not being able to say exactly what she wanted, but fortunately the department had been assigned another trainee who was, for once, unusually bright and keen. He had, she told him sternly when he came in, spent far too much time on the streets recently.
The trainee’s face fell so far Flavia thought she might have to help him pick it off the floor. ‘It’s all very well rushing about in flash cars kicking people’s doors down, Corrado, and don’t think I’m criticizing. You kick them down very well. But the essence of policing these days is intelligence. Forward planning. That sort of thing. Very interesting,’ she added encouragingly. ‘So I’ve constructed a little exercise for you.’
‘An exercise?’ he said in a scarcely concealed tone of disgust. ‘You mean, not even a real case?’
‘It might be one day. Got your notebook? Good. Take this down. Let’s see now. Armed robbery at a museum. Lone operator. Painting stolen.’
‘What painting?’
‘Doesn’t matter what painting,’ she said. ‘It never does in real life either.’
‘Oh.’
‘Ransom demand. Pay up or else. Right?’
Corrado nodded.
‘Good. Now assume this has all just happened. It’s your job to head into the records and construct a list of potential people who might have been involved. Do you know how to do that?’
‘Start with the computer, then go to the files, look for possibles for the theft itself, compare that with lists of people who are thought to have done kidnappings, etcetera.’ He sounded bored and annoyed. Flavia felt slightly sorry for him, but if she had just told him a pack of lies at least one part was true. Sitting on your rear end reading files really was now the stuff of policing.
‘Quite,’ she said brightly. ‘And I know you are going to grumble and moan about it. So the sooner you are done, and done properly, the sooner you can get back to the outside world. Off you go,’ she concluded in her best schoolmistressly tone, giving him an encouraging smile as he sloped out of her office.
That was all very well, and even cheered her up a bit, but the improving mood went into a sharp reverse shortly after she had finished her sandwich. As she brushed the crumbs carefully from her blotting pad into the wastepaper bin, her secretary – it was amazing how quickly you can get used to having a secretary – announced that a journalist was on the phone from Il Mattino. Common enough, quite a few checked in regularly to see if there was anything going on, and Flavia was very much pleasanter to them than Bottando had ever been. Ettore Bossoni was a new one to her, however; she vaguely knew the name, but he had never, as far as she was aware, had anything to do with art or theft before.
‘I was thinking,’ he said in a tone which had just a touch of insinuation about it, ‘about writing a story on security.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Yes. You know. Museums. Especially when pictures move around.’
‘You mean for exhibitions, things like that?’ Flavia asked drily.
‘Just that sort of thing. You know. Look at insurance, the way they are guarded, what might happen if anything went wrong and a picture was lost …’
‘Very good idea,’ Flavia said encouragingly. ‘Although I can’t give you chapter and verse on anything. We haven’t lost one that way for ages …’
‘Of course not,’ Bossoni said in an oily fashion. Flavia was beginning to dislike him. ‘But you must have plans about what you’d do if something like that happened.’
‘We’d run around and try to find it,’ Flavia said. ‘Same as usual. No story in that.’
‘But if there was a ransom, say.’
‘Paying ransoms’, Flavia pointed out severely, ‘is against the law.’
‘You mean you wouldn’t pay one?’
‘Me? Me personally? How could I? That’s not my department. All I would do in those circumstances is pass on the request to a higher authority. As quickly as possible, I might add, although if you quoted me on that I would strangle you. Your guess is as good as mine about how they’d react. As I say, it’s against the law.’
She got him off the phone as soon as possible, then leant back in her chair, a worried frown on her brow. He was clearly fishing. Someone had said something, but not enough for him to know what to do with it. Three possible sources: someone from the museum, someone from the prime minister’s office, or someone involved in the theft itself. Not much point speculating about which. She picked up the phone and talked to some contacts about having his phone tapped. Ten minutes later, she had the response.
No.
That was the trouble with being new at the job. She had no clout yet. No one would have refused Bottando. Although, come to think of it, no one had ever refused her before either. It put her in a bad mood which lay simmering inside her until Argyll once more proffered his well-meaning, and quite possibly sound, advice.
While she was thus unemployed, Argyll was left at home, feeling terribly left out, abandoned and slighted. On the whole he hit it off well with Flavia’s work; they had cohabited nicely for years and tolerated each other with only a few hiccups along the way. He endured the frequent absences, the preoccupations and the occasional flashes of ill-humour that it generated in her, and her work, in return, had provided him with a fairly constant diet of entertainment. He had even, so he prided himself and Flavia readily acknowledged, given material assistance on a few occasions. The three-way relationship had become a little more complex when the great promotion arrived, not least because Flavia spent more time on the drudgery of policing and less time looking for stolen works of art. She had also become more like Bottando in office, more prone to calculate risks, see dangers and watch for hidden traps. This occasionally gave her a furtive, not to say suspicious, air, and Argyll was interested to note that Bottando, relieved of his position, had become more like her – full of bright, if not always respectable, ideas.
He had been prepared for this and usually it was only an occasional problem. With this particular case, however, domestic life swiftly became all but unendurable. Information had to be winkled out of her, her usual good humour had vanished, she would not talk over, as she habitually did, even the outlines of what was going on. Quite apart from the fact that she was, in his opinion, taking an appallingly silly risk in having anything to do with it. The fact that it was her job, and that she had been brought in by the prime minister, seemed insufficient reason, in his opinion, for not ducking and diving for all she was worth.
So, while he waited for his wife to recover herself, he lay on the sofa, considering which of his own tasks he should tackle first. This used up a great deal of time which the more censorious might have considered better spent on actually doing one of them, but Argyll was particular on the matter and wanted to get it right. So his mind wandered from topic to topic. Papers. Export regulations. The weekly shopping. Back again.
And then he had an idea for Bottando’s farewell present. They would, of course, get him a conventional trinket of some sort to mark the occasion, but Argyll felt like producing something special. He liked the general, and Bottando liked him. He almost felt he’d miss the old fellow as much as Flavia would. And his idea was perfect. Not long ago they’d been to Bottando’s apartment for a drink; the first time Argyll had ever been there, as he rarely invited people. A dingy place
