The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET

by Mariani, Scott

  He turned to go, heading back for the gap in the wall, picking his way between the slender tree trunks by moonlight. A cloud passed across the face of the moon, casting the woods in shadow.

  He stopped. Lying among the leaves, half-hidden behind a mossy knot of tree roots, a man’s body was lying crumpled and grey on the ground with his arms flung out to the sides.

  There was no head on the body.

  He waited, perfectly still, watching it until the cloud passed and the moonlight brightened. He went over to it and nudged it with his foot. It wasn’t a body. It was something the clean-up team had missed.

  Arno’s tweed jacket. He remembered Leigh dropping it as they ran across the grounds.

  He picked it up. It felt cold and damp, and it was empty apart from an oblong shape in the left inside pocket.

  He fished it out. It was a slim wallet.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Her voice sounded frightened in the darkness.

  ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’ He shut the door of the cabin behind him.

  ‘Where were you?’

  He told her.

  ‘You went back?’

  ‘The place has been torched, Leigh. There’s nothing left. But I found something.’ He held up the wallet. ‘It’s Arno’s.’

  Leigh sat up in bed as he flipped on a sidelight. He sat on the edge of the bed next to her and she brushed the thick black hair out of her eyes. ‘Where did you find it?’ she asked sleepily.

  ‘Where you dropped his jacket, in the woods,’ he said. He opened the slim calf-leather wallet and unzipped one of the internal pockets. ‘There’s not much here,’ he said. ‘A library membership card, out of date. A couple of old cinema tickets. Fifteen euros in cash. And this.’ He took out a small slip of paper and showed it to her.

  She took it and looked at him quizzically. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s a receipt.’

  ‘The Museo Visconti in Milan,’ she said, reading the crumpled print.

  ‘Ever heard of it?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘This is an acknowledgement of something Arno donated to the museum,’ he said. ‘The receipt doesn’t say what it is, but it’s dated last January, just a few days after Oliver’s death.’

  She looked up from the slip of paper. ‘You think—’

  ‘The letter has gone to Milan? I don’t know,’ he said. ‘We’ll soon find out. Get some sleep. We’re moving on at five.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The kid had been right about the car. It was old, but it was dependable. It took them to Milan in a little over four hours. On the way they stopped at an autostrada service station where Leigh picked out a headscarf and a pair of wide sunglasses, new jeans and a warm jacket.

  The Milan traffic was insane, and it was mid-morning by the time they found the Museo Visconti, an imposing eighteenth-century museum of music in the city suburbs. Its high porticoes overlooked a walled garden away from the street and the traffic rumble.

  They went inside and breathed the old museum smell of must and wood polish. The place was almost empty, with just a few middle-aged visitors strolling quietly around the exhibits, talking to each other in subdued voices. The parquet floors were varnished and waxed to a slippery mirror sheen. Classical music played softly in the background. The doorways to each room were flanked by thick velvet curtains. The security guard on patrol looked about eighty.

  They walked from room to room under the sweeping gaze of cameras, past displays of period brass instruments and a collection of magnificently ornate antique harps. Ben peered through a doorway into a large gallery space filled with old oil portraits of famous composers. ‘Nothing in here,’ he said. ‘Just a bunch of dead men in powdered wigs.’

  ‘Philistine,’ Leigh whispered at him.

  From the main hall a curved flight of wooden stairs led up to the next floor. Ben went up, and Leigh followed. The creaking stairs took them to a long room whose walls were lined with tall glass cabinets displaying period opera costumes and other exhibits. Leigh stopped at one of them and read the small brass plaque. ‘This is the gown that Caruso wore in his first ever public appearance in 1894,’ she read out. She walked along and stopped at another. ‘Wow. Look. The dress that Maria Callas wore when she sang Norma in Milan in ’57. Incredible. How come I never knew about this place?’

  ‘Leigh. Please. We’re not here to gape at some old dress. The letter, remember?’

  Back in the entrance foyer, the old security guard shook his head. ‘We do not have any letters or documents.’

  ‘Is there another Museo Visconti?’ Ben asked. He knew what the answer would be.

  The old man shook his head again, like a mournful bloodhound. ‘I have been here for fifty years,’ he said. ‘There is only one.’

  They walked away.

  ‘I had a feeling this wouldn’t lead anywhere,’ Leigh said.

  ‘But Arno donated something. The receipt proves it.’

  They walked down a long corridor. On either side were rows of antique violins, violas and cellos behind glass. ‘He was a collector,’ she said. ‘He could have donated anything. A painting, an instrument.’ She pointed at the violins behind the glass. ‘Could have been one of these, for all we know.’

  He stopped. ‘We’re idiots.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s gone home,’ he said.

  She stared at him in confusion.

  ‘It’s gone home,’ he repeated. ‘Arno said the letter had gone home. It’s gone back to where it came from. He didn’t mean the museum itself. It’s never been here before.’

  ‘We’re in the wrong place?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ he said, looking up and down the corridor. ‘We need to find the piano exhibit.’

  Understanding dawned on her face. ‘Shit, I think you might be right.’

  ‘Would you recognize your dad’s old piano if you saw it?’

  ‘You bet I would.’

  Their footsteps rang fast off the parquet as they hurried back up the corridor to find the keyboard instruments section. Through an archway to the side, flanked with red drapes, they found it. The big room was full of old keyboard instruments, pianos, spinets and harpsichords, all highly restored and gleaming. They stood on plinths, cordoned off with DO NOT TOUCH signs on them.

  Ben walked in among them. ‘Can you see it anywhere?’ he asked.

  ‘This is it,’ she said, pointing. She ran over to the old instrument near the window. It was big and ornate. Its woodwork gleamed dully under the museum lights. She circled it. ‘Christ, last time I saw this it was half restored, all stripped down to the bare wood and bits chipped off everywhere. But it’s definitely the one.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’d know it anywhere.’

  Ben studied the piano carefully, running his eye over the heavily varnished surface, the mother-of-pearl inlays and the gleaming ivory and ebony keys. Over the top of the keyboard, in gold letters, was the maker’s name: Josef Bohm, Vienna. It had three intricately carved legs, two at the front and one holding up the long tail at the back. It was about twelve feet long, solid and heavy. ‘So remind me,’ he said. ‘Which leg was hollow?’

  Leigh put her finger to the corner of her mouth, thinking. ‘It was one of the front ones.’

  ‘Left or right?’

  ‘Right, I think. No, left.’

  Ben leaned over the security cordon, but he couldn’t get close enough to examine the piano properly. He glanced around. There was nobody in sight. He could hear the footsteps of the old security guard pacing through one of the adjacent rooms.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Definitely the right front leg.’

  ‘You don’t sound too certain.’

  ‘I’m certain.’

  Mounted on a bracket high in a corner, the small black eye of a security camera was watching them. Ben stepped away from the plinth and looked casual as he slipped into the camera’s blind spot and along the wall beneath it. He looked up. Th
en he walked back to the piano and stepped straight over the cordon. ‘The camera’s useless,’ he said to Leigh with a smile. ‘It’s almost as old as these pianos, and half the wires are disconnected at the back.’

  ‘That’s so typically Italian,’ Leigh replied.

  ‘Don’t knock it.’ He knelt down next to the piano and examined the front right leg up close. The instrument had been carefully restored and was in such perfect condition that it was hard to believe it was almost two centuries old. Ben couldn’t see anything. But then his eye picked out a small crack in the varnish three-quarters of the way up the leg. He scratched with his nail. Tiny scales of varnish flaked away to reveal what seemed to be a hairline saw-mark. He scratched a bit more. The saw-line extended right round the leg, but it was barely visible. Had someone been at the instrument since the last restoration, removed the hollowed-out leg, replaced it and then painted over the join with clear varnish?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Belgium

  The same day

  Philippe Aragon had been reading policy documents and signing letters at his study desk all morning, and the stack of papers at his elbow was a foot high. He liked to work from home whenever he could. He’d designed and built the house himself, back in his architect days. The Aragon family home near Brussels was simple and modest by his father’s billionaire standards, not at all like the fabulous chateau in which Philippe had spent his childhood. But Philippe was tired of opulence. Opulence was anyone’s for the money. It meant nothing.

  As he worked, his eyes drifted from time to time to the framed pictures that sat on his desk. He had a whole collection of them, clustered together. His parents, his wife Colette. Vincent, his boy, riding the bicycle he’d had for his tenth birthday. Delphine, their beautiful four-year-old daughter, swinging on her swing with a glittering smile. And Roger. Dear old Roger.

  Philippe was suddenly filled with sadness all over again as he thought about him. He laid down his pen and picked up the framed picture, studying it. His old friend and mentor looked up at him. He’d had such kind eyes. It was still hard to accept what had happened. Or to understand it.

  To the political world, the man in the photo had been the Swiss-French former politician and highly respected statesman Roger Bazin. To Philippe, who had known him all his life, he was like an uncle. He’d taught Philippe a great deal, even though their political stance had radically diverged as Philippe got older. Roger hadn’t ever been completely comfortable with his protégé’s socialist and environmentalist leanings, and they’d spent many a night debating over a bottle of cognac. They might have agreed on less and less as time went by, but those intellectual wrestling matches with the elder statesman had proved an immensely valuable training ground for the young politician, shaping and sharpening his mind for the battles to come. Philippe had always considered Roger as part of the bedrock of his life, something that would never go away, like the old oak tree he could see from his study window.

  It still hurt that he was gone. It hurt a great deal. And it hurt even more to think that Roger might have been involved in what had happened that night.

  Those events of the previous winter were still, and would always remain, fresh and sharp in Philippe Aragon’s mind. He remembered the chalet in Cortina as though he’d been there just yesterday.

  It had been one of those rare moments in his hectic new political career when he’d been able to reserve a whole six days to get away with Colette and the children. He’d been so happy to see the kids looking forward to it. He’d been planning to teach them to ski. More than anything, he’d been looking forward to spending time with Colette, the way they used to before things had got so crazy.

  The nineteenth-century chalet was perfect, something out of a fairy-tale. Far away from anything, total silence, nothing around except mountains, forests, and clean, clean air.

  On the second day he’d had the phone call. Few people had his private mobile number, just Colette, his secretary and a handful of family members and close friends.

  It was Roger Bazin on the line. It had been the first time in a while that Philippe had heard from him. He’d sounded odd, his words a little slurred as though he’d been drinking. That was peculiar in itself, but there was something else, something stranger. It was the note of fear that Philippe had picked up on instantly. A tortured edge to Bazin’s voice that the younger man hadn’t heard before. What was wrong?

  ‘Philippe, where are you?’

  ‘I’m on vacation. Remember?’

  ‘Yes, but where are you now? This moment?’

  Philippe had frowned, confused. ‘I’m in the chalet. We’re just about to have dinner. What’s wrong, Roger?’

  A hesitant pause. Heavy, stressed breathing. Then: ‘Get out of there.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get out of there. All of you. Run. As far as you can. Now.’

  Philippe was left gaping at a dead phone. He turned to look at his family.

  In the next room, Colette was opening a bottle of wine ready for dinner and laughing at something Delphine had just said.

  He’d hesitated for a few seconds. It seemed absurd, insane. But then he ran over to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. The wine smashed on the floor. He’d yelled for Vincent to come quick, and he’d scooped the little girl up under his arm, and they’d all run out into the garden, Colette asking what was wrong, what was wrong.

  They had all run like lunatics. At the bottom of the garden, deep in snow, they’d reached the edge of the pine forest and stood looking back at the house. The kids had realized it wasn’t a game from the look on their father’s face. Colette was screaming at him now: What’s wrong, have you gone nuts?

  As he stood there in the cold, still clutching his mobile phone, he thought that maybe he had gone nuts. Or that Roger had gone nuts. Or was this some kind of stupid, reckless, tasteless joke? That wouldn’t be like Roger.

  ‘It’s freezing out here,’ Colette said. ‘The kids—’

  He blew out his cheeks, exasperated with himself. ‘I must be insane,’ he said. ‘Shit, your shoes.’ Colette’s suede moccasins were soaked, snow clinging in clumps to her ankles.

  ‘What did you think was happening?’ she demanded.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he sighed. ‘Christ, maybe the stress is getting to me or something. I’m sorry. It was stupid. Let’s go back.’

  ‘Daddy’s crazy!’ Vincent sang. ‘Daddy’s crazy!’ Delphine had started to cry and Colette picked her up, shooting fierce looks at her husband.

  Aragon took his wife’s hand apologetically. They started walking back to the house.

  And were thrown backwards by the force of the explosion.

  The chalet had just disintegrated in front of Aragon’s eyes. The night sky was lit up as the house erupted in a massive rolling fireball that mushroomed upwards and sent wreckage spinning for hundreds of yards around. He saw the roof lift off and the walls burst outwards. Bricks and wrecked timbers and flying glass rained down across the snow. He’d tried to shield Colette and the children with his body as secondary explosions ripped through the shattered building, levelling it.

  Nothing had been left of the house or anything standing nearby. The outbuildings, the garage and the car were reduced to smoking shells.

  Colette and the children had been hysterical. They’d taken shelter in a hut in the garden and called the emergency services. After that, things really had gone crazy. Police, security, fire brigade, television and press had all descended on this quiet mountain valley. Aragon had got his family away from the place as quickly as he could get the private plane in the air.

  He had said nothing to anyone about the phone call. Time had passed. He’d waited until the results from the investigation, but they’d turned up nothing except signs of a gas leak.

  He’d tried and tried to contact Roger Bazin. He didn’t know what to think. He needed to talk to him. How had he known about the explosion?r />
  But Roger seemed to have disappeared. Days went by and there was still no answer on his phone. Philippe left messages, and none were returned. He’d been just about to get on a train to visit Bazin personally at his home in Geneva when he got another call.

  The old Alfa Romeo Spider had gone out of control in an empty tunnel and hit a pillar at a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour. The sports car had been pulverized and the flaming wreckage had blocked the tunnel for hours. By the time the fire crews could get inside, there had been little left of Roger Bazin. There were no witnesses to the crash, the only testimony the gruesome photographs that the paparazzi had rushed to print in the glossy gutter press.

  The distraught Bazin family testified that the old man had been suffering from stress for some weeks before the accident. He’d seemed depressed and agitated, frightened of something. Nobody knew what. His doctor had prescribed antidepressants, and they knew he was drinking, washing the pills down with brandy. There hadn’t been enough left of Roger to run tests, but the medical people all agreed on the obvious conclusion. The coroner’s verdict was death by misadventure.

  For six months afterwards, the private firm hired by Philippe put in thousands of man-hours of investigation into Bazin’s death. Aragon baited the hook with a million-euro reward for anyone who could come up with information that would reveal the truth. They found no sign of anything suspicious.

  Car accidents happened. So did gas explosions.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Milan, Italy

  The Museo Visconti closed for lunch at 1 p.m. Visitors filed quietly out through the portico entrance. When the last ones had left, old Domenico Turchi the security guard pushed the entrance door shut behind them. With a shaky hand he reached for a jangling ring of keys on his belt and locked it, then threw the heavy iron bolt. He was sharing a joke with Signora Bellavista the receptionist as he hung his uniform jacket and cap on a hook behind the desk. They headed through a side door leading to the staff exit. He flipped open a panel on the wall and punched numbers to activate the alarm system, and he and Signora Bellavista left the building still laughing. Luca and Bepe had already left the workshop downstairs and Domenico knew he’d find the two men sitting drinking Peroni beers over lunch in the café around the corner where they all congregated every day.