Death & Restoration

17

Menzies sat on his sofa contemplating his handiwork. He was an egotistical man in all areas of life except where his work was concerned; in that he was extremely self-critical, to himself if not to the outside world. But even he, as he sat and looked, then got up and picked up the icon, turning it over, brushing it with his finger, then looking at it critically once more, was satisfied. Was it perfect? he thought as he wrapped it carefully in a cloth. No. Could he tell there was something wrong? He wondered as he covered this in newspaper and tied it with string. Certainly, although it would have taken him some time to figure it out. Would anyone else? He paused reflectively. He didn’t think so; really he didn’t. It was a decent piece of work. In the circumstances, a brilliant one.

He was still judiciously congratulating himself when Mrs Verney, posing as a police messenger, came to pick it up. Would she notice anything wrong? he wondered anxiously.

“You’d better check it,” he said with concern as she took the carefully wrapped parcel. “I don’t want it damaged and you coming back and saying it was like that when you picked it up.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

“I insist,” he said. “And I want a receipt.”

She sighed heavily. “Very well.” And began to unwrap it.

“Fine.”

“Look at it carefully,” Menzies said.

She looked it over. “Seems OK to me. Have you done any work on it?”

“Some,” he said. “I was just starting.”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to finish later.”

“You’re satisfied?”

“Oh, yes. Now I must go. I’m late.”

“My receipt …?”

With barely concealed impatience, she put the parcel down and hurriedly wrote out a note. Received from Sig. D. Menzies, one icon of the Virgin belonging to the monastery of San Giovanni. Menzies took it and regarded it with amused satisfaction. A certificate of competence, he thought. Something to show his friends.

“Now, I must go.”

“Splendid,” Menzies said. “Take care of it. It’s caused enough trouble already, that has.”

“Don’t I know it.”

And Mary Verney, with the icon under her arm, walked out of the apartment block and turned left up the street. A man sitting at the little cafe over the street saw her come out, and picked up his phone.

“You can add impersonating a police officer to your list of crimes and misdemeanours,” he said quietly. “She’s got it, and heading into the Campo dei Fiori. I’m right behind her.”

Mary Verney took a taxi from the rank outside San Andrea; it was busy, as the market was still in full flood, but the rush hour was over, and she didn’t have the alarming problem of having to stand in the open with a stolen icon under her arm for too long. She got off to a good start by giving the driver 100,000 lire.

“Now, listen carefully,” she said. “This will be an unusual drive. I want you to do exactly what I say; if you do, I’ll give you another 100,000 at the end. Is that understood?”

The driver, a young man with a malevolent smile and a bad squint in one eye grinned horribly at her. “As long as you’re not going to shoot someone.”

“You’d object?”

“Charge you more.”

“I see I picked well. Now, at three o’clock exactly, I want you to be driving south down the Lungotevere Marzio, towards the crossing with the ponte Umberto. Fifty metres up, there is a bus stop. Near it, there should be a man standing. You with me so far?”

The driver nodded.

“You will get into the lane closest to the pavement, and slow down. When I say stop, you stop; when I say go, you go again as fast as possible. Then I’ll tell you what to do next. Got it?”

“One question,” said the man, who Mary Verney suddenly realized had a thick Sicilian accent.

“Yes?”

“Where is Lungotevere … what did you call it?”

“Oh, Christ,” she muttered under her breath. “Do you have a map?”

Five minutes later, they were under way, Mary Verney clutching the map in one hand and the icon in the other. She thanked God they didn’t have that far to go. Otherwise they’d have got stuck in the traffic and never made it. The driver took the route up the via della Scrofa, then swung round at the Porte Ripetta, and headed south again. Mary’s heart began to thump with nervousness. She took the icon out of the bag she’d been carrying it in, and laid it on her lap.

“Into the nearside lane now,” she said, noting that the traffic was heavier than she’d hoped. “Slow down.”

Then she saw him, standing beyond the bus stop, hands out of his pockets.

“Stop.”

The taxi stopped, and she held up the icon to the window. Mikis stared at the icon, and she stared at Mikis. It lasted for about ten seconds, then he nodded, and took a step forward. He put a hand in his pocket.

“Now! Go! Fast!” she shouted. “Get us out of here.”

The car lurched forward as the driver, now thoroughly enjoying himself, slammed his foot on the accelerator and let out the clutch. There was traffic everywhere; twenty metres further on the lights were at red and the road was blocked with two large trucks.

“Keep going,” she shouted to the driver. “Whatever you do, don’t stop.”

He needed little encouragement and swerved with a thump on to the pavement, put his hand on the horn and his foot on the pedal. The taxi shot along, gaining speed until the pedestrian crossing at the bridge; then he cut left across the traffic, swerved to avoid a tourist and barrelled over the crossing so fast that, had anything been coming towards them, they could not possibly have missed it. He went faster and faster in the direction of the Piazza Navona, then cut right down the old cobbled streets that surround it.

“You’re going to kill someone,” she shouted as he swerved to avoid an old tourist eating an ice cream.

No reply. He kept on driving, almost like a professional racer. Then he slowed abruptly, and turned sharply into a cavern underneath an old apartment block.

The engine died as he cut it off, and the pair of them sat in silence for a few seconds. Mary was trembling from terror.

“Where are we?”

“My brother-in-law’s garage.”

He got out of the car and pulled the big old doors closed, cutting out all the summer light with a frightening suddenness. The weedy light bulb he switched on was no substitute. Mary breathed deeply several times to calm herself down, then fumbled in her bag for a cigarette, and lit it with shaky hands.

“Thank you,” she said when the driver came back. “You did a marvellous job.”

The driver grinned. “Normal driving for Palermo,” he said.

“Here.” She handed him a bundle of notes. “The additional 100,000 I promised. And another 200,000. You never saw me before. Don’t recognize me.”

He pocketed the money, and gestured to the door. “Thank you. And if you ever want another lift …”

“Yes?”

“Don’t call me.”

Mary nodded, dropped her half-finished cigarette and ground it into the dust with her feet, then picked up the icon in its wrapping.

“How far is it from here to the via dei Coronari?”

The taxi driver, pouring himself a drink from a bottle he’d found in a rickety desk, pointed. She walked out, back into the brightness of a Roman summer.

Five hundred metres away, in an entirely different street, pointing in the wrong direction and encased on all sides by cars and trucks, Paolo wept with frustration and humiliation. It was the sudden acceleration and the appallingly risky driving of Mary’s taxi that had caught him unawares. When pushed to the test, he wasn’t that willing to die. He beat his fists against the dashboard of the car, then picked up his phone and spoke reluctantly into it.

“Lost her,” he said.

“Oh, Christ,” Flavia said, her heart sinking. “Paolo, you can’t have. Tell me you’re joking.”

“Sorry. What do I do now?”

“Ever thought of suicide?”

“What the hell are you playing at?” Mary Verney, now she’d had a drink and had calmed down, was furious by the time she found the public phone in the bar and called Mikis again. “We had a deal. You had nothing to gain by pulling a gun.”

“I was not pulling a gun,” Charanis said at the other end.

“Oh, come on.”

“I was not pulling a gun,” he repeated. “As you say, what would I have to gain by shooting you? Nothing. So stop being hysterical. I want to get this over and get away.”

“Did you see the picture?”

“Yes.”

“Are you satisfied?”

“Enough. Until I can examine it properly. In about quarter of an hour you should receive a phone call. I will ring back in half an hour and you will tell me where the picture is. And it had better be there.”

There was no pretence at the urbane suavity he normally affected; he was serious now. Mary Verney looked at her watch; somehow she felt the next fifteen minutes would be vital. It would either work, or blow up in her face. Dear God, she wished there had been another way. If anything went wrong …

She looked at her watch again, thirteen minutes. She lit a cigarette, another one but at her age what did it matter, and ran through the list of things that could go wrong.

The phone went. She grabbed it, fumbling slightly in her impatience.

“She’s at liberty.” Oddly formal in its phrasing.

There was a click and the line went dead.

She dialled her daughter-in-law’s number, fumbling badly and dialling the wrong number the first time she tried, and the second. The third time it connected.

“Hello, Granny.” The bubbly, infectiously childish voice at the other end brought tears to her eyes; the moment she heard it she knew she’d won. She’d done everything she set out to do. She managed to mumble back a few words, but Louise would have to wait.

“Is your mummy there?”

She stopped her daughter-in-law from talking; she’d always talked too much, and once she got going it was difficult to stop her.

“She’s all right?”

“She’s fine. I don’t know what happened …”

“I’ll tell you later. Take Louise, get in the car and go.”

“Go where?”

“Anywhere. No. The police. Go to the nearest police station. Sit there as long as possible and say you want to report a missing dog, or something. I’ll send someone to get you when it’s all over.”

“When what’s all over?”

“Just do it, dear. It should only be another hour, or so.”

Her heart sank as she put the phone down and looked at the small package by her side. She would now have to deliver it and hope nothing went wrong. She took a deep breath, and walked off to begin the final stage.

When Flavia picked up her phone and heard Paolo’s frustrated, apologetic explanation of how he had lost Mary Verney in the traffic, she all but hurled the instrument across the room in rage and frustration. Of course there were risks something would go wrong. Something always does. But already, and such an absurd blunder? Paolo had years of experience; he knew the streets of Rome better than anyone. He was an alarmingly fast and incautious driver. Of all the people who should have been able to hang on to a foreigner who barely knew the city, he would have come top of her list.

And now it was all over. They would have to sit back, and hope that they could pick one or both of them up as they left the country. How very disappointing. How embarrassing. How humiliating. How stupid.

She paced up and down, not because this ever helped her think much, a process always done better horizontally, but because it provided some vague illusion of doing something. There would be a handover. Obviously a cautious one, or it would have already taken place. Mary Verney had driven past Charanis, then accelerated away so fast Paolo had lost her. She didn’t trust him; that was obvious. He saw she had the picture, and presumably had to do something before she would hand it over.

So where would the handover take place? She walked next door to find Giulia, who had come back to the office and was waiting to be given something to do.

“Your notes,” she said. “Reports. Of when you were following Mrs Verney.”

The girl opened her desk drawer and pulled out a sheaf of paper.

“Where did she go? I know she went shopping, went to museums, and so on. Where else did she go?”

Giulia shrugged. “Dealers. We went round almost every dealer on the via dei Coronari. Then she took me for a long walk. She said she always likes to walk four or five kilometres a day.”

“Where did you go?”

“Down the Corso, across the Campo dei Fiori and across the ponte Sisto. We stopped for a coffee opposite Santa Maria in Trastevere. Then we walked up to see the Bramante chapel in San Pietro, then we ended up watching the sun go down from the Gianicolo. Then we took a taxi back to her hotel. I was exhausted. It didn’t seem to bother her at all.”

“She didn’t do anything unusual? Didn’t seem particularly alert at any moment? Wasn’t checking anything out? What did she say?”

“We talked all the time. She’s a very nice person. But she didn’t say anything which struck me particularly.”

“Try a bit harder. She’s going to hand this picture over to Charanis soon. She must have a handover spot. Somewhere quiet, where there won’t be any witnesses, somewhere where she can put it down and leave very fast. She doesn’t trust him, and I don’t blame her. She’s frightened of him. Where can she leave it which is quiet and with good transport?”

“In Rome?” the girl said. “Nowhere. Besides, if she wants to put a safe distance between herself and this man, why not give it to an intermediary?”

“Like who?”

“Like one of the dealers.”

Flavia looked solidly at her. Maybe she had a future in the police after all. “Who did she visit?”

Giulia handed over her list. Flavia went through them. “She introduced me as her niece at all of them.”

“She knew them?”

“Oh, yes. They all greeted her very fondly. Some with a bit of caution, but they all put on a show for her.”

“Including this one?” She pointed at one name, halfway down the list.

“Including that one, yes.”

Flavia all but kissed the girl with delight. “Yes,” she said triumphantly. “Yes, yes. That’s the one. It must be.”

“Why?”

“Because you say she knew him and when I met him the same afternoon he denied ever having heard of her. Giuseppe Bartolo, old friend, I’ve got the both of you. At long last. Come on. Let’s go. There’s not much time.”

Flavia did her best to summon reinforcements, but knew as she and Giulia ran through the streets, across the Piazza Navona and down the via dei Coronari that the chances of anyone getting there quickly was slim. The rush hour was beginning, and none of her comrades were in walking, or running, distance. She was on her own, with Giulia. Nor did she have any idea of what she was going to do when she arrived. Hang around outside and wait? Then what, even assuming they were right? She hated guns herself and was a terrible shot. She assumed Giulia had received the standard training, but also remembered that trainees weren’t allowed to carry weapons. What, exactly, was she meant to do if Charanis turned up before her support, and refused to stand there and be arrested?

Running and dodging the crowds and concentrating on arriving as swiftly as possible gave her little time to dwell on this problem. She had one chance to catch this man with the icon and link the entire case together, and she wasn’t going to miss it again. She only hoped that her guess about Mary Verney was right. What if, at this moment, she was standing on top of the Gianicolo handing the thing over?

If she was, she was. Too late to do anything about it. Besides, there was the gallery. She slowed down, waited for Giulia to catch up, and stood uncertainly, getting her breath back.

“What do we do now?”

“Wait. And hope.”

Flavia looked around. “Might as well sit down and look inconspicuous, I guess.”

She led the way over to a cafe, and commandeered a table which gave a good view of the gallery and its approaches.

“What about a back entrance?” Giulia asked.

“There isn’t one. I know this place.”

She ordered a bottle of water and drank, opened her bag and peered anxiously at her gun. Then she scrabbled around in the depths to find the bullets she kept in a little purse. As a matter of principle she always refused to go around with a loaded gun in her pocket. Rules now said she had to have one. They never said anything about it being ready to go off at any moment.

Giulia looked nervously at the unpractised way she loaded it.

“Quite right,” Flavia said grimly. “The only time I ever tried to fire one of these things in the past, I nearly killed Jonathan.”

The trainee smiled wanly.

“How do we know he’s not already been and gone?”

A good question. Flavia looked up as she considered an answer, then frowned. “Because he’s coming down the street now, that’s why.”

She nodded in the direction of the Piazza Navona, and Giulia peered round to see in the flesh the man she’d only seen before in a grainy photograph. He was tall, quite handsome, apart from an incipient paunchiness, and very, very businesslike. The sort of person who was not going to frighten easily and might well not come quietly.

“I think,” Flavia said, “the best thing to do would be to leap on him from behind as he comes out of the shop. He’ll be holding the icon, so will have one arm occupied, and two of us should be able to get him on the ground. Once he’s collected the picture he should relax a little as well.”

Giulia nodded stiffly.

“Nervous?”

Another tight-lipped little nod.

“Join the club. Come on,” she said as Mikis vanished into the shop. “Stations. You take that side of the door, I’ll take the other.”

She dropped a note on the table to pay for the water and the two women walked across the street, desperately trying to look like a pair of shoppers concerned with nothing more than buying a small memento for a beloved aunt’s birthday.

Flavia was sweating with nervousness, and she noticed that Giulia was trembling with simple fright. She hoped the girl wouldn’t make a mess of things. If both of them did what they should, they stood a decent chance. But if Giulia froze, then she would leave Flavia in deep trouble.

They took up positions on either side of the shop door, Flavia consulting her watch and trying to look like a girlfriend on the verge of being stood up, Giulia concentrating her attention on a red open-topped car with two men in their twenties in it, playing their stereo at an unsociable volume, glancing around to make sure everyone else was looking at them, deliberately doing their best to incite hostility by their noisiness. Don’t go over and ask them to turn it down, Flavia thought. Please. All around, the street was full of people, coming and going, walking arm-in-arm, enjoying the sunlight and warmth. Peaceful and normal people leading a peaceful and normal life. And not a sign of Paolo, nor of anyone else. Where was everyone?

And then it was too late to hope for reinforcements. The door of the gallery opened, and Charanis, with a parcel under his arm, walked out. He paused in the little entrance way before stepping out into the street. Flavia made sure she could grab her gun, the youths in the car turned up the volume still further, and drummed a beat on the side of the door, bobbing their head in time to the music. Giulia looked desperately at her, waiting for a sign, a look of grim determination on her face.

Flavia nodded, and leaped forward to grab Charanis’s free arm, and was relieved to see that Giulia did the same. “You’re under arrest,” she said.

She felt Charanis’s muscles tense up and noticed that the sudden movement and shout had drawn the interested attention of the men in the car, as well as one or two passers-by. One of them got out of the car to see what was happening. Charanis dropped the picture, and began to crouch down to fight for his freedom.

But the man in the car walked forward just as he was beginning to use all his strength to wrench himself free. “Help us,” Flavia. said. He looked her straight in the eyes, then gave a strange little smile.

There was very little noise and it was almost completely muffled by the cacophony of drumming coming from the car; but Charanis suddenly doubled over so violently that he broke free from Giulia’s grasp, and collapsed on to the floor. The young man calmly picked up the package with the icon, walked over to the car, and got in. It screamed off down the street. No more than seven seconds. There were no screams and no rush of pedestrians to get out of danger. It had been so quick, so neat and tidy, no one had even noticed. Until the thick stream of blood ran away from Charanis’s collapsed body and gathered in a large pool in the gutter.

Flavia recovered her senses first; Giulia was standing looking down at her dress and the red stain that had spread down it. “Call an ambulance,” she said once it was clear that she hadn’t been injured. “Quickly.”

And she bent on her knee to feel for Charanis’s pulse. It was a waste of time. A crowd was gathering, talking nervously and excitedly, and she should have taken control and made sure they kept their distance. But she didn’t. She just sat beside the body and stared into space. She had, no idea what had happened or why.

She didn’t notice the one person who could have explained it to her. At the back of the crowd, a small old man with grey hair and a grim look on his face had watched it all stonily and impassively. From the moment he had left Mary, he had worked hard. He had made sure she was followed every step of the way to keep her safe. And when she had told him where the handover was to be, he had given his orders. He felt it was his duty to be there. In all his long life he had often been ruthless and often cruel, but he had never been a coward and had never walked away from his responsibilities. He fixed his mistakes, and he had now fixed his biggest mistake. After a few moments, he turned round and walked down the street to where his limousine was waiting to take him to the airport.