autopsy, his first, and something that he had not greatly enjoyed.
Nothing remarkable. Lots of alcohol, and death by drowning. No signs of foul play, but nothing to rule it out either.
She nodded absently as she munched through a ham sandwich and Corrado looked at her with distaste. 'Time of death?' she asked. 'I don't suppose they know, as usual?”
'Wednesday morning at the latest. Probably Tuesday evening.”
She stopped eating. 'What?”
He repeated himself. 'Why do you looked so shocked?' he added.
She sent him off quickly. A trainee was the last person she was going to tell that not only had Sabbatini been dead before he collected the ransom, he'd probably even been dead before asking for one.
10
Trailing after Sabbatini wasn't, perhaps, quite so important if he hadn't actually stolen anything to start with, but Flavia had a dogged and thorough strain in her character that propelled her out of her office despite the discouragement and her growing conviction that her stomach was consumed with ulcers so vast in size that she might not survive them.
So she trudged wearily to the lawyers who had been channeling generous sums of money in Sabbatini's direction for so many years, and used her authority, her powers of persuasion, and best of all, her manifest ill- humor, to prize open their lips. And what she learned suddenly made her world terribly complicated again.
Maurizio Sabbatini was the brother-in-law of Guglio di Lanna.
'How very interesting' was her only comment. The lawyer made no response; it was a statement of the obvious.
She thought about it on the way back to the office, and at the same time felt a pang of regret that Bottando was no longer in place to give her his advice. Tangling with the Di Lanna family was the sort of thing that required all the help you could lay your hands on.
Not the richest family in Italy, certainly, but currently one of the most powerful, as the do-it-yourself political party that Di Lanna had forged out of the wreckage of the past few years of political chaos was now keeping the government in office. The Party for Democratic Advance—no one knew what that meant, or even whether it was left wing or right wing—had only fourteen members in the Chamber of Deputies, but as the government as a whole had a majority of only twelve, its influence was far beyond its nominal strength.
On top of that, Di Lanna's tentacles stretched throughout Italian industry and finance; he owned nothing, controlled little, but through a whole series of investment groups and holding companies he had a stake in almost everything. He had mastered the art of making relatively little go a very long way. He was a powerful man, but with no power base; an illusionist who had vast influence because everyone thought he was influential.
And his brother-in-law was, it seemed, a terrorist who might, in his last days, have turned art thief.
Di Lanna was a deputy and she finally tracked him down in the most unlikely of places, the Chamber of Deputies itself. Except for set-piece occasions when the television cameras are switched on, members of the chamber, above all important ones, rarely turn up there, so to find a man of his stature in the office assigned to him as the leader of a party was all but astonishing. No secretary, no aides guarding the approaches, no noise and bustle of petitioners coming to and fro to indicate the presence of an important personage within. Just a little typed sign on the glass door, taped over a more permanent, painted one announcing that this had once been an office belonging to the now-defunct Christian Democrats. It was so quiet that Flavia scarcely expected to find anyone in; she bothered to knock only because it seemed silly to go away without trying.
But Di Lanna was not only there, he even opened the door himself, another all but unimaginable piece of behavior. Important people in Italian politics—in any politics, come to think of it—do not open doors themselves; it indicates they are not, perhaps, that important after all. Di Lanna seemed prepared to take the risk of falling in people's estimation as he waved her into the cramped little space without ceremony. Man-of-the-people act to show his left-wing credentials? Flavia thought. Or maybe a touch of American informality to indicate his orientation toward business and free market economics? She shook her head. She really must make an effort to keep it all simple.
'You're early,' he said.
'Am I?' she replied, a little surprised.
'Yes. You're not due until four, I think. No matter. Let's get on with it. Don't expect me to say anything interesting, though.”
'I wouldn't dream of it,' she said before she could stop herself. To her surprise, Di Lanna threw back his head and laughed. 'Sit down, sit down. What's your name, by the way?”
He sat himself and looked at her carefully, a slightly impish air of curiosity about him.
Thinking about it later, Flavia decided it was his eyes that made up her mind; no one not fundamentally sound, she thought quite unreasonably, had eyes that twinkled in such a mischievous fashion. Di Lanna was one of those people she instantly liked. It took some time to figure out why he confused her, though. He dressed a little tweedily, an old establishment indicator, aping a supposed English style evoking images of land and country values. But everything else suggested the new left—the haircut, the way of sitting, the hand movements. A deliberately confusing onslaught of associations, which had the effect of always slightly catching unawares those he talked to.
'Who do you think I am?”
'You're yet another journalist, aren't you? Come here to wonder when I'm going to stab the prime minister in the back?”
She handed over her identity card. Di Lanna did not look surprised. 'Might I ask,' she went on, 'if your office is entirely safe for conversation?”
He paused for a second, 'Every Wednesday morning, someone places a bug or two in here; every Wednesday afternoon I have it taken out again. They know this, but keep on doing it. It's to serve notice I'm under surveillance, not because they expect to hear anything of interest. At the moment, we should be quite safe.”
'And who are they?”
He shrugged. 'Whoever. The dark hand of the state. You know. Perhaps you should tell me why the art theft police is here to see me?”
She hesitated only a second. 'Because you may be related to an art thief. As you know quite well, as I assume it was you who provided three million dollars for a ransom payment last week.”
Di Lanna pouted in the sort of way that indicates that losing three million dollars is a matter of the utmost triviality. As, indeed it probably was for him.
'Ah,' he said. 'I was told it would be handled discreetly. And that there would be no investigation. I must say, I am disappointed.”
'You needn't be. All I am doing is tying up a few loose ends. The whole business has become a little more complicated since your brother-in-law's death.”
She noticed that mentioning Sabbatini produced not even a conventional look of dismay or regret on the politician's face. If anything, there seemed to be a shadow of satisfaction on his closely controlled features.
'I would have thought it would have simplified things for you. That has been the effect on me.”
'Quite the opposite, in my case,' she replied. 'It now seems that he was dead before the ransom was either asked for or collected. Which means that either he was working with someone else—who knows all about the whole embarrassing business and has the money—or someone was deliberately using his style of playacting to confuse us.”
Di Lanna looked curious.
'I am presumably not the only person to know about your relationship to him,' she went on. 'We must consider the possibility that this whole stunt was aimed at you, rather than anything else.”
He swung in his chair—another Americanism—then put his hands together, fingertips on his lips, priestly fashion. An old Christian Democrat habit. 'Seems unlikely, surely?
The only point to that would be if everyone knew about it. In that case—you're right—it would be damaging.”
'My point is that it still might be. The money is out there, and someone knows the full story of the theft, the ransom, and—as he has the money—he also has the convincing evidence to prove it. I suspect there is little we can do; whoever this character is, he can't be touched without there being some risk of everybody discovering that the
