Death and Restoration (24 page)

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?