by John Harris
‘I don’t know. There were six. That’s the last. The Germans helped themselves, so did the Resistance. They’ll have sent the proceeds to the Communist Party in Rome, I expect. Perhaps even to Uncle Joe Stalin himself. Corneliano got one, and unfortunately, when he was shot, it disappeared, so if it comes on the market you’ll know it’s genuine. It’s called A Stolen Embrace. Lascivious-looking chap with his paw on a girl’s left tit.’
‘There were others?’
‘True. Two were destroyed. One was shot to pieces by the Germans and one was destroyed by a mad goumier. There was one other which was given away.’
‘To whom?’
Pugh smiled. ‘You could buy it if you wished. It’s at the Orphanage of the Virgin of Manimora at Moccino.’
Da Sangalla smiled. ‘I think they’ll be willing to sell.’
Pugh smiled back at him. ‘I think they might. But you’ll have to pay what it’s worth. They know its value because I told them, and they’ll drive a hard bargain.’
Da Sangalla frowned. ‘And the rest?’
Pugh indicated the Still Life. ‘That’s the rest. One painting. And it’s going where it belongs.’
‘I think not,’ Da Sangalla said. ‘One is a poor return for all the trouble I’ve taken, but it will be enough. I know where I can sell it. And it won’t be to Colonel Tasker or Colonel Baracca. That would be silly. They would never pay its full value.’
‘Neither, I suspect, will you.’
‘Then you might just as well let me have it. You have no option, Sergeant, anyway.’
Glancing through the window, Pugh saw that the man in the car had climbed out. He was crossing the road now, the handkerchief still to his face. He smiled.
‘I think your friend wants you,’ he said. Da Sangalla glanced through the window, nodded to the Italian sergeant, and slipped out to the landing. Pugh could hear them talking. As they waited, he suddenly heard Marco whispering.
‘Let him have it,’ he was saying. ‘It’s not a Detto Banti.’ Pugh turned and stared at Marco. ‘It isn’t,’ Marco insisted softly. ‘I know it isn’t.’
For a moment Pugh wondered if he were in league somehow with Da Sangalla and that was the reason why he had turned up for a chat. But Marco shook his head again. ‘It isn’t,’ he repeated. ‘I swear it on the head of my dead brother.’
Da Sangalla reappeared in the doorway and they heard slow footsteps on the stairs outside. After a while, as Da Sangalla stared at the painting, Pugh saw the man with the handkerchief return to the car, climb in and be driven off.
Pugh smiled. ‘Going to make an offer?’
Da Sangalla smiled. ‘No, Sergeant. We have no guarantee that the picture is genuine.’
‘You’re playing with fire, Da Sangalla,’ Pugh said. ‘You’ll never get away with it. Tasker and Baracca will be after you at once.’
‘They’ll be too late. I shall have disappeared by the time they learn what’s happened.’
‘You’ll be finished as an art dealer.’
‘I’m not worried. I don’t have to be, with a million lire in my pocket.’
‘Half that,’ Pugh smiled. ‘De Castro will want a cut.’
Da Sangalla frowned and Pugh guessed that he had already worked out some scheme whereby he could disappear and leave De Castro in the cold. Da Sangalla produced a large-denomination note and laid it on the table. ‘Take this, Sergeant, for your trouble.’
‘It’s not worth much in my country.’
Da Sangalla smiled and picked up the still life. ‘Doubtless you’ll manage.’
‘What makes you think I shan’t report what’s happened to Tasker and Baracca?’
‘I’m not worried about Tasker and Baracca.’
The words set Pugh thinking. Had Da Sangalla access to some secret shady business Tasker and Baracca were involved in, so that he could threaten them if they tried to move against him? He watched Da Sangalla study the picture and roll it up.
‘At first glance,’ he said, ‘a very good Detto Banti. Not typical but good nevertheless.’
He gestured to the sergeant and the soldiers, who filed out. Da Sangalla waited in the entrance. ‘The sergeant will be waiting outside for ten minutes,’ he said. ‘I prefer you not to follow me.’
Pugh watched the door close. Then he turned to Marco. ‘How do you know it is not a Detto Banti?’ he said at once.
Marco grinned. ‘Because I painted a lot of it myself.’
There was a long silence, then Pugh lit a cigarette and handed the packet to Marco.
‘When?’ he said.
‘Just before his last illness. He was still trying. He needed the money, and a painting was the only way to raise some. But he couldn’t finish it. So I took over. I told you, I’d often painted bits of other pictures. I knew his style. Hardly any of it’s Bocco’s work.’ Marco smiled. ‘Funny, isn’t it? You decided to sell Bocco’s paintings on the strength of one that he didn’t paint. He spent all his life sneering at my little efforts, but in the end it was to be my work that was to establish the genuineness of his work.’
‘One of life’s little ironies,’ Pugh said.
‘What’ll you do? About Da Sangalla, I mean.’
‘Hell never get away with it. Tasker and Baracca will have every military policeman and field security organisation in the American and British armies looking for him. De Castro too.’
‘Will they take it off him?’
‘Without doubt.’ Pugh was thoughtful. ‘And, since you painted most of it, you might well end up as the owner. Pity it’s not a genuine Detto Banti. It might have fetched more money.’
Five
Jones’ request to the general for confirmation that the government in London were interested in the Detto Banti canvasses brought a quick reply. But it came from an unexpected source – a department of the War Office dealing with the high incidence of looting in occupied countries – and it requested to know more about the Detto Bantis.
Jones beamed at Pugh and agreed to accompany him to see Colonel Tasker.
‘We’d better go into this together,’ he said. ‘He’ll probably court-martial me and shoot you, but I’ll enjoy seeing his reaction. Got your story ready?’
He made an appointment, giving an indication of what it was about, and the following day they drove to Tasker’s office in Jones’ Jeep. For once there was no need to send a message to the O Sole Mio bar. There was no sign of Tasker’s car outside as they drove up, though Pugh noticed that Cirri’s hearse was in the yard as usual and his horse tied to the lamp post, with a nosebag attached to its head.
Colonel Baracca was with Tasker, and they were both looking smart, with the smartness of men who worked an eight-hour day in an office with long lunch breaks and no overtime.
Tasker smiled as they entered. ‘Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Have you got the Detto Bantis?’
Pugh glanced at Jones.
‘He found himself in some danger,’ Jones said at once. ‘And I have to register a protest that he was sent there.’
‘Bit late for that now, Captain,’ Tasker said cheerfully. ‘What about the Detto Bantis?’
‘He didn’t get them.’
Tasker’s rosy glow fell away like the curtains at the end of a performance. ‘Why not?’
‘You’d better hear it from Sergeant Pugh.’
Tasker stared at Pugh with eyes that were like the barrels of twin machine guns. Pugh was aware of Baracca, sitting alongside Tasker’s desk, also staring hard at him. He hadn’t moved – Baracca never seemed to move much – but his amber eyes were suddenly hard.
‘Well, go on,’ Tasker snapped.
‘I understood,’ Pugh said, ‘that there were twelve pictures.’
‘There were.’
‘No, there weren’t. There were six. The brother who laid the information was lying in the hope of a big reward.’
Tasker was silent for a while, his face red, his eyes angry. ‘Where is this brother now?’ he snapped eventually.
&n
bsp; ‘He headed for Brindisi. He has relatives there.’
‘Name?’
‘Bonti. Via Conoso, 105.’ The lie came easily. ‘That’s the address he gave me.’
Tasker wrote the address on a pad. ‘We’ll check on him. He probably kept the others himself. What about the remaining six? Where are they?’
‘Nowhere. There aren’t any.’
‘What?’ Even Baracca was on his feet this time, and Pugh continued, enjoying every minute.
‘We were cut off in Vicinamontane,’ he said. ‘But we got the pictures away – all that we could find – in a hearse.’
‘In a hearse?’
‘How would you have done it, sir?’ Pugh asked innocently. ‘In a pantechnicon marked “Art Treasures”?’
‘Don’t be bloody insolent, Sergeant! Get on with it.’
‘We were stopped by Germans returning from Crocifisso. They were removing the Tintoretto Adoration. They’d already removed the altarpiece from Avizano. However, I happened to learn where they’re being taken to.’
Baracca’s eyes gleamed. ‘Where?’
‘Austria. Captain Jones has the exact address. He’s passed it on to the general.’
Tasker’s face went red. ‘And the pictures?’
‘Four were lost when the Germans were attacked by partisans. One was stolen by Corneliano, the bandit.’
‘They shot him.’
‘But they didn’t recover the picture.’
‘I’ll bet the bloody police collared it,’ Tasker snarled.
‘That was a thought that crossed my mind.’
‘And the other? There’s still one. What happened to that?’
‘Colonel da Sangalla, of the Ministero di Monumenti e Belli Arti, removed that one from my room. At gunpoint.’
Tasker glared. He looked like a lion at feeding time thwarted of its dinner. ‘It doesn’t belong to the bloody Italian Government!’ he snapped. ‘It belongs to us.’
‘That’s what I told him,’ Pugh smiled. ‘He insisted, though, and I don’t argue with a gun. Not when all I’m armed with is a revolver with which I couldn’t hit a pig in a passage.’
Tasker was already reaching for the telephone. ‘Where’s Da Sangalla now?’
‘Doubtless in hiding. But you could possibly find out from Sergio de Castro.’
‘The dealer?’
‘The very same.’
‘We’ll let them pick up Da Sangalla,’ Jones said cheerfully as they left. ‘Then we’ll let them know his painting isn’t a Detto Banti at all. That should please everybody all round. Is this brother really in Brindisi?’
‘He’s here in Naples. In hiding.’
Jones smiled and suggested they have a drink. They found a bar and, parking the Jeep within two feet of the table where they were sitting so no one could steal it or any part of it, they sat back with a vermouth each.
‘Give them a little longer,’ Pugh suggested. ‘Let Da Sangalla buy the one we left at the Orphanage of the Virgin of Manimora. I dare bet he expects to sell it to an American for twice what he’ll have to pay for it.’
‘Personally,’ Jones said, ‘I’ll be glad when these bloody Detto Bantis are out of the way. I need you.’
‘Too many girls wanting to marry British soldiers?’
‘I wish that were all. It’s your penicillin, old lad. And not just penicillin. Drugs in general. They keep disappearing. Whole consignments from the docks. Half the dock police are receiving hand-outs to look the other way, and now that Rome’s fallen it gives the bastards a wider market. They can even send the stuff up by sea to Civitavecchia. The military police are checking, but so far we’ve found nothing. Just a few small packets, hidden in the cistern of the captain’s cabin of a coaster. They’d go in your pocket, and we know there’s more than that.’
Jones frowned. ‘There’s plenty else, too,’ he went on. ‘God knows how many political parties for a start, all clamouring to be allowed to hold meetings and all expecting to be in power when the elections are held. Only the Christian Democrats, the Socialists and the Communists really count, of course, and even the Communists don’t count for much. They’re like a tadpole – all head and no tail. Mind you, they aren’t really expecting much. They think the Christian Democrats will win and be so corrupt they’ll be chucked out, so the Communists will have the opportunity to get in, in their place. They’ve a hope! The Yanks would never allow it.’ Jones fiddled with his glass for a moment. ‘In addition,’ he continued, ‘it’s still thought there are Teds hiding in the catacombs at San Placido. Noises are still heard and there’s a panic that they’re being fed by Fascist sympathisers and will sally out, now that Rome’s fallen, to cut our supply lines. I don’t believe a word of it myself. The noises are probably just made by shifting earth. With Vesuvius close by, I reckon this whole bloody city’s due to drop into a damn great hole at any moment.’
He finished his drink. ‘In the meantime, I have to go down to Reggio di Calabria. We think drugs are being brought across from North Africa to Sicily in troopships – probably by stewards – and then across to the mainland from Messina. I shall be back on Saturday. I’m taking the train. As senior sergeant–’
‘I’m not senior sergeant. Waddilove is.’
‘Waddilove’s in hospital.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since last night. He put his foot in a hole in the road – you know how the bastards pinch the manhole covers – and he’s broken his leg. Just as well, as a matter of fact, because he’s been sticking his finger into a little fiddle over tinned meat and he’ll be going home. So you’re running the place until I get back. I shall arrive on the midday train and I’ll need meeting with the Jeep.’
The next few days were busy. There was a visit to be made to the Ufficio Matricola, where prisoners at the prison at Poggio Reale were admitted or discharged, and a trip to Ischia to interview a small-time crook with a grudge who said he was prepared to give evidence against a big-timer they had been chasing for months. It happened to be a public holiday and the ferry was crammed with people armed with guitars and trumpets and old shoe-boxes containing picnic lunches. They swarmed all over the ship, some of the young men, show-offs like so many Italians, even climbing the rails and clinging to the outside.
When they reached Ischia Porto, an old man who looked like Tassinari promptly offered to take them to their witness. Within seconds, however, it was clear he had battened on to them in the hope of getting something to eat. Pugh bought him a coffee and a roll, and he was so tearfully grateful he allowed them to continue alone to their witness, who, it appeared, had suddenly got the wind up and, afraid of retaliation from the big-timer’s friends, had decided against giving evidence, after all. The old man was on the ferry going back and, for another cup of coffee, gave Pugh the whole history of the Campi Flegri and its associated legends.
There was also an epidemic of telephone-wire cutting, for which the excuse was that the Allies had told the Italians to do that very thing to harass the Germans and they’d never been told to stop. There were instructions that precautions against typhoid were to be intensified and that sanitary teams would be on the streets, using an anti-typhus spray on any likely subject. There was also to be a campaign against flies and yet another against promiscuity – what the troops called the Lechery Law. Bullied and wheedled, the Italians could only hit back by demanding that their women should be left alone, and once again the British were trying to follow the example of the Americans, who were already conducting – not very successfully, it had to be admitted – a campaign to improve morals. Imagining that this new campaign would go the same way as all the others, Pugh tossed the instructions into Jones’ ‘in’ tray for him to study when he came back. He fully expected Jones would do nothing about it because he never had before.
There was also a ‘contessa’ who had put on a show of wealth to persuade a British officer to marry her, and had then been found to have a husband already, elderly and infirm and safely tucked away i
n the north behind the German lines; and a prince who indignantly claimed his sister was using his palazzo to run a high-class brothel for officers. There were other things, too – the line-crossers who were paid to take letters to relatives in the north but in fact dumped them at the first opportunity; a dockworker caught stealing tins of meat – for his family, he said, which was probably true; and a little gang who were gaining entry to houses by posing as American welfare workers seeking suitable premises for soldiers’ clubs – as one half of the group was being shown round, the other half robbed the place of everything they could lay their hands on. All this was in addition to the quacks who claimed to be able to provide women anxious to marry British soldiers with toned-up sexual organs, crooks working on the superstitions of the poor to offer fake medicines and holy relics, witnesses who were known to have seen a man blown up by a bomb in front of them but, because they were afraid of retribution from the gangs, claimed to have observed nothing of it.
Pugh found he was too busy co-ordinating the enquiries of the other sergeants to have much time for his own enquiries. With Waddilove gone, there was extra work and, just to help matters, the day before Jones was due to return, an officer from the Commission for the Protection of Arts and Monuments arrived, wanting to know where the Detto Bantis were. Pugh and O’Mara were dealing with the case of a soldier who had stolen a consignment of Scotch whisky. This had involved O’Mara in getting a little drunk, so that he was singing softly when the door opened.
‘Hitler has only got one ball,
Goering has two, but very small,
Himmler is very sim’lar,
And Goe-balls has no balls at all–’
‘Come in, you darlin’ man, sor,’ he said as the officer stuck his head round the door.
He was a young man called Grafton-Smith who looked as if he’d just left a seminary, but he was a captain nevertheless, and, disgusted to learn that the Detto Bantis were not in their possession, he let them know his views in no uncertain terms.
‘Do you mean to say,’ he demanded, ‘that you let the bloody things slip through your fingers? Art and museum experts in uniform are following the Allied armies with the sole purpose of tracking down looted art treasures like these. We follow clues that are often no more than rumours.’