The Bernini Bust. Iain Pears

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      ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ di Souza snapped back, with enough uncertainty in his voice to convince Argyll he was on the right track.

      Argyll sucked in his breath and tutted with wholly hypocritical sympathy. ‘Wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if the folk at the Belle Arte get their fangs into you. Nasty, that’ll be,’ he said with an uncontrollable grin. Di Souza gave him a very unpleasant look. ‘Serious offence, smuggling…’

      ‘It’s not smuggling I’m worried about.’

      ‘Oh, go on, Hector, spill it.’

      But there was no persuading him. Di Souza was panicked and adopting the tactic of saying as little as possible. You could see his point, Argyll thought. A public announcement, and reporters here as well. Had Thanet stood up and thanked di Souza for smuggling the bust out for him, it couldn’t have been more awkward. All it needed now was a little whisper, a little looking, and Hector would be in big trouble back in Italy. Standing up in a court and saying that he hadn’t known what was in that case would merely be greeted with hearty guffawing from the prosecutor. Argyll found it hard to believe himself.

      ‘Hmm,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You’ll just have to hope that no one notices too much. All I can say is you’re very lucky Flavia isn’t here. She’d have your guts.’

      He shouldn’t have said that. Flavia di Stefano had been greatly on his mind all afternoon, all week, in fact, and he had only just succeeded in thinking of other things. If he put his hand on his heart and confessed what it was that most attracted him to living in Rome, he would have had to say that, splendid though the buildings, the art, the streets, the food, the weather and the people were, what he really liked most was Flavia di Stefano, old friend, investigator in the Italian polizia art squad and a woman with a long-standing disapproval of those who smuggle the Italian heritage out of the country.

      Flavia, alas, did not return his feelings. She was a wonderful companion and a perfect friend, but though Argyll had worked hard to persuade her to be something more his labours had produced remarkably little result. He was fed up with it. That was why he was able to reconcile himself to going back to England.

      What more could he do? He’d mentioned Byrnes’ proposal to her one evening as they came out of the cinema – with what result? Oh, don’t go? Please stay? Even, I’ll miss you, would have been a start. But nothing. All she’d said was that if his career would benefit then of course he should go. And changed the subject. Not only that, since then he’d barely seen her.

      ‘What was that?’ he said, coming out of his reverie and realising that di Souza was still talking.

      ‘I said that when I have sorted everything out with Moresby not even your Flavia will have any interest in me.’

      ‘If you can. Besides, she’s not my Flavia.’

      ‘I’ve already told you I can. Simple to prove.’

      ‘What is?’ Argyll asked, puzzled. Evidently he’d missed more of di Souza’s conversation than he’d thought.

      ‘If you can’t listen I’m not going to repeat it,’ he said crossly. ‘It’s the second time you’ve spurned my anecdotes today. Besides, judging by the way the crowds are beginning to practise doing obeisance, I’d guess Moresby is arriving and I need an urgent talk with him. I’ll fill you in later, if you can pay attention for long enough.’

      Argyll followed in the slipstream of the guests heading for the main door where they could get a decent view of the proceedings. Di Souza was right. Moresby arrived with all the sense of occasion of a medieval potentate turning up to visit some minor province. Which he was, in a way. Compared to the vast range of his interests – Argyll vaguely remembered they stretched from oil to electronics, miscellaneous weaponry to financial services and just about everything in between – the museum was a fairly minor operation. Unless, of course, Thanet managed to prise open the old man’s very tight fist and keep it open long enough to build his big museum.

      It was an odd experience, halfway between being impressive and slightly ludicrous. The car was one of those stretched limousine affairs, about forty feet long with a small radio telescope on the back, all black tinted glass and shiny chromium. It swept up to the entrance and a host of nervous museum folk swept down to it, competing for the honour of opening the door. Then one of the richest men on the western seaboard emerged in the fading light of evening and everybody gazed at him reverentially.

      From Argyll’s standpoint, there wasn’t much to be reverential about. From the purely visual, or aesthetic, point of view, Arthur M. Moresby II didn’t amount to much. Tiny little fellow, peering myopically around him through thick round glasses, dressed up in a heavy suit much too thick for the weather and which, in truth, did little for his general appearance. He was almost completely bald and slightly pigeon-toed. A thin mouth, mottled complexion and ears that rose up to conclude with a very definite point at the top. He looked, indeed, a bit like a malevolent garden gnome. Putting himself in Anne Moresby’s position, Argyll began to see the appeal of a narcissistic concoction like David Barclay.

      Had it not been for the bank balance, it was difficult to imagine anyone gushing over him. On the other hand, he reflected as he scrutinised Moresby more closely, maybe that was unfair. The face indicated a man to reckon with. Entirely expressionless, it nonetheless radiated an air of chilly contempt for the clucking hordes gathered around him. Whatever his possibly innumerable faults, Arthur Moresby knew exactly why people were so keen to welcome him, and realised it had nothing to do with his loveable personality or exciting physique. Then he disappeared into the museum to get on with business, and the excitement was over.

       3

      Looking back on events later, Argyll viewed the following couple of hours with profound embarrassment. It was just his luck that, whenever something interesting happened, he would be elsewhere. It was simple enough; he was hungry and, no matter how many virtues oysters possess, no one can call them filling. Not like a burger and french fries, anyway, so after a few moments indecision, resolved when he decided that hanging around in the hope of shaking Arthur Moresby by the hand was a demeaning way of spending an evening, he sloped off in search of a halfway decent restaurant and sat feeling miserable for an hour or so.

      Indeed, he regretted not latching on to Jack Moresby to spend the night getting drunk together. He also regretted agreeing to have breakfast with di Souza. He’d had enough of the man already, what with spending much of the afternoon booking him into the same hotel he himself was staying at, carrying his luggage around, and listening to him at parties. Quite apart from the fact that he knew who was going to end up paying for breakfast.

      And he also regretted his choice of restaurant. The service was interminably slow. The waitress (who introduced herself as Nancy and was most keen that he enjoy his food) did her best, but it was one of those places where the cook evidently begins by grinding his own wholemeal. Alas, he shouldn’t have bothered. The end result wasn’t worth the effort.

      It was nearly eleven o’clock by the time Argyll set out for his hotel, after two hours spent all on his own with ample opportunity to feel sorry for himself. Apart from that, completely uneventful, except for narrowly avoiding being run over by an ancient truck painted with purple stripes. It was his own fault; he crossed the wide boulevard which led past the Moresby and on to his hotel in the cavalier fashion he had adopted for dealing with Roman traffic, and discovered that drivers in California, while generally slower, are not nearly СКАЧАТЬ