Iain Pears - The Raphael Affair

‘What’s happened now?’ she asked as she regained her balance after a particularly vicious corner.

‘I told you about Manzoni, the restorer?’ She nodded. ‘He was meant to come and see me at seven. He didn’t show up. The Trastevere police just rang: he didn’t come because he was dead. It seems that someone has murdered him.’

Flavia sat stunned. Things were going from bad to worse. ‘Are they sure it was murder?’

‘Knife in the back,’ he replied simply.

‘Oh dear,’ she said. Complications, nothing but complications. It wouldn’t make Bottando look any better to have a witness murdered under his nose. It made solving the case more difficult, and now there was a murder mixed up in it all, there would be demarcation disputes with the murder squad and others, as they squabbled over who should be in charge. The investigation could disintegrate into one of those well-known Italian situations where everybody spends their time fighting their colleagues, and nothing whatsoever gets done. She’d seen it before. The General was evidently thinking along the same lines.

‘Listen,’ he said as the car drew up at their destination. ‘Leave the talking to me here. Don’t say anything more than you need to, all right?’

Following behind him at a distance suitable for a junior tagging along, therefore, she climbed the stairs and entered Manzoni’s apartment. It was full of policemen, photographers, fingerprint men, neighbours and people just hanging around. The usual chaos. Bottando was spotted by the senior local detective, who came over and introduced himself.

‘When we discovered he worked at the museum I decided it might have something to do with you, so I called,’ he explained after relating how the body had been discovered by a neighbour peering in through the open front-door as she passed.

Bottando shrugged and walked over to the body, ignoring the invitation to talk. ‘Any idea when he was killed?’

‘After five-thirty, when he was seen coming home, and before seven, when the body was discovered. So far we can’t be more precise than that. Right-hand blow to the back and into the heart. Kitchen knife.’

‘No one saw any strangers hanging about, I suppose?’

The detective shook his head. ‘Any idea what it may be about?’

Bottando pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. ‘No,’ he lied. ‘My first inclination is to suggest coincidence, much as I dislike them. He certainly wasn’t a hot tip for our arsonist. Nor was there any connection I know of between him and any of our suspects.’

The detective looked disgruntled. He knew Bottando was being elusive, but in the very hierarchical police force, there is no way you can press a general without running the risk of getting yourself into trouble. He would have to find someone of equivalent rank to do that for him.

While the little interchange was going on, and while her boss wandered around the apartment looking vainly for hints, Flavia leant on the small round table in the sitting-room and pursued her own thoughts. They didn’t lead anywhere, except to the depressing conclusion that while they had had two crimes and too many suspects this morning; now they had three crimes and too many suspects. Not her idea of progress.

She told Bottando this after they left the apartment. He dismissed the car, explaining that walking helped him think. Besides, it was one of the few things he found pleasant at the moment. She fell in step with him and talked. He marched morosely by her side, not saying a word in reply for several minutes.

‘So what you’re basically saying is that we’re no further on at all? And in fact we’re more confused than ever?’ he said when her exposition was finished.

‘Well, yes, I suppose I am. But we could try and narrow it down a little.’ Bottando grunted, but kept quiet. Flavia was wearing baggy trousers and a jacket, and now thrust her hands into the pockets to help her concentrate. They crossed the Tiber as the dusk was deepening into dark. A thin but chilly wind was coming up the river, making her shiver as they walked.

‘OK then,’ she began after a few moments. ‘Either the picture was a forgery or it wasn’t. If it wasn’t, then we must look for a madman or someone in the museum. Correct?’ It was a rhetorical question. Even had it not been it probably wouldn’t have got a reply from her companion, who was staring moodily at the pavement.

‘Main candidates, Manzoni, deceased, and Spello. Both disliking Tommaso, prompted into desperate action by the announcement of his retirement.’

‘Who killed Manzoni?’

‘Spello,’ she said firmly. ‘Realised Manzoni had wrecked the painting. Overcome with rage that he’d destroyed such a beautiful object. Or realised Manzoni knew he’d burnt the picture, so killed him to shut him up.’

‘This is narrowing it down, is it?’

Flavia ploughed on, ignoring the interruption. ‘Other candidate: Argyll, overcome with remorse at his lost opportunity...’

She got no further in what she considered a masterly exposition of the options. ‘Flavia, dear, this is not cheering me up. Do you, in fact, have the slightest idea who might be responsible for this?’

‘Well, um, no.’

‘I thought not. Now, why the timing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, why was the picture burnt yesterday? After all, we’d just come across the evidence it was a fake and hadn’t told anyone. And the evidence, it seems, wasn’t as good as we thought. So why destroy it?’

This one stumped her, so he carried on on his own. ‘I think,’ he pointed out, mentally counting, ‘you have just listed about a dozen combinations of possibilities, without a shred of real evidence for any of them. Which goes to show that armchair detection is no good for anything. We need evidence of something. I reckon it’s about time you stopped thinking and started looking.’

‘Where do you suggest?’

‘Go to London. Manzoni seems to have come up with something, and we need to know what it was. If those tests have a hole, the only place you’ll find out is there. Go and see those restorers. That might provide something. Could you get on a plane tomorrow?’

She nodded. ‘As long as someone can keep an eye on Argyll while I’m away,’ she said. ‘Perhaps,’ she added, ‘I should nip off now and see if he’s back in. You never know, he might open the door covered in blood.’

‘And might stick a knife in you for good measure.’

‘I can’t see him doing something like that. But I can’t see any of them doing anything like that. That’s the trouble.’

‘Don’t let your intuition run away with you. If it wasn’t for the timing of all this, he’d be charged already. So watch yourself. Unless he comes up with a very good reason for what he’s been up to, let me know and I’ll pull him in.

‘I feel uncomfortable about all this,’ he continued. ‘I’m missing something which should be obvious. Something a long time ago which isn’t right. I woke up this morning and almost had it, but it slipped away. It’s driving me quietly crazy. Having an impossible task is bad enough, but when you suspect it’s because of your own failing memory it becomes insufferable.’

They parted at the next corner, Bottando walking northwards, slowly, absent-mindedly and morosely; she with the brisk step of a person who cannot remain bothered and overburdened for too long.

Argyll was at home this time, let her in, and burbled happily about his day for the first few minutes, not letting Flavia get a word in edgeways. She sat quietly and waited for him to stop.

‘There’s nothing like the prospect of spending the rest of your life in jail to make you get a move on,’ he said. ‘I reckon if my supervisor had threatened to send me to Wormwood Scrubs for a year or two, I could have had my thesis finished ages ago.’