Sandro Didn’t Know What he was going to say until he said it, although at least he had the instinct to say nothing at all until they’d let him through the door.
Massi had clearly brought Antonella Scarpa along as back-up; typical, Sandro thought, as they busied themselves nervously around the lock. Hiding behind a woman. The security shutter was a wire mesh, he noticed; was this because they intended the place to be a showroom, a kind of advertisement? No point in hiding the wares from the public.
Massi was complaining about the traffic; Sandro kept the information that the bridges were going to be closed to himself. He had turned up, at least, the great Direttore; Sandro’s ineradicable instinct for fear told him the man was very nervous: what had changed? Sandro had forced him out of his comfort zone, was that it? But this was his gallery.
‘It’s kind of you,’ was all Sandro said. ‘I don’t think this will take long.’ When he had made this arrangement, he marvelled, he had had no idea, none at all. But now he was here, now he could smell the air in this place, he knew he was on to something.
A row of lights flicked on, downlighting the dark-coloured walls, which were a kind of deep maroon. It was very cold. It occurred to him that they were practically underground, set back into the hillside, the great cold weight of earth and rock above them.
Buying a little time, Sandro walked along the row of framed work, some ink drawings of architectural detail, charcoal, a couple of oils that seemed to him to be poorly executed, but what did he know? A drawing of a girl lying on her back, reading a book; he stopped in front of the picture.
He turned.
‘You know a man called Claudio Gentileschi,’ he said. It was not a question; they both gaped at him under the sepulchral lighting. He focussed on Paolo Massi.
‘You met him a little more than ten years ago, at a reception at the synagogue, to which you were invited because your father was considered a friend of the Florentine Jewish community.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Paolo Massi seemed belatedly to recover his tongue. ‘Ten years ago? I – I – I have no idea what this has to do with, with your investigation.’
‘Claudio Gentileschi died on the same day that Veronica Hutton disappeared.’
That would have to do; it seemed to have the effect of relaxing Massi, just fractionally. He inclined his head; it occurred to Sandro with the weight of inevitability that Paolo Massi was very happy for him to draw the obvious conclusions from that simple fact.
‘Ten years is a long time,’ he said with an attempt at a smile. ‘But the name is familiar, yes.’
‘Gentileschi’s widow says your wife called on her,’ said Sandro. ‘To pay her respects. On Friday night.’
Massi’s smile was a little fixed. ‘My wife is very proper in these matters,’ he said.
‘But there had been a continued connection, obviously,’ said Sandro. ‘Between your family and theirs?’
Massi opened his mouth, and closed it again.
Reaching up to a hook beside the door to hang up her coat, it was Antonella Scarpa who spoke, over her shoulder, as if casually.
‘Claudio Gentileschi has sold the occasional piece of work through us, Paolo. Don’t you remember? He is rather a good artist, some beautiful drawings.’
Slowly Sandro turned to focus on her; he didn’t believe a word of it. She slotted her arms into the sleeves of another of her white work-coats, her uniform. She was prepared.
‘His own work?’
‘What do you mean?’ said Antonella Scarpa, and he saw through her in that moment, standing there looking severely at him, hands in her pockets, trying to bamboozle him.
You’re good, he thought, you’re good; is it love, or is it business, that makes you so good at lying for him? Across her shoulder he saw, through the window and out across the dark street, Gabi silhouetted in the window of her own shop, staring at them.
‘What I mean, Signorina Scarpa,’ he said, extemporizing, ‘is that I have information to the effect that for ten years Claudio Gentileschi has not merely been supplying you with the odd beautiful piece of his own work, as you put it. He has been a one-man production line of high-quality faked drawings, for you to sell on to your international customers. Your Germans, your Americans, your Russian billionaires with Riviera properties to furnish and money to launder – you must have been very happy indeed with the fall of communism, no?’
‘You’re talking nonsense,’ said Antonella Scarpa, calmly. ‘This is pure fantasy.’
Sandro held her gaze. ‘You thought you could put anything over on them, ignorant Russian peasants, did you? Well, let me tell you, when they find out that you’ve been cheating them, you’ll find out there are certain things those Russian peasant oligarchs are very good at indeed.’ He withdrew the flimsy cardboard folder from his bag and took out one of the drawings he’d lifted from Claudio’s studio.
‘You weren’t scared of the Guardia di Finanza, were you? Bet you were pleased with yourselves when you saw them off. Scared now?’
‘They found nothing,’ said Massi, faintly. ‘There was no evidence of any – of any impropriety.’ Scarpa shot him a glance, and he fell silent.
‘He was a good man,’ said Sandro, surprised by the fervour in his own voice, as he defended Claudio. ‘How did you talk him into it?’
Paolo Massi looked back at him, his jaw slack and weak, no longer the great patron of the arts, the Svengali to any susceptible, pretty student. No, thought Sandro, we haven’t even got to that yet, have we? The girls. First things first. He stayed calm.
‘I expect you used your father’s name, didn’t you? The old printing presses kept running through the war, the Jewish connection. With perhaps a hint of how he needed to make sure his wife, who was so much younger, would be taken care of after he’d gone?’
Helplessly Massi put out a hand for the drawing but Sandro pulled it back. ‘Even if we can’t trace all the Renaissance drawings you’ve sold over the past few years, one or two should be enough, don’t you think?’
Sandro moved on. ‘Are they out at the back?’ It felt as though he might almost have been speaking in tongues; it all came tumbling out, guesswork, improvisation, but even as he said it he knew it made sense.
‘Is that what you’re keeping there, the work you cleared out of Claudio’s studio, before anyone else knew he was dead? Pity to waste that investment you’ve been making in him all these years, and where are you going to get work of this quality?’ He held up the faded sepia drawing, Claudio’s life’s work. ‘A pity to waste it.’
And how did they get in? To Claudio’s studio? Could Claudio have given them a key from the beginning, proud, private Claudio? Wouldn’t that have seemed like they owned him?
But as the inconvenient questions posed themselves he noticed that Antonella Scarpa had moved to position herself between him and the door at the back of the gallery, down under the security light that he had watched from Gabi’s shop. He flicked a look back across the road towards her, his only ally, but the shop was dark now. Gabi had gone home.
‘I’d like a look in there,’ he said, easily. ‘If you don’t mind?’
‘And if we do?’ said Antonella Scarpa. He almost admired her; she had guts, at least. The fierce little Sarda in her white coat.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m sure the police could persuade you, couldn’t they?’
‘I think they’re busy just now,’ said Massi, sneering; Sandro observed him try to puff himself up, like some creature trying to make itself appear larger when threatened.
And with the two of them motionless and blocking him in in the near-dark, Sandro was just beginning to wonder what he would actually do if Luisa and Giuli didn’t turn up – or even if they did, would they be a match for these two? – when Massi’s telephone rang. And everything changed.
‘No way,’ said Sophia, her eyes wide. ‘Oh, my, God. No way, Jackson.’
Too chastened to feel more than a tiny twinge of satisfaction, Jackson just nodded. At least this was an improvement; as they’d walked to the bar Sophia’s eyes had been fixed on him, switching from silent reproach to sullen anger and back again. Couldn’t blame her, could he? Sorry, Sophia; he tried it out in his head, but it sounded pathetic. So he said nothing at all until they were out of the rain, and then he told them.
They were in a bar Jackson had never been in before, a back-street place that was long and narrow as a corridor, nowhere to sit, mirror along one wall dripping condensation and a shelf under it to rest your coffee on. The air was fusty with the odour of damp wool but ahead of them Hiroko had calmly threaded her way through the packed bodies and made a space. Jackson fetched coffee, struggling with the Italian, but nobody in this place spoke English.
‘So, Jackson,’ said Hiroko, placing herself square in front of him. ‘You have talked to Iris?’ He got the apologies out of the way, he seemed to have spent the day stumbling over his words what with one thing and another, while they stared him down. And then he came to it.
‘She thinks it’s Massi Ronnie was going away with,’ he said. ‘Actually, she knows.’
‘No way,’ said Sophia, round-eyed.
Hiroko remained silent, waiting for his evidence.
‘I don’t like him,’ she said quietly when he’d finished – or almost finished. ‘I never liked him, from the beginning, too much fake. And he actually does not know so much about painting; he dated two of the Uccello drawings wrong, and the techniques of the mediaeval, he knows nothing, Antonella knows more than him.’ Jackson stared at her; quiet, polite, attentive Hiroko, had been thinking this all along?
‘Only this is not evidence,’ she said patiently. ‘The Zecchi colours, the trip to Sicily – well, I agree, there is some kind of evidence, but in a – in a court of law?’
Jackson fumbled in his pocket, in a panic; could he have just stuck it in there? Had it fallen out?
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Look? Here?’ They stared at the tiny square of plastic. ‘Anyone got a phone?’ he asked, and Sophia took hers out only she seemed to have an iPhone all of a sudden, just like his. He looked at her; she bought it because of me, he realized, and they cost twice as much here. Ah, shit.
‘No good,’ he said apologetically, bringing out his own, ‘y’know, locked? Both of ’em. No way you can get around the contract with the iPhone. Stupid, huh?’ He tried to smile at her, but ducked his head before she could glare back. Hiroko set her own phone on the counter, a modest, scratched little number. ‘Yeah,’ he said enthusiastically, ‘yeah, great.’
Calmly she slid off the back, held out her hand for the card, slid it in over the contacts, replaced the battery, turned it on. The screen opened.
‘Message,’ said Hiroko, pointing to a small icon in the corner. ‘Answerphone message?’
‘Yeah, OK,’ said Jackson, itching to get his hands on the phone but not wanting to muscle in. Hiroko handed it to him wordlessly. Call info, missed calls, down, down, and there he was. He held up the screen.
‘Paolo,’ said Sophia, sceptically. ‘Well, it’s not as if it isn’t, like, about the third most common name in Italy or anything, is it?’
Hiroko gave her a soft look of reproof. ‘You just have to telephone the number,’ she suggested. ‘And then we know.’ Jackson handed her the phone. ‘You,’ he said. ‘You do it.’
Iris stopped outside the apartment building, soaked to the bone. She’d had to walk all the way, because something was up with the traffic – no buses, no taxis, nothing. She didn’t know if she’d even be able to remember the way, but she was here.
At the crossroads a drain had burst, bubbling up through the grating like a geyser to meet a torrent pouring down the Via San Domenico from Fiesole. As she made her way through it the thought occurred to Iris that this was more than just another traffic screw-up, it was a full-scale natural disaster. Ma might be watching it on television; I could call, thought Iris, with longing. After; I’ll call after.
Looking up at the building’s grim facade, she thought that it would be warm inside, at least. She didn’t want to start this thing by asking for something dry to wear, but what the hell. Too late now. She leaned on the doorbell, hard.