The Lost Relic

mirror. The sports car was already gaining on him fast.

It was a Ferrari. Not good. No way he could outrun her on this sewing machine on wheels.

Do what you can with what you’ve got. Boonzie had taught him that one.

Ben kept his eyes on the mirror just an instant too long. When he looked back at the road ahead, there was a fat man crossing the street dragging a chihuahua on a lead. He swerved violently to avoid them, narrowly missing crunching into the side of a parked Fiat Cinquecento. He hammered up onto the kerb and rode down the pavement. A corner cafe was closing for the night, with plastic chairs and tables strewn outside and a waiter gathering up glasses. Ben ducked down behind the bars, gritted his teeth and went ploughing through the tables, sending the waiter diving for cover. The little Honda wobbled furiously but he somehow managed to keep it upright. He jumped the bike back down off the kerb between two parked cars, hit the road with a screech and accelerated away.

It was only as he sped off down the street that he realised the bumpy ride had jolted the Beretta out of his waistband. Any thoughts he had of going back for it were quickly scotched as the Ferrari came hurtling round the bend just a few metres behind him, glued tight to the road, bearing relentlessly down on his tail.

A street sign flashed by: Via dei Coronari. Buildings parted, and Ben could suddenly see the city lights glinting off the smooth waters of the Tiber to his left. A line of lanterns traced the shape of a bridge spanning the river and illuminated the facing rows of angelic white statues along its sides. But it wasn’t the graceful beauty of the architecture that made Ben swerve the Honda hard left and take a closer look at the bridge – it was the fat concrete bollards set across its entrance, blocking the way to anything wider than a skinny little trail bike. He passed between them and sped out across the smooth paving stones of the bridge. Heard the scream of tyres behind him as the Ferrari skidded to a halt at an angle in the road.

Halfway over the bridge, Ben stopped the bike and looked back. Darcey Kane was out of the car, standing under the glow of a street light, gun in hand. Even at this distance he could see she was virtually dancing with frustration. Her shout of rage echoed across the river.

Ben had to smile to himself as he rode away into the night.

Though somehow, he had the feeling he hadn’t seen the last of this Darcey Kane.

Chapter Forty-Three

The De Crescenzo residence, Rome

Ten to two in the morning and Count Pietro De Crescenzo was too tired to pace up and down any more, too tired to think, too tired to do anything except sit slumped in his armchair and stare dully across the large living room at his wife Ornella. She was lying with her back to him, her glossy blond curls fanned out over the arm of the sofa. The flimsy material of her dress had ridden up to mid-thigh and her legs were kicked out carelessly over the cushions. One white high-heeled shoe had fallen to the rug; the other was dangling from her toe, ready to drop at any moment like the last autumn leaf from a twig.

Once upon a time, Pietro De Crescenzo would have got up and gone over to her, brushed the hair from her face and straightened her dress for modesty’s sake, maybe covered her with a blanket, or else carried her tenderly to bed. But he didn’t move. Just sat there and listened to her soft snoring, watching the curve of her hip rise and fall as she slept.

Though, he reflected bitterly, ‘asleep’ wasn’t quite the right word for someone who’d spent the last almost three hours passed out in a comatose stupor. She’d hit the vodka particularly hard that night, and he had no sympathy for the selfish bitch. He was the one who should be drinking himself stupid all day, after what he’d been through. The tremors in his hands and knees were slowly fading, though there were moments when the horrors came flooding back and he was rendered virtually prostrate with nerves. The trauma was going to stay with him for the rest of his life – he was sure of it.

He looked at his watch and sighed. He dreaded going to bed. Night was the worst time. Night was when the ghosts came out to revisit him. Aldo Silvestri and Luigi Corsini, and the woman who had died in front of them all on the office floor, and all the other poor souls who had lost their lives. Their sightless eyes staring at him in the dark, their bloody fingers groping out to claw at him until he woke gasping and covered in sweat. Then he’d be awake till dawn, with only more horrors to look forward to – more agonised phone calls with Aldo’s and Luigi’s relatives, more terrible funerals to attend, more wrangling with obtuse insurance company directors and more hysterical gallery owners threatening dire litigation. It was a mess on a cataclysmic scale.

And meanwhile, the police investigation was drawing blanks every way it turned. Pietro had no faith in any of the detectives who’d been assigned to the case. Lario was a fool, and when he failed he’d simply be replaced with another fool. Though Pietro had to admit that he was having just as little success in solving the enigma that haunted him feverishly day and night.

Why the Goya? Why? Why? Its personal value to him, as a tangible connection to the woman he’d always wished could have been his own grandmother, was inestimable – but its monetary value was minimal compared to so many works that the robbers had just seemingly ignored. To walk past prizes that could have enriched them for the rest of their lives, for whose recovery the art world would have paid whatever gigantic ransom they demanded, in favour of a simple sketch that had spent most of the last century hidden away among the forgotten personal effects of a dead artist: no amount of obsessive brain-racking could help Pietro to see any sense in it.

Something else perplexed him even more deeply. This wasn’t the first time that Gabriella Giordani’s personal possessions had attracted the attentions of dangerous men.

He was worn out from trying to figure out the connection. His eyes were burning from fatigue and his neck and shoulders ached. He rose stiffly from his armchair, turned off the living room light and shut the door behind him.

Pietro’s office was across the other side of the large villa. When things weren’t going well between him and Ornella he often took refuge to sleep on the couch in there. They hadn’t argued, but he felt that way tonight.

As he walked into the office, he noticed the flashing light on his answer machine telling him there was a new message. It had been left after midnight.

Pietro let it play on speaker. The caller spoke Italian with a Spanish accent. His voice was deep and rich, like old wine.

‘Signor De Crescenzo, my name is Juan Calixto Segura. It is extremely important that I speak with you. Please call me immediately, night or day.’ A pause, then: ‘It concerns your stolen Goya.’

Pietro replayed the message with a trembling finger.

He hadn’t dreamed it.

Segura. The name was vaguely familiar. A wealthy art collector and dealer in Salamanca, De Crescenzo remembered – though they’d never met.

Frantic with anticipation, Pietro snatched up the phone handset and returned the Spaniard’s call. Segura picked up on the third ring. He didn’t sound as if he’d been asleep.

‘This is De Crescenzo.’

‘I thought you would call.’

‘My Goya,’ Pietro said breathlessly.

‘Charcoal on laid paper. “The Penitent Sinner”.’

‘That’s it. What have you to tell me?’

‘I think it better that we meet,’ Segura said. ‘I have something to show you.’

‘If you know something, I beg you . . .’ Pietro’s voice quavered; he was near to a sob as he spoke.

Segura was silent for a moment, as though unwilling to disclose too much on the phone. ‘I will tell you this much,’ he said. ‘How can it be that “The Penitent Sinner” was stolen from your gallery in Italy?’

Pietro was stunned. ‘What do you mean? It was stolen.’

‘Then you may care to explain to me,’ Segura said, ‘why it is sitting here safely in my private collection,