Fallen Gods

Seven

It takes very little to cause traffic congestion in the centre of Edinburgh. A major fire alert in the heart of Princes Street is a recipe for major-league chaos. Maggie Rose was stuck in it for a while, until she called HQ and had a motorcycle officer locate her and clear a way for her through the queues.

She had to concentrate as she followed his lead, but still thoughts of Rufus, and of Mario, forced their way into her mind. She knew that she had no choice but to give the boy up, and she knew that her husband realised that also. However, what he did not know was that even if she could have seen a way to keep him, she would probably still have opted to hand him over. He was, after all, her father's son; taking him in had been Mario's idea, not hers, and while she had gone along with it, it had taken a great effort on her part. The truth was she felt nothing for the boy.

As for Mario… the core of her feelings for him had not changed. She believed that she loved him, even if she could no longer force herself to do so physically, the act having become completely abhorrent to her.

She had no illusions about the meaning of his overnight absences. At first he had been 'working late', but recently no excuse had been offered and no questions asked. Her outburst that morning had been a mistake that she regretted already. She could guess where he was spending those missing nights, and with whom, but if that was what it took to keep them together, she could handle it. She was confident that he was not going to leave her to move in with his cousin, and if

Paula was prepared to feed his appetites on that basis, well, it was fair enough by her.

She pushed her musings away as her escort led her into Princes Street.

It was closed off, from Waverley Bridge to the West End, and two uniformed constables were stationed at the Scott Monument, diverting traffic past Jenners and up towards St. Andrews Square. Her motorcyclist, a sergeant, spoke to one of them and she was waved through without delay. She parked as close to the scene of the incident as she could, about one hundred yards away, and walked the rest.

As she approached, she counted four fire appliances parked in the roadway, outside the pillared entrance to the Royal Scottish Academy, with another three drawn up in the paved area to the right. At least two dozen firefighters were milling around, and beyond them a crowd of spectators were being marshalled by uniformed police. As Rose looked at the scene, she realised to her surprise that no ladders were deployed, and no hoses rolled out. She frowned, and looked for signs of smoke coming from the grey stone building, but she saw none.

She strode past the throng and trotted up the entrance steps. There, in the open doorway, the first person she saw was Chief Superintendent

Manny English, the uniformed commander of her division. "Where's the fire?" she asked him.

"Out," he replied, curtly. "The staff here fought it successfully with extinguishers."

"All that lot outside are a bit of overkill, then," said Rose.

"Perhaps that's true, but it's better to look over-cautious in hindsight than to look negligent."

She made an effort to keep from smiling. Within the force, English had a reputation for over-caution that bordered on the legendary. "It's your business," she said, "Manny, yours and the firemaster's, but what if there's another major incident this afternoon with most of the appliances here and doing nothing, and the traffic screwed up good and proper?"

"That's a damn good question, Maggie," said a voice from the side. She turned to see Senior Fire Officer Matt Grogan, in his white helmet, bearing down on her and the divisional commander. "Do you have the gift of second sight?" he continued. "We've just had a call-out from the Exchange district, up Lothian Road. There's been a major outbreak in one of the new office blocks up there. It's just round the corner from the fire station, but of course all our bloody appliances are down here, aren't they! I need your people to clear the traffic for us, Manny, and I need them now!"

"Yes, yes, I'll deploy officers at once." English stepped out into Princes Street, shouting orders to a nearby inspector. Grogan was about to follow him, when Rose caught his sleeve.

"Hold on a second, Matt," she exclaimed. "What about this incident?"

"It was deliberate, Maggie; no doubt about it. But my boys have searched the whole place, and found no other surprises. Your man Steele's through there. He'll bring you up to speed on it. Now I must go. From the sound of things we've got a real fire up there, unlike this one."

"Thanks. Good luck." Grogan shouldered his way through the door and broke into a run; Rose turned and headed up the stairs that led into the main hall of the Academy.

The big room was split into a number of alcoves, but she had no trouble locating the scene of the fire; a crowd of people, one or two in uniform, the rest informally dressed, stood directly ahead of her, all staring into a booth on the left of the gallery. She could not see what they were looking at, since a wall blocked her view, but she could read the shock and distress on their faces.

"Ma'am." She turned, to see Detective Inspector Stevie Steele, as he stepped out of an alcove on her right. He was tall and good-looking, in his early thirties, single and something of a heart-throb, she had heard, although he tended to keep his private life to himself. She knew that he was a former boyfriend of Paula Viareggio, and there had been one other dark rumour about an attraction, but Rose had always thought that he was too smart to risk that.

"Less of the formality, Stevie," she said. "There are no other ranks around, are there?"

"No. I was in on my own when the shout came in."

"Has there been an arrest?"

"No. It looks as if someone planted an incendiary device on a timer."

"We'll need back-up then."

"I've got technicians on the way; we're going to need them. I'm expecting a couple of DCs as well to start taking statements."

"Why, exactly… just what is this?"

"Didn't you see the signs outside?"

"No. I saw Manny English; that was enough."

Steele laughed. "Yes, I decided to keep well out of his way, otherwise I might have found myself on points duty too. Actually," he said, 'what we have here is an exhibition of religious art. Do you know anything about the subject?"

"I wouldn't know a Botticelli from a Beryl Cook," she answered, truthfully.

"You'll find him here," the inspector told her, 'but not her. You'll also find Titian, and El Greco, and even Dali's Cubist Christ. This is the RSA's big summer attraction; it pulls together great works, from various schools, and it's scheduled to run all the way into September.

It's being sponsored by the solicitors, Candela and Finch, to mark their bicentenary, and also the refurbishment of the Academy building itself; the opening ceremony was just getting under way when the brown stuff hit the fan. The people you probably saw outside in the piazza are their guests.

"The problem is that someone's torched one of the prize exhibits.

That's what they're all staring at over there; I've got the Academy's security staff standing guard over it, to make sure no one touches it before Arthur Dorward's lot get here."

"Bloody hell!" Rose exclaimed. "What is it? Not the Botti-what's-it, I hope."

"No. It's a work called The Holy Trinity, by a modern Chilean artist called Isobel Vargas. It's what you would call controversial, although some people have gone further and called it blasphemous."

"Why so?"

"Because the Blessed Trinity are all depicted as female."

"What, you mean Mother, Daughter and Holy Ghostess?"

"You got it in three. At least that's what it did look like; it's a bit changed now. Come and see for yourself."

He led her over, excusing them quietly past the silent onlookers, and into the alcove in which the exhibit had been placed. It was still hanging there, still perfectly lit from above, but no longer in the form of the artist's vision. The gold frame… about five feet deep by four feet wide, r i, Rose estimated… was largely undamaged, although foam from a fire extinguisher still dripped from it in places, forming puddles on the floor below, but the painting itself had been virtually destroyed. It was a mass of blackened, hanging threads with a gaping hole in the centre through ill which the scorched wall behind could be seen. Three of its corners retained colour and shape, but even they were badly blistered.

"Pretty comprehensive," the detective superintendent muttered.

"Oh yes," Steele agreed. "I haven't touched it, and neither did the fire boys, but Grogan said he thought that an incendiary device had been placed behind it, in the bottom left corner. You'll see that's been completely destroyed. As I said, he thinks we'll find the remains of a timing device when the technicians look behind it."

"When did it happen?"

"I can tell you that," a dry, cultured voice interrupted. Rose turned to look up at a tall, grey-haired man in a dark business suit, with flecks of dandruff about its shoulders and lapels.

"This is Mr. David Candela, the senior partner of Candela and Finch,"

Steele explained.

"I thought this was your bicentenary," she said to the man.

He nodded, taking her meaning at once. "It is, but there's been a

Candela in the firm since its foundation. We're very proud of the family connection. It's unique in its longevity, I believe."

"Congratulations," said the detective. "Now tell me about the present."

"Certainly. I was right in the middle of my opening speech, standing just there…" he pointed to a spot in below the Botticelli which hung on the far wall '… when there was a damn great whoosh to my right, and the damn thing went up in flames.

"I got quite a shock, I can tell you. All hell broke loose, of course; the curator, who was standing beside me, went into a blue funk and ran off to call 999. A couple of the security Johnnies, they grabbed fire extinguishers and started to go at the fire. It was going like.. " he gave a short braying laugh at an impending joke '… like blazes, I suppose, but they got it out eventually. By the time they did, though, it looked like that. It's a bit of a bugger, really; we're underwriting the insurance costs of this show."

"Has your firm upset anyone lately, Mr. Candela?" Rose asked.

"My dear lady," the man replied, affably, 'my firm has been upsetting people for two hundred years now. We have developed a style over that time which tends to get right up the noses of the people on the opposite side of disputes in which we become involved. Kick 'em bloody hard in the thingamajigs; it's the only way in litigation, and we're bloody good at it, I can tell you."

Smiling in spite of her dislike of being taken for a dear lady, Rose nodded towards the wrecked painting. "Can you think of anyone you might have upset enough for them to do that to you?"

Mr. Candela drew himself up, seeming to find another couple of inches in height in the process. "Dear lady…" he began.

"Superintendent," said Maggie, affably.

"Superintendent then," he continued, unruffled, 'the people against whom we litigate tend not to be, shall I say, at that end of the market. They went to different schools. Some of them may be arse holes I'll admit, but I do not believe that any of them are arsonists.

Go down that road if you choose; I'll co-operate, if only to annoy some of the buggers even more, but you won't find your man among them."

Rose sighed. "I'm sure you're right, Mr. Candela, but I can't take that as read. It's a line of enquiry I'll have to follow." She turned to Steele. "Stevie, a word."

They walked back to the alcove from which they had come, in time to see the red-haired Inspector Arthur Dorward, the head of the scene-of-crime team, slouch glumly into the hall. "Another unhappy copper," said Rose, in greeting. "It's over there. We think you'll find the remains of a firebomb behind it. As usual, we'd like to know everything about it, and we'd like to know yesterday. If that's not possible, later on today will do.

"While you're at that, Stevie and I will start to go through the basics." She pointed up into a corner of the gallery towards a video camera. "That has to be connected to a tape. Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll give us a result."

Steele looked at her with something approaching disdain. "Sure, Maggie, sure, and maybe God really is a woman."