“Betta? Where are you?” A voice booms from the hall, making me jump. It’s Nino. He sounds cross.
“Over here,” I say. “Come and help me look in the bedroom?”
I walk into the room and stand in the middle of the thick, cream carpet. I scan the ceiling for a door to an attic, but there’s nothing. Nino walks in and stands just behind me.
“Betta, come on, we’ve searched in here.” He speaks in a hiss, whispers like an adder. We have to be quiet. Ernie might wake up. He puts his hand on my shoulder. His signet ring is a blood-red ruby, the size of an eyeball, set in gold.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve just got a feeling. Something that valuable, something that special, you’d want to keep it close. . . .”
“In the room where you sleep,” Nino says, pacing the carpet in his heavy black boots. This is killing him, I can tell. Patience clearly isn’t his thing. I doubt he listens to Take That. I walk around my sister’s bedroom, my fingers trailing over mahogany: the wardrobe, the dressing table, the chest of drawers. There isn’t a speck of dust; it’s incredible. Emilia’s worth her weight in gold.
I look under the bed. Nino looks stressed.
“For fuck’s sake. We’ve looked everywhere. We’re going to have to just look again, the whole fucking house, properly this time.”
We’re just about to leave the room when Nino says, “Have you checked inside that wardrobe? There could be a false back?”
We look at each other, then rush for the wardrobe. I yank open the door and pull aside the clothes, Ambrogio’s clothes: trousers, jackets, shirts, ties. My fingers feel for the corners of a panel at the back, but the wood is stuck firm.
“No,” I say, stepping away.
“Let me try,” Nino says.
He dives into the wardrobe like he’s looking for Aslan. I hear him cursing under his breath. “Niente. Merda.”
He pulls himself out and thumps the door! THUMP! Shit. He’s losing his cool. Any minute now, he’ll pull out his gun!
“Betta, come on! Where the hell is it? I know you know so quit fucking around.”
I’m starting to sweat. My chest feels tight. I sit down on the bed, rub my face in my hands. Come on, Alvie, where? Where? I’m burning up. Is it the coke or the climate? It’s Death Valley Nevada in the middle of a heat wave. My breathing is shallow; I can’t get enough air. I stand up and walk over to the window, yank it open, and take a deep breath. I squeeze my eyes shut. Something valuable. Something important. Something special that you want to protect. An image of Ernie pops up in my head.
I run out to the hall and Nino follows after.
“Hey, Betta! Where are you going?”
“Shh, come with me. We’ve got to be quiet.”
Ernie’s asleep in his cot; I can hear him snoring in the darkness—softly, softly, in and out. I tiptoe in and flick on the night-light: baby blue in the shape of a moon. There’s a rug on the floor by the baby’s bed. I lift it up; it’s a hunch, but it’s right! Underneath the carpet is a small trapdoor. It’s got to be in there, surely? I lift the rug with trembling fingers and pull up the door: the hinge creaks open. I glance over at Ernie, but he’s still fast asleep; he didn’t hear a thing. I pull the trapdoor open wide and rest it against the folded rug. I reach down low beneath the floorboards; I feel a heavy canvas bag. I grab the handles and pull it up. I don’t think there’s a painting in here. It’s way too small. I look up at Nino, and he shakes his head. I unzip the bag anyway; I’ll take a quick peek just in case. Oh my God! Hidden inside are hundreds of bags of fine white powder. I’ve never seen so much coke in my life. This must be Ambrogio’s private stash. It looks stunning, white like an Arctic landscape. As fresh and pure as snow. I smooth the plastic in my palms. Mmm, drugs! I wonder if Beth knew about all this stored in baby Ernie’s room? She would have freaked out.
“Keep looking,” says Nino. “Down there.”
I’m about to zip the bag back up when Nino reaches down and grabs a baggie. I look up and he shrugs. Fair enough. Ambrogio’s dead. What’s he going to do? He shoves the coke in his jacket pocket. I grab myself another baggie and pop it down my bra. I close the bag and haul it to one side. I peer back through the trapdoor. There, beneath the floorboards and wrapped in brown paper, is a long, slim, dusty canvas. I can’t believe it. That’s got to be it! It’s has to be The Nativity. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can only stare. Twenty million dollars right here? I can’t believe all this stuff’s in the nursery. Isn’t that dangerous? Beth can’t have known where Ambrogio hid it. She’d never have allowed it. Or perhaps she did and that was the problem? I bet that really pissed her off. Class A’s and a gun for her precious baby? The hottest piece of art on the planet. Beth was mad at her husband, guaranteed. I bet that was why she hated Ambrogio. She probably wanted him dead.
Nino pushes me out of the way and reaches down through the open trapdoor. Very carefully, as though he were delivering a newborn baby, as though he were holding the infant Christ, he scoops out the painting. It smells musty, old. It looks really fragile. It’s longer than I thought. It’s a huge picture. Nino places it onto the floor. His eyes seem to blaze in the shadows. We found it!
“Close it,” he hisses, pointing to the trapdoor.
He stands up with the canvas in his arms. The painting’s enormous, really massive. I lower the trapdoor down with a creak. The dust makes me sneeze: “Atchoo! Atchoo!” I cover my nose with both my hands. This time Ernie wakes and stirs and starts to complain. He lets out a high-pitched catlike mewl as I pull the rug back over the door. Please don’t wake up, please don’t cry. Nino and I stand motionless, listening, waiting for Ernie to scream the house down. He doesn’t move. He gurgles a bit and then falls back to sleep. Lucky.
I stand up slowly. A floorboard creaks.
Ernie wakes up and screams. Oh God, here we go. I walk over to the crib. I look over at Nino; he looks even more terrified than I do, a look of pure panic on his hardened face: Don’t you dare give that thing to me. Where is Emilia when you need her? I pick up Ernie and shh, shh, shh. What does he want? Why is he crying? Food? Drink? Sleep? Poo? I rock him and pat him and shush him and kiss him. I shrug at Nino, who’s staring, fuming. Hey, what can I do?
“What do you want?” I say to the baby.
He looks into my eyes with his big tear-filled eyes, his lower lip wobbling. He sniffs. He cries. A little bubble of snot blows out from his nose. I grab a tissue from the bedside table and dab at his face. I kiss him and rock him and hug him and squeeze him. At last, he stops. I lower him back down in his cot. As soon as his little head touches the pillow, he starts crying again. It’s a sound far worse than anything I’ve heard in my whole life: the screaming of summer lambs. Goose pimples all over my skin. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
“What? What now? You don’t like your cot?”
I pick him back up and Ernie stops crying.
I put him back down and he starts crying again.
Up.
Down.
Up.
Down.
“Ma che cazzo?” shouts Nino. He’s cross.
“I think he just wants me to hold him,” I say. “Do you want me to hold you?” I whisper to Ernie. The baby leans his hot red cheek against my chest and sucks his thumb. “I’m just going to hold him, for a bit. Just until he falls asleep.” Hopefully soon. Poor lamb.
Nino carries the canvas back down the corridor and into Beth and Ambrogio’s room. I follow him with the baby. We lay the painting on the bed, then I close the bedroom door behind us, pushing it shut with my half-broken toe. I take a chair and push it up against the handle, just in case anyone should come in. Emilia perhaps. Or the fucking police. I haven’t told Nino about that policeman, the one I saw who was going next door. I don’t want to annoy him any more than I already have (in other words, a lot).
Nino has th
e painting rolled up at one end of the bed. I head over and join him. I run the palm of my hand along the canvas; it’s ancient, rough. Dust and cobwebs. He unsticks the dull, brown paper and unfurls the painting across the bed. It’s lucky it’s a king-size, although even this surface is far too small. The painting is three meters long at least. We can only unroll part of it, or it will fall off the edge of the bed and onto the floor. The picture is brownish with torn, jagged edges from where the wannabe mobsters hacked it from its frame with a razor.
I have no idea what this painting’s supposed to look like, but I know that it’s the Caravaggio as soon as I see it. I can feel it in my bones. I see Nino out of the corner of my eye; he makes the sign of the cross across his chest. He’s gone all religious in the presence of something so valuable. Money does funny things to people. Or perhaps it’s the religious theme that’s touched him; he had a picture of Jesus stuck up in his car after all. He might be genuinely moved.
I guess we can only see about a third of the picture like this, but here is the newborn Christ: tiny, naked, pink. He’s lying on white cloth on top of a hay-covered floor. He looks fragile and kind of beautiful, a bit like baby Ernie (who’s still not sleeping, by the way. He’s pulling on my hair in fistfuls and slobbering all over my shoulder. Bless). Jesus gazes up into the adoring eyes of his mother, a disheveled-looking Virgin Mary. She slumps, exhausted, her hair and clothes completely undone. She’s clearly just given birth; she looks totally knackered. Must have been a difficult labor. I wonder if Jesus got stuck like me. They didn’t have gas or morphine back then. You can’t do a cesarean in a shed.
On the right-hand side of the painting, a man sits with his back to us, wearing white tights on his crossed legs and a flowing, grass-green shirt: a Robin Hood type. He’s touching the baby Jesus with his toe. I don’t know who he is. He looks too young to be Joseph, too well dressed to be a shepherd. Perhaps he’s early paparazzi? He didn’t want to miss this shot. On the left of the painting are the long, golden-yellow robes of someone I presume to be a king or a saint.
“Mamma mia,” says Nino.
“Thank fuck we found it,” I say.
“Ma, ma, ma,” says Ernie.
Beth’s iPhone bleeps: a sound like a bird. Tweet. Tweet. Tweet. God, is that Taylor again? I pick it up and take a look. There’s a message from “Mummy”; how old was Beth? Five? I click into the message and take a sharp breath.
“Tried to call. Boarding a flight to Catania. I’ll take a cab from the airport. Will be with you in 24 hours. I love you, Mum.”
Shit.
“What? What’s the matter?” says Nino.
“Oh, nothing. It’s just my mum. I’ll call her back. Here,” I say, shoving the baby into Nino’s arms. “I’ll just be a minute.”
I don’t know who looks more terrified, the baby or him. Ernie starts crying. Again.
I grab the phone and storm out of the room, run downstairs and into the kitchen. My hands are shaking. My fingers miss the tiny buttons. The last thing I need is my mum turning up. I jab at the icon to make the call. I’ve got to talk her out of it. She can’t come here to the villa. But my mother’s phone is off or, more likely, in airplane mode; she’s already boarded the plane.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I’ve made a real effort. I’ve dressed up for the occasion: short black minidress, long black veil, black lace gloves, and classic patent Louboutins. I’ve even got an antique lace handkerchief to mop the mascara from my eyes. Blood-red lipstick. Lots and lots of kohl. I look the part: the hot young widow on day one of mourning. I really ought to take a picture. Instagram would go nuts for this shit. Never mind Tinder.
The church is empty. The air is cool and damp. I push through heavy wooden doors and step into darkness: the smell of incense, the flicker of candles. I can see the priest standing behind the altar, his gray head bowed. He’s dressed in white vestments embellished with gold. I found him; he’s here. The priest is muttering something under his breath. Is he praying? He hears me coming and looks up. It takes a moment for him to recognize me, but when he does, his wrinkled face cracks into a smile.
“Betta, you came.”
He opens his arms wide to embrace me. He looks like a saint in those flowing white robes. But I know he’s not. He’s fucking corrupt. It’s just a clever disguise. I climb the steps to the altar and we stand for a moment in total silence. I study the priest’s calm demeanor: steady eyes, benevolent smile. Back at the villa, I was convinced he was the client, but now that I’m here I’m not so sure. Is he corrupt? How do I ask him? If he isn’t the buyer, I’m screwed.
“Betta, I’m so sorry about your husband,” says the priest. He places a hand on my left shoulder: a father comforting a daughter. His hand looks gnarled and old. “I just heard this afternoon. I’m so sorry for your loss. May Cristo comfort you at this difficult time.”
“Thank you,” I say, looking down at the floor: worn-out flagstones, chiseled inscriptions. What does that say? Are we standing on a grave?
“I’m glad you came. I was going to pay you a visit.” He gives me a look: loaded, imploring.
“Is it safe to talk?” I ask, looking up. The priest’s eyes flicker left then right.
“We are alone.”
He leads me by the hand toward a polished wooden pew. We sit beneath a life-size statue of Jesus, the one that had been staring right at me before. He has the same pained expression on his face, beneath a crown of nasty-looking thorns. On the walls hang Renaissance scenes from the New Testament; I recognize Mary and Jesus, of course. That guy with a beard could be Saint Peter? He’s holding golden keys by the gates of Heaven. I doubt he’d let me in. The priest takes my gloved hands in his blue-veined hands. His liver-spotted skin is as transparent as tracing paper and as cold as the skin of a corpse.
“I read the newspaper. Suicide?” he says.
I draw a sharp breath. “Yes, it certainly seems like that. He was found on the rocks at the bottom of a cliff.”
The priest nods, a grave and knowing look on his face. “La Cosa Nostra.” He whispers this, as though he were swearing, uttering a curse word in the house of God.
We sit without speaking. I study the long, black, iron nails that protrude from Jesus’s hands and feet. It reminds me of Beth’s doll, all those pins I stuck in. La Cosa Nostra. OK. Sure. This will be the priest’s version of the truth. The truth is just what we choose to believe. There’s no objective reality.
“You still have the painting?” he asks suddenly. He looks at me with rheumy eyes.
“I do,” I say. My shoulders ease back. I can relax. He’s definitely the buyer.
“You still want to sell?”
I nod. “Uh-huh.”
I can see he really wants it. I wonder how much. He runs his hands along his thighs, smooths the creases in his robes, sits up a little straighter.
“We have to be careful, Betta,” he says softly. “There are people out there who know: the people who killed your husband. It’s not safe for you here anymore. Whoever it is that killed your husband will stop at nothing to steal that picture.”
Yeah. Whatever. “I understand.”
“You should leave,” he says.
I shoot him a glance. “Don’t worry about me.”
The priest turns away. He’s looking up at Jesus. Jesus looks back. They seem to be having some secret conversation. I think of Tallulah. It reminds me of Beth and her imaginary friend. He hesitates before proceeding.
“I agreed three million with your husband, but he wanted more.” He sighs. “The love of money is the root of all evil. First Timothy 6:10.”
“That’s what you were arguing about last time we came?” I say. Where does a priest get three million euro? They pay the clergy way too much in this country.
“Not arguing, not arguing. Business negotiations.”
I shake my head, tuck a str
ay lock of hair behind my ear. “It’s worth twenty million dollars at least,” I say, trying to sound authoritative. I know what I’m talking about, Nino and Google have filled me in.
The priest turns to me. “Betta, you have to understand, this painting is wanted all over the world. Now that your husband is dead; it’s even more dangerous. I can offer you two million. That’s my final offer.”
“Your final offer?”
“Yes.”
I give the priest my sweetest smile. Just because I’m a woman, he thinks I’m naïve. Two million euro? That’s daylight robbery. I want more than that. I study the priest for signs of weakness, listen to his raspy breath. He stares straight back at me, steadfast, firm. This guy is confident; he has God on his side. If I don’t sell it to him, I have no other buyer and no means of finding one. I could push for three million, but no doubt he’d tell me to get lost. I don’t want to lose him. He knows I am compromised by the death of my husband. Lowering his offer by one million euro is a mean trick to play, especially for a priest. At least the poor will inherit the Earth.
“Two million euro,” I agree, gritting my teeth. I don’t want the hassle and I am crap at negotiating. But two million euro is better than nothing, and Nino will be pleased that I’ve got us a deal. I offer my hand and the priest shakes it. His face lights up with a youthful radiance; he’s gone from ninety to nineteen in an instant.
Mad Page 27
