even if my job didn't depend on it. Then he rang off. Slammed the phone down, presumably. Except that I think it was a mobile phone. How do you slam down a mobile phone? Angrily pressing the off button isn't as expressive, really.'
'I don't know. I've never thought about it. Then what?”
Dossoni shook his head. 'Then nothing. The next I hear, he's found in his vat of plaster. I assumed it was all some sort of hoax that had failed and he'd got drunk in disappointment. I must say I was heartily relieved I'd had the common sense to have nothing to do with it.”
Dossoni's story was not much, to be sure. Hardly worth bothering about. Deliberately or not, Dossoni had told her virtually nothing of interest. And now he was pushing her to say what she knew.
Well, why not? She was no longer in the business of keeping other people's secrets.
'Okay, then. This is the summary. Picture stolen. I hand over a ransom five days later and get it back ...”
'How?”
'Direct exchange. With a man thought at the time to be Sabbatini, wearing a silly mask.”
'Who was not Sabbatini.”
'So it seems.”
'Curious,' Dossoni said. 'Most curious.”
'Do you know someone called Elena Fortini?”
Dossoni gave what seemed almost a shudder. Flavia looked at him inquiringly.
'Do you know her?' he asked back.
'Yes. I met her a couple of days ago.”
'And your impressions?”
'I quite liked her. She seemed . . . sensitive, kind.”
Dossoni threw back his head and laughed. 'No wonder so few paintings are ever recovered,' he said, 'if the police are so perceptive.”
'I beg your pardon?”
'I have heard Elena called many things, but not sensitive or kind,' he went on.
'Cruel, brutal. Not sensitive.”
'She didn't strike me like that.”
'She is the most violent person I have ever met,' he went on. 'An example. When one of her comrades was arrested on Good Friday, she suggested the appropriate response would be to bomb Saint Peter's during High Mass on Easter Sunday. Someone pointed out that hundreds of people might die, and she said, how appropriate. Christian sacrifice. The more the better. She was always into symbolic gestures. The symbol of the act. Remember that phrase? She was a great advocate of nail bombs. You know, the ones that tear off people's legs.”
'None of this is in her file.”
'She was wonderful at keeping in the background. And people were much too frightened of her to say anything, even when they were picked up. She was very much cleverer than anyone else. Poor old Maurizio was her puppet; she designed all his little actions for him; he was quite incapable of doing anything himself. But with her in charge everything had so many hidden messages it became surreal. She was an artist in violence. No one else could touch her. Did you ever see any of Maurizio's art, so-
called, in the last few years?”
'Some. In his studio.”
'Not very good, is it?”
'No.”
'Confused, clumsy, incoherent. It was all he could manage, poor soul.”
'Stealing this picture was a return to form, then,' Flavia commented. 'Very straightforward, that.”
'Yes, but what does it mean? What's the interpretation, eh? That was the trouble with him. At the crucial juncture he became incoherent, meaningless. No intellectual depth, and what there was was supplied by Elena Fortini; she was much better educated, much smarter.”
Unlike Dossoni, Flavia did not find the atmosphere of the Olympic stadium agreeable, or conducive to thought. Instead she went for a long walk.
Normally she did this with Argyll; they had spent years pounding the streets and hills of Rome together, amiably and in companionable harmony. Such jaunts were infinitely refreshing, but not the sort of thing that aids concentration. Argyll's boundless enthusiasm for bits of ancient Roman masonry sticking out from walls, or crumbling statues or patterns in cobblestones, was too distracting for that. He was forever shooting off with a gurgle of pleasure to look more closely at something or other, coming back when his curiosity was sated to pick up the conversation where it had been abruptly abandoned. 'Oh, look, isn't that lovely,' he was always saying, pointing out to Flavia something she might have passed a dozen times before without noticing.
But this day she had no appetite for architecture or sculpture or the oddities of town planning. She paced the streets, hands in the pockets of her jacket, frown on her face, eyes down, walking quickly across the town, over the river, and up the hill called the Janiculum to the statue of Garibaldi's wife on her horse in all her grandeur. To where the body of Maria di Lanna had been found nearly two decades ago, and where Sabbatini had told the journalist he wanted to stage his coup that would shake—what, exactly? There she sat for an hour thinking about the symbolism of Sabbatini's act. The phrase so enthusiastically taken up and put into action by the likes of Sabbatini. Odd how it had such an old-fashioned sound to it now, like some dead and buried artistic fad.
She began by trying to fit all the events into some pattern, but when that didn't work she tried it the other way around, constructing a pattern and seeing what events might fit in.
Some bits were easy; the date, in particular. Sabbatini had stolen the picture on Monday, then done nothing. Now she knew he had something planned for Friday, May 25. On May 25, 1981, his sister had been killed. Her body had been dumped close to where Flavia was now sitting, and that was where Sabbatini had wanted the cameras and audience to assemble, prompted by a reluctant Dossoni.
So far, so good. But why that picture? Any reason, or was that where Sabbatini's limited intellect let him down, as Dossoni had hinted? It was hard to see how a landscape by Claude could possibly have any hidden significance. Cephalus and Procris.
The story even had a happy ending. Maybe he simply wanted a high-profile picture, stolen in a way that advertised what he was doing. Perhaps that was all there was to it.
But what was the point? A grand gesture to show to a bunch of old terrorists that he had not forgotten? How did that fit in his claim to Dossoni that he would shake the country to its foundations? Then there was the ransom demand. How did that fit in?
Were there two messages? Or maybe whatever Sabbatini intended was abandoned when he died and his associate—and Flavia had not ruled out the possibility that Dossoni was three million dollars richer now than he had been last week—decided to cut his losses and collect the money.
Flavia sat on the bench next to Mrs. Garibaldi, reached for a cigarette, lit it, then pulled it out of her mouth and trampled on it. Oh, God, she thought. Can't even do that anymore. And, she suddenly realized, she was deliriously happy, and burst into tears.
All the tourists—not that there were many—looked on sympathetically.
'I tried to find that report on the Di Lanna kidnapping you asked for,' Paolo said later when the four met in a restaurant to have dinner and discuss progress so far. He had begun by handing over a file of phone records, together with the apologetic remark that he hadn't had time to go through them. Not surprising. No one liked doing that. 'No luck, alas. A curious story, though from what I have been able to gather. With a recent end.”
'Yes?”
'As you said, it was all hushed up. Or, rather, it seems to have become one of those stones that everybody knew, but no one ever mentioned in public. Nevertheless, some aspiring and trouble-making magistrate did decide to investigate, and began working on the case. Unfortunately, it was for the wrong reasons; he seems to have had leftish sympathies and was more intent on causing trouble than establishing what happened.
He was told to lay off and was then investigated himself; turns out he was as corrupt as you can get and still have only two legs. Eventually, to avoid the embarrassment of acknowledging dirty dealings in the judiciary, they cut him a deal. He resigns and is left in peace. End of story.”
Flavia smiled. 'Thank you. What's the recent end?”
'A few months ago. The magistrate dies.”
