The Montague Portrait

by Matt Drabble

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  Chris Taylor sat bored and lonely. He was finding out that the human mind had only a limited amount of panic; when that was exhausted, it seemed it left only tiredness.

  When he was snatched from his street and bundled into the back of a large dark vehicle, his head was covered by a hood and he was abducted in silence. Once the hood was whipped from his face, he found himself trussed to a chair in an empty warehouse. The building was long and deserted. The air felt damp and smelled musty and the only sound was the faint scuttling of rodent claws. His mind had raced through various scenarios, but none seemed apt. He had done nothing wrong as far as he knew and he was always careful. Surely Vargas would have no call to summon him in such a manner. The thought was both relieving and terrifying; he could think of no fate worse than to incur the wrath of Telfer Vargas. The man was a force of nature – if indeed he was a man at all.

  Chris had worked for Vargas for the last fifteen years or so. In that time he received more recompense for his work than mere money could buy. His whole life revolved around Janey, and Janey had been part of the company package. His biggest fear in life was to wake one morning and find her gone – snatched from his embrace by spiteful fingers.

  Jane Adler had always been way out of his pitiful league and as the years passed the distance between their stations grew. They first met during what could only be described as Vargas’s courtship. She was the most exquisite creature he had ever laid eyes on.

  Chris’s skills were legendary among certain circles and his talent was always in demand. He might be a lumbering oaf in the real world, but inside a cyber-world he was a lithe and nimble dancer. He had an almost magical ability to weave a complex web of misdirects and false leads to hide anything. He kept financial records spinning on plates and forever untraceable. He was fluent in binary code and could hack any system on earth. For those who had ill-gotten gains to hide, there might be some people who could make them disappear, but Chris could go one step further and make them legal.

  Vargas had an empire that generated dirty fortunes that were in need of cleaning. He had pursued Chris with an indisputable single mindedness that left little room for denial. The offers of wealth and power meant little to Chris and at first he had refused the industrialist. But Vargas was able to offer so much more than financial attractions.

  Vargas had hosted a Christmas party to which Chris was invited. Out of mild interest he attended. But once there he laid eyes on a vision of beauty that sucked the breath from his body.

  The party was filled with beautiful women, but Jane Adler was blessed with a bloom that pushed her under a spotlight. Chris saw her from across the room and fell hard and fast. The depths of his feelings were so strong that he even dared to approach and even spoke to the stunning creature. His words were clumsy and awkward, but she at least had the good grace to humor him with a kind smile and gentle eyes. Her polite refusal had only endeared her to him further.

  Over the next few weeks she became the sole focus of his world. He stopped his freelance work and conversing on even the most basic of levels. It was Vargas who had handed him a lifeline through the storm. Vargas promised him the world to come and work for him, but Chris refused. He liked to think that it was out of some moral compass. But in reality it wasn’t the committing of the crimes that he feared, it was more the possible repercussions.

  It was then that Vargas offered him Janey.

  She could be his and his alone. Vargas promised he would have her unconditional and genuine love, and in the end Chris discovered that he had a price, and Janey was it.

  He was highly skeptical at first. He knew that wealth and power could buy almost anything. He figured that Janey would be sent to him and perhaps even manage to act the part, but it would all be an act.

  In reality Chris had gained the smallest of peeks behind the wizard’s curtain. Whatever Vargas was, he had sent Janey to him and her love was real. Chris was utterly convinced of that. Her smiles and touches could not be faked no matter how good an actress she might be.

  And once Chris was part of the family he witnessed close up the ability of Vargas to generate money out of nothing. Every stock he bought would treble in value no matter how unlikely. Every investment paid off tenfold and every long shot romped home.

  Sitting tied to the chair in a deserted warehouse he wondered about the sort of person that would take one of Vargas’s toys. He could only hope that such a man would be a fool and not a genuine threat. For anyone capable of taking on Vargas without fear must be truly terrifying indeed.

  ----------

  Charlotte watched as Florence passed by the taxi window. The city was a beautiful relic of old buildings and history that hung richly in the air. They were on their way to an ancient opera house that sat proudly within the walls of the city. It was another rung on the ladder of discovery and another link in the chain.

  The past few days had been a whirlwind of confusion, excitement, life and death. Pierce Barnes had been an assistant to the artist Benedict Worthington. It was Worthington who painted The Montague Portrait that loomed large over her life with a black cloud of death and despair. Hugo Montague was a monster of a man whose presence still tainted the very air that she breathed today. She knew that Travis had not yet managed to come full circle and believe in everything he had been told about the painting. But she had witnessed first-hand the possession of her father and the murder of her mother. She was in no doubt about the power and the danger of the portrait and that somehow Hugo Montague still lived on buried inside the brushstrokes.

  Barnes had told them that Hugo Montague’s secrets could be found in the Teatro Comunale di Firenze, an old opera house from the 1800s. She could only pray that this would be one step closer to doing away with Hugo Montague for good and avenging her parents.

  ----------

  Travis was more than a little disappointed as they pulled up to the dull beige opera house. The outside of the building was drab and the surrounding area was coated in matching bland sandstone. Graffiti adorned the walls as beset most modern cities nowadays. Metallic roller blinds covered the vulnerable glass against unwanted attention from idle hands.

  He had been expecting something grand and breathtakingly beautiful: a vision of history and grandeur rather than the dull functional building that lay before them.

  Travis paid the taxi fare with the Vargas money, leaving a generous tip; their benefactor could afford it. Charlotte started to speak and he silenced her with a hard stare until the driver had pulled away from the curb. Thankfully she held her tongue and he felt pleased at the shoots of trust that were beginning to appear between them.

  ‘What now?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, this is the place,’ Travis pondered aloud as he thought that if this was back in the UK, he would be able to cobble together some excuse for a private tour – Health and Safety inspection, building regulations, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore and my Italian isn’t going to enable me to pass for a native.

  He felt her eyes on him. All they had was this place. Barnes had told them that Hugo Montague’s story lay within these ancient stone walls. But just how he would go about prising such information from them still eluded him. His mind was ticking over furiously when he heard the unmistakable sound of breaking glass from around the corner. He looked back sharply to find that Charlotte had disappeared, and in her place was the echo of tinkling glass shards scattered on the ground.

  Bloody woman, he thought angrily.

  He darted round the side of the building to find her ankles sticking out from a small broken window. As her hips swivelled her legs waggled and then she was inside.

  ‘Charlotte!’ he said, to no reply.

  Thankfully, the rear of the building was deserted. Two large metal waste bins sat in pools of reeking water leaking from somewhere inside. Tall buildings framed the entire area, all laden with windows and potential witness points. Breaking and entering was not exac
tly Travis’s preferred method of getting in, and he would have at least brought a balaclava with him if he’d known. The opera house was secured at the front, and the rear door looked large and sturdy. Only the small window that Charlotte had disappeared through looked to be any sort of access point.

  The large door suddenly creaked open and Charlotte’s face poked around the corner. ‘You coming?’ she asked with a grin.

  Travis didn’t waste time or risk potential exposure arguing. The damage was already done. He slipped quickly inside the darkened building.

  ‘Great idea, genius!’ he said. He had meant to be angry, but her grin was infectious and he couldn’t help cracking a little. ‘Dammit, Charlie, we could have been seen by any number of people.’

  ‘My father used to call me that – Charlie,’ she said sadly.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay. I kind of like it.’

  Charlotte led the way as they walked slowly and cautiously down a long corridor that eventually opened out into the main auditorium. The inside was dark and gloomy save for the gentle glow of the electric fire alarms. The walls were lined with historic posters from decades gone by, depicting the greats of the operatic world who had graced the stage of the Politeama Fiorentino Vittorio Emanuele.

  If the outside of the building was disappointing, the interior certainly made up for it. Plush red seats were arranged elegantly with sweepings of gold trim, and a thick red velvet curtain obscured the main stage. Deep set boxes lined the sides of the great auditorium, with exquisite columns and crystal chandeliers that hung with grace and style.

  A rough voice startled them both from behind. ‘It is some sight, is it not?’

  Travis spun around. After their brushes with death over the last few days he was annoyed to be so easily caught with his guard down. At least the man that stood before him appeared on the surface to offer no threat. He was old and slightly hunched. He wore what looked like a janitor’s jumpsuit in a stone colour adorned with an ID badge. His face was well worn and wrinkled, but his eyes sparkled with friendliness.

  ‘Do not worry, my friends,’ the man said kindly in highly accented but understandable English. ‘You are not the first to feel the desperation when first casting eyes upon the splendour.’

  Travis felt Charlotte tense beside him and he was suddenly afraid that she was about to round off her breaking and entering by adding assault to the list. He took her arm gently but firmly.

  ‘We’re really sorry,’ he said in hushed tones to the elderly janitor. ‘I wanted to propose to my girlfriend and I assumed that this place would be open. When we found it locked, I guess that the moment just carried me away and I thought it would be more romantic to sneak in and ask her.’

  The janitor smiled through brown stained teeth. ‘Ah … the vagaries of the modern heart’.

  ‘It’s such a beautiful old building,’ Charlotte added, taking Travis’s lead. ‘I can only begin to imagine the history that lies beneath this roof.’

  The old man chuckled. ‘I’d wager that no-one knows this old lady quite like I do.’

  ‘Is it too cheeky to ask for a tour?’ Travis asked. ‘Mr …?’

  ‘Umberto, Carmine Umberto.’ The man smiled broadly and offered a weathered hand.

  ‘We could pay you for your time,’ Charlotte said.

  ‘Ah, no need,’ Umberto replied. ‘The joys of having my tales fall upon fresh ears is more than enough.’

  ‘Your English is very good,’ Travis said as they followed the old man.

  ‘I married one of yours.’ Umberto winked conspiratorially. ‘She learned me by her endless yapping.’

  The next hour was a dizzying ride through history and Florence’s place in it. The opera house was central to the heart of culture in the city. Umberto spoke in poetic swells and his love for the building was second only to his obvious awe. It would have been a fascinating tour, if only Travis hadn’t felt the pressure of time. Chris was God knows where, suffering God knows what while he was seeing the sights.

  Travis was about to give up hope of hearing anything of any use to them, when they passed something that made Charlotte take a sharp intake of breath. He looked back to find her staring with wild gaping eyes at a painting on the wall of the private back staircase.

  ‘It’s here,’ she whispered.

  Travis followed her gaze to the wall. A large portrait hung in a row of paintings lining the staircase.

  The portrait depicted a man and a woman. The man was tall and regal and stood beside his seated wife. The small brass plaque fixed beneath the painting simply read: ‘The Montague Portrait’.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BUSTING OUT ALL OVER

  Chris Taylor screamed as loud as he could as the pliers ripped the tooth from his gums. Blood and spittle mingled in a frothy cocktail that he spat to the floor. ‘Please’ he mumbled helplessly from his immovable position on the chair.

  His unqualified dentist sighed heavily. ‘Where is he, Mr Taylor? Where is Mr Parker and that bitch he’s travelling with?’

  His head ached monstrously. His left eye was swollen completely shut and the vision in his right was hazy at best. Someone had handcuffed him and strapped his arms firmly behind his back, and his boredom at being left alone had soon faded into distant memory when his captors started taking turns in beating him. All with the same question: ‘Where is Travis?’ He was not a brave man by nature and the physical assaults had weakened him further. A lot had been slaps designed to humiliate rather than injure, and these had been the worst. He had openly wept at his treatment and the unfairness of it all.

  He knew that his loyalty to his old friend may well have had consequences, but had assumed that they would come from Vargas. His employer was absolutely clear when expressing his desire that Chris was to play no part in Travis’s assignment. When Vargas approached him about Travis, he was most eager to meet the man. Whatever Vargas wanted to use Travis for, Chris had been worried for his friend.

  A hard slap woke him from his drifting thoughts.

  ‘No time for sleeping, Mr Taylor,’ his captor said.

  Chris began to weep softly as the man tore open his shirt and exposed his flabby flesh. The man was tall and slender. He wore a silvery grey suit that shone in the overhead light. Despite the excess of fluids that Chris had spewed and spattered, the man was spotlessly clean. He plucked a wicked looking small blade from inside his jacket. Chris steeled himself against the impending disfigurement as the man leaned in closer.

  ‘Wait!’ a male voice commanded softly but firmly from behind.

  Chris could have kissed the owner of the voice for even the briefest of respites. Gentle footsteps echoed towards him but he was unable to turn to face the newcomer. As the man approached he caught a faint whiff of expensive cologne. He detected several other soft undertones of careful grooming as the man whispered close.

  ‘Hello, Mr Taylor, I am Dr Gabriel Lochay.’ The man smiled as though greeting a fellow guest at a dinner party.

  ‘I don’t know where Travis is,’ Chris sobbed as a blood red drool fell from his butchered mouth.

  ‘Now, now,’ Lochay soothed. ‘No need for tears. I’m sure we can come to some arrangement that would be beneficial to all parties concerned.’

  ‘What do you want with him?’ Chris couldn’t help asking.

  ‘Oh, I think you should be more concerned with what we want from you, and that pretty little wife of yours.’ Lochay smiled without warmth.

  ‘Janey …’ Chris whispered in terror.

  ‘You know your friend Mr Parker is proving to be quite the little fly in the ointment, Mr Taylor. Not to mention his young companion.’

  ‘I don’t know anything. Please don’t hurt my wife,’ he said, ignoring his own predicament.

  ‘Oh, but I have no intention of harming so much as a hair on her delicate head,’ Lochay said. ‘The very idea is appalling. Of course there are those in my employ who, dare I say, would relish the idea of stripping that
bitch’s flesh from her bones, and skull fucking her corpse,’ Lochay added in the same refined tone.

  It was the threat to Janey that broke him. She was his weakness regardless of their coupling at the hands of Vargas. In the end he chose her over his oldest and only friend. ‘There’s a GPS tracker inside the new phone that he’s carrying. Give me a computer and I’ll show you where he is,’ Chris said as the tentacles of guilt crawled into his guts and beyond.

  ----------

  ‘Ah, it is somewhat unnerving, is it not?’ Carmine Umberto said as Travis and Charlotte stared at the painting on the wall.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s here,’ Charlotte whispered, not believing her eyes. ‘What is it doing here of all places? I mean, how did it get here?’

  ‘This piece has been resting here with us since 1946,’ Umberto answered.

  Charlotte glared at the elderly janitor. ‘1946? That’s impossible,’ she said a little too loudly.

  ‘I can assure you that it has.’ Umberto sniffed indignantly. ‘I can promise you, my dear, that I do not make mistakes, especially with dates.’

  ‘But as a child, this painting was in my house,’ Charlotte insisted.

  Umberto shrugged. ‘Perhaps you are mistaken. Perhaps it was a similar portrait?’

  ‘There is no mistake,’ Charlotte answered with blazing eyes.

  ‘Do you know the history of this work?’ Travis interjected tactfully.