Giotto's Hand

And then she went to report to Bottando, who was, yet again, in an ill-humour. Argan, he said, was lobbying for the Leonardo forger to be clapped in irons and was going around accusing everybody of being slapdash over a raid on an antiquities gallery in the via Giulia. Someone had driven a small truck through the window, loaded up and driven off. Happened every day of the week, almost. Why Argan was in such a fuss over this one had escaped him, until someone pointed out that the gallery was owned by his brother-in-law. And, of course, it served to make the department look bad.

“I did say the fake Leonardos were entirely trivial, but that, of course, is not the point. It got into the papers, and so there’s an opportunity for the department to have a high profile.”

“The paperwork will take me at least a month.”

“Will it?”

“If you want it to, yes. I could spin it out indefinitely, if that’s what you want.”

Bottando nodded. “Splendid,” he said with satisfaction. “We’ll make an apparatchik of you yet. Now, Forster. What is the state of things there?”

“Interesting, since you ask. Signora Fancelli points the finger, and much of her story is supported by della Quercia. Sandano reckons Forster was behind the Fra Angelico. He was working in some way for a woman called Beaumont who was also at della Querela’s. And he’s dead, of course. As far as I know, the police in England have not yet decided whether he fell or was pushed.”

“Hmm. Anything there to indicate he was a bit light-fingered?”

“Not as far as Jonathan knows. On the other hand, he rightly points out that the police aren’t exactly going to take him into their confidence. Relying on him for information isn’t the best thing to do.”

Bottando nodded thoughtfully. “Which, roughly translated into clear and unadorned prose, means you think you ought to go and see for yourself. Is that what you’re getting at?”

Flavia confessed it had crossed her mind.

“And what about friend Argan? He thought you going to the other side of Rome a gross waste of resources.”

She looked at the ceiling and studied the cobwebs growing across one comer. “He hasn’t got your job yet, has he?”

Bottando scowled. “You know what I mean. Will this be worth it? Or will it merely provide Argan with more evidence to be used against us?”

She shook her head. “That’s politics, not policing. From my lowly point of view, there is enough to look at Forster. You have to decide about Argan. Do you want me to give up a perfectly legitimate enquiry because he wants your job?”

Bottando sighed and rubbed his face. “Curse the man. And you. Of course I don’t. But make it quick, eh? Either find something or get back here. Don’t mess about. I’m not going to be hanged by the neck until dead by your expense account.”

Flavia did her best not to look happy; it was some time since she’d been let out of the office on a jaunt, and it would make a nice change. Besides, there was a small possibility that it might even produce something of interest. She drained the dregs of her coffee cup, and went off to get down to business.

As far as the Norfolk police were concerned, the lad called Gordon Brown was the most likely place not only to start but also to end the investigation into the murder of Geoffrey Forster, if that was what his death was going to be.

At first sight, there was a lot going for him. Even his friends agreed that he was a bit of an oaf, and inclined to violence when roused or with a pint or two too many inside him. Next, of course, came his reputation as the local burglar, the man who had done over several of the houses in search of unearned income. He was a well-connected village figure in his way; the son of Mary Verney’s part-time housekeeper and married to Louise, the elder daughter of George Barton. Relations between the Brown and Barton families had never recovered from the union, George Barton being the sort of person who did not approve of the likes of Gordon Brown, especially the way he treated his daughter.

While nobody seriously doubted that Margaret Brown the housekeeper had, as she’d claimed, spent the evening with her feet up in front of the television, and that Louise the wife couldn’t possibly help in any way due to the fact that she had spent the entire evening with her sister and knew nothing whatsoever about her husband’s activities and didn’t want to either, such credulity did not extend to the mother’s insistence that Gordon, the loyal and devoted son, had been by her side all the time. If he was. Constable Hanson said, it would be the first time in living memory, except for those occasions when he was so blind drunk he couldn’t move.

In his favour, however, was the expressed opinion that young Gordon was far too cowardly to go around killing people, and that robbing art dealers was not really his style. If a colour television or video recorder vanished, then Gordon was your man. Everybody knew that, although unaccountably no one had yet managed to catch him at it. But not more.