He explained that he was after information about a painting, and understood that Forster may have had it once.
“What is this? A guessing game? Tell me which picture. I have handled one or two in my time.”
Argyll suggested that it might be better if they met. It was a delicate matter.
“Don’t be such a damned fool! Tell me what it is or stop wasting my time.”
“Very well. I wish to ask you about an Uccello, which was in your possession shortly after it was stolen from the Palazzo Straga in Florence in 1963.”
There was a long silence from the other end, followed, rather irritatingly, by what sounded very much like a laugh. The secretary in the gallery was impressed as well.
“Was it indeed?” Forster said. “Well, well. Maybe I should talk to you about that. Whoever you are.”
He managed to say it with something approaching a contemptuous sneer. Argyll disliked him intensely already, but nonetheless agreed to meet him, in Norfolk, at eleven the next morning. It was, he thought as he put the phone down, a pity he couldn’t persuade Flavia to take a more active interest in locking the man up.
“Know what you mean,” said the secretary in the flat accent of south London, interpreting the sour look on his face with accuracy. “Real bleeder.”
Argyll glanced at her, and decided to be forthcoming. “Is he as bad as he sounds?”
“God, yes. Worse. Luckily, he almost never comes here.”
“Why does he come here at all? I thought he had a job with some old lady?”
“Oh, she died at the end of last year. Her successor took one look and kicked him out. So he’s a bit short of money. God knows why he’s allowed in here though. The boss loathes him, but somehow he’s part of the fittings. Every time he turns up my life’s a misery. No creep like an old creep. Hey, what’s all this about then? Been a naughty boy, has he?”
Argyll shrugged noncommittally. “If anything, he’s been a very clever boy, I think,” he said, unashamedly doing his best to blacken the name of a man who, for all he knew, might be as innocent as a new-born babe.
“Oh, yes? Did you mention something about a stolen picture? Lifted it, did he? When was this?”
Even Argyll, however, retained some shred of discretion. So he looked vague, said he really didn’t know all the details, and asked about how to get to the village of Weller, Norfolk. The girl was disappointed in him, and in a disapproving voice told him that Liverpool Street was the place to start.
Outside, he stood on the street and thought about it. Could he be bothered? He did have some time to kill before the plane back, but on the other hand was reluctant to go interfering in Flavia’s job too much. Over the years, he’d decided that the more police work was left to her, the safer their relationship was. It was only the purely malicious desire to cause this arrogant voice on the other end of the phone some discomfort which prevented him from dismissing the idea entirely.
He decided he’d sleep on it. He had friends to visit, and he’d go and see them that evening. Then he’d rest, relax and consider. In the morning, he would decide what to do.
4
While Argyll was distracting himself in this fashion, Flavia was similarly stuck with activities which, in her opinion, made no sensible contribution to the maintenance of Italy’s slightly shaky grasp on law and order. She was, for much of the day he left, doing her paperwork.
It had been building up for days. Vast quantities had made their way to her desk, liked it, and settled down to nest and produce offspring. This was the disadvantage with having made yourself semi-indispensable over the years. Sometimes she didn’t quite understand why it was that certain administrative matters required her attention, but there it was. A mountain of reports on thefts, a hillock of reports on arrests and a virtual Alpine range of standard nonsense about all sorts of things. Archives wanted a new photocopier. What about Susannah’s day off next Thursday to go to her ex-husband’s wedding? An odd request, that one, but why not? No harm in being broad-minded. Accounts wondered whether another researcher had really needed to stay in the most expensive hotel in Mantua on a routine trip recently.
And on, and on. What would happen, she wondered absently, if she shredded the whole lot? No; that wouldn’t work. Lose an entire art gallery and no one turns a hair; lose a copy of an invoice and the whole world gets turned upside down until it is found. She decided instead to experiment with a holding action. On top of every form, note and memorandum she wrote her initials in large letters, and then sent them all back to where they’d come from. See how long it takes to figure that out, she thought.
That taken care of, she turned to the real reports and, to cheer herself up, began with the arrests and recoveries. Only two of those, one concerning a stash of seventeenth-century ceramics in a left luggage locker at Naples railway station, which came with the observation that they had probably been stolen and did anyone know where they’d been stolen from? And an exultant note from Paolo, announcing that the case of the Leonardo man had finally been wound up. Flavia took it up to Bottando. It wasn’t often they managed to bring a case to a decided end, complete with an arrest, confession and evidence, and he liked to know on the rare occasion that it did happen.
“Oh good,” Bottando said as she told him and handed over the report. “Thank heavens for that. Who is he?”
She grinned. “Just an art student, trying to earn a bit on the side. Bit of a problem what to do with him, really.”
True enough. The Leonardo man had attracted more than his fair share of attention in the press, which had pounced on a nice story of Italian criminality. It was simple enough; someone had been producing, and peddling, what were claimed to be Leonardo juvenilia on to an imbecile, and generally foreign, public. At least half a dozen people had trotted off home bearing bits of paper supposedly produced by a youthful, but already inquisitive, Renaissance genius.
As far as forgeries went, they were not in the top class: the handwriting was OK, but the paper was new and the ink was so obviously ballpoint that it shouldn’t have deceived a child. And the subject matter had made Flavia gurgle with merriment when confronted with the first in a series of outraged collectors. Had they honestly, she asked, taken seriously something claiming to be a design for a late fifteenth-century vacuum cleaner? Quite ingenious, and might have worked had you persuaded some servant to set to work on a pair of bellows large enough, but really. And what about the hand-cranked. Renaissance food-processor? Personally, she thought that if people were daft enough to be taken in by such an obvious joke, she didn’t see why they should be helped out, at the taxpayers’ expense, by the Italian legal system.
But, of course, it had got into the papers, and Corrado Argan decided that something had to be done. And so last night they’d hauled him in. A nice lad, apparently, who’d used his skill to pay for a lifestyle marginally above the penurious level at which Italian art students habitually live. What’s more, he’d implicated a dealer, who he claimed had been behind the entire thing.
“I suppose we interview him, make clucking noises and see if we can get him off with a caution or a suspended sentence.”
“I guess.”
Then Bottando rethought. “On the other hand, it’s about time we were seen to be cracking down on something. Tell you what, get the magistrate in Florence to lock him up for a week or so. Who is it?”