’t want to get drawn into some long drawn-out legal thing.’

  Stan sucked his lips. ‘No, I’d better go myself. I’ve got some photographs and stuff. And some letters the daughter gave me.’

  ‘I can take them,’ Morris said.

  For the first time Stan gave him a queer look. ‘No worries, man,’ he said. ‘You’re a busy guy. And I’m kind of into this now. Nothing like this ever happened to me.’

  Morris slowed down his responses to disguise any suggestion that he was a man thinking fast. He raised a hand to get the waiter to bring the bill, then with a heavy heart said, ‘Let’s go together. I’ll get the car.’

  ‘But it’s so close.’ Stan hesitated. ‘Good of you though. My Italian’s pretty rusty these days.’

  When the waiter returned, the American added, ‘’Fraid I’m out of cash.’

  Wasn’t that ever the way, Morris remembered. And wasn’t it amazing that thirty years ago he had been sitting at a table in this same café with Massimina when Stan saw them together. Perhaps this very same table. The day she decided to run away with him, the day it all began. It was as if something that should have happened many years ago was finally coming to pass.

  ‘Thinking about it,’ Morris said reflectively, ‘we’ll probably have more luck with the police if we drive out to where he was last resident. When he was painting the Jezebel. The local police won’t have so much to do out there.’

  Stan hesitated.

  ‘We could even take a look at the picture again. Maybe see if the priest there knows something.’

  ‘That’s a point,’ Stan said. ‘He was eating when I went. Wouldn’t leave the table.’

  Morris thus had perhaps an hour to make his decision. First a short cab ride to get the car, then a forty-minute drive round the city and up into the hills. At the wheel he told Stan about his concerns for his daughter. She seemed to have stopped going to the university and spent all her time texting. It was so disappointing seeing a young person throwing her life away.

  ‘No worries,’ Stan said, for perhaps the third time in an hour. ‘Adolescents do that stuff. You should stay cool. I’ll speak to her if you like.’

  ‘You’re so relaxed about everything,’ Morris said appreciatively.

  ‘Not about this Forbsey thing,’ Stan admitted. ‘I really think he must have come to grief.’

  It was as if the man were asking for it, Morris thought. He found it fascinating how some people would suspect him even when he hadn’t done anything at all, while poor Stan seemed genetically incapable of suspicion. The problem would be when the police realised that yet another person close to Morris Duckworth was missing in mysterious circumstances. There must be a limit to one’s luck. Meanwhile Stan was complaining how expensive everything had gotten in Italy these last few years. Morris nodded sagely.

  ‘In the end,’ he suddenly interrupted, ‘the last place we know of Forbes ever going was the church.’

  ‘There was the flat he rented,’ Stan said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I went there last week.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Obvious place to go. Naturally someone else was living there. The landlord is an agency so the staff have all changed. From the records it seems when he didn’t pay rent for a few months they went to check and found all his stuff gone. So they just rented to someone else.’

  ‘There you are,’ Morris said. ‘So he did a flit. Typical. He’s probably safe and sound in China or somewhere. I know he’d had offers to teach in other parts of the world. It isn’t easy to get a good Latin teacher these days. Dying breed,’ Morris added, enjoying the expression.

  ‘How do we know it was him took his stuff out of the flat?’ Stan asked. ‘What if he was killed and the killer took it all, to give the impression he’d done a runner?’

  That did it. Morris drove on, up into the hills toward the church where he had been so recently with his son. Santi Apostoli del Soccorso. He parked in the shade against the cemetery wall. What he needed, he thought, was just a little bit of luck. Who visited a church on a Wednesday early afternoon? No one. At the same time he wondered if he could really go through with this. He’d prayed so much the cup would pass from him.

  ‘Let’s look at the picture again, first,’ he said. ‘The priest will be having his siesta. I read a novel once,’ he went on, ‘where a painter had left a message on the back of a canvas.’

  ‘We can’t start turning it round,’ Stan laughed. ‘They’ll think we’re stealing it.’

  ‘Actually, I remember Forbes telling me it was amazing the sort of stuff you found in church attics. Maybe we should check if there is one in the place. There’s just a chance he could have come to grief up there.’

  ‘I already checked,’ Stan said.

&nbs
p; Morris tripped and almost fell.

  ‘Pure curiosity. But there’s only rubble up there.’

  ‘Rubble?’

  ‘Some builder’s leftovers they didn’t bother to bring down and chuck away. Sacks of cement and so on.’

  They had reached the church.

  ‘What if he was under them?’

  Stan whistled softly. ‘Quite a mind you have Ducky! But they wouldn’t have killed him in the church, would they? Most likely it was a reaction to some hanky-panky, or something.’

  The good thing, Morris thought, pushing open the door, was that having visited the place recently he knew that everything was there, everything was in place. And so it was. For a few minutes they stood together and stared at Jezebel crashing down from the window.

  ‘It was because she was a foreigner, you know,’ Morris said. ‘Seems that’s why they didn’t trust her.’

  ‘Typical,’ Stan laughed. ‘You kind of wonder if she couldn’t maybe have survived a jump from the second floor, though. Don’t you reckon?’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ Morris allowed himself an embarrassing non sequitur, ‘let’s go take a look upstairs at that rubble.’

  Making his invitation, Morris barely trusted the sound of his voice. It all seemed so obvious, so easy. How could Stan not see what he was walking into? Morris moved purposefully to the altar table. ‘We can light the way with one of the candlesticks.’

  True to his word, Don Gaetano had put real wax candles in the big brass sticks. Morris took the heavy thing to the little battery of votive candles in the nave and lowered it to the flames. The thick smoke curled up round the white flesh of the wax.

  ‘Baroque!’ Stan laughed.

  The man was a fool, Morris thought. An utter fool. He deserved it. Afterwards, he would light a votive candle himself and beg forgiveness.

  Stan showed him the door at the back of the chancel and led the way along a short corridor, then up steep stone steps. At the top in the gloom was a small iron door that groaned in exactly the way it had five years ago. As if a switch had turned, Morris felt his body thrill with anticipation.