The Gilded Seal (12 page)
rio Santa Cruz, trying to forget what he had felt upon seeing
the place where Rafael had died, and focus instead on what
he had learned there.
On reflection, of all the things that Gillez had told him,
two stood out. The first was that Rafael had been seen going
to confession at the Basilica de la Macarena which, given
Rafael’s attitude toward religion in general and the Catholic
faith in partic ular, seemed about as likely as the Pope being
spotted in a strip bar.
The second was that although Gillez had mentioned Ra-
fael’s apartment being searched, he’d said nothing about his
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
7 7
studio. It was just possible, therefore, that the police didn’t
know about it. This was hardly surprising given that, as far
as Tom could remember, the property was registered in the
name of Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, a once-famous Sevillian
bullfighter and longstanding resident of the Cementerio de
San Fernando.
The crumbling street of tattered ware houses and tumble-
down workshops was deserted, but Tom stuck to the shadows
all the same. When he was satisfied that he was alone, he
crossed over, sidestepping a decomposing car raised on bricks.
The wreck had been set alight at some point and the seats were
melted back to their frames, scraps of fabric and foam clinging
stubbornly to their blackened skeletons like skin.
There were no lights on inside Rafael’s two-story building,
and as he drew closer Tom could see that the padlock secur-
ing its heavily graffitied roller- shutter to the ground was still
intact. Above him, a small fern that had somehow taken root
under the flaking plaster swayed lazily in the sticky heat.
Checking around him one last time, he sprang the lock,
raised the shutter high enough to slip under it and then rolled
it back behind him. The noise reverberated along the length
of the windowless room that stretched in front of him like a
deep coffin. Grabbing a chair, he leaned it against the shutter
and then balanced the padlock he’d removed from the door
on its seat. It was an old trick, but an effective one.
Locating the flashlight in its usual hiding place, Tom crept
along the narrow corridor formed by the assortment of un-
wanted furniture, old tires and children’s toys that had been
piled up on either side of the room, dolls’ eyes glinting ac-
cusingly every so often out of the darkness. A few of the
nicer pieces had been covered in protective sheets; as Tom
walked past, they lifted slowly as if reaching out to touch
him, before settling back with an inaudible sigh.
Compared to the ground floor, the upstairs room was light
and airy, with large windows front and back and a high, glazed
roof. There was a full moon, its anemic glow chased away ev-
ery few seconds by the red- blooded pulse of a large neon ad-
vertising sign high on the wall of a neighboring building.
7 8 j a m e s
t w i n i n g
Despite the shifting light, Tom could see that the room
was every bit as chaotic as he remembered. The concrete
floor, for example, was almost lost under a layer of dried
paint, thin veins of random colors that crackled underfoot
like dry twigs on a forest floor. Discarded sketches and half-
finished canvases were gathered in the corners as if blown
there by the wind, empty paint tubes and worn brushes emerg-
ing from the gaps between them like the masts of a ship half-
buried in sand.
And yet not everything was the same. A chair had been
flipped over on to its front, its legs extended helplessly into
the air, its innards spilling through the deep gash that had
been cut in its seat. Two easels were lying prostate on the
ground. All the cupboards and drawers had been yanked
open and their contents scooped out on to the fl oor beneath.
Tom’s face set into a grim frown. Whoever had turned over
Rafael’s apartment had clearly been here too.
Kneeling down, he plucked a small photo frame from
where it was sheltering under a crumpled newspaper. Al-
though the glass had been shattered, he recognized Rafael’s
grinning face through the sparkling web of tiny fractures. He
had his arm around Tom on one side and Eva on the other,
and the three of them were sitting on the edge of a fountain
in the Alcázar. The mixture of anger and disbelief that he
had felt on seeing the crime-scene photographs welled up in
him again. Why
?
There was a thud downstairs. Steel on concrete. The pad-
lock falling off the chair he’d left leaning against the shutter.
Someone had come in behind him.
He placed the frame back on the ground and crept over to
the top of the stairs, positioning himself out of sight to the
left of the doorway. From below he heard the sound of care-
ful footsteps and then the tell- tale creak of the staircase. The
third step, he remembered from when he had made his own
way up.
He readied himself, ready to send whoever was coming up
sprawling across the room, when the faint scent of perfume
reached him. A perfume he recognized.
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
7 9
“Tom?” An uncertain voice filtered through the open door-
way.
“Eva?” Tom edged forward, his shadow further obscuring
the already dark stairwell. A figure advanced toward him.
“Still using that old chair routine?” A flash of white teeth
amid the gloom.
“Still wearing Chanel?” Tom smiled as he stepped back
and let Eva into the room.
“If that’s a line, it’s a bad one,” she sniffed, brushing past
and then wheeling to face him. In the intermittent neon glow
she looked even more striking than he remembered: dark
oval eyes glinting impetuously, an almost indecently sugges-
tive mouth, shimmering black hair held off her face by an
elasticated white band and tumbling down on to olive-
skinned shoulders that might have been modeled on a Canova
nude.
“I heard you’d gone straight.” She sounded skeptical.
“I’d heard the same about you,” he said softly, trying to
keep his eyes on her face rather than tracing a line from her
slender ankles to her skirt’s embroidered hem and the sugges-
tive curve of her legs. Now, as when he’d first met her, she ra-
diated sex. It wasn’t deliberate, it was just the way she was.
The animal dart of her pink tongue against her lips, the gener-
ous heave of her breasts under her black silk blouse, the erect
nipples brushing the material, the open thrust of her hips. Sex
seasoned with a hint of unpredictability and a dash of temper
for good measure.
A pause.
“It’s good to see you again, Eva.”
He meant it.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
Her tone didn’t surprise him. Their break-up had been
messy. She’d been hurt. No reason she should be anything
other than cold with him now. In fact, it made things sim-
pler.
“Same as you. Looking for answers.”
“He’s dead.” Her voice was hollow. “What more of an an-
swer do you want?” She paused, her eyes boring into his.
8 0 j a m e s
t w i n i n g
“Go home, Tom. You’re not needed here. You’re not wanted
here.”
“He left a message before he died.”
“I know.” She gave a sad nod. “They showed me the
photos.”
“Then you saw who it was addressed to?”
“You two and your little codes and secrets.” Her bottom
lip, pink and full, jutted out indignantly, nostrils quivering.
“It was never like that,” he insisted.
“Yes it was. Rafael only ever invited me in when it suited
him. And even now that he’s dead, nothing’s changed.” Tom
remembered now that she’d always insisted on calling her
stepfather by his fi rst name.
“What was he mixed up in?” Tom pressed.
“I don’t know. Things were never simple between us.” She
fixed him with an accusing stare. “You walking out on me
didn’t help. It forced him to pick sides.”
“Is this about Rafael, or us?”
Eva flew forward and slapped Tom across the cheek, the
sharp crack of the blow echoing around the room.
A pause.
“Feel better?” Tom asked slowly, rubbing his face.
“Go home, Tom,” she said wearily.
“He came to see me in London.”
“What?” This, finally, seemed to have registered.
“Three or four weeks ago. I don’t know what he’d got him-
self involved in, Eva, but I think he was in trouble and that he
wanted my help. He stole part of a Napoleonic dinner ser-
vice. An obelisk. What was he up to?”
She looked down, the toe of her black patent leather shoe
poking absentmindedly through the debris strewn across the
fl oor.
“He lied to us, Tom.” She glanced up, looking unsure of
herself for the fi rst time. “He lied to us all. I could tell from
his voice. He’d signed up for another job.”
“For Milo.” Tom nodded, thinking back to the unfi nished
letter
M
scrawled in blood across the base of the well. “Have
you checked the drawers yet?”
“What do you mean?”
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
8 1
He pulled one of the drawers out, emptied what remained
inside it on to the floor, and then released a small catch un-
derneath. The bottom of the drawer folded back, revealing a
hidden compartment about an inch deep. It was empty.
“He used to hide things he was working on in these,” Tom
began, before realizing from the expression on Eva’s face
that this was yet another secret Rafael had not chosen to
share with her. Maybe she had a point after all.
“Open them,” she muttered hoarsely.
There were six drawers, but like the first, they were empty.
All except the final one. This opened to reveal a painting. A
painting that a small part of Tom had almost been expecting
to find. There could be no doubt now that the two cases were
connected.
“Is that a da Vinci?” Eva exclaimed.
“It’s the
Madonna of the Yarnwinder
,” Tom confi rmed
grimly as he carefully lifted it from the drawer. “But it’s not
the original. That was stolen a few days ago by Milo. This
must be one of your father’s forgeries. I expect that’s what his
killers were looking for when they turned this place and
his apartment upside down.”
“You mean all this was for a stupid painting?” Her voice
broke as she gestured, the sweep of her arm taking in the
ransacked room but also, Tom knew, the invisible trail of
blood that led to the courtyard on the other side of the city.
She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to keep her emo-
tions in check. He said nothing, giving her time to regain her
composure. As she lowered her arm, Tom caught a glimpse
of the silver bracelet he’d given her many summers ago, be-
fore she hurriedly tugged her sleeve back down to cover it.
Perhaps she hadn’t totally banished those times from her
mind after all.
“They didn’t take everything,” he said gently. “They left
you this—”
He handed her the photo he had found on the fl oor. This
time there was no holding back her tears.
SOUTH STREET, NEW YORK
19th April— 3:26 p.m.
As soon as she was certain that the doors had closed be-
hind her, Jennifer let out an angry cry and struck her fi st
against the side of the elevator. The noise echoed up the shaft
above her like thunder presaging a heavy storm. How could
she have been so stupid? Lewis had just been fi shing and
she’d grabbed the bait at the first time of asking. She’d even
knocked the guy over. On camera. What would Green say?
Assaulting civilians was not exactly how the Bureau liked to
handle its PR. If it wasn’t so bad, it would almost have been
funny.
Less funny was how Lewis had known she would be there.
Had someone leaked her schedule? Unlikely, given she had
only arranged to see Hammon after leaving Razi earlier that
morning.
Maybe it was just an unfortunate coincidence. After all,
years swimming through the lurid waters of pop ular scandal
had given Lewis and his kind a nose for a story somewhat
akin to a shark’s for a wounded seal. He would have smelled
the blood in the water from the other side of the city.
The doors whirred open. A camera flash exploded, mo-
mentarily burning an image on to the back of her retina. A
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
8 3
corpse sprawled on the floor in front of the reception desk.
Two bullet wounds in her back suggesting she’d been gunned
down as she tried to run away. A dark shadow of blood be-
neath her, matting her long blonde hair with dark streaks.
“Who the fuck let you up here?” A man stepped into her
field of vision. He had a mottled complexion, a deep scar
across the bridge of his nose and a lazy right eye.
“Special Agent Jennifer Browne, FBI.”
The man glanced at her ID and then looked up again, his
chin jutting out defiantly. Judging from his graying brown
