about making other people use them. Before he left the cooing turtledoves in their rustic retreat and went back into the village, he borrowed Mary Verney's phone and telephoned Flavia. She, by this time, was also in a bar and also in as much of a reverie as her new teetotal state permitted.
As Argyll knew little of her current paranoid frame of mind, her reluctance to say where she was made him a little irritable. But eventually it dawned on him that, when she said she would meet him in the truffle place, she meant a small restaurant halfway between Florence and Siena where they had spent a blissful few hours a couple of years previously. Why she couldn't have just said so he wasn't entirely certain, nor did he understand why she couldn't have chosen somewhere a little bit closer, but he was, by and large, used to her little ways and drove there as quickly as possible. She said she had important news. He said the same. Each doubted that the other's news could possibly be more important than his or her own.
In the end, when they'd met, begged a table even though the restaurant was closed, and talked for a good hour, Argyll reckoned Flavia was ahead by a length. Being pregnant, watched by the security services, and on the track of evidence that the prime minister of Italy was a murderer were marginally more surprising items, in his opinion, than discovering the lovers' tryst at Mary Verney's Tuscan hideaway, especially as he omitted some of his imaginary extrapolations. At least Argyll could answer one of her questions. Why Bottando?
'When Bottando was in Florence, back in the sixties, this magistrate took a shine to him. Thought he was very able. Wrote letters of commendation. It was in the police report at Buonaterra I told you about. It probably helped his career quite a lot. Bottando owed him. Shall we go and ask?”
'I suppose.' She looked out of the window and smiled. 'If these people would leave me a?one, I think I'd happily forget the whole thing. Do you know, at the moment, I couldn't give two hoots about the prime minister, or long past murders, or whether Claudes disappear or not? Do you know what I want to do?”
'No.”
'I want to paint the apartment. I've been thinking about it all day.”
'What?”
'Hmm. Odd, isn't it?”
'Extremely. Wouldn't it be better to sort out one or two other things first? Like being able to get back into the apartment safely?”
'Maybe. But I've been working for years without a serious break, and I want to do nothing but water the plants. The shopping. And what I am doing instead is fighting off an attempt to oust me from my job so that I won't be able to do any of these things.”
'So why bother? Why not quit?”
'Are you serious?”
'Of course I am.”
'What would I do? I mean, bringing up baby is one thing, but I wouldn't want to spend my life doing it. Besides, even generous payoffs don't last forever. Then what?”
Argyll considered. The idea of Flavia applying her considerable energies and intelligence to nothing more demanding than finding the most absorbent diapers did frighten him somewhat. 'We could set up together. Finding pictures. You know. The stuff you never heard of because people avoid the police. We could have Bottando as a consultant ...”
'And Mary Verney?' she added, a touch sarcastically.
'You must admit she'd be an asset. And charge clients a fortune for a discreet and effective service.”
'Assuming we could find the clients and provide the service.”
'Would that be so difficult?”
'Yes. You don't just run around asking questions and producing pictures out of a hat, you know. Without files, background material, colleagues, you'd never get anywhere.”
'None of those have been much use in this case.”
'This case is an oddity. And don't think that I or Bottando could play on our contacts for long to get official information. The moment you're out, that's it. All I—or Bottando—would be able to get would be crumbs.”
'Just an idea. I was briefly entertaining notions of moving, you see.”
'What do you mean? Why should we move?”
'Babies. Diapers. Do you have any idea how much space these things take up? Our apartment is scarcely big enough for us as it is without trying to add truckloads of brightly colored plastic toys and things.”
'We can't afford a bigger one.”
'Not if we stay in Rome,' he said thoughtfully.
'You wouldn't want to leave Rome, would you? Not seriously?' She couldn't have been more astonished if he'd suggested joining the army.
He looked at her sadly. 'I don't know,' he said mournfully. 'Just feeling itchy, I suppose.”
'Shall we go?' she prompted, when she decided the dreamy look had been on his face quite long enough.
'Where?”
'To go and ask Bottando about all this.”
'Eh? Oh, that. Yes. I suppose.”
'You haven't said anything about my news.”
'No. I'm still in shock.”
'Are you pleased? Or not?”
'I'm pleased,' he said carefully, then threw caution to the winds. 'I'm delighted,' he added. 'Absolutely delighted. I'm so pleased that ...”
'All right, all right,' she said quickly. She wasn't used to him getting emotional and it made her feel slightly uncomfortable. 'Don't get carried away. I was just checking.
Come on.”
So back they went again. A quiet journey. Flavia was half asleep, and Argyll was busy thinking about the implications of what Flavia called her news. He would, no doubt, get the hang of it eventually, but it was a bit of a shock.
Sensible people would, no doubt, have gone straight to sleep the moment they arrived and begun business the next morning, but only Flavia felt tired and she was determined to stay awake as long as possible. So Mary Verney lit the lamps on the terrace, got out the bottles of water for Flavia and the grappa for everyone else, and they all sat around in the quiet night air, talking softly.
Flavia began, listing her trials, tribulations, and her news. For some reason, the news took pride of place; the trials and tribulations seemed minor in comparison. Then she got down to the serious business.
And it was all so terribly simple. Once she'd finished, Bottando smiled.
'Well done.' I should have guessed you'd figure it all out. Stupid of me not to tell you beforehand, really.”
'Why didn't you? I find it all a little hurtful.”
'I didn't for the same reason most people being blackmailed keep quiet. Sabbatini made it clear that if there was any outside involvement he'd burn the picture. I read the file on him, and decided he was quite loopy enough to do it. So I thought I'd play safe until I got it back.”
'So? What happened?”
'About twenty minutes after you came to tell me about your meeting with the prime minister, I got a phone call from Sabbatini. Saying he wanted this piece of paper the magistrate Balesto had given me, and would swap the picture for it. No deals, negotiations, concessions. Simple as that. Or else.
'I was astonished. I hadn't even thought about it for nearly twenty years. After all, this investigation of Balesto's was more or less unofficial; he never told me he was working on it. All I knew was that he asked me to look after an envelope for him. He was an old friend by then. He'd been good to me when I was young and we kept up contact; I went to see him every time I went to Florence, and he came to see me when he came to Rome. It was only about once a year, sometimes even less.
'When he handed it over, he didn't tell me what was in it, nor did I ask. I just put it in a file, and forgot about it. And if that sounds strange, it wasn't; he was a friend, and I was happy to do him a service without any quibbles or curiosity. It could have been anything, a copy of his will, for all I knew.
'I never saw him again, although I tried to. When he was bounced out of the magistracy I wrote to him expressing my sympathies, and saying that I didn't believe a word of the complaints against him, but got no reply. I
