Italian state managed to lose a picture it promised to guard with its life. Nor that it, and you, connived in an illegal act to get it back again. Which, I assume, you do not wish to happen.”
'Not really, no.”
'So I shall be very careful. But I do think it is important to find out if possible who this other person is. Then there will be less chance of a nasty surprise one morning when you open the papers.”
Di Lanna considered, then nodded. 'Perhaps wise. I always knew that little shit would cause more trouble sooner or later.”
'Might I ask what contact you had with him?”
'None whatsoever. I haven't seen or spoken to him in any way for nearly twenty years. As far as I was concerned, he didn't exist. He betrayed everyone he ever came into contact with.”
'But you still gave him money.”
Di Lanna looked inquiringly.
'I talked to the lawyer who paid him a monthly allowance.”
'That was money from his father, held in trust. Had I been able to stop it entirely, I would have done so. I spent a fortune on legal bills to try and get him excluded, and largely succeeded. But I couldn't manage it all. What he was left with was enough to make me wonder why he did this when I heard about it. His one good quality—his only one, perhaps—was that he genuinely did not care a hoot about money. If he had it, he spent it. If he didn't have it, he didn't care.”
'He seems to have changed his ways, then.”
Di Lanna shrugged.
'Can you tell me anything about him? Friends, associates, that sort of thing?”
Di Lanna shook his head. 'I think the voluminous police files would be more use. As I say, I refused even to talk to him.”
'Was he that bad?”
'Yes. The damage he did was incalculable and unforgivable.”
'He didn't do much, though. Apart from rob a bank.”
'You are very forgiving for a member of the police, signora. However, I was not thinking of his politics, or his self-indulgent antics. I was referring to his murder of my wife. His sister.”
Flavia paused to take stock. 'I'm sorry,' she said after a while. 'I'm not with you.”
'Maurizio fooled around with these people, and being him couldn't help bragging about his family connections—he was happy to play revolutionary, but never wanted it forgotten that he came from a rich and powerful family. Maybe it was his way of rebelling against his father, who was a formidable man. Very powerful, determined, and insistent on getting his own way. He doted on his daughter, and had no time for his son. I don't know, and I don't care.
'These people had no more loyalty to Maurizio than he had to them. For them he was a joker, a source of money, no more. And when they wanted to pull off a really big coup, they exploited him mercilessly. He told them all about his family and their houses.
He told them all about his sister, what shops she liked, what restaurants she frequented. My wife, signora. I loved her more than anyone I have ever loved, before or since. We'd been married for eighteen months, that's all.
'The rest is simple, if painful. They took her, then made their demands. I got the money ready—I would have paid twice as much—but the police were unusually effective for once and found the house where they thought she was being held. There was a siege, which ended in shooting.
'It went terribly wrong. There were terrorists inside and they were all killed. But Maria was not there. And the response was immediate and savage. She was found the next day, dumped behind a bush in the Janiculum near a statue. She was twenty-four.
They had shot her in the head. It killed her father, and nearly sent me mad with grief.
May twenty-fifth, nineteen eighty-one. The day my life ended.”
Flavia sat back in her chair and thought. She had no memory of the tragedy.
'No,' he said. 'It was one of the many things that were hushed up, as much as possible. It would have been an enormous propaganda coup for them and we felt that at the least we could deny them that. Her body was collected before the press could get there, and we put out the story she had died in a car crash. It pained me, not to have the reason for my loss known, so people would understand, but it was the right thing to do. I thought so then, and I still do.”
He shrugged helplessly. The look of pain on his face was all too real and immediate.
'I've never really got over it, I think. And I have certainly never forgiven him. So don't ask me about him now.”
'I'm sorry. I didn't realize . . .”
'How could you?' He paused, and thought, swinging in his chair once more, but gently and without affectation this time. 'Prime Minister Sabauda was interior minister at the time; he broke the news to me himself. Stayed with me, comforted me.”
Di Lanna smiled, very slightly. 'I am always asked when I am going to bring him down, pull out of the coalition, and try to increase my own power at his expense. The answer that I can never give is that I am not. I owe him gratitude for the way he helped me through those dark times. I can never say that, of course; my credibility as a politician, such as it is, would be destroyed if it became known that I was acting out of motives like loyalty and gratitude. So I have to talk about unity and stability instead.
Which, of course, are taken to be code words for biding my time until I trip him up.”
Flavia shook her head once more and felt a wave of nostalgia for nice simple criminals. You always— generally, at least—knew where you were with them.
'I see,' she said. 'I think. What do you think Sabbatini was up to, then?”
'I have no idea, and I don't care. The picture has been recovered, and happily he is dead. May he rot. Three million dollars is a small price to pay for that.”
He reached over his desk and picked up a picture frame, which he handed to her. It was of a young woman, holding a bunch of white flowers, smiling at the camera. It had the look of distant history on it already.
'She was pretty,' Flavia said, not knowing what else she could say.
'She was delightful. Everything I ever wanted. We never had any children, alas. That would have been some compensation, at least. He denied me even that.”
'I'm sorry.”
Di Lanna made an effort to bring himself back to the present.
'Why did you provide the money for the ransom?”
'Because the prime minister knew the moment he heard of the theft who had committed it, and when he told me I offered to help. One must take responsibility for members of one's family, however despicable they may be. Sabauda was very worried about using public funds; the chances of someone noticing would have been large. I assisted. That is all. As I say, for me it was a small thing financially. The emotional cost, you might say, was much higher.”
Di Lanna looked at his watch. 'Now, I'm afraid you must excuse me, signora . . . ,'
he said gently.
Flavia got to her feet. 'Of course. I apologize. I have taken up far too much of your time already.”
'What will you do now?”
'I will tiptoe delicately around the matter, and see if there is anything to be done to tidy things up.”
'May I give you a word of advice? Leave it be. There is nothing to be gained from it.
My wife was buried without explanation. Let Maurizio go the same way. He deserves no better.
'And,' he added, showing for the first time the slightest flash of claw—not much, nothing overt, but nonetheless there and all the more impressive for it—'it will win you no thanks from anyone.”
11
Try as he might, Argyll could not rid himself of the idea that there was something decidedly odd about Bottando's little Virgin, and the thought of it preyed on him mightily. It was not that it was urgent, that was certain, but it was a distraction and Argyll, when Flavia was occupied and there was, in theory, nothing to keep him from his work, loved distractions. He sought them out, in fact, finding almost any reason, good or bad, to avoid settling
