Each smiles at the other at the same moment before the door swings open again and a very annoyed Commissario Tarento enters. 'I told you to look around outside, Bottando,' he says curtly. 'Not wander about like a tourist.”
'I insisted he come here,' the girl says. 'To reassure me we are in no danger. I do not like the idea of murderers and robbers wandering about the place. He has been most kind.' Another mocking smile, which Bottando understands and his superior is incapable of even noticing.
Tarento is mollified and gives her a silly-little-girl look. 'And you are ...”
'Verney,' she says. 'My name is Mary Verney.”
From that point on, Argyll's imagination concluded, everything was straightforward.
No need even to go through it all. The loss of the little Virgin. Its recovery. Its reappearance on Bottando's sitting room wall. His retirement. The angle of Mary Verney's arm as she poured a glass of wine in the crisp spring sunshine. The ransoming of the Claude. Flavia's frustration at being constantly left out of things. It wasn't exactly supported by evidence, far from it; Argyll's overwrought imagination had supplied most of it. And very puzzling it all was.
15
For Flavia, not being able to get hold of Argyll was merely an irritating start to what turned into another appalling day. Around the time he was leaving for Florence, she was returning to Rome, having stayed on in Siena to tidy up a few trivial matters with the police there. She went straight to the office, where she found a note summoning her to a meeting at the ministry. Urgent, it said, and the fact that the meeting had been supposed to start five minutes previously did nothing to improve her already irritable mood. She had spent a terrible night dealing with what Elena Fortini had pointed out to her. Her condition was so obvious that she felt foolish for not having thought of it herself.
Her world had changed forever. Just like that. It was going to take some time to get used to it. She couldn't even begin to imagine how she was going to reconcile the sorts of hours that her job required with the sorts of hours that she knew from observation small children seemed to demand as their right. All she did note was that she was thinking of how to fit the job in. Not the other way around. She was still too much in a state of shock even to consider whether she was pleased or not.
She was also not really at her most attentive when she arrived, finally, at the meeting, which she thought was going to be another interminable discussion of staff training or budgets or quibbles about results. It was something about bureaucracies she had noted: the more trivial the subject, the more pompous and urgent the summons. In general, anyway. She didn't even pay enough attention to note that the two civil servants in the room—both completely unknown to her—spent a remarkable amount of time shuffling papers and looking uncomfortable.
'I'm afraid that we have to deal with more important matters now,' the more senior said once the small talk had been disposed of. 'That is, the future of the department now that General Bottando has left. We feel—the minister feels—that a clear leadership line is required to ensure the maintenance of the high-profile and successful performance that has been such a marked feature of the art theft department in recent years.”
'I quite agree,' said Flavia, still unaware of the large manhole opening up in front of her. 'Staff morale, I feel, is highly important for producing the productivity gains that the ministry seems to want so much.' She was very proud of that remark; it showed she was learning the language of management that seemed to be so terribly fashionable in administrative circles these days. She knew that it was all nonsense, but accepted that when in Rome it was necessary to speak a little Latin.
The other civil servant grunted and looked even more awkward. 'Indeed. But that is not why we have called you here today. There is no easy way to say this, so I will not try. I regret to have to tell you that it has been decided at the highest level not to appoint you as the permanent head of the art squad.”
As she did not know how to react, she scarcely reacted at all. 'And may I ask the reasoning behind this decision?”
'I am afraid not,' he said. 'As you know, all such matters are in the strictest confidence.' There was just enough of a hint of regret in his voice to make Flavia think that at least he was not enjoying himself. 'The good work you have done in the past year has been noted and is greatly appreciated. Please do not think that any criticism of you or your ability is intended. However, it is thought that a figure with greater seniority is required, with, perhaps, greater willingness to adhere to policy.”
'What do you mean, 'adhere to policy'?”
A faint, apologetic smile was all she got in response.
'You don't, of course, mean that I'm a woman, do you?' Flavia said.
The second civil servant had the look of a man about to be taken to the European Court of Human Rights. 'Oh, dear me, no,' he said in a hurry. 'That's the last thing we mean.”
Flavia kept quiet. The two men shuffled some more in their seats and looked at each other. They'd thought of that one. It was obvious that their approach had been worked out in advance.
'We understand that it is difficult for anybody to return to a subordinate position once they have run an organization. And we quite understand that you may consider your position untenable from now on.”
It was worse than Flavia had ever imagined, even in her most paranoid nightmare.
She was now paying full attention. 'You want me to go away?”
'You may consider it in your own best interest and also in the best interest of the department,' the man said. 'I must add that to avoid any discontinuity during the transfer period, we would like the matter resolved now.”
'You want me to go now?' She was even more incredulous.
There was a long pause and more fiddling on the desktop. 'We can offer you two choices. The first is a transfer to a senior administrative post ...”
'In?”
'Ah, in Bari.”
'Bari?' Flavia said in disgust.
'Of course, should this not be acceptable, you might consider taking advantage of a generous severance package ...”
'This is ridiculous,' Flavia interrupted. 'I have never heard of anybody being treated in such an appalling fashion. To be passed over, I suppose, is something that happens.
Although, to be perfectly frank, I do not know of anyone who could do the job as well as I can. But to be ejected so unceremoniously, almost as though I had been caught with my hand in the till or something like that, is outrageous.”
'I knew this was not going to be easy or pleasant for any of us,' the first civil servant replied regretfully. 'All I can say is that you have our considerable sympathy.
Nonetheless, our instructions are clear.”
'Do I understand that I have the perfect right to accept this situation and go back to my old job as it was under General Bottando?”
'You do. In theory.”
'And in practice?”
In reply she received only a look. A very informative look.
'It is rare, I think, for people to find a new regime as comfortable as the one they were used to. The new head of department may not consider you to be so very obviously his deputy in the same way that General Bottando did. Indeed, he may well bring in his own people so that you revert to your official job as a researcher. You must consider seriously whether you would find that acceptable.”
True enough. Flavia had got used to a great deal of unofficial authority in the past few years, as well as a considerable amount of independence. It would be very hard to lose that.
'You do realize,' Flavia said, 'the level of compensation and publicity I would receive if I took this to court? Dismissing a senior civil servant, which I am whether you like it or not, merely because she is expecting a baby ...”
This was one detail that caught them on the hop. They both looked at her as though she had announced that she was the pope's daughter. Flavia could almost hear their strategy crumbling.
'Oh.”
She smiled. 'Against the law, you know. Even worse, it looks bad. It looks terrible.”
