A Twist of the Knife (26 page)

In a swirl of classy perfume, she was gone.

*

Reality was a drizzly, late November Thursday, a few minutes before midnight. While their diminutive, elderly retainer, Vincenzo, hefted the Contessa’s bags into her Alfa, she stood beside her husband, nervously squeezing his hand, her stomach feeling like jelly. In the gloomy darkness, beneath the crumbling portico, with the solitary overhead lamp shining down on the wet paintwork of the car, she felt anything but confident. She had streaks of dirt on her face and her gloveless hands were grimy – all part of her cover story.

Vittorio, Conte Di Valieria Massino, a tall, elegant man, dressed in a pale blue cashmere sweater over a cream shirt, paisley cravat and crisply pressed slacks, squeezed her hand back, trying to give her reassurance, but in reality feeling very nervous, too. It should be he who was making the journey, but the London dealer, James Denempont, was experienced in helping people smuggle works of art out of Italy and was adamant that a woman travelling alone would be less likely to attract the attention of customs officers than a man.

They were taking a terrible risk. A long prison sentence for Romy and the confiscation of their works of art, which would leave them in financial ruin. The alternative was equally unthinkable, though.

This magnificent palazzo, up here in the hills close to Florence, had originally been built in 1588 as a summer home for Catherine de Medici, although she had died without ever seeing it finished. It had been in Vittorio’s family for over four centuries now. He’d grown up here, and it was where, in turn, he and his wife had raised their four children. He was now its custodian. Aristocrats like himself never really viewed themselves as owning their grand houses. He regarded himself merely as a curator, trying to preserve the palazzo and hand it on to the next generation in slightly better condition than when he had inherited it.

Now he risked losing it through a convergence of unlucky factors. The first was being swindled by his trusted accountant, who had convinced him to invest vital cash, which he had been keeping in reserve for maintenance works, into a printing business. It turned out to be a scam, set up by his lawyer who had absconded to Brazil. The second was the arrival of a crippling tax bill, thanks to the same accountant, who had been siphoning off the tax Vittorio thought he’d been paying for the past decade into a Panama bank account. The third, just two months ago, was the grim news from a structural engineer that the house was riddled with dry rot, to the point where parts of the upstairs were too dangerous to inhabit and had to be sealed off. The estimate for repairs was hundreds of millions of lire.

Other than the property itself, their assets were the art treasures housed in the palazzo’s grand rooms – some of which he had inherited and some which he and Romy had collected during better financial times. These Impressionist pictures, now taken off their stretchers and lying at the bottom of a suitcase in the Alfa, were the latter, so at least in disposing of them it did not feel like he was selling off the family silver. He watched Vincenzo close the boot.

They were all set.

They’d discussed for an age what car she should drive on this trip. Her convertible sports Mercedes, which she loved, might attract too much attention, they decided. As would his Jaguar. So they had bought, second-hand, an Alfa Giulietta 1600 Ti saloon. Sporty but relatively inconspicuous. And it had the advantage of a large boot.

She slipped behind the wheel. He kissed her on the cheek, wished her good luck, then slammed the door. She fired up the engine and drove off fast, as she always drove, along the driveway lined with cypress trees. After a moment he saw her brake lights come on and wondered if she had forgotten something or was having a change of heart. Then he saw a faint glow inside the car and realized she had lit a cigarette.

He went inside and had Vincenzo pour him a very large single malt. A short while later he poured himself a second one, eyeing the time. At this time of night, with the traffic light, it would be an easy two hours to the nearest crossing point, near Locarno, into Switzerland. Romy planned to stop before then and get an espresso, to kill a little more time. With luck, she would be through the border controls by a quarter past three. Then she had about a twenty-minute drive to a hotel, where she would spend the rest of the night and much of tomorrow. She had already phoned them to explain she would be hours late, giving them the same story she would give to any border official if she was challenged about why she was driving alone at this hour of the morning. Her brother-in-law had recently died; she was going to take her sister away on a short motoring holiday to Scotland.

*

The barrier at the Italian sector of the border control was up, and two officials in the booth, engaged in a conversation, didn’t bother to look at her. She slowed, her stomach in knots, then drove on. There was still the more efficient Swiss border control to go through a few kilometres further on.

Sure enough the barrier was down, blocking the road. She pulled up, lowered her window and picked her passport up off the seat beside her. The official peered at her from beneath the peak of his hat and frowned, clearly studying the smears on her face. Then, as she handed over her passport, he said something in German.

‘
Scusi?
’ she replied.

This time speaking in fluent Italian he asked kindly, ‘Have you had an accident? Is everything all right?’

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘I’m fine. I had a flat tyre a few miles back, but I managed to change it myself with the help of a gentleman who kindly stopped.’ She raised her hands to show how grimy they were. As an additional precaution, in case anyone checked out her story, the spare wheel was lying loose with the luggage in the boot, partially deflated. Although she carried a foot pump in the car, just in case she really did get a flat.

Satisfied, he nodded, stamped her passport and handed it back. ‘Be careful now you don’t have a spare any more, Contessa. Are you going far?’

‘No, I plan to stop at the first hotel I find and stay until the morning, then I’ll find a garage to get it fixed.’

‘Yes, I think that would be sensible. A lady on her own in the middle of the night is very vulnerable. Perhaps you would be safer to pull in here and wait until dawn?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘But thank you for your kindness.’

‘I’ll alert the Polizei who patrol this road to keep an eye out for you.’

The very word made her tremble, and she hoped her nervousness did not show.’

‘Thank you, I appreciate that.’

‘What is your registration number?’

She gave it to him and he wrote it down. ‘There is a pleasant hotel about fifteen kilometres along this road. L’Auberge des Pins. I would try them, if they are open at this hour.’

‘I’ll look out for that,’ she said. Then she gave him a cheery wave and drove on, breathing a sigh of relief. She checked in her mirror and saw a large lorry had pulled up at the checkpoint. Good, she thought, he would be distracted. She put her foot down and accelerated hard into the night.

After several minutes of driving fast along the dark road through a valley, she saw a speck of light appear in her mirror. It rapidly grew brighter and she felt a stab of anxiety. She put her foot down harder, until the speedometer needle passed 160 kph. Then 170. Still the light kept on growing brighter. In another minute she was being dazzled by it, right on her tail now.

She felt nervous, half watching the light, half concentrating on the curving road ahead. Still the light stayed on her tail. It had to be a motorbike.

Was it police? Or had one of their servants passed on information to some crooks? She pressed harder on the pedal, pushing the speed up to 180 kph, and beyond her comfort zone. Pines, road signs and occasional houses flashed past. The yellow line in the middle of the road stretched out ahead and the Alfa felt as if it were on rails, but she was too scared to feel exhilarated. She wasn’t sure whether to slow and let the bike pass, or keep on to her destination. But she was scared of crashing.

God, she thought, imagine crashing, and all the millions of dollars’ worth of paintings in the boot being destroyed?

Then the lights ahead picked up the name of a village, and a 50-kph speed limit sign. Could she take the risk of ignoring it? What if it was police behind her? She reduced her speed slightly and suddenly, to her relief, the motorbike roared past, carrying on at high speed, its tail light fading away into the night as she decelerated further, bringing her speed down to a much more comfortable 80 kph, until she was through the village and back out on the open road.

She was shaking, she realized, her hands trembling on the wood-rimmed steering wheel. Then, to her relief, she saw the welcoming sign for her night stop, L’Auberge des Pins, five Ks ahead. She had not told the border official that she had a reservation there and had warned them she would not be arriving until the early hours of the morning.

Drenched in perspiration, she finally pulled up outside the front entrance of the hotel. Ten minutes later, having given a massive tip to the night porter who had carried her bags up and then brought her a large brandy, she sat down on a sofa in her suite, cradling the glass, and lit a cigarette. Then she phoned her husband to say she was safe, and smiled at her two large Louis Vuitton suitcases. One contained the clothes, washbag and makeup bag she needed for the trip. The other, beneath an assortment of underwear and dresses, contained a conservative five million pounds’ worth of Impressionist canvases, all lying at the bottom, removed from their stretchers.

An hour later she fell into a fitful sleep, and dreamed of being chased for a hundred miles by a whole posse of bandits on motorcycles. She awoke shortly after 7 a.m., drenched in perspiration and scared as hell. The enormity and danger of what she was doing was now really hitting her. She needed to kill a few hours in the hotel, then set off in the afternoon and head to Geneva, then up towards Jurançon to cross the French alpine border, again in the middle of the night. Then the following day on to England and a plane to New York.

She phoned her husband again and was comforted by his reassuring voice. It was easy for him to sound calm, she thought after she had hung up. She still had the Swiss and French border officials to get through. Then the English ones. No one would be interested in checking her bags when she flew into New York, he assured her. Once she was in England she would be home and dry.

*

She crossed into France at 2.30 a.m. the following morning without any problem at all. She had a bleary-eyed border official barely look at her passport before waving her through, and finally she was on the last leg. At 3.30 a.m. she checked into a lakeside chateau hotel near Annecy and fell into a deep sleep, waking at midday. She climbed out of the vast bed and, before phoning her husband, she opened the suitcase containing the paintings and their salvation for the future, lovingly, if a little sadly, thumbing through the canvases, each of them separated and protected by layers of silk dresses and underwear.

Next stop was the Calais–Dover night ferry, by her calculations an eight-hour drive, including meal stops, from here. In planning the trip with her husband and Denempont, they had discussed ways to handle a difficult customs official. They had discussed the possibility of a bribe, which was in general how it worked in Italy, and she had a large wad of lire with her, which had not been needed, as well as a large sum in French francs.

But they had ruled out any attempt to bribe either Swiss or British customs officials as too risky. If it backfired in either of these countries, she could risk arrest, and the consequences of that were unthinkable. She was going to have to rely on her charm which, with her handsome looks and aristocratic pedigree, she knew how to turn on to maximum effect, and as a fall-back, on a cunning plan that had been suggested by Denempont.

Even so, as she hit the road once more, she felt an increasing knot of anxiety with every kilometre that drew her nearer to Calais. She arrived at the port shortly after 11 p.m., an hour ahead of her estimate, and pulled into a quiet area of the ferry port car park, near some lorries. She wanted to arrive in Dover, as discussed with the art dealer, at 3 a.m., when the customs officers would be at their tiredest. With the one-hour time difference that meant catching the 2.30 a.m. boat. Three and a half hours to kill.

She could murder a coffee, but she was nervous about leaving the car unattended, so instead she sat in the car, in the darkness, listening to music on the radio, ate the baguette she had bought earlier at a filling station, sipped on a bottle of mineral water and chain-smoked until it was time to board.

She switched on the ignition and pressed the starter button. The engine turned over several times without firing and she felt a deep stab of panic. She tried again, heard the starter motor whirring and smelt a stench of petrol. No. Oh God no! She had flooded the engine. She tried again. Then again. Then again. Lorries were firing up their engines all around her and starting to roll forward.

Then the battery gave out.

She jumped out of the car and waved her arms up at a driver in his cab. He climbed down and asked her, in French, what the problem was. She explained.

A couple of minutes later he had recruited two other drivers. They told her to switch the ignition on and put the car into second gear, then they pushed. As the car gained momentum she let out the clutch and, to her intense relief, the engine fired. She sat still, soaked in perspiration, revving the engine hard, thick exhaust smoke billowing past her. She thanked them and drove forward, up to the ticket barrier.

A few minutes later she felt the reassuring judder as she drove over the ramp and down into the belly of the ferry, where she was waved forward until she was close to the rear of a Volkswagen camper van. She then climbed out and locked the car, debating whether to risk leaving the suitcase in the boot or take it with her. She realized she had not discussed this in advance. But then, she thought, it might look odd for her to be lugging the case upstairs to the passenger area. So instead, she double-checked that the boot was securely locked and made her way up the steps, her nostrils filled with the smell of spent exhaust fumes, varnish and paint, she was feeling sick with nerves.