Iain Pears - The Raphael Affair

One thing was certain. Bottando felt himself getting too old for this sort of thing. Wearily, he counted up the forces and assessed his chances. On his side, he had the ministry of defence, who could be counted on to look after him. He thought. Against him, he had the newspapers, the arts ministry, the interior ministry, and Tommaso. The treasury represented a floating vote, whose mind would be made up by the chances of getting its money back.

If they ever got that far. According to the legal department in the arts ministry, the contract stated clearly that if the picture was a fake, the seller — that is Edward Byrnes — would have to refund. Any loss of a genuine picture would be borne by the state. If Byrnes was telling the truth, if he hadn’t owned the picture and didn’t have the money, he’d still have to refund. But, as the man had told Flavia, the picture was gone. So the only way of proving it was a fake was to find the original.

Essentially, it came down to the fact that the future of his department and of his career now depended on a foreign graduate student, who had already made one mistake and who might very well be an arsonist, forger, conspirator, murderer, and half-cracked as well. The thought did not bolster the General’s confidence. He was starting to suspect that, at long last and after many campaigns, he was outnumbered, outflanked and outgeneralled.

And Bottando’s sense that he was missing something still nagged away at him. He’d paced the streets, sat in armchairs, tossed and turned in bed. All to no avail. He was missing something and was no nearer to discovering what it was. The more he tried, the more the wisp of memory receded. Hence the vast piles of dossiers on his desk. The personnel files of everyone in the museum, combined with what they knew about Morneau, Byrnes, Argyll, and anyone else concerned.

He picked up Tommaso’s file. Might as well start at the top, he thought as he opened it. Cavaliere Marco Ottavio Mario di Bruno di Tommaso. Born March 3, 1938. Father, Giorgio Tommaso, died 1948, aged forty-two. Mother, Elena Maria Marco, died 1959, age fifty-seven. He jotted idly on his notepad and sighed heavily.

Pages and pages of the stuff, a monument to the excessive zeal of an overstocked bureaucracy with nothing better to do. Education, careers, opinions, recommendations. All repeated hundreds of times in each dossier on everyone. And he was going to go through the lot of them, for the one piece of information that might jog his memory.

Bottando had polished off the Renaissance department when the plane touched down, and was progressing on to Early Medieval Painting by the time the taxi drew up outside the Victoria & Albert Museum to let Argyll out.

As agreed, he gave her a detailed itinerary; a couple of hours there, followed by a brief stop at the Courtauld in Portman Square, with an option on a visit to the British Museum later on. She told him to meet her at six, and concluded with dire warnings of the potential penalties should he miss the rendezvous again. He grinned nervously at her and made his way up the steps.

He had always hated the V & A, especially the library, which was his present destination. It was not just the fact that it was cold; nearly all libraries he had worked in were underheated. Nor was it particularly the clear evidence of a chronic lack of funds: — the little donation boxes hopefully primed with five-pound notes to give visitors the right idea; the lack of proper lighting; the general air of woebegone neglect.

But in he went, walking through the museum along the echoing corridors, resisting the temptation to buy an overpriced bun in the café, up the stairs and into the library. For the next ten minutes he rummaged around in the catalogues, occasionally scribbling call numbers on bits of paper and handing them in at the desk. Then he gave in to temptation, took his newspaper and went down for a coffee. Long experience had taught him that no books would turn up for at least forty-five minutes.

Feeling oppressed and out of place, he took his coffee and soggy doughnut and sat in a far corner of the room, away from the other students and the small number of miscellaneous tourists. He concentrated on the paper and pretended, as best as he could, that he was somewhere else. His thoughts on the subject were interrupted by a clattering of plates as someone sat down at his table. The newcomer instantly fished out a packet of Rothman’s from the pocket of his old, battered jacket — which had clearly once been the top half of a suit — and lit up.

‘Thank heavens for that. First today. I’ve almost been chewing my fingers off up there.’

‘Hello, Phil. How are you?’

The newcomer shrugged. ‘As ever,’ he replied. He puffed furiously on his cigarette. He was one of Argyll’s oldest associates. As Philip Mortimer-Jones, he was a child of privilege, public schools, and superlative contacts through his father, who was some big wheel in the National Trust. As plain Phil, he was short and stocky, abominably dressed, with dark greasy hair and a look on his face which made you suspect he was about to fall asleep, or that his eyes were caked with grime, or that he had just eaten some substance of which the police would disapprove: in all the five years he had known him, Argyll could never decide. Possibly all of the above. But for all his dormouse-like appearance Phil was a bright lad. He was also more finely tuned into the nuances of academic gossip than anyone else Argyll knew. He confirmed this with his next statement.

‘Surprised to see you here. I thought you’d still be mourning over your great Italian disappointment.’

Argyll groaned. If Phil knew then everybody would know. ‘Who told you about that?’

‘Can’t remember. Heard it somewhere.’

How did he know, though? Argyll was certain he had told only one person, and that had been his ever-so-civil and discreet supervisor. It had been an awkward meeting, because his idleness had finally caught up with him. His university had become somewhat impatient and had threatened to wipe his name off the books. His supervisor, old Tramerton, had been asked for a recommendation one way or another, and he had asked Argyll for evidence that any sort of mental activity was still flickering.

He’d had to produce something convincing quickly. So in the space of four days he had gathered the only material to hand, accumulated an impressive-looking bibliography and posted off to Italy his tentative conclusion that underneath the Mantini rested a genuine, lost Raphael.

It seemed now, of course, that it was the wrong conclusion, but he refused to take responsibility for that. If the university authorities had not been so unreasonably demanding, the little paper would not have been written and Byrnes would not have got to the picture before him. Quite a pleasant chain of events, if you thought about it. Anyway, Tramerton had been convinced — of his efforts if not his scholarly merits — and had done the decent thing. The threat of execution was withdrawn and Argyll had thought no more about it.

Until now. Evidently either Tramerton had given the paper to someone or had told someone about it. Find who it was and the route to Byrnes would open up like magic. But who? His supervisor had been out of circulation in Italy; staying at a colleague’s house west of Montepulciano, so a letter had said. How had Byrnes got at him there? He’d write and ask. Maybe that would produce something useful.

It would all have to wait for the time being; the aromatic confines of the library awaited him. He stopped his colleague just as he was getting into conversational second gear, astounded him with the announcement that he was desperately keen to get back to his desk, and dragged himself up the stairs again. A brief conversation, and not at all a satisfying one.