Iain Pears - The Bernini Bust

Four in the morning. Which meant that he’d been lying in bed for three and a half hours, eyes open, brain rotating.

He switched on the light, hesitated and finally took the decision he’d been wanting to take ever since he got back to his hotel room. He had to talk to someone. He picked up the phone.

While Argyll was wide awake in the middle of the night, Flavia di Stefano, sitting at her desk in the Rome headquarters of the Italian art squad, was half asleep in the middle of the day. Like him, however, she was in a disturbed frame of mind, and her colleagues were beginning to notice.

Ordinarily she was an exceptionally good-humoured person to have around. Cheerful, charming, relaxed. A perfect colleague to spend an hour chattering to over a cup of espresso when the work load flagged a bit. In the four years she’d worked for Taddeo Bottando as a researcher, she had successfully established a reputation for all-purpose amiability. She was, in short, well-liked.

But not at the moment. For the past few weeks she had been grumpy, uncooperative and a complete pain in the neck. A very junior and pimply-faced lad who had just joined had his head almost bodily ripped off for a trivial mistake that, usually, would have elicited nothing more alarming than a patient explanation of how to do it properly. A colleague asking for a swap on the work rota so he could take a long weekend was told to cancel the weekend. A plea for help from another, bogged down in a mass of documents from an art gallery raid, was told he would have to sort it out himself.

Not herself at all. General Bottando even made cautious enquiries after her health, and wondered whether she was, perhaps, overworking a little. He got short shrift as well, and was told, in effect, to mind his own business. Fortunately, he was a tolerant man, and more worried than annoyed. But he was beginning to find himself watching her more carefully. He ran a happy department, so he liked to think, and was disturbed at the effect she was beginning to have on morale.

Doggedly and persistently, though, Flavia plugged on with the work; forms in, forms annotated, forms out again. No one could fault her work, or the amount of time she spent doing it. She just wasn’t much fun anymore. The bad mood seemed an almost permanent fixture, and was approaching high tide when, at 5.30, the phone rang.

‘Di Stefano,’ she snapped, rather as though the instrument was a personal enemy.

The voice at the other end bellowed through the receiver at a volume which suggested the owner was shouting loudly into it. He was; Argyll had still not fully accepted that the audibility of phone lines varies in inverse proportion to their length. His voice came through as clear as a bell, while a call across Rome was frequently incomprehensible.

‘Wonderful, I’ve got you. Listen, something awful’s been going on.’

‘What do you want?’ she said crossly when she realised who it was. Typical, she thought. Don’t see him for weeks on end, then, when he wants something…

‘Listen,’ he repeated, ‘Moresby’s been murdered.’

‘Who?’

‘Moresby. The man who bought my picture.’

‘So?’

‘I thought you’d be interested.’

‘I’m not.’

‘And a Bernini’s been stolen. It was smuggled out of Italy.’

This was, of course, more in Flavia’s line of business, as much of her time in the past few years had been devoted to stopping smuggling, and recovering at least some of the works of art which were smuggled. Generally speaking, no matter what sort of mood she was in, she would have picked up pen and paper and begun listening. However…

‘In that case it’s too late to do anything about it, isn’t it?’ she said shortly. ‘What are you ringing about? Don’t you know I’m busy?’

There was a two dollar fifty-eight cent pause from California until the slightly aggrieved voice returned for another try. ‘Of course I know you’re busy. You always are these days. But I thought you’d want to know.’

‘Don’t see what it’s got to do with me,’ she said. ‘It’s an American affair. I haven’t noticed any official requests for our assistance. Unless you’ve joined the local police or something.’

‘Oh, come on, Flavia. You love murders and thefts and smuggling and things like that. I rang you up just to tell you. You could at least sound interested.’

In truth, she was, but was damned if she was going to let on. Argyll and she had been close friends for a couple of years. She had long given up any notion that they would be anything else. Until he came along she had tended to think of herself as the sort of person who, if not irresistible – she was not sufficiently vain to think that – was at least generally attractive. But Argyll didn’t notice. He was companionable, friendly, evidently enjoyed trips round the countryside and to movies and dinner and museums with her, but that was it. She had provided the openings, had he been so minded, and he had not taken them. He just stood there, looking awkward.

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