A gruelling afternoon for Cesco, going through the studio’s contacts book to let clients, suppliers and the rest know of Raffaele’s death, cancelling or rearranging sessions and orders as required. Mostly, however, his task was to console. Raff had had such exuberant charm that everyone who met him even just once considered him a friend. And their grief only served to remind him of what he himself had lost.
The phone was by the computer. He played idly with its mouse as he traded stories about Raff. Their security app was still open on the screen from checking the time they’d set the alarm last night. He noticed something odd. Someone had been in here last Sunday afternoon. Surely Raffaele, though he’d not mentioned it and they’d had no job on. He brought his conversation to an end and gave the computer his full attention. Raff’s dyslexia had meant leaving school almost without qualifications, so being hired by the museum had been a kind of vindication to him. It had infuriated him when they’d insisted he use their phone and laptop, because it meant they didn’t trust him. But he’d put up with it even so, because he valued the contract so highly.
Besides, it had been easy enough to get around.
Raff had been no IT buff, but he could wipe a browser history. Router logs, however, were another matter. He opened their one now, searched last Sunday afternoon, and was rewarded with a long list of URLs. He clicked a few at random. All were related in some way to an American art dealer called Miranda Harcourt, who’d apparently turned a slot on a popular antiques programme into a devoted following on social media by showcasing her lifestyle travelling the Mediterranean and the wider world buying expensive pieces with which she fitted out the homes of stars and billionaires.
Beautiful, slim, upbeat and perfectly groomed, with gorgeous clothes showing artful hints of nipple and thigh as she was helped in and out of the backs of flash cars by a burly, stone-faced chauffeur whose humourless devotion was perhaps another part of the fantasy. Yet there was a darker side too. A Reddit thread accused her of smuggling stolen artefacts back to the States to sell through the string of high-end dealerships she part-owned and helped promote, as well as on dark web auctions. The manager of her Miami dealership had been jailed for selling stolen Inca treasures, and there were rumours that she herself was under investigation. He checked her dealership website. It was filled with striking artefacts from Europe, South America and Asia. Her bio had links to her social media accounts. He clicked on her Twitter feed – and sat back, stunned. For, according to her latest tweets, she was on a European tour at this very moment.
And she’d been in Naples just last night.
Professor Zeno D’Agostino’s circle of academic friends all despised the Neapolitan district of Vomero for its shallow chic. By contrast, his new young wife Emanuela adored it. A testament to his devotion, then, that he’d given up his beloved Avvocata home on their marriage to buy a penthouse here instead, though it had cost far more than he could rightly afford, and had meant putting much of his private library into storage.
But then he was hardly the first man to lose his head over a beautiful woman.
Her white Mercedes cabriolet was in its spot. Of course it was. The one time he’d have been glad to find her out shopping, naturally she was at home. He pulled in alongside, then sat there a few moments, building himself up for the coming confrontation. He was a man of distinction, he told himself. The youngest ever history professor at Napoli’s Università di Federico II; a winner of multiple awards and honours, whose books and papers had been translated into over twenty languages. His courses were always full, and with sparkle-eyed young women too – young women just like Emanuela had been when they’d first met. And maybe he was starting to get on a little, but a few still came up to him after lectures to ask questions and flutter lashes. Who was she, then, that he had to answer to?
What else had she expected?
He opened his eyes and lifted his chin. He felt Vesuvian suddenly, the magma bubbling molten beneath his granite face. He took the elevator up, paused again outside his front door. The TV was on and tuned to local news. His spirit flagged. He went on in all the same. Emanuela was lying sideways on the couch, her shoes kicked off, hugging a velvet cushion to her belly like her longed-for pregnancy. She looked up with burning eyes, her mouth and nose so scrunched and ugly that it was hard to remember how stunning she could be.
‘What have you done?’ she demanded.
‘Done?’ he frowned.
She pointed at the TV. ‘Don’t give me that bullshit.’
He stared at her, perplexed. ‘You think I had something to do with that? Why ever would I do such a thing?’
‘Revenge.’
‘Revenge? I hardly knew the guy.’
‘Because he was my friend.’
‘Your friend!’ scoffed Zeno. The word somehow undid him. ‘The man fucking you, you mean?’
‘About time someone did.’
‘You whore,’ he spat. ‘You filthy fucking whore. What the hell did you expect?’ It felt good finally to say it, hot and purging and good. But then he saw her shock and realised she hadn’t truly believed it, not until now.
‘I’ll tell them,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell the police.’
‘Tell them what? I was here with you all last night, remember? And in the car with four others when it happened.’
‘So? I know it wasn’t you yourself. You don’t have the balls. It was your bastard cousin Claudio. Oh yes. I saw you whispering together.’
‘That’s bullshit!’ he exploded. He wagged a finger in her face. ‘I warn you, one word to anyone…’
‘And what?’
‘I expect a Mercedes soft top will burn just as well as a yellow Lamborghini.’
She scrambled away from him, to her feet and to the door. The fear and loathing on her face gave him a rare sense of power. He took a pace towards her. She backed away. ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Go stay with your mother until you’ve rid yourself of this absurd delusion. But I warn you: one word to anyone, even her…’ He left the threat unfinished, turned his back, picked up the remote, took it to his armchair. He felt oddly calm, though his chest was hot and his hands were trembling. He flicked through channels until he found golf. It was a game he despised yet found perversely soothing. All that sunshine and bright blue water. Those lush fairways and perfect greens.
Several minutes passed. Footsteps clacked on the tiled hallway, somewhere between a fast walk and a run. The front door slammed. The elevator set off downwards. His sense of righteous vindication ebbed away, leaving him empty and alone. He went to the drinks tray for a large vermouth and a bag of cashew nuts, then sat back down.
To sell one’s soul. And for such poisoned fruit!
The phone was next to his elbow. He sat there, not looking at it, yet waiting for it to ring.