‘So I won’t have to see the
‘Like drink yourself to death?’
She snorted, took another long drag on the cigarette. ‘Sounds good to me.’
‘It can get expensive trying,’ he said. ‘I know.’
Ornella sidled up to him, and he caught a whiff of her vodka breath. ‘Rupert Shannon. That’s a beautiful name.’
Ben had borrowed it from the biggest, dumbest swinging dick of an ex-soldier he’d ever known, a brigadier’s nephew who’d miraculously held it together for three years in the Paras – and later, for a brief time, had somehow worked his way into Brooke’s affections. ‘Kind of you to say so, Ornella.’
She arched an eyebrow and moved closer. ‘Have you come to stay with me a while, Rupert?’ she said in a low purr.
Ben smiled. ‘I think maybe you could do with a coffee.’ The kitchen was a cavernous affair off the entrance hall, with a state-of-the-art cappuccino machine that looked as though it had never been used. Ben fired it up and made two strong black coffees, put the cups on a tray and carried them through to where Contessa Ornella De Crescenzo was lounging back on the sofa, still nursing her hangover. He made an excuse about needing to use the bathroom, and left her alone to sip the coffee as he trotted upstairs.
It was a big place, and it took a few wrong turns and a lot of doors to check before Ben found what looked like Pietro De Crescenzo’s home office. There was a good deal of art on the walls. The antique desk bore a framed snap of the count and countess in their younger days, somewhere alpine – Switzerland, maybe. He had more hair and looked less cadaverous; she obviously hadn’t discovered vodka back then. Happier times.
Next to the picture was all the usual desk stuff – a phone, a jar full of pens and pencils, a lined writing pad, an exhibition brochure and a pile of opened mail, bills and letters. Ben glanced at the one on top long enough to see it was from the director of a gallery in Amsterdam that had loaned De Crescenzo one of the grand masters for his exhibition. The words ‘destruction’ and ‘tragic’ and ‘severe consequences’ featured heavily in the text.
Ben picked up the writing pad. Its topmost sheet had been torn away in a rush, leaving a serrated ribbon of paper trapped in the wire binding rings. He angled the pad towards the light. Whatever had been hastily scribbled in biro on the missing page, the pressure of the pen had left faint marks on the paper under it.
Ben grabbed a pencil from the jar. Using the side of the tip, he carefully shaded over the pressure marks. The handwriting that appeared in white was the jagged scrawl of someone scribbling in a hurry while talking on the phone It took him a few moments to make out the name Juan Calixto Segura. Under it was an address in Salamanca, Spain.
Ben turned on De Crescenzo’s laptop and did a Google search on the name. Segura had no website of his own, but he came up in listings of European fine art dealers. It seemed he specialised in Spanish painting from various periods: El Greco, Velazquez, Zurbaran, Picasso. Ben’s eye skipped down the list, then stopped at a certain eighteenth-to-nineteenth-century Romantic painter and print artist called Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes.
‘Now we’re getting somewhere,’ Ben murmured. He remembered what De Crescenzo had said about not liking to fly. It was a long drive across three countries to Salamanca, which made it all the more interesting that the count would feel the need to rush off to see this Segura so suddenly. Whatever the guy had told him on the phone, it had to be worth hearing. Ben copied the address more clearly on another sheet of the writing pad, tore it off and folded it into his pocket, then burned the original in De Crescenzo’s fireplace. He erased the computer’s memory of the Internet search, then headed back downstairs.
Ornella had finished her coffee and half of his and was up on her feet, only a little wobbly on her high heels. She’d cleaned up the smudged makeup. As Ben came into the room she teetered over to him with a big smile and ran her hand down his arm.
‘Will you stay for lunch, Rupert? I’m so lonely here, all by myself in this great big house.’
‘Lunch isn’t for two hours.’
Ornella De Crescenzo pouted innocently. ‘You’re right. However shall we pass the time?’
When the count’s away, Ben thought. ‘It was truly a pleasure to meet you, Contessa. I’d love to stay longer, but sadly I have a prior engagement.’
Her face fell. ‘Shame. You’ve been so sweet to me. There must be something I can do for you in return?’
‘Maybe another time,’ Ben said with a smile, and Ornella’s eyes sparkled like champagne. She thumped him playfully on the chest.
‘You’re a
‘You have no idea.’
On his way out the front door, Ben spotted a set of car keys in an ornate silver dish on a stand in the hall, and the shiny leather fob embossed with a distinctive trident emblem. Interesting.
Maybe there was something Ornella could do for him, after all. She wasn’t in a fit state to drive it, anyway. Ben snatched the keys and went out into the hot sun to look for where she kept it.
The ivy-clad three-door garage was around the back of the house. He used the remote bleeper attached to the key fob to open the middle door, and when it whirred up he let out a low whistle at what was inside.
Silvana Lucenzi would lap it up.
As he jumped in behind the wheel of the sleek bronze GranTurismo, he was already planning his route. From Rome towards Genova, then passing by Nice and Marseille, through Andorra, then westwards through Spain to Salamanca. A twelve-hour drive, maybe thirteen. But when he twisted the ignition and the throaty roar of the 4.7- litre V8 filled the garage, he reckoned he could do it in less.
It was 10.34 a.m.
Ben slipped the shades back on, and hit the gas.
Brooke’s flight had been dead on time, and it was only 11.45 a.m. when her taxi rolled up to the end of the country lane that was as close as it was possible to get to her cottage by car. She got her luggage out of the back, paid the driver and watched the car turn round and disappear in a cloud of dust.
It felt immensely liberating to be here again. The heat was intense and dry, and the air was filled with the chirping of cicadas. She set off down the rambling, rocky path that wound through the trees, across a small valley where butterflies flitted in vast numbers, and up a gentle slope to the grassy mound where her little cottage glinted white in the sunshine. As she walked, she heard the puttering motor of a quad bike in the golden fields and saw the small, wiry figure of Fatima Azevedo riding along with her dog in pursuit. Brooke waved. Fatima and Luis were her nearest neighbours. Their little organic farm a quarter of a mile up the road produced fruit, herbs and a tiny yield of wine that they kept mainly for themselves and their friends. When Brooke was around, the warm-hearted couple would sometimes pop over to visit her with a bottle and a box of fresh eggs.
The rocky path turned to fine gravel on the approach to the cottage. The old stone
With Ben, she remembered with a smile. It had been the end of June, just a couple of weeks after their long-standing close friendship had developed into the full-blown relationship she’d secretly dreamed of for longer than she liked to admit. It had been a wonderful few days here together. They’d eaten out on the little terrace every
