The Last Judgement

‘Well, get a message to him, then. It’s urgent. He’s to come to my apartment as quickly as possible.’

‘You two getting back together again?’

‘Do you mind?’

‘Sorry. OK. I’ll see what I can do,’ said the voice from the other end. Somehow, he didn’t inspire confidence.

If this demonstration of planning skill was less than impressive, at least Bottando had managed to get through to Janet, who informed him that he had absolutely none of his people in Italy.

‘Taddeo,’ came the booming voice down the phone, ‘How could you think such a thing? Would I do something like that?’

‘Just checking,’ Bottando reassured him. ‘We must do things properly. Now, tell me about this painting. Is it stolen?’

Janet said that he didn’t know. He’d have to look it up. He’d ring back with the information as soon as possible.

‘And now we wait,’ said Bottando. He looked around the apartment. ‘Charming place you have here, Flavia.’

‘You mean it’s untidy and minuscule and bleak,’ Argyll said. ‘I quite agree. Personally I think that we should move.’

If he had hoped for support from Bottando, though, Argyll was disappointed. Not that the General didn’t agree, but the ringing of the doorbell prevented him from saying so. An expectant hush fell. Argyll turned pale, the uniformed policeman took out his gun and looked at it unhappily, Bottando went and hid in the bedroom. Unfair, in Argyll’s view. He’d been planning to hide in there himself.

‘OK, then,’ Flavia whispered. ‘Open the door.’

And gingerly, expecting to be attacked at any moment, Argyll edged towards it, unlocked it, and retreated back out of the line of fire. The policeman waved his gun around, looking nervous. It occurred to Flavia that she hadn’t actually asked if he’d ever fired one before.

There was a pause from outside, then the door swung slowly open, and a man stepped in.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ Flavia said with relief and disappointment.

Fabriano, still framed by the doorway, looked at her with irritation. ‘Don’t sound so pleased. Who were you expecting?’

‘You didn’t get my message, either?’

‘What message?’

‘One of those days,’ she said as she explained.

‘Oh. I see.’ He waggled his little radio. ‘Batteries flat,’ he explained. ‘What was it about?’

Flavia provided a brief summary. Edited version only. Some aspects of the story were covered a little fast. By the end, she’d given the impression that her relationship with Argyll was based on mutual lack of communication.

‘This man’s a bit late, isn’t be?’ Fabriano said.

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps because he was busy doing other things.’ Fabriano had that ‘I know something that you don’t’ look on his face.

She sighed. ‘Well? Like what?’

‘Like committing another murder, perhaps.’ Fabriano went on. ‘Of a harmless Swiss tourist. Who just happened to have Muller’s and your addresses written on a piece of paper in his pocket.’

He explained that he’d been called out at four to the Hotel Raphael, a quiet, pleasant hotel near the Piazza Navona. A hushed and shocked manager had called to report what he said was a suicide in one of the rooms. Fabriano had duly gone along. Not a suicide, he said. That was wishful thinking on the part of the manager. There was no way the dead man could have shot himself like that. Not with the gun wiped clean of fingerprints, anyway.

‘I’m afraid, my dear, that you are going to have to look at this hotel room,’ Bottando said. ‘I know you don’t like bodies, but still …’

She agreed reluctantly, noting as she prepared to go that Bottando himself had slithered out of it. He thought he ought to go back to the office. People to telephone, he said.

Argyll wasn’t so lucky. Not only did he have no desire to see this scene, he’d taken something of a dislike to Fabriano as well; largely because Fabriano had so obviously taken a dislike to him, admittedly, and he had this strong feeling it would be best to steer well clear. However, Fabriano, after eyeing him with a slight sneer of contempt around his upper lip for a few seconds, said he wanted a statement, so he’d better come too. They could deal with him later.

Flavia had described her morning in Muller’s apartment and, even though she had spared him most of the worst, he had a sufficiently agile imagination to be apprehensive long before they reached the third floor room in the hotel. Fabriano, of course, was laying it on thick; so much so that, when he did finally walk into room 308, he was almost disappointed, and certainly relieved. If there were individual styles in murder, then this was one that had not been committed by the person who killed Muller.

Instead of chaotic devastation this particular scene of crime was almost domestic. The occupant’s clothes were still laid out in neat piles on the table; a newspaper lay neatly folded on top of the television. His shoes were lined up and poking out from underneath the bed, which had been turned down evenly and with care.

Even the body itself conformed to this pattern. Surprisingly, there was no horror; even Argyll found it impossible to feel sick. The victim was fairly old, but evidently well preserved; even dead – a state which rarely brings out the best in people – he looked only in his sixties. His passport, however, suggested he was seventy-one, with the name of Ellman. The bullet that had killed him had done so through a neat, round hole, perfectly and symmetrically placed at the top of his bald and shiny head. There was not even much blood to get the stomach-heaves about.

Fabriano grunted when Flavia noted this, and pointed to yet another of the inevitable plastic bags lying in the corner of the room. It was green. With quite a lot of red.

‘Odd thing,’ he said. ‘As far as we can make out, the victim was sitting in the chair. His killer must have come up behind him’ – here he approached the chair from the rear to illustrate the point – ‘put the towel around his head and shot. Right through the top of the head. The bullet went straight down; no exit wound at all, that we can find. It must have gone straight down his neck and ended up near his stomach. I suppose we’ll find it eventually. So, not much mess. And as the gun had a silencer, not much noise either. Do you know this man as well, Argyll? Been selling pictures to him, too, by any chance?’

‘No, I’ve never seen him before,’ Argyll said, peering at the sight with an odd interest. He decided to ignore the less than courteous way Fabriano chose to address him. ‘He rings no bells at all. Are you sure he wasn’t the one who telephoned me?’

‘How should I know?’

‘So what was he doing with my address? Or Muller’s?’

‘I don’t know that, either,’ he replied a little testily.

‘What about his movements? Where does he come from?’

‘Basle. Swiss. Anything else I can tell you? To help you with your enquiries?’

‘Shut up Giulio,’ Flavia said. ‘You brought him here. The least you can do is be polite.’

‘Anyway,’ Fabriano continued, manifestly irritated at having to waste time explaining things to hangers-on, ‘he arrived yesterday afternoon, went out in the evening, came back late and after breakfast spent the rest of his life in his room. He was found just after four.’

‘And Jonathan was rung up at about two,’ Flavia said. ‘Is there a record of any calls?’

‘No,’ said Fabriano. ‘He made no outside calls. Of course, he may have used the public phone in the lobby. But no one saw him leave his room.’

‘Visitors?’

‘No one asked for him at the desk, no one noticed any visitors. We’re interviewing the staff and the people in neighbouring rooms.’

‘So there’s no reason to think either that he had anything to do with the death of Muller, or with this painting.’

‘The addresses, and the gun which is the same type as the one used to dispatch Muller. Apart from that, no. But it’s not bad as a beginning. Although perhaps an élite specialist like yourself has some better idea?’

‘Well …’ began Flavia.