Scott Mariani - The Mozart Conspiracy

Sandro wiped his hands on his jeans. ‘She’s old, but good. Say a thousand and a half.’

Ben took cash from his pocket. ‘Is she ready for a run right now?’ he asked.

He drove quietly out of the farmyard and up the rutted drive, then turned right to follow the winding country road back the way they’d come. The yellowed reflectors of the old Strada picked out the lopsided road-signs and the landmarks he remembered from earlier. He passed the forest where they’d dumped the farm truck, and wished he had a weapon.

He hated going back to Arno’s place. It was tactically sloppy and possibly dangerous. But it was the only way. He bitterly regretted not having pressed the old man to say more about where he’d hidden the letter. He was making too many mistakes. Was the damn thing even worth finding? Maybe not, he thought, but clutching at straws was his only option right now. He had to hope he was clutching at the right one.

It was half past midnight by the time he found Arno’s villa. The front gates were set back from the road, across a neat border. He slowed. The driveway and gardens were lit up with the swirling lights of police cars and two fire engines.

As he swore and accelerated past the gates he looked past the vehicles at the house.

It wasn’t there any more. Hardly a wall was still standing. The villa was a levelled mess of blackened rubble and smoking timber, the collapsed roof lying like the twisted spine of a giant carcass, tiles and charred woodwork and smashed windows scattered over a wide circle.

The fire had obviously raged a long time. The crews were calling it a night, packing up their equipment. There was nothing left worth saving.

Ben drove on, thinking about the options left open now. Either the blaze in the study had spread, or someone had made sure the place was thoroughly torched. It was more likely to be the latter. Whoever they were, these people liked their tracks to be covered. And fire was the best cleanser.

After a kilometre or so he turned into the farm entrance and followed the bumping, stony lane as far as the deserted yard where they’d stolen the truck earlier that day. Other than the shattered barn, there was no visible trace of what had happened there.

He turned off the engine and stepped out. He waited in the dark for a while. There was nobody around. He searched the buildings by the thin beam of his Mini Maglite but found nothing, not a single shell case left uncollected. They’d even cleaned the blood off the tool-shed door where he’d nailed the man to the frame. The nails had been pliered out too, leaving four neat holes in the wood.

There was a sudden movement behind him, and a crash of something falling. He whirled around in the darkness, every muscle tensing.

The black cat leapt down from its vantage point on a high shelf, landed next to the old nail tin it had knocked over, and darted out through a hole in the planking.

Ben cut across the dark farm and found the gap in the crumbled stone wall leading into Arno’s rambling parkland. He stayed back among the trees, watching the fire crews leave and the police strolling up and down the sides of the gutted villa. He knew he was wasting his time here. It was worthless.

He turned to go, heading back for the gap in the wall, picking his way between the slender tree trunks by moonlight. A cloud passed across the face of the moon, casting the woods in shadow.

He stopped. Lying among the leaves, half-hidden behind a mossy knot of tree roots, a man’s body was lying crumpled and grey on the ground with his arms flung out to the sides.

There was no head on the body.

He waited, perfectly still, watching it until the cloud passed and the moonlight brightened. He went over to it and nudged it with his foot. It wasn’t a body. It was something the clean-up team had missed.

Arno’s tweed jacket. He remembered Leigh dropping it as they ran across the grounds.

He picked it up. It felt cold and damp, and it was empty apart from an oblong shape in the left inside pocket.

He fished it out. It was a slim wallet.

‘Who’s there?’ Her voice sounded frightened in the darkness.

‘Relax,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’ He shut the door of the cabin behind him.

‘Where were you?’

He told her.

‘You went back?’

‘The place has been torched, Leigh. There’s nothing left. But I found something.’ He held up the wallet. ‘It’s Arno’s.’

Leigh sat up in bed as he flipped on a sidelight. He sat on the edge of the bed next to her and she brushed the thick black hair out of her eyes. ‘Where did you find it?’ she asked sleepily.

‘Where you dropped his jacket, in the woods,’ he said. He opened the slim calf-leather wallet and unzipped one of the internal pockets. ‘There’s not much here,’ he said. ‘A library membership card, out of date. A couple of old cinema tickets. Fifteen euros in cash. And this.’ He took out a small slip of paper and showed it to her.

She took it and looked at him quizzically. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s a receipt.’

‘The Museo Visconti in Milan,’ she said, reading the crumpled print.

‘Ever heard of it?’

She shook her head.

‘This is an acknowledgement of something Arno donated to the museum,’ he said. ‘The receipt doesn’t say what it is, but it’s dated last January, just a few days after Oliver’s death.’

She looked up from the slip of paper. ‘You think-’

‘The letter has gone to Milan? I don’t know,’ he said. ‘We’ll soon find out. Get some sleep. We’re moving on at five.’

The kid had been right about the car. It was old, but it was dependable. It took them to Milan in a little over four hours. On the way they stopped at an autostrada service station where Leigh picked out a headscarf and a pair of wide sunglasses, new jeans and a warm jacket.

The Milan traffic was insane, and it was mid-morning by the time they found the Museo Visconti, an imposing eighteenth-century museum of music in the city suburbs. Its high porticoes overlooked a walled garden away from the street and the traffic rumble.

They went inside and breathed the old museum smell of must and wood polish. The place was almost empty, with just a few middle-aged visitors strolling quietly around the exhibits, talking to each other in subdued voices. The parquet floors were varnished and waxed to a slippery mirror sheen. Classical music played softly in the background. The doorways to each room were flanked by thick velvet curtains. The security guard on patrol looked about eighty.

They walked from room to room under the sweeping gaze of cameras, past displays of period brass instruments and a collection of magnificently ornate antique harps. Ben peered through a doorway into a large gallery space filled with old oil portraits of famous composers. ‘Nothing in here,’ he said. ‘Just a bunch of dead men in powdered wigs.’

‘Philistine,’ Leigh whispered at him.

From the main hall a curved flight of wooden stairs led up to the next floor. Ben went up, and Leigh followed. The creaking stairs took them to a long room whose walls were lined with tall glass cabinets displaying period opera costumes and other exhibits. Leigh stopped at one of them and read the small brass plaque. ‘This is the gown that Caruso wore in his first ever public appearance in 1894,’ she read out. She walked along and stopped at another. ‘Wow. Look. The dress that Maria Callas wore when she sang Norma in Milan in ’57. Incredible. How come I never knew about this place?’

‘Leigh. Please. We’re not here to gape at some old dress. The letter, remember?’

Back in the entrance foyer, the old security guard shook his head. ‘We do not have any letters or documents.’