The Raphael Affair (21 page)

Flavia had also lost her conversational flair. Clearly little could be done to repair their once promising relationship until that picture had been looked at. Then, perhaps, all would be forgotten and forgiven. He still thought it was a good plan, and was a little hurt that she’d reacted so badly. Maybe she was jealous of him for thinking it up?

When she finally decided that it was safe and time to go, it took about ten minutes to restore life to his leg. When he stood up for the first time, it collapsed under him and he fell, knocking over a large bucket with a toilet brush in it. It rattled over the floor, and the noise echoed around the room. They watched as it rolled slowly to a halt in the corner. ‘Be quiet, for God’s sake,’ Flavia yelled in fright.

‘You’re making as much noise as I am. At least I’m not shouting my head off,’ he hissed back.

‘I don’t want us to get caught now. It would be very embarrassing.’

He smiled in a half-way attempt to be conciliatory. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not used to this sort of escapade. It’s not included in the introductory course for art history graduates.’

She glared at him, still not ready to forgive. ‘Just keep quiet, all right? Now, let’s get going.’

She poked her head into the corridor, then disappeared through the door, gesturing for him to follow.
They walked down to the main saloon again, and tiptoed, quietly and cautiously, over to the door that led to the staircase. It opened. No alarms. That at least was one worrying part over.

Once on the top floor, she flicked on a small torch, another purchase from the shop. ‘Now tell me I don’t think of everything,’ she murmured to him as they walked. She went lightly and without a sound. Argyll, wearing his usual heavy, metal-tipped brogues, clattered after, despite all attempts to keep quiet. Had she mentioned she was proposing amateur cat burglary, he would have dressed appropriately.

The room was as he had left it six hours earlier. Flavia went over, quietly closed the heavy wooden shutters over the windows, and flipped the metal fastener to keep them secure. Then she closed the door, and pushed down the light switch.

‘There. I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to see what we’re doing for a bit. No one will be along here for at least an hour. How long will this take you?’

‘Not long at all,’ he replied as they gently took the picture off the hook that kept it on the wall and blew off the thin coat of dust all over it. ‘I’ll have to be careful, but no more than five minutes, I reckon.’

He had taken a book on the restoration and cleaning of pictures out of the library and had read the subject up on the plane flight. In principle it was simple. You just needed some form of solvent and a cloth. Then you brushed away until the right amount of dirt or paint was removed.

He pulled the tools he had bought in the art supply
shop in London out of his pocket. A very small but very sharp knife, a large bundle of cotton wool and a small aerosol. ‘Combination of acid and alcohol. The man in the shop said it’s the best thing you can buy.’ He grinned at her. ‘I think of everything, you see.’ No response.

As is often the case, practice turned out to be more complex than principle suggested. Argyll wanted to be careful not to do too much damage to the painting; after all, he was no restorer and had only the vaguest idea of what he was doing. So he concentrated on a very small amount of canvas in the bottom-left corner. But this meant he could only spray a small squirt from the aerosol at any time, in case it spread out too far.

So he settled down to squirt and rub, squirt and rub, only removing a tiny amount of dirt, varnish and paint at a time. It was hard work that required a lot of concentration. Every time he swabbed the cotton wool over the canvas, he hoped to see the tell-tale signs that indicated a masterpiece underneath.

‘How’s it going? You’ve been at it for nearly twenty minutes now.’ She spoke quietly but urgently, leaning against a table a few feet away to give him light. She rubbed her arms. ‘It’s freezing in here.’

He rubbed for another five minutes, the pile of dirty cotton-wool balls getting ever bigger. Then, as he gently slid a new ball across the paintwork, he stopped, and stared intently, scarcely believing his eyes.

‘What is it? Have you found it?’ She spoke excitedly, leaning forward for a better view.

‘Paint,’ he said. ‘Green paint underneath…Flavia, put that light back on. What are you doing?’

Flavia didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. The room was plunged into darkness. If both of them hadn’t been concentrating so hard on the picture, they might have noticed the movement of the door opening. But they didn’t, and the first time Flavia realised something was wrong was when she was hit on the side of the head with a thick length of wood. She fell on the floor, silent, with blood flowing swiftly from a broad cut in her scalp.

Argyll looked up at the sound, saw her collapse, and saw a shadowy figure advancing towards him. ‘Oh my God…’ he began, but had no time to finish the remark. He had never been kicked in the stomach before, certainly not that hard, and had never imagined that anything could hurt so much.

Badly winded, he doubled up in agony, clutching at his stomach as though that might lessen the torment. He was pushed away from the picture and fell heavily on the floor. He liked, later, to think that he was moaning softly. In truth, his groans were probably a good deal louder. He didn’t notice; his stomach fully occupied his consciousness, but he did reach out and touch Flavia, afraid of what he might discover.

‘Don’t you dare die on me. Keep going or I’ll kill you,’ he whispered in her ear. He felt for her pulse, and couldn’t find it. But he’d never been able to find his own either. He reached for her head and brushed her hair lightly, and felt the soft breath coming from her mouth and nose. She was still alive. But she wouldn’t be for long unless he got his act together here. Nor would he, for that matter. ‘Looks like neither of us thought of everything,’ he said to her sadly.

Try as he might, he couldn’t move. The pain was too intense. All he could do was watch as the dark outline of the man who had given him such misery took a small, and evidently very sharp, knife and cut the painting, swiftly and without fuss, out of the back of the frame. At least, he assumed that was what was going on; all he could see was the occasional glint of metal. He didn’t like the look of that knife, which was evidently a versatile instrument which could be put to many uses. He wheezed on the floor as the man rolled up the canvas, put it in a cardboard tube, and sealed it. Very methodical, in no rush at all.

That done, he picked up his knife again. ‘Oh, Lord,’ thought Argyll. ‘Here we go.’ He exploded from his sitting position and cannoned into the man’s chest, knocking him off balance by sheer fluke. It used up all the reserves of energy and will-power he had. More, in fact. Men with knives can bring out the best in you.

But it was immediately obvious that his best wasn’t enough. His antagonist slipped over, but Argyll simply didn’t have the resources to do what was plainly required; that is, leap decisively up and down on his head with his heavy, metal-tipped shoes. Instead, he just stood there, still half hunched over with pain as his opponent rolled over, recovered his knife and began coming towards him again.

There was only one course left, and he took it. In the gloom, he could dimly make out that the infernal creature was between him and the door leading to the staircase down. So Argyll dashed through the other one and began to climb up. It was the best he could do to
fulfil his promise to Flavia to protect her, even though she’d plainly been dismissive of his offer. With luck her assailant would follow him, giving Flavia a chance to regain consciousness and raise the alarm.

I
hope
he comes after me, anyway, he thought as he wheezed and puffed his way up the stairs. But what if he does something to Flavia first? Maybe I should have stayed down there.

It was a noble thought, and the fact that it was plainly impractical didn’t make him feel less awful. He would have been killed and Flavia would have followed soon after. Which may yet be the case anyway, Argyll reflected.

He ran blindly up the stairs in the pitch dark, half-tripping, missing steps, but going as fast as he could. It got harder and harder. Earlier in the afternoon even the climb up the hill had been enough to wind him; the way he felt now, the man behind wasn’t even going to have to bother sticking in a knife. It was what came of sitting in libraries when he should have been out jogging away and lifting weights. If he survived this, Argyll promised himself, he’d buy a rowing machine. The next time some tall, dark forger tried to knife him in a Sienese tower in the middle of the night, he’d be prepared for it. Up the stairs like the wind, he’d go.

His thoughts were getting confused from the combination of fright, pain and cramps. At one stage he stopped climbing. Doing so scared him to death, but he simply couldn’t go on. He listened over the whistling, rasping sound of his breath; the soft pad of footsteps was just audible. He evidently had a lead, and his pursuer
didn’t seem to be hurrying. But then, why should he? – Argyll thought with a flash of despair – it’s not as if I can get away. Perhaps he’s as out of condition as I am?

The thought of his pursuer keeling over with a heart attack half-way up the stairs cheered him momentarily, but dissipated as he realised it was hardly likely. Whoever it was, the man with the hefty kick was not Sir Edward Byrnes – an elderly gent who, whatever the circumstances, would hardly go around kicking people in the stomach. He could just about see Byrnes knifing someone, but this sort of crawling around with wooden clubs and boots and knives didn’t really seem the man’s style.

Argyll began climbing the stairs again. He was going slowly, but making progress. The apparent inevitability of death doesn’t mean that you will do nothing to postpone it for as long as possible. He doggedly kept on going to the top. Had circumstances been different, he could have stared at the view from the parapet for a very long time: bent double over the wall, choking as he dragged air into his much abused and protesting lungs, he saw the whole of Siena laid out like something out of a fairy-tale. A crescent moon illuminated the Campo and the jumble of medieval buildings around it. It lit up the black and white marble stripes of the cathedral tower. Twinkling lights from dozens of windows showed where the town’s inhabitants were still up and about, watching the television, drinking wine, talking with friends. A light, warm and refreshing breeze. Beautiful, safe and normal.

But Argyll was in no mood to ponder over either the scenery or his unfortunate situation. I could shout, scream bloody murder from the rooftops, he thought. But he didn’t. No one would work out where it was coming from in time. And anyway, in the state he was in at the moment, he doubted that he could raise much more than a faint squeak.

He turned round at the creak of the door. The man was standing, quietly and still in the doorway, evidently evaluating how best to go about things. When Argyll had seen Flavia collapsing in a bloody heap, he had initially been furious, then desperation had sent him flying up the stairs. Now all these impulses had gone, and he was just frightened.

Knife me, push me over, or both, Argyll thought. Spoiled for choice. Probably push me over, he decided. More ambiguous.

An arm went round his neck, pushing him back so his head rested on the parapet wall. He saw the flash of the knife in the moonlight. He was choking. He grabbed the wrist below the knife, not that it made any evident difference. The planned resistance was useless; the unplanned response was much more effective: reflex action brought his knee up between the other’s legs so fast and so sharply that the impact hurt it. To Argyll’s faint astonishment, the grip relaxed as his attacker clutched at the offended area and let out a deep, and very satisfying yelp of pain.

But the respite was only brief. His assailant had kept hold of the knife and was still much too close. Argyll clenched his fist and hit him. He’d never hit anyone
before, having led a quiet and largely withdrawn childhood in a world which disapproved of shows of temper among the young. He should have got into more fights when he was small. It was odd how small his fists felt, and how much his knuckles hurt when he punched the man in the general area of the chin. He made a few more desultory taps, then stopped. He could do no more and it didn’t seem to be much use in the long run anyway. His assailant, at least, also seemed less than happy after his brief contact with Argyll’s knee. They both paused, breathing heavily and looking at each other, eyes less than a foot apart. In the dim light, Argyll saw his face clearly for the first time, and was briefly shocked into inactivity.

Then the knife hand swung back for the last time, and Argyll reached into his pocket for his last weapon. A pity he hadn’t thought of it before. He aimed the aerosol, and pressed the button.

There was a scream of agony, the knife clattered to the stone flagging. Argyll was appalled. He hadn’t even considered what he’d been doing, just grabbed the one faint chance the moment it occurred to him. He backed away, and stood, dumbly, watching the torment he’d just caused.

One hand still trying to rub the acid out of his eyes, Argyll’s assailant was scrabbling in the pocket of a heavy blue jacket.

Oh, Christ, not a gun as well, Argyll thought. This man’s a walking bloody arsenal. It was no good even thinking of another round of fighting to try and disarm him. There was no strength left for that. With
the certainty that only desperation can provide, Argyll ran forward once more and pushed with every drop of muscle-power and will-power he had left.

Without a scream, a cry, or any noise at all, Antonio Ferraro, deputy director of the Italian National Museum, disappeared over the edge and hurtled to the ground, three hundred feet below.

14

Argyll sat there for twenty minutes, maybe more. He was too exhausted and in too much pain to move. The adrenaline washed out of his system, leaving a barely functioning wreck behind it. It was very quiet, now. His back resting against the parapet wall, he looked upwards, beyond the tall bell tower that rose from the middle of the Campanile, and stared at the stars. It wasn’t really appropriate but he was far too washed out to do anything else. Flavia was, at the least, badly injured and might well be lying down there with her throat cut. He had, it seemed, just killed someone who would, knowing his current run of luck, turn out to be entirely innocent of any wrong-doing. All for that stupid, useless picture. The thought made him feel ill. It would have been better if he’d never heard of bloody Mantini.