Cesco settled back into his chair. The police computer wasn’t hooked up to the Internet, so he brought up Miranda Harcourt’s website on his phone instead; but he could find no trace of the funerary stele, however long he searched, whatever terms he used. But he was sure that was where he’d seen it when he’d checked out her site the other day. One hundred per cent sure. And the fact that it was now gone could hardly have been more damning.
He drummed his fingers on the table. A museum piece on Harcourt’s website. Yet there was no way Raff could have stolen it that day out at the warehouse. They’d loaded and unloaded the van together; he’d have noticed a heavy piece like that. And if Emilia had subsequently brought it to the studio for fresh photography, it would only have been after entering it onto her new database, so that its absence would quickly have been noted.
His mental jigsaw fell apart. He tried to fit the pieces to a different pattern. Raff had always been on the lookout for new photographic ideas and techniques. With the museum such an important client, he’d spent hours browsing the websites of rival institutes, auction houses and dealerships, in search of inspiration. They both had. All too likely, then, that Raff had stumbled across Harcourt’s website by accident, only to recognise the stele or some other piece. As evidence of wrongdoing, it would have been far too flimsy to risk alienating a top client. Safer and easier to keep an eye on it by following Miranda Harcourt on Twitter. Then, when she’d announced her next visit to Naples, he’d done a fuller background check, then had gone down to the Lungomare to see who she was meeting. And that was why that waitress had thought they’d left together – because when she’d left her hotel, and walked right by him, he’d jumped up to follow.
Another riff of fingers on the desk. It fitted, yet was circumstantial. And it invited an uncomfortable question: who then was the real thief? Someone with access to the pieces before they were catalogued. Someone who could scrub existing records, cover traces, hide gaps. Someone no one would suspect. And someone Raff liked, too, or he’d have mentioned it. Put like that, there was only one candidate. Sweet, doe-eyed, motherly Emilia herself, she of the almond cakes and chocolate puddings, the helpless tears of apparent grief.
It was still only a suspicion, but one strong enough to share. But who with? Emilia was his friend. He didn’t want to smear her with false allegations of theft or – God forbid – involvement in Raff’s death. Yet he couldn’t let it slide either. He only knew one person at the museum well enough to approach with something this delicate and explosive. Fortunately, that happened to be Il Direttore Taddeo Santoro himself, who’d taken him and Carmen under his wing on their arrival in Naples, minor celebrities that they’d been after their Alaric triumph. Cesco called his office now, only to find that he’d gone home already to work on some upcoming speech. He put down the phone and sat there brooding. This wasn’t information to sleep on, not with a hole in the museum’s security and one man already dead. He knew where Santoro lived too. The other side of Naples, yes, but only twenty minutes or so beyond his own apartment.
He zipped the memory card away in his pocket, then turned off the computer and headed for the stairs.
‘She’s my wife!’ shouted Zeno D’Agostino, finally losing his temper. ‘I insist you bring her to the phone!’
‘Oh, you insist on it, do you?’ scoffed his mother-in-law. ‘And if she says no? What exactly will you do to us then?’
The question threw D’Agostino. Was it possible Emanuela had told her about his involvement in Raffaele Conte’s death? Yet her tone expressed no fear, only contempt. ‘You’ll see,’ he said darkly.
The phone went dead in his hand. He stared at it for a moment, seething, and was halfway through redialling when there came a knock at his front door. His neighbour Alicia, no doubt, back with her wretched petition. He went angrily to answer it, finally in the right frame of mind to tell her where to stuff it. To his dismay, it wasn’t Alicia at all, but rather yesterday’s two detectives, Romeo Izzo and Valentina Messana. He had to steel himself not to slam his door in their faces. ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded. ‘How did you even get in?’
‘Your neighbour,’ said Izzo placidly. ‘A tall man. Russian, I think.’
‘Ukrainian,’ corrected D’Agostino, for it wasn’t in his nature to let mistakes go. ‘Well? What can I do for you?’
‘A few minutes, that’s all. One or two follow-up questions from yesterday.’
‘And it has to be now, does it? Only I have an engagement.’
‘A man’s been murdered. If your engagement is more important…’
He took a breath. ‘No, no. Of course not. Come in.’ He stepped aside for them, then closed the door before any more of his neighbours could see them.
‘Is your wife here?’ asked Messana. ‘We were hoping to speak to her too.’
‘My wife?’
‘Emanuela, isn’t it? Is she here?’
‘Not right now. No.’
‘Will she be back?’
‘What is this? Am I her keeper?’ Silence fell. Both detectives regarded him curiously. He ran a finger around his collar. ‘Not tonight, as it happens. She’s gone to see her mother.’
‘Ah. Is that right?’
‘Of course it’s right. Why would I lie?’
‘When did she leave? Only your good neighbour told us she drove off last night in quite a state.’
‘What is this? What are you implying? Am I under arrest?’
‘Do you need to be?’
His heart was pounding so hard, he could feel his cheeks burn. The two detectives smiled identical police smiles at him, the ones that said that they knew everything. Crazy thoughts rushed through his mind. Say whatever it took to stay out of custody tonight. Fly out first thing tomorrow to some non-extradition country. Change his name, get plastic surgery, go to ground. But, almost as swiftly, reality came crushing back down. They’d arrest him before he even took off, then use his flight as a confession. They’d freeze his accounts to leave him destitute within a month. And he discovered, to his mild surprise, that his reputation mattered too much to him simply to surrender it without a fight. The self-knowledge gave him a certain courage. What proof could they possibly have, after all? Only supposition and circumstantial evidence. He was a man of distinction, blessed with influence and friends. Hold his nerve and they’d struggle even to bring it to court. All this passed through his head in a second or two. His heart resettled. His complexion returned to normal. He found himself entering a curious state of detachment, as though watching it all on a screen. With a polite smile, he gestured towards his living room. ‘Come with me, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you everything I can.’
The traffic had grown even heavier while Cesco had been in the police station. Fortunately, the Harley allowed him to weave swiftly through it, so that it took him only fifty minutes to pass through Naples and out the other side to the wealthy suburb of Posillipo. He dawdled along its waterfront of chic shops and expensive restaurants, looking for his turning. He’d only been here once before, and that by dead of night. But there it was. He remembered the orange and yellow striped awning on that cafe. He turned up it, into the hinterland of pricey apartment blocks then across a junction up a poorly lit, narrow and winding cobbled lane in such disrepair that one might have been forgiven for thinking this the poorer part of town.
If so, one couldn’t have been more wrong.
A better clue was given by the long, high walls on either side, many topped by wire or broken glass, as well as by the automated gates and the glimpses they afforded of the fabulous villas strung along this lane like pearls on a necklace. The Santoros lived right at the top, so that Cesco wound slowly back and forth for nearly five minutes before he reached it. There was nowhere to park outside, but the lane petered out just a little further on, he knew, ending in a patch of broken ground where people could turn their cars, or leave them to hike the hilltop.
He parked beside a gold Ford Ka, packed away his helmet, walked back down the lane. The slap of his footsteps on the rutted cobbles emphasised just how quiet it was. Like the other properties, Taddeo’s was shielded by a high wall and an automated gate. There was a thin gap between the gate and posts, however, through which the house was visible. Some lights were on, upstairs and down. He could hear Wagner playing. He pressed the buzzer. The music was turned off and the upstairs lights went out, then the downstairs. But the gate didn’t open and no one answered. He buzzed again. Still no response. He stood there uncertainly. The death threat letter had demanded an end to excavations, yet Taddeo had pushed on regardless. Surely that made him a plausible next target.
Cesco considered calling the police. But maybe Taddeo simply wasn’t in the mood for visitors. Besides, his presence here would take too much explaining. On the other hand, he couldn’t just leave it. The gate was easy to scale by its hinges. He vaulted it now, lowered himself on the other side. The gravelled drive was bordered by lush lawns of springy grass. He walked along the verge, careful to make no noise. The drive curled in a wide arc around the front of the house, the better to dazzle guests with the magnificence of its view out of the bay, before arriving at a large forecourt with a classical fountain at its heart that doubled as a kind of roundabout to help the flow of traffic for the grand parties Taddeo and his senator wife threw on the rare occasions she was back in town.
Intruder spotlights suddenly snapped on, so bright they made him squint. They illuminated a horrific scene. A man – Taddeo Santoro from the look of it – was on his knees in front of the fountain, his wrists tied behind his back with orange rope, his chest resting on its low stone rim, and a white pillowcase over his head, which was tipped forward so that his face was completely submerged beneath the water, as if bobbing for apples. Cesco walked dizzily across the gravel to him. He hauled him from the water by his shoulder, rolling him onto his back, on the outside chance that his life could yet be saved. It was Taddeo for sure; he could see his face and beard through the sopping wet cotton of the pillowcase. Bizarrely, there appeared to be other objects in there too, though he couldn’t make them out. And drowning obviously hadn’t been good enough, for there was a savage gash in Taddeo’s white silk shirt just beneath his ribs, and it and the stone perimeter of the fountain were both stained dark with blood.
More out of a sense of duty than from any real hope, Cesco felt Taddeo’s wrist and then his throat for a pulse. His skin was cool and a little plastic-feeling. He looked around for the murder weapon, but saw no sign of it. The killer must have taken it with them. But this was a murder scene, all the same. He needed to leave everything else as it was and call in the police. He took out his phone as he stepped backward towards the house, wondering who best to—
A noise behind him. He whirled round even as a dark figure came racing out of the front door and across the gravel towards him, their hood up and drawn so tight around their face that he couldn’t make them out, not least because he found himself transfixed instead by the glinting blade of a kitchen knife in their left hand, the dark stains of congealed blood upon it. Instinctively, he threw up his forearms to protect his chest and face. They lunged with their other hand instead. A pale blue glittering of electricity thumped into his left wrist like a well-swung baseball bat. He cried out with shock as much as pain and collapsed onto the gravel.
The stun gun briefly lost contact. He tried to push himself back up. Then the pain exploded again, this time against his throat, a blast that went on and on and on, overwhelming him and leaving him twitching, dazed and helpless, despite the knowledge that he was now utterly at the mercy of Taddeo’s killer – a cold-blooded murderer with two victims already to their credit, and no doubt fearful that he’d seen their face.