unread, and all speeches delivered at the top of his voice, preferably with a megaphone. Even though he was a decade older than she was, Flavia knew him because their mothers were friends and he had always had a benevolent affection for her, which even survived her entering the police. Her total lack of interest in politics was forgiven her, as family and connections have always, quite rightly, been considered of far more importance than transitory ideologies. So Flavia had watched Aldo metamorphose over the years from youthful choirboy, through political revolutionary, and around again to earnest churchgoer. She had kept a distant eye on him as he started life in a parish, found the work tedious, then worked his way into a job at the Vatican where he was now an ambitious undersecretary of some small importance in the Church's equivalent of the foreign ministry.
Slight ostentation had always been his trademark, so Flavia knew perfectly well that when he escorted her to his office by putting his arm around her waist it was purely and simply so that the people in the corridors who passed them would notice. For all the playacting, however, he was someone who had never wasted time with chatter.
'What do you want, then?' he said, the moment the door of the little office was closed.
'Help. Urgently,' she replied. There is nothing like childhood to relieve you of the necessity for diplomacy.
'Go on, then. Let's have it.”
So he got it; from the theft of the Claude, right through to the security men camped outside her door.
'Now,' he said when she'd finished, 'if I read you correctly, you suspect Ettore Dossoni of horrendous duplicity simply because this other woman spotted you were going to have a baby before you knew yourself.”
Flavia opened her mouth to make a sharp reply, then considered. 'That's partly right,' she said after a brief hesitation. 'I suppose. Also because he said that he talked to Sabbatini on the phone and none of Sabbatini's phone records show any signs of it. I checked this morning. Not that that is proof, of course.”
'Congratulations, by the way,' Aldo went on. 'You'll be a very good mother. I trust it will be the first of at least half a dozen. I will baptize them all myself. I need a bit of practice. Now, Dossoni. I remember him. There was always a bit of a smell about him, if you see what I mean.”
'There still is.”
'I don't mean his hygiene; that was fashionable. Everybody smelled. You were just too naive to realize that deodorant was a capitalist plot. I mean, there was always a whiff of something slightly unsavory about Dossoni. Everybody had their doubts where he was concerned.”
'Meaning?”
'Now, you're expecting me to speak ill of people. Which I cannot do, being a priest, and having to think worthy thoughts all the time. So, I'll get the book on him.”
'What book?”
'This is the Vatican, child. We know everything. You must remember, the Church was in cahoots with the government back then, and our foreign intelligence was second to none. We swapped what we knew about foreign lands with what the Italian government knew about goings on here. There, I should say. And annotated what we were given with our own sources.”
'Can you get hold of this stuff?”
'I am a senior official, you know. Should be monsignor by next year.”
'Congratulations.”
'Hmm. Fancy a red hat, though. Crimson has always suited me. Now, I can't of course show you the files themselves; they are terribly confidential. What I will do is read them and answer questions about them. Silly, I know, but there we are. Rules are rules. Why don't you look at some pictures while you wait. It might take some time.”
'I've seen them,' Flavia said crossly. 'Many times.”
Aldo waved a hand. 'Oh,' he said, 'not those pictures; I didn't mean the museum. I mean the good ones; the ones the public doesn't see.”
And to keep her occupied while he hunted, Aldo led Flavia through back corridors into rooms that looked older and older, until he came to a door. 'Through there,' he said. 'Off you go. I'll come and get you when I'm done.”
He wafted off and Flavia thought idly how curious it would be to see Aldo as a cardinal. And why stop there? How would he look in white? Then she opened the door and forgot such trivia. She spent the next hour looking openmouthed at a collection of paintings that made the Vatican Museum itself look second-rate.
It is amazing how fast time passes when you are astonished; the only conscious thought Flavia had in the entire period was that she wished Argyll had been there, although he would have been in such a delirium it might have been days before she got a coherent remark from him.
And she especially wanted Argyll there when she came to one particular picture. It was a Dormition, the last sleep of the Virgin. She wasn't as good as Argyll, nowhere near, but she knew the picture; or rather, she knew a face. It was the same face as the one in the Madonna above Bottando's fireplace. Same size panel, more or less, same reds in the clothing. She was no expert, couldn't swear to anything, but under Argyll's tutelage she had spent a long time looking at pictures as well as looking for them. And this one was just too similar. Must have been part of a triptych, the only difference being this one still had a proper frame, complete with the little iron hinges that would have linked it to the bigger, central panel. That, presumably, would have been another scene from the life of the Virgin. But what was it? She looked, but there was no notice, no useful little plaque. Damnation. She began to understand how Argyll felt.
'Enjoy it?' Aldo remarked as he breezed back in, although whether it was an hour or two later Flavia could not tell. 'I thought you might.”
'What's this?' she asked, pointing at the little panel.
He shrugged. 'No idea. Not my area. I do foreign policy, not pictures.”
'Who does know?”
He shrugged without any interest at all.
'Where did these come from?' she asked.
He shrugged once more. 'Oh, here and there. And most should not, strictly speaking, be here. That's why they're kept hidden.”
'What does that mean?”
Aldo began to look embarrassed. 'I'm beginning to regret showing you these. In fact, I shouldn't have. So don't ask anymore. Now, business,' he said briskly, dismissing the matter and refusing to let Flavia interrupt. 'Here we are. Now you can ask away and I will answer with all the omniscience of someone who has read the files while you have not.”
Flavia tried to remember why she had come in the first place, and dragged her eyes away from the little panel. 'Dossoni?' she asked, giving way reluctantly.
'I now remember him very well. He was a narc.”
'Really?”
'Yup. Two-faced, double-dealing police informer, if he wasn't worse. He knew far too many of the wrong sorts of people and probably still does.”
Flavia shook her head, and thought about this while Aldo paced up and down and looked with bored indifference at a painting or two. He'd always been a bit of a philistine in this department, Flavia thought.
'And all this would have been in the file my colleague couldn't get hold of? No wonder it was restricted. What about the Di Lanna kidnapping itself? Was there a file on that?”
'A very big one. Most of it you will know; there seems to have been little new, except for noting the fact that Di Lanna, when he got control of the money, poured funds into the Christian Democrats, and used it to try and wrest control of Bologna from the communists. And, I assume, feathered the nests of many politicians at the same time.
Our beloved prime minister grew surprisingly rich in those years, but then gratitude is a wonderful thing, and he does genuinely seem to have done his best.”
'What about this magistrate and his report on the murder?' 'Very little. We don't have much on that at all. Only newspaper cuttings.”
'Anything else?”
'That's it. What's the matter? You look disappointed.' 'I was hoping for something a bit more substantial.' The future monsignor looked disapproving. 'I've done the best I can. What do you expect? Miracles? The Vatican isn't
