by Paul Adam
‘What do you want?’ he snapped.
‘Dottor Forlani?’
‘Yes. Who are you?’
‘Antonio Guastafeste, Cremona police. We have an appointment, if you remember.’
The head pulled back and a moment later we heard locks and bolts being undone. The front door clicked open on a chain. A dark, suspicious eye looked out through the crack.
‘Show me some identification.’
Guastafeste held out his police identity card and a hand like a wizened claw snatched it away for a few seconds, then gave it back. The door snapped shut and we heard the chain being detached on the inside. When Forlani reopened the door it was only a little wider than before. He beckoned us in and we squeezed awkwardly through the gap, Forlani pushing us to one side so he could lock and bolt the door behind us.
The stench was the first thing I noticed. There was the damp odour you get all over Venice, but it was particularly noticeable here and exacerbated by a pungent reek of decaying vegetable matter and a fruitier, more human smell which I realised was emanating from Forlani himself. To my right, a short flight of stone steps led down into the open basement of the building which, like most of the others on the canal, had been constructed as a water entrance and boathouse for the palazzo. I could see the Grand Canal through the wrought-iron gates, see and hear the water lapping against the walls of the basement. Even in the gloomy light it was possible to make out the scum on the surface of the water; a thick layer of kitchen scraps and other rubbish which had been dumped there over the years and never been flushed away by the action of the tides. I heard a patter of feet which I knew was rats.
We followed Forlani up the stairs to the first floor. Through an elaborately panelled set of double doors was a large room overlooking the Grand Canal – at least it would have overlooked the canal if the shutters on the windows hadn’t been tightly shut. Strips of sunlight percolated in through the slats in the shutters, dimly illuminating the bare floor and walls of the room. The plaster was peeling off like diseased skin, the long curtains next to the windows hung in soiled, shredded tatters. There was no furniture except for a long wooden table and a couple of cheap wooden chairs. The top of the table was cluttered with piles of china plates on which congealed sauce and rancid old meat and rubbery pasta lay decomposing.
I could scarcely believe that this was the Enrico Forlani we were seeking. Guastafeste must have had his doubts too for the first thing he said was, ‘You are Enrico Forlani, collector of violins, aren’t you?’
‘Of course I am,’ Forlani replied testily. ‘Who else do you think I am? Now what is it you want?’
He was wearing a threadbare old dressing gown and a pair of cheap plastic flip-flops on his bare feet. The smell from his body was so overpowering that I had to step back a few paces from him.
Guastafeste glanced around the room. ‘Is there perhaps somewhere more, ah, comfortable, we can talk?’
‘What’s wrong with here?’ Forlani demanded.
‘As you wish. First of all, thank you for agreeing to see us. I hope we’re not going to take up too much of your time.’
‘Get to the point,’ Forlani said.
Guastafeste’s mouth tightened. ‘We’re investigating the murder of a man named Tomaso Rainaldi. A violin-maker who was found dead in his workshop in Cremona last Wednesday night.’
Forlani gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘You told me all this on the phone. What has it got to do with me? I’ve never been to Cremona in my life.’
‘Rainaldi came to see you two days before he was killed. I’d like to know why.’
Forlani looked at us in turn. He had a pale, unhealthy complexion and hooded eyes like a lugubrious vulture. I put his age at somewhere in his late seventies.
‘What if I say that’s my business?’
‘A man has been murdered, Dottor Forlani,’ Guastafeste said mildly. ‘I’m sure you would want to give us your full cooperation.’ Guastafeste smiled at Forlani, a pleasant enough smile, but one edged with an unmistakable hint of menace.
I sensed Forlani drawing back from us a little, watching us carefully. The Venetians are a green and slippery people, like their city. They have a reputation for hard-headedness, for being calculating and untrustworthy.
Guastafeste fed him a snippet of information, perhaps trying to head off the evasive reply we could both see coming.
‘We know he was looking for a violin, a violin he called the “Messiah’s Sister”. Was that why he came to see you?’
‘You think there’s a connection between this violin and his death?’ Forlani said.
‘We’re exploring every possibility. You’re a wealthy collector. Was he searching for the violin for you?’
Forlani didn’t answer. He turned away so we couldn’t see the expression on his face. It was stiflingly hot and airless in the room. I was beginning to feel sick.
‘Was he?’ Guastafeste asked again.
‘What if he was?’ Forlani said, swinging back to face us. ‘That was between him and me.’
‘Not any more,’ Guastafeste said. ‘Not now he’s dead.’
Forlani walked across to the shuttered windows and fingered one of the catches. I hoped he was going to open it, to let some air and light into the oppressive room, but he didn’t. He shrugged.
‘I don’t suppose you know the story of Le Messie, do you? A provincial policeman like you.’
Guastafeste ignored the slur. ‘I know it. My friend here told me.’
‘Did he?’ Forlani turned his gaze on me. ‘Did he tell you what it was worth?’
‘Yes. He’s quite an expert on violins.’
‘Oh yes?’ Forlani’s lip curled. ‘I didn’t think the police were experts on anything, except corruption, of course.’
‘I’m not a policeman,’ I said. ‘I’m a luthier.’
‘A luthier? Your name?’
‘Giovanni Battista Castiglione.’
Forlani screwed up his nose. ‘I believe I may have heard of you,’ he conceded. Then his eyes became wary. ‘Why are you here?’
‘He’s assisting us in our enquiries,’ Guastafeste said. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to answer my question, dottore. Why did Tomaso Rainaldi come to see you?’ His tone was sharp. He was starting to lose patience.
Forlani gazed at him for a long moment. Then he said indifferently, as if his reply were of no consequence: ‘He had a proposition for me. He told me he was sure there was another Messiah out there and he could find it for me.’
‘And you believed him?’ Guastafeste said.
‘Yes.’
‘Were you paying him?’
‘I gave him some money for expenses, yes.’
‘How much?’
‘Five thousand euros.’
‘That’s a lot of money.’
‘It may be a lot to you. It’s not to me.’
‘Did you know Rainaldi? Had you met him before?’
‘No. I’d never set eyes on him until he showed up on my doorstep.’
Guastafeste regarded the old man sceptically. ‘So this stranger you’ve never seen before comes to your door and tells you some tale about a violin and you give him money? I find that a little unlikely, Dottor Forlani.’
‘Do you?’ Forlani’s voice took on an edge of aggression. ‘Do you have any idea what is at stake here? I don’t think you do. Come with me, I’ll show you.’
Forlani went out of the room, his flip-flops slapping on the marble floor. We followed him up another flight of stairs and down a gloomy corridor. Through open doors I caught glimpses of more derelict rooms, of collapsed ceilings and piles of rubble. The smell of decay was everywhere. Forlani moved slowly, pausing regularly to catch his breath. At the end of the corridor he opened a door and we entered a small, unfurnished antechamber which contained nothing but a metal cabinet on the wall. In front of us was a large steel door, like the entrance to a bank vault.
Forlani unlocked the cabinet and, shielding his fingers with h
is body, punched in a combination on a keypad. The steel door clicked open and swung out towards us, its electric motor purring softly.
Beyond the door was another room, a vast chamber that must have taken up half the total area of the second floor. It had no windows – the light was all artificial, beaming down from recessed lamps in the ceiling – and from the breath of cool air that gusted out I could tell it was air-conditioned and humidity-controlled. I knew Forlani’s reputation, had seen fine collections many times before, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I entered that room. Around all the walls and in the centre of the chamber, immaculately presented in individually lit glass cases, were violins.
I paused on the threshold, suddenly breathless. It wasn’t the quantity of instruments that struck me – though there must have been a hundred or more – it was the quality. I could tell at a glance that this was a truly exceptional collection, maybe the finest ever put together since Cozio di Salabue had amassed – and then lost – his own.
Forlani was watching me, gauging my reaction.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘It’s incredible.’
I stared around at the glass cases, at the violins bathed in light, their varnish glowing orange and red and russet like a sunlit autumn forest.
‘You see now?’ Forlani said. ‘For forty years I have been building this collection. Forty years, that’s a long time. I have instruments by all the giants of violin-making: by Stradivari, the Guarneris, by every one of the great luthiers. I have spent a fortune on it.’
He wandered deeper into the chamber, holding out his arms as if to embrace his precious possessions.
‘This is why I gave Rainaldi money. Maybe he was wrong about the violin, maybe he was even lying to me, trying to cheat me. But think of the prize: a perfect, undiscovered Stradivari, as fresh and untouched as the day the Master finished it. If there was just a one per cent – no, a fraction of one per cent – possibility that Rainaldi was right and could find it, then that was good enough for me. He was offering me a chance to have it. What collector could turn down an opportunity like that?’
Forlani’s eyes had the glint of the fanatic in them, a hard coruscating light which was just this side of insanity. I believed him. I’d met collectors before. I’d seen how the desire, the greed to own a violin could consume and corrupt a man.
Forlani was rich and shrewd, the scion of a shipowning family which dated back to the Middle Ages when the Venetians had made a killing transporting the Crusaders to the Holy Land, their support for their passengers’ Christian cause always tempered by good sense and the clear-headed philosophy that has almost become the unofficial Venetian motto: ‘On what terms?’ Forlani was tough and ruthless, but he also had that other dominant Venetian characteristic: a willingness to gamble.
I walked in a daze around that perfect room, that shrine in a cathedral of squalor, my head swimming with an intoxicating cocktail of emotions: awe, astonishment, envy, admiration. But also anger. A deep, powerful resentment directed against Forlani. I despised him for hiding away treasures that the whole world should have been able to share. I have no quarrel with people who collect art. Its only purpose is to be looked at; whether in a public gallery or on a collector’s wall is irrelevant except for the number of people who can enjoy it. But a violin is different. A violin is meant to be played and heard, not put in a vault or a glass case. Forlani could have lent out his instruments to gifted but impoverished players, to young musicians who would use them as their makers intended, but he had chosen instead to hoard them away where only he could look at them.
I could see that there were at least ten Stradivaris in the room. Why did he want another? What was it that drove his desire to own yet more violins that would never be played? I knew he wasn’t a violinist himself. No true musician would ever have put instruments like these in glass cases.
Forlani was watching me. ‘Let’s see how much you know, shall we? Our police “expert”. Are you up to the challenge?’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Identify my violins. Without looking at the labels inside them.’
I stifled a snort of contempt. No one but an amateur would have made such a remark. No violin expert worth his salt bothers much with labels. Too many of them are false or have been changed. He assesses the instrument from the outside first, examining the shape, the feel, the colour and sheen of the varnish, the cut of the f-holes and scroll, searching for the fingerprints of the maker which are there as surely as the fingerprints of a careless thief at the scene of a burglary and are just as clear to the expert eye. Only then does he bother to look at the label, if there is one. It may confirm his assessment. If it does not, then I would always trust my own judgement first – the label is probably false.
‘Where would you like me to begin?’ I said.
‘Try this one,’ Forlani said, pointing at one of the glass cases near the side wall.
I stepped over to the case and studied the violin inside it. I knew instantly what it was.
‘Maggini,’ I said.
‘Your reasoning?’
Who could resist such an invitation to show off?
‘Several things,’ I said. ‘The varnish, for a start. That rich golden orange. Then the arching is very full towards the edges, the waist a little more discreet than, say, the Amatis’ instruments which were being made at about the same time. The sound holes have the small lobes and wings characteristic of Maggini and, of course, it has his trademark double purfling which – as every violin-maker knows – is dedication beyond the call of duty.’
I walked round to the back of the case. The violin had a one-piece maple back, cut on the slab, with a pattern in the grain that resembled the head of a snake. I peered closer. ‘It’s hard to tell without holding the violin, but from this distance it looks to me as if the white part of the purfling is fig tree bark. Maggini, and his teacher Gasparo da Salò, are the only great makers to use fig tree bark in their purfling. The Cremonese and Venetians always used poplar wood for the white part, except Ruggeri who favoured beech like the Neapolitan and Tuscan luthiers.’
Forlani pursed his lips. ‘Not bad. A date?’
I gave him a look. ‘Please, dottore, you will have to do better than that. Everyone knows that Maggini never dated his instruments.’
Forlani sniffed. Round one to me.
‘All right, what about this one?’
‘Amati,’ I said.
‘Which one?’
‘Nicolò.’
I gazed at the violin. Amati instruments have fallen out of favour with modern soloists because they lack the power of a Stradivari or a Guarneri, but they are beautifully crafted and have an unmatched sweetness of sound. Nicolò was the third generation and greatest maker of the family. His influence on the art of violin-making was immense, not just because of his own instruments but because of the pupils he taught – Andrea Guarneri, Giovanni Battista Rogeri, Bartolomeo Cristofori, who would go on to invent the pianoforte, and of course Antonio Stradivari.
‘And this?’ Forlani said.
‘Guadagnini. Giovanni Battista.’
‘Care to hazard a guess at the date?’
‘Somewhere between 1759 and 1771,’ I said. ‘When he lived and worked in Parma.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘The sound holes. He cut them higher and higher up the table during that period and so had to cut the notches to mark the position of the bridge correspondingly lower.’
‘Pretty good. I’m impressed,’ Forlani said. ‘But how about this one?’
And so we worked our way around most of the room. He had several more Amatis, violins by every member of the Guarneri family, Bergonzis, Stainers, Gaglianos, the ten Stradivaris, including one extremely rare pochette, a dance master’s fiddle which was made narrower than usual to fit in the player’s coat pocket. Each one – to Forlani’s increasing irritation – I identified correctly.
Finally,
we came to a glass cabinet set apart from the others in the centre of the room. A chair was drawn up in front of the case as if Forlani liked to sit there admiring this one violin in particular.
It was certainly a magnificent specimen, its back two pieces of striking flamed maple, its varnish a dazzling mixture of colours which seemed to encompass and meld together every red, orange and gold in the spectrum.
‘Guarneri “del Gesù”,’ I said without a moment’s hesitation.
Giuseppe Guarneri ‘del Gesù’, like Nicolò Amati, was the most gifted member of a distinguished violin-making family, one of the two greatest luthiers of all time, Stradivari being the other. When people speak in awe of a Guarneri violin this is the maker they mean, the suffix ‘del Gesù’ coming from the cross and the letters IHS – the Greek for Jesus – he inscribed on his labels. His craftsmanship falls short of Stradivari’s sheer perfection, but for tonal beauty his instruments are unsurpassed. Paganini played a ‘del Gesù’. So too did Heifetz, Stern, Grumiaux and Kogan. If I were a concert violinist, given the pick of any instrument on earth, I would choose a Guarneri ‘del Gesù’.
‘But do you know what’s special about this Guarneri?’ Forlani asked me. It was time for him to show off, to bask a little in his superior knowledge.
‘It belonged to Louis Spohr,’ he said in the tone of veneration priests use when speaking of the Holy Father. And just in case I’d missed the significance, he repeated the name of that illustrious nineteenth-century virtuoso and composer. ‘Louis Spohr. This is Spohr’s missing Guarneri.’
Guastafeste, who’d remained silent all this time, peered more closely at the glass case.
‘Missing?’ he said.
‘He lost it back in the early 1800s,’ I explained.
‘1804, to be precise,’ Forlani added and I knew he was going to give us the full history. Spohr’s stolen Guarneri, like the tale of Le Messie, is familiar to every student of the violin. But I let Forlani tell us anyway. This was the moment he’d been waiting for ever since we’d entered the room.
