with their partner, but too chicken to bring it up first. He gave a nervous laugh. ‘Drink?’
The offer appeared to be directed more at himself than her. She shook her head, her eyebrows raised in surprise.
‘It’s a little early, isn’t it?’
‘Not in Europe,’ he said quickly. ‘When in Rome and all that, hey?’
There was another strained silence as he busied himself over a bottle of scotch and some ice, the neck of the bottle chiming against the glass’s rim as his hand trembled while he poured.
‘Cheers!’ he said, with a rather forced enthusiasm.
‘About the other day…’ she began.
‘Very unfortunate,’ he immediately agreed, refilling his glass. ‘All those people, all those questions…’ He knocked back another mouthful, swallowing it before it had touched the back of his throat. ‘It doesn’t look good, you understand.’
‘The kouros is genuine,’ she insisted. ‘You saw the forensic tests.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Only sometimes it’s easier for people to attack us than it is for them to accept that their fixed views on the evolution of Greek sculpture might be wrong,’ she said, paraphrasing Faulks’s rather more eloquent argument from the previous day.
‘I know, I know.’ Bury sat down wearily, momentarily forgetting his usual mind games, it seemed. ‘But the trustees…’ he said the word as if they were a local street gang who he suspected of vandalising his car. ‘They get nervous.’
‘Building a collection like ours isn’t risk free,’ she observed dryly. ‘Their canapes and cocktails come with some strings attached.’
‘They don’t understand the art world,’ he agreed. ‘They don’t understand what it takes to play catch-up with the Europeans and the Met.’
‘They’re out of their depth,’ she nodded. ‘And they’re dragging us under with them.’
He shrugged and gave a weak smile, not disagreeing with her, she noted.
‘They just want to wake up to the right sort of headlines.’
‘Then I have just the thing for them,’ she jumped in, sensing her moment. ‘A unique piece. Impeccable provenance. I’m flying to Geneva tomorrow to see it.’
‘Verity-’ he stood up again, as if he sensed a negotiation looming and therefore the need to physically reassert himself once more ‘- I have to tell you that it’s going to be a while before the trustees, or me, for that matter…’
She thrust the Polaroid Faulks had entrusted her with towards him. He sat down again heavily, his face pale. ‘That’s…’
‘Impossible? Wait until I tell you who I think carved it.’
FORTY-THREE
Piazza del Collegio Romano, Rome 19th March-10.49 a.m.
This was Aurelio’s Eco’s favourite art gallery. Quite an accolade, when you considered the competition. Yes, the Capitoline Museum was richer, the Vatican Museum bigger, the Galleria Borghese more beautiful. But their fatal flaw was to have been crudely sewn together from larger collections by different patrons over time, leaving ugly and unnatural scars where they joined and overlapped.
The Doria Pamphilj, on the other hand, had been carefully built over the centuries by a single family. In Aurelio’s eyes this gave it a completely unique integrity of vision and purpose that stretched unbroken, like a golden thread, back through time. It was a sacred flame, carefully tended by each passing generation and then handed on to the next custodian to nurture. Even today, the family still lived in the palazzo’s private apartments, still owned the fabulous gallery that sheltered within its thick walls. He rather liked this-it appealed to his sense of the past and the present and the future and how they were inexorably wedded through history.
He paused on the entrance steps and snatched a glance over his shoulder, tightening his scarf around his neck. Gallo’s men weren’t even trying to pretend they weren’t following him now, two of them having parked up near where he’d been dropped off by his taxi and following on foot about thirty feet behind. He felt more like a prisoner than protected, despite what they’d told him. With a helpless shrug, he placed his hand on the door and heaved it open.
‘
He was early, but then he liked to leave himself enough time to check the room and have a final read through his notes. It was funny, but even at his age, after doing this for all these years, he still got nervous. That was the problem with an academic reputation. It was brittle, like porcelain. All those years of care could be shattered in one clumsy moment. And even if you managed to find all the pieces and reassemble them, the cracks invariably showed.
‘Expecting a big turnout today?’
‘An interpretation of the archaeological remains of the Etruscan bridge complex at San Giovenale,’ Aurelio recited the title of his lecture in a deliberate monotone. ‘I almost didn’t come myself.’
‘In other words, I’ll be turning people away as usual.’ The guard’s laughter followed him along the entrance hall.
The one thing Aurelio didn’t like about this place was the lift. It was ancient and horribly cramped and seemed to rouse a latent claustrophobia that years of archaeological excavations had never previously disturbed. Still, it was only one floor, he thought to himself as the car lurched unsteadily upwards, and with his hip the way it was, it wasn’t as if he had much choice.
Stepping out, he limped though the Poussin and Velvets rooms to the ballroom, where two banks of giltwood and red velvet chairs had already been laid out. Enough seating for fifty, he noted with a smile. Perhaps the turnout wouldn’t be so bad after all.
‘Are you alone?’
He turned to see a man closing the door behind him, the key turning in the lock.
‘The lecture doesn’t start until eleven,’ he replied warily.
‘Are you alone, Aurelio?’ A woman stood framed in the doorway to the small ballroom, her face stone, her voice like ice.
FORTY-FOUR
Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome 19th March-10.57 a.m.
‘Allegra?’ Aurelio gasped. ‘Is that you? What have you done to yourself?’
‘How many?’ Tom growled in Italian.
‘What?’ Aurelio’s eyes flicked back to him.
‘How many men followed you here?’
‘Two,’ he stuttered. ‘Two, I think. Gallo’s. They’ve been watching me ever since…’
‘Ever since you betrayed me?’ Allegra hissed. It was strange. She’d felt many things for Aurelio since yesterday afternoon. Sadness, disbelief, confusion. But now that he was actually standing in front of her, it was her anger, instinctive and uncontained, that had come most naturally.
‘We haven’t got time for that now,’ Tom warned her, bolting shut the door that gave on to the adjacent ballroom. ‘Just show it to him.’
‘I’m sorry, Allegra. I’m so sorry,’ Aurelio whispered, reaching pleadingly towards her. ‘I should have told you. I should have told you everything a long time ago.’
‘Save it,’ she snapped, stony faced, then pressed the photo into his hands. ‘What is it?’
He gazed down at the picture, then looked up, open mouthed.
