The Geneva Deception (25 page)

Main harbour, Monte Carlo 20th March - 5.03 a.m.

‘Are you sure that was him?’

‘I’m telling you, it’s Antonio Santos,’ she breathed, certain she was right but still not quite able to believe it. ‘The Chairman of the Banco Rosalia. He said exactly the same thing about life being too short when he was identifying Argento’s body.’

‘It wouldn’t exactly be the first time a Vaticanfunded bank has been a front for the mafia,’ Tom conceded with a shrug.

‘Do you think he ordered the hit on Jennifer?’

‘The priest clearly works for him and, by the sound of it, he had access to the Caravaggio too,’ Tom nodded darkly.

‘But why would he have done it?’

‘My guess is that she found something during that raid on the dealer in New York. A bank
statement or an invoice or a receipt. Something that implicated the Banco Rosalia or that tied him back to the League. Something worth killing her for.’

‘Even if we could prove that, he’s got a Vatican passport,’ she reminded him with a shake of her head. ‘He can’t be prosecuted.’

‘Maybe if we can get to the painting before him, he won’t have to be.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean the Serbs will take care of him for us if he doesn’t deliver,’ Tom explained in a grim voice.

There was a pause as she let the implications of this sink in.

‘At least now we know why D’Arcy’s murder didn’t match any of the other killings,’ she said. ‘It had nothing to do with the League’s vendetta. Santos killed him for his watch.’

‘They link everything,’ Tom agreed.

‘Moretti, De Luca, D’Arcy…’ She counted the watches off on her fingers.

‘Cavalli,’ Tom finished the list for her.

‘That must have been what Gallo was looking for when he killed Gambetta,’ Allegra said with an angry shake of her head. ‘He’s been working for Santos all along.’

‘But why? How can a watch help get to a painting?’

‘Even if we knew, we still don’t know where the painting is.’

‘Ziff’s our best hope,’ Tom said slowly. ‘He’ll know why Santos needs them.’

‘Will he see us?’ Allegra asked.

‘Oh, he’ll see us,’ Tom nodded. ‘But that doesn’t mean he’ll tell us anything.’

Near Aosta, Italy 20th March - 8.33 a.m.

It was a six-hour drive to Geneva, the road snaking up into the hills behind Monte Carlo and then along the motorway into Italy, before turning north and plunging into the Alps. They’d had no trouble at the border, their Swiss passports earning little more than a cursory once-over from the duty officer and then a dismissive flick of his hand as he waved them through. Even so, Tom was certain that he’d caught him giving them the finger as they’d accelerated away. So much for European harmony.

Allegra had soon drifted off, leaving Tom to take the first shift, although she had at least managed to share what she remembered about Santos’s immaculate dress sense, compulsive liquorice habit and cold-eyed charisma before her tiredness had finally caught up with her. Eventually, about three
hours in, Tom had turned off at a service station near Aosta on the A5, hungry and needing to stretch his legs before swapping over.

‘I need a coffee,’ Allegra groaned as he shook her awake.

‘We both do.’

‘Where are we?’

‘Not far from the Mont Blanc tunnel.’

The service station was bright and warm, something indistinct but resolutely cheerful playing in the background. A busload of school children on a ski trip had turned up just before them and they were besieging the small shop. Desperately rooting through their pockets for change, they were noisily pooling funds to finance a hearty breakfast of crisps, coke and chocolate. As soon as the onslaught had cleared, the teachers swooped in behind them to pick over the bones of whatever they hadn’t stripped from the shelves and apologise to the staff.

While Allegra queued for the toilet, Tom got them both a coffee from the machine and managed to locate a couple of pastries that had somehow survived the raid. Then he called Archie.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Archie greeted him angrily. ‘I’ve been trying to call since lunchtime yesterday.’

‘I had to swap phones. It’s a long story.’

‘Then make it a good one. Dom was worried. We both were.’

‘We think Jennifer was killed because she was investigating a mafia-controlled antiquities smuggling ring called the Delian League,’ Tom explained, mouthing Archie’s name to Allegra as she returned.

‘
We
? Who the bloody hell is “we”?’

Tom sighed. He could see this was going to be a long conversation. But there was no avoiding it. Step by step, he ran through the events of the last day or so - his encounter with Allegra at Cavalli’s house, their trip to see Johnny Li, the abortive attempt to steal a car, their interrogation of Aurelio, their capture by De Luca and subsequent escape from the tomb, their trip to the casino and their discovery of D’Arcy’s panic room. And finally, the conversation they had just overheard between Santos and the Serbs. Archie was an impatient listener, interrupting every so often with questions or a muttered curse until Tom had finished. Then it was his turn to explain how it seemed that the Artemis Tom had asked them to look into had in fact been bought by a company controlled by the same person who had sold it in the first place.

‘Our guess is that it’s part of an elaborate laundering scam to manufacture provenance,’ Archie added. ‘You ever heard of an antiquities dealer called Faulks?’

‘Faulks,’ Tom exclaimed, recognising the name that Aurelio had mentioned. ‘Earl Faulks?’

‘You know him?’ Archie sounded vaguely disappointed.

‘Aurelio mentioned his name,’ Tom explained. ‘Where he is now?’

‘His car had Geneva plates, so I’m guessing he’s based here.’

‘See if you can find him. When we’ve finished with Ziff, I’ll call you. We can pay him a visit together.’

‘Everything okay?’ Allegra asked as he ended the call. From her expression, Tom guessed that she’d overhead the tinny echo of Archie’s strident tone.

‘Don’t worry. That’s standard Archie,’ Tom reassured her with a wink. ‘He’s only happy when he’s got something or someone to complain about.’ He held out the car keys. ‘Here - it’s your turn to drive.’

Lake Geneva, Switzerland 20th March - 10.59 a.m.

A couple of hours later, they drew up at the lake’s edge. A yacht was skating across the water’s glassy surface, its sail snapping in the breeze. In the distance loomed the jagged, snow-covered teeth of the surrounding mountains, their reflection caught so perfectly by the water’s blinding mirror that it was hard to know which way was up. It was a strangely disorientating illusion. And one that was broken only when the yacht suddenly tacked left, its trailing wake corrugating the water.

Getting out, they walked up to the gates of a large three-storey red-brick building with steep gabled roofs. Set high up and back from the road behind iron railings, it appeared to be empty; grey shutters drawn across the mullioned windows, walls choking with ivy, the gardens wild and
overgrown. Even so, there were faint signs of life - tyre tracks in the gravel suggesting a recent visit,roving security cameras patrolling the property’s perimeter, steam rising from an outlet.

‘The Georges d’Ammon Asylum for the Insane?’ Allegra read the polished brass nameplate and then shot Tom a questioning, almost disbelieving look.

‘Used to be,’ Tom affirmed, rolling his shoulders to try and ease the stiffness in his back and neck. ‘That’s why Ziff bought it. He thought it was funny.’

‘What’s the joke?’

‘That anyone who spends their life watching the seconds tick away is bound to go mad eventually. He thought that at least this way, he wouldn’t have far to move.’ A pause. ‘Swiss humour. It takes some getting used to.’

Tom pressed the buzzer. No answer. He tried again, holding it down longer this time. Still nothing.

‘Maybe he’s out,’ Allegra ventured.

‘He never goes out,’ Tom said with a shake of his head. ‘Doesn’t even have a phone. He’s just being difficult. Show him the watch.’

With a shrug, she held D’Arcy’s watch up to the camera. A few seconds past, and then the gate buzzed open.

They made their way up the steep drive, the gravel crunching like fresh snow underfoot, the
building’s institutional blandness further revealing itself as it slowly came into view.

‘How long has he been here?’

‘As long as I’ve known him,’ Tom replied. ‘The authorities shut it down after some of the staff were accused of abusing the inmates. They found two bodies under the basement floor, more bricked up inside a chimney.’

Even as he said this, Allegra noticed that the spiked railings girdling the property were angled back inside the garden - to keep people in, not out. She shivered, the sun’s warmth momentarily eclipsed by the shadow of a large plane tree.

‘How many watches does he make a year?’ she asked, changing the subject.

‘New? Not many. Maybe three or four.’ Tom shrugged. ‘His main business is upgrades.’

‘What sort of upgrades?’

‘It depends. Retrofitting manufactured components with handmade titanium or even ceramic ones, improving the balance wheel and mainspring design, engraving certain parts of the movement, adding new features, modifying the face…The only way you’d know it was one of his is from the orange second hand that he fits to everything he touches.’

‘So you buy a watch that tells the time perfectly well and then pay him more money to take it apart and rebuild it to do exactly the same thing?’ she asked incredulously.

‘Pretty much.’ Tom grinned. ‘People do it with sports cars.’

‘But that’s to make them go faster. A watch either tells the time or it doesn’t. It can’t do it better.’

‘That’s not the point. It’s not what it does but the way it does it. The ingenuity of the design. The quality of the materials. The skill with which it’s been assembled. It’s like people. It’s what you can’t see that really counts.’

‘Some people, maybe.’

The front door was sheltered under an ornate cast-iron canopy at the top of several shallow steps. It was open and they stepped inside, finding themselves in a large entrance hall lit by a flickering emergency exit sign.

Her eyes adjusting to the gloom, Allegra could see that the room rose to the full height of the building, an oak staircase zig-zagging its way up to each floor capped off by a glass cupola far overhead. To their right was what had clearly once been the reception desk, the yellowing visitors’ book still open at the last entry, a gnarled claw of desiccated flowers drooping over it as if poised to sign in. Up on the wall was a large carved panel lauding the generosity and wisdom of the asylum’s founder and marking its opening in 1896. Next to this, another panel commemorated those who had served as directors over the years, the final name on the list either incomplete or deliberately defaced,
it was hard to tell. To the left, a straitjacket had been left slung over the back of a wheelchair at the foot of the staircase, its leather straps cracked, the buckles rusting. Behind it was a grandfather clock, its face shrouded by a white sheet.

Allegra had the strange feeling that she was intruding, that the building was holding its breath, and that as soon as they left the straitjacket would deftly fasten itself, the doors would swing wildly in their frames, the clock chime and silent screams rise once again from the basement’s dank shadows.

‘Up here,’ a voice called, breaking the spell.

She looked up through the darkness and saw a man peering down at them over the secondfloor banisters. Swapping a look, they made their way up to him, the wooden staircase groaning under their unexpected weight, their footsteps echoing off the flaking green walls.

‘So you’ve come to visit at last, Felix?’ Ziff grinned manically, thrusting his hand towards them as they stepped on to a landing lit by sunshine knifing through the gaps and cracks in the shuttered windows. He spoke quickly and with a thick German accent, his words eliding into each other.

‘A promise is a promise.’ Tom smiled, shaking his hand. ‘Max, this is Allegra Damico.’

‘Friend of yours?’ Ziff asked without looking at her.

‘I wouldn’t have brought her here otherwise,’ Tom reassured him.

Ziff considered this for a few seconds, then gave a high-pitched, almost nervous laugh, that flitted up and down a scale.

‘No, of course not.
Wilkommen
.’

Ziff stepped forward into the light. He was tall, perhaps six foot three, but slight, his reedy frame looking as though it would bend in a strong wind, dyed black hair thinning and cropped short. His features were equally delicate, almost feminine, his face dominated by a neatly trimmed moustache that exactly followed the contours of his top lip and had been dyed to match his hair. He was wearing a white apron over green tweed trousers, gleaming brown brogues and an open-necked check shirt worn with a yellow cravat. His sleeves were rolled up so she could see his thin wrists, the slender fingers of his right hand tapping against his leg as if playing an unheard piece of music, the left gripping an Evian atomiser. Strangely, given his occupation, he wasn’t wearing a watch.

She shook his hand, his skin feeling unnaturally slick, until she realised that he was wearing latex gloves.

‘I was so sorry to hear about your father.’ Ziff turned back to Tom, gripping him firmly by the elbow and leaning in close. ‘How have you been?’

‘Fine,’ Tom nodded his thanks. ‘It’s been a while now. Almost three years.’

‘That long?’ Ziff let him go, his head springing from side to side in bemusement. ‘You know me: I try not to keep track. I find it too depressing,’ He licked the corner of his mouth absent-mindedly, then repeated his shrill laugh.

The sight of a round mark on the wall behind him where the clock that had once hung there had been removed made Allegra wonder if perhaps Ziff hadn’t been joking when he had told Tom his reasons for buying this place. Maybe he really did believe that a life spent watching time leak irresistibly away would condemn him to insanity, and that by removing a clock here and covering another there, he might in some way avoid or at least delay his fate.

Ziff seemed to guess what she was thinking, because he glanced up at the ghostly imprint of the missing clock behind him.

‘Time is an accident of accidents, signorina.’ He gave her a sad nod.

‘Epicurus,’ she replied, recognising the quote.

‘Exactly!’ His face broke into a smile. ‘Now tell me, Felix. What accident of accidents brings you here?’