Paganini's Ghost (19 page)

I was growing weary and contemplating stopping for dinner, when the telephone rang. I could hear nothing but a fuzzy crackle on the line to begin with and was about to hang up, when a voice broke through the interference.

“Hello?”

It was a man's voice, speaking in English.

“Yes?” I replied in the same language.

“Gianni?”

I realised who it was.

“Yevgeny? Is that you, Yevgeny?” I almost shouted into the phone.

“Yes, it is me.”

“Yevgeny, where are you? Are you all right?”

“Yes, I am all right.”

He sounded very faint. His voice was thin and tremulous.

“What's happened?” I said. “Have you rung your mother?”

“No. I cannot speak to her.”

“Yevgeny, you must. She's going crazy with worry. Where are you? Why did you disappear like that?”

“Please, Gianni, speak to my mother for me. Tell her I am okay. Tell her I am sorry.”

“Why can't you speak to her yourself?”

“I just can't.”

His voice cracked and I thought he was about to burst into tears.

“What is it?” I asked. “What's happened? Did someone take you away by force?”

“By force? No, nothing like that.”

“So where are you? People are worried. It's not just your mother. The police are involved, too.”

“The
police
?”

“You vanished, Yevgeny. No one knows where you are. Anything could have happened. Of course your mother went to the police.”

“The
police
?” he said again. “I did not know.”

“Are you in trouble? What's going on? Can I come and collect you?”

“Speak to Mama for me. Please, Gianni. I know I can trust you. Say I am sorry for all the trouble I am causing.”

“Do you need help? Tell me where you are, and I'll come and get you. Are you in Cremona?”

“I will be back in a few days. I have to sort things out.”

“What things?”

“I will call you again. I am sorry.”

The line went dead. I pressed the recall button but got only a computerised voice-mail message. He'd turned off his mobile.

I left my workshop and went across the terrace and into the house, knowing I had to call both Ludmilla and Guastafeste, but unsure whom to ring first. I chose Ludmilla. Antonio's involvement in the case was purely professional, his interest detached and objective, but Ludmilla was Yevgeny's mother. Her life, her entire emotional being, was inextricably entwined with her son's. She needed, and deserved, to be told first.

It wasn't an easy call. The initial relief in her voice was so great that she sounded as if she were about to swoon. But then she recovered and became almost indignant.

“Why did he ring you?” she demanded. “He barely knows you. Why didn't he call me?”

“I'm not sure, signora. The important thing is, he is safe.”

“But where is he?”

“I don't know.”

“Didn't you ask?”

“Yes, I asked. He didn't say.”

“Was he alone? Was Kousnetzoff with him?”

“I don't know.”

“You should have asked. You should have found out. He has engagements, commitments. What is the stupid boy playing at?”

“He sounded distressed,” I said. “He said to tell you he was sorry and that he'd be back in a few days.”

“A few days? When? I have already had to cancel his recital in Venice. He is destroying his career. We must find him. Have you told the police?”

“I am going to ring them next.”

“They can trace the phone call. They can find out where he is. Does he not realise how foolish he is being? Call them now. They must act quickly.
Now
, you understand?”

“Yes, signora. I will call them now.”

Guastafeste was still at his desk at the
questura
. I gave him the gist of my conversations with Yevgeny and Ludmilla.

“He gave no indication at all of where he is?” Guastafeste said.

“No.”

“You didn't pick up any clues? Background noise, other voices, that kind of thing?”

“No. The line was so bad, it was hard enough hearing Yevgeny.”

“And he said nothing about why he disappeared?”

“I asked him. He wouldn't—or couldn't—answer.”

“You think there was someone with him? Someone who was monitoring what he said?”

“No. When I asked if he'd been taken away against his will, he sounded genuinely surprised. I don't know what's going on, Antonio, but he hasn't been abducted. I'm sure of that.”

“Well, that's good to know. We can scale down the search for him now.”

“Ludmilla wants you to trace the phone call. Can you do that?”

“From a mobile? It's possible. If his phone is still switched on, it will be sending out an intermittent signal to the nearest base station.”

“It's not switched on. I tried to call him back.”

“Then we can get the record of the call from the phone company. They'll have the coordinates of the location from where it was made. But it's a lot of hassle, and I'll probably have to get a court order. The magistrate will want some pretty good reasons for granting the order. Did Yevgeny sound as if he was scared or in danger?”

“He sounded upset, but not scared.”

“Upset?”

“Emotional, close to tears.”

“Has he had some kind of breakdown?”

“It's possible, a highly strung artist like him.”

“But he said he was coming back in a few days?”

“That's right.”

“Then I'm inclined to leave it, do nothing for the time being. He's phoned in. He seems to be safe and well. Let's wait for him to return.”

“Ludmilla won't like that. She wants him tracked down and brought back now.”

“It's not as easy as she thinks.”

“She won't take no for an answer. You know how persistent she is. She'll be coming into your office, camping out in the foyer until you do something.”

“Fortunately, I won't be here,” Guastafeste said. “I'm going out of town for a couple of days.”

“Oh, yes? Where?”

“Paris.”

“Paris?”

“The jewellery expert examined the gold box this morning. The hallmarks indicate that it was made in Paris in 1819 by Henri le Bley Lavelle. I'm flying up there tomorrow morning. Le Bley Lavelle's business was taken over by another firm in the mid-nineteenth century, but they still have all his records dating back to the 1780s.”

“You want to check the records?” I said.

“The box was made for a specific violin. The cutout shape inside it—Le Bley Lavelle must have been supplied with the exact dimensions he had to work to. I want to know if the records give any information about the violin the box was made to fit. I need to know what we're looking for. And while I'm in Paris, I want to have a talk with François Villeneuve's business partner, Alain Robillet.”

“I didn't know he had a partner.”

“Nor did I until today. We asked our colleagues at the Sûreté for information on Villeneuve. Their report was faxed through this afternoon. He had something of a dodgy reputation: three instances of stolen property being found in his possession—and not small stuff, either. We're talking valuable furniture, old masters, antique silverware. He wriggled out of the charges each time—insufficient evidence to prosecute him for receiving—but the French police clearly think he was guilty. Villeneuve might have been a successful fine-arts dealer, but it would seem that he was also a successful fence.”

“Was the gold box stolen?”

“We're checking to see.” Guastafeste paused. “I'm glad you rang, Gianni. I was going to call you this evening anyway. You like Paris, don't you?”

“Well, yes,” I said warily. “Why?”

“I want you to look at Le Bley Lavelle's records with me.”

“You mean fly up there with you tomorrow?”

“It's all cleared with my boss. You're the violin expert. I need your help, Gianni. Having your company will be nice, too.”

“I'll have to get myself a ticket,” I said.

“That's all arranged. I'll pick you up at half eight. Our flight leaves Linate at eleven.”

I
have happy memories of Paris. It was where my wife would have liked to have gone for our honeymoon, only we were too poor to afford it at that stage of our lives. We were in our early twenties and I was an unknown, struggling luthier. A long weekend at Bellagio, on the shores of Lake Como, was all our budget would stretch to, but when you are newly married, your honeymoon destination is ultimately immaterial. You are not there to look at scenery or wander round museums; there are other things to occupy you.

Paris would have been wasted on us back then. We would have been too absorbed with each other to take in the cultural delights the city offers. But later, when the children were off our hands, we managed a few days there. We were no longer the starry-eyed newlyweds for whom the French capital is such a draw, but Paris is not the exclusive province of the young and enamoured. The middle-aged and exhausted are also allowed to share in its sophisticated pleasures.

We did all the classic tourist things—went up the Eiffel Tower, took
a boat trip on the Seine, ate out at restaurants where the imagination lavished on the food came in a poor second to the imagination lavished on the bill—and loved it. Of all the European capital cities I have visited, and I have not visited many, Paris is undoubtedly the most captivating. Berlin is grand but dull, Rome a chaotic inferno of traffic and dusty ruins, London damp and unappealing. Paris cannot compete with its rivals on many fronts. Its weather is inferior to Rome's, its public services worse than Berlin's. Its parks are not a patch on London's green open spaces, yet it has a style, a charm that the others cannot match. To live there is probably hell, but to visit for a short time is an exquisite experience, particularly with someone you love.

We have become cynical these days, and with good cause. Our lives are saturated with the lies and obfuscations of the PR and marketing industries, whose main raison d'être is to part us from our money. The image of Paris, the romance of Paris, has been filtered and distorted through so many films and glossy advertising campaigns that it is hard to tell what is reality and what is a sales pitch. But my memories of the city are not tainted by commercial misrepresentations. I know that. They are not part of a movie scenario or a tourist brochure. They are real and they are vivid and they are happy. For I was there with Caterina. I was there with her when she was well and full of life, before she succumbed to the vile, creeping sickness that was to take her from me. For that, I will always have a tender spot in my heart for Paris.

Guastafeste and I, however, were not there on holiday. We had business to transact. Our flight from Milan got into Charles de Gaulle at half-past twelve. It was nearly lunchtime, but you would have to be insane to eat by choice in an airport, so we took a taxi straight into the city centre. The offices of Molyneux et Charbon were in the Place Vendome, near the Ritz Hotel, whose well-heeled customers could stroll out of the front door and straight into the jewellers' showroom, then back to their luxury suites without being unduly worn out by the weight of all those carats round their necks and fingers.

This was no ordinary high-street jewellery store. I had seen shops like it in Milan. You couldn't simply walk in and ask to see a few diamond
rings. You had to make an appointment for a “consultation,” during which items would be brought out of a display case or the high-security safe by solicitous assistants who spoke at least half a dozen languages, including English, Arabic, and fluent flattery.

Guastafeste pressed a bell by the door and spoke our names into an intercom, a CCTV camera on the wall above us scrutinising our every move. When the lock clicked back to open the door, we stepped through into a strange artificial environment. All trace of the outside world seemed to disappear. The noise of the street was cut out altogether by the thick walls; there was a deep burgundy carpet on the floor, on which our feet made no sound. The sunlight, partially blocked by the shutters and small windows, was replaced by a constellation of spotlamps sparkling and scintillating in the ceiling. The unnatural quiet, the lighting—which was somehow both bright and subdued—made me feel as if we'd walked into a well-appointed fish tank.

A man came forward to greet us. He was in his forties, a tanned, jowly man with thick black hair and dazzling white teeth. He was wearing a dark three-piece suit, which had a gold watch chain dangling from a fob pocket, and a gold tie pin inset with tiny sapphires. He had the smooth, well-fed look of an affluent banker.

“
Buon giorno, signori
,” he said, then went on in excellent Italian. “I am Olivier Delacourt, the assistant manager.”

We shook hands. His palm was soft and fleshy.

“It's a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “Did you have a good journey?”

“Yes, thank you,” Guastafeste replied, his voice much quieter than usual. In the refined atmosphere of the shop, it seemed almost rude to speak above a whisper.

“Monsieur Jahinny is expecting you. Please, this way.”

Delacourt opened a door at the back of the room and led us through into a vestibule, which had several other doors leading off it. One of those doors opened and a man and a woman emerged from a private consulting room. The man was dark-skinned, with the facial features
of an Arab, though he was wearing Western dress. The woman was much younger, a blonde in a low-cut haute-couture dress for whom the phrase “dripping with jewels” might have been invented. She seemed to have diamonds on every available surface of her body—dangling from her ears, round her throat, on her fingers, and even round her ankles. Behind the couple came a second man in a three-piece suit like Delacourt's—presumably another shop assistant, although that description could not possibly do justice to the young man's appearance. He was tall and dark, with the smouldering good looks of an old-fashioned French movie star, the kind of actor you might have seen in newsreels from Cannes in the 1950s. He was carrying a stack of embossed leather cases, which I guessed must have contained more newly purchased additions to the blonde's already-impressive collection.