by Will Adams
The scratching stopped. Hinges squeaked. The door clicked closed. Cesco looked around. The window was painted shut and anyway it was three storeys straight down. He was fit and strong enough, but Dieter was way out of his league. He stood no chance whatsoever against him in a fair fight. As well, then, that he was perfectly comfortable with making it an unfair one. An old tripod was leaning against a wall. It would have to do. He picked it up quietly by its legs to hold like a battleaxe above his head. Then he watched the office door handle slowly turn, steeling himself to strike.
IV
Sitting directly outside the Colonna room, Carmen could hear the constant murmur of voices inside – but not, for the most part, what they were saying. That changed, however, when they started squabbling about ‘in’ and ‘of’. And suddenly she found herself transfixed.
The letters of St Paul had long provided grist for sceptics of Christianity, because he’d so rarely referred to Jesus the man, only to Christ the spirit. Believers retorted with two key passages. The first described his birth, life and crucifixion at some length; but there was some reason to think that had been a later interpolation. Another famous passage, however, talked of Thomas, brother of Christ, providing oblique evidence of Jesus’s humanity. Yet sceptics argued that this too had been a later tweak, and that Paul had really written of Thomas, brother in Christ, which clearly offered no such—
The Colonna room door suddenly flew open and Taddeo Santoro stormed out, his thundercloud expression telling her instantly she’d been rumbled. His face convulsed in the effort to restrain himself from yelling or even hitting her. ‘The key,’ he demanded.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The key. To the safe.’
‘No way,’ she said, half rising. ‘Lucia told me under no circum—’
He thrust his face in hers. ‘Fuck Lucia. I need to make sure you haven’t stolen my scroll.’
‘How dare you?’
‘You were in there when I got here, weren’t you?’
‘I was in the loos. I told you. I had—’
‘Bullshit.’ He jabbed a finger at the door. ‘You were in there with Lucia’s keys, including the one to the safe. You stole my scroll and escaped out the terrace doors. Only you couldn’t bolt them from outside, could you?’ He didn’t wait for her denial but snatched her handbag instead, upended its contents onto the table. Carmen grabbed Lucia’s keys first, only for him to seize her wrist and prise away her fingers one by one.
‘What the hell’s going on here?’
They both looked up, in surprise, to find Lucia Conte standing there, still bandaged from her burns, visibly furious at the commotion.
‘Your friend here just stole our scroll,’ said Taddeo.
‘That’s a lie!’ protested Carmen.
‘Then give me the key.’
‘I’ll take it, thank you,’ said Lucia, with complete authority. For while Taddeo might outrank her in Naples as a whole, this was her domain. Carmen let go gladly, Taddeo grudgingly. The Colonna room door was still ajar. They filed inside. Three copies of Nestle–Aland lay open on the table, a few blurred letters up on each of the screens. They ignored those and went straight to the safe. Lucia crouched to unlock it. The scroll-holder was just as Carmen had left it. Lucia drew it out with both hands. She undid the catches, lifted its lid.
‘Thank God,’ grunted Taddeo, when he saw it still inside. ‘But how many times must I say it? This place isn’t secure. We need to—’
‘No.’
‘But we—’
‘Not now. This isn’t the time or place. And you owe Carmen an apology.’
Taddeo blinked. For a moment Carmen thought he’d refuse. Then he mastered himself. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I panicked. If you knew how important…’
‘It’s okay,’ she assured him. ‘I understand.’
‘Let’s call it a day,’ said Lucia. She looked around at the men until each had nodded. They closed their books, turned off their screens, filed out. Lucia waited until they were all gone, then plucked Carmen by the sleeve. ‘What the hell?’ she hissed.
‘I’m sorry? You don’t believe what Taddeo was—’
‘Don’t even try to lie to me,’ said Lucia. She held up the key to the terrace doors, which had spilled out of Carmen’s handbag along with everything else. ‘Because how the hell else did you get hold of this?’
Chapter Nineteen
I
Cesco chopped the tripod down hard even as the office door opened, only to see at the last possible moment that it wasn’t Dieter or another Hammerskin but rather a slender young blonde woman he’d never seen before. He twisted so violently sideways to avoid hitting her that he lost balance and slammed the tripod into the tiled floor, sending painful shudders thrumming up his arms.
The woman yelped in alarm. She reached into her shoulder bag for a small pink canister of pepper-spray that she squirted in his face even as he looked back around. His eyes instantly caught fire. He dropped the tripod and grabbed her left wrist to rip the canister from her, if only to stop her squirting it again. She tore herself free and fled. The front door banged behind her and her footsteps clattered on the stairs down until they were out of earshot.
Blinded by the spray, and in extreme pain, he zipped the canister away in a back pocket of his cargo pants and fumbled his way to the kitchen for a carton of milk that he took into Raff’s bathroom. He washed the spray off his hands, then splashed milk into cupped palms to rinse his eyes. The burning finally began to ease. He managed to open his left eye a slit, enough to see the reddened blur of his face in the mirror. He took a hand towel out onto the terrace to complete the cure with time and fresh air.
But who the hell had that been? And what had she been doing here?
He hadn’t recognised her. He was sure of that. And she was too young, thin and blonde to be Raff’s ex-wife. Yet she’d had keys in her hand. The scratching at the lock must have been her trying to open it quietly, to avoid drawing attention. And her pepper-spray meant little in itself. You could buy it over the counter here, along with stun guns and all the rest. Many Neapolitans carried such things as a matter of course. Surely, then, Raff’s mystery girlfriend, perhaps come to retrieve or destroy evidence of their affair before it was discovered. Photographs, most likely. Raff had photographed everything. Yet Cesco hadn’t seen any shots of her on the studio computer, while his cameras, phone and laptop had been destroyed in yesterday’s blaze. That only left the memory cards Valentina Messana had taken yesterday afternoon.
His eyes were better now. He found Messana’s card in his wallet, called her on her mobile. She sounded distracted when she answered. He asked if she’d had a chance to look through Raff’s memory cards. Not yet, no. Could he look himself? ‘Whatever for?’ she asked, suddenly coming alert.
Cesco hesitated. If that woman had really been Raff’s lover, he didn’t want to cause her grief. ‘I don’t think it’s related to the murder,’ he said. ‘But I’ll tell you if it is. You have my word.’
‘Your word!’
‘My friend was murdered yesterday,’ he told her tightly. ‘If I can help catch his killer, you better believe I will.’
‘Very well. Come over. We’ll go through them together.’
‘Thanks. Give me forty minutes.’ He tidied up Raff’s papers, locked up, headed down to the piazza and his bike, so distracted by thoughts of the mystery blonde that he forgot all about the white van and the Hammerskin lookalikes. Nor did he notice when a green Audi A3 pulled out after him and followed at a cautious distance.
II
Valentina Messana had been reading a report when Cesco Rossi had called. The police officers she’d sent out earlier to canvas Parco Massimo Troisi had found a jogger and a dog walker who each had noticed a yellow Lamborghini on Viale Due Giugno at around six thirty yesterday morning. Unfortunately, neither had seen the driver or anyone they might have talked to. Her phone conversation, however, drove that matter from her mind, and left her con
templating three related questions. Did she believe that Rossi’s request to look at the memory cards wasn’t connected to Conte’s murder? Did she trust him to tell her if it was? And would she trust his judgement anyway?
No. No. And no.
She opened her desk drawer, drew out the memory cards. Their precinct had been stung before by malicious software, so they’d put a stand-alone computer in a basement office for situations just like this. She went down there now, turned it on, and waited impatiently for it to boot. Then she slotted the first memory card into its port. Thumbnails popped up across the screen. She expanded them enough to get their essence at a glance, then went page by page. A motorcycle accident in the Spanish Quarter, all bloodied limbs and harrowed faces. At lunch with his sister Lucia and three others Messana didn’t recognise. Fishing boats unloading their catches at Pozzuoli harbour. Addicts scoring inside a derelict Scampia apartment block.
The second memory card now. It contained numerous photographs of artefacts out at some warehouse. The third, a modelling session: beautiful women in sundresses set against the ruins at Baiae, then in swimsuits on its beach. The fourth was more traditional. Men with expressive faces at bus stops. Mothers hanging out laundry. Friends meeting outside cafes. Old folk struggling with their shopping. But all taken from unexpected angles and with such a gorgeous use of light that she found herself captivated, even though they obviously weren’t related to the case.
The man had had talent, she had to give him that.
She slotted in the fifth card. At once, she realised that this was likely what Rossi was after, if only because the pictures were stylistically so different from the others. Not art or craft so much as simple spying. Professor Zeno D’Agostino was sitting outside a fashionable Vomero cafe with an attractive blonde with sparkly fingernails who Messana didn’t recognise. Her first thought was that she was his mistress, and that Conte was there for evidence of his infidelity, to blackmail him into approving the museum contract. Except the two of them were sitting there in plain view, and they looked bored rather than in love.
On a hunch, she took out her phone and googled D’Agostino. He was a minor celebrity, after all. And yes. He’d married a former student called Emanuela Barro several years before, and enough pictures of her had made the papers for Messana to be confident of the identification. She clicked on through the photographs. D’Agostino checked his watch, summoned the waiter, settled the bill. He and Emanuela kissed cheeks then headed off in separate directions. Only now, with a rush of understanding, did Valentina get why Conte had really gone to spy on them that morning. Because it wasn’t Professor D’Agostino that he followed.
No. It was his wife.
III
Carmen took one look at the key in Lucia’s hand and knew that lies wouldn’t save her. Only the truth might. ‘It’s not how it seems,’ she said.
‘Then how is it?’ asked Lucia.
Carmen glanced around, then drew Lucia closer so that they couldn’t be overheard. ‘You’re going to be mad at me,’ she said. ‘But not for the reason you think.’
‘You don’t know what I think.’
‘Cesco’s broken up about Raff. You know how close they were. He’s set his heart on finding whoever did it. So he checked his search history on the studio computer yesterday.’
Lucia shook her head. ‘Raff never used that thing.’
‘He did this time. Perhaps because he wanted to make sure no one at the museum could find out what he’d been up to.’ She grimaced to warn Lucia to brace herself. ‘He googled an American arts dealer called Miranda Harcourt, you see. She visited Naples two nights ago. Raff went to her hotel to meet her.’
‘But this is a breakthrough,’ exclaimed Lucia. ‘Have you told the police?’
‘No. She left the country before Raff was killed. More importantly, she’s a crook. She smuggles stolen artefacts back to the US to sell through her dealerships and on the dark web.’
‘What the hell are you suggesting?’
Carmen held up a hand to calm her. ‘I’m saying Cesco was worried how it looked, even though he couldn’t work out what Raff might have had to sell. The museum pieces are all logged on the new database long before they ever reach the studio. But then last night we got talking about your Philodemus scroll. Except that it’s not Philodemus, is it?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Come on, Lucia. You gave it away yesterday. All that morphine, I expect. You called Alberts “Father”. You’d never done that before. No one had. So I got curious, I checked him out. When I saw who he worked for… What else was I to think?’
‘Does Cesco know?’
‘I didn’t tell him, I swear. He worked it out for himself.’
‘Okay,’ said Lucia. ‘So let me get this straight. The two of you came to believe that my brother – my murdered brother, and supposedly your friend – stole a priceless scroll from me to sell to some American crook?’
‘No. No. Not believe. Not truly. But come on. We had to make sure. I mean, he photographed it the day you found it. He could have worked out what it was. He had access to your keys and he was in and out of here all the time. What were we to do? We couldn’t go to the police without risking his reputation. You were in hospital, and we didn’t want you hating us, like you do right now. But we couldn’t ignore it either. If, God forbid, he had taken it…’
‘You needed to find out at once,’ said Lucia. ‘So you came in here to check.’ A muscle flickered in her jaw, yet she seemed to accept it, though she shook her head anyway at Carmen’s recklessness. ‘This American woman,’ she said. ‘This Miranda Harcourt. Raff went to meet her after work, you say? When exactly? And where?’
‘Around six. At a cafe on the Lungomare close to her hotel. I can find out which one from Cesco, if you like? They met there then left together. Why?’
‘No reason,’ said Lucia.
IV
Valentina continued clicking through the photographs as Raffaele Conte followed Emanuela at a distance until she finally noticed him. She began hurrying away from the camera while also glancing back, torn between alarm, indignation and laughter. Her face was so expressive, Valentina could almost hear Conte’s tongue at work. Are you a model? You’re so gorgeous, you have to be a model. What? Shame on my fellow photographers. Your face is exquisite! Such kindness! Such intelligence! One proper shot, please. Just one. That’s all I ask. A single smile. That’s it! God, what a smile you have! I bet you crack hearts like a chef cracks eggs.
A parody of a fashion shoot followed. Emanuela kicked up her heel, clasped her hands behind her head, made mock-sexy pouts at the camera. But gradually Conte’s blandishments gave her the confidence to model for real, standing on a flight of stone steps with her back to the bay as the breeze blew a thin veil of hair across her face and pressed her cotton skirt wetly against her thigh, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks ablaze, thrilled by the admiration of a handsome and charismatic man.
And she did indeed look stunning.
They moved from Vomero to the Church of Santa Teresa in Chiaia, then to the narrow lanes of the Spanish Quarter, and from there to Conte’s studio: except that Emanuela looked so different in these that Valentina checked the date stamps. Two days had passed. Her hair was up in a bun and she was dressed in a sober navy dress suit with skirts down to her ankles. Valentina could only surmise that she’d agreed to a session that she hadn’t been able to cancel, so she’d turned up intending to make sure nothing untoward happened. But Conte went back to work on her. The ramparts fell one by one. First a smile, then a laugh. Off came her jacket. Down her hair. A button popped, and another. Her skirt unzipped to show a scimitar of thigh. And now the backdrop changed again, to Conte’s apartment balcony, Emanuela looking flushed and confused and lovely as she posed against the colourful blooms on the stone balustrade, not altogether sure what she was doing there, unable quite to leave. And then abruptly, inevitably, beneath his tangled duvet, her hair tousled and her hand held up against his
lens, alarm turning to indignation, unwilling laughter and finally to a waved hand of reluctant acceptance, realising it was too late now.
The pictures stopped. The show was over. So then. All was clear. Angry that D’Agostino had lobbied against him, Conte had sought revenge the old-fashioned way, by screwing his wife. That was why he’d kept the affair so quiet, and why she’d called him at his studio too. She hadn’t dared use his museum mobile, what with her husband on the board. A wave of anger pulsed through Valentina, that Conte had used Emanuela so cruelly. No wonder her husband had lost it when he’d found out and had set his heart on revenge. But while the anger swiftly ebbed, the accompanying satisfaction of a good solve didn’t. She popped the memory card from the computer, then set off upstairs to show Izzo.
It looked like they had a professor to go see.
Chapter Twenty
I
The walk from the library back to the port district was nothing like far enough for Alberts to shake off his agitation. He carried on past his apartment, therefore, before cutting inland at Mercato and wandering around Piazza Garibaldi for a while until a 154 bus stopped close by and he realised how sore his feet were. The driver saw him running and waving and took pity, and fifteen minutes later, he was finally back home.
Yet tiredness didn’t settle him. He remained in turmoil. What a day! First the explosive implications of his Tertullian research and the potentially devastating ramifications for his beloved Church. Then his spat with D’Agostino and the drama over the opening of the safe. And, finally, seeing the scroll again for the first time since the afternoon of his arrival, when Lucia had afforded him a brief glance. Back then, it had felt an immense privilege, like standing beside the holy crib. But today it had been bathed in a very different light, almost as if the creature in that foam swaddling had been from the other place instead.