The Monster of Florence (2 page)

“Have you heard?”

“Yes, I saw it in the
Nazione
.”

“He left me some money and the studio. I was a bit surprised, to tell you the truth, but I confess that it comes at a time when I really need it.”

“I’m glad for you.” He didn’t add what he was thinking, that Landini had done little enough for his son when he was alive.

“Well, he was never much of a father to me when he was alive.”

As had always happened, ever since their first encounter, Marco seemed to be reading his thoughts.

“Now I can set up a studio with a friend who graduated in architecture with me. Well, I say a friend but—once we’ve got on our feet—we want to get married …”

“Good. So what’s wrong?”

A moment’s hesitation. “Oh dear … I suppose it’s true that I only get in touch with you when I’ve got a problem to dump on you.”

“No, no, it’s not true at all. I only said that because I can tell by your voice that you’re worried.”

“I am. Can I come and see you? You don’t mind?”

What he’d been worried about was a painting, a seventeenth-century portrait in oils. It was not part of his father’s collection or it wouldn’t have been left in the studio. Landini had known for some time that his days were numbered and had put his affairs in order. He had gone so far as to remove the more worthy pieces of furniture from the studio his son was to inherit to his second wife’s home. And yet there was this apparently valuable painting standing on an easel in the centre of the white marble floor unexplained, inexplicable.

Then came a letter from the Florence branch of a famous London
auction house followed by a visit. All very discreet. Signor Landini had discussed with them the sale of an Antonio Franchi portrait of Anna Caterina Luisa dei Gherardini and had been kind enough to leave a photograph. Naturally, in the circumstances, should the countess no longer feel inclined to sell …

“The countess? They meant your mother?”

“Exactly. My mother has nothing, Marshal, other than an old Florentine name. That’s what he married her for. My father made money, new money, but the Gherardini name was useful to him, when he was starting out, in circles he intended to frequent. Anyway, that painting isn’t hers, and, if it were, he’s the last person she’d allow to sell it …” He hesitated, then stopped.

The Marshal had watched and waited. The boy was hiding something but no doubt it would come out eventually. He made no comment on it and his large expressionless eyes gave no sign of being aware of it.

“My father did do quite a lot of dealing on his own account, apart from doing valuations and attributions for a fee, so there wouldn’t have been anything so odd about an unidentified painting being in the studio if they hadn’t brought my mother’s name into it …”

“Are you afraid it’s stolen?”

Marco looked down, his face starting to burn. “Either that or it’s a forgery.”

Again the Marshal watched and waited. That wasn’t all or Marco would have relaxed. He didn’t relax.

“Have you talked to your mother about this?”

“No. How can I? You realize that she’d be implicated? Besides, there’s no question of its being her painting. She hated him, you know, and more than anything she hated being financially dependent on him because he thought that gave him the right to lay down the law about everything, and he did, too.”

“I can understand that, but what do you want to do? What do you want me to do?”

“I want to clear it up, without telling my mother, without the newspapers finding out. If it’s stolen I want to get it to the real owner
without a real scandal—surely I can do that? I didn’t steal it and, after all, my father’s dead so they can’t prosecute him even if it does come out.”

“Well … I’m not sure what would happen, it’s not my line of country. You’re safe enough since it was presented to the auction house before you inherited. But your mother, I think you should tell her—”

“No! No … I can’t do that.”

“In that case you need expert advice. I don’t know anything about paintings, stolen or otherwise, and as for forgeries—”

“But you have a specialist group in Rome. I found that out for myself, and they are bound to know if it’s listed as stolen.”

“And if it is? I can’t control what happens next once I’ve given them the information.”

“Why should anything happen if I give it back?”

“They can’t even touch the thing, not even return it to its owner without opening an official enquiry.”

“But they can do it without letting it get in the papers.”

“Maybe …”

“I don’t believe my father was a thief. I mean, I don’t want to believe it; I suppose that’s nearer the truth. Even though I hated him more than my mother did.”

The way he’d hated it when his father had sat there in that same chair that day twelve years before and offered the Marshal money. He hated the shame of it.

“I’ll do what I can.”

“You will? Listen, if you could just find out whether there’s a Franchi portrait listed as stolen. Just that, without mention of the title because it can’t be correct. And I’ll get on with my own researches on what Franchi paintings are in existence and where they are, in case it’s a copy. I keep wondering—this might sound stupid—but I keep wondering if he left me with this problem on purpose. I think he always despised me.”

“No, no … I’m sure he didn’t,” lied the Marshal.

“Oh yes. He thought me ingenuous, which for him meant I was a
fool. You remember that drug business … he gave me such a hard time for that, not because I was experimenting with dangerous drugs but because I was the only one stupid enough—‘cretinous enough’ were his own words—to hang around and call an ambulance for that boy who died and so risk getting arrested. I know he only brought me round here to pay you off in case I should get into any more scrapes. He tried to, didn’t he?”

“Yes. He tried.”

“I was sure, sitting out there in your waiting room. I knew. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so ashamed in my life.”

“You needn’t have. It wasn’t your fault. But as far as this other business is concerned, you might well be right and it’s all a joke at your expense, so we shouldn’t do anything hasty. What we are going to do is have a coffee before we go any further.”

Thinking of which, the Marshal decided he could do with one now, and a glass of water as well. Sweating in this wretched woollen overcoat had brought on a thirst. He’d walked quite a way too, of course. He spotted a red neon sign on the other side of the dark, narrow street not far ahead and crossed over in the hope that it was a bar. It wasn’t, it was a trattoria, but he did find a bar right at the end on the corner.

“A coffee and a glass of mineral water.”

“Flat or fizzy?”

“Flat.” While he was waiting he fished a slip of paper out of his overcoat pocket and looked at the address Marco had written down for him.

“One coffee.”

“Thank you.”

“This glass do you?”

“A bigger one, I think. It’s so hot for November …”

“Flu weather. My wife’s gone down with it already.”

Via dei Della Robbia should be immediately to the right. The thick coffee scalded his tongue and he took a sip of water. Young Marco had certainly done his homework.

“You see, whether the painting is forged or stolen, my father
could only have been some sort of middle man. He wouldn’t have stolen it and couldn’t have painted it. So I went through his diary and checked up every one of his contacts with the excuse of communicating my father’s death to them. I think I’ve eliminated them all except this one. There was nothing in the diary about him except a surname and the time of an appointment. Since it’s an unusual name, I looked it up in the phone book and there were only two. One’s a woman, a veterinary surgeon, the other’s this man, Ivo Benozzetti in Via dei Della Robbia. That’s one of those nineteenth-century streets where the ground floors are studios.”

“You have been playing the detective!”

“I didn’t mean … I mean I couldn’t ask you to—”

“No, no, I was only joking. You’ve done a good job. So what next? Are you going to go and see him?”

“I was hoping you would.”

“Me?”

“Not officially, just as a friend of the family who’s helping me out—well, that’s true, isn’t it?” Without giving the Marshal the chance to protest he went on, “I had an idea, you see, that we could say—you could say—that my father had stipulated in his will that certain friends should be offered some little memento of him from the personal effects in his studio. You could ask him to meet me there and choose something.”

“Are there any personal effects in the studio?”

“Not many,” admitted Marco, “but there are one or two framed photographs of him with famous people, you know the sort of thing—and there’s a clock, an antique letter opener, enough to convince him, I hope. You needn’t even mention the painting. After all, if he’s involved he knows it’s there. If it’s his he might take it away, saying he’d left it to be valued.”

“And you’d let him take it?”

“Certainly I would. Then I’d be rid of the problem.”

“Mmph.”

The Marshal wasn’t too sure about that, but since it was clear that Marco would proceed alone if he refused and since, if he were
absolutely honest, his own curiosity had been aroused, here he was. He paid for his coffee.

“I wonder … I’m looking for Via dei Della Robbia …?”

“Just there to your right.”

“You don’t know a man called Benozzetti, by any chance—I’m not sure that I’ve got the right door number—Ivo Benozzetti.”

“Never heard the name. I’d have remembered if I had, it’s unusual, isn’t it? Of course, I don’t remember the name of everybody who comes in for a coffee. I might know him by sight.”

“He’s an artist, I think.”

“Artist? It’s a long time since this was an artists’ quarter. Nothing but the street names left from those days.”

“Well, thanks anyway.”

As he peered at the tiny lights of the doorbells in the gloom he wondered whether, in the long run, it would be a better idea to present himself as a Marshal of the carabinieri rather than just a friend of the family. Both, he decided, pressing firmly on the bell with a large finger. He had enough experience of life to know that when you want to deceive somebody there’s no better weapon than the truth.

“Yes?”

The Marshal leaned down to speak into the microphone.

“Guarnaccia, Marshal of carabinieri. I’m looking for Benozzetti, Ivo. The label on the ground-floor flat was marked only I. B.”

There was no response for a moment, then the voice said, “Wait, please.”

He waited for almost five minutes but he would have stood there motionless for an hour if necessary. He didn’t ring the bell again, either. He was quite used to this and it was all the same to him whether it was an old lag stuffing a pistol behind a brick in the chimney or a housewife straightening the cushions and whipping off her apron. Everybody has something to hide when The Law arrives, from the prime minister to the tramp.

The gate clicked open, and through the thick laurel bushes, the front door was illuminated at the end of the path. The door opened
just enough to admit him and without the man who opened it ever becoming visible to the outside world.

“Yes?” He was behind the now almost closed door and showing no inclination to allow the Marshal to intrude any further into the elegant high-ceilinged entrance hall. It was just as well, the Marshal thought, that he’d decided to introduce himself as a carabiniere. Of course, the man could refuse to admit him or not as he pleased just the same, but to refuse a carabiniere admittance would look bad, draw attention. Someone with only I. B. written on the doorbell wasn’t too keen on drawing attention. Even so, the Marshal waited without a word, filling the doorway with his solid presence, no more likely to go away than one of the trees behind him. He maintained his silence until the man was forced to fill it.

“Has there been a robbery in the building? Some sort of accident? I’ve heard nothing.”

“Not an accident …” Leaving the other possibility open he added, “I think we should talk inside. I won’t disturb you long.”

The door opened then just long enough to admit him but Benozzetti, he noticed, stepped back out of sight of the street. Man must be paranoid … or …

The alternative explanation, half formed in the Marshal’s mind, that he might be in some way scarred or deformed dissolved the minute the door closed. Benozzetti was a very fine man indeed, broad and muscular, his grey hair sleek and his face freshly shaven. He was wearing an impeccable and very expensive-looking suit. The Marshal took all of this in without appearing to look at the man. Ostensibly he was looking at a mass of tall plants standing in brass pots on the chequered marble floor and the fancy wrought-iron work of the lift. He reckoned he wouldn’t be kept out here to talk. A man who couldn’t tolerate being seen from the street would hardly let his neighbours in the building know his business. “Come this way, please.” A small door set back in an alcove. Nothing at all this time on the bell.

Once inside it took all the Marshal’s willpower not to stare about him. Of course, it was all one room with floor space equal to one of the large and elegant apartments above, but even so … And
in the centre that massive figure, whatever it was, swathed in polythene—and the safes! Who could need two safes that size, apart from a bank?

He wasn’t staring about him. He took in what he could with his large, slightly bulging eyes without permitting himself to move his head one centimetre, and even then it was only his peripheral vision that was picking up the objects whilst his gaze was fixed on Benozzetti and he was explaining his errand with plodding meticulousness.

It wasn’t much of an explanation since the Marshal was no fine talker. When it came to an end there was a short silence. There was something in the way Benozzetti was looking at him, nothing he could define, perhaps the eyes themselves—which were as hard and cold as diamonds—that caused the sweat on the Marshal’s body to turn chilly. This man was surely dangerous.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m all right … I was overheated and then …”