His first objections had been predictable and understandable.
“This is an undercover operation, Jennifer. You’re going to be assuming a different identity, you’re going to be Italian, not English; you won’t be able to take calls from friends.”
Jennifer laughed. “I understand that, Paul, and my friends won’t have my number. My friends can be told I’m doing something else entirely, that I’m somewhere else entirely, so my disappearing for a long period of time won’t appear odd. But there are certain people, three to be precise, whom I can’t fob off with some story to explain why I can’t contact them. I simply can’t. They won’t accept it; they are too much a part of my life. And anyway, I think at least two of them could be useful to the whole scheme.”
“How do you figure that?” asked Godden, his tone sceptical. He didn’t want outsiders involved, untrained people who weren’t police. The whole operation was precarious enough as it was.
“Well,” replied Jennifer, trying to keep her voice light, “We need somewhere in Florence for the team monitoring things to stay. Somewhere convenient and comfortable that’s in no way connected to either the Italian police or to us. Pietro has such an apartment only ten minutes’ walk from the gallery. I’m sure Massimo Felice would appreciate it too, given the problems he’s had in the past and given he wants to keep my operation quiet. The apartment’s big, comfortable and almost never used. It’s not registered in Pietro’s name, of course, nor connected to him on paper — all part of dealing with the extortionate Italian taxes, you understand.” She held out her arms, her palms upwards and gave an Italian shrug. “This is Italy.”
Godden snorted. “You’re a police officer, Jennifer, how can you condone tax evasion?”
“It’s not evasion; it’s perfectly legal. It’s simply playing a system so staggeringly complex no one truly understands it, not even the tax man.”
She knew how he felt. No foreigner could understand the Italian fixation with taxes and how to avoid them. It was played at all levels of society from the poorest to the richest, and while the system continued to be perceived as punitive instead of constructive, nothing would change.
“The point is, Paul, the apartment’s unattributable, anonymous, and there are dozens of good routes I can take to it to ensure I’m not followed. And I can assure you Pietro won’t get in the way. I’ll tell him exactly what he can and can’t do, the most important of which is to keep away. He’ll understand. And he also has good connections in Florence, as he does in every Italian city.”
“That’s what worries me.” Paul was still unconvinced.
Later, as his resistance to Pietro thawed, he asked, “OK, I’m beginning to see why you can’t exclude Pietro, but why does Henry Silk need to be in the loop?”
“You mean apart from the fact he’s my father, that he calls me almost every day and that he put his career on hold while I got over the worst of my injuries despite having been offered the best parts ever?”
“He’s a famous actor, Jennifer. You can’t have him sashaying around Florence with you, drinking espresso or aperitivi or whatever, he’d be recognised instantly and your cover would be blown.”
It was Jennifer’s turn to snort. “Henry Silk is a master of disguise. Haven’t you seen any of his stuff? I can assure you that if he took to sashaying around Florence, firstly, I wouldn’t be with him, and secondly he could walk right up to you and you wouldn’t recognise him.”
“So how do you see him being involved?”
“I don’t. I don’t want him involved and I’ll tell him so. It’s not necessary. But I can’t just disappear from his radar. I know Henry; he’s like me. He would regard finding me as a challenge.”
“Even if you told him it could endanger you, that he should keep his distance?”
“Yes, I can tell him that, but I’d have to tell him why. Don’t you understand? He would have to know I was safe. It needn’t amount to more than a brief, coded text every few days.”
“You’re a grown woman, Jennifer, a police officer going under cover in a protracted and potentially dangerous operation. You don’t need parental interference.”
“There won’t be any, I can assure you. But Henry’s still angry with himself over the Freneton case. He knows she’s still a threat and he feels he could have done more.”
“He was in prison; how could he have done more?”
“I don’t know. He couldn’t. He just thinks he could. And now he’s not in prison, he certainly won’t accept my being out of touch while Freneton’s still at large.” She paused to take a sip of water.
“Look, Paul,” she continued, “I know you can simply order me not to tell Pietro or Henry or Derek anything. I’m just trying to explain that that could be more dangerous, more likely to compromise the operation than if they were told something. If I lay down the ground rules, they’ll follow them. I just need to toss them a crumb. Surely this situation must occur in other undercover operations.”
Godden shook his head. “Actually, it’s not normally much of an issue. Officers going under cover tend to be single, unattached and with average backgrounds. They can disappear off the radar quite easily and keep any concerned parents at bay with the odd phone call where they just say how great everything is, how busy they are, and so on. You’re unusual in the scheme of things in that your background is, frankly, privileged and you have concerned parents who, as a result of what happened to you, need constant reassurance about you. Under normal circumstances you wouldn’t be a good choice, but you have special talents that are very hard to find. You’re a one-off, Jennifer, especially as you’re willing to take on the task.”
Jennifer took a deep breath; she knew she had won. “I’m more than willing, Paul. It’s a very exciting challenge. I really want to be part of it.”
Pietro had stopped pacing. He turned to face Jennifer, his back to the view, the source of hoped-for inspiration that had failed him.
“Tell me once again, tesoro. Explain it in simple terms I can understand, per piacere. I am just a simple fashion designer; I make pretty dresses for pretty ladies, I don’t understand all your complicated police intrigue.”
Jennifer found it hard to avoid smiling. Pietro was anything but simple: he was a highly articulate businessman with a razor sharp mind. Nothing and no one in his world deceived Pietro, which was why he was so successful and why he had to know what she was up to. Apart from that, with his connections and understanding of the darker side of Italian business, he would be able to put a slant on it that Godden, as a foreigner, wouldn’t come close to appreciating. She had seen Pietro’s soft-soap oh-so-humble approach many times before and seen his charm carry it off. To her, it was ridiculously transparent, but all part of the theatre.
“Sit down here next to me,” she said, reaching out for his hand and patting the sofa. “Your pacing is making me dizzy.”
Pietro obeyed, allowing his face to crumple like a disobedient puppy that has just been told off.
“It’s very straightforward,” started Jennifer, and summarised the background of the need for the operation, although she held back on the location of the gallery. When she reached the part about the creation of the forgeries taking three months, Pietro queried it.
“That doesn’t seem a great deal of time to recreate a masterpiece, tesoro. Some of these paintings took years to complete.”
Jennifer laughed. “We’re not talking about the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Pietro, we’re talking about relatively small paintings. However, I know what you mean: Godden was sceptical too, so he contacted a painter in the Lake District who apparently is as good as it gets when painting in the style of the old masters, a man called John Andrews. Andrews reckons it would take him around three to four months to knock up a copy of a Renaissance-period painting that was a convincing fake. He’s bona fide, by the way, beyond reproach, apparently.”
Pietro nodded. “I know his work; it’s brilliant. In fact, I have one of his portraits. Don’t you
remember it? It’s of a little girl, his daughter I think. It’s stunning, breathtaking.”
“Of course, the one in the formal dining room in the Milan apartment,” said Jennifer. “I didn’t make the connection.”
“Well, it’s modern, tesoro,” teased Pietro, “so you don’t tend to take so much notice.”
Poking her tongue out at him, she continued, telling him about the embedded security created by the gallery.
Pietro was shaking his head. “Beyond my simple brain, tesoro,” he said, pulling a face.
Pants on fire, thought Jennifer.
“There’s something else you haven’t covered,” said Pietro once Jennifer had finished. “You say you think the gallery produced a fake of the painting from the Sir Gounder person. I’ve met him, you know, hideous little man. What are they doing with the original? And what about the copies they will have made of Gounder’s other four paintings?”
“There’s been no suggestion they did that,” replied Jennifer, surprised by his remark.
Pietro laughed. “Listen, tesoro, these men are businessmen. Crooked ones, but businessmen just the same. They have an opportunity to maximise their profits, so why not take it. They have a market somewhere, people who think they are buying originals. China, I suspect, where they know little about art.”
“Pietro!”
He looked somewhat shamefaced but defended himself by saying, “European art, I mean, it’s outside of their culture, the same as understanding their art is hard for us.”
“I’m surprised at you,” Jennifer continued to scold.
Pietro ignored her. “What I was going to say is they probably make copies of everything, return some originals to the owners and some fakes. And those they sell on to China or wherever it is, they claim are originals. They are playing both ends off against the middle.”
“I agree,” said Jennifer, impressed by his assessment. For Pietro, it was a foregone conclusion that the fraudsters would explore every possibility.
“So,” said Pietro, getting up from the sofa again — he could seldom sit still for long, “that’s the scam, and the British police want you to go and work under cover in the gallery, according to what you told me earlier. Why you in particular? That part you haven’t told me yet.”
Jennifer pulled a face.
“OK,” she said, dropping her voice and looking around. “This part is … sensitive.”
Pietro smiled. “It’s all right, tesoro, there’s no one else here, not in the house anyway. I sent them all away.”
“I’m sure you’ve actually guessed already, Pietro, but if you want me to spell it out, the fraudsters are not in England, they are here in Italy, on the mainland, that is. Their operation uses a very prestigious gallery as a front and it’s assumed they have a number of master forgers there or nearby who are turning out the paintings.”
Pietro pursed his lips. “I see. They’ve chosen you because you can pass as an Italian. Where is this gallery? Roma? Firenze? I know many of the galleries in this country since, as you know, I have bought a number of quite expensive paintings myself. I also know the gallery owners, some better than others. Most I should say are entirely honourable men; others … well, I can think of three galleries I wouldn’t trust and would certainly never buy a painting from now. So, enlighten me, tesoro.”
“Firenze.”
Pietro raised his eyebrows and sighed in a way that said he now knew everything.
“Cambroni,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “it has to be. They are the only gallery of any note in Firenze I wouldn’t trust. Father and son business. Maurizio, the father, is old now, around seventy. I bought a painting from him about forty years ago, but there was something I didn’t like about him even then, and of course, one hears things. And his son, Ettore, I wouldn’t trust an inch.”
He looked at his stepdaughter in satisfaction. “Am I right?”
“Yes,” she laughed, “spot on.”
Pietro wasn’t laughing. “As I told you earlier when I thought the gallery was in London, these will be bad men; it will be dangerous. And now I know it’s in Italy, my concern is even greater. They will have connections, if you know what I mean. I am not happy about this.”
Chapter Nineteen
Fully refreshed after an undisturbed eight-hour sleep, Olivia jogged from the hotel near the river Trent, making her way along the river bank to Trent Bridge. Here she crossed the river and headed into West Bridgford.
Her running clothes made her as anonymous as any other jogger: black leggings, dark blue running shoes, a zip-up, tightly fitting dark blue lycra jacket over a sleeveless black top and a slightly oversized dark blue baseball cap with a false chestnut ponytail falling through the gap in the back. Wrap-around dark glasses and earbuds trailing to a mobile phone strapped to her left upper arm completed the image. Attractive, fit and forgettable.
After passing Trent Bridge Cricket Ground, she left the main road and the morning rush-hour traffic to make her way to Rampton Street. Stopping opposite the entrance door to the flat alongside the large garage doors of her lock-up, she ran on the spot as she pretended to adjust her phone. The street was quiet: no traffic, no pedestrians, no other joggers. Glancing to both ends of the street, she jogged over to the entrance door and pressed the buzzer. She could hear it sounding at the top of the stairs, but there was no follow-up sound of footsteps, just a rapidly fading echo. She pressed the buzzer again as she scanned the street, taking particular note of the buildings opposite. There was nothing. She removed a key from her jacket pocket and quickly let herself in.
She closed the door behind her, her senses on high alert. There was no webcam at street level, but her eyes searched every inch of the wall and ceiling for any changes. She tried the handle of the internal door to the garage. Locked, as she had left it a year ago. A good sign. Unlocking it, she slipped into the garage, standing in the entrance to allow her eyes to adjust to the gloom.
Before switching on the overhead light, she pulled her phone from her sleeve and turned on its torch, moving the beam around the walls and ceiling and large white van. Nothing had changed so she flicked the light switch, which was when she noticed the first sign of disturbance. The cables leading from the van’s battery to the trickle charger she had left attached had moved. She had arranged them in a characteristic configuration as they ran from the van across the floor and up to the charger. They no longer followed the same path.
Her senses now tingling, she carefully opened the van’s passenger door and peered inside. At first sight, nothing appeared to be out of order, but when she focussed the torch beam onto the steering wheel, letting it glance along the surface, she could see smears in the dust. The wheel had been wiped, swabbed probably. A forensic team had been here. There were more signs of swabbing on the handbrake and the floor, all places she knew there would probably have been traces of blood. Her blood, and therefore her DNA. And even if the traces were not blood, they would have found her DNA from her smeared fingerprints left when she had driven the van without wearing gloves.
Turning to the pocket in the passenger door, she removed the four maps she had carefully placed there the previous year. Road maps of Devon and Cornwall, Somerset, South Wales and Southern Ireland, the Somerset map folded very specifically and reversed in the stack from the others, its front cover facing onto the front cover of the South Wales map. At least that was how she had left them; but they were no longer arranged in the same way. It was quite clear the maps had been removed, opened and examined before being returned to the door pocket.
She nodded, smiling grimly. Her hideaway had been discovered and searched. It was compromised; she shouldn’t stay long. But how thorough had the search been? Had her hidden stocks been found?
She closed the van door, locked the internal door to the garage and headed up the stairs to the flat above the lock-up.
The first items to look at, in case she was now broadcasting her presence to a watcher, were the modem and the webcam. There
were no lights working on the modem, even though it was still plugged in and switched on. She sniffed at it, immediately registering a smell of char. It had burnt out: the report of lightning strikes had been accurate. So how come the premises had been searched? Coincidence? Who had found it?
As if in answer, the sound of a key in the lock of the main entrance at the bottom of the stairs cut through the silence. She instantly moved to stand behind the bedroom door. She was thankful she’d had the foresight to switch off the garage light and to close and lock the door. Whoever was entering the flat would have no advance warning of her presence.
She heard the intruder try the handle of the internal garage door. Smart. Cautious. Then the more confident sound of footsteps on the stairs. Just one set, and no conversation. Whoever it was, they were alone.
Olivia readied herself for dealing with the intruder. The flat had been discovered; it was probably a patrol or someone from the SCF. How ironic if it turned out to be Bottomley or Thyme. Whoever it was, she was already adjusting her schedule, knowing immediately she would no longer have the luxury of several days to finalise her plans.
Peering through the slight gap she’d left as she stood behind the bedroom door, she waited for the intruder to appear at the top of the stairs. As he did, she almost felt disappointed. It was Peters, the idiot landlord. Wasn’t he supposed to be in Australia? He must have returned, paid the flat a visit and when he found it empty and unused, reported it to the police. Perhaps he’d recognised her face on some flyer. Whatever the reason, he was about to pay heavily.
Ever since reporting his suspicions to the police, Clive Peters had been kicking himself. Having been away for two years, he’d completely forgotten about the concealed space in the cupboard below the kitchen sink, a hidey-hole created by a former tenant whom Peters suspected had been dealing drugs.
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