Chapter Twenty-one

STANDING BEFORE CAIN AND ABEL, Morris wept. How well Titian understood killing: on one side innocence and unpreparedness, on the other sudden, ruthless, crushing violence. Morris saw now, examining the master’s brushwork in the hazy light of a summer’s dawn, how the painting’s odd perspective beautifully reinforced this ugly truth: the low angle, almost from under the tumbling Abel, foreshortened the towering Cain into a whirlwind of clubbing fury, fusing killer with stormy sky and victim with stony ground. Murder crashed down on the dark earth from the darker heavens, irresistible and inexplicable as a thunderbolt.

How could one not be impressed! How could the tears not flow, particularly for a man like Morris, who had lived through these experiences? As you entered the exhibition, emerging from a little passageway of modern screens offering far too much by the way of introductory text—acknowledgements, curator, sponsors, themes, technicalities—the great painting was suddenly there, not hanging on the wall to one side, but right in your face, almost too close, mounted on its own stand, a visual blow to match the blow Cain struck. Morris was delighted. If he wept, it was as much for joy as horror, gratitude as repentance. They had even kept his caption, word for perfect word. This was too good to be true. Except of course that it was attributed to Tim Parkes. This is my destiny, Morris muttered. A talented also-ran. But the game wasn’t quite over yet.

How had Zolla arranged the other exhibits? Had crude chronology carried the day? All alone in the museum, Morris left Titian and headed into the first room: here to the left three more Cain and Abels hung on a black background while to the right three David and Goliaths stood out against a creamy white. KILLINGS ABHORRED BY GOD, read a banner over the black, KILLINGS APPROVED BY GOD, ran another crowning the white.

Not bad, Morris thought, not bad at all! He appreciated this polarity. Even his own poor murders, he reflected, could easily be divided into the abhorrent and the admirable. To kill the pure young Massimina had been utterly unforgiveable; but when it came to extinguishing Forbes, he had been as much an instrument of God’s wrath as the young David with his sling.

And the murder he was supposed to carry out today?

Today Morris did not even know whom he would be killing, nor in what cause.

Mariella had woken him at five. Morris had his smartest black suit and Tonbridge School tie laid out ready on the sofa. Somehow it seemed appropriate to dress exactly as he had for the ceremony that had conferred upon him his honorary citizenship.

Together they went down the stairs to the underground garage. Morris covered himself with a blanket on the back seat of Mariella’s Punto until they were beyond the CCTV camera that watched the entrance to the block.

‘Seems crazy going to work this early,’ she remarked when he threw off the blanket and sat up. The streets were empty and the traffic lights flashing yellow. The dawn had barely greyed the sky, but Morris was wide awake. It was to be the defining day of his life, what was left of it.

‘You weren’t there the night it all happened,’ he remarked, offhand.

‘Women are hardly invited,’ Mariella observed.

Morris faked a yawn. ‘As Zolla’s secretary, though, you would have been involved in the arrangements, I suppose.’

‘Actually, no.’ A wry expression curled her lips. Eventually she said: ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to get coffee at the machine at the office, Dottor Duckworth. It wouldn’t do for you to be seen in a café.’

‘In any event, I just wondered if you had seen the video.’

She hesitated. ‘You mean, what Professor Zolla filmed on his mobile?’

Morris waited. What else could he have meant?

‘Yes I have.’

‘And what, pray, was your impression?’

Mariella hesitated. ‘Mostly boring. I mean the whole initiation process.’ She laughed. ‘You’ll think me naive, Dottor Duckworth, or perhaps presumptuous, but I’ve always felt that these solemn male associations are rather childish. The silly symbols, the nudity. I’m amazed they take themselves seriously.’

Extraordinary, Morris thought, how you asked people for facts and they were immediately eager to establish some sort of moral and intellectual superiority.

‘You looked like a fish out of water, to be honest.’ She half laughed.

‘Really?’

‘I mean, it was obvious they’d pulled you in at the last minute. You just look bemused, dazed even.’

‘And why do you think they did that?’

Mariella frowned. ‘Surely you know that better than I ever could.’

‘I’m just eager to hear what you thought.’

‘Well, I know one of the director’s Arab contacts felt you might help with building a mosque for them. Apparently they have some property up on the Torricelli.’

Above the prospected tunnel, Morris thought.

‘Then I had the impression Don Lorenzo wanted you and Volpi to be reconciled. What a lovely old man he was. Actually, I half wondered whether it wasn’t your wife who had told him to arrange that, since of course she has a lot of contacts with the confraternity members.’

‘That’s true,’ Morris acknowledged.

Mariella hesitated. ‘But I also think the director was punishing Professor Zolla in some way. Giving you prominence.’

‘Ah.’

Morris felt as if an icy clump of ignorance was slowly thawing. But too slowly.

‘One thing I would love to know,’ he hazarded, ‘is what actually happened that morning when I found Zolla in a heap on the floor of Volpi’s office.’

A deep sigh lifted the lady’s blouse.

‘Dottor Duckworth, wouldn’t it be wiser of you to concentrate on your task today? If all goes well, in forty-eight hours you’ll be a free man.’

‘Far from concentrating, I need a little distraction. Why don’t you tell me? What can it possibly matter?’

Unexpectedly, she started to speak: ‘Dottor Duckworth, over the last few years, our museum director had become, well, embarrassing. I’m sure you’d understood that. Paolo, Cardinal Rusconi, had gone to talk to him. During their meeting, Angelo let something slip about certain interests of theirs, I believe in the Middle East. It was the breaking point for Paolo. Volpi was furious, called Zolla an imbecile, said he should never have raised him from the gutter.’

This was a completely different version from the one Morris had heard from Cardinal Rusconi.

‘So it wasn’t to do with their fighting over the same younger man?’

Mariella actually laughed. ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’

Morris didn’t believe a word of it.

‘And the murder?’ He reckoned he had five minutes to get something definite out of her.

The Punto was stuck behind an empty bus.

‘It all happened so quickly. Then of course Professor Zolla dropped his phone, so there’s only the audio at the actual moment.’

‘Screaming?’

‘Exactly. More Angelo than the director. He had one of his fits of hysterics. You could hear the others clearing out.’

‘You didn’t actually see the knife go in?’

‘Thank heavens, no.’

‘Or my fainting?’

‘No. Did you?’

‘I think I did, yes.’

After a moment, Morris asked, ‘And did you feel I was in any way . . . justified?’

‘How so?’

‘I mean, with Volpi provoking me and so on.’

Mariella glanced in the rear-view mirror and their eyes met.

‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t see how you were provoked at all. One moment you were kneeling in front of him—it’s such a stupid ceremony—the next you pulled the knife from nowhere. Then the picture went.’

Morris’s mouth had gone dry. As she described it, he saw it all, but without remembering.

‘So why do you think I did it?’

Mariella hesitated. ‘You really want my opinion?’

‘I do, yes.’

She breathed deeply. ‘Because you’re mad, Dottor Duckworth.’

The woman drew the car to a halt. They were still about a hundred metres before the museum. ‘There are no TV cameras here,’ she explained. ‘Don’t walk to the main entrance. Go through the park where they’re doing building work on the Arch. There is a gap in the fence that will bring you to the service doors. The code on the touch pad is 83381. 83381. You have the instructions for deactivating the alarm?’

‘Yes.’

The woman smiled. ‘Enjoy the show, Dottor Duckworth. I know it means a lot to you.’

So it did, so it did. Though Caravaggio’s David, Morris reflected now, was definitely gay, or at least an object of homosexual desire; that bare shoulder and the pretty nipple of his adolescent torso, the way the decapitating sword was held so that its tip seemed to disappear into the boy’s own suggestively swelling crotch. Parkes had missed a chance here, Morris felt, to talk about the scandalous homoeroticism in so much Renaissance art. Not to mention the linkage of all that eroticism with moments of violence and killing. Donatello’s David was another; the younger sexier person always seemed to be in complacent possession of an old and grizzled head.

For a few moments, enjoying the wonderful painting and the extraordinary privilege of being here alone, Morris tried to make some sense of homosexuality and its constant closeness to art and religion. He could not. He remembered Tarik that evening in San Zeno. Why had it been so exciting, even revelatory? And how could the boy pass straight from that extraordinary intimacy to Zolla and Volpi and no doubt a host of other filthy, insignificant men who just gave him cash? Was that what had inspired his fury against the fat man? Three nights ago Morris had finally contacted his daughter on a mobile phone in San Diego.

‘Papà. Che bello! ’

She had seemed genuinely enthusiastic, as if wondering why it had taken her father so long to be in touch. He asked if she was well. As if by prior agreement, no mention was made of his arrest.

‘Sorry if I sounded a bit odd when you called that night,’ he said.

‘No, you were sweet!’ she protested. ‘I was expecting you’d be grumpy, waking you up as well to give you difficult news like that. But I thought it was better than having you worry.’

‘I can’t remember,’ he tried, ‘whether I actually told you what happened that evening.’

‘You were so happy,’ she laughed. ‘You said something about joining an important club and making great art.’

Morris didn’t know what to think.

‘You really don’t mind my being here?’ she asked. ‘With a girlfriend?’

‘I’m just glad it isn’t Stan,’ Morris had told her.

Full daylight was streaming through the castle’s barred windows now. Morris had been told he could stay in the exhibition till just before eight, then must retire to the basement until they called him up to give him the name and the gun. Leaving Cain and David, Abel and Goliath behind, he moved into a room where the killers were all women. Excellent! No sooner, it seemed, had Morris been removed from the scene than Professor Zolla had felt free to adopt all his ideas. Here Judith hacked at Holofernes’ neck, Jahel placed her giant nail against Sisera’s sleeping temples, Bonnaud’s Salome sat in naked splendour on her silky bedspread with the Baptist’s severed head gazing on in admiration.

The thing to have commented here, Morris thought, reading an uninspired caption that merely summarised the Salome story, was surely the dish. Why had the dancing girl asked for the prophet’s head on a dish? All the artists had picked up on this, from Andrea del Sarto right down to Frey-Mook. Gold dishes, silver dishes, dishes of dark blue glass. Parkes had completely failed to comment. It must have to do, Morris realised, with a desire to shift attention from the act itself, the ugly hacking at the neck, to the notion of an aesthetic presentation; the head became a sculpture, a work of art framed, haloed even, by a shiny dish, at which point the unpleasant narrative behind the killing disappeared. As with a well-basted beast on a gleaming platter, butchery became beauty. Who could disapprove?

Morris was just congratulating himself on these incisive reflections when he remembered Samira’s account of his phone conversation with Don Lorenzo just a couple of hours before Volpi’s death. Why had they invited him that evening? And why had the meeting so rapidly culminated in Volpi’s murder? Was it the cocaine? And today? What if he were to lose his memory definitively this time? He was too old to kill, he lacked the psychological strength. That had been evident in the church with Stan. Morris shook his head. Volpi must have provoked him. When had he ever killed anyone unprovoked and unthreatened?

He stood staring at Titian’s version where the sad modesty of Salome’s girlish face and the serenity of the Baptist’s quietly closed eyes seemed to make the ugly event at once beautiful and inevitable, desirable even. And at last a new thought occurred to him. An almost convincing explanation. Might it not be that the lurid scene-setting that night in the old museum, the great throne, the robed man’s naked obesity, all in all the amazing similarity with the biblical woodcut of the Eglon and Ehud drama, had simply invited Morris to, as it were, complete the picture. He had seen the tableau, found himself in it rather, and in his delirious state, had felt compelled to strike. Instead of sublimating his murderous instincts, art had guided his hand.

And the elaborate nature of the execution had nothing to do with coded messages between mafias. It was painting.

Was that possible?

Morris left Salome and walked through into a room of martyrs. San Bartolomeo had cleaned up nicely. His flayed muscles gleamed like . . . well, like fresh paint, as if it was the artist’s scarlet brush that had peeled away the pale skin. Masaccio and Caravaggio crucified San Peter upside down. Vasari stoned St Steven. Mantegna shot San Sebastian full of arrows. They loved it, Morris realised. He couldn’t be bothered to read the captions now. The works were overpowering. The old masters loved painting death and violence. Supposedly evoking piety and pathos, they revelled in brutality. And we love looking at it, Morris thought. We always have. In a way we’ve all killed a million times, in our heads. What did it really matter who actually pushed the knife into Volpi or why? These things happen. Art requires them.

In the next room painters of all schools and centuries had a go at slaughtering the Innocents. This was my idea! Morris thought, shocked by its gruesome impact. These originals were so much more powerful than any copies. Giotto’s heap of dead white babies simply glowed. Pietro Testa’s murderous sword shone as it pierced an infant navel. Morris shook his head. What if some nutcase visited the exhibition then went straight off to a nursery school to hack a few bambini to bits? A private art room was one thing, but here all this awful negative energy was to be made available to a huge international audience. There would be those less sound of mind than Morris who would not be able to handle it.

Why on earth did I want this? he wondered.

Disorientated, Morris looked at his watch. 7.45. To his left now was the space they had set aside for Interactivity. Another idea he had rejoiced in. A series of booths invited you to contemplate mocked-up murder scenes—Julius Caesar, Thomas à Becket—to finger sharp weapons and watch archive footage of famous assassinations, Kennedy and Luther King. Would it make people feel sick of violence, Morris wondered, or would it thrill them? Might someone decide they hadn’t lived till they had killed?

All of a sudden he wanted no more of it. Leaving half of the show unexplored, he turned, hurried back the way he had come and opened the door leading down to the storerooms where he must wait till they called him. Why did I agree to this? he wondered. So I can return to a meaningless life with a woman I don’t really love, a woman who doesn’t love me? So I can occupy an honoured place in a dishonourable world, accumulate a wealth I can’t really enjoy, because I am not free and never have been from the moment I first killed? For nigh on thirty years, Morris told himself, stepping carefully down the steep stone stairs into the storeroom, I have lived on sufferance, closely monitored by a Catholic Church that collected my conscience money and waited for the day when my ‘special skills’ could be turned to advantage. Don Lorenzo was my minder, Morris realised.

What if, far from planning a reconciliation, Don Lorenzo had encouraged Morris to stick Volpi? Or Zolla for that matter? That would be another way of explaining the absence of provocation, as reported by Mariella. What if Tarik during his disgraceful embraces with Zolla had informed the man that Morris was so high on dope and coke he would commit any crime they cared to ask of him? Just put a knife in his hand and set the scene.

‘The outcome might even be described as an answer to prayer,’ the cardinal had said. ‘Volpi had overstepped himself.’ ‘Something about a painting he wanted someone to paint,’ Samira had said. The King Eglon tableau? If only Morris could get access to that famous video footage.

Down in the basement, everything was uncannily similar to the scene he had explored some months before; there were the same canvases and sculptures under wraps, the same ancient metal cabinets, locked and unlocked, the same harsh, ugly light from fluorescent tubes. Morris walked through the damp dusty air, lifting a piece of plastic sheeting here, a filthy cloth drape there. There was no sign that the place had been thoroughly searched. Even the medieval daggers were still heaped in their cupboards. Again Morris took one in his hands, careful this time not to touch the point. The Trecento arms industry, he thought. Suddenly he laughed, thinking of his thuggish son attacking a policeman with a plastic stick weighing eighty grams. How droll!

The door to the passageway that he had discovered that fateful morning was closed. But not locked. Morris went through. There were no police seals to prevent entry to the scene of the crime. Could it even be that the police themselves were only going through the motions? They had decided (been told?) Morris was the killer and that was that. Tomorrow they would be told he wasn’t. After Morris had dispatched the appointed culprit. There was nothing more convenient than finding dead men guilty of old crimes.

He found a light and turned it on. The various pieces of lush furniture—thrones and chaises longues—had been covered with dust sheets. The blood had been scrubbed from the stone floor. The rugs had been rolled against the far wall. Fat Volpi had met his death here. Morris still found it hard to believe he had been responsible. One moment you were kneeling in front of him. An initiation ceremony. The next you pulled the knife. Said Mariella. You were so happy to have joined the club, Papà! To have made great art. Massimina. Had he had to take his clothes off? Morris wondered. Or just to bare his back for a few slaps of the scourge. When had he stashed the dagger in his belt? Or had Don Lorenzo given it to him? Or Zolla? After all that coke, I would happily have killed him, Morris realised. Probably it was a huge pleasure. A relief too, after the failure with Stan, to know he could still raise a dagger. Old age hadn’t blunted him.

Too bad he couldn’t recall it to savour the moment again.

For some time Morris walked this way and that around the huge chair on which Volpi had sat. Naked. Dead. Perhaps he was about to find some telltale clue. Some object would gleam on the floor. He would recognise it and memory would flood back. He would remember everything. He would know what he had done and why and consequently what to do next.

How stupid! Even if he had been entirely compos mentis throughout, Morris realised, even if his mind had retained every tiny detail, or recovered it all now, he still wouldn’t understand. In the end, what had happened that mysterious night was no more than emblematic of a debilitating ignorance that had haunted this English expat for decades. Morris had never understood who he was or who he had spent his life with. Certainly he had never understood Italy.

‘But I don’t want to understand!’ Suddenly he shouted the words out loud in defiance and frustration. ‘I don’t want to understand. I want out!’

With the thought came a wave of emotion. Morris began to cry. He wanted out; out of his marriage, his family, his work, his life. Out of Italy. Out of a culture that had transformed him into an ugly and helpless killer. He did not want to make a fortune digging a tunnel under the Torricelli, or building mosques on property that had lost its value. He did not want to fall forever into their provincial Catholic mesh.

‘I WANT OUT!’

Control yourself, Morris muttered. Get a grip!

‘Dottor Duckworth.’ A voice called quietly from above. It was Mariella. Morris recrossed the storeroom and climbed the stairs.

‘Before you open the package, please put the gloves on.’

They were in Volpi’s office. Morris had been here now for more than an hour. Mariella had brought him two cups of coffee, an excellent brioche from a pasticceria in Via Roma. It was oddly as if he were the one shortly to be executed, enjoying a final meal, not the executioner at all. But Morris had always thought the roles interchangeable. He had wandered round the room and tried to recall exactly how it had looked that morning he had brought San Bartolomeo to the storeroom then come up to the offices on the off-chance. Everything had been in disorder, but in a rather inconsequential way, it occurred to him now. If you were really looking for something there was hardly any need to push over chairs and scatter papers on the floor. Would Volpi really have left a porn video running on his PC? Surely not. Zolla had put it there, to discredit the man. Killing him wasn’t enough. His reputation had to be ruined. So that the guilty parties could feel less guilty.

Idly, Morris turned on the computer but it demanded a password. He stood up and walked round the room again, looking at the old panels and posters against the walls. An advertisement for a show on De Chirico. What an oddball he had been: Roman temples, armchairs, tailors’ dummies. And here was the panel he had seen behind Zolla when the man had sunk to the floor that morning: ‘Devotees of the Bianchi made their pilgrimages barefoot, slept on straw, abstained from meat-eating, and scourged themselves while calling for mercy and peace.’ It must be a caption for some quattrocento altar panel. Volpi had come north, Morris mused, infiltrated the local religio-political-Masonic confraternity, then begun to use his knowledge on behalf of old friends in Naples, or Benghazi even. The mayor’s Arab delegations. But this sounded like any of a million conspiracy-obsessed articles crowding the pages of supposedly serious organs of investigative journalism. More likely he just enjoyed bossing his younger lover about.

Talk of the Devil. With no warning, the door opened and the cardinal and Zolla came in.

‘My dear Morris, my good man,’ the cardinal cried. ‘I knew you wouldn’t let us down.’

White-faced in blue pinstripe, carrying a large padded envelope under his arm, Zolla looked distraught. The art history professor placed the package on the desk and with barely a glance at Morris trod stiffly across the room to the window.

‘Buon giorno, Angelo,’ Morris said. Nothing cheered him more than another’s uneasiness.

Zolla kept his back to them. He was looking out at the river. The cardinal, resplendent in red, but with a rather vulgar gold chain round his neck, narrowed his eyes and grimaced, as if to confirm for Morris their shared superiority to the younger man.

‘Before you open the package,’ the ecclesiast warned, ‘remember you need gloves. There’s a pair in the first drawer on the left.’

The cardinal’s voice carried a calm authority. Morris opened the drawer and found a pair of white cotton gloves. Surprisingly, the scourge Volpi had once showed him, the same black leather stick with lashes that he had also seen at the scene of the crime, was now back in the drawer along with an assortment of staplers, scissors and pens. Shouldn’t this be a police exhibit?

The cardinal was watching him carefully, squinting as he lit a cigar. Morris pulled on the gloves and found them way too big. The fingertips hung empty like the tips of so many condoms. For some reason Zolla had shaved his moustache. He looked naked.

‘Sit down, Morris, take your time, open the envelope, study the details,’ the cardinal said.

Morris sat. But Volpi’s swivel chair was huge. He seemed to be falling backwards into something deep and soft. Opening the envelope, he said:

‘By the way, Angelo, I love the way you’ve laid out the show. Really, congratulations.’

Zolla didn’t turn. Through the fine wool of his suit, his back radiated an unhappy tension.

‘It was great to see some of my ideas still in there. Thanks for that.’

Zolla breathed deeply. He had too much gel on his hair.

‘Particularly the captions.’

‘The captions are all the work of the author Tim Parkes,’ the show’s curator said sharply.

‘I emailed Parkes some of my own attempts,’ Morris said. ‘The opening Cain and Abel one, for example. He was most appreciative.’

Rusconi interrupted: ‘Gentlemen, I know we still have half an hour but Morris needs to look at these papers now. He has a job to do.’

The cardinal lifted the skirts of his cassock and sat on the chair across the desk. Watching his English assassin, he seemed to be mouthing silent words around the damp stub of the cigar. Saying a rosary? Morris wondered. He reached a hand into the envelope, which was unsealed, and pulled out first the gun, then three sheets of paper. The gun was already complete with silencer. It had a very ordinary, kitchen-utensil feel to it. Not at all nervous now, Morris laid the weapon on the desk, then unfolded the sheets of paper. The first was a printed programme for the day’s events, beginning with a presentation of Painting Death to the press and ‘friends of the museum’. Doors open at 10:00. Curator’s address, 10:30. Drinks and guided visit to the show, 11:00 till 12:00. Followed by lunch.

‘Prepared a good speech, Angelo?’ Morris asked coolly. ‘Mariella was telling me you will be having yourself videoed.’

Suddenly Zolla turned. ‘Why do we have to deal with this monster?’ he demanded. His face was white. From his breathing it would have seemed he had just run up five flights of stairs. ‘He’s already made one holy mess for us. How can we possibly trust him?’

The cardinal cleared his throat and raised a thick eyebrow, but said nothing.

‘Holy mess, holy Mass,’ Morris said lightly. ‘By the way, that was my caption Parkes used for Gentileschi’s Holofernes. The “Dressed to Decapitate” one. Did you like it?’ Turning to the second piece of paper he found his own schedule.

‘10:25 take up position in the Interactive Room. 11.05 slide back the safety catch on the gun. Circa 11:15. Your target will be one of the first to enter the room. He will be in conversation with the cardinal who will guide him to the hologram of John Lennon entering the Dakota building on Central Park West. As soon as you have positively recognised your target, step towards him through the hologram, push the gun into his heart and shoot four times. There are four bullets in the gun. Please use all of them.’

Fascinating, Morris thought, the use of ‘please.’

‘Lennon was shot in the back,’ he observed. It was taking some effort not to rush to the third paper and see who this target was.

‘Please follow instructions and shoot at the heart,’ the cardinal said matter-of-factly. ‘Your man will think you are part of the show. After the first shot I will hold him to stop him from falling and you will fire the other three in quick succession.’

Morris shook his head. ‘Is there any particular prayer I should say, around 11:10 maybe? The Lord is my shepherd? Now let thy servant depart in peace?’

The cardinal smoked and smiled. ‘You could profitably ask the Lord to guide your hand, Morris. This is not a decision we have taken casually. You can consider yourself an emissary.’

‘Stop!’ Zolla yelled. ‘Stop all this nonsense. I’m not having it in my museum!’

The cardinal sighed. His rugged features were unruffled.

‘Cold feet?’ Morris enquired, looking up at Zolla. He unfolded the last piece of paper and found himself looking at four photographs of a middle-aged Arab man, thickset and solemn. That was a relief. He had been anxious that his target might be someone he knew, someone who would recognise him as he pulled the trigger.

‘Or would you prefer to pull the trigger yourself?’

Zolla was beside himself. ‘I insist that this madness be called off.’ He had begun to walk up and down the room in a strangely jerky kind of way.

Rusconi smoked and observed the younger man intently.

‘It will ruin the show. It will damage the town’s reputation. It will be a catastrophe.’

‘It will save our skin,’ the cardinal said coolly. ‘It will link the two murders as something quite extraneous to our confraternity.’

Morris watched. He wouldn’t even try to understand, he decided.

‘I AM NOT GOING TO ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN,’ Zolla yelled. ‘This is my museum now. This is my show. This is my day. There must be other ways.’

The cardinal checked his watch. It was fourteen minutes past ten. Morris looked at the Arab man in the photographs. He had an oddly oval head, chubby cheeks, very smooth skin, and small black eyes behind severe glasses. In all four of the pictures he was wearing a thin green tie. A man in the first phase of maturity, Morris thought, mid to late forties, intelligent, committed, perhaps passionate. The assassin began to feel a liking for his target.

Zolla tried to reason, but he was breathing hard. ‘We are not the secret services. So why are we doing their work for them?’

The cardinal smiled. ‘You know the answer to that all too well, Angelo. Now that Giuseppe is no longer with us there is no reason why our victim would not use all he knows to—’

‘You are not going to do this to me,’ Zolla shrieked. ‘And above all you are not going to ask Duckworth to do it. He’s a madman. And a bungler with it. A murderer who collapses and has to be walked home, for Christ’s sake. We’ll all be in gaol.’

Zolla was trembling. Morris was fascinated at the way all this stuff was finally coming out.

‘Explain to the cardinal, Angelo,’ he said quietly, ‘about putting that knife in my hand before the ceremony.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Explain to him that your little fuck Tarik, the Arab boy, had told you I was high. I would do anything.’

Zolla simply stared.

‘I saw you two leave his apartment in San Zeno together earlier in the evening. For one of your little sessions.’

‘That’s a lie!’ Zolla shouted.

The cardinal was intrigued.

‘You wanted Volpi dead. He was humiliating you every day. He didn’t want you sharing Tarik. And you knew the cardinal wanted him dead too. You put the knife in my hand, because someone had told you I’d murdered in the past. I was coked to the eyeballs, Angelo. But I remember perfectly.’

‘This man is talking slanderous nonsense,’ Zolla snorted. But his hand on the desk was trembling.

‘We’ll do the show together, you said. You and me, without Beppe getting in the way.’

‘This is complete fabrication!’

The cardinal’s voice cut in calmly and evenly. ‘Angelo, there’s no time for this little squabble now. As for today’s business, I am satisfied that what we are doing is right and that this is the propitious moment to do it. Afterwards five witnesses will describe the killer as a young Arab man. The murder will appear to be part of a feud between the moderates and the jihadists.’

The cardinal paused and puffed. He looked down at his cigar and then up at Zolla, who had the trembling lips of a panicking adolescent.

‘Let’s be clear too about your situation, Angelo. You owe your career to Volpi’s infatuation. You are implicated in various unpleasant activities he was involved in. Now you owe this to us, and to the city of Verona, which needs neither mosques nor gun money.’

Zolla clenched his fists. ‘I have my publications like any other professor. All in respectable journals.’

‘Funded and edited by Volpi,’ the cardinal chuckled.

There was silence. The minutes were ticking by. The gun was sitting on the desktop. Morris looked at the safety catch and reflected that it resembled nothing more than the sliding switch on an electric train he had owned as a child.

‘Do it,’ a voice said.

Morris started.

‘I said do it, Morrees.’

She was back!

With flaunted sangfroid, Morris asked Zolla: ‘What exactly are you planning to say in your opening speech, Angelo?’

Standing while the other two were sitting, the art historian seemed displaced and vulnerable.

‘Do it,’ the girl repeated.

‘Actually, if it’s any consolation to you, Angelo,’ Morris said smilingly, ‘I can’t think of better publicity for this particular show than a murder on the first day. The media will be thrilled.’

Suddenly, Morris felt extremely confident.

Zolla turned to the cardinal. ‘He behaved crazily last time, why should he do any different now?’

‘Coraggio! ’ Mimi was laughing softly. Morris felt as though heat were rising from the floor through the soles of his feet. Thighs and buttocks were glowing.

‘As I understand it,’ the cardinal said calmly, ‘by the time Duckworth was contacted that unfortunate Saturday evening he was drunk and possibly drugged. Today he is sober and prepared, and if he does not do the job as asked he will spend the rest of his life in gaol for murder.’

‘Do it,’ the girl repeated. First she didn’t speak for weeks, now she was interrupting him when he needed to think.

‘I do kill better when I’m compos mentis,’ Morris agreed cheerfully. ‘Though come to think of it, I would very much like to see this famous video you have of my Eglon tableau.’

Both men seemed taken aback.

‘As the good cardinal says, I was in quite a state that evening. It would be good to see how it looked.’

‘You’re disgusting,’ Zolla told him.

‘Afterwards,’ the cardinal said. ‘Professor Zolla will show you the video at the first possible opportunity.’

‘They’ll never show it to you,’ Mimi shouted. ‘They’re setting you up again.’

Morris felt extremely lucid and extremely excited.

‘Just tell me exactly who this guy is I’m to kill. So I feel I have a reason for pulling the trigger.’

The cardinal frowned, looked at his cigar and stubbed it out in an ashtray on the desktop.

‘Time to go,’ he said. ‘You will just have to trust me, Morris.’

‘I’m not going to kill unless you tell me.’

‘He’s officially a Libyan diplomat,’ Zolla said abruptly. ‘But actually supplying all kinds of unpleasant people with dangerous things.’

‘With Volpi’s help, I suppose?’

Evidently irritated that Zolla had given this information, the cardinal shook his head. ‘It’s not quite that simple, Morris. Please do not try to understand just now. I assure you that within the week your name will be cleared and you will be back with your beloved wife, who by the way is here this morning for the opening of the show.’

‘She hates you!’ Mimi whispered.

Again the cardinal looked at his watch. ‘Angelo, you’ll have to get moving now. People will be waiting. And please pull yourself together. For your own sake. Weren’t you going to have the video relayed to your mother? You wouldn’t want to let her down. Morris?’ The cardinal turned to look at the Englishman. ‘Keep the papers in your pockets, please. They mustn’t be found lying around. You will have time to read the instructions again while waiting. As soon as you have carried out your task, you leave through the emergency door in the Interactive Room behind the Martin Luther King exhibit. Mariella will be waiting to escort you out. Check the route carefully.’

The churchman got to his feet and shook out the skirts of his cassock. ‘I will take you there now.’

‘Now,’ Mimi whispered.

Morris picked up the gun in his gloved hand, got to his feet and walked round the desk. Only Zolla seemed unable to get moving. He had pulled two sheets of paper from his pocket and was trying to read, his lips moving with the words. Morris approached him while the cardinal was already heading for the door.

‘All prepared for the big speech?’

Zolla couldn’t answer.

‘It must be exciting to think your mamma will be watching you open a major international show.’

The art expert was trembling.

‘You will mention my sponsorship at least?’

Morris moved up close.

Zolla began to stutter. ‘Id-d-diota! B-buffone!’

‘Now, Morrees!’

‘Ing-glese di merda.’ Zolla’s face twisted in a panicky sneer. ‘Inc-capace! ’

That did it. Lowering his left hand to release the catch on the side of the gun, Morris raised his right, pressed the barrel into Zolla’s chest and pulled the trigger.

‘Sei splendido!’

The noise was no more than a sharp thud. Zolla did not even cry out. Before he had clattered to the floor, Morris was rushing across the room toward the red bulk of the cardinal, waving the gun before him. No fainting this time. At last, he had surprised them. Shocked, the big clergyman raised his hands to his face, as if skin and bone could offer any protection.

‘Per l’amore di Dio!’ he protested.

It occurred to Morris then, in the hallucinatory intensity of the moment, that he might now, if he so wished, as in a movie, force the cardinal to tell him all kinds of interesting things: about what really went on in the Museo di Castelvecchio, about the real nature of the confraternità, about the real identity of the Arab man in the photograph, about what really happened the night Volpi died. And so on. All this the cardinal could have been forced to disclose with the barrel of a gun in his gut. Especially a hot gun.

‘Don’t,’ Mimi said.

Morris Duckworth hesitated.

‘Don’t waste time. Morrees. Don’t make this mistake.’

She was right.

‘Turn round, Paolo, per favore,’ Morris said, ‘and lead me to where I have to do my job.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘You can give the opening speech. I’m sure you’ll do it better than our professor would have. Let’s go now.’

Slowly the cardinal dropped his hands. His face, even his nose, had suddenly drained white, but there was the faintest smile on his lips now, a smile of intense recognition, as of a man confirmed at last in the opinion that he has met someone truly special: Morris Arthur Duckworth. It was a moment to be painted, Morris thought, if ever there was one.

‘As you will,’ the churchman stammered. ‘I’m sure we’ll, er, fix this, somehow. Yes. The important thing is Al Zuwaid.’

That name!

The cardinal turned to open the door. As he did so, Morris raised the gun so that it pointed upward from the bottom of the skull under the right ear and shot. The red pillar of righteousness crashed. Morris hurried back across the room, pointed the gun into one of Zolla’s eyes and fired again. This really was so much easier than bludgeoning people with candlesticks. The mature man’s weapon. If he’d had a gun that day, Stan wouldn’t have had a chance. Then back again to the cardinal. One bullet would have to do here. Morris crouched, found the man’s right hand, opened it and slipped in the gun. Uncannily the fingers closed around the butt of their own accord.

‘Just like when you were young,’ Mimi breathed.

‘Signori e signore, welcome to Painting Death!’

Three minutes later, climbing on the dais of the conference room and stepping up to the microphone, Morris was not even short of breath. How long did he have? Not long.

‘As Professor Zolla will shortly be explaining to you, this is by far the most ambitious art exhibition that this wonderful museum has ever offered to a loyal citizenry, and probably the most innovative in all of Italy this year. If not Europe. Hence it is with immense pride, as one of the show’s sponsors, through the Duckworth Foundation, and perhaps its warmest advocate, that I stand before you now to, how can I put it, signori e signore, let’s say to prepare you for what you are about to see. Because this show is not for the squeamish or faint-hearted. It is dynamite.’

Even as he spoke then, looking boldly into the crowd—and the room was packed with journalists, art historians and local dignitaries—even as he spoke Morris became aware of a fine spray of red dots on his left sleeve resting on the lectern.

‘Don’t worry,’ Mimi murmured. ‘Just keep going.’

‘Some of you, I’m sure, will have wondered whether it might not be rather morbid to offer the public no less than one hundred masterful depictions of murder and violent death. Believe me, the first time I actually saw the show in its entirety I was overwhelmed, stunned.’

Suddenly an eye in the first row caught his. Mariella. If some of the others present looked surprised to see Morris on the podium, her expression was one of alarm. She seemed ready to jump to her feet and rush out. On the other hand she had the distinguished head of Florence’s Strozzi museum, James Bradburne, to her left and the equally distinguished Uffizi art historian, Cristina Acidini, to her right. Both of them were listening to Morris with great attention. Meantime, at the back of the room, half a dozen TV cameras were recording every word for news bulletins around the world, not to mention the video for Zolla’s mother; from the floor beneath the dais came the flashes of the newspaper photographers. A sense of occasion tends to intimidate, Morris knew; no one wishes to do something rash and appear ridiculous on camera. In a charming gesture of friendliness, Morris smiled into the woman’s eyes, as if to say, everything under control, cara.

‘Which it is, Morrees. It is. Except . . .’

‘However, before we wonder about the wisdom of this decision, let’s remember some of the great names who have given us those depictions.’

Morris paused and puffed up his chest. The slight pressure of the Tonbridge School tie around his neck was strangely thrilling.

‘Giotto, Botticelli, Bellini’—Zolla would have needed notes to remember the names—‘Masaccio, Caravaggio, Goya, Poussin, Titian’—the art historian was a nobody—‘Tiepolo, Gentileschi, Giorgione’—utterly without charisma—‘Rubens, Stuck, Klimt, Delacroix’—Morris beamed—‘and many many others.’

Talk about idiota now, Mr. Sole Curator. Talk about buffone now, Mr. Dead Man!

Glancing down for a moment, Morris noticed that there was actually a rather large splash of red on the toe of his left shoe. He felt elated. And to think that he had blown away that mountain of ecclesiastical presumption too, pulling the very trigger the pompous fool had put into his hand.

‘I’m so happy for you,’ Mimi frothed. ‘Only that . . .’

‘Signore e signori, why did these great minds feel the need to paint scenes that bring together two of the unhappiest aspects of human life, our mortality and our cruelty? Why did they want to show that? Why lavish their ineffable creative skills on Cain clubbing Abel to death, on Judith hacking through Holofernes’ neck, on the soldiers flaying San Bartolomeo, on Othello strangling Desdemona? Was it just because these stories are in the Bible, or at the centre of our cultural heritage? Was that all it was?’

It was strange. Morris hadn’t prepared this speech in any way. Yet everything was coming out with the greatest ease and fluency. Perhaps it was because Mimi was back. As he spoke he even had time to scan the crowd. There was no sign, he saw, of his designated victim, Al Zuwaid. Samira’s father? Her uncle? He had got wind. She had warned him. But Antonella was there in the second row, with Mauro on her right and, yes, Stan on her left. Stan Albertini! For Christ’s sake. The meddling Californian was back again. He had heard that their marriage was over no doubt. He was trying to step into Morris Duckworth’s affluent shoes and take over the Trevisan fortune. For a moment Morris’s eyes met Antonella’s. Her round pale face was absolutely inscrutable.

‘. . . only it would be very nice, Morrees,’ Mimi whispered, ‘to have our older sister join us.’

He mustn’t let himself be distracted.

‘She hates you, Morrees. She betrayed you.’

‘Signore e signori, we live in a country which is famous for its mysteries, for its conspiracies, for its occulting of power. One thinks of Aldo Moro, of Ustica, of Piazza Fontana. So many unexplained deaths. And we live in an age that does everything to hide our mortality behind hospital screens, to disguise the ugly reality of our prejudices in the sham of political correctness. Such hypocrisies are not new. So as you walk through the show, and I will detain you no longer . . .’

As he said this Morris smiled at the mayor, in the front row beside Bradburne, recalling that moment, less than a year ago, when the Northern League man had been in such a hurry to meet the Arab delegation (could Al Zuwaid have been among them? Why hadn’t Samira told him who her father was?). He too, the mayor that is, seemed puzzled to have Morris at the microphone, but clearly appreciated his public-speaking skills. Bradburne, who was wearing a rather ridiculous, but also rather marvellous mauve silk waistcoat, seemed hugely impressed. Then Morris realised that the pudgy presumptuous face behind him, with its holier-than-thou simper, the man with the bald spot and the turkey neck must be Parkes. Thirty years in Verona and they met at last! I’ll show the bastard who’s the real artist, Morris thought.

‘You!’ Mimi assured him. ‘Only you could bring three sisters together in heaven. Do it, Morrees!’

‘So as you walk through the show, signore e signori, with all its rich and varied representations of fratricide and matricide, of stabbing and stoning and beheading, may I invite you to reflect on this: what our artists are showing us is the stark reality of the fact, the baseline fact of violence ; violence beyond any explanation or mystification, beyond any motive and technique or fancy detective-story narrative of the variety that usually occupies our minds and distracts us from the awfulness of what has actually, physically happened. To the artist it hardly matters how or why each death occurs, the motives, the conspiracies, the techniques. Rather a terrible brutality is made briefly beautiful, seeable, in order that we may be reminded of what, in essence, we all are: savages.’

At this point a cry was raised. ‘Aiuto, aiuto, o aiuto. Sono morti.’

Someone was running along the corridor.

‘Aiuto! Chiamate la polizia. Sono morti ammazzati!’

The door was thrown open. Morris recognised one of the young women who worked alongside Mariella. She held on to the door handle as if she might faint. People were getting to their feet, turning to the door.

‘Anto,’ Mimi told him. ‘Do it now! Quick.’

So this was what she had come back for, Morris thought. Not to help him, but to fetch her sister.

‘She knows, Morrees. She knows about you. She’s got to go.’

‘But I don’t have the gun.’

In the crush Antonella was moving arm in arm with Stan towards the exit.

‘When did you ever need a gun, Morrees?’

‘She’s the mother of my children, Mimi.’

‘She betrayed you with Don Lorenzo, Morris. She betrayed you with Stan.’

What nonsense. Morris shook his head. He felt oddly queasy, faint even.

‘Morrees, you must—’

‘No!’

Struggling to get a grip on rising nausea, Morris put aside the microphone and headed the opposite way from the crowd, across the dais, down along the front wall, through the corridor of screens that led to the entrance to the show. He mustn’t faint this time. If I faint I’m dead. Nodding to a uniformed attendant, he strode quickly past the introductory panels, past Cain and Abel, David and Goliath, Judith and Holofernes, Jael and Sisera, past Salome and John the Baptist—my glorious predecessors, he fleetingly thought, he felt better now, artists, killers and victims all—past St Steven, San Sebastian, San Bartolomeo—Morris too was a martyr, past St Peter crucified and Santa Chiara with her eyes poked out. But now Morris stopped a moment spying a canvas he wasn’t familiar with, a bearded man with a top knot poking out of a great black cauldron under which a bonfire had been lit. ‘Bhai Dayala Ji being boiled alive,’ the caption read, ‘by the orders of Mughul Emperor Aurangzeb in November 1675.’ Morris shook his head. What was Zolla thinking of ?

‘What are you thinking of?’ Mimi was petulant. ‘I’m so disappointed.’

Morris stood staring at the awful painting. Boiling in his pot Dayala Ji wore a top knot and a heavily bearded smile.

‘There’s still time,’ she insisted.

‘Enough, Mimi,’ Morris muttered. ‘I’m my own man. I do what I want.’

If all went to plan, Samira would be waiting. His mind was clearing now.

‘Go to your whore and you’ll never hear from me again.’

‘That’s fine by me,’ Morris told her sharply.

Now he heard footsteps. Damn. Morris turned and resumed his previous pace, walking swiftly past Medea and Achilles and Perseus, past Sickert’s sad assassins and the waxy nudity of their pathetic victims. The footsteps were gaining on him.

‘Rot in hell,’ Mimi was calling.

Oddly, this was exactly what Morris wanted to hear. He was through with her.

Closing the show as it had opened, with a grand canvas in the centre of the thoroughfare, was Delacroix’s Sardanapalus. An excellent decision. Morris stopped and waited. He had guessed who his pursuer was. He might as well enjoy one long look at this magnificent painting, in the original flesh. The richness of its colour, the extraordinary reconciliation of chaos and violence with form and beauty, was breathtaking. So much finer than Forbes’s copy.

‘Mariella,’ he said as the footsteps approached. He didn’t turn.

‘A great picture, no?’

‘What in God’s name is going on?’ her voice quavered.

‘You’re a wonderful woman,’ Morris told her. ‘You deserved better than that pious old fraud.’

‘What did you do?’ she shrieked.

Morris’s ear picked up the sound of sirens. Still without turning, he said: ‘It will be in your interest, Mariella, to agree that the cardinal was depressed and must have shot first Zolla, then himself. Out of guilt for their murdering Volpi. Think about it.’

He walked round the painting and made for the exit.

‘If you get into that car, it’s all over with me,’ Mimi told him.

Morris didn’t bother to reply. Outside, on Via Cavour, Samira’s Cinquecento was on the double yellow line. The sirens were coming from behind them. Morris opened the door with deliberate calm. There was no need to say anything. She pulled away. He watched her profile as she shifted gear, intent and practical, the lips puckering around the tip of the tongue. She had put her hair up. The neck was long and the chin firm. What a beautiful young woman she was. How mad of her to accept the challenge of going on the run with Morris. And how long could it last? Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight? What chances did they have? In a Cinquecento! Yet this madness had seemed so much better than a contract killer’s return to the suffocating marital propriety of Via Oberdan. This moment of wild freedom was what his whole life had pointed to, Morris thought. He wouldn’t let his woman down this time.

‘I love you, Samira,’ he breathed. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this for me.’

She smiled, turned, smiled more warmly, and drove on through San Zeno, then the circular road. Near the stadium she turned off.

‘What’s up?’

She stopped just before the stadium car park. Immediately in front of them was a large black luxury sedan. Again she smiled.

‘We’re changing cars, Mo.’

Morris was alert, not alarmed, but ready to be so.

‘And the bags?’

‘Already in there.’ She motioned with her head to the larger car, a Mercedes of some kind. The windows were dark. Morris noticed an unusual licence plate. A blue Arab scrawl.

‘Quick now.’

‘But . . .’ Morris hesitated.

Samira hurried forward and opened the back left door of the larger vehicle. Why the back? Wasn’t she driving? Morris had no alternative but to follow. As he opened the back door on the other side he saw two men in the front. For a second he thought of fleeing, but he had to trust the girl. Looking over his shoulder from the driving wheel, Tarik said: ‘Welcome to Libya, Morris. Next stop, Tripoli. You have just done our country an immense service.’

Even though he hadn’t seen the face yet, Morris realised that the older man up front must be his designated victim, Al Zuwaid. He turned to look at Samira. She raised a plucked eyebrow and opened her arms, ‘New family, Morris,’ she smiled. ‘New country, new lady, new life.’

Some weeks later, lounging beside a swimming pool with a gin and tonic in his right hand and a copy of L’Étranger in his left, it occurred to Morris that he had never asked anyone about that call from Volpi the same night the man was killed. Perhaps everything they had told him, he thought, had been a pack of lies. Putting the book aside to let his fingers trail on the stomach of the beautiful woman beside him, his eyes dazzled by the Libyan sun dancing on the palace pool, Morris frowned and puzzled and speculated, until finally it occurred to him that he really had left Italy at last. He had left it behind, that country of conspiracies, and his old double life with it. Mimi too. The ghost was gone. His scarred face relaxed in a slow smile and at that very moment the surface of the bright water broke and a lithe figure climbed out. Square-shouldered and stark naked, Tarik was grinning at him. Morris Duckworth closed his own blue eyes in placid assent. A mellow old age lay before him.