by Vaseem Khan
The silence that followed was broken by the sound of a bell ringing somewhere in the house.
Belzoni, who seemed to have slipped into a trance, stirred. ‘This house belongs to an Italian financier who settled in India many years ago. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the University of Bologna and allows us to use the property. I grew up in a fishing village on the Tuscan coast – the sound of the sea is, how you say, familiare.’ He paused. ‘Whatever you think you know, you are wrong. I cannot tell you anything more.’
‘What I know is that you’re not here for the reasons you say you are. What I know is that I’ve been attacked twice by a man who, it now turns out, might be a former Nazi. And here you are, running around town with a man who worked for Mussolini’s very own Gestapo.’
Alarm spread over his dark features. ‘What do you mean? What Nazi?’
She hesitated. Perhaps she’d made a mistake. The circumstances of James Ingram’s death and the fact that he might be a Nazi had, so far, stayed within the investigation – to tell Belzoni would be to risk releasing those details into the wild. She would swiftly lose control of the situation if that information ended up as tomorrow’s headlines.
Belzoni spoke. ‘I understand that it must be difficult for you to trust me. Please understand, I am here only to help. Our interests are the same.’
‘What interests are those exactly?’
He seemed on the verge of saying something, but then pulled back. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. I cannot tell you more. Not at this time.’
She stood. ‘In that case, tomorrow, your name, and the name of your good friend Signor Mariconti, will be splashed across the front pages of every major newspaper in this country. I will personally see to it. “Italian interference in the investigation of the missing Dante manuscript.” I wonder what your paymasters, whoever they are, will think of that?’
‘You would not!’
‘Try me.’
He stared at her in mild horror. Finally, he sat back. ‘Give me three hours. I will speak to Mariconti. I make no promises, but I will try my best to convince him that we should share our information with you.’
‘What information?’
‘Information about what really happened to John Healy during the war.’
Chapter 39
John Healy’s funeral took place in a church in Sewri near the Sewri Christian cemetery. The irony didn’t escape her. Healy had hidden himself in the same cemetery and would now end up buried there.
It was a small service, presided over by a native priest, Mervyn Alvares, a bald, regal-looking man of indeterminate age, whose white cassock dragged over the warm flagstones of the nave. Passing beyond the communion rail, he ascended the altar, turned, and looked down over his gathered audience.
There were few mourners.
Neve Forrester and a handful of Healy’s colleagues from the Asiatic Society shuffled noisily among the pews towards the front; two rows behind them, Erin Lockhart sat, stony-faced, on her own. At the very rear were a trio of journalists, admitted after much protest and under strict orders not to cause disruption. The news of Healy’s death had filtered out, though it had yet to make the papers. That would soon change.
Persis supposed that she would have to brace herself for the onslaught, particularly if the full circumstances of Healy’s disappearance and death also came to light.
An inevitability. Keeping a secret in Bombay was as difficult as trying to hold down a shadow.
She slipped into the pew behind Lockhart, forcing the American to twist around on the wooden bench. She stared at the policewoman, then dipped her head fractionally in greeting. Behind her, the priest launched into his eulogy.
Alvares had a theatrical style, and the picture he painted of Healy was both sympathetic and bombastic: an intelligent, talented young scholar, a man who had suffered the iniquities of war, and whose life had ended too soon.
John Healy: a Greek tragic hero.
Minutes later, Neve Forrester took the stand to offer a few words in eulogy.
Persis leaned forward and whispered into Lockhart’s ear. ‘Shouldn’t it be you up there?’
‘I don’t do eulogies,’ said the American, curtly, without looking around. ‘Once you’re dead, people will say everything about you except the truth.’
A noise turned them around. Persis saw Archie Blackfinch clatter into the church. He spotted her, gave an uncertain wave, then fell on to a pew near the door.
Forrester looked down on the small gathering, her expression unreadable. ‘Whatever the circumstances that drove John to act as he did in his final days, the fact remains that a young man of immense talent has been taken from us. I did not know John well; none of us did. He was a committed scholar, a man who valued history and the way that it might be used to illuminate our present. In his short time on earth, he achieved more than most of us do in a lifetime. He was a complex man, a thoughtful man. But some shadow had fallen over his soul, and I believe he found it impossible to find his way out from under it.
‘Sub specie aeternitatis, we are all dust, our lives inconsequential. Nevertheless, wherever John ends up, I hope that he is now in the light.’
Persis found the words strangely moving.
An hour later, she looked on as the soil was patted down over Healy’s grave.
She waited as a carved slab was laid over the soil and set into place. A stone Cross served as a simple tombstone.
The group gathered around the grave began to shuffle and look at their watches. A crow cawed from a nearby tree, setting off its neighbours, the cacophony raucous in the silence. The sound seemed to serve as a starting pistol, and the mourners dispersed quickly, racing for the cemetery gates.
Neve Forrester hung back. ‘I’m glad you came, Inspector,’ she said. ‘I would appreciate an update.’
Persis quickly brought the Englishwoman up to speed.
Taking out her notebook, she showed her Healy’s last riddle.
Forrester stared intently at the page, as if she might force meaning from the words with the fierceness of her gaze. Finally, she sighed. ‘No. It means nothing to me.’ She patted Persis on the arm, a gesture of intimacy that surprised her. ‘Well done. I have every faith you’ll see this through.’
She turned and walked briskly away.
Stepping back towards the grave, Persis saw that Erin Lockhart was still there, Blackfinch with an arm around her shoulders.
A splinter stabbed its way under her skin.
Lockhart was silently weeping. Persis found the display of emotion jarring. She wouldn’t have believed the hard-nosed American capable of such sentimentality.
She waited in silence.
Sunlight gilded the tombstones around Healy’s plot; the air danced in the heat.
Finally, Lockhart reached into a pocket for a handkerchief and dabbed at her tears. ‘Forgive me. I never cry at funerals. It’s just . . . such a damned waste!’ She seemed to get hold of herself. Turning to face Persis, she asked, ‘Archie tells me you’re one step closer to finding the manuscript?’
Archie?
Persis blinked, momentarily nonplussed. The woman was all business again.
She glanced at Blackfinch who, having withdrawn his arm from the American, was now standing there like a lost sheep. A wave of heat prickled her skin as she recalled the taste of his lips, the feel of his hands on her—
‘Inspector?’ Lockhart was staring at her, waiting for an answer.
She coughed to hide her embarrassment, then told her about her recent findings. She had decided that taking Lockhart into her confidence was worth the risk – the American was probably the one person in Bombay who had known Healy’s mind or as much of it as he was willing to reveal.
But Lockhart could make nothing of the latest riddle. Nevertheless, the idea that Nazis were running around the city chasing the manuscript seemed to enrage her. ‘Three years ago, the Smithsonian sent me to Poland to look at their concentration camps in preparation for an
exhibition. Auschwitz. Sobibor. Treblinka. I have a strong stomach, but the revulsion I experienced walking around those places, knowing what the Nazis did to millions of civilians, to women and children . . .’ Her jaw clenched. ‘I don’t suppose until that moment I understood what depravity really means. We’ve been programmed to believe that humanity is better than it is. That we’re somehow fashioned in God’s image. Well, if this is what God looks like, then I really don’t ever want to meet him.’
‘Did Healy ever mention them? The Nazis?’
‘No. As I said before, he refused to talk about his time in the war. He hated them, that much I know. Whatever they did to him over there, it left its mark.’
‘Can you think of any reason they would transfer him out of the prison in Vincigliata, but then doctor the records to show that he was still there?’
She shook her head, her golden hair bouncing around her shoulders. ‘It’s strange. They must not have wanted anyone to know they’d taken John somewhere else. I suppose if you’re going to torture a man as relatively well known as he was, you take precautions. The propaganda war was just as important as the physical one.’
But Persis didn’t think the explanation fit the facts.
Lockhart looked at her watch. ‘I’ve got to be going,’ she said. Her usual brisk demeanour appeared to have reasserted itself, the uncharacteristic display of emotion no more than a passing aberration. ‘Look, I know this is asking a lot, but can you keep me informed?’
Persis flashed a humourless smile. ‘You still think you can procure the manuscript for the Smithsonian?’
Lockhart refused to back down. ‘The world must go on, Inspector. I have a job to do.’ She turned to Blackfinch. ‘Perhaps we can meet up for lunch, sometime? I’d love to know a bit more about your work out here.’ She held out a card. Blackfinch looked at it stupidly, then accepted it as if it were a live grenade, glancing guiltily at Persis as he slipped it into the pocket of his jacket.
They watched her walk briskly away.
‘I wonder why Healy’s father didn’t ask for the body to be returned to England?’ remarked Blackfinch in an overloud voice. She got the impression he was filling the sudden void to prevent her from commenting on the lunch invitation.
Not that that mattered to her. In any way. Why should it?
‘I think he said goodbye to his son a long time ago. Whoever Healy was now, he wasn’t the same man that left to go to war.’
Her eyes lingered on Healy’s grave. Words had been carved on the slab.
Father in thy gracious keeping
Leave we now thy servant sleeping
The clipped epitaph brought a lump to her throat. The strangest sensation overcame her then, that John Healy’s life had somehow become superimposed on her own; that his emotions, his thoughts, the tortured mystery of his final days, had become invested in her.
On the heels of this feeling came a quiet desolation, temporarily stilling her thoughts.
‘Are you alright, Persis?’
Blackfinch, looking down at her with concern.
She grimaced, embarrassed that he had seen her overcome by . . . what? A vision? A momentary empathy with a man she had never known?
‘I should be getting back.’
‘Persis.’ He hesitated. ‘Do you want to talk about last night?’
She risked a glance and saw that a high colour had risen to his cheeks.
‘There’s nothing to talk about.’
‘I disagree. Something happened. It would be silly to den—’
‘I must be getting back,’ she said, cutting him off. She turned and began to walk away, her feet seemingly encased in cement. Unbidden, her mind kept replaying their encounter in the jeep, the closeness of his face, his breath on her lips, the feel of his hands moving over her body.
He followed, his long strides easily keeping pace.
‘Is it because of him?’
‘No.’
‘He wants you back, doesn’t he?’
‘No.’
‘You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?’
‘No.’
She flew through the gates and scrabbled into her jeep, slamming the door shut behind her.
He stared at her through the window like a boy outside a sweet shop without the money to venture inside.
She felt her heart twist and bend. Why did she feel as if she’d walked out on to a branch that was about to crack under her? . . . No!
She had vowed never again to allow any man to have control over her emotions.
If the price for that was loneliness, then so be it.
She switched on the engine, put the jeep into gear, and screeched out into traffic.
Chapter 40
It was almost four before she returned to Franco Belzoni’s residence. The sun had moved across the sky, but the air was still stiflingly hot. Her shirt stuck to her back as she drove the jeep through the gate, parked, then crunched over the gravel forecourt to the front door.
A different house servant answered, a small, bookish man in white livery. He led her through the house, this time out into a rear garden. Here Belzoni was standing, sipping lemonade as he conversed with another man, smaller, with thick shoulders, a ruthless grey buzz cut, and a hard stare. A terrier in human form.
The man wore a suit that looked about as comfortable on him as a cocktail dress on a rhino.
Belzoni dipped his head as she approached. ‘Inspector, may I introduce il Signor Enrico Mariconti?’
Mariconti did a strange shuffle while standing on the spot, a sort of semi-bow while clicking his heels together, then held out his hand. She looked at it, then shook it quickly.
Moist fingertips.
Belzoni ushered them towards a set of cane garden furniture. They sat and ordered more drinks from the house servant, who was hanging around them like a nervous bat.
‘How much has Franco told you?’ asked Mariconti, once the pleasantries were out of the way. His English was excellent.
‘Not nearly as much as I need to know.’
His jaw worked silently. He had small eyes, but his gaze was hard and penetrating. ‘Very well. What I will tell you now must be kept in the strictest confidence until such time that I deem fit. Agreed?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Whatever you tell me must be the truth. No conditions attached. I will use it as I see fit to further my investigation.’
His face opened in surprise. A look of pure wonder crossed his rustic features. She supposed that he wasn’t used to hearing the word ‘no’, let alone from a woman. A sort of half smile, half grimace moved the edges of his mouth.
A silence passed between them, until, eventually, he nodded.
‘Very well. But may I ask that you operate with discretion?’
‘Yes. You may ask.’
He lifted a glass of chilled water and sipped at it before setting it down. ‘John Healy is no hero. Yes, he went to war to fight the Nazis, but at Vincigliata he quickly learned what it means to be a real soldier. He was a scholar, a soft man. Once the Nazis discovered who he was, they came for him. They demanded his cooperation. Help them or face torture, even death.’
‘What cooperation did the Nazis need from him? He was an academic, not a spy or a politician.’
Mariconti flashed a superior smile. ‘Perhaps you are not aware, but Hitler – along with many of his senior officers – was obsessed with art. They looted priceless treasures from across Europe: paintings, statues, jewellery. How do you suppose they knew what was worth stealing, what was worth keeping?’
She waited for him to explain.
‘Himmler, in particular, was obsessed with the occult. For this reason, the acquisition of old manuscripts became a passion with him. But there were so few men who understood what he wanted, or could make sense of the treasures he amassed. The SS murdered much of the intelligentsia during their purges; the ones they didn’t murder were forced to flee overseas.’ He tapped the top of his glass with a thick index finger. ‘That i
s where Healy came in.’
‘Are you telling me that Healy worked for the Nazis?’ Her tone was sceptical.
‘Yes. To be more accurate, he was a collaborator.’
The word sat between them, as heavy as a cannonball.
‘He must have had no choice,’ she said.
He wagged an admonitory finger at her. ‘He was a soldier. A soldier has only two choices if he is captured. To suffer or to die. A soldier who chooses to help the enemy is a collaborator. A traitor.’
She shifted in her seat, processing the idea. Healy – the renowned scholar, the fêted war hero – a traitor. ‘Why does no one know of this? What I mean is, if you’re correct, then why isn’t this common knowledge?’
A hard edge entered his eyes. ‘It took a long time for the facts to come to light. Healy had been very clever, you see. He made a deal with the Germans, tried to cover every eventuality. If the Nazis lost the war, and he made it back to England, he did not wish for his reputation to be destroyed. He did not wish to be treated as a collaborator.
‘So he asked his new masters to alter the records at Vincigliata. This way, anyone checking after the war would think he had remained imprisoned there. No one would look too closely – and no one did.
‘At some point, he found his way out of Italy. We don’t know if he escaped or was released, though the latter is unlikely. What matters is that he returned to England, where they called him a hero and gave him a medal.’ The sneer in his voice was audible. ‘When the truth came to light, only the Allied intelligence services knew. And they decided to keep it to themselves. This, at least, I can understand. After all, the British government did not want anyone to know that they had fêted a Nazi collaborator. What is that saying? Let sleeping dogs lie? Healy was their sleeping dog.
‘The only reason that we are talking about it now is because six months ago, my own organisation, SIFAR, stumbled across the truth. My superiors decided they could use this information. You see, the Italian government has made it clear that they wish to recover as much of the lost treasure that the Nazis stole from Italy as possible. Healy helped the Nazis to loot many rare books and manuscripts from my country. Monasteries, museums, university libraries, private collections. Nothing was safe from those vultures.’
