by Tim Parks
We had brought a bolt cutter and I invited Tarik to break the padlock on the door, something he did with disquieting competence and without raising the slightest interest from the crowd squeezed between church and lake. With their backs towards us, people were intent on watching the first poor fools try to climb the pole. There were so many yells, curses, splashes, oohs and ahs and raucous remarks on the goose-pimpled flesh of prettily shivering maidens as they tumbled into the water that I realised we were actually less likely to be noticed than if the area had been deserted. Once inside we lit our torches and bolted the door behind us.
It was at this moment that I received a phone call from my son to tell me that Massimina had not come home the previous evening. How was I supposed to respond to this? In the end it’s not unusual in this day and age for a twenty-year-old girl to stay out on a Saturday night. But Massimina, as I have explained, had hardly been out of the house for the last month and was apparently in a state of, if not depression, then some intense internal conflict. What was particularly surprising, however, was that her oafish brother should show such real concern as to his elder sister’s whereabouts, as if he knew something I didn’t. I decided that if Massimina was not at home by the time I returned, I would find out where Zolla lived (with his mother and grandmother it seems) and drive straight round to demand an explanation.
I had moved to one side to speak to my son, idly playing my torch over a Deposition that left much to be desired. Turning to the others, then, it was to find Christ’s dead face, luminous in its affliction, floating in the air not a yard away. My heart skipped a beat and my jaw must have dropped because Samira immediately burst out laughing. It was Tarik playing the torch over his face. The likeness to the Semitic features in the ugly old painting was remarkable. Delighted that they had made a fool of me, the two of them flashed their torches around poking fun at the Christian images on the walls and cackling together in a most unpleasant way. For some private reason that had to do with their late night, they were in extremely high spirits. I was anxious that if we didn’t go about our task with a little more decorum we might come to grief in some way.
Behind the altar of Santa Chiara there is a small vestry with a rotten wooden staircase leading up to a low attic. Tarik and I picked our way up the stairs with a length of rope. The paintings, five of them, were at the far end, each about a metre fifty square. Since on my first visit here I had hidden San Bartolomeo at the back of the stack we now had to move the others aside. To tell the truth I almost lost my temper with Tarik who insisted on making rude remarks about the devotional images just about visible through thick plastic sheeting. The Miracle of the Fish, in his estimation, was a capitalist fantasy of exploiting natural resources beyond all sustainability. The Road to Emmaus was about gay threesomes, Mary Anointing Jesus’s Feet was pure fetishism. When we got to San Bartolomeo I asked him rather sourly what smart-ass remark he was going to make about a man willing to undergo pain beyond belief for his faith. ‘Beyond belief!’ he laughed. ‘You said it, Boss.’ That ‘Boss’, I thought, was especially uncalled for.
‘You do know who did this to him?’ I asked sharply.
‘I’ve no idea,’ he said.
‘Arabs. He was flayed alive by Arab infidels.’
We were still standing with our torches shining at the plastic sheeting, so that the flesh laid bare on the saint’s chest looked rather like meat under cellophane. Tarik sighed. ‘Let’s get moving,’ he said. But as we were turning the painting round, he remarked matter-of-factly that it was a good job I was so enthusiastic about martyrs because I could expect to see a lot more of them in the near future.
Naturally I asked him what on earth that was supposed to mean.
‘The West is utterly corrupt,’ he said. ‘People here deserve to die.’
I asked him to whom in particular he might be referring.
‘People like you,’ he said coolly.
‘Look,’ I told him, ‘I don’t know what your problem is, young man, because everyone here in Verona is being extremely nice to you.’
We were now sliding Bartolomeo in his bubble wrap along the wooden planking.
‘Volpi himself speaks highly of you,’ I added.
‘Volpi is another,’ Tarik said harshly. ‘And Zolla. They’ll get what’s coming to them.’
‘Another what?’
‘Sex pig.’
I asked him what in God’s name he was on about, but he just laughed, and when I asked him how he knew Zolla, he said anybody who knew Volpi inevitably knew Zolla.
I told him I didn’t understand. He said if that was really the case I was more autistic than he had imagined.
‘Planning to start a jihad, are we?’ I enquired as we began to tie the rope round the frame at the top of the stairs.
‘To finish one,’ he said grimly. ‘Expect a slaughter.’
Out of sorts as I was, I kept in mind that the only important thing right now was to get Bartolomeo’s flayed flesh safely down the stairs, and off to the museum. Leaving Tarik at the top, I picked my way over the rotten planks to Samira and the two of us prepared to receive the painting as it was lowered slowly down in its rope cradle. In the event, everything went very smoothly. We got the painting to the porch, unbolted the door and pushed out into the crowd. It had started to rain and people were jostling their umbrellas trying to get a glimpse at the idiots whose efforts on the slippery pole had now washed the soap off the first six feet or so. Fortunately the cyclists had gone to test their synthetics against sweaty saddles. With some effort we lifted the martyred saint into the van where I had put foam sheeting on the floor to receive his tortured remains.
‘To Castelvecchio,’ I said.
There was silence. We were sitting side by side up front. I was between the other two.
After a few minutes, Samira said: ‘I thought we were taking it to your house.’
I laughed. ‘If we did that it might seem I was stealing it.’
A little later, Tarik said: ‘The trouble is we can’t leave the van parked outside the museum blocking all the buses on Via Cavour, can we?’
I said I would phone ahead. The museum was open to visitors on Sunday and one of the guards could open the gate for deliveries at the side of the building beside the river. Obviously I had informed the director and they were expecting us.
‘Where are you planning to leave it, exactly?’ Samira asked.
‘There’s below-ground storage,’ I explained, though of course Samira would know this, doing the job she did. In any event, it’s only in the last few days that I have begun to wonder about all those questions the Libyans put to me during the trip from church to museum. They seemed unnecessarily anxious. And Tarik had seemed extremely belligerent in Volpi’s regard.
At a certain point, Tarik said to Samira, ‘The trouble is we’ll be late for . . .’ and he mentioned a name I have forgotten. Apparently they had arranged a lunch with an uncle who had recently come over from Libya.
At this point I was feeling more relaxed. ‘Let’s do this,’ I said: ‘we get the painting to the service lift and I’ll take it from there. If you’re running late for your appointment, by all means use the van.’
As we approached Verona I phoned the museum. On arrival we found the barrier guarding the delivery bay already lifted and the big double door unlocked. We slid the painting along the corridor to the service lift, pushed it inside, and said our goodbyes. Of course I have not seen them since, but all I can say is that as we parted I remember noting a very peculiar look on Tarik’s face: it was as if to one side of his nose there was a most sinister, Machiavellian grin, while the other side was a mask of the childish innocence. Samira on the other hand was entirely natural, apparently already focused on their meeting with this uncle, who, she had been explaining in the van, was in some kind of political trouble with the new regime in the country. But then women, as is well documented, are far better at dissembling than men, I suppose because they enjoy so much more sexual oppor
tunity than we do.
Dear Samira,
No doubt you will have heard of the bizarre fate that has fallen me. I write to you from gaol where all my post is being strictly monitored. I just wanted ask you if, from the vantage point of your position in the Cultural Heritage Department, you could focus your mind on everything to do with Castelvecchio and this terrible murder. The fact is that I have heard rumours that the storerooms in the museum were being used as warehouses in an extensive art-trafficking business that was also part of the Camorra’s endless need to launder dirty money. If that is the case then it seems quite likely that the murderer was some hit man from the world of organised crime. Again I appreciate that it’s unlikely that you would have any pertinent information, but my present situation obliges me to clutch at straws.
With all best wishes and my deep gratitude for our past collaboration and friendship,
Yours sincerely,
Morris Duckworth
* * *
Still without having seen any museum staff, I took the lift down to the storage rooms, slid out the painting and leaned it against the nearest wall, as previously agreed with Volpi and Zolla. My task was now complete and had I had an ounce of good sense, I would have left at once. There was, after all, the question of my daughter not having returned home the night before, a matter of some concern, if not yet alarm. On the other hand, I was naturally excited to have secured the painting and thought it would be a good idea at least to have a quick look at it and check whether it would be useable, once restored. It then occurred to me that if by chance Volpi or Zolla were in their offices, they would also like to come and see it. They knew I was bringing the painting, after all. In fact, it was surprising that they hadn’t arranged to have a member of staff on hand to meet me as agreed. In any event, my best chance for working harmoniously with them was to appeal to our shared enthusiasm for art.
Rather than take the lift back to the service entrance, I started to walk through to the other end of the storeroom where a staircase leads up to the museum and the offices. At once I had the impression, if not certainty, that a number of objects had been moved since I was last down there some weeks before. In particular there was a small upright bronze which had been standing then and was now on its side, almost blocking the corridor of free movement among the objects stored. This struck me as odd, since it would have been impossible to knock such a thing over without being aware of it, in which case why wouldn’t you take the very short time and effort required to turn it upright again?
The storeroom at Castelvecchio is actually something of a labyrinth; it spreads out in all directions around the old bulwarks and dungeons with doors here and there leading into rooms that might be no bigger than a cupboard or as large as a whole apartment. I reached the stairs and went up to the museum. Again I was struck, finding the door open, at the lax security in the place. A member of staff did nod to me, an elderly lady who knows me by sight. The statuary room was full of Asians surreptitiously photographing things they didn’t understand. I hurried up to the offices, to see if by chance Zolla and Volpi were there. In parenthesis, I must say, I noticed the police found this part of my story particularly hard to take. They could not imagine that I really supposed anyone might come into his office on a Sunday. I could only plead with them that, to my shame, I often work on the Lord’s Day. Morning and afternoon. After Mass of course.
All the doors were open, but nobody was around. I walked through the open-plan section to Zolla’s room. I know the police claim that I turned on his computer, but this is not true. I did glance at the papers on his desk, though, among which were insurance documents for the shipping of Titian’s Cain and Abel. This cheered me up no end.
I took the corridor at the end of the open plan and went to Volpi’s office. This was closed. Remembering what had happened on my previous visit, I knocked and waited. I knocked again. Nothing. Why, then, the police asked me, did I go in? And once in, having seen that there was no one in the room, why did I go to Volpi’s desk? The answer, at least as far as entering is concerned, is simple. Habit. One knocks, one tries the handle, one enters. I make no apologies. It was not a bedroom. I opened the door and at once saw the office had been turned upside down. It is not true that I turned it upside down myself. Why would I do such a thing? Searching for what? My only interest at Castelvecchio was the organisation of the exhibition Painting Death. Sometimes I think the police just don’t use their heads, but I thought the same throughout the Amanda Knox case which I followed quite closely. They get excited by whatever lurid solution has popped into their skulls, then move the facts around so as not to be disappointed.
Seeing the room in disorder, I naturally went to the desk as if there might be some explanation there of what had happened. In the event there was nothing but scattered papers. A low hum alerted me to the fact that, though the screen was blank, the computer was on. I went round the desk and pressed the space bar. After the usual delay the screen came to life. It was a video platform. I looked but couldn’t understand at first what I was looking at. Only after perhaps thirty seconds did I appreciate that it was an anus seen from close up. I mean two or three centimetres. I was appalled, but for some reason I found the mouse and clicked replay. I hardly need describe what I saw. The police have stored the video as an exhibit. I stopped the film and it was then, as I moved away from the desk to head back towards the entrance, that I noticed faint footprints on the stone floor.
As you know already, I had blood on my shoes.
One says footprints, but the truth is they were barely stains and I only related them to my feet because they occurred at regular intervals crossing the room, though quite long intervals, since it turned out it was only my right foot that was involved. At first, I didn’t realise it was blood. I thought I had brought in some dirt on my shoes, perhaps from the wet gravel outside the church. So it was entirely natural that my first thought was to wipe them off so as not to dirty the office of the museum director. There was a pack of tissues on the desk and I crouched down. It was as I was wiping the third or fourth print that it occurred to me that this must be blood. I smelt it. Yes. At that point I simply cleaned off my shoe, just my right shoe, as I said, and with a growing anxiety retraced my steps, through the open plan, and into Zolla’s office, then back downstairs and through the museum.
You will no doubt want me to explain my reasoning and my actions at this point, but I honestly can’t. On the one hand I just wanted to clean up behind me, like anyone who feels guilty of making a mess. This is the way I was brought up. On the other, I was aware that that blood must have come from somewhere. There was also the problem that I could hardly go down and start cleaning the museum floor with all the Asians touting their cameras and the museum attendants trying to pretend the rules weren’t being broken. Undecided, I froze for some minutes.
Then as if to avoid the issue—but who knows why we act as we do?—I took out my mobile and called my son.
‘I’ve found a note,’ Mauro said.
‘Oh yes?’
‘It just says, Dear Mamma e Papà, I’m going away for a while, don’t worry about me, Mimi.’
I didn’t know how to respond.
‘So I guess she’s OK.’ He seemed dubious.
Eventually I asked: ‘What does your mother think?’
‘I haven’t told her yet.’
‘But why on earth not?’
My wife, he said, or rather, his mother, was upset about Don Lorenzo. The priest was in a coma. Mauro hadn’t wished to make matters worse.
‘I’ll be back as soon as possible,’ I promised.
At this point I felt extremely eager to get home where my family needed me. I decided to identify the source of the blood, make sure it was nothing serious, then leave at once. The idea of a murder, or even a crime of any kind, still hadn’t occurred to me. I was more concerned about having made a mess or being accused of trying to get inside people’s computers when they weren’t in their offices. Seeing a pack of
wipes on Mariella’s desk, I hurriedly cleaned up all the prints first in the office, then the corridor. Here it is truly hilarious that the police accuse me of having committed the murder, then tried to eliminate these traces, as if, having knifed a man to the most violent of deaths, I wouldn’t be aware that modern forensics is more than equal to a quick scrub with a Kleenex Moisty Wipe. The fact that I behaved in a way entirely natural for someone who has merely brought in a little dirt from the street is rock-solid proof that at this point I knew nothing of the murder.
At the same time it occurred to me now that when the other Massimina, Antonella’s younger sister, had left home with such fatal consequences many years ago, she too left a note in which she said she was going away for a while and not to worry about her. That thought changed my mood drastically. From this point on I was, to put it mildly, in a frenzy of concern for my daughter.
Coming out of the lift and re-entering the museum, I lost patience with cleaning the prints, elbowed my way through the tourists, pushed open the service door and hurried down to the storeroom. Turning on all the lights it was evident that there were patches of blood all over the place. I must have been blind not to see them earlier. The stains grew darker the more you moved to the far wall. I followed them and eventually found a door I hadn’t noticed before, perhaps because it stood behind two or three ugly stone statues from the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. Opening the door, which I noticed had a large key in the lock on the inside, I found myself in a corridor with other doors leading off either side. Again it was all too easy to see where the blood was coming from since the handle of the second door on the right was thickly smeared with red. I was so breathless to get to the bottom of it I simply put my own bare hand on the handle and opened.