The Last Judgement

‘What?’ said Fabriano, leaning as nonchalantly as he could manage against the door. Flavia could see that even he was having a hard time maintaining the pose.

‘His ear,’ the man replied, holding up the bag containing the bloody, torn object.

At least Fabriano turned and bolted first, although Flavia was hard on his heels in her attempt to get out of the room as fast as possible. She went straight into the kitchen and poured a glass of water.

‘Did you have to do that?’ she asked angrily as Fabriano came in after her. ‘Did sending me in there make you feel any better or something?’

He shrugged. ‘What did you expect? “This is no sight for a little woman,” or something?’

She ignored him for a few seconds, trying to maintain calm in her stomach. ‘So?’ she said, looking up at him again, annoyed that she had seemed so fragile with him around. ‘What happened?’

‘Looks as though he had a visitor, doesn’t it? Who tied him up, ransacked the house, then did that to him. According to the doctor, he was shot to death eventually.’

‘Reason?’

‘Search me. That’s why we asked you people along. As you can see, whoever it was seemed to have a grudge against pictures.’

‘Organized-crime connection?’

‘Not as far as we can tell. He was the marketing director for a computer company. Canadian. Clean as a whistle.’

It was then that Flavia got this nasty feeling. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Arthur Muller,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said. Damnation, she thought. A complication she didn’t need. She could see it now: 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.