Maestra

by L. S. Hilton

  I’ve always believed that hiding things in plain sight is a good maxim. I took the lift back down, hoping my face wasn’t too flushed from the run, crossed the lobby back to the reception desk, and asked if Mr. Fitzpatrick had left any message for me. No, signora. Could they please call his room? No reply, signora. I thanked the concierge and walked slowly out of the back entrance. I pulled off the coat in a doorway and rolled it tightly into my bag. I walked calmly to the Piazza Navona, disposing of the bloodied dress in one dustbin, the cigar tube in another, kneeling to adjust my ankle strap and losing the passport down a drain grating. I took the cash and credit cards from the wallet, added the notes to my own, and deposited the cards in another bin. There were a couple photos and what looked like a folded letter, dirt in the creases from refolding; I made sure not to look at those. Presumably Holofernes in Artemisia’s painting had had a family too. The wallet and the phone could go into the river on my way back to my hotel. I chose the café nearest to the Bernini fountain and ordered a cognac and a caffè shakerato, amaro. Then I opened the notebook. I turned the leaves with slow deliberation. Shopping list, reminder to buy a card, the name of a restaurant with a question mark next to it. Come on, come on. On the last written page, I found them. A name and an address, “11 a.m.” next to it, underlined. And on the facing page, the numbers. Joy. I drank the iced coffee and sipped the cognac while I smoked three cigarettes, watching the tourists throwing coins and taking pictures. The brandy felt warm as it oozed into me. I touched my hand to my cheek and found the skin of my face was cold, despite the warmth of the evening. I made sure to leave a large tip and exchange a polite good-bye with the waiter, hoping that he would remember me if anyone ever asked, then walked back across the river.

  In my room I undressed, placed my clothes neatly, flipped up the loo seat, and then vomited until all I could cough up were strings of bile. I took a long shower, as hot as I could stand, wrapped myself in a towel, and sat cross-legged on the bed to study the notebook. I called up the account on my laptop, entering the numbers carefully. They had been quite clever, my little duo of art crooks. The account was in the Cook Islands, obviously recently opened, as it held $10,000, the international minimum, just as mine in Switzerland did. There was the IBAN, the SWIFT code, the beneficiary name. Not so clever that one, Goodwood Holdings Inc., while the password, Horse1905, was just moronic. I shut it down. I guessed that Rupert would have access to the account too, imagined him waiting tensely tomorrow for the numbers to roll through. Tomorrow. The appointment. The name of the person Cameron was meeting was Moncada. Maybe Fitzpatrick had had a date with a snazzy Roman hairdresser, but somehow I didn’t think so.

  My blood was sputtering with weariness; I couldn’t bear to look at the clock. Still, it wouldn’t be the first time I had pulled an all-nighter. I made myself some disgusting instant coffee with the miniature hotel kettle and took a health break at the window, then turned back to the laptop. The name Moncada drew a complete blank. I tried art galleries, smaller dealers, sale reports, guests at art-world parties, curators, journalists—nothing. Then I tried the Roman address, looking first for any art-related businesses nearby, then Google-Earthing images of what appeared to be a fairly grotty suburban neighborhood. Why would Cameron have been doing a hugely lucrative trade in such a place? Either Moncada was a reclusive private collector or he was dodgy, and I had my money on dodgy.

  I checked the index of Money Laundering Through Art: A Criminal Justice Perspective on Google Books. I’d looked at it for my master’s, but the name Moncada was absent. I tried a few random search terms, and “art fraud Italy” soon got me to the word I had expected. The Mafia had their beaks in the art world, but that didn’t mean much—the Mafia remained as much a fact of life in Italy as half-naked hostesses on TV game shows. One of the things I love about Italians is that they take culture so seriously. One wouldn’t have thought that art could be too important to the Mob, in between corrupting the government and covering the south with tarmac, but the gangs were real professionals. One group had successfully substituted fake Renaissance canvases for twenty real works in one of the smaller Vatican museums here in Rome, and had sold the real pictures underground in order to fund arms-buying for a territory war in Calabria. It had been decades before the fakes were revealed and some of the canvases recovered. More recently, arrests had been made in a money-laundering case involving fake Ancient Greek artifacts supposedly excavated from a tiny islet off the Sicilian coast, Penisola Magnisi, famous for its wildflowers and for being the site where the nymph Calypso holds Odysseus an erotic prisoner for seven years in The Odyssey. Those involved in the scam were clearly less than enchanted by their treatment by the Roman police force, and responded by blowing up several of them as they enjoyed a cappuccino break at a beachfront café. If Cameron’s man was connected with this sort of thing, it was rather discouraging. Gaudy headlines kept popping up, detailing the fates of those who crossed the gangsters. Concrete and explosives featured prominently, which would have been funny if it weren’t true. It was the kind of stuff that Dave would have enjoyed.

  My research and my vision were starting to spin in circles, so I gave it up. If this Moncada character was the type to carry thumbscrews in his briefcase, maybe the less I knew about it, the better. Dawn was glowing beneath the acrylic hotel blind, but even after a busy day, it’s vital to consider your skin, so I drank both the bottles of mineral water in the minibar and flopped on the bed for a couple blessed hours’ unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING I was in the lobby of the Hassler at nine-thirty. I took a seat in the lounge, ordered a cappuccio and looked at La Repubblica. Nothing in the early edition. After ten minutes or so I pretended to make a call, waited another ten and did the same. I ordered a glass of water. I went back to the desk and repeated last night’s performance. No, Signor Fitzpatrick had not left a message; no, he was not in his room. I waited for a bit longer, looking agitated now, playing with my hair and smoothing my tan linen skirt over my knees. Finally, after forty minutes, I asked if I could leave a message. On a sheet of hotel writing paper I wrote, “Dear Cameron, I waited for you this morning as we agreed, but I’m sure you were busy. Perhaps you’ll be in touch when you’re back in London? I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in Rome. Many thanks for dinner. Yours, JR.” The letters could have been that, or they could have been GP or SH. Another bit of stalling.

  At eleven I stepped off a tram near the address I had found in the notebook. It was a little way out, a scruffy residential area of eight-story apartment blocks perched on islands of yellow grass and dog shit. I found the shop easily enough from my map, between a pizzeria and a cobbler. It was a framer’s, with a couple big gilt mounts in the window and a section of modern photographs, mostly Chinese brides in hired white nylon and faux-baroque borders. A tracksuited Chinese woman watched a small television behind the counter. Behind her was a door to what must be the workshop; I could smell resin and glue.

  “Buongiorno, signora. Ho un appuntamento con il Signor Moncada. C’è?”

  “Di fronte.”

  She turned back to her program. Politics, probably, from the shouting. Across the street I could see a small bar with aluminum tables under a green striped awning. Only one was occupied, by a man in a pale gray suit with collar-length silvering hair. I could see the glint of his Rolex as he picked up his espresso cup.

  “Grazie.”

  There was sweat prickling under my arms and between my shoulders, and my grip on the portfolio was so tight it hurt. I didn’t have to do this, I thought. I could just get a tram, then a train, then another, and be back in London tonight. All my planning had been focused on this moment only. I had refused the enormity of what I had done. I had ten meters to offer myself a reason to stay, and I couldn’t find one, except that I thought this was possible. I’d proved to myself that I could do it, so now I felt compelled to see it through.

  “Signo
r Moncada?”

  “Sì?” He was wearing Bulgari sunglasses and a beautifully knotted pale blue silk tie. Why can’t all men carry off clothes the way Italians can? I handed him one of the cards I had removed from Cameron’s jacket and my passport.

  “Sono l’assistente del Signor Fitzpatrick.”

  He shifted into English.

  “The assistant? Where is he, Signor Fitzpatrick?”

  I looked embarrassed.

  “I couldn’t find him this morning. He sent me a text last night.” I showed him my phone. Before I’d flushed the thumb, I had sent it to myself at eleven-thirty last night. I’d slightly misspelled instructions to keep the appointment without him, for an authentic drunk-text look. No one else was ever going to read it—the phone, minus the SIM card, was becoming archaeology in the Tiber sludge. I shrugged apologetically.

  “I have the picture, of course. And everything else which is necessary.”

  “I need to see it.”

  “I imagined you would have planned somewhere to do so, Signor Moncada.”

  He indicated the frame shop and set down some coins for his coffee. We walked past the Chinese lady without acknowledgment and into the workshop. The ceiling was low; it must have been a modern front built onto a much older building. Moncada had to incline his neck, and I could scent that faint watery smell of cool ancient stone in shadow. The workbench was empty, as if in anticipation. I opened the folder, gently lifted out the duke and duchess, placed the catalog and the provenances next to it, and stepped back. He took his time, to show me he knew what he was doing.

  “I need to speak to Signor Fitzpatrick.”

  “Please call him.”

  He stepped outside to make the call and I waited with my eyes closed, all my weight in my fingertips on the glass-topped bench.

  “I can’t reach him.”

  “I’m sorry. But if you are satisfied, I have his authority to go ahead.”

  Another call, another wait with the inside of my eyelids for company.

  “Va bene. I’ll take it now.”

  “Of course. But I’m not to hand it over until you make the transfer, Signor Moncada. I know Mr. Fitzpatrick wouldn’t like it.” I didn’t add, Because Mr. Fitzpatrick knows you are a crook and you know he knows it. Or knew, anyway.

  “How?”

  I straightened my shoulders and switched back to Italian.

  “You have a laptop? Good. Then we find somewhere with Wi-Fi, you make the transfer, I watch it come in, I leave the picture with you. Very clear, no?” Before he had a chance to reply, I ducked my head into the shop and asked the woman if the restaurant nearby had broadband.

  So we went to the pizzeria and ordered two Diet Cokes and two Margheritas and logged on. I wrote the codes from the notebook on a napkin and pushed it toward Moncada to copy for the transfer. I felt as though an elastic band was squeezing round my heart. I opened Cameron’s account again on my own laptop. The little beach ball appeared on the screen, and as it whirled I poured Coke from the can to stop my hand from shaking. The site loaded. I entered the pass code. Nothing had changed since last night. Now I could watch the money arrive. Moncada typed slowly at his own machine, his hands hovering before he punched the keys. That made me feel young, which was a nice change.

  “Ecco fatto.”

  We both sat there in silence as I watched my screen.

  There it was. Six-point-four million euro.

  “I need to try Signor Fitzpatrick. Would you mind?”

  “Certo, signorina. Prego.”

  His courtesy encouraged me. Had I been a man, he might have questioned the beneficiary, asked for some proof that I hadn’t already done what in fact I was just about to do. Luckily, Italian men don’t have a high opinion of the young female mind. Or men in general, come to that.

  Outside, he lit a cigarette. I hooked my phone under my ear, paused, then pretended to leave a message, my hands still working on the keys. Open the account Steve had set up for me, hold it at the bottom of the screen, select the transfer option from the Goodwood account. Send. I called up my own numbered account. SWIFT, IBAN, password. Happy days at Osprey. It was in. I left the folder on the table, next to the untouched microwave pizza. It was truly tragic, what was happening to Italian food.

  “I got his voice mail. I left a message and of course Signor Fitzpatrick will call you. I’m very sorry he couldn’t be here, Signor Moncada, but I hope you and your client will be satisfied. It’s a very lovely picture.”

  I took a taxi back to my hotel and made a point of asking if there had been any messages from a Signor Fitzpatrick. As I checked out, I gave the clerk my number and asked her to be so kind as to pass it on if the signore called. I was going on a trip, I said chattily, up to the lakes. Just enough details for her to remember. There was a place near the Campo dei Fiori that made white Roman pizza, the real thing, spiked with rosemary. I thought I’d have one of those before collecting my things and catching the Como train. I’d never seen the lake. I could sunbathe, I thought, and take a ferry trip to Bellagio, while I waited for the police.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  IT COULDN’T BE an accident that the baroque had been invented in Italy. There was just too much beauty here, too many perfect views, too many delicately melded colors in too much startling Mediterranean light. The abundance was excessive, almost embarrassing. After the train had left the disquietingly elegant cavern of the Stazione Centrale in Milan and crawled through the bleak high-rise suburbs, their streets holiday-vacant, it began to pass through a series of tunnels in the first reaches of the Alps, emerging to brief flashes of green slopes and blue stretches of water, vivid and dazzling as a suddenly opened jewel box. And in the way that the rhythm of train tracks will always catch one’s mood, the carriages crooned to me, “You are rich, you are rich, you are rich.”

  All the same, when I reached Como, I checked into the most modest pensione I could find, a place so old-fashioned I was astonished it was still open, green lino on the floors and a communal bathroom shared with various hearty Dutch and Germans who went off cycling or hiking each morning, with rolls furtively assembled from the meager breakfast buffet tucked into their Lycra onesies. I sorted through my clothes, dividing the expensive items, and bought a cheap checked plastic holdall from the supermarket to store them in, concealing it under a bile-colored blanket at the bottom of the rickety wardrobe.

  The first evening, I took a seat in a snack bar, ordering a Coke, which I didn’t drink, and a mineral water, which I did. In a square-ruled school exercise book, I made a list of names.

  Cameron. Dealt with. He obviously wasn’t going to be talking to anyone ever again.

  But how soon would news of the killing make the press? That led me to Rupert. He would have been frantically trying to contact Cameron, panicking that the deal had gone wrong.

  It gave me a certain pleasure to imagine one day on the sodding Scotch grouse moor ruined. I had to assume that Rupert had access to the Cook Island account, that he would see that the money had come and gone, and, moreover, where it had gone. When he heard of Cameron’s death, as he unquestionably would, he would have to think that Cameron had got involved in something too dodgy, offended someone, taken a risk. Rupert could hardly go to the police to try and get the “Stubbs” back. And if the papers threw up my name? It was perfectly reasonable that Judith Rashleigh could have been in Rome, perfectly reasonable that she could have been angling after a job from Cameron. Rupert knew that Dave and I had been snooping round the Stubbs, but even if he credited me with the intelligence to have worked it out, and Cameron with the stupidity of having told me, the picture was gone. He was powerless. Mostly.

  Which left two names: Leanne and Moncada. Leanne wasn’t the type to pay much attention to newspapers, but she wasn’t entirely stupid. If my name was published, she would be able to associate me with two dead men. Yet I knew her well
enough to recognize that her only interest in life was Leanne, so why would she get involved when there was nothing for her to gain but trouble?

  So, Moncada. He didn’t strike me as the type to have a very friendly relationship with the police. There was no law against being a private dealer, but he was too well dressed to be clean, even for an Italian. I hadn’t ripped him off; his clients would be satisfied and pay up. My performance as Cameron’s assistant had been convincing enough to get Moncada to hand over the money. Indeed, it must have seemed in his eyes that I had acted correctly, given that I was ignorant that my boss was a gore-sodden lump in the Tiber at the time we made our deal. If anything, would he be afraid of nice little Judith going to the police . . . ? For a few seconds I felt incredibly cold. Would he come after me? Would he remember my name from my passport? I’d had to flash it, to make it convincing. If Moncada was in any way connected with organized crime, as I somehow felt he must be, he would have no trouble finding me while I was in Italy. Perhaps right now he was slipping through those same rock tunnels like a vicious rat, homing in on the rank scent of my fear. My heart was banging and my hands began to shake. Stop it, stop it, breathe. Moncada knew that he personally had nothing to do with Cameron’s death. Nor could he suspect that I did. He had paid Cameron, he’d thought, not me. But what was the worst-case scenario? Moncada discovers unsuspected qualities of civic-mindedness and goes to the police. There was no evidence to charge me with, only circumstance. For fuck’s sake, I sounded to myself like one of those morons who think they understand the law from watching CSI. Think. At the present, Judith Rashleigh is a skint ex–art dealer who has been unfortunately connected with a horrible incident—two, if they pulled my flight records and somehow connected me back to James. There were records of cash withdrawals from her UK savings account, which proved how she had funded her modest travels before returning to London to look for work.