Still nursing his injury, the kidnapper opened the back and peered in, his eyes adjusting to the darkness as he crawled in beside her. He flipped the lid of the water bottle, spat in it and pulled the gag off the young woman’s mouth.
‘Open up,’ he said. She looked at him with contempt, but opened her parched, cracked lips and swallowed. ‘Now, how about a bit of thanks.’ Before he could wipe the smirk off his face, she pulled the crowbar from beside her and lunged at him like a cornered Death Adder. She tugged on the van door to close it, but it wouldn’t pull shut.
‘Give me the keys.’
The pale one held his hands up, protecting his face.
‘Screw you.’
She pulled his trousers and his underwear so hard, he winced and scrabbled around in his pocket, feeling for the car keys. Cutting the ropes binding her ankles with the mini-saw, she crawled on her belly, commando style, to the driver’s seat. As soon the key hit the ignition, the van roared into life. The wheels spun in the soft sand.
Outside, the gravedigger dropped his shovel and grabbed his AR-15, disengaging the safety as he aimed at the driver’s window.
As the young woman scanned the ground in front of her, willing the van forward, the back door swung open. In her rear-view mirror, she saw her daypack fall out and in the next moment, the face of a killer. He mouthed obscenities at her as she put her foot to the floor. A burst of gunfire, bullets smashing the passenger window, through one side and out the other.
Blown sideways, the young woman held her hands up in front of her face and slammed her head against the side of the van. As the blood trickled down her temple, she pulled herself upright, shoved the vehicle into drive and gunned the motor.
The young woman crouched over the steering wheel, her eyes scanning the landscape for tyre marks; a track, or any sign of human habitation. Looking out over the vast emptiness towards the horizon, she saw a faint trail in the distance.
With one hand on the wheel, the young woman reached underneath her T-shirt and pulled out a pouch, slung around her neck. She glanced down to see that tucked inside was her burgundy-coloured passport.
Seizing his moment, her assailant crept up behind her on his knees, bleeding from his gums where the crowbar struck him. He lunged at her and jammed his forearm under her neck. She fought him off with her left hand and tried to steer with the other. The van lurched drunkenly from side to side. She slammed on the brakes, knocking her attacker sideways. She went for the crowbar next to her and aimed for the side of his head. He recoiled and slumped to the side, barely conscious.
She flicked the switch on the radio. Just static. She pressed the play button on the music system. Thrash metal blared out of the speakers. She turned it off and stared at the nothingness ahead.
In the distance, a large shape moved along the horizon like a mirage. It was a three-truck road train. It tracked ahead, roaring at speed along what must have been the highway. She pulled up before the junction, ran around to the back of the van, dragged the man out and pulled him into a sitting position. She grabbed a water bottle from the cool bag inside the van and threw water on his face. As he came round, he stared at her with hatred in his eyes. She spat in the water bottle and rolled it just out of his reach.
She made a run for it and jumped back into the van. As she wound the windows up, the thug at the side of the road screamed after her.
‘You bitch. When I find ya, I’ll do more than kill ya.’
Darwin, Australia
* * *
With the cash from selling the van and a new haircut and colour, Cara Robertson walked down to the waterfront and started asking around amongst the yacht skippers.
‘Need any crew?’
‘Where you headed?’
‘Indonesia,’ Cara said in her best New Zealand accent.
‘We’re going to Bali in a week. That do you?’ Cara shook her head.
‘I need to get there quicker than that,’ she said.
‘Try the fishermen. They might take you.’
‘Thanks.’
She walked away from the yacht moorings to the commercial end of the harbour where the fishing boats were tied up. A man padded around his boat and glanced up as she headed towards him.
‘Any chance of a lift to Kupang in West Timor?’ Cara said.
The man looked her up and down, taking in her petite frame and slim shape.
‘Why does a nice Kiwi girl like you want to go there?’ he said, winking at her.
I’m an aid worker.’
‘Sure you are. What’s your name?’
‘Natalie,’ Cara said.
‘Not the sort of name an aid worker would have.’ He gave her the once over again.
‘What name would you prefer I had then?’
‘I didn’t say I didn’t like it. It sounds more like a singer or an actress, that’s all. Natalie Wood, she was a looker. I’ll take you as far as Timor for a thousand dollars. Five hundred if you’re, you know, nice to me. If you catch my drift.’
‘That’s not the only thing I’ll catch by the sound of it,’ Cara said, looking the lech up and down. ‘I’ll try somewhere else.’
Megalong Roadhouse, Western Australia
* * *
Sitting at a table, the two kidnappers nursed their beers. The hirsute one lowered his voice.
‘I told the boss it was all good, okay?’
The younger one sported a bruiser of a black eye.
‘He’s going to kill us when he finds out that the mad bitch is still out there,’ the pale one said, spilling his beer.
‘I threw her stuff on the ground, made it look like there’d been a struggle. Then took a photo of that and the grave and sent it to him.’
‘He didn’t ask to see a body then?’
‘Nah. Some guy in a suit on the other side of the world. You could tell him she was dragged away by a Tasmanian tiger and he wouldn’t know any different.’
‘You’d better be right,’ the pale one said, eyes darting around the bar, looking for anyone who might have been listening. The truth was nobody seemed to be taking any notice of them: they were more interested in the cricket on the big screen TV and the droning commentary.
‘If we keep our shit together we’ll be good. The cops will close down the case. Another lone female tourist, dumb enough to go walkabout.’
Chapter 3
The present. Rome, Italy
* * *
Stephen had looked at his phone and willed it to ring. Nothing. The moment he’d decided to punch in Ginny’s number, his taxi had gone into the Heathrow road tunnel as a jet was taking off. By the time the scream of the engines had subsided, she’d hung up.
As he suspected, Ginny had taken the news of his hasty departure badly and avoided him the entire week. She wasn’t there this morning when he packed and left. There hadn’t even been a falling out: the worst of it was that there hadn’t been anything.
He’d vowed that as soon as the plane took off, he’d push all thoughts of Ginny aside. But as the wheels hit the tarmac at Fiumicino, pinpricks of tears welled up in his eyes. He made his way through passport control like an automaton.
Stephen pushed a luggage trolley loaded with his bags out into the arrivals area. His name was on a placard, held up by a taxi driver. He hadn’t expected to be picked up from the airport. As he made his way towards the driver, his phone buzzed. Anxiety welled up inside him. But it wasn’t Ginny, it was a text from his new colleague, Elisabetta di Mascio. He struggled to decipher it. His Italian was rustier than he thought. From what he could make out, the driver was going to take him straight to the office. Elisabetta wanted to talk to him about researching auctions. Did that word mean “auction”?
No time to get his feet under the desk then. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end. There would be a hell of a lot to absorb in an afternoon. New city, new force, new crime, in a language he hadn’t spoken in years. He just hoped he was up to the job.
A uniformed receptionist usher
ed Stephen into the office of the Carabinieri for the Protection of Cultural Heritage and handed him a sheaf of paperwork. He was going to need help translating. It looked like standard HR stuff, red tape he’d have to wade through. Was he expected to fill out all these forms now?
He hated asking, but he didn’t know whether they were soft or hard on rules here. Hell, he didn’t even know the correct way to greet the woman in the next door office, who was standing while talking on the phone, deep in conversation. She had dark brown hair scraped neatly on the top of her head, medium height, athletic build, late thirties, early forties. He guessed she was Elisabetta or Lieutenant di Mascio. Which one was it?
Just as he was deliberating whether to wait for her to get off the phone or go to collect his ID and entry pass, she popped her head around the door.
‘Stephen, come on in,’ she said in English, in a broad Australian accent.
Before he’d had a chance to reply she held out her hand, ‘Elisabetta.’
Stephen greeted her in Italian. Her grasp was firm and business-like.
‘Bravo. Your Italian’s pretty good.’
‘It’s the reading and writing I struggle with.’
Elisabetta glanced down at the forms in Stephen’s hand and groaned.
‘We don’t have time for that now. I’ll get someone to help you.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Except they finish early today.’
‘We call them jobsworths back home,’ Stephen said.
‘Jobsworths,’ she repeated, a puzzled look on her face. ‘Wowsers, that’s what we called them in Melbourne.’
Before he’d had a chance to reply, she ushered him into her office. ‘Before I forget, these are the keys and the details of your serviced apartment. It’s fifteen minutes from here. Not that I expect you to walk there with all your luggage.’ She broke off and looked around.
‘I left it at the front desk.’
‘I’ll try not to keep you too late. To give you a chance to settle in.’
‘Thanks. It’s more important that I get up to speed on the case.’
Elisabetta nodded and switched into full work mode, before Stephen had a chance to draw a breath.
‘That was my contact in Traffic. They’ve found evidence at the scene of a fatal that might be relevant to our investigation,’ she said, perching on the edge of her desk and offering Stephen her chair. ‘I’m waiting to get more details.’
The phone barely rang before she picked up.
‘Lieutenant di Mascio,’ Elisabetta said, switching into Italian. Stephen leaned forward in his seat, worrying he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the speed of the conversation.
‘Superintendent Costa’s office,’ said a booming voice. Elisabetta tapped the button for the speakerphone. It hardly seemed necessary. ‘The boss wants you to take a look at some photos,’ the caller went on.
‘What’s in these photos?’
‘Vases. Statues. Knick knacks. The kind of stuff rich people stick on their patios.’
‘Any intel on the driver?’
‘Antonio Sanzio, known as Tony. Small-time crook. Fencing mainly. And a former cop in the Guardia di Finanza.’
‘Hang on a second, will you.’ Elisabetta pressed mute on her phone and turned to Stephen.
‘That’s the financial crimes unit. They had a purge of corrupt officers after it was infiltrated by organised crime. Our dead driver might have been part of the clear out.’
Did she expect him to keep up with the events as they were happening and read the case notes later? Was that how she operated?
‘Has the cause of the crash been determined yet?’ Stephen asked, hoping this would give him some breathing space.
Elisabetta shook her head. She took her finger off the mute button and ploughed on. ‘Carry on, officer,’ she said.
‘The photos are old-school Polaroids.’
‘Scan them to me first.’
‘On their way.’
‘Stay on the line, will you?’
Stephen adjusted his chair to get a better view of the computer monitor. Elisabetta leant over and clicked open the first attachment. It showed dirty and broken pottery, covered in soil, smashed into a dozen pieces, each one roughly the size of a man’s hand. As she clicked through the remaining photos, there were images of what looked like a lion, and then a winged figure with the head of a woman attached to a lion’s body. Elisabetta clicked back to the first picture of the broken pottery.
‘What background colour would you say those broken pieces are?’
Stephen peered at the screen. ‘Sort of clay coloured, but they’re covered in earth, so it’s hard to tell.’
Elisabetta clicked in for a close-up. She did a double-take.
‘What is it?’ Stephen asked.
‘Look here.’ Elisabetta pointed to a fragment that appeared to be two-tone. ‘What’s different about that one?’
‘The colour. The background’s black and the engraving’s a dirty red,’ Stephen said, hoping he’d got it right.
She perched on the edge of her seat. ‘Let’s compare them with mass-produced ones.’ She opened up another window on her screen of a garden centre and clicked on a link to the factory-made pots.
‘What about these?’
‘The decoration on each one is identical and they’re all the same size,’ Stephen said.
‘Go on.’
‘The one at the crash site has been glazed and painted. You can see the black there, and the drawing seems to be in a shade of um, clay.’ There was a technical name for that tone, but Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what was it? ‘Terracotta?’
‘You’re right. It’s “red figure” vase painting as opposed to “black figure”. Anything else?’ Elisabetta asked.
Stephen hesitated. He peered at the photos again. ‘It’s as though the vase is telling a story. And that each painted section is like a scene.’
The contact at Traffic interrupted. ‘Lieutenant di Mascio, I’ve got another call coming in. Do you want me to send the rest of these photos over?’
‘Yes, please,’ Elisabetta said. She looked up at the clock and turned to Stephen. ‘You need to get down to the firing range so that they can issue you with a pistol. Then we can go through the rest of these photos.’
Stephen was relieved to go and do something physical. Firing a weapon at a target was easy compared with trying to understand the finer points of ancient Greek pottery. By the time he got back from his firearms test it was gone five. As he made his way back to Elisabetta’s office, he spotted a man in leathers holding a crash helmet walking into reception carrying a large envelope. Elisabetta strode purposefully towards him, calling out behind her, ‘Stephen, take a seat, I’ll be right back,’ and turning to the courier, ‘I think those are for me.’
As he sat down, Stephen noticed a framed photograph of Elisabetta in a karate uniform, at an awards ceremony receiving her black belt, Third Dan.
She walked back into her office with the envelope. She opened it and laid out a series of Polaroid photographs on her desk.
‘Madonna! Traffic made them sound like patio ornaments. But look at these. It’s a treasure trove.’
There were necklaces, brooches, a sculpture of a Roman centurion’s costume, as well as a bust of a Roman head. It looked like the collection of an amateur archaeologist with pots and vases in various states of disrepair—some in pieces with earth still on them and others restored.
‘You can even see the room the photos were taken in. The table looks like it’s in someone’s kitchen. That red baize fabric they’re displayed on is a tablecloth,’ Elisabetta said.
Stephen felt out of his depth. It had been a long day. ‘Do you think they’re fakes?’ he ventured.
‘A broken head and that sculpture would be difficult to fake. They look like one-offs,’ she said, her jaw dropping as she pulled out the final photograph in the pile. It was distinctly different, a scene in a gallery with someone standing by a backlit display case containing an urn, a whole, undam
aged one.
Stephen stood transfixed. The scene depicted in the broken fragments had been fully restored. It was the story of a giant and a warrior, fighting to the death. The drama was played out in front of two terrified onlookers, both women.
‘It’s the same as the broken one,’ Stephen blurted out.
‘I know. But it can’t be. There is only one krater in existence that tells this particular story.’
Stephen frowned. ‘Krater?’
‘An urn, used in ancient Greece to dilute wine with water,’ Elisabetta said and pointed to the signature: Euphronios. ‘That signature belongs to the painter, not the potter. Euphronios was one of a handful of highly sought-after vase painters.’ The name didn’t mean anything to Stephen, but even in a photograph he could see that the vase was something extraordinary.
‘It’s one of the finest pieces of painted pottery in all of the ancient world and it’s every bit as dramatic as the Sistine Chapel. Here we have Antonio Sanzio standing proudly next to this perfect krater, in a museum in the Vatican. What’s he doing there?’
‘As though he was the archaeologist who discovered it. And look, there’s someone else hiding behind the plinth, trying to get out of the shot,’ Stephen said.
‘So there is. I’m going to get down to the Vatican Museums before they close. If this confirms what I’m thinking, I’ll need a warrant to search the dead guy’s apartment.’ Elisabetta scribbled down a name and number on a scrap of paper. ‘Call them for me, will you? Ask them to hang on until I get there. I’m going to leave you in the hands of a colleague.’
She picked up the phone. ‘Pasquale, can you get down to my office and look after Stephen, our new colleague from London. I have to go out. Thanks.’ Elisabetta grabbed her keys, phone and the bundle of photographs, and strode towards the exit, issuing a series of instructions. ‘I want a digital version of that photo of the two men, something we can zoom in on. And we need to find out who the other person is. Have I forgotten anything? Can you find out if there are any upcoming antiquities auctions across Europe? That’s in the file on my desk, as well as the case notes of this current investigation on the table. I’ll let you know about the raid on Sanzio’s apartment.’
Nighthawks Page 2
