by Iain Pears
“Not at all. The outer frame came off easily. The inner one was fixed much more securely. It would have been difficult to remove it, and much safer not to.”
“I see. Now, how did Burckhardt get in? Was the main door open?”’
“No. It never is. He must have come in through the usual entrance.”
“Which means ringing the bell and someone letting him in?”’
“I suppose. Unless he arrived with someone who has a key. Everyone in the place has a key.”
“No one we’ve talked to let him in or heard him ring.”
Menzies shrugged. “Must have pole-vaulted over the wall, then.”
“Thank you, Mr Menzies.” She stood up and showed him to the door before he could begin to move the conversation back to newspapers and journalists. “I may very well need to talk to you again in the next few days. I’ll come and see you at the monastery if need be.”
Surprisingly, he walked out quite meekly, and left her alone. She sighed heavily, shook her head, then glanced at her watch. Her heart sank. Menzies had distracted her from her real business. It was ten to six. Time for Mrs Verney. She was not looking forward to it.
Flavia had persuaded Paolo to pick Mary Verney up from her hotel and bring her in, then had her kept in a small room in the, basement for a couple of hours to meditate on her sins, whatever they were. She did not think Mrs Verney had stolen the picture. She didn’t know what Mrs Verney had done. She merely knew that she had done something, and hoped that a spot of peace and quiet in a dank and airless room would persuade her to explain. Somehow, though, she doubted it.
For all that she was on the verge of panic, Mrs Verney seemed perfectly unconcerned on the surface. She did not relish the idea of jail; she resented the fact that pressure from others had landed her in this position and, above all, she was terrified that unless she delivered the goods, her granddaughter would suffer. And at the moment, she was completely at a loss. The picture had gone, and all she had to show for it was a hefty stash of money found in a left-luggage box. While Flavia wanted the interview to bring some enlightenment, Mrs Verney awaited the conversation with very similar hopes.
Like a good prisoner, though, she sat quietly as Flavia came in and waited for her to begin the questioning.
“Now then, I have to tell you that you are in serious trouble.”
“Really? Why is that?”’
“Let me summarize. Yesterday morning, a painting was stolen from the monastery of San Giovanni on the Aventino. Do you know the building?”’
A smile of the sort that indicated that she thought setting such an easy trap was, well, a bit insulting, really.
“Of course I do. Which painting was stolen? The Caravaggio, or the little icon in the corner? I saw them for the first time some twenty years ago. I lived in Rome briefly and was a very assiduous tourist.”
“The icon.”
“Goodness,” she said, then offered no more.
“Do you know anything about it?”’
“Should I?”’
“I’m asking you.”
“So you are.”
“Are early-morning walks a speciality?”’
Mrs Verney gave a brief twitch of a smile as she spotted the clue she’d been waiting for. She now had a measure of how much the police had found out.
“When I can’t sleep, they are. To be up at six o’clock is a privilege of age. Especially in Rome. And, since that is what you seem to be getting at, yes, I was walking on the Aventino. Do you want the whole story?”’
“What do you think?”’
“As I say, I went for an early-morning walk. And—just by chance—found myself walking past the monastery.”
“Oh, come now,” Flavia said. “You expect me to believe that?”’
“It’s true,” she said with a fine mixture of surprise and indignation at being doubted. “Anyway, I saw a man come down the steps from the church. The door was open, so I thought that maybe they had early-morning services, or something like that.”
“And you felt a burst of piety come over you?”’
“More like nostalgia, I think. As I say, I’d visited the place many years ago, when I was young and fancy-free. And what could be more natural than to revisit it?”’
“What indeed?”’
“So I did. And found this poor man lying on the ground, with blood streaming out of his head. Now, I’m a good citizen, most of the time. I did what I could for the poor soul, then went straight away to phone the police for assistance. How is he, by the way?”’
“He’ll recover, we think.”
“There you are then. And rather than being thanked, here I am being interrogated as some sort of suspect. I must say, I am not happy about it.”
“Dear me. I suppose you can explain why you were so modest about receiving thanks for your considerate act?”’
“Do I need to? Heaven only knows what Jonathan has told you about me. But naturally I thought you would be suspicious if I was found there, however innocently, at such an early hour. In the circumstances. So I thought it best not to complicate the issue.”
“I see. Now, what time was this?”’
She grew vague. “I couldn’t really say. After six, before seven. Maybe.”
“We have witnesses that it was about six-fortyfive.”
“Must have been, then.”
“And the phone call was logged at seven-forty. That’s a long time to find a phone.”
She shook her head evenly. “Not really. There aren’t any bars open, and there aren’t many public phones in Rome. I went as fast as I could.”
“I see. Now, this man, did you recognize him?”’
“No. Why should I have done? Who is he?”’
“Was. A man called Peter Burckhardt. A dealer.”
“Was?”’
“He’s dead. Someone shot him.”
For the first time the unconcerned mask slipped. She hadn’t known that, and doesn’t like it, Flavia thought. How very interesting. What is she up to?
“Dear me.”
“Dear me, indeed. We are now investigating a murder, an assault and a theft. And you are right in the middle of the investigation.”
“You think I had something to do with this? When was the poor man killed?”’
“We think yesterday. About midday, give or take an hour. I suppose you can tell me where you were?”’
“Absolutely. I was in the Barberini, then I had lunch at my hotel, and then I went shopping. I can give you all the receipts, which I imagine have time stamps on them. They usually do, nowadays.”
“We’ll check them.” Not that there was much point. She knew they’d stand up.
“Can I go?”’
“No.”
“What more do you want from me?”’
“Answers.”
“I’ve answered everything you’ve asked so far.”
“I have a problem.”
“I’ll happily listen if it will help.”
“Perhaps it will. You see, I know that you are a thief. What’s more, I know that you are one of the most accomplished thieves I’ve ever come across. What was it? Thirty or so major thefts, and never a hint of suspicion.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. Now, all of a sudden, you turn up in Rome. We get phone calls saying where the theft will take place. We notice you and question you. It worries me. From your past track record, you’ve been meticulous about planning. Never put a foot wrong. If you were involved in the theft of that icon I would have expected it to vanish without trace and without warning. And without violence. And I would have also expected that, when something went wrong, you would abandon everything and go home. Instead we were alerted in advance, there’s blood everywhere and you are still here. As I say, it makes me think.”
“The obvious conclusion, surely, is that I am telling the truth, and that none of this has anything to do with me at all.”
Flavia snorted. “I don’t think so.”
“We’ll see.”
“You’re going to have to let me go, then.”
“Oh, yes. We never thought of holding on to you. This was just a friendly chat. The first, I suspect, of many.”
Mary Verney stood up, waves of relief passing through her, drenched with sweat and her heart still pounding. Appalling performance, she thought. Gave too much away to that damnable policewoman. She was getting too close for comfort. Besides, she was right; this was a disaster from beginning to end.
Flavia even opened the door for her, marvelling at the woman’s utter calm and insouciance as she walked out. Didn’t budge an inch. Leaving her as much in the dark as she was at the start.
Progress, however, was being made at the duller and more routine end of the enquiry; Peter Burckhardt was seen leaving his hotel on the morning of his death with a man in his late thirties and getting into a car. Flavia’s heart had a little skip when she heard this; because Burckhardt, bless him, had been staying in a hotel in the via Caetani. An ordinary street, a bit noisy from too much traffic, but less busy than the large, polluted thoroughfares all around it. It was a no-parking zone, and there was no obvious reason why anyone should pay any more attention to such trivialities in that quarter than they did anywhere else in the city.
Except for historical circumstance, of which Flavia fervently hoped the murderer of Burckhardt was unaware. Because just around one corner of the street was the via delle Botteghe Oscure, containing the headquarters of what had once been the Christian Democrat Party, and close to that was the place where terrorists dumped the body of Aldo Moro. It was all many years ago now; the Christian Democrats had fallen on hard times and the only memento of the former prime minister was the occasional ragged bunch of flowers left at the site where he was found.
But the police still kept close watch, fearful lest those dark days should suddenly come again. Perhaps they were more concerned now that angry voters would come to take revenge on the politicians who had deceived them for so many years, or perhaps it was simply because standing orders, once given, tend to get forgotten. All over Europe, perhaps, policemen stand and guard things for no reason except that their predecessors, and their predecessors’ predecessors, stood and guarded in exactly the same place. It was no doubt apocryphal, but a colleague in Paris had once told him of a building in Neuilly-sur-Seine, the residence of a minor ambassador, which had received round-the-clock surveillance for years after the embassy moved to other accommodation and the building was turned into a brothel.
So policemen patrolled regularly, and the camera, once installed, was perhaps too expensive to take down again. It was Alberto who pointed this out to her, and suggested she came round immediately for a video show.
She got there in fifteen minutes, and was treated to the most encouraging sight she had seen for days. A terrible picture, taken at long range, and certainly not good enough for use in a court, should it ever come to that. But enough to give them an idea, to identify the type of car used, and three letters of a registration number.
“Let’s see it again,” Flavia said, and they sat and watched as once more Peter Burckhardt and a man several inches taller than him came down the street from the direction of the hotel and got into a Lancia.
“Doesn’t look under great duress. No gun pointed at him. Nothing like that.”
“No.”
“Got the car?”’
“Still checking. It should be here any moment. Have you made any progress?”’
“Not really. That is, I have someone I’m desperately interested in, but I can’t find any way in to her.”
“Her?”’
“An Englishwoman. Who is more interested in art than she should be. The trouble is, I’m fairly certain she didn’t steal the picture.”
“I thought we’d established Burckhardt did.”
“Have we? I’m not so sure. He didn’t break into the place, after all. Someone opened that door from the inside for him. What’s more, I’m not sure he hit Father Xavier, either.”
Flavia didn’t want to go into any more details, and didn’t have to, as she was interrupted by the arrival of a computer print-out. “Bingo,” Alberto said. “A run of luck for once.”
“What do you mean?”’
“It’s a rented car. Picked up at the airport last Friday by one M. K. Charanis. Greek passport, staying at the Hassler.”
“Better go and get him then. Can you rustle up some manpower?”’
Flavia got home at ten, more tired than she could believe, starving to death andwitha blinding headache. Argyll took one look at her, suppressed a desire to mutter about how late it was, and instead ran a bath and fetched some food. She was so exhausted she could barely eat but, after he had given her a broadside of tender loving care, she began to lose the feeling that her neck muscles were tied in knots. The bath helped too.
“We were close,” she said after telling Argyll about the hunt for Charanis, waving a sponge in the air for emphasis. “if we’d only had a little bit of luck …”
It had been gruelling. The result would have been the same whatever they’d done but, while spotting this man showed the carabinieri at their best, trying to arrest him brought out all their worst characteristics. Too many anti-terrorist training courses, that was the problem. Rather than Flavia and Alberto, with a couple of supporters, going round and knocking on the door of his hotel room, someone, somewhere—and Flavia suspected Alberto’s immediate superior, who was a man with a flair for the unnecessarily melodramatic-decided now was the time to give their Los Angeles-style rapid response unit a whirl.
The result had been total chaos which—quite apart from enraging the management of one of the most expensive hotels in the country and creating a very bad impression among a large number of its guests—probably served only to warn Charanis that he had been noticed, assuming he watched the news on the television station which sent along a crew to film an entertaining display of official muscle. At least Flavia persuaded Alberto to put out some vague story about drug smugglers to try and keep them away, although she doubted it would do much good.
As for the rest of it, she had watched appalled as truck after truck of heavily armed idiots ran around waving guns, shouting into radios, getting into position so that they could interdict, negativize or otherwise arrest and render harmless a man who had, in fact, checked out of the hotel the previous evening and was nowhere to be seen.
And all they had to do was ask in the first place. May the Good Lord defend us from such imbecilities.
“That’s a pity,” Argyll said when she finished and he offered her a towel.
“You can say that again.”
“Is he a regular customer?”’
She shook her head. “Not that I know of, no. Never heard of him before. We’ve put out enquiries to the Greek police, to see if they know anything about him. God only knows how long that will take. Last time we asked them anything the man we were interested in died of old age before we got a reply.”
“Sort of makes the case for Bottando’s international bureau, doesn’t it?”’
“Sort of makes the case for people answering enquiries. I don’t think you need set up huge expensive organizations.”
“What do you do now?”’
“Go to bed, I think.”
“I mean about this icon.”
“Sit and wait. The carabinieri can look for this Charanis character; I can’t do much with Mary Verney at the moment. Apart from talking to Father Xavier tomorrow there’s not a lot to do.”
She dried herself, with Argyll helping, and breathed a sigh of relief. “Human again,” she said. “You didn’t find anything interesting, did you?”’
“Depends.”
“Depends on what?”’
“On what you think is interesting, of course. Hang on.”
He walked out of the bathroom, letting a draught of cool night air blow in as he went, and ca
me back a few minutes later.
“Look.” He held up a Xerox, then flicked it over to show a mass of scribbling on the other side which indicated how hard he’d been working on her behalf.
“Spirits,” he said. “Visitations by. Anthropological study of. Structure and meaning in the magical appearance of gifts. It’s an article Burckhardt published three years ago.”
“So?”’
“That icon was brought by angels, remember?”’
“What does it say?”’
“According to this, it’s a common enough story. Angels seem to have worked overtime as delivery boys in the Middle Ages. Forever running around with paintings and statues, even whole houses in the case of Loretto, and leaving them in unlikely places. The general argument is that it is often enough a folk memory with some substantial foundation.”
“Such as what?”’
“The example he quotes here is a church in Spain, near the Pyrenees, which has a miraculous statue. Also delivered by an angel, according to the legend. He reckons it was donated by a generous benefactor who distributed money to the poor to mark the occasion. This got confused as the generations passed and the gift of the statue became associated with the money, then it was thought that it was the statue which gave the money, so naturally it became a miracle. And the person who gave it turned into a delivering angel.”
“San Giovanni is associated with a cure for the plague.”
He nodded. “Better food, more resistance to disease. I suppose it fits.”
“Does it say that?”’
“No. That’s me making it up. However, there is one reference to San Giovanni; nothing relevant, but he was obviously in the archive there once. That’s interesting, don’t you think?”’
She nodded dubiously. “Not much to go on, though.”
“I’m doing my best. There’s a lot of stuff to digest here, you know. It’s hard when you’re starting from scratch.”
“And I can’t think of anyone better to scratch away. Would you mind keeping on going? See if you can dig up anything more specific?”’
He nodded. “All right. But only for one reason.”
“What’s that?”’
He grinned at her. “I quite enjoy it.”
Flavia barely got into the office the following morning when a dire message came through from Alberto. Foreign ministry, please. Now. Heavy-duty stuff indeed, the sort of thing Bottando would do. But he was not around and she was in charge. She had never been in the building before, let alone been summoned to a meeting headed by a full-blown, senior smoothie.
