The Immaculate Deception

by Iain Pears

‘Tarento. Yes. He was a perfect fright, and quite the stupidest policeman I had ever met. But quite sweet and amiable in his way,’ she went on, demolishing part of Argyll’s imaginary reconstruction, ‘and dreadfully kind to Taddeo here,’ she added, flattening another.

  ‘So I didn’t really think there was much to worry about from that direction. Which was a mistake, as while his superior lacked investigative drive and enthusiasm, Taddeo had both in abundance. And early on I saw him watching Bulovius with a level of interest that only flickering suspicion could arouse. So I took the trouble to engage him in conversation to try and get his measure. It was a bad mistake. Quite simply, I fell completely in love with him.

  ‘Now, I am not a romantic soul; quite the opposite, in fact. I always thought myself immune from such feelings; this was why I married my husband, as I thought mild affection was more than enough. To fall in love, so unexpectedly, so instantly and with the most inappropriate person in the world, simply took my breath away. It made me foolish in a way I have never been before. Even worse, Bottando was utterly unresponsive as far as I could see and, moreover, was taking far too close a professional interest in me. He watched me like a hawk; even had I been capable of coherent action, it would have been quite difficult to do anything. I had wild imaginings that there was a file on me, and that they had already earmarked me as the likely thief; that I was going to spend several years in gaol for the one picture I didn’t steal. The only thing I didn’t remotely consider as a possibility is that I had had the same effect on him as he had on me. I had a high notion of my abilities; but I never thought of myself as someone people fell in love with.

  ‘The worst moment was when I forced myself to go into Florence to have a meeting with the runner, to reschedule getting the picture out of Italy should I get hold of it. It was stupid – the one and only time I ever had direct dealings with such people. Fortunately, the man I had chosen was not well known, otherwise seeing me come out of his apartment block would have been enough to make even the thickest policeman suspicious.

  ‘And Bottando was not stupid, which was why, when I saw him standing across the street, looking at me when I emerged, I came as near to panic as I have ever done. Even worse, he wouldn’t come to the point, just talked to me, said he was off-duty, and would I care to go for a walk? It was the oddest interrogation I have ever been through because, I suppose, it wasn’t one. Instead, we just walked. And walked and walked. We visited churches, and we visited museums and courtyards and by-ways and alley ways. You do the same with Flavia, I know you do. There is nothing better in the world than to share the pleasure of a little discovery, a new sight or a new picture with someone. I had never felt so happy in anyone’s company before in my life. I will not go into any further details, if you don’t mind. I will merely say that we came back here to my little house, and spent a lovely weekend together.

  ‘Except for the fact that he was a policeman. And that was a major stumbling block. I decided that he was warning me. We know about you, he was saying. Watch yourself.

  ‘So I did. I was not about to pay the price of someone else’s folly, thank you very much. It was a ticklish situation, as you can imagine. On the one hand, I wanted to get that picture; on the other, the risks were large, and I have always disliked risks.

  ‘So I waited, and slowly became reassured. The police seemed to lose interest, everything went quiet. I had already figured out by watching Bulovius, and the way he got nervous every time someone sat on the sofa, where the picture was, and late one night, after I had spent an hour in the garden waiting for everyone to go to bed, I slipped back into the house, put it in a little bag, and walked out.

  ‘Straight into the arms of Taddeo. He had been sitting in the garden all night for days. Waiting for something to happen. It was a lovely night, with a beautiful moon, and I could see the look of vague amusement on his face. I was speechless, so he did the talking.

  ‘“Congratulations,” he said. “You found it.”

  ‘I said I had, and that I could explain.

  ‘“No need to. I know what happened. You were looking for an earring, peered under the settee and there it was. So you picked it up and decided to take it yourself to the police station.”

  ‘It seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation to me, so I nodded.

  ‘"It might be difficult, however,” he went on, “to explain that to Mr Stonehouse. He might ask why you were taking it out of the house at all. He might become angry about the whole business, and wonder whether in fact you took it in the first place.”

  ‘I said it would be terribly unkind of him even to think such a thing.

  ‘“Maybe it would be better, if you were willing to forgo thanks for recovering the picture, if we didn’t say how it was recovered? Perhaps if it was just found?”

  ‘I agreed to the inevitable and we left it, wrapped in a bag for protection, in a ditch, where Bottando duly picked it up the next morning with me there as a witness, and handed it in to general applause. It was a terrible wrench, but I left that same afternoon, went back to England, and steered clear of Italy for some time. When I started working again, it was a full decade before I took any commissions for Italy.

  ‘But, for old time’s sake, when I heard that the Stonehouse collection was to come up at auction, I looked in the catalogue, saw the picture was there, and bought it. I sent it to Taddeo as a little keepsake – complete with the invoice so he wouldn’t be concerned. I was glad to see he still had it when we met again. That meant a lot to me.

  ‘Anyway, for the thirty-five years in between I put Taddeo Bottando behind me and got on with my life, which was perfectly satisfactory until Flavia began investigating me and I met him again. Then I realized that some things simply cannot be put behind you. And as he let it be known that he felt exactly the same, we decided we were too old for any more delay. I was already in retirement, he decided to take his as soon as possible, and here we are. And here, I very much hope, we stay.’

  Bottando said nothing during this lengthy exposition; simply sat and looked benignly from one to the other, smiling occasionally, and sipping his drink. When Mary Verney finally finished, Argyll stared glumly at both of them. It was not what she had not mentioned that bothered him, it was the fact that, on what was in some ways the central point, she was clearly and obviously telling the truth. When he saw Bottando looking at her, he knew the expression well, and knew what feeling lay behind it. It was the way he looked at Flavia. He knew just enough about them to realize that both had led lives that had a deeply unhappy core, for both were naturally affectionate, and neither had any proper object for their affection.

  They had tasted it once, walking the streets of Florence, and now they were grabbing it with both hands, and with a desperation only the truly deprived can manage. Was he going to spoil it for them? Was it really supposed to be his job to snatch it all away?

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, staring hazily in the direction of the sun, which was beginning to sink behind some pine trees halfway up the next hill, ‘Flavia has always had a considerable admiration for you. Professionally, that is.’

  ‘I’m flattered to hear it.’

  ‘Hmm. She once told me, you know, that of all the thieves she had ever come across, you had one quality that set you apart from all the others.’

  ‘And that was?’

  ‘Discipline. Rigorous self-discipline. Most are caught, you see, because they become lazy – these are her words, not mine, you understand – so they repeat themselves. One particular way of stealing something works, so they do it again. And again. You were the only one to have infinite variety, beyond the fact, as the general here once noted, that none of the things you stole were photographed or, until recently, recovered.’

  ‘We all have our little trademarks.’

  ‘Apart from that, almost nothing. Which is just as well, really.’

  She looked at him and smiled sweetly. ‘I suppose it is,’ she said.

  17

  The
realization that she had told almost everything she knew to a man who, it seemed, was quite possibly still connected to the intelligence services made Flavia feel quite distinctly paranoid. So much so that when she got to her car – thanking heaven that she always kept the key in her pocket rather than leaving it in the apartment – she checked it carefully, inside and out, underneath and in the engine and around the petrol tank. Stranger and nastier things had happened.

  But all seemed fine, and she drove off quickly, taking a round-about route, up and down little alleyways, stopping frequently, doing illegal U-turns, driving the wrong way down one-way streets, just to make sure no one was taking an undue interest in where she was going. She kept up the routine when she got to the motorway as well, although the suddenly uncooperative nature of her bladder and the fact that for the first time in her life she felt car-sick meant that she had to stop frequently in any case.

  Again, nothing untoward appeared in her mirror, no one seemed to look at her with more attention than was warranted, and gradually she relaxed. It was a long drive, made longer by the frequent stops, and it was three o’clock when she arrived once more in Siena. She parked in La Lizza, a part of the town that rarely appears on tourist postcards, considered for a moment whether she was doing the right thing, then walked into the school where Elena Fortini earned her living.

  She had to wait; Elena was giving a class, and had another twenty minutes to go, so she sat, walked around, read the noticeboard full of trips and offers of accommodation and old cars for sale, and finally stared out of the window wondering why time so often seemed to drag along so slowly. It was unlike most schools; no bell signalled the end of lessons when they came, there was no sudden outburst of noise and movement as the pupils cascaded out of the classrooms. This was a serious place, mainly for students dissatisfied with the teaching at the university, or businessmen trying to show how keen they were to get on, or people who wanted jobs in the town’s hotels and needed to be able to talk to the guests.

  Very dull, little life. Lost in a particularly distant pattern of thoughts, Flavia scarcely even noticed; only when Elena Fortini tapped her on the shoulder did she return to earth, and turn round.

  ‘They said I had a visitor,’ she began. ‘I’m glad you didn’t say who you are.’

  ‘Can we go somewhere quiet?’

  Elena shrugged. ‘Fine. Inside or out? It’s a nice day. Let’s go for a walk. If you’re up to it.’

  She was, but only for about ten minutes, then she began to feel extraordinarily weary, so they went into a hotel Flavia had stayed in once before, many years ago, and ordered a bottle of cold water and coffee, and sat in a small cloister in the shade. It was almost too beautiful to talk of anything serious. So they didn’t, for a while, but sat quietly together, with Flavia more and more convinced that her instincts were – must be – superior to any other evidence.

  There was, though, only one way to find out. ‘I’ve been looking into you, and into Sabbatini,’ she said. ‘And getting conflicting reports. Like your being known in your past for excessive violence and cruelty. I was also told that Sabbatini never thought up his own stunts. They were always designed and planned by you, who stayed safely in the background. I’ve also caught you out in a particular lie. You said you hadn’t heard from Sabbatini in ten years. That wasn’t true.’

  She smiled. ‘Can you prove it?’

  ‘As near as I need to. He phoned your school in February. It’s in his phone records.’

  ‘And how could you know that?’ she said scornfully.

  ‘You mean, how could I know when he used a public phone? Simple. Because he was an idiot and used a charge card to pay for it.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean I spoke to him. Maybe I was teaching.’

  ‘That can be checked, no doubt.’

  ‘Or out for a coffee.’

  ‘The phone call lasted thirteen minutes. It doesn’t take that long to be told you’re not there.’

  ‘So I forgot. Sorry. It slipped my mind.’

  ‘Ettore Bossoni.’ Flavia noted the sudden caution in the woman’s pose as she mentioned the name.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s the one who says you are exceptionally violent and dangerous.’

  ‘If he’s right, it’s risky of you to tell me, then.’

  ‘He’s now a journalist, and rang me up soon after the theft to make inquiries. He says Sabbatini tried to persuade him to publicize the whole thing. He also is lying.’

  ‘Very perceptive of you.’ She smiled. ‘No, I mean it. I’m not being entirely sarcastic. Go on, please.’

  ‘I’m fairly certain he got his information from somewhere in the government, at least. He was checking up on me, to make sure I was being as discreet as instructed. He was working for the security services twenty years ago, and probably still is in some form. A couple of hours after I talked to him someone put a car outside my apartment, which worries me.’

  ‘So it should,’ she said, suddenly serious.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Go on talking to me. I might tell you later, depending on what you say.’

  ‘As far as I know it now, the events went like this: Sabbatini steals the picture on the Monday, and plans some grand coup for the Friday, the anniversary of his sister’s death. On the Wednesday, a ransom demand arrives. Two days later I – or rather my colleague – hand over the ransom money down the Appian Way and recover the picture. End of story. But …’

  Elena Fortini looked at her inquiringly.

  ‘But, who handed the picture back and took the money? There are two possibilities. One is Bossoni, the other is you.’

  She turned to see how this suggestion was received. It was not received very well. Elena Fortini took a sip of water, and shook her head.

  ‘Wrong,’ she said simply. ‘Or at least, wrong in your conclusions about me. I can’t comment on Bossoni, of course. However, all that evening I was teaching a long revision class that went on until past ten o’clock. The students had a big exam on the Monday and needed a lot of help. I have twenty people to prove I was here. And if you think I could get from a classroom in Siena to the Appian Way in under two hours, you have a higher estimation of my poor old car than it deserves.’

  ‘I’m open to suggestions.’

  ‘And what would you do if I did tell you something of interest?’

  ‘I don’t know. My original intention was to tidy up loose ends and save everybody embarrassment. Like a good public servant. It seems to have got a bit beyond that. I thought I was dealing with a stolen picture. The picture seems only a small part of it now. Although part of what I do not know. But Sabbatini is dead, his sister was murdered, a large amount of money has gone missing. And no one wants me to look into it at all. I’d like to know why, and get people off my back.’

  ‘If that’s the case then I won’t tell you anything,’ Elena said. ‘I’m not going to break cover just to make you feel comfortable. It’s too dangerous. And I’m not being melodramatic.’

  Flavia looked at her seriously. ‘Look, I could arrest you as an accessory. I won’t; won’t even threaten it. You can sit there, drink your water, say nothing, walk out. There will be no consequences, no reports, nothing. If you tell me what you know, if there is anything I can do about it, I will. But I must be honest; I doubt there is.’

  Elena rocked herself back and forth and thought. ‘So do I.’ She paused, then took a deep breath. ‘I kidnapped Maria di Lanna. Was that in your files?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. I was worried about Maurizio when he was arrested. Courage was not his strong point, and I knew that he would say anything to get himself out of trouble. We needed something to make sure he realized that he had to keep quiet. Kidnapping Maria was a message he could not fail to understand.’

  Flavia stopped herself from saying that shooting her in the head probably got through as well.

  ‘So we took her, and held her. A nice woman, oddly. Desperately spoiled, of course, b
ut no whinger. I liked her. She was upset and frightened, obviously, but we reassured her it was only for a week, then she calmed down. It was true, as well. We planned to hold her only long enough for Maurizio to hear about it and get the message.

  ‘The day before we planned to let her go, the police came. The army, whatever. I was out; Maria said she wanted some cornflakes, so I went to the shop to get them for her. I also bought her a little cake. With a candle. We were going to have a little party that evening to say goodbye. Can you believe it?’ She shook her head. ‘I even bought some party hats.

  ‘No party. I saw the cars draw up as I was coming out of the shop, so I watched from a distance. I heard the gunfire, saw the troops storm in, heard my comrades and friends being killed. Pop pop pop. They didn’t even fire back; it was too much of a surprise. Five people in there, all killed within seconds.’ She paused. ‘You don’t look very shocked.’

  ‘Should I be?’

  ‘I suppose not. All that I want to say is that there was no attempt to arrest anybody. It was shoot to kill, no questions asked. We expected it in one way, but it was still a shock. A long time ago, and not important. What is important is that after all the shooting was over, I saw Maria, alive and well, being bundled out of the house and into a waiting car.’

  ‘She was alive? She was rescued? Are you certain?’

  ‘Alive and unharmed. Believe me, I can never forget it; as she was being led to the car she looked across the road and saw me, clutching the cornflakes. I thought, Christ, she’s going to point me out, and I got ready to run, but she didn’t. Do you know what she did? She winked at me. She did nothing at all except wink at me. Then turned her head away, allowed herself to be put in the car, and was driven off.’

  She stopped, still remembering that faint smile then shook her head and drummed on the marble-topped table with her fingers. Thick, short fingers, they were, Flavia noted. Almost like someone who worked with them for a living.

  ‘The next morning it was all over the papers. Heiress killed in car crash. And rumours that she had been murdered by terrorists. I never discovered how they found us, but in some ways I was lucky that everyone else was killed. There was nothing to link me with the business at all. I went underground for a couple of years, and eventually was picked up and made peace, in my way, with the powers. It was all over by then; nothing anyone could do.