‘She might have some idea of where he travelled to during the last few months.’
‘Why do you want to know that?’ Brunetti asked, honestly curious.
‘No special reason, Guido. But we like to know this sort of thing, once a person’s name has come under our noses more than once.’
‘And his had?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Nothing specific, if I have to tell the truth.’ Carrara sounded disappointed that he didn’t have a definite accusation to pass on to Brunetti. ‘Two men we arrested at the airport here, more than a year ago, with Chinese jade figurines, said only that they had heard him named in conversation. They were only carriers; they didn’t know much at all, didn’t even know the value of what they were carrying.’
‘And that was?’Brunetti asked.
‘Billions. The statues were traced back to the National Museum in Taiwan. They’d disappeared three years before; no one ever learned how.’
‘Were those the only things taken?’
‘No, but they’re the only things recovered. So far.’
‘When else did you hear his name?’
‘Oh, from one of the little people we keep on a string down here. We can get him for drugs or for breaking and entering any time we want him, so we let him run loose, and in return he brings us back a piece of information now and again. He said that he had overheard Semenzato’s name mentioned on the phone by one of the men he sells things to.’
‘Stolen things?’
‘Of course. He has nothing else to sell.’
‘Was the man speaking to Semenzato, or about him?’
‘About him.’
‘Did he tell you what he heard?’
‘The man who was speaking said only that the other person should try to speak to Semenzato. At first, we assumed the reference to him was innocent. After all, the man was a museum director. But then we caught the two men at the airport, and then Semenzato turned up dead in his office. So I thought it was time to call and tell you.’ Carrara paused long enough to signal that he was finished with what he had to give, and now it was time to see what he could get. ‘What have you found out about him there?’
‘Remember the Chinese exhibition a few years ago?’
Carrara grunted in assent.
‘Some of the pieces that were sent back to China were copies.’
Carrara’s whistle, either of surprise or admiration for such a feat, came clearly through the line.
‘And it seems he was silent partner in a pair of antique shops, one here and one in Milan,’ Brunetti continued.
‘Whose?’
‘Francesco Murino Do you know him?’
Carrara’s voice was slow, measured. ‘Only in the way we knew Semenzato, unofficially. But his name has turned up more than a few times.’
‘Anything definite?’
‘No, nothing. It looks like he covers himself very well.’ There was a long pause, and then Carrara added, in a voice suddenly grown more serious, ‘Or someone covers things for him.’
‘Like that, is it?’ Brunetti asked. It could mean anything: some branch of the government, Mafia, a foreign government, even the Church.
‘Yes. Every lead we get turns to nothing. We hear his name, and then we don’t. The finance police have checked him three times in the last two years, and he’s clean.’
‘Has his name ever been linked to Semenzato’s?’
‘Not by anyone here. What else have you got?’
‘Are you familiar with Dottoressa Lynch?’
‘L’americana?’ Carrara asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Of course I’m familiar with her. I have a degree in art history, Guido, after all.’
‘Is she that well known?’
‘Her book on Chinese art is the best one around. She’s still in China, isn’t she?’
‘No, she’s here.’
‘In Venice? What’s she doing there?’
Brunetti had asked himself the same question. Trying to decide whether to go back to China, whether to stay here because of her lover, or, now, waiting to see if her former lover had been murdered. ‘She came here to talk to Semenzato about the pieces that were sent back to China. Two toughs beat her up last week. Cracked her jaw and broke some ribs. It was in the papers here.’
Again, Carrara’s whistle came across the line from Rome, but this one somehow managed to convey compassion. ‘There was nothing here,’ he said.
‘Her assistant in China, a Japanese woman who came here to oversee the return of the exhibits to China, died in an accident out there.’
‘Freud says somewhere that there are no accidents, doesn’t he?’Carrara asked.
‘I don’t know if Freud meant to include China when he said that, but, no, it doesn’t sound like it was an accident.’
Carrara’s grunt could have meant anything. Brunetti chose to interpret it as assent and said, ‘I’m going to talk to Dottoressa Lynch tomorrow morning.’
‘Why?’
‘I want to try to convince her to leave the city for a while, and I want to learn more about the pieces that were substituted. What they were, whether they have a market value—’
Carrara interrupted him. ‘Of course they have a market value.’
‘Yes, I understand that, Giulio. But I want to get some idea of what the market would be, whether they could be sold openly.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t understand what you meant, Guido.’ His pause could have been read as an apology, and then he added, ‘If it’s coming out of a dig in China, you can pretty much put any price you want on it.’
‘That rare?’ Brunetti asked.
‘That rare. But what do you want to know about it?’
‘Chiefly, I want to know where or how the copies could have been made.’
Carrara interrupted again, ‘Italy is full of studios that make copies, Guido. Everything: Greek statues, Etruscan jewellery, Ming pottery, Renaissance paintings. You name it, and there’s an Italian artisan who can make you one that will fool the experts.’
‘But haven’t you people down there got all sorts of ways to detect them? Surely I’ve read that. Carbon-14 and things like that.’
Carrara laughed. ‘Talk to Dottoressa Lynch, Guido. She has a whole chapter on it in her book, so I’m sure she can tell you things that will keep you awake on long winter nights.’ Brunetti heard noise from the other end, then silence as Carrara covered the phone with his hand. In a moment, he was back. ‘Sorry, Guido, but I’ve got a call coming in from Vietnam; it’s taken two days to get it through. Call me if you hear anything, and I’ll call you if I do.’ Before Brunetti could agree, Carrara was gone and the line was dead.
* * * *
Chapter Fourteen
Entirely unconscious of how hot his office had become, Brunetti sat at his desk and considered what Carrara had told him. Take a museum director, add guards, labour unions, stir in a bit of the Mafia, and the result was a cocktail strong enough to give the art theft branch a bad hangover. He drew a piece of paper from his drawer and began to make a list of the information he needed to get from Brett. He wanted complete descriptions of the pieces she had discovered to be false. He needed more information about how the switch could have been done and where and how the false pieces could have been made. And he needed a complete account of her every conversation or exchange with Semenzato.