Paganini's Ghost (31 page)

He turned and plunged back into the woods. I moved forward and hesitated. Guastafeste had told me to keep back. He'd said almost the same thing to me in Paris when we'd found Alain Robillet's body. I knew I should heed his instructions, but my curiosity was too strong. I wanted to find out what had happened. Pushing aside the undergrowth, I ventured into the edge of the woods. Then I stopped abruptly, letting out a gasp of shock. In a small clearing a few metres in front of me, a man's body was sprawled on the ground, his arms thrown out to the sides, his eyes and mouth open in a horrific grimace. It was Vladimir Kousnetzoff. There was a bloody red gash on his neck where his throat had been cut.

I stepped back, feeling my legs give way. I averted my eyes, breathing deeply to stop the nausea from overwhelming me. Where was
Guastafeste? He'd told me to leave this to him, but I couldn't stand there and do nothing. There was a killer in the woods. I couldn't let Guastafeste tackle him alone. I skirted round the body and kept going through the trees.

It was a dense patch of woodland that had been left untouched for years. There were no paths, few clearings. The trees were crammed close together, the space between them filled in with shrubs and bushes, some so high and thick that they were virtually impenetrable. I forced my way through the vegetation, branches and brambles clawing at my arms and legs. I'd gone maybe thirty or forty metres when I stopped and tilted my head to listen. I could hear a faint rasping sound, like a hacksaw cutting through metal. I squeezed round a thicket of tangled shrubs and saw the wall of the summer house five metres ahead of me; saw a man carving feverishly away at the wrought-iron latticework, trying to remove a small section of the ornate decoration. And I knew suddenly what it was. I could picture the section in my mind. I'd seen it but not noticed it.

I edged closer. The man didn't see me, didn't hear me, he was so intent on his work. Then he paused to rest for a second and caught the crunch of my feet on the twig-strewn ground. He turned his head. I stopped dead in surprise, my eyes meeting his. It was Olivier Delacourt, the assistant manager of Molyneux et Charbon, in Paris. Delacourt! I gaped at him, my astonishment turning to fear as I remembered Kousnetzoff's body back in the clearing near the edge of the woods.

Delacourt stared at me, a hunted, desperate look on his face. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. He glanced round, checking that I was alone. I could sense the calculation going on in his head. One elderly man, that wasn't a threat. There was time to finish the job at hand, then deal with me.

He went back to his sawing for a moment, hacking away at the last few millimetres of metal with a furious energy until the piece of latticework came away in his fingers. He held the piece, gazing intently at it, panting heavily from the exertion; then he raised his head and fixed me with a piercing glare that froze my blood.

I was breathless; my legs were shaking, my heart pounding. This man was a killer. I took a step back. Where the hell was Guastafeste? Had he somehow got lost in the woods? Had he forgotten about the summer house?

Delacourt advanced towards me. I knew I couldn't run away from him. I was too old, and my legs were too weak.

“Antonio!” I screamed. “Over here, by the summer house.
Antonio!
”

Delacourt raised the hacksaw in his hand, the blade facing outwards. I reached down and picked up a fallen branch, brandishing it in front of me like a club. Delcacourt kept coming, his mouth twisted into a bitter smile, a crazed, feral glint in his eyes.

“The police are on their way,” I yelled. “You can't get away.
Antonio!
”

Then I saw Guastafeste. He was creeping out from the bushes behind the summer house. But he was too far away to do anything. Delacourt was almost on me. I swung the branch to and fro in front of me to keep him at bay, and to give Guastafeste more time.

“Did you hear me?” I shouted. “The police are coming. It's all over.”

Delacourt came for me. But as he lunged forward, he caught his foot on a bramble and stumbled. I lashed out with my branch, knocking the hacksaw from his hand. He paused for a second, scanning the undergrowth for the hacksaw. And in that instant, Guastafeste swooped out round the summer house and launched himself at Delacourt, hurtling into his back and smashing him violently to the ground. The piece of metal from the summer house that Delacourt had been clutching went flying into a clump of grass. Guastafeste pinned the winded Delacourt to the earth and in one slick, practised movement cuffed his hands behind him.

“You okay, Gianni?”

I nodded. I felt sick. My head was spinning. I wondered if I was going to faint. I stretched out my hand and steadied myself on a tree trunk. On the ground by my feet, Delacourt was groaning feebly, Guastafeste kneeling on his back.

“You're safe now, Gianni,” Guastafeste said. “I've got him.”

I stayed where I was for a time, letting my heartbeat and breathing get back to normal. Then I walked slowly across to the summer house. My legs were still trembling. My mouth was dry. I could see the gap in the wrought-iron latticework, the rough silvery edges where the metal had been cut through. All these years the summer house had been there. How many people had sat in the cool shade of its domed roof, had gazed out through that intricate pattern of twisted iron—and never noticed? Yet why should they have? It blended in so perfectly with the other decorations that it was completely inconspicuous—just an organic part of the whole. If you want to conceal something, put it out in the open, where everyone can see it.

I retrieved the piece of metal from the undergrowth. It was an elongated oval, like a large sweet-chestnut leaf, about thirty centimetres long and ten centimetres wide. The ends were bare, jagged, freshly cut metal, but the other surfaces—the front and back and sides—didn't look like metal at all, they were so thickly coated with tar.

Delacourt twisted his head round and swore at me.

“That's mine. You have no right to it.
I
found it.”

“Tell that to the Bologna police when they arrive,” Guastafeste replied.

He pushed Delacourt's face firmly back into the earth and looked up, listening. I could hear it, too—the distant sound of sirens getting nearer.

I took out my pocketknife and scraped away some of the black layer. It wasn't easy to remove—it was set hard, like rock. I worked the knife blade deeper and a chunk of the coating broke away. There was an object underneath, an object that wasn't oval but which had been bonded to a piece of oval metal and then disguised with the tar. I chipped away another corner and saw a gleam of yellow, then something else—a bloodred crystal the size of a small pea, and next to it a second crystal, this one clear like a piece of glass. Only I knew it wasn't glass.

I lifted my head and smiled at Guastafeste.

G
uastafeste stayed on in Bologna, to be present when the local officers interviewed Olivier Delacourt, so I caught the train back to Cremona. It was almost dusk when I arrived home. The sky was overcast, daubed with bulging black clouds that presaged rain. The house was cold and gloomy. I switched on some lights and the central heating and made myself a cup of coffee. I didn't feel much like eating. I'd had a dried-out ham and cheese sandwich at Bologna station—my first food since breakfast—but I didn't want anything else. The afternoon's events had taken away my appetite.

I was listless. There was a hollow feeling of nausea in my stomach. I wondered if I was suffering from delayed shock. I kept seeing Vladimir Kousnetzoff's body lying on the ground, running and rerunning the image through my mind like a loop of film that stubbornly refused to move on to the next sequence. And when, finally, it did move on, it was only to the scene by the summer house, to Delacourt advancing towards me with a hacksaw in his hand. I don't know which scene
disturbed me more—the corpse with its throat cut, or the killer preparing to do the same to me. I knew I couldn't have fought Delacourt off. If Antonio had come just half a minute later, he would have found me dead. The thought made me shudder, sent an icy tremor through my body that left me chilled to the bone.

I forced myself out of my armchair and went upstairs to find a warm pullover. I was shivering, my arms and legs trembling as if I had a fever. I slipped the pullover on, then put my dressing gown over it and sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes until the shaking stopped. I was considering whether to go straight to bed, or go back downstairs to make myself a bowl of hot soup, when the telephone rang. I picked up the receiver on the bedside table, thinking it would be Guastafeste. It was Yevgeny Ivanov.

“Gianni?” he said. “I need to talk to you.” He spoke in English, his voice almost a whisper, hoarse at the edges.

“Talk?” I said.

“Can you come to me?”

“Where are you?”

“A house near Lodi.”

“Lodi?”

“You know where that is?”

“Of course. You want me to come now?”

“Yes.”

“What is this, Yevgeny?”

I couldn't disguise my irritation. It was nearly dark, and I had had a traumatic day.

“I want to sort things out. Please, Gianni. You're the only person who can help me.”

The appeal was so heartfelt that I softened a little.

“Whereabouts near Lodi?” I asked.

“Close to the river. Outside a village called Galgagnano.”

I thought about it. Lodi wasn't far, a small medieval town midway between Cremona and Milan.

“Gianni?” Yevgeny said tentatively. “I am sorry to trouble you. I would be very grateful if you would come. I have no one else to turn to.”

“How do I find you?” I said.

He gave me directions; then I hung up. I didn't really want to go. I was tired, emotionally drained. The last thing I felt like was an earnest, and probably difficult, conversation with a troubled young man. But I couldn't bring myself to let him down. I liked Yevgeny. His faith in me was flattering. He'd said he needed my help. It would have been callous to reject his plea. Besides, if I stayed here, I would only dwell disturbingly on Kousnetzoff and Delacourt, and I'd had enough of both of them.

It was spitting with rain outside. I picked up my waterproof jacket and went to my car. By the time I reached the main road, the heavens had opened and I was driving in a torrential downpour, the sky so dark that it felt like the middle of the night. It took me twenty minutes to get to Lodi, then a further fifteen to find the house. It was down a rough farm track, a small one-storey stone cottage on a hillock above the River Adda. I could just make out the course of the river in the broad floodplain below me as I dashed from my car to the door of the cottage.

The door was already open. Yevgeny was standing in the hallway. Next to him was a slim, pretty young woman in her early twenties. I gave a start as I recognised her. She was the student who'd been accompanying Vittorio Castellani at the postconcert reception in Cremona's town hall two Saturdays ago.

Yevgeny took my hand and squeezed it hard, then clung on to it as he spoke.

“Thank you for coming. It is very good of you. Is it raining?”

“Yevgeny, what are you doing here?” I said, extricating my hand.

He glanced at the girl beside him.

“This is Mirella,” he said. “She was at the reception.”

“I know.”

I looked at her. She averted her eyes guiltily. So Rudy Weigert had been right. Sex—the key to all human behaviour.

“She is music student at the university in Milan,” Yevgeny said.

“This is your house?” I asked her.

“No, it belongs to a friend.”

“And you've been here all this time?”

The question was addressed to Yevgeny. He looked down sheepishly.

“I have not behaved well,” he said. “My mother will never forgive me.”

“Mothers are very good at forgiving,” I said. “Now, why don't you tell me exactly what's been going on.”

We went into the living room off the hall. It was a small room with a kitchen area at one end and an open hearth, in which the remains of a fire were glowing dully. I'd already worked out from the three doors off the hall that this was a one-bedroom cottage: living room, bedroom, bathroom.

Yevgeny and Mirella sat down next to each other on the sofa, leaving me to take the armchair by the fire. I could feel the welcome heat on my legs. Yevgeny grasped Mirella's hand in his own and she slid closer to him, their shoulders touching. They looked terribly young, and terribly awkward.

“This is not easy,” Yevgeny began. “I feel so bad about it. All the trouble I have caused, the worry. Did you speak to my mother—after my telephone call?”

“Yes, I spoke to her.”

“And?”

“She was concerned, of course. She was hurt that you had rung me and not her.”

“Yes. I know that must have made her unhappy.”

“But I reassured her that you were all right and would be coming back soon. What are you doing out here, Yevgeny? Your mother has been worried sick. She has had to cancel at least one of your concerts. You're damaging your career.”

“I am not sure I want a career anymore,” Yevgeny said quietly.

“What do you mean?”

He gave a facial shrug.

“I am not sure I want to go on with the life I have been living. I do not think it is right for me.”

“Are you not happy?”

“No, I am not.” He glanced at Mirella. “I mean with my music, my playing. In other areas, well, yes, I am happy now. Very happy.”

He smiled at Mirella and they gazed softly at each other for a moment, as if I weren't there. I'd forgotten just how intoxicating and all-consuming young love can be—and how irritating to others.

“Let's start at the beginning,” I said, suppressing the urge to bang their silly heads together. “At the reception after your concert. That's presumably where all this began.”