The Immaculate Deception ja-7

by Iain Pears

  "I'm really sorry you're going," she said, suddenly afflicted by an enormous sense of panic and loss.

  "You'll survive without me, I dare say. And my mind is quite made up. Even the most fascinating job palls after a while, and as you may have noticed, what I'm doing at the moment is not especially fascinating. By the way, those chocolates. Did you say Belgian?”

  "Yes.”

  "Ah.”

  "Why?”

  "No reason. Merely a detail. Always thought them overrated, myself.”

  She stood up, looking at her watch. Late, late, late. Was it always to be like this now?

  Constant meetings, constant rush? Never time to sit and talk anymore? After several decades of it, she'd be ready to give it all up as well. She gave Bottando a brief embrace, told him to keep himself ready to give more advice, and headed back to her car. The driver was sound asleep on the backseat, waiting for her. Lucky man, she thought as she prodded him awake.

  3

  She was home early, even before Jonathan, and drank a glass of wine on the terrace—her promotion, their marriage, and the fact that even Jonathan now had a regular salary of a sort meant that, finally, they could afford an apartment they were happy to be in. Still in Rome's Trastevere section, but four whole rooms now, high ceilings, and a terrace overlooking a quiet square. If you stretched you could just see a bit of Santa Maria. Flavia was too short, but Jonathan could see it, and it gave him a twinge of pleasure just to know it was there. Although the least house-proud of people, even she made something of an effort to keep the apartment neat and tidy. A sign of age, perhaps.

  She had left early because she wanted some time to think, and there were always too many distractions in her office. Phones, secretaries, people popping in and out to ask her opinion, or to get her to sign something. She loved it all, most of the time, but it made it difficult to reflect and consider. That was best done looking out at the ocher-colored buildings opposite, watching people doing their shopping, listening to the quiet murmur of a city going about its business.

  Bottando's lack of practical advice had given her more than a little to think about.

  She had gone through Bottando's response, backward and forward, considering every option and possibility in a methodical way, and come up with nothing better. However, the essence of it—keep your head down, do nothing but avoid any involvement—appalled her. And struck her as almost as dangerous as doing something. Her head was on the block, come what may. If something, anything, went wrong, she would be the one to take the blame. Acting head of the department. Never yet confirmed in her post, even after a year. A matter of a moment to get rid of her; no noise, no fuss. Simply an announcement that a new and permanent chief, more experienced and fitted for the job, was being drafted in over her.

  But what could she do? It was certainly the case that she couldn't do anything practical without somebody finding out quickly. Nor could she go trotting around the wealthy of Italy asking if they had a spare suitcase full of unwanted dollars. Fundraising was hardly her job. If anyone could do it, it should have been Macchioli's task. That's what museum directors did these days. Or were supposed to. Alas, his talents notoriously did not lie in this direction at all. Still, it might be worthwhile having a serious talk with him, just in case a ransom note arrived.

  Argyll came home an hour later, in a relatively good mood considering he'd spent the day trying to din the rudiments of art history into his students, and plunked himself down beside her to admire the view. Once it had been as admired as was possible, he'd asked about the meeting with the prime minister. She didn't want to talk about it yet, so she fended him off.

  "How's the paper?" she asked mischievously to take her mind off things. This was a sore point with Argyll. He had been taken on in his current job to teach baroque art to foreign students passing a year in Rome, a task he was eminently fitted to do. Then the adminstration—a baroque organization itself—had decided, for reasons that no one really understood, that salary levels would be partly determined by academic production as well as hours put in at the coal face. Raise the reputation of the institution. Must be taken seriously as a university, not dismissed as a finishing school for rich kids. Which, of course, it was. The essence of the edict, however, was that if you wanted more money, you had to produce articles. Papers. Better still, a book or two.

  Not really that easy, and Argyll was of a stubborn disposition. The idea of being forced into writing academic works annoyed him. However, a bit more money would be agreeable. He was nearly there; he had ruthlessly exploited his old footnotes and conjured up two articles of extraordinary banality for minor journals, and had also been invited to give a paper at a conference in Ferrara in a few weeks' time, and that would put him over the threshold.

  Except that he didn't have a paper to deliver and, while he did not hesitate to produce grandiose trivia in the comforting anonymity of a journal no one read, he hesitated to stand up in front of a live audience and parrot obvious nonsense. So no paper; not even the glimmer of one. He was beginning to get worried. Flavia did her best to sympathize when he told her, again, that he still couldn't think of anything, and eventually Argyll shifted to another topic, lest dwelling on the matter ruin an otherwise pleasant evening.

  "I had a phone call today.”

  "Oh?”

  "From Mary Verney.”

  She put down her drink and looked at him. Not today, she thought. It's been bad enough already without Mary Verney. She was retired, Flavia knew; she had said so the last time they almost arrested her for art theft on a grand scale. But she'd said that the time before last as well.

  "She asked me to ask you if you'd mind if she came back to Italy.”

  "What?”

  Argyll said it again. "She has a house somewhere in Tuscany, it seems. She hasn't felt comfortable going there for the last few years, what with you so keen to lock her up. So she simply wanted to know whether you had any outstanding business with her.

  If you do, she'll stay in England and sell the house, but if you don't she wouldn't mind coming and seeing if it still has a roof. I said I'd ask. Don't look at me like that," he concluded mildly. "I'm the messenger. You know, the one you don't shoot.”

  Flavia huffed. "I really do have better things to do, you know, than reassuring aging thieves.”

  "So it seems.”

  "What does that mean?" she snapped.

  "You weren't really listening to my fascinating anecdote about the coffee machine in the staff room. My little joke about the tourist being taken to hospital when a piece of the Pantheon fell on his head didn't make you smile at all, even though it was quite a clever play on words and would normally have produced at least a flicker of amusement. And you have twice dipped your olive into the sugar bowl and eaten it without even noticing.”

  So she had. Now she thought about it, the olive had tasted odd. So she heaved a sigh and told him about more serious matters. By the time she finished, Argyll was dipping his olives in the sugar bowl as well. He, in contrast, found them quite tasty. He could see that Flavia's situation did really put the antics of the departmental percolator in the shade.

  Oddly, the more important matter was swiftly dealt with. Flavia didn't want Argyll's advice on this one, but she got it anyway. It just wasn't very good. "Your stomach," he said. "It's been playing you up for days now. How about if we got Giulio downstairs to have you admitted to hospital for a week? Urgent tests? Suspected ulcer?

  Gastroenteritis? You could blame my cooking. He'd be happy to oblige. Then you could sit out the case of the stolen Claude in peace and security.”

  Giulio was the doctor who lived on the grander first floor of their apartment block.

  And Flavia was sure he would oblige. He was an obliging fellow. And her stomach—in fact, her entire internal system was misbehaving shockingly, although it was better now, probably thanks to the wine. But this was one case she could not duck out of, and Argyll knew it as well as she did.

  "Don't
be silly," she said. "If you want to be useful, you can tell me about this Claude picture.”

  "What's to tell? It's a landscape. Not one of his huge ones, which is no doubt why it's so popular with the thieves.”

  "What about the subject, though? Cephalus and Procris.”

  Argyll waved his hand dismissively. "Wouldn't worry about that. They're just mythological figures wandering around the canvas who were put in to give it respectability. Claude couldn't do people for toffee. Arms and legs too long. Bums in the wrong place. But he had to do them to be taken seriously.”

  "Still. What's the story?”

  "No idea.”

  And Flavia clearly wanted to say no more, so he switched the topic. "Tell me about Bottando. You'll miss him, won't you?”

  "Terribly. Father figure, you know. It gives you a shock when permanent fixtures are suddenly not so permanent. Also, he's not happy about retiring, either. It's not a good way to end his career after all this time.”

  "We should get him a present.”

  She nodded. "Can you think of anything?”

  "No.”

  "Nor me.”

  They paused. "What shall I do about Mary Verney?" Argyll said.

  She sighed. "Oh, I don't know. I suppose there are so many thieves in the country, one more won't make any difference. At least we can be certain she didn't steal the Claude.”

  4

  Argyll was reluctant to criticize his dear wife, especially as she had been his wife for only a short time and it seemed premature to begin carping, but he found it hard to suppress a certain amount of irritation at the way she wouldn't listen to reason—his reason—about this Claude. It was not that he didn't see that it was her job to recover pictures, nor did he blame her for being worried. Normally it was her calm that amazed him. He knew well that he would have been quite incapable of doing what she did without being in a permanent state of panic. The omnipresent possibility of disaster that she seemed to live with was not the sort of thing that gave him pleasure; in his own line of work, now that being an art dealer was more of a hobby than an occupation, the worst that could happen was that he might lose his lecture notes. Selling his remaining stock of pictures and covering his expenses was more than enough stress to have in his life, in his opinion.

  There were only a few dozen pictures left now, ranging in quality from the moderately decent to the embarrassing; the rest he had either got rid of to a couple of clients, unloaded onto dealers, or decided to keep for himself. This last batch, in a fit of impatience, he had decided to sell at an auction and, as none was particularly valuable, he had arranged for them to go into a sale in London; they were not subject to any export restrictions and would get a better price there. They were, however, subject to a monumental amount of paperwork, which he had been sweating over for months. It was nearly all done now, most of the pictures were safely boxed and ready to go, but there still remained an alarming number of forms to fill in.

  So he didn't blame Flavia for being alarmed; the Italian state in one of its full-blown moods of cranky irrationality is an alarming thing. But she had a sort of absentminded calm about her, which was really quite unwise.

  It was not ingratitude that made Flavia dismiss Jonathan's counsel with a touch of impatience, she was merely preoccupied. Since being summoned to the prime minister's office, she had been totally consumed with the Claude while also having to put on an air of not having a care in the world. A long, early-morning phone call with the prime minister to try and extract more specific instructions produced nothing except a convoluted statement that gave the impression that he was unaware of anything to do with ransoms; after it was over, Flavia convinced herself that the call had been taped and would be used in evidence against her if need be. That started her day off badly, but even worse was the lack of any movement; the kidnapper did not follow up with any more details about how much money he wanted or how it was to be paid.

  Assuming a ransom was what he wanted. Time was short, after all; Flavia found the desultory approach quite surprising. Even the dimmest thief—and this character clearly was not dim—must realize that the longer he waited, the greater the risk of something going wrong, and that if the news came out, the price would go down dramatically.

  At least the delay gave her time to do something, even though she had no great hopes of anything useful resulting. She could not send anyone out to ask questions, but she could comb through the records to see if any obvious candidates presented themselves. Again, she was hampered by not being able to tell anybody what she wanted, but fortunately the department had been assigned another trainee, who was, for once, unusually bright and keen. He had, she told him sternly when he came in, spent far too much time on the streets recently.

  The trainee's face fell so far Flavia thought she might have to help him pick it off the floor. "It's all very well rushing about in flashy cars kicking people's doors down, Corrado, and don't think I'm criticizing. You kick them down very well. But the essence of policing these days is intelligence. Forward planning. That sort of thing. Very interesting," she added encouragingly. "So I've constructed a little exercise for you.”

  "An exercise?" Corrado, the trainee, said in a scarcely concealed tone of disgust. "You mean, not even a real case?”

  "It might be one day. Got your notebook? Good. Take this down. Let's see now.

  Armed robbery at a museum. Lone operator. Painting stolen.”

  "What painting?”

  "Doesn't matter what painting," she said. "It never does in real life either.”

  "Oh." "Ransom demand. Pay up or else. Right?”

  Corrado nodded.

  "Good. Now assume this has all just happened. It's your job to head into the records and construct a list of potential people who might have been involved. Do you know how to do that?”

  "Start with the computer, then go to the files, look for possibles for the theft itself, compare that with lists of people who are thought to have done kidnappings, etcetera."

  He sounded bored and annoyed. Flavia felt slightly sorry for him, but even if she had just told him a pack of lies at least one part was true. Sitting on your rear end reading files really was now the stuff of policing.

  "Quite," she said brightly. "And I know you are going to grumble and moan about it.

  So the sooner you are done, and done properly, the sooner you can get back to the outside world. Off you go," she concluded in her best schoolmistressy tone, giving him an encouraging smile as he sloped out of her office.

  That was all very well, and even cheered her up a bit, but the improving mood went into a sharp reverse shortly after she had finished her midmorning sandwich. As she brushed the crumbs carefully from her blotting pad into the wastepaper bin, her secretary—it was amazing how quickly you can get used to having a secretary—announced that a journalist was on the phone from II Mattino. Common enough, quite a few checked in regularly to see if there was anything going on, and Flavia was very much pleasanter to them than Bottando had ever been. Ettore Dossoni was a new one to her, however; she vaguely knew the name, but he had never, as far as she was aware, had anything to do with art or theft before.

  "I was thinking," he said in a tone that had just a touch of insinuation about it,

  "about writing a story on security.”

  "Oh yes.”

  "Yes. You know. Museums. Especially when pictures move around.”

  "You mean for exhibitions, things like that?" Flavia asked dryly.

  "Just that sort of thing. You know. Look at insurance, the way they are guarded, what might happen if anything went wrong and a picture was lost ...”

  "Very good idea," Flavia said encouragingly. "Although I can't give you chapter and verse on anything. We haven't lost one that way for ages ...”

  "Of course not," Dossoni said in an oily fashion. Flavia was beginning to dislike him.

  "But you must have plans about what you'd do if something like that happened.”

  "We run around and
try to find it," Flavia said. "Same as usual. No story in that.”

  "But if there was a ransom, say.”

  "Paying ransoms," Flavia pointed out severely, "is against the law.”

  "You mean you wouldn't pay one?”

  "Me? Me personally? How could I? That's not my department. All I would do in those circumstances is pass on the request to a higher authority. As quickly as possible, I might add, although if you quoted me on that I would strangle you. Your guess is as good as mine about how they'd react. As I say, it's against the law.”

  She got him off the phone as soon as possible, then leaned back in her chair, a worried frown on her brow. He was clearly fishing. Someone had said something, but not enough for him to know what to do with it. Three possible sources: someone from the museum, someone from the prime minister's office, or someone involved in the theft itself. Not much point speculating about which. She picked up the phone and talked to some contacts about having the journalist's phone tapped. Ten minutes later, she had the response.

  No.

  That was the trouble with being new at the job. She had no clout yet. No one would have refused Bottando. Although, come to think of it, no one had ever refused her before either. It put her in a bad mood that lay simmering inside her until Argyll once more proferred his well-meaning, and quite possibly sound, advice.

  While she was thus employed, Argyll was left at home, feeling terribly left out, abandoned, and slighted. On the whole he hit it off well with Flavia's work; he and it had cohabited nicely for years and tolerated each other with only a few hiccups along the way. He endured the frequent absences, the preoccupations, and the occasional flashes of ill-humor that the work generated in her, and her work, in return, had provided him with a fairly constant diet of entertainment. He had even, so he prided himself and Flavia readily acknowledged, given material assistance on a few occasions.

  The three-way relationship had become a little more complex when the great promotion arrived, not least because Flavia spent more time on the drudgery of policing and less time looking for stolen works of art. She had also become more like Bottando in office, more prone to calculate risks, see dangers, and watch for hidden traps. This occasionally gave her a furtive, not to say suspicious, air, and Argyll was interested to note that Bottando, relieved of his position, had become more like her—full of bright, if not always respectable, ideas.