Iain Pears - The Raphael Affair

Working proved less easy than he’d anticipated. The excitement of the previous couple of days wrought havoc on his concentration. As did the pressure he was working under. As Flavia had pointed out to him, find that Raphael and all was well. The penalty for failure was not, however, merely a raised eyebrow from his supervisor this time. This is not, he told himself as he flipped through the books he’d ordered, what academic work is meant to be like. The marines would be less dangerous at the moment. It was all very well to say ‘find a Raphael’. But if it was that easy, it would have been found years ago.

Of course, he’d made progress, but only of a negative sort. He knew better where the painting wasn’t . That, however, was not going to bring him many congratulations. From the initial two hundred and something or other possibilities, it was now down to a few dozen. What was he meant to do? Visit every one with a sharp knife and give it a little scrape? Apart from the fact that the owners might protest, presumably someone else was also on the same course. If Byrnes had destroyed that picture so it wouldn’t be revealed as a fake, he was smart enough to know he’d have to get rid of the real thing as well, which was the last possible proof of his initial fraud.

The idea made him think; he paid less attention to his books and stared up at the wire netting strung across the ceiling to stop falling bits of roof from the decaying building hitting the students below. The books didn’t seem quite so important now. He could accumulate information for months, and still never find anything convincing. If he was going to get anywhere, he’d have to work with what information he already had. He had to find the picture to catch a culprit. But what if he did it the other way round? Lateral thinking, it was called, and once he started thinking along these lines, everything began to seem quite simple. And after a few hours, he even began to get a smell of where the picture might be.

Later that evening he met Flavia on schedule and in the right place, and the two of them walked into a cutesy little winebar in a street running parallel to Wardour Street. It was called the Cockroach and Cucumber, or somesuch, which prompted Argyll to make a few disparaging comments. ‘It’ll probably be full of the elder brothers of the students who work in the V & A,’ he sniffed at Flavia, who missed the reference and smiled politely. She’d had a tiresome day, talking to the other restorers. Not that it had done her much good. They’d all taken refuge in technicalities and refused to come out of their shells. This was her last chance to make the trip worthwhile. It made her determined, and sliced the edge off her sense of humour.

The clientele around the bar generated a rubicund air of confident and artificial jollity that settled around Argyll like a suffocating smog. He felt unhappy already. ‘Hardly the place for a quiet and confidential chat,’ he bellowed into Flavia’s left ear.

‘What?’ she yelled back, then sighted the Tate restorer. ‘Doesn’t matter. Tell me later.’ She weaved her way over to the bar. Anderson, her target, was standing there, waving a five-pound note in a hopeful fashion. Flavia rapped him on the shoulder firmly, just at the moment his long vigil was rewarded, and the barmaid was headed in his direction. He turned to greet the Italian, lost eye-contact with the other side of the bar, and the woman drifted off to serve someone else.

‘Goddamn,’ he exclaimed. ‘Missed her again. No matter. We can go next door where it’s quieter. They have table service through there.’

As they walked through, Flavia introduced Argyll. Anderson looked disappointed. ‘Oh. I thought you were coming alone.’ Argyll was instantly offended and found himself disliking the man intensely. They sat down at one of the few remaining tables and ordered a bottle of white wine of uncertain origin. ‘You see? It’s a lot quieter in here. Nice place, eh?’

Argyll smiled and nodded. ‘Remarkable. Nice is not the word.’ He’d wanted to say that for years. Flavia smiled at him and trod heavily on his toe with her heel. They were not called stilettos for nothing. Tears came into his eyes from the pain.

She then went on to try and rescue the conversation, parroting out a largely erroneous explanation of her presence in England.

‘And you want my help. Willingly. If, of course, you tell me why.’

‘Just routine enquiries, as I believe they say in this country.’

‘Nonsense. Nothing I could possibly say would be of the slightest use to you unless there was more to it than that. I knew nothing about the painting except that I was called in by Sir Edward Byrnes to clean and restore it. Apart from the occasional incursion by television cameras, I worked alone with the other restorers. Why send someone all the way from Rome just to ask about that?

‘And of course, you turn up here bringing Mr Argyll — ’ for some reason Argyll disliked that Mister bit, ‘ — who Sir Edward once told me was miffed about the whole business. Why search for motives when you take the number one suspect along with you? Unless, of course, there is something else going on. Cheers.’ He raised his glass to salute his cleverness, and screwed his face up in an exaggerated demonstration of disgust.

‘I never realised that I had achieved such fame,’ commented Argyll, uncertain whether Anderson’s facial antics referred to the wine or him.

‘Don’t worry. You haven’t. But Byrnes mentioned you once and I have a very good memory for minor details.’

Argyll decided to retire from the conversation as much as possible. Minor details, indeed. He leant back in his chair, nursed his glass of wine, and tried to look nonchalant. If it hadn’t been for his afternoon’s labours he would be in a bad mood. However, what he had to tell Flavia made him feel smug. It would be agreeable to be in control of events for once.

‘Will you give me your word that this conversation will be confidential?’ Flavia asked.

‘I can give you my word and you can decide how much it’s worth,’ Anderson replied. Flavia thought some more. She not only wanted information, it would be nice to rattle this little bugger’s confidence a little. Suggesting he might have been one of the prime victims of a hoax might sober him up a bit. Also, she didn’t like that crack about Argyll: maybe he had been a little objectionable, but basically she agreed with him. This worried her. Becoming protective was always a bad sign.

‘It was a fake,’ she announced bluntly.

The statement did the trick nicely. Anderson didn’t exactly turn pale, but clearly felt like it. ‘Oh shit,’ he said, very slowly and distinctly. ‘Are you sure?’

Flavia shrugged and smiled prettily at him, but didn’t reply.

‘And can you tell me why you think that?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I’m afraid not. Just take it that we’re right.’ It was a gross and unreasonable exaggeration, but Bottando had always instructed her that the one golden rule about police work was never ever seem uncertain of your facts. Besides, she reckoned that the more upset Anderson was, the more he’d talk. She switched into concerned and attentive mode.

‘I think I ought to buy you something to eat here. I’m pretty hungry.’

So was Argyll. And he appreciated that the little gesture was, perhaps, a good way of establishing a better rapport with Anderson. He was the sort of tactless person who not only can’t resist a free meal, but who is also made hungry by bad news. For the next hour he munched his way steadily through a large plate of jumbo prawns, a sizeable slice of fish pie, two plates of vegetables, a dessert that was meant to be pecan pie but wasn’t quite right somehow, two cups of coffee and an unfair share of a second bottle of wine. Flavia also matched him pretty much forkful for forkful. As on the first occasion when he had watched her prowess in this field, Argyll wondered how on earth someone of such a delightfully trim shape could possibly stuff that much food inside her.