The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (212 page)

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Arriving in Milan, they bought a prepaid mobile phone at a stall in the crowded railway station. Darcey started keying in a number from memory.

‘You’d better be able to trust this guy,’ Ben said. His shoulder was hurting and he was feeling irritable. He set down the holdall at his feet.

‘I’d trust Mick Walker with my life,’ she retorted.

‘That’s very touching. But not with mine,’ Ben warned her. ‘Don’t tell him where we are or where we’re going.’

He hovered unhappily in the background as Darcey’s contact answered the call. She spoke fast and clearly. From the way Walker kept interrupting her with questions, it sounded to Ben as if he was concerned.

‘I’m all right,’ Darcey assured him. ‘Everything’s under control. But I need a favour, Mick.’ She ran quickly through the details.

Picking up the holdall, Ben moved a few steps away and leaned against a railing nearby where he could still listen to Darcey’s call over the echoing noise of the station. According to the arrivals and departures noticeboard, their train to Monaco was dead on time and should be rolling into the station any minute. A cigarette would be nice around now, he thought. He missed his old Zippo lighter. It had taken a bullet for him once, saving his life. Now it was probably buried in a box in an Italian prison service storeroom.

Darcey finished her call and looked pleased as she joined Ben at the railing. ‘Sorted. He’ll do it.’

‘There’s every chance they’ll have already opened up the locker to pass Lister’s stuff on to his next of kin,’ Ben said. ‘Could be a waste of time.’

‘Mick knows he needs to move fast,’ she said.

‘Even if it’s still there, you think this Mick of yours can just stroll into the place and ask them to open up a member’s private locker?’ He shook his head.

‘A SOCA ID can open a lot of doors,’ Darcey said.

‘I don’t see the point of it. You involving this guy, and for what exactly? You risk compromising us for nothing.’

‘I have a feeling,’ she insisted, with a look halfway between hurt and indignation. ‘I always trust my feelings about things.’ She paused. ‘You resent me, don’t you?’

‘It’s not so long ago you were trying to stick me in a jail cell. Maybe I’m not quite over it yet.’

‘That’s not what I’m talking about. You don’t like it that I’m coming up with the ideas.’

‘I have no problem with useful ideas,’ he said.

‘You know what I think? You’re a little too used to working on your own, Ben Hope. Stubborn, grouchy, set in your ways.’

‘I can be a team player,’ Ben said. ‘But I like to know who else is on my side. If I’d known you were going to start bringing every Tom, Dick and Harry on board I might not have let you tag along with me so easily.’

She stared at him, her hands on her hips. ‘
Tag along?
Maybe you’d have preferred it back in Rome, with that guy Gourko punching holes in you.’

‘Forget it,’ Ben said, picking up the holdall. ‘We have a train to catch.’

It was just after six in the afternoon when they stepped down onto the platform at Monaco station. In the second smallest country in the world after Vatican City, its thirty-thousand-strong population crammed into just two square kilometres of intensely moneyed Riviera paradise, Ben was pretty sure Mimi Renzi wouldn’t take a lot of finding. Five minutes later, he and Darcey grabbed an out-of-the-way table in the back of a cyber-café near the railway station, paid an extravagant amount for two tiny cups of espresso, and he started his search.

As he’d guessed, it didn’t take him long. An online local business directory listed her as the managing director of a real estate company called Immobilier Renzi. A quick check of the company website confirmed that Signora Renzi had managed the firm since founding it in the seventies, running the operation from her villa in the Les Revoires district of the city. Immobilier Renzi seemed to have grown into quite a little empire over the years, with branches all up and down the Riviera catering for the rich and famous. Even Ben couldn’t fail to recognise some of the movie star names on her client list.

‘Now we’ll find out if it was worth coming all this way,’ Darcey said to nobody in particular as their taxi climbed the steep cliff road to the highest point of the tiny city, past verdant gardens and the glittering white homes overlooking the Rock of Monaco and the wide expanse of the Mediterranean. ‘If this biddy we’re going to see was the companion of Gabriella Giordani back when she was a countess, she must be a million years old.’

Ben kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t inclined to argue with her – partly because of the frosty distance that had come between them ever since Milan, and partly because Darcey’s doubts only echoed his own. The worry that Mimi Renzi might have nothing of value to tell them had been growing in his mind with each passing mile. Plus, a lot of things had happened since she’d tried to make contact with him. He was the Tassoni killer now, and desperate criminals on the loose couldn’t just wander into respectable elderly folks’ homes and expect tea and biscuits.

The Renzi villa was perched high on a cliff overlooking Monaco harbour, set back a long way from the road. It was about four times the size of Pietro De Crescenzo’s cosy little pad in Rome. White stone balustrades and columns glittered in the falling sun, and palm trees whispered in the early evening breeze. As they approached the house, a long-haired Pekingese dog barked furiously at them from a gated ornamental garden. A black limousine with smoked windows was parked outside the villa. Someone was obviously home. Ben laid down the holdall and knocked on the door.

The woman who answered couldn’t have been much over sixty. Her hair was bottle-blond and she wore too much makeup and a well-tailored jacket with two pens sticking out of the breast pocket. Ben stared at her for a moment. ‘Signora Renzi?’

The woman shook her head and informed them curtly in French that her aunt was not available. ‘I am Madame Dupont.’

‘We’re here about a property,’ Ben said. ‘Signora Renzi is expecting us.’

‘You have an appointment?’ The woman flicked a disdainful up-and-down glance at him, from the floppy hat to the white training shoes. Evidently, prospective clients did not generally present themselves attired in T-shirts that said ‘Yeah, Baby!’. Not unless they’d arrived in a chauffeur-driven Rolls.

Ben took out his wallet, slipped an old receipt from inside, reached out and plucked one of the pens from the woman’s pocket before she could react. He scribbled something on the back of the receipt, folded it, then handed it to her.

‘Madame Dupont, my name is Don Jarrett.’ He motioned at Darcey. ‘Mrs Jarrett and I have important business with Signora Renzi.
Private
business,’ he added with emphasis. ‘Please pass this note to her. We’ll wait here.’

The woman stared icily at him for a moment, then disappeared back inside the villa.

‘What did you write?’ Darcey asked him when she was gone.

‘I wrote, “
L’eroe della galleria is here
.”’ If he couldn’t shake it, he might as well make use of it.

Darcey frowned. ‘Who the hell’s Don Jarrett?’

‘He’s a Holocaust denier who lives in Bruges,’ Ben said. ‘Oh, and I’m Mrs Jarrett. Thanks so much.’

Minutes passed. Darcey paced up and down outside the villa, kicking loose gravel off the paving stones. Ben was beginning to think they’d have to find another way in when the surly Frenchwoman suddenly returned and invited them grudgingly inside. They followed her along endless marble-floored corridors, up a short flight of steps and then out through a set of double doors that led onto a broad balcony. Flowers spilled from pots everywhere. Beyond the elegant wrought-iron rail, the low sun cast a golden light on the sea.

Sitting in a high-backed wicker throne was the most ancient woman Ben had ever seen. She was tiny, dressed in a plain black dress and buckle shoes that barely reached the flagstones. Her hair was thin and white and drawn back under a headscarf. In one wizened hand she held a fan, which she was waving slowly to cool herself. The other clutched a string of rosary beads. A walking stick was propped against the arm of the wicker seat. The old woman’s body was withered and frail, as though every organ was on the verge of imminent shutdown – but behind the mass of wrinkles, her sharp blue eyes shone with alertness and strength of will. One look at her was enough to tell Ben this lady was a survivor.

Lying unfolded on Mimi Renzi’s lap was Ben’s scribbled note. As the French woman sullenly introduced them as Monsieur and Madame Jarrett, then left, the old woman’s eyes never left his.

Ben took off his dark glasses and the floppy hat. ‘Please don’t be alarmed, Signora Renzi,’ he said in Italian.

‘I speak English, Mr Hope,’ the old woman replied. Her voice was surprisingly strong. ‘And I do not think you have come here to murder me. Please, sit.’ She motioned at a pair of director’s chairs.

‘I didn’t murder anybody,’ Ben said.

‘I did not think you had,’ Mimi Renzi replied. ‘The Dark Medusa has always been surrounded by death and pain.’

‘The Dark Medusa?’

‘She is the reason I wanted to speak to you, Mr Hope.’ Mimi put down her fan on the white cast-iron table next to her, picked up a tiny golden bell and tinkled it. Almost instantly, a maid came running.

‘Elise, my visitors are thirsty. Would you please bring some drinks?’ Elise nodded, then scurried off.

‘This is Darcey Kane,’ Ben said. ‘She’s a friend.’

Darcey glanced at him, just a little surprised.

Mimi smiled. ‘
Enchantée.
’ Turning back to Ben, she said, ‘It makes me so happy to see you, Mr Hope. I was worried that my message had not reached you.’

‘I’ve been a little waylaid,’ Ben said, taking a seat with the holdall between his feet, very aware of the small military arsenal he’d brought into this little old lady’s home. ‘But now I’m here.’

‘Can you spare an old woman a few minutes of your time?’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Ben said.

Mimi Renzi looked pleased. ‘Good. Because I have a story to tell you.’

Chapter Sixty-Eight

‘I was born Simonetta Renzi in 1912,’ the old woman began. ‘A very long time ago. I am in my hundredth year, but God has blessed me with a clear memory. Though at times,’ she added darkly, ‘I wish he had not.’

She gestured about her. ‘I did not always live like this. My parents were peasant farm workers, both illiterate, who never left their village to the day they died. I had six brothers. All gone now.’ She paused, as though remembering each of them in turn. ‘Perhaps because I was the youngest, and the only girl, I knew from the start that the hardship of working on the land was not the life I wanted. At a young age, I taught myself to read and write, and I could sew and embroider beautifully. I was almost twelve when word came around that a local aristocrat was seeking a lady’s maid for his new bride.’

‘Count Rodingo De Crescenzo.’ Ben said.

Mimi nodded. ‘I was very mature for my age. Pretending to be fourteen, I presented myself to the count’s head servants and somehow managed to persuade them that I was suitable for the position. That is how I first came to meet Gabriella, then the newly wed Contessa De Crescenzo. We quickly became friends. It was she who first called me “Mimi”, after the seamstress heroine in Puccini’s opera “La Bohème”. The nickname has stuck with me all my life.’ The old woman paused again as Elise returned with drinks. The maid placed a Campari soda on the table at Mimi’s elbow, and a frosted bottle of white wine and a jug of iced lemon water on the side for Ben and Darcey. When she was gone, Mimi continued her story.

‘In many ways, Gabriella’s background reflected my own. She was born Gabriella Giordani in 1908, to an impoverished upper-middle-class Milanese family. By the time she was seventeen, her father had squandered much of his inherited wealth. All he had left to sell was his beautiful daughter. To help save her family from poverty she agreed to marry this Count De Crescenzo, twenty-five years her senior, and reluctantly went to live on his estate. I remember the house very well. It was a veritable palace, so huge that many parts of it were never used. And it was old, so old that some rooms and passages had even been forgotten. Gabriella took to wandering alone, exploring. One day she came on a hidden passage that led to a secret room which had been unused for many years. After she very discreetly asked the servants, she realised nobody knew it was even there.

‘It became her refuge. You see, she was so miserable. Her husband was a cruel man, a weak man who lived in the shadow of his domineering mother and took out his frustrations on his poor wife. He did everything he could to destroy her confidence. He ordered his manservant Ugo, a terrible brute of a man whom we all dreaded, to spy on her; and meanwhile he and his mother would regularly go through her personal belongings, so that she had no privacy. Only her secret diary, the key to which she wore on a neck chain, remained safe from their prying eyes. And only I remained her friend. She and I spent many hours together, sharing stories and dreaming of a time when our lives would be different.’

The old woman sighed and was silent for a moment, deep in thought. Ben wondered what the look in her eyes was. Regret, certainly. Guilt, possibly, too.

‘The one true solace in Gabriella’s life at that time was her love of art,’ Mimi continued. ‘But again, the count put a stop to that. When Gabriella decided to apply to the art academy to study formally, she found herself rejected. She was told by the board that she had no talent. No eye either for form or composition, and no possible future as an artist.’

‘Arseholes,’ Darcey muttered, reaching for some wine. Ben shot her a look.

Mimi went on. ‘She was suspicious, because she
knew
she had talent. She grew even more suspicious on discovering that the senior academy director who had most vociferously rejected her, and encouraged his colleagues to do the same, was a close acquaintance of her husband’s. Gabriella realised then that Rodingo had conspired against her, to ruin any chance she had. It was not until three months later, when he announced that he was throwing a large dinner party and she saw the same art academic’s name on the guest list, that she saw her opportunity for revenge. In the weeks leading up to the party, she devoted herself to recreating a lesser-known work by one of her most favourite artists. I think you may know what work I am referring to, Mr Hope?’

It wasn’t a far stretch to guess. ‘Goya’s “The Penitent Sinner”,’ Ben said. ‘Charcoal on laid paper.’

‘Correct,’ Mimi said.

‘What was the idea?’ Darcey asked, sipping wine. Ben could see she was getting drawn into the story.

‘The idea was to expose the so-called art scholar who had humiliated her. When the work was finished, I helped her to frame it, as she had taught me. Then, an hour before the dinner was due to begin, while the count was too occupied to notice, Gabriella asked me to hang her sketch on the dining-room wall where it would be in plain view of the esteemed expert.’ Mimi’s face wrinkled into a smile. ‘And the plan worked so beautifully. As the academy director took his place at the table, he suddenly leapt up and let out a roar of delight. “My God, De Crescenzo, you never told me you had a Goya!” Before Rodingo could speak, the academy director had rushed over to examine the sketch up close. “Magnificent,” he exclaimed over and over. I was watching through a keyhole. I could see the triumph on Gabriella’s face.’

‘I like this woman,’ Darcey said.

‘At this moment, Gabriella stood up and addressed him. “I am pleased you admire it so greatly, sir. For it was not the great Goya who drew it, but one too lacking in talent to be worthy of a place at your illustrious academy.” Rodingo was furious. When the guests had departed, he beat poor Gabriella and forbade her ever to paint again. He gave her one hour to destroy every piece of art she had ever produced, threatening that he would do so himself if she refused. As he watched from a window, Gabriella was forced to make a bonfire in the estate grounds. But she did not burn them all. Many she kept hidden in her secret room – including her perfect copy of “The Penitent Sinner”.’

‘The sketch that people have killed and died for, even to this day,’ Ben said. ‘What I want to know is why.’

Mimi smiled. ‘And you will, Mr Hope. But in order to understand why I wished to speak to you, you must please bear with me.’ She paused. ‘How much do you know about Russian history?’

Ben was taken aback. ‘A little,’ he said. ‘No more than most people do.’

‘We must pause our story of Gabriella and Rodingo for a moment,’ Mimi said, ‘and return to the year 1903. Back to the days of Imperial Russia, and an aristocrat named Alexander Borowsky. A distant cousin of the ruling Romanov dynasty, Borowsky was also the owner of the biggest gold mines in Siberia, and one of the richest men in the empire. He and his wife Sonja had three children: Natasha, Kitty and the youngest, Leo, born in 1895.’ Mimi drew in a long breath. ‘And now we come to it. For in that year of 1903, Alexander Borowsky came to be in possession of an object of terrible beauty and incredible value. It would become known as the Dark Medusa. And when I tell you what it was, you will begin to understand.’