home filled with beautiful things. Antiques, jewel-lery, artwork, every piece itemised for insurance purposes. The burglars could have helped themselves to everything. And yet, they touched not a single item of her possessions, though they searched the house violently from top to bottom. What they were looking for remains a mystery.’
Ben could see a pattern forming here. Criminals broke into a house full of valuables, were willing to cause death in order to obtain what they wanted, yet left the place apparently empty-handed. Twenty-five years later, an armed gang committed multiple murder, just to obtain a relatively valueless drawing once owned by the same person, which now moreover turned out to have been a fake. When history repeated itself like that, there had to be a reason.
‘You think they were looking for “The Penitent Sinner” the first time round?’ he asked.
De Crescenzo shrugged helplessly. ‘I have asked myself this many times. There is no way to know the answer.’
‘I can think of one way. Talk to the people who did it.’
De Crescenzo said nothing.
‘Tell me again about this drawing,’ Ben said. ‘What was it, a pencil sketch?’
‘Charcoal, drawn on laid paper.’
‘Laid paper?’
‘A special kind of art paper, thick, textured rather like a fabric print. But essentially just a piece of paper, nothing more. The sketch itself is interesting and masterfully executed but, as you have seen yourself, it is by no means a spectacular piece of art. Its only possible value was the signature at the bottom. If it had only been genuine,’ De Crescenzo added sourly.
‘The sketch couldn’t have been superimposed on some other piece of artwork?’ Ben asked. ‘The original painted out, then redone over the top?’ He was thinking that maybe whatever the thieves had been after was hidden underneath – but he was clutching at straws and he knew it.
‘Impossible,’ De Crescenzo said. ‘On canvas, this could be feasible. On paper, however, such an overpaint would be immediately apparent, as well as highly impractical. No artist would do such a thing. The mystery is simply unsolvable.’
Ben leaned back against the seat as De Crescenzo drove on, and thought for a while in silence. Then an idea hit him. ‘You mentioned Gabriella had a longtime companion. Someone she might have confided in. Maybe that person would know something.’
‘I do not know what happened to her after she left Gabriella,’ De Crescenzo said. ‘If Mimi is even still living, she would be impossible to trace.’
‘Did you say Mimi?’
De Crescenzo looked blank. ‘Yes.’
‘That wouldn’t be Mimi Renzi, would it?’
‘Her surname was unknown. In all the biographical accounts of Gabriella’s life, she was referred to only as Mimi.’ De Crescenzo’s bemused look turned to one of desperation. ‘Now you know everything I know. That’s it. There is nothing more I can add. Will you please let me go?’
‘I’m true to my word,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not who you think I am.’
‘Why did you kill Tassoni?’ The question burst out of De Crescenzo’s mouth as though it had been burning on his tongue all day.
‘You really think I did?’
‘It was on television.’
‘I thought you were smarter than that, Pietro.’
At that moment, something caught Ben’s eye out of the car window. He turned and saw it again – a blinking light suspended high in the air over the rooftops. He whirred the glass down a few inches, felt the hot sticky night air on his face.
And heard the thump of helicopter blades over Salamanca – as well as the high-pitched chorus of police sirens.
Ben reached into his pocket for the Maserati keys. It was time to be out of here.
Within minutes, the dark, quiet street outside Juan Calixto Segura’s home was filled with noise and activity as a whole fleet of police vehicles pulled up outside and armed officers spilled out. Segura was standing at his front door wearing a silk dressing gown and a bewildered expression as eight cops came storming up the steps, bundled him aside and poured into the house with their weapons drawn. Within moments, the radio signal came back that the place was clear.
Two kilometres across Salamanca, a black Eurocopter deployed by the Grupo Especial de Operaciones, Spain’s specialist tactical firearms police unit, was hovering low scanning the streets with its powerful spotlamp when the co-pilot spotted the bronze Maserati GranTurismo making its way out of the city. In a flurry of radio calls the chopper overtook the car, banked round one hundred and eighty degrees and came down to block the Maserati’s path. Ropes tumbled down from the aircraft’s open sides and six heavily-armed cops in black fatigues, helmets and goggles came abseiling down and hit the road running.
The Maserati halted in the middle of the road as they circled it, six bullpup FN submachine gun muzzles trained steadily on the dark figure behind the windscreen. The men had all been briefed on the nature of their target. They were taking no chances. Over the roar of the chopper the team leader yelled into his throat mike, ‘Fugitive apprehended!’ The others were shouting at the car: ‘Get out of the vehicle NOW! Hands on your head! Move SLOW or we WILL shoot!’
The Maserati’s door swung open. In the blazing spotlight from the chopper the driver got out very nervously and dropped to his knees on the road with his fingers laced over his head. Laser sight dots danced around his head and chest like a swarm of red insects as the cops advanced warily. But the man didn’t seem like the fearsome adversary they’d been briefed to expect – in fact he didn’t match the description of the fugitive at all. This guy was much older, skinny and gaunt. The team leader signalled to his men to bring him in anyway.
‘I didn’t do anything!’ Pietro De Crescenzo screeched in Italian as they put him face down on the road and fastened his wrists behind his back. ‘He told me to take my wife’s car home—’ His protests were lost in the noise as an armoured police van skidded up to the scene and he was dragged into the back.
Three minutes’ fast sprint away in a quiet backstreet overshadowed by tall houses, Ben was working his way up a line of parked vehicles looking for a ride out of Salamanca. Stealing cars wasn’t something he liked doing, but when he saw the rusted-out Renault 5 at the kerb he had a feeling the owner would probably thank him for taking it. No alarm, no immobiliser. Auto theft, the old fashioned way. The passenger side window gave after just a couple of hits. Ben popped the locks, and then he was in and working on the wires behind the steering column. The engine fired with a rattle.
He pulled away and drove calmly through the empty night streets. Not fast, not slow, attracting no attention, observing the rules of the road. Over the wheeze of the Renault’s engine he could hear the rhythmic thud of the police helicopter and a chorus of sirens that sounded as if every police vehicle in the region was heading for the vicinity of Segura’s house.
Ben stopped for a red light at the mouth of a wide T-junction, indicating right to follow the signs out of town and toeing the gas to help the Renault maintain its idle speed. The junction ahead was deserted. After a few seconds, the lights changed and he pulled out.
A massive impact tore the steering wheel from his grip and threw him sideways as the Renault was sent spinning sideways, mounted the kerb and hit a wall.
For a few moments, Ben was stunned. His vision floated unsteadily, his hearing muffled. Seconds passed before he understood that the dazzling light shining through the cracked windscreen was the remaining headlight of the car that had been speeding across the junction and hit him. It was stationary at an angle a few metres away in
