James Twining - The Geneva Deception

‘ Buongiorno .’ Allegra flashed a broad smile and her badge in the same instant, snapping it shut before they could get a good look at her name or the picture. ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ she continued. ‘But my friend has had his car stolen.’ The two men glanced at Tom accusingly, as if this was somehow his fault.

‘It’s probably in a container halfway to Morocco by now,’ one of them suggested gloomily.

‘That’s what I told him,’ Allegra agreed. ‘Only one of his neighbours says they saw it being towed. And this is the closest pound to where he lives.’

‘If it’s been towed it will be on the database,’ one of the officers said to Tom. ‘Pay the release fee and you can have it back.’

‘He’s already looked and it’s not there,’ she said with a shrug before Tom could answer. ‘He thinks that someone might have made a mistake and entered the wrong plates.’

‘Really?’ The men eyed him like they would a glass of corked wine.

‘He’s English,’ she murmured, giving him the sort of weary look a mother might give a naughty child. The officers nodded in sudden understanding, a sympathetic look crossing their faces. ‘Is there any chance we can go up and take a quick look to see if it’s here? I’d really appreciate it.’

The two men glanced at each other and then shrugged their agreement.

‘As long as you’re quick,’ one of them said.

‘When did it go missing?’ the other asked her, ignoring Tom completely now.

‘Around the fifteenth of March.’

‘We store all the cars in the order they get brought here,’ the first officer explained, pointing at a worn map of the complex that had been crudely taped to the counter. ‘Cars for that week should be around here -in the blue quadrant on the third floor.’ He pointed at a section of the map. ‘The lift’s down there on the right.’

A few moments later the doors pinged shut behind them.

‘You enjoyed that, didn’t you?’ Tom said in a reproachful tone.

‘It could have been worse,’ she said with an amused smile. ‘I could have told them you were American.’

The lift opened on to the southern end of the third floor. It was a dark, depressing place, most of the neon tubes missing or broken, the walls encrusted with a moulding green deposit, the ceiling oozing a thick yellow mucus that hung in cancerous clumps. The floor was divided by lines of decaying concrete pillars into three long aisles, with cars parked along both sides and a spiralling up-and-down ramp at one end linking it to the other levels like a calcified umbilical cord.

They made their way over to the area pointed out by the guard, dodging around oily lakes of standing water, until they were about halfway down the left-hand aisle. Jennifer took out the keys and pressed the unlock button. Cavalli’s car eagerly identified itself with a double flash of its indicators-a souped-up Maserati Granturismo, worth almost double what Johnny was asking for. No wonder he’d pushed them into this.

‘What are you doing?’ Tom called in a low voice as Allegra opened the boot and leaned inside. ‘It must have been searched already.’

‘That doesn’t mean they found anything,’ she replied, her voice muffled.

‘Let’s just get out of here before they…’

She stood up, triumphantly holding a small piece of pottery that had been nestling in a fold in the muddy grey blanket that covered the boot floor. About the size of her hand, it featured a bearded man’s face painted in red against a black background.

‘It’s a vase fragment. Probably Apullian, which dates it to between 430 and 300 BC.’

‘Dionysius?’ Tom ventured.

‘Yes,’ she said, looking impressed. ‘I’d guess it was part of a krater , a bowl used…’

‘For mixing wine and water,’ Tom said, grinning at her obvious surprise. ‘My parents were art dealers. My mother specialised in antiquities. I guess I was a good listener.’

‘Notice anything strange?’ she asked, handing it to him with a nod.

‘The edges are sharp.’ He frowned, gingerly drawing his finger over one of them as if it was a blade.

‘Sharp and clean,’ she agreed. ‘Which means the break is recent.’

‘You mean it was done after it was dug up?’ Tom gave her a puzzled look, still holding the fragment.

‘I mean it was done on purpose,’ she shot back, Tom detecting a hint of anger in her voice. ‘See how they’ve been careful not to damage the painted area so they can restore it.’

‘You mean it’s been smashed so it can be stuck back together again?’ he asked with a disbelieving smile.

‘It makes it easier to smuggle,’ she explained with a despairing shake of her head. ‘Unfortunately, we see it all the time. The fragments are called orphans. The dealers can sometimes make more money selling them off individually than they would get for an intact piece, because they can raise the price as the collector or museum gets more and more desperate to buy all the pieces. And of course, by the time the vase is fully restored, no one can track where or who they bought each fragment from. Everyone’s protected.’

‘Then Cavalli must have been working either with or for the League,’ Tom said grimly as she dropped the boot lid. ‘Perhaps they found out that the FBI had his name and killed him before he could talk?’

The noise of an engine starting echoed up to them from one of the lower floors, and drew a worried glance from Tom towards the exit.

‘We should go.’ He opened the passenger door to get in, but then immediately staggered back, coughing as a choking chemical smell clawed at his throat.

‘You okay?’ Allegra called out in concern.

‘It’s been sprayed with a fire extinguisher,’ he croaked, pointing at the downy white skin which covered most of the car’s interior, apart from where it had been disturbed by the police search. ‘Old trick. The foam destroys any fingerprint or DNA evidence.’

‘Which Cavalli’s killers would only have done if they’d been in the car,’ Allegra said thoughtfully, opening the driver’s side door and standing back to let the fumes clear.

‘Where did they find the car keys?’ He asked, rubbing his streaming eyes.

‘In his pocket, why?’

‘I’m just wondering if he was driving. Based on that I’d guess he was.’

‘How do you work that out?’

‘Because I doubt his killers drove him out to wherever the car was dumped and then planted the keys on him before killing him.’ Tom shrugged.

“What does it matter either way?’

Taking a deep breath, Tom disappeared inside the car. Leaning over the passenger seat, he plunged his hand down the back of the driver’s seat, wisps of foam fluttering like ash caught by the wind. Feeling around with his fingertips, he pulled out first some loose change, then a pack of matches, and finally, pushed right down, a folded Polaroid. He stood up, brushing the sticky white paste from his clothes.

‘If Cavalli was driving, that’s about the only place he would have been able to hide something once he realised what was going on,’ he explained, enjoying the look on Allegra’s face. ‘Here.’ He leant over the roof and handed the photo to her. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Some sort of statue fragment,’ she said slowly. ‘Greek, I’d guess, although-’

She was interrupted by a shout.

‘ Rimanga dove siete !’ Stay where you are!

19th March-8.51 a.m.

Spinning round, Allegra immediately recognised the two officers they had talked their way past downstairs. One was hunched over the wheel of the blue Fiat squad car that had ghosted up the ramp behind them, its headlights now blazing through the darkness. The other was standing next to it, his voice echoing off the car park’s low ceilings, gun drawn.