by Iain Pears
Flavia nodded. 'What this doesn't clear up, of course, is why it got stolen a second time. That doesn't make any sort of sense. Now, if it had been a fake . . .'
'Do we know it wasn't?' Bottando asked idly, still watching the clock. 'I mean, the only real indication we have is a report written forty years ago by someone who died - very conveniently if you ask me - last year. Didn't you say di Souza had a long-standing connection with a sculptor?'
'Man called Borunna, in Gubbio. That's right. It's what the file says, anyway.'
'Go and see him. It'll be worth examining all the angles. Meantime, I'll put someone on to checking auction catalogues and dealers.
See if anything stolen from Alberghi has surfaced. Waste of time, I think, but you never know.'
Flavia got up to go. 'If you don't mind, I'll go up tomorrow. I'm a bit whacked at the moment.'
He peered at her, then nodded. 'Fine. No great rush. You might go and give di Souza's apartment a going over, though, if you feel like it. Don't want you getting bored.'
'Is there anything else going on in America?'
Bottando shook his head. 'Not really, no. I had another word with Morelli, but he didn't have much to add. Your Argyll is coming along nicely. The accident wasn't his fault, apparently. The brake cable of his car dropped off, simple enough. Do you, by any chance, have a passport?'
'Of course I do. You know that. Why do you ask?'
'Oh, nothing, nothing. It's just that I've booked you on to a plane for Los Angeles tomorrow. You'll have time to go to Gubbio first. But I thought you ought to pop off and recover this bust yourself. Get you out of the office for a bit.'
She gave him a suspicious look, and he smiled sweetly and innocently back at her.
Flavia directed her third taxi of the day to an apartment block in a street off the via Veneto. No missing art dealers were in residence, and the apartment was as well defended as the American Embassy down the street.
But the caretaker had a set of keys, and it didn't take long to persuade him to hand them over, even though he was not at all impressed by the warrant Flavia had written out for herself in the back of the taxi. She also relieved him of the mail, to give herself something interesting to read in the elevator.
Di Souza's letters were not enlightening. Flavia learnt only that he was in danger of having his electricity cut off for non-payment, was being asked to tear his American Express card in two and send both halves back to the organisation, and had unaccountably failed to settle an outstanding bill with a tailor.
When she finally got through the formidable array of locks and metal plating on the door, she began to search. Initially not knowing where to start, she employed the impressionistic method, flitting about and inspecting whatever took her fancy, particularly satisfying her curiosity about what lay under the bed. Not even fluff. A tidy man, she decided. The cavity under her own bed resembled a fullblown dust storm.
Then she settled down to a more methodical approach, beginning at the inlaid Empire writing desk, moving on to the filing cabinet before the more whimsical business of investigating down the sides of gilt Venetian sofas or peering behind baroque history pieces on the walls.
Neither fancy nor professionalism produced much to justify her diligence. The only thing Flavia was sure of at the end was that Hector di Souza was no businessman. His accounting procedure was more than a little quaint. Notes of purchases were written on the back of cigarette packets which were then crushed and filed. Most of his assets - except for those which were used for sitting on or hung on walls - seemed to be in a moderately sized bundle of bank notes stuffed in a drawer. His bank statement revealed wild and inexplicable fluctuations, but nothing so grand as to suggest that several million dollars had recently come his way. That, indeed, tallied with the checks Bottando had instituted with assorted banks. He had found no trace of surreptitious Swiss accounts and the bank manager in Rome, asked if di Souza had recently made an enormous deposit, guffawed heartily. Any deposit at all, he indicated, would have been a bit of a novelty. Apart from that, there was a small file labelled 'Stock' but it contained no note of a Bernini. Not even an Algardi.
So, what did the apartment tell her? Di Souza was not in the big league of dealers. The apartment was fairly small and the furniture not of the highest quality. You can tell an art dealer by the chairs he sits on. Argyll's, she remembered, had the stuffing coming out of them. Di Souza made a reasonable income, assuming that most of it was hidden and never appeared in his account books. No one could live off the tiny sums entered officially for taxation purposes. A purveyor of middle-ranking stuff to middle-ranking collectors. In all, not the sort of man you'd expect to find selling major works of art to places like the Moresby. No more than Argyll was, really.
But there they both were, selling stuff to the place. Was this relevant? Probably not, or at least, not yet. But it was a coincidence, as Bottando had noted. She put the thought to the back of her mind, in case it came in handy later on.
Chapter Seven
Jonathan Argyll woke up with a splitting headache and spent some fifteen minutes staring at the ceiling and wondering where he was. It took a long time to retrieve his thoughts, put them all in the correct order and reach a satisfactory conclusion to explain why he wasn't tucked up in bed in his apartment in Rome.
He proceeded by association. First he remembered his Titian, then the imminent return to England that it implied. The search for the cause of this brought back the memory of the Moresby, which led straight on to di Souza, the theft and the murder.
His head punished him for the gruelling early morning exercise with a sudden stab of pain, and he groaned quietly.
'You OK?' asked a voice, out of his field of vision, somewhere to the right. He thought about it for a while, trying to place it. No, he decided, he didn't recognise it.
So he grunted, vaguely, in response.
'Nasty crash you had,' the voice went on. 'You must be pretty mad about it.'
He thought about that as well. A crash, eh? No, in fact, he wasn't pretty mad about it. Or at least, he wouldn't be if his headache went. So he murmured he was fine, thanks for asking.
The voice tut-tutted disapprovingly, and said that was the post traumatic shock syndrome talking. When he woke up a bit more, he really would be mad. Argyll, who rarely managed to get even slightly upset about anything, didn't bother to contradict him.
'And then,' continued the voice, 'I bet you'll want to do something about it.'
'No,' he murmured. 'Why should I?'
'It's your public duty,' the voice explained.
'Oh,' he said.
'Cars like that on the road. It shouldn't be allowed. These people have to be stopped, or they'll kill us all. It's a disgrace, and you can help make California a safer place. I'd be happy to help.'
'That's very kind of you,' Argyll said, wondering where he could get coffee, aspirin and cigarettes.
'It'll be a privilege,' said the voice.
'Say, who are you?' came another voice, from the left this time. It was slightly more familiar. Argyll considered opening his eyes and turning his head to see, but decided it was much too ambitious.
There was a restful muttering of voices, and he considered going back to sleep again. Splendid stuff, sleep, he thought as the voices began to increase in both pitch and volume.
One voice, he noted - voice two, so to speak - was protesting, and accusing voice one of being a vulture. Voice one identified itself as Josiah Ansty, attorney at law, specialist in auto damage claims, and said it was looking after the interests of injured citizens. If voice two hadn't rented out badly maintained vehicles, it wouldn't be sued. He was going to have to pay for this.
This gave Argyll a lot to think about. Voice two he identified as the man called Chuck who rented him his nice 1971 Cadillac, which, he now remembered, had gone through the window of that shop. The other point was the bit about suing. Whoever said anything about that?
The conversation was continui
ng, meanwhile, over his prostrate body. The voice of Josiah Ansty, attorney, was saying that the brake cable had been badly maintained.
Chuck interrupted here, and said that was a pile of crap. He himself had serviced the car only last week. That brake cable was screwed on tight with a double screw. No way could it have come loose. No way.
Ansty said that merely proved how culpably incompetent he was, and went on to request that he not be poked in the chest like that.
Chuck then called Ansty a little creep, and there drifted into Argyll's slumbering consciousness the vague sound of grunts and scuffling followed by a shout from a long way away saying to stop that immediately and that this was a hospital not a place for a barroom brawl.
Oh, he thought, as a loud cry of pain accompanied that tinkling sound that results when a shelf of surgical equipment crashes to the ground, that's where I am. In hospital.
That's all right, then, he thought, as he drifted off to sleep to the sound of people calling for the police. Now I know.
'You OK?' came a voice as Argyll surfaced again, hours later.
Oh, God, not again, he thought.
'Hear you've been causing a bit of excitement.'
This time he placed the voice. Detective Morelli. For the first time his eyes opened, more or less focused, and turned his head without regretting it.
'Me?'
'People fighting over your body all morning. A lawyer and a car rental man; nearly wrecked the place. Didn't you notice?'
'Vaguely. I remember something. What was a lawyer doing here?'
'Oh, them. Jackals. They turn up everywhere. How are you doing?'
'Fine, I think. Let's see.' He quickly checked to see that everything was where it ought to be.
'What's wrong with my leg?'
'You broke it. Clean snap, so they say. Nothing to worry about. You'll have to give up jogging for a bit.'
'That's a pity.'
'No permanent damage, anyway. I thought I'd come and see how you're getting on. So I can tell your girlfriend.'
'Who?'
'That Italian woman? She been ringing up every few hours for the last couple of days, driving the entire department nuts. The whole homicide squad's on first name terms with her now. She's pretty gone on you, isn't she?'
'Is she?' Argyll said with grave interest. Morelli didn't bother to reply. Seemed pretty obvious to him.
'So, now I see you're OK, I'll leave you in peace.'
'Double screw,' Argyll said, a vague memory coming into his mind.
Morelli looked surprised.
'The brake cable couldn't have come undone on it's own. So I'm told.'
'Yeah, well, I was going to mention that . . .'
'Which means,' he went on, thinking hard, 'what does it mean?'
Morelli scratched his chin. Amazing. The man never seemed to shave. 'Well,' he said, 'it sort of struck us, down in the department, that maybe someone gave it a tug.'
'Seems a bit silly to me. I might have been hurt. I can't imagine who'd do something like that.'
'How about the person who killed Hector di Souza? And Moresby? And stole that bust?'
'What do you mean?'
'Di Souza's body was found this morning. He'd been shot.'
Argyll stared at him. 'You're not serious.'
Morelli nodded.
A long pause followed. 'You OK?' he asked eventually.
'Umm? Oh, yes,' Argyll began, then stopped and reconsidered.
'In fact, no. I'm not. It never occurred to me that something might have happened to the poor old sod. He's not the sort who gets killed. Why on earth would anybody want to kill Hector? I didn't like the man much, but he was part of the landscape, and pretty harmless. Unless you bought something from him, that is. Poor bugger.'
Morelli, of course, was scarcely upset at all. In his career he had seen the murdered remains of nice people, nasty people, old ones, young ones, rich and poor, saints and sinners. Di Souza was just one more, and he had never even met him.
Argyll stirred from his mournful reflection and asked for more information. Morelli kindly spared him most of the details. He'd been up early to go to the bit of woodland where the body had been found in a shallow grave, and could remember it all far too well to share with someone in Argyll's delicate state of health.
'It's a bit difficult to tell, but the experts reckon he must have died less than twenty-four hours after he vanished. One bullet, in the back of the head. Never felt a thing.'
'They always say that. I can't say I've ever found it too convincing. Personally, I suspect being shot hurts. Do you know where the gun came from?'
'No. A small pistol. We found it thrown into some scrub nearby. They don't know any more yet, except that it's almost certainly the gun that killed Moresby as well. We'll find out something about it eventually.'
'And I suppose it'll be up to me to get him back to Rome,' he said reflectively. 'Typical.'
'Do you think that's a good idea?' Morelli rubbed his gum with his finger again, in an exploratory fashion.
'Still hurting?'
He nodded. 'Hmm. It seems to be getting worse, damn the thing.'
'You should go to a dentist.'
Morelli snorted. 'When? I'm swamped with work because of this murder. Besides, do you know how far ahead you have to make an appointment with dentists? It's easier to get an audience with the Pope. Why do you feel responsible for di Souza?'
Argyll shrugged. 'I don't know. But there it is; I do. Hector would never forgive me if I left him here. He was a professional Roman and an aesthete. I don't think a graveyard in Los Angeles would please him at all.'
'We have very good cemeteries.'
'Oh, I'm sure. But he was very fussy. Besides, I don't know of any relations or anything.'
Takes all sorts. Morelli was very much less sentimental. Argyll, on the other hand, reckoned that the least he could do was give the old man a decent send-off in the style to which he was accustomed. Full requiem with all the trimmings in a church of suitable magnificence, weeping friends at the grave, all that.
'Very clever of you to find him,' Argyll said, not being able to think of anything else to keep the conversation going.
'Hardly. We got a tip-off.'
'Who from?'
'Someone hunting out of season, I reckon. It often happens. They want to report a body, but don't want the risk of being prosecuted.' Morelli said it as though illegal hunters tripped over corpses every day.
'Sort of lets Hector off your list of suspects, doesn't it?'
'Maybe. Maybe not. But we're certainly short of at least one murderer at the moment. You were one of the last people to talk to him at that party, weren't you?'
Argyll nodded.
'Can you remember what he said?'
'But I've told you, more or less.'
'Exactly. Word for word.'
'Why do you want to know?'
'Because if someone at some stage loosened the brake cable of your car, then it stands to reason they wanted to kill you. With all due respect, why would anyone want to kill you? Unless you know something that you haven't told us.'
Argyll thought hard, and could come up with nothing that might, somehow, solve the problem.
'He said that he could sort everything out with Moresby,' he said eventually.
'Did he say how?'
'Yes.'
'Tell me, then.'
'Well, you see, the trouble is, I didn't listen. I was thinking of something else. And Hector does tend to go on. I asked him to repeat it but he wouldn't.'
Morelli gave him a nasty look.
'Sorry.'
'And who may have overheard this?'
Argyll scratched his head as he thought. 'Lots of people, I suppose,' he said eventually. 'Let's see. Streeter, Thanet, Mrs. Moresby, that lawyer man were all there. Young Jack had gone, Old Moresby hadn't turned up . . .'
'But who was close enough to hear?'
Argyll shrugged. No idea.
'You're
not a dream witness, do you know that?'
'Sorry.'
'Yeah, well, if you remember . . .'
'I’ll call. I don't know that it would do much good though.'
'Why not?'
'Because we were speaking in Italian. Langton speaks Italian, but he wasn't anywhere near. Hector was looking for him. I suspect that none of the others speak it.'
Morelli looked even more disappointed in him, so Argyll switched the subject.
'Have you found the bust yet?'
The detective shook his head. 'No. And I don't imagine we will. It's probably been thrown in the sea.'
'That's daft,' Argyll said with conviction. 'Why steal something and throw it away?'
Morelli snorted. 'Don't ask me.'
'But somebody must have seen something.'
'Why?'
'Because marble is bloody heavy, that's why. You can't just stick it in your pocket and stroll off. If you stagger down the street with a Bernini in your arms, somebody should notice.'
Morelli smiled cynically. Just goes to show how little people know. 'Just as somebody should notice a murderer trotting about the administrative block, or hear a shot. And no one did. Nobody ever sees anything in this city. Nobody's ever around and if they are they're too busy going somewhere. I sometimes think you could steal the city hall and there'd be no witnesses.
'Anyway,' he went on, getting up to leave. 'This bust is not really my main concern. Your friends in Rome are taking that one on. They think it's the genuine article and they've lodged an official complaint with the Moresby about illegal export. They're going to harass the museum until they get it back. Don't blame them, either. This friend of yours is coming over to try and recover it.'
'Flavia?' Argyll asked with surprise.
'That's the one. That Bottando told me. That'll cheer you up, won't it?'
Argyll thanked him for the news.
'You OK, there?'
Oh, the limits of conversational gambits in this part of the world, Argyll thought, and turned to look at the new visitor.
'Mr. Thanet,' he said, with real surprise. The director did not seem the sort to go running around hospital wards bearing bunches of grapes. But, there he was, standing by the bed looking anxiously at him. 'How nice of you to come.'