gather that you have lost a painting,’ the policeman began once the preliminary polite noises were over. ‘As I have been told it might have been stolen, I thought I had better make some enquiries.’
The priest frowned, cupping his hands together in front of his stomach in a gesture of clerical thoughtfulness. ‘I can’t imagine who told you that. There used to be an altar painting, true. But we sold it a month or so ago.’
‘Sold it? To whom? Isn’t that church property? I thought these sales normally went through the Vatican. They generally tell us about them.’
The priest looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, it’s like this.’ He paused. ‘Do you have to make a report or something? I really don’t want to get into a bureaucratic muddle over forms and things.’
‘It all depends. We’ve been told that a painting here was stolen. The niceties of Vatican routine are not our concern if it wasn’t.’
‘It wasn’t.’ He thought for a moment, then launched into an explanation. ‘I run a small programme for the addicts who live in the Campo area – food, shelter, some attempts to keep them off drugs, and awake.’ Bottando nodded and politely encouraged him to get on with it. He had come across dozens of these individual programmes in Milan, generally run by well-meaning priests. As a rule, they didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the problem, but the state provided no better alternative.
‘We need a lot of supplies and, as you can see, it’s a poor parish. We don’t get any donations from visitors, not a penny from the diocese, nothing from the city. About a month ago a man appeared and wanted to buy the altarpiece. He offered enough money to keep the programme going for a year and I took it. The sale wasn’t registered with the Vatican because it would have taken most of the money. I decided that my addicts needed it more.’
Bottando nodded again. It happened all the time and was understandable, even if it did make his job more difficult. ‘How much did he pay?’ he asked.
‘Ten million lire,’ the priest replied. ‘I knew all about the painting. It’s virtually worthless. I told him so, but he said it was for a collector who wanted a piece by Mantini and was prepared to pay over the odds for it.’
‘Did he give you a receipt or anything like that?’
‘Oh yes, it was all done properly. The deed of sale was even franked properly. If you will wait I’ll get it.’ He hurried back to the sacristy and returned a few moments later with a large piece of white, lined paper with a stamp in the top-right corner. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Sold, One Reposo by Mantini from the Church of Santa Barbara, Rome, for ten million lire. Dated 15 February and signed by myself and Edward Byrnes, dealer. I see he gave no address. I’d not noticed that before. But he paid me in cash and gave me a donation for the programme as well, so I suppose that doesn’t matter much.’
At about eight that evening, Flavia di Stefano sighed, dumped the remainder of her work, finished and unfinished, in the ‘out’ basket and walked briskly out of the office. It had been a busy day, and not a particularly satisfying one.
After the visit to Santa Barbara, the rest of her day had been taken up with routine enquiries about the Mantini, all of them frustrating for someone who loved finding corruption in high places. Everything about the transaction was entirely legal. The owner had wanted to sell, the buyer had taken the picture to England and had been scrupulous about informing everybody of his intentions. All the forms had been filled in properly, and every legal obstacle with the arts ministry, the treasury and the customs surmounted by the rulebook.
A model of a respectable art dealer in operation. Except that Sir Edward Byrnes, prince of London art dealers, might have been taking a Raphael out rather than some piece of junk. But an afternoon spent combing through the penal code had produced nothing which gave them a case. If Byrnes had painted over the Raphael and concealed the fact, a clear crime. If he had smuggled it out, ditto. If he had stolen it, no trouble. In all those cases they could probably have recovered the picture. But, as far as she could tell, there was nothing against taking out a Raphael covered with a Mantini, if you were not the one who’d put the Mantini over it in the first place. And Byrnes would say he didn’t know there was anything special about the picture at all. He’d be lying through his teeth, of course, but nothing could be done about it.
It was annoying. Doubly annoying, in fact. Flavia took it for granted that all art dealers were crooked at some level. Their business, after all, consisted of buying things that they knew the sellers could get more for elsewhere. Byrnes, however, was an absolute model of propriety. Utterly fluent in Italian, he often donated works to Italian museums and lent other pieces for exhibitions. His services in other matters had been rewarded with honours in Italy and France, as well as with his knighthood. By reputation a distinguished and learned man, there was not a trace of his ever having even bent the rules, let alone broken them. It was infuriating and, to Flavia, merely demonstrated that he was too clever to get caught.
It was also annoying because the Italian woman, in this if not much else, was patriotic. For hundreds of years the rest of the world had picked over Italy and removed its greatest art treasures. Nowhere in Italy now was there a museum that compared with the National Galleries in London or Washington, or the Louvre in Paris. Many paintings only remained in Italy because they were stuck on to the walls, though she had even heard that one American millionaire in the twenties had offered to buy the church in Assisi so that the Giotto frescos decorating it could be shipped back to Arizona. For Italians to lose a Raphael was dreadful, even if they had not even known they had it.
Grumbling thus to herself, Flavia walked quickly along the streets, heading towards the Piazza Navona. She had agreed to meet her erstwhile prisoner for dinner, so she could go over some of the details of his story in an atmosphere that might make him more forthcoming. Not that she thought Argyll had been lying. But an interrogation by the police after a night in the cells often makes people forget little details.
The hurry was because she had almost forgotten. As she walked, she checked her handbag; the strap around her neck, Roman fashion, to guard against pickpockets. There was enough to pay for dinner for two. She had a feeling that her fellow-diner was short of funds, and taking men out to dinner always gave her an agreeable feeling. Her mother would never have gone out with a man on her own. Although she was a liberal sort of mother and countenanced such behaviour in her youngest, the idea of her daughter paying would still have shocked her greatly.
She had arranged to meet her guest at a nearby trattoria. It was not a particularly special one, but near to her apartment, and reliable. Like most Roman eating establishments, it served wonderful pasta, magnificent antipasti and dreadful main courses. Unlike Turin, which really knew what meat was, Romans seemed satisfied with any sort of boot leather. No matter: she was used to it now. But Roman food was still about the only thing that made her nostalgic for her home town.
Argyll was sitting at a table in the corner and waved cautiously at her as she entered. Ordinarily he would have been good-enough looking, in an English sort of way, not that that sort of thing normally appealed much to her. Tallish, fair-haired, conservatively and not very well-dressed by Italian standards. Most remarkable of all, perhaps, were his hands, which were long and delicate. He had wrung them together incessantly during the formal interview. They looked as though they would have been better employed playing the violin, or something. At least, he didn’t now seem to be twitching and fiddling so much.
Being freed from temporary incarceration indeed seemed to have done him good, and Flavia remarked
