“Let me organise a jet for you,” continued Connie, as she reached for her phone and started scrolling through her contacts. “It’s the least I can do. You’ll be there in three hours or so.”
It was Olivia’s turn to be alarmed. She wasn’t going anywhere near Brussels but Connie couldn’t know that. And she most certainly didn’t want Connie making any associations between her and England.
She touched Connie’s arm. “Thank you, that’s the most generous … you really are …”
She let her voice break as she smiled at Connie with all the warmth she could muster. “If my dear aunt hadn’t already passed away and I needed to get to her as fast as possible, I’d have jumped at your offer. But it’s not so urgent that I have to get to Brussels by this evening. I can get a flight in the morning. I’ve checked the schedules; there are several every day from both Ciampino and Fiumicino.”
“It’s your decision, Diana, but if you change your mind, a jet can be arranged in no time at all.”
“You’re too kind, Connie. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such a wonderful friend.”
“Come,” said Connie, holding out her arms. “Let me give you a hug. Cry on my shoulder if you wish.”
Olivia didn’t wish. Her eyes flashed in distaste as she looked down over Connie’s shoulder while they embraced. This was the closest physical contact they’d had and she had to remind herself not to kill Connie there and then.
“Did you manage to get any sleep, Diana?” asked Connie the following morning at breakfast. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to in your position. You should have taken a pill.”
“I don’t like the things,” replied Olivia. “I’d rather not sleep than be knocked out by some drug. But, yes, I think I did drop off eventually. It was all rather fitful though.”
The truth was altogether different: she’d slept soundly and when she awoke at five, her thoughts had been entirely focussed on her plans.
“What time’s your flight? I’ll organise a car from the hotel,” continued Connie.
A question asked innocently but one that could have had repercussions if Olivia hadn’t already anticipated it and used her innate planning skills. She had chosen a flight to London that left within minutes of one of the Brussels flights. If Connie did by chance check the flight, there would be no time discrepancy to raise any flags.
“It’s just after eleven,” she replied, not wanting to specify the number of minutes past the hour.
She leaned forward. “Look, Connie, The last thing I want is to leave. I love what we have here and I so appreciate being, well, appreciated. It’s not something I’m used to. I don’t want the bubble to burst but I really have no choice. I spoke again to my aunt’s lawyer last night after I went back to my room and he said he would try his best to get everything settled within two weeks, three at the absolute outside. It’s ridiculous, I know, but you know what Brussels and bureaucracy are like.”
Connie was dismayed but tried not to show it. She wasn’t sure how she was going to manage without Diana for three weeks. “Would it help if I got my team of lawyers onto it? They’re very efficient; they could work alongside your man.”
Olivia shook her head. “Thank you, but he’s an old timer. He’s been my aunt’s lawyer for ever. I think he’d feel extremely put out if I suggested something like that.”
“All right, Diana,” conceded Connie, “if that’s what it takes, I’ll have to live with it. However, please remember, if there’s anything I can do to help, anything at all, just contact me.”
Olivia reached out to touch Connie’s arm. “Thank you, Connie, thank you so much.”
“It’s purely self-interest,” said Connie, pulling a resigned face. “Whatever it takes to get you back quickly works for me.”
Olivia knew she was taking an extra risk by flying to and from the UK. However, she had little choice: it would take far too long to make the 2600-mile round trip to Nottingham and back from Rome, even on her BMW. It was around twenty hours of driving each way and when she arrived she needed to be more than fresh; she needed to be at her very best.
Having sent the hotel car on its way, she walked into the terminal at Ciampino airport and headed for the washroom. In the privacy of a cubicle, she folded her now shoulder-length hair into a skullcap and put on a wig of lank, greasy dark brown hair she had prepared specifically for the trip. She was always thankful that her own hair was extremely fine; it made hiding it under wigs very straightforward.
Next she removed the brown, neutral prescription contact lenses she had always worn for Connie’s benefit and replaced them with a dull blue pair, far darker than the pale grey-blue of her own pupils.
Following the lenses, a finely crafted gum shield pushed out her top lip and lifted her cheeks, making her chin appear to recede slightly. Lipstick she deliberately applied poorly and a patchy dusting of cheap powder completed the picture. Her features now strongly resembled the woman whose passport she was about to use, a passport she had stolen the day before from a carefully chosen British tourist at Rome’s Spanish steps.
She had already checked in online so after leaving her bag at the self-service bag-drop, she headed for security. No problem there; she was carrying nothing remotely illegal or prohibited in her cabin bag.
The final and potentially most difficult hurdle was passport control. Here she was banking on the officer in the booth being bored as he checked the thousandth passport of the day. To help her cause, she stood in front of a far-more-attractive twenty-something blonde in the passport queue. The officer behind the desk dismissed Olivia with a cursory glance, his attention fully on the blonde.
There would be a final check of her passport against her boarding pass at the gate, but the airline staff there were programmed simply to match name against name with only a cursory glance at the photo. It was simple psychology: if the passport and boarding pass names matched and the photo was similar enough, no doubt would raise itself in the checker’s brain.
Leaving Italy on a stolen British passport was one thing; entering the UK was another. Olivia couldn’t risk the probable greater scrutiny of her face against the photograph in the passport by the UK Border Police, and nor did she wish to risk the ePassport queue, even though the passport she’d stolen had the appropriate chip. But there was a simple solution. Italian nationals are required to carry an official ID card issued by the comune in which they live, and these cards can be used to travel anywhere within the EU: no passport is required.
Earlier that week, Olivia had positioned herself at an open-air bar in the Piazza Navona in central Rome and waited until an Italian woman of a similar age to her sat down nearby, hanging her open handbag on the back of her chair. While the woman distracted herself with texting on her phone, Olivia quietly changed tables, reached into the bag and removed the woman’s ID card from her purse, the process taking no longer than the time to bend and retrieve the napkin she had deliberately dropped as a smokescreen.
Five minutes later, down a dark alley smelling strongly of garbage, Olivia had climbed a dingy flight of steps to knock quietly on a door, using a prearranged sequence of knocks. Inside, a young drug addict called Mario covered the cost of his habit by forging and counterfeiting ID cards. Olivia handed him the stolen card and a photo-booth shot of herself as Signorina Drab. The Italian ID card has far less built-in security than a state-of-the-art passport, and in a matter of minutes, Olivia’s photo had been substituted for the original, the corner suitably embossed with a replica of the appropriate comune stamp.
With her new Italian ID in the name of Chiara Terzi, Olivia bought a second ticket for her flight, checked in online and printed out a second boarding pass. She wasn’t sure if the UK Border Police would ask to see it or not, but she now had that covered, just in case. They certainly wouldn’t know Signora Terzi was registered with the airline as a no-show.
In the event, the friendly-faced officer at the desk at Stansted airport simply looked at the ID card a
nd asked her a question she pretended not to understand.
“Mi dispiace, ma—”
The officer held up a hand to stop what he assumed might become a long flow of excited Italian.
“I asked you how long are you staying in the UK, Ms Terzi,” he repeated slowly with exaggerated patience.
She nodded as he spoke, as if processing and translating each word.
“Ah,” she cried, pushing her hair behind her ear and smiling, “Due, er, two-a weeks-a.”
“Enjoy your stay,” he said, handing back the ID card.
Chapter Sixteen
Paul Godden completed the hundred lengths he had set himself, the pace leisurely compared with his normal training session in the cooler, over-chlorinated pool near his office in Canary Wharf. As he towelled himself down, he gazed out over the Tyrrhenian Sea thinking life as a British bobby wasn’t all bad.
He had spent the previous evening sitting with Jennifer at an outside dining table explaining the details of the joint operation he was setting up with his opposite number in the Polizia in Rome.
“Massimo Felice is a delightful man, as you might expect a cultured Italian with a love of art to be, even if he is a copper,” he said, a twinkle in his eye as he glanced across the table at her.
Martina, the resident cook, had served them one of her signature dishes — coda di rospo alla catanese: breadcrumbed monkfish on a bed of fresh broad beans that reflected her Sicilian ancestry — and Godden, who had decided he’d died and gone to heaven, was now sipping a grappa from one of Pietro Fabrelli’s vineyards in the Veneto region of northern Italy.
“Our paths have crossed before in a couple of cases, but this one promises to be rather more complex. It started with a call from Sir Brian Gounder, the self-made squillionaire who thinks that because he’s fed a fortune back into the country’s coffers the entire British government is at his beck and call, along, of course, with the police, the crown prosecution service, et boring cetera.”
“I’ve heard of him,” said Jennifer. “Something of an—”
“Obnoxious little upstart with an ego the size of his bank balance?” suggested Godden.
“That’s the one.”
“His latest passion is art and, having bought a few daubs, liked them and then got serious about collecting, he now regards himself as an art buff. Fortunately for him, he has a couple of good advisors because otherwise he’d be at risk of squandering millions on junk.”
“I’m on the side of the junk,” said Jennifer.
“Me too,” agreed Godden. “At some point, Sir Brian got into Renaissance art, wanting to buy it wholesale. The idiot was seriously miffed when the Italian government told him he couldn’t buy frescos and ship them and the walls they were on to his Northamptonshire estate.”
“Arrogant sod,” said Jennifer.
Godden smiled. “I’m pleased we’re of the same opinion. Anyway, undeterred, he sought out galleries in Italy that specialise in the lesser-known fifteenth- and sixteenth-century artists. With an eye for business, Gounder reckons they will be famous one day and when they are, he’ll hit yet another jackpot as museums and foundations beat a path to his door.”
Jennifer’s laugh was scornful. “Hasn’t it occurred to him that if they haven’t jumped the big league barrier in five hundred years, it might be a while before they do, if ever?”
“Maybe he’s planning to live for a thousand years,” replied Godden.
He paused to take another sip of his grappa.
“All went well until he discovered a gallery in Florence well known for acquiring rare and sought-after paintings, and selling them on at outrageous prices. They smoothed the way to Gounder’s cheque book by discounting a couple of small portraits, one of which is an exquisite Giovanni di Luca. I was very jealous when I saw it and rather outraged it should be in the hands of someone like Gounder. Do you know his work?”
“Di Luca?” said Jennifer. “Yes, a little. Venetian with a style remarkably similar to Tommaso Perini’s.”
“I agree,” nodded Godden, “especially considering they never met and are unlikely to have seen each other’s work.”
“Now, what was interesting about the two small portraits was they came with a revolutionary new security tagging technique embedded into the fabric of the canvas, something the gallery developed and patented. The components are sub-microscopic in size, completely invisible to the naked eye and once they are there, impossible to remove. There are thousands of them forming an array that can interact remotely with a detection device that transmits to them. The components in the painting are passive, requiring no power, so there are no batteries to worry about or heat generated by the electronic systems.”
Jennifer shook her head in disapproval. “Surely that wouldn’t be acceptable for major works. It would be regarded as altering the nature of the painting, potentially compromising it if something unexpected happened to the micro-components in the future. I don’t know, leakage, perhaps?”
“Yes, you’re right,” agreed Godden. “Museums and foundations with priceless works wouldn’t touch it, but concerned private collectors think differently. They want to ensure that if there’s any attempt at theft of their collection, it’s nipped in the bud. And if for some reason a painting is somehow stolen, they want to be sure it can be located wherever it is in the world.”
“Impressive,” said Jennifer, puckering her lips in reluctant approval.
“Yes, and it might well be the genuine article. But we also think it’s the lead for a con.”
“Really?”
“Yes. What happened was Gounder was so impressed with his new acquisitions, the theft-proof paintings he’d bought for a song, that he wanted the system for his other far-more-valuable works. Which was exactly what he was supposed to want. The gallery owners of course reluctantly explained that the technique was so sensitive and complicated to apply, it could only be undertaken in their specialist laboratory in their gallery in Florence, the process of inserting the micro-components taking three months for each painting, although they could do several at once.”
“I think I see where you’re going,” said Jennifer, a sparkle in her eyes.
“Yes, during the three months while they were hidden from view in the gallery’s laboratory, the paintings were copied by one or more master forgers who could in that time fabricate everything about the painting, all imperfections in the canvas, wear and tear, the lot. The painting itself is the easy part.”
“What did they send back to Gounder? A pile of fakes?”
“Oh no, they’re too clever for that. He entrusted them with five masterpieces with a total value of around two million pounds, and when the paintings came back, they all passed his scrutiny. It was only when one of his advisors took a careful look that any doubt was raised, and then only about one of them. There was something about it, although he couldn’t put his finger on it.”
“That good, eh?”
“Yes. Anyhow, Gounder pulled some strings and got Ced Fisher to check the paintings with his magic program. Four duly passed the test, but the fifth, the one his advisor had questioned, a painting by an obscure but sought-after Neapolitan artist that’s worth nearly half a million, was a fake. A brilliant one, according to Fisher, but nevertheless a fake.”
“What did Gounder do?”
“He hit the gallery with it, who were outraged. They said if it was a fake, it must have been all along and to prove it, they produced a set of photographs taken in Gounder’s presence of the paintings before they were shipped from his house to Florence. They were digital images, so the metadata had effectively date-stamped them, and they insisted Fisher examine them. He did, under protest — Ced Fisher doesn’t like being ordered around — and lo and behold, the photos showed the painting was a fake all along.”
Jennifer shrugged her scepticism. “Metadata can be altered, as Ced will tell you, even the stuff that’s supposed to be carved in the original stone of the image. Didn’t Gounder have any p
hotos of his own?”
“He did, but the ones of the questioned painting had disappeared. Somehow, someone in the gallery must have arranged it.”
“Really? Presumably they must have planted someone in Gounder’s organisation.”
“That’s the assumption, yes,” nodded Godden, “but we don’t know for sure.”
“Who did he buy the paintings from? Surely they were certificated.”
“They were and they came from a very reputable source. Unfortunately the expert certifying them is now dead and the photos in the records he left behind are all rather poor quality film shots.”
“How convenient. What does Gounder want you to do now?”
Godden laughed. “I think what he wants is for Britain to declare war on Italy. What he actually got from us was a helpless shrug. But then we got a similar report from another collector, a far nicer man who lives in the wilds of Scotland. He’s only had one painting security tagged by the gallery, and it’s the same story. He was suspicious but not certain. Ced has been called in and certified the fake, but it’s a fake from a different hand, so there’s no connection with Gounder’s fake, and again, the gallery produced its own photographic record taken before the painting was shipped to Florence. And, surprise, surprise, there are no previous digital photographs.”
“Does Gounder know about the other case?”
“Heavens, no, he’d be screaming at everyone from the PM downwards. But two cases did give me enough to think about contacting Massimo Felice. Now, what Massimo had to say was most interesting. It seems he has long been suspicious of the gallery — it’s called the Galleria Cambroni and is run by a father and son, Maurizio and Ettore — but every time he’s tried to mount an operation, he has been told to back off by his superiors. It would appear that the Cambronis are extremely well connected, all the way to the top.”
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