The Immaculate Deception

by Iain Pears

‘No.’

  ‘Can I see it, please?’

  ‘It’s in my office.’

  It was like talking to a particularly stupid child. ‘Why don’t we go to your office, then?’

  ‘There,’ he said, forty minutes later, after a silent voyage through the streets of Rome. ‘It’s not very informative.’

  Flavia took the piece of paper – no point in worrying about fingerprints or anything like that now – and looked. True enough. She could hardly fault the analysis. Six words only. She even admired the economy of expression.

  She leant back in her seat and thought. Did it tell her anything? ‘You’ll be hearing from me.’ Done on a computer printer, but who didn’t have access to one these days? The paper was standard-issue computer paper, of which there were several billion sheets consumed every day. No; it told her nothing; or, at least, nothing that the author didn’t want her to know.

  ‘The robbery itself,’ she said, turning her attention back to Macchioli.

  He shook his head. ‘Very little to say I haven’t already told you. A small truck; the sort that traders use to deliver fruit and vegetables. A man dressed up as Leonardo da Vinci …’

  ‘What?’ she asked incredulously. He had said it as though people dressed as Renaissance painters or baroque popes were to be seen pottering about the museum every day.

  ‘One of those masks you buy in party shops. You know. And a sort of cape. And the gun, of course. Do you want to see that?’

  She looked at him wearily. Mere expressions of incredulity seemed inadequate, somehow. ‘The gun?’

  ‘He dropped it when he drove off. Threw it, actually. At the head of the man who helped him load it. This was after he handed out chocolates.’

  ‘Chocolates?’ she said weakly.

  ‘Little boxes of chocolates. Belgian ones, I believe. You know, the ones that you buy in speciality shops. With a ribbon on the top.’

  ‘Of course. Where are they?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The chocolates.’

  ‘The guards ate them.’

  ‘I see. Blood sugar levels low because of the shock, no doubt. Apart from that, no violence of any sort?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to these people in the store room.’

  ‘You’ll have to.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Someone has to tell them to keep quiet about this.’

  ‘You haven’t done that?’

  ‘Of course. But nobody ever listens to me.’

  Flavia sighed. ‘Very well, then. Take me to them. Then you can show me the gun.’

  She decided on the brutal approach. Not simply because it was one of those days, and she wasn’t feeling in the mood for subtleties, but because she knew that being young and a woman meant that it was sometimes difficult to persuade people – especially the sort of people who unload paintings – to take her seriously.

  ‘Right,’ she said, when the two men had come in and sat down. ‘I will say this once and once only. I am the head of the art theft squad, investigating the theft of this picture. You two are prime suspects. Got that?’

  They didn’t answer but, judging by the way they turned a little pale, she assumed they had.

  ‘I want it back fast, and more important people than myself want there to be no publicity. If there is any, if anyone hears about what has happened here, and I trace it back to you two, I will personally ensure (a) that you go to gaol for aiding and abetting a crime, (b) that you stay in gaol for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, (c) I will have you fired from this job, and (d) I will ensure that neither of you ever gets a job again. Is that understood?’

  More pallor.

  ‘In order to avoid this regrettable fate, all you have to do is keep your mouths shut. There was no theft, you know of no theft, nothing untoward happened yesterday. You may find that difficult, but you will find the self-discipline rewarding. Do I make myself absolutely clear?’

  She was rather proud of the speech, delivered with all the cold conviction of a true apparatchik, able to call on untold occult powers to visit terrible consequences on the innocent. Anyone with a moment’s thought would have seen it was all nonsense, and that there was nothing she could do to them at all, but the two men seemed too dull to notice. She only hoped they were not so dull that they failed to grasp what she wanted of them.

  That would become clear in the next few days; what was immediately apparent, alas, was that they were certainly too dim-witted to be much use as witnesses. Their description of the robbery was scarcely more detailed than the brief summary that Macchioli had already given her. The only facts they added were that the van was large enough to get a Claude in, was white, and wasn’t a Fiat. The man involved was of average height and might (or might not) have had a Roman accent. She dismissed them after twenty minutes with another dire warning, then was taken to see the gun.

  Macchioli was keeping it in his safe. In a plastic bag. He was inordinately proud of himself about the plastic bag.

  ‘There,’ he said, putting it gingerly on his desk. ‘We were lucky it didn’t go off when it hit the ground.’

  Flavia felt like weeping. Some days were just so abominable she didn’t know how she stood it. She took out her handkerchief, picked up the gun, looked at it for a few moments, then pointed it at her head.

  ‘Signora! Be careful!’ shouted Macchioli in alarm.

  She looked at him sadly, closed her eyes and, to the older man’s horror, slowly pulled the trigger.

  The sound of what was later identified by analysts – or rather by a secretary in payroll, who was an enthusiast for opera – as a jaunty version of Verdi’s ‘Teco io sto, Gran Dio’ from Act Two of Un Ballo in Maschera, rendered on a little widget buried deep inside the gun’s handle, drifted slowly across the room.

  Flavia opened her eyes, shrugged, and tossed the gun on to the desk.

  ‘If we manage to find a shop that has recently sold a Leonardo da Vinci mask and a plastic singing gun to a man carrying chocolates, we might have a lead,’ she said, as she put the gun back into the bag and got up. ‘I’ll let you know.’

  Five minutes later she was slumped in the back of the car, muttering darkly to herself. Then she reached a decision. Whatever injunctions other people needed to obey on keeping their mouths shut, she needed to ventilate. She gave her driver directions to head for the EUR.

  2

  Despite the morning, she thought little on the journey, or, at least, thought little about Claudes and their inconvenient disappearance. Rather, she thought about her old boss, General Taddeo Bottando, poor soul, consigned to opulent exile in this grim suburb, surrounded by office blocks and 1930s architecture and wastelands where nothing much seemed to happen. He had been stuck out here for a year now, heading some grandiosely-named European directive, as cut off from the mainstream of policing as his location suggested. Only bankers should have to work in this awful place, she thought; scarcely even a decent restaurant to go to at lunchtime, and Bottando was a man who liked his lunch.

  Whereas the art squad building was run down but beautiful, underfunded but buzzing with activity, Bottando’s new empire was grand, dripping in cash but ugly and deathly quiet. Merely getting into the building required going through the sort of security procedures that usually defend classified government installations. Everybody was terribly well-dressed, the carpets were thick, the doors swished to and fro electrically, the computers hummed. A policeman’s paradise, enough resources to tackle the world. Poor, poor man, she thought.

  But Bottando put a brave face on it, and Flavia smiled encouragingly, both going through the ritual of pretending that all was well as they did on every occasion they met. He talked about the splendid things his new operation would shortly accomplish, she made joking remarks about European expense accounts. Neither ever referred to the fact that Bottando was showing his age just a bit more, that his conversation was just that touch duller, that his jokes and good humour were
now ever so slightly forced.

  Nor was his heart in it any longer; he was away more often than he was behind his desk, constantly, it seemed, taking holidays. Winding down. Preparing his exit. It was only a matter of time before the holiday became permanent. A couple of years and he would have to retire anyway, although while in his old post he had fended off even the thought: there was nothing to retire to. He was one of those people whose very existence was inconceivable without his job and his position.

  His promotion had lost him both, and maybe that was the intention. To ease him out by easing him up, and perhaps Bottando was ready to go; he would have fought more had he not been halfway there already. He had won bigger battles against greater odds in the past. Maybe he’d had enough.

  Fairly often now, Flavia came to see him not because she wanted his advice but because she wanted him to give it. She had been running the department for a year and had settled in. Better still, she found she was good at it and no longer needed to be anybody’s protégée. She had leant on Bottando heavily in the earlier days, but needed to do so no longer. He had, she was sure, noticed this and was pleased for her. The last time he came to the department, a few months back to check some old files and gather some materials, she knew he was just checking to make sure all was well. She was also sure that the visit was for no real reason, and that he stayed most of the afternoon – pottering about, reading this and that, chatting to people in corridors, going out for a drink afterwards – largely because he had so little of substance to do in his own offices. She only hoped that he didn’t suspect that sometimes – just sometimes – she felt a little sorry for him.

  This time, however, there was no artifice in her visit. She was entering dark and stormy waters, and needed a bit of navigational guidance. She half-knew already what the advice would be; she none the less still needed to hear it.

  Bottando came out of his office to greet her, gave her an affectionate kiss, and fussed about making her comfortable.

  ‘My dear Flavia, how pleasant to see you. Not often we have you out in the provinces like this. What can I do for you? I assume, that is, that you haven’t come just to feast your eyes on a properly funded department?’

  She smiled. ‘I always like to see how things should be done, of course. But, in fact, I am here for some more of your best vintage advice. Premier cru, if you please.’

  Bottando grunted. ‘Always willing to put age at the service of enthusiasm,’ he said. ‘As you know. I hope it is a real problem this time, not just something constructed to make me feel less obsolete.’

  He had noticed. Damn. Flavia felt genuinely, truly remorseful.

  ‘You once told me prime ministers can ruin your life,’ she said.

  ‘So they can. Especially if you get in their way. What have you got to do with prime ministers?’

  With a brief preface about injunctions placed on her for silence, she told him.

  Bottando listened intently, scratched his chin, stared at the ceiling and grunted as the tale progressed, just as he always did when they had talked over a problem in the old days. And as the story continued, Flavia saw the slightest gleam come into his eyes, like an old and battered flashlight given a new battery.

  ‘Aaah,’ he said with satisfaction as she finished, leaning back in his chair, gorged on the tale. ‘I can quite see why you want a second opinion. Most interesting.’

  ‘Exactly. The first question that strikes me, of course, is why such interest from on high? I mean, urgent meetings with the prime minister because of a picture?’

  ‘I suppose you have to take the explanation about the EU presidency at face value,’ Bottando said thoughtfully. ‘If I remember, they want to make law and order their top priority. Old Sabauda will have a hard time pontificating about security if everybody is sniggering at him behind their memoranda all the while. No politician likes to look silly. They’re very touchy on the subject; that’s why they confuse their egos with the national interest so often.’

  ‘Maybe. Nevertheless, it strikes me that should anything go wrong, and there is a good chance that it will, then I am in a somewhat exposed position.’

  ‘Nothing on paper, I take it?’

  Flavia shook her head. Bottando nodded appreciatively.

  ‘I thought not. And the only other person to hear what was said was old Macchioli. Who is as malleable as a piece of lead sheeting.’

  More thought. ‘Let’s say it goes wrong. Everything appears in the paper, big scandal. Indignant prime minister says that he gave you instructions personally to drop everything and recover the painting, yet you did nothing about it. Hmm?’

  Flavia nodded.

  ‘Even worse, news takes some time to get out. Same indignant prime minister expressing shock that a policewoman should go around raising cash from unnamed sources to pay a ransom.’

  Another nod. ‘I could go to prison for that.’

  ‘So you could, my dear. Two years, not counting anything that might be tagged on for corruption and conspiracy.’

  ‘And if everything goes well …’

  ‘If everything goes well, and you get the picture back, you will have performed a sterling service, which no one will know about. But you will know that the prime minister – a man who has many enemies and who has been around so long his skills as a survivor should never be underestimated – connived to get around the law so he could look good strutting the international stage. Knowledge, sometimes, can be a dangerous thing. Were you more ruthless, you could perhaps apply a little pressure on him, but he is more likely to see you as an ever-present threat and take the appropriate action. Something subtle, so that if you ever said anything, the response could be along the lines of “poor embittered woman, trying to create a fuss because she was dismissed for incompetence". Or corruption, or gross indecency, or something like that. Enough to make sure no one took you seriously. As I say, prime ministers can ruin your life.’

  Flavia felt her heart sinking as he spoke. Everything he said she had known, of course; having it spelled out in quite such a bald fashion did not raise her morale.

  ‘Recommendations?’

  Bottando grunted. ‘More difficult. What are your options, now? A strategic but untraceable leak to the press, followed by a public promise on your part to leave no stone unturned, etcetera? It would eliminate the prospect of going to gaol at some future date, but pretty much ensure that prime ministerial wrath would descend on you with full force. End of a promising career. Do as you are told? Bad idea, for obvious reasons, especially as Macchioli would say on oath that you had been specifically instructed not to pay a penny.’

  ‘Doesn’t leave much, does it?’

  ‘Not at the moment, no. Tell me, this ransom money, where is it to come from?’

  ‘I have no idea. Maybe an extremely wealthy patriot will suddenly wander through the door with a chequebook.’

  ‘Stranger things have happened. Let us assume that the money turns up. What then?’

  ‘Get the picture back. Then go after whoever was responsible. They might do it again, after all.’

  Bottando shook his head. ‘Bad idea. What you must do is keep your head down. Do as you are told, and nothing else.’

  ‘But I’m not sure what I have been told to do. That’s the trouble.’

  ‘I am merely trying to indicate that, when faced with deviousness, you must be devious yourself. You might also consider the wisdom of putting everything down on paper in front of a lawyer, so that, if necessary, your understanding of the meeting is clear.’

  Flavia grunted, in exactly the same manner as Bottando used to do himself when she had proposed a distasteful idea and he had acted the part of cautious superior. The general noticed the sound, and all it implied, and smiled gently. For he also, in his way, felt slightly sorry for Flavia. Position and authority were not without their disadvantages, and having to be careful and responsible were among the biggest.

  ‘I don’t suppose you would like to help …’

&nbs
p; ‘Me?’ Bottando chuckled. ‘Dear me no. I most certainly would not. I am too old, my dear, to be running around with suitcases full of money under my arm. Besides, I must plead self-interest.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I am bored, Flavia,’ he said mournfully. ‘Bored out of my head. I have been sitting here pushing little bits of paper around for a year. I give orders to people who give orders to people who do some policing occasionally but spend most of their time constructing international directives. So I have decided that enough is enough. I am going to retire. My pension will be very much less than I had anticipated but quite sufficient. And I do not want to risk it at the moment. I will willingly give you any advice you want. And when I am finally retired any assistance you want as well. But at the moment, I must keep my head down as much as you.’

  ‘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 any more? 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 back seat, 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 Trastevere, 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 houseproud of people, even she made something of an effort to keep it neat and tidy. A sign of age, perhaps.