LITMIR.BIZ

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if she said Argyll had been there yesterday, Fabriano would go straight round and arrest him. Probably lock him up for a week, out of pure malice.

      ‘Have you heard of him?’ Fabriano asked.

      ‘Maybe,’ she said cautiously. ‘I’ll ask around, if you like. Jonathan might know.’

      ‘Who’s Jonathan?’

      ‘An art dealer. My, um, fiancé.’

      Fabriano looked upset, which made the small untruth worthwhile. ‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘Have a chat with the lucky man, will you? Maybe you should get him along here?’

      ‘Not necessary,’ she said shortly. ‘I’ll ring. Was anything stolen, by the way?’

      ‘Ah. This is the problem. As you see, it’s a bit of a mess. Working out what’s gone may take some time. The house-keeper says she can’t see anything that’s gone. None of the obvious things, anyway.’

      ‘So? Conclusions?’

      ‘None so far. In the Carabinieri we work by order and evidence. Not guesswork.’

      After which friendly exchange, she went back into the living-room to phone Argyll. No answer. It was his turn to do the shopping for dinner. It didn’t matter; he’d be back in an hour or so. She rang a neighbour and left a message instead.

      ‘Yes?’ Fabriano said brusquely as another detective came in, a man in his mid-twenties who had already acquired the look of weary and sarcastic disdain which came from having worked for Fabriano for two hours. ‘What is it?’

      ‘Next-door neighbour, Guilio –’

      ‘Detective Fabriano.’

      ‘Next-door neighbour, Detective Fabriano,’ he restarted rolling his eyes in despair at the thought that this might turn out to be a long case, ‘she seems to be your friendly neighbourhood spy satellite.’

      ‘Was she in during the hours of the crime?’

      ‘Well, I wouldn’t come and tell you if she wasn’t, would I? ’Course she was. That’s why –’

      ‘Good, good,’ said Fabriano briskly. ‘Well done. Good work,’ he went on, thus removing from the policeman any pleasure he might have felt at his small discovery. ‘Wheel her in, then.’

      There must be hundreds of thousands of women like Signora Andreotti in Italy; quite sweet old ladies, really, who were brought up in small towns or even in villages. Capable of labours on the Herculean scale – cooking for thousands, bringing up children by the dozen, dealing with husbands and fathers and, very often, having a job as well. Then their children grow up, their husbands die and they move in with one child, to do the cooking. A fair bargain, on the whole, and much better than being confined to an old folks’ home.

      But in many cases, the children have gone a long way from home; many have made it big in the city, made money on a scale their parents could scarcely even imagine in their day; la dolce vita, eighties style.

      The Andreotti household was one such; two parents, one child, two jobs and no one in the house from eight in the morning to eight at night. The elder Signora Andreotti, who once spent her spare time gossiping to neighbours back home, was bored silly. So much so that she felt her mind going with the tedium. And so she noticed everything. Every delivery van in the street, every child playing in the backyard. She heard every football in the corridor, knew the lives of each and every person in the apartment block. She wasn’t nosy, really, she had nothing better to do. It was the closest to human comradeship she came, some days.

      So, the previous day, as she explained to Fabriano, she had seen a youngish man arriving with a brown paper packet, and seen him leaving again, still with the packet, some forty minutes later. A door-to-door salesman, she reckoned.

      ‘This was what time?’ Fabriano asked.

      ‘About ten. In the morning. Signor Muller went out about eleven, and didn’t come back until six. Then in the afternoon another man came, and rang the bell. I knew Signor Muller was at work, so I popped my head around the door to say he was out. Very surly look he had.’

      ‘And this was when?’

      ‘About half-past two. Then he went away. He may have came back again, if he was quiet. I didn’t hear anything, but I sometimes watch a nice game show on the television.’

      She explained that in the evening – the crucial time, as far as Fabriano was concerned – she was too busy preparing dinner for the family to see anything. And she went to bed at ten.

      ‘Can you describe these men?’

      She nodded sagely. ‘Of course,’ she said, and went on to give a perfect description of Argyll.

      ‘This was the one in the morning, right?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And the afternoon visitor?’

      ‘About one metre eighty. Age about thirty-five. Dark brown hair, cut short. Gold signet ring on the middle finger of his left hand. Round metal-rimmed spectacles. Blue and white striped shirt, with cufflinks. Black slip-on shoes –’

      ‘Inside-leg measurement?’ said Fabriano in amazement. The woman was the sort of witness the police dream about, but rarely find.

      ‘I don’t know. I could make a guess if you like.’

      ‘That’s quite all right. Anything else?’

      ‘Let me see. Grey cotton trousers, with turn-ups, grey woollen jacket with a red stripe running through it. And a small scar above his left eyebrow.’

       4

      ‘In that case I suggest you get him to trot down to the Carabinieri and make a statement. Do it now, in fact,’ Bottando said, drumming his fingers on the desk. A definite irritant. More than many, his department had to work closely with the trade; today’s witness was frequently tomorrow’s defendant. It was a fine business, not to get too close to people who were, at least, liable to come under suspicion. And in the world of Italian crime and politics, accusations of corruption were easily made. The connection of Argyll and Flavia, when allied to a murder and the wrath of Fabriano, had considerable potential for trouble. What was more, Flavia knew that very well. It was perfectly understandable that she should want to keep her private life away from Fabriano’s baleful gaze, but she should have known better.

      ‘I know. I should have come clean. But you know what he’s like. Jonathan would be locked up and emerge with bruises, just to teach me a lesson. Anyway, I’ve tried to get hold of him. He’s out. But I’ll see him and take a statement myself, not that there can be any connection of importance. I’ll send it to Fabriano tomorrow.’

      Bottando grunted. Not perfect, but it would do. ‘Apart from that, is there anything for you to do on this case? Anything that concerns us?’

      ‘Not obviously so, no. At least, not yet. Fabriano’s going to do all the legwork. Talk to the people at Muller’s office, find out his movements, and so on. Apparently he has a sister in Montreal who may come over. If anything turns up which might concern us, I have no doubt he’ll let us know.’

      ‘Still as obnoxious, is he?’

      ‘Even worse. Getting into homicide seems to have turned his head.’

      ‘I see. Good. In that case, until you talk to Mr Argyll, you may as well amuse yourself with daily routine. Now, how do you fancy doing something with that computer?’

      Flavia’s face fell. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Not the computer.’

      He’d expected that. This awful machine was supposed, by the designers, to be the last word in detection techniques. The idea behind it was to be the Delphic oracle of art police around

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