Sitting in the archives of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, Remi pored over the records of the four paintings once again, looking for any trace of evidence of the painting of Famine by Frerik Peeters. There was nothing. Her Dutch friend, the Belgian art curator Eleah Smets, had also double checked and come up with nothing.
Remi had hoped that the Uffizi, as one of Europe’s great art museums, might have something new on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but once again she had come up short. She knew she had been grasping at straws. The Uffizi specialized in Italian art, not outré paintings by minor Dutch artists.
And certainly nothing about the set’s most elusive painting. Other than a few references to Hendrick van Berckenrode commissioning the piece, there was no trace of the painting of Famine at all. It was like it had vanished into thin air.
Remi growled in frustration and leaned back from her chair, rubbing her temples.
“Nothing?” Daniel asked. He had been sitting nearby, talking to contacts on his mobile phone. He had also come up with nothing.
“No,” Remi sighed. “What time is it?”
“Ten. We’ve been here for hours.” He didn’t say this out of any complaint, but merely frustration. The local police had gotten the Uffizi’s curators to keep the archives open as long as Remi needed them. It was the least they could do to after bungling their monitoring of Manetti.
Further investigation of the house had revealed nothing of importance. No evidence had been found that Costa had any hand in the murder, nor had flight records shown he had been outside of Italy for more than a year.
Frustratingly, there were no notes on astrology or marks in any of Manetti’s books on the subject. Nothing to help them understand better what he had been delving into. Whatever he had wanted to know about his painting, he had kept it in his head, and that knowledge had died with him.
So Remi had been stuck here in the archives looking for historical clues, instead of out on the streets looking for a serial murderer. All the while, she was bothered by the knowledge that the archives holding the answers to her questions about the Church of St. Pantaleon of Nicomedia were only a ten-minute taxi ride away. The next step, perhaps the last step, to her learning the secret of the cryptex, the medieval riddle that had intrigued her for her entire professional career.
“I don’t know what to do,” Remi said, gesturing with despair at the piles of old books and files in front of her. “No records, no bills of sale …”
“What if it was never sold?” Daniel asked.
Remi looked up. “I beg your pardon?”
“You were saying that there’s no record of the paintings ever having been together. Maybe that was part of the plan. They held this great secret, so you couldn’t have them all hanging in the same room or someone who knew astrology might figure it out. So they were kept in separate houses or separate cities. Maybe even separate countries, even right at the beginning. What if Hendrick van Berckenrode allowed Frerik Peeters to keep his painting of Famine, wanting one to stay close while the other three got sold elsewhere? Then maybe it never got sold after that. It might have stayed in the family all this time. My mother took me to aristocratic houses here in Europe where there have been paintings kept by the family for centuries.”
Remi’s jaw dropped. “I … I never thought of that. You might be right. That’s brilliant!”
And I’m a fool. Why didn’t I think of that? It’s my job to think of these things.
Remi pulled out her phone.
“What are you doing?” Daniel asked.
“It’s still afternoon in the United States. I’m texting a genealogist I know to look up any surviving relatives of Frerik Peeters.”
“After four hundred years? Aren’t there going to be heaps of them?”
“Yes, but we’ll look for direct descendants, not nephews or nieces. If we’re lucky, we’ll find Peeters’s great-great-grandson.”
“Add a few greats to that. This is a hell of a long shot.”
Remi looked at him sadly. “Long shots are all we have now.”
* * *
Remi’s genealogist colleague pulled an all-nighter in the United States to trace the complex history and lineage of the Peeters family, which meant that it wasn’t until Remi had spent a restless night at the hotel and a nervous morning constantly checking her phone before she finally got an answer back.
When she did, all was forgiven. The genealogist had struck gold.
Italo Peeters, the many-times-great-grandson of Frerik Peeters, lived in Bologna, just an hour and a half drive from Florence. The son of a Dutch father and Italian mother, he had worked as an accountant before his retirement the year before.
Torsson found he had a criminal record. His ex-wife lodged a complaint of physical abuse and used it as ground for divorce. Peeters had also been in trouble with the law for drunk and disorderly conduct, damage to property when a café tried to kick him out and he went on a rampage. He had also paid a hefty fine for defecating on a peace memorial.
“Sounds like a charmer,” Daniel said when the Interpol agent read out the list to them.
“There’s more,” Torsson said. “Phone records show he had called Manetti several times in the past few weeks.”
“Did Manetti call him?” Remi asked.
“No. Odd, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps not,” Remi mused. “Maybe he heard somehow that Manetti had purchased Pestilence. Then he tracked down his phone number and started badgering him to sell it.”
“And when that didn’t work, he decided to take what he wanted?” Daniel said. “Yeah, could be.”
“The only problem with that theory is there are no flight records showing him going to the United States,” Torsson said. “He could have gone to France on the train, paying cash, but there would be a record if he boarded an international flight.”
“The killer has shown himself to be very resourceful,” Remi said. “Perhaps he has a false passport.”
“Those aren’t too hard to buy here in Europe,” Torsson conceded. “Especially Belgian passports. There was a big scandal a few years ago when it was discovered Belgian officials had sold thousands of blank passports to the black market.”
“Ah, Europe. So civilized,” Daniel said. That got him sour looks from the two Europeans.
Remi decided to ignore the comment. “We need to get to Bologna.”
Daniel nodded. “Even if the Belgians didn’t help him out, there’s always the possibility that he hired someone to make the U.S. hit. And if he isn’t the perpetrator, he might be the next victim. Torsson, call ahead to the Bologna police to put him in protective custody. And make sure they do a better job than the idiots here in Florence.”
Torsson got on the phone. “I’ll also ask them if he has a painting of Famine in his house. Then I’ll rent a car for us.”
* * *
Within an hour they were on the highway out of Florence in a rented car with the Interpol agent at the wheel, weaving through traffic and breaking the speed limit with all the enthusiasm of someone who knew the law was on his side.
His phone rang.
“Try not to kill us when you answer that,” Remi said from the back seat.
He chuckled, pulled out his phone and answered it in English. “Hello? You can’t? Parlez-vous francais? Non? One moment.”
He handed the phone back to Remi. “The arresting officer’s English isn’t up to the task, and my Italian isn’t much better. You speak with him.”
Remi took the phone. “Hello, this is Remi Laurent speaking, civilian advisor to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Hello,” a gruff male voice said. “This is Aurelio Russo of the Bologna police department. Is agent Daniel Walker there?”
“I’m afraid he doesn’t speak Italian.” Or at least doesn’t admit to.
“Is there no other officer of the law there I can speak to?”
Remi frowned. You mean a man? He had used the masculine form of the word in Italian. “I’m the only one in the car who speaks Italian, and I am temporarily an officer of the law.”
Remi shot a nervous glance at Daniel, but her partner didn’t react.
At least he didn’t understand that bit of Italian.
“Very well,” Officer Russo said, sounding irritated. “We found the painting you requested.”
Remi’s heart took a few skips.
“Where was it?”
“Hanging in his dining room.”
Remi cocked her head. Who would keep a painting of Famine in their dining room?
A psychotic, that’s who.
“Keep him in custody. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“Are those Agent Walker’s orders?”
“Yes,” Remi snapped, hanging up.
She wished she could have slammed it. That was the only thing she missed about the old landline phones. You could give them a good slam when you felt like it.
But she couldn’t stay angry for long. They were finally about to see one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse face to face.