The Babylon Idol

Chapter 15

As Ben drove away from Saint-Jean, he considered his priorities. The first of which was to understand who was doing this. Was someone else carrying out these attacks on Usberti’s behalf, or was Usberti alive? If he was alive, where was he?

If the situation had been different, Ben could have picked up the phone and talked to Luc Simon. Now that the one cop he trusted in the world was gone, he might have been thinking about driving east, over the Italian Alps, to pay an unscheduled visit to Usberti’s home estate. But that wasn’t his only or even his main priority, because there still remained one name on the hit-list to be ticked off. Ben had to find Anna Manzini and make sure she was safe.

He checked his email — still no reply to the message he’d posted via her author website. Looking again at the site, he noticed the name and number of Anna’s literary agent in Florence on the ‘contacts’ page. It was worth a try.

‘Agenzia letteraria Carlo Scanzi,’ said a gravelly voice.

Ben hadn’t spoken Italian in a while. He politely introduced himself, explained that he was a friend of Signor Scanzi’s client Anna Manzini, said he urgently needed to contact her and asked if he could have a number or address, preferably both.

The agent responded with a snort. ‘Sure. If you’re such a close friend of my client’s, why are you calling me? You people will do anything to get your little feet in the door, won’t you?’

It wasn’t a good start. Ben asked, ‘What people?’

‘You’re the second one today. What’s it this time, trawling for a free signed copy? A referral to a publisher? Help with some crappy project you think’s gonna make you rich? Dream on. Wait, I know who you are. You’re not Italian. You’re that freaky Dutchman who tried to shove your manuscript on Signora Manzini at the Turin book fair and chased her into the ladies’ bathroom. I’m onto you, pal. You breach that restraining order and I’ll have the carabinieri down on you so fast it’ll make your head spin.’

‘I told you who I am,’ Ben said coolly. ‘And when I said this was important, I meant it. Anna knows me. Call her, tell her I’m trying to get in touch with her and that it’s urgent. Give her this number.’

‘Stick it.’ Scanzi hung up.

In truth, Ben couldn’t blame the guy for protecting his client. What troubled him the most was that he hadn’t been the first one to call that day, trying to find out Anna’s details. It appeared that he had competition, and perhaps from more than just an overzealous book fan.

Which meant two things: first, if he couldn’t get in touch with Anna by phone or email, he was going to have to travel the 750 kilometres to Florence and reach her in person; and second, he was going to have to get there before someone else did.

The quickest flight he could find online from Montpellier Méditerranée to Peretola Florence was a one-stop with Alitalia that was going to take over eight hours all told, with a long connection in the middle, on top of which would be the extra time-wasting hassle of hiring a car at the other end. He reckoned he could drive there in a little over six hours, if he kept his foot down and avoided police entanglements.

But he couldn’t do it without getting some rest first, or he risked falling asleep at the wheel. Kipping in the car in a cold December was inviting hypothermia, so he hammered up the coastal A9 motorway as far as Montpellier, located a little hotel called the Ibis in a pine forest off exit 32 and crashed fully dressed into bed, where he tossed and turned for a couple of hours. He awoke feeling as refreshed as he was ever going to, whether he slept two hours or twelve. After a fast shower and a change of clothes he checked his email once more: still no reply. Committed now, he jumped back into the Alpina munching on a brioche and raced eastwards, stopping only for fuel and coffee. The French and Italian Rivieras flashed by unnoticed. Marseille, Cannes, Monaco, Genoa. By eight that evening, he was arriving in a wintry-looking Florence.

Carlo Scanzi’s office was on the top floor of a handsome old apartment building off Via dell’Agnolo, near to the historic centre’s limited traffic area. Ben drove slowly past the building to check that the upper windows were in darkness, then parked two blocks away, grabbed his bag and walked back. The temperature had dropped below zero and a freezing mist cloyed the narrow streets, but the cold night air wasn’t Ben’s sole reason for having slipped on the pair of Blackhawk light assault gloves that he kept in the car.

Ben waited in a shadowy doorway across the street from the apartment building, watching the windows and the entrance until a young couple came out and hurried off, arm in arm, braving the chill. Before the door had swung shut, Ben was across the street and inside.

Nobody was about. He padded silently up the spiral stairs to the darkness of the top floor. From his bag he fished out the mini-Maglite and turned it on. He shielded its bright, thin beam with his gloved hand as he hunted for the agency office’s door and quickly found it, marked by a brass plaque. Ben reached back into his bag and took out the small pouch that contained his lock picks. If Scanzi didn’t want to talk to him, then he’d have to access the agent’s client files by other means.

But when Ben went to pick the lock, to his surprise he found the door was already open. He put away the picks and stepped quietly inside, pausing to listen and let his eyes adjust to the dark. He was in a short hallway with a door at its far end. He moved towards it in absolute silence, gently turned the door handle and slipped through.

Scanzi’s office was in pitch blackness and utterly still. The torch beam swept back and forth like a laser, picking out glass-fronted bookcases, artwork and tasteful furniture until it landed on what Ben was looking for, the antique desk cluttered with papers, piled-up books and a shiny Dell laptop. On the wall behind Scanzi’s desk chair hung a framed blow-up taken at some book event, where a small balding man in his sixties, wearing a rumpled suit and with skin the colour of tea stains, was shaking hands with a tall, immaculately dressed younger man baring perfect teeth at the camera. Ben was no authority on Italian authors past or present, but he figured the glamorous one was some famous writer and the small rumpled unhealthy-looking one must be Scanzi.

As he approached the desk, Ben’s torch beam picked out something else that made him stop in his tracks.

He said, ‘Hm.’

It seemed that Carlo Scanzi hadn’t gone home after work that day. Because he was lying twisted on the rug in front of his desk. And he looked even less healthy than he did in his photo. In the photo, he hadn’t had his throat cut and his chest and belly perforated by at least a dozen knife wounds that had turned his white shirt black with blood. Scanzi’s glassy stare seemed to be aimed right at Ben. His face was contorted with terror and agony. He hadn’t died pleasantly, but there didn’t seem to have been much of a struggle. His murderer was evidently a much larger, more powerful man. Whoever he was, he was long gone. Ben didn’t feel the need to draw his pistol.

Ben crouched by the corpse, cautious not to step in the blood that had saturated the rug and was still drying, telling him that Scanzi hadn’t been dead for too long. That impression was confirmed by the rigor mortis that had frozen his face in a mask of horror but not yet fully spread to his limb muscles, which could take five or six hours. Scanzi had probably died sometime that afternoon. Stepping over the body and exploring further with his torch beam, Ben could see none of the pictures of wife, kids and grandkids that a man of Scanzi’s age might have added to the clutter on his desktop. The agent wore no wedding ring, either: not a family man, then. Which could account for why nobody had come looking for him when he hadn’t returned home that day. If nothing else, Ben could at least rest easy in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be disturbed in the next few minutes while he searched for what he needed.

The Dell laptop had gone to sleep, and flashed into life when Ben touched the power button. What came up on-screen was the most recently opened file. It was an agency agreement, a kind of document Ben had never seen before but which he guessed must be a standard boilerplate contract between authors and literary agents. It was dated two years earlier. The bold print header read AGENZIA LETTERARIA CARLO SCANZI. On the line below was the name and address of the client who had signed up to be represented by him.

Anna Manzini.

With a sick feeling, Ben realised he’d been right. Someone else had been following up the same line of inquiry as him. Someone who was now a critical step ahead of him and knew where to find her. Someone with a knife that had already been bloodied once that day.

Ben left the apartment and raced back down to the street. He wanted to sprint the two blocks back to his car, but kept to a brisk walk in case a report of a man running from a murder scene later attracted suspicion. Anna’s address was scrawled on the notepad in his pocket. He punched her postal code into his sat nav. Moments later he was screeching through the streets of Florence, heading south.

The sat nav led him eight kilometres outside the city, into rolling countryside dusted with frost. Judging by the place she’d rented in the Languedoc when he’d known her, she had a taste for elegant and secluded homes; as he turned through the gates and found himself winding up a long, private tree-lined driveway, it was clear that her new residence was no exception.

As the villa came into view, Ben’s already rapidly beating heart stepped up a notch. The blue lights of emergency vehicles swirled through the mist up ahead. The property was swarming with cops. Paramedics were carrying a body on a gurney from the house towards a waiting ambulance.

Once again, he’d got there too late.