James Twining - The Geneva Deception

D’Arcy was gripped by a chilling realisation. His eyes rose slowly from the screen to the small metal grille positioned in the right-hand corner of the panic room. To the thin tendrils of acrid smoke that were even now snaking through its narrow openings. To the acid taste at the back of his throat as he felt his lungs begin to clench.

Vicolo de Panieri, Travestere, Rome 19th March-7.03 a.m.

Tom had booked himself on to the afternoon flight out of DC, taking the obvious precaution of using another name. He never travelled without at least two changes of identity stitched into his bag’s lining and luckily the FBI had not thought to check whether he had left anything with the concierge at the hotel he’d been staying in the previous night.

There had been a relatively low-key police presence at Reagan International. Understandable, given that the FBI would probably be focusing all their efforts on the Vegas area if they were serious about catching him. After all, he’d dropped a pretty strong hint to Stokes that that was where he’d head in the first instance to pick up the killer’s trail.

He’d managed to snatch a few hours’ sleep, recouping a little of what he’d lost over the past two days, and then spent the rest of the flight reading through Jennifer’s file in a bit more detail. Most of it was by now familiar to him, although he had paused over the witness statements, bank records and various other documents that the FBI had seized in their raid on the art dealer’s warehouse in Queen’s which he hadn’t seen before. One, in particular, stood out and had triggered the call he was making now as his taxi swept into the city along the A91, accompanied by the dawn traffic and the chirping tones of the driver’s satnav system.

‘Archie?’ he said, as soon as he picked up.

‘Tom?’ Archie rasped, jet lag and what Tom guessed had probably been a heavy night at the hotel bar combining to give his voice a ragged croak. ‘What time is it? Where the hell are you?’

‘Rome,’ Tom answered.

‘Rome?’ he repeated sleepily, the muffled noise of something being knocked to the floor suggesting that he was groping for his watch or the alarm clock with one hand while digging the sleep out of his eyes with the other. ‘What the fuck are you doing in Rome? You’re meant to be in Zurich. What number is this?’

‘Jennifer’s dead,’ Tom said sharply. ‘It was a setup. The Caravaggio. The exchange. They were waiting for us.’

‘Shit.’ Any hint of tiredness had immediately evaporated from Archie’s voice. ‘You all right?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘What the fuck happened?’

‘Sniper,’ Tom said, trying not to think about what he’d seen or heard or felt, concentrating on just sticking to the facts. ‘Professional job.’

‘You’re sure she was the target?’

‘Pretty sure. Have you ever heard of an antiquities-smuggling operation called the Delian League?’

‘No. Why? Is that who you think did it?’

‘That’s what I’m in Rome to find out. That’s why I need you in Geneva.’

‘Of course,’ Archie replied instantly. ‘Whatever you need, mate.’

‘There’s a sale at Sotheby’s this afternoon,’ Tom said, glancing down at the circled entry in the Geneva auction catalogue that had been included in the file. ‘One of the lots is a statue of Artemis. It looks like Jennifer thought it was important. I want to know why.’

‘No worries,’ Archie reassured him. ‘What about you? What’s in Rome?’

‘A name. Luca Cavalli. He was fingered by someone Jennifer arrested in New York. I thought I’d start with him and work my way back up the ladder.’

A pause.

‘Tom…’ Archie spoke haltingly, for once lost for words. ‘Listen, mate, I’m sorry. I know you two were…I’m really sorry.’

Tom had thought that sharing the news of Jennifer’s murder with Archie might help unburden him in some way. But his hesitant awkwardness was so unusual that it was actually having the opposite effect, forcing Tom to reflect yet again on the events that had brought him here, rather than focus on the immediate task at hand.

‘Are you going to be all right?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Tom said. ‘Just call me on this number when you get there.’

About fifteen minutes later the taxi pulled up. Tom stepped out.

It was a wide, cobbled street largely populated by neat four-storey buildings with symmetrical balconies and brightly coloured plaster walls. Cavalli’s house, by contrast, was a feral, hulking shape. Long and only two storeys high, its stonework was grey and wizened by age, the roof sagging under a red blister of sun-cracked tiles, the flaking green shutters at its upstairs windows betraying years of neglect. An old horse block stood to the right of the front door, while to the left, a large dilapidated arched gate suggested that the building had once served as some sort of workshop or garage.

For a moment, Tom wondered if he’d been misled by the sat-nav’s confident tone and been dropped off in the wrong place. But the seals on the door and the laminated notice declaring the premises a court-protected crime scene removed any lingering doubts. He was definitely in the right place. It just looked as though he was too late.

Hitching his bag across his shoulders and checking that the street was empty, Tom clambered quickly up the drainpipe, glad that he had changed out of his suit. Reaching across to the window, he could see that although it had been closed shut, the frame was warped and the latch old and loose. Pushing a knife into a narrow gap, he levered the blade back and forth, shaking the window so that the latch slowly worked itself free, until it popped open and he was able to clamber inside.

He found himself in what he assumed was a bedroom, although it was hard to be sure, the contents of the wardrobe having been swept on to the floor, the bed propped against the wall and the chest flipped on to its back, its emptied drawers lying prostrate at its side. It struck Tom that there was a deliberate violence in the way that the room had been upended. The police, for all their clumsiness, usually searched with a little more restraint. The people who had done this, however, hadn’t just been looking for something. They’d been trying to make a point.

He exited the bedroom on to a glass and stainless steel walkway that ran the length of the building and looked down on to a wide, doubleheight living space. Here the décor was as modern as the outside had been neglected, the back wall made of folding glass panels and looking out on to a small walled garden, the floor a dull mirror of polished concrete, the galley kitchen a mass of stainless steel that looked like it might double as an operating theatre.

Tom stepped along the walkway past a bathroom and another bedroom that had been similarly turned upside down. Then he made his way down a glass staircase to the ground floor, its icicle-like glass treads protruding unsupported from the wall. Down here, the brutality of the assault was, if anything, even more marked-the large plasma screen lifted off its brackets and broken almost in two across a chair; the seats and backs of the leather furniture slashed open, their innards ripped out in handfuls through the deep gashes; the coffee table overturned and its metal legs stamped on so that they were bent into strange, deviant shapes; the bookcase forced on to its front, crushing its contents underneath. There was a distinctive and unpleasant aroma too, and it was a few moments before Tom was able to guess at its meaning-not content with defeating these inanimate foes, the assailants had, it seemed, chosen to mark their victory by urinating on them.

A sudden noise from the front door made Tom look up. Someone was coming in, the bottom lock clunking open, the key now slipping into the top one. He knew immediately he wouldn’t have enough time to make it back upstairs.