Goodbye Again (18 page)

‘Ah, Mr Contini.’ He was sympathetic. ‘Of course I’ll let the two of you go your own way with your happy memories.’ Then his eyes narrowed. ‘But not until you tell me where those pictures are.

‘I see.’

‘I hope you do. I hope you’re going to be sensible this time. Where are the rest of those pictures?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Come, it’s a big area, forty square miles of marble mountains, they tell me. Clearly I can’t take a needle-in-a-haystack approach.
You’ll have to help me. Otherwise my friends here,’ he gestured to the men behind him, ‘will take a very unwelcome interest in you, particularly in your girlfriend.’

I looked at Ben. We were surely and finally cornered now. He saw this, too.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I don’t know where they are, but I’ll help you, tell you all I know.’

‘Good. Meanwhile you’ll stay in your rooms, with my friends here keeping an eye on you. I have things to see to at the marina. We’ll meet at lunch – just you and me. And please don’t make a fuss, or you’ll ruin everything. Including yourselves.’

I looked across at Ben. He looked at me. I said to him with my eyes, ‘Get us out of this one, Ben, and forgive me for ever questioning your crazy idiot schemes. Dear Ben, just get us out of this one.’

SIXTEEN

Ben’s Story

This was a scrape we really had to get out of. I sat on my bed and rolled a cigarette. The phone was dead. One of the toughs, putting us both in our separate bedrooms, had disconnected it and taken the flex away, and locked me in. I could hear him, and the other fellow, walking up and down outside in the corridor. They’d taken rooms on the same fourth floor.

Well, there was only one way out and that was to tell O’Higgins all that I suspected about where the paintings might be, but I knew no more than him about this. Would he believe me? I didn’t know.

And then suddenly I thought maybe I do know. The Modi nude. Why had my father kept the painting hidden in the attic all those years, a painting in which he had no artistic interest? Why hadn’t he sold it, legally or illegally? Because the painting must have had some very special importance to him. All I’d thought about it was the secret behind the woman, Emelia. The woman behind the
inscription ‘Emelia-Amedeo-Amore’ written on the canvas turnover, hidden by the edge of the hessian backing. But what if the real secret, something much more important to my father, was also hidden behind the backing, on the back of the actual canvas itself?

I went with O’Higgins for lunch at the Roma, a little restaurant next to the marble theatre just up the road from the hotel. One of the minders took another table close by, and I told O’Higgins all I suspected about where the hoard was hidden – somewhere in a cave in the marble-quarry mountains above us. And then I told him how I thought the directions might be hidden on the back of the Modi nude.

He had a slice of melon and a wafer of Parma ham almost into his mouth. He lowered the fork, and a glint of greed showed again in his eyes. ‘Of course! To think I never thought of that. Come on, Ben,’ he said, making me a friend and accomplice by using my Christian name, and finishing his melon and Parma ham in two mouthfuls. ‘We must move quickly.’

Back at the hotel we went up to his room. He unwrapped the painting and asked me to tear the hessian up along both edges of the frame.

And there it was. Several lines of writing in dark ink, my father’s hand, in Italian – and below it a drawing. O’Higgins was on tenterhooks. ‘So? What does it say?’

I translated the Italian. ‘“Colonnata Village. On a theodolite line taken from the top of the middle pinnacle on the church tower.” And then there are some figures: looks like “Thirty-something degrees south-west and at an elevation of forty-nine degrees”, I think it is, “In the valley of the twin peaks, between the Cave di Gioia and the Cave Cancelli di Gioia”.’

‘And the drawing?’ It showed what seemed a sheer rock face, high up, since it was between and not far below the two mountain peaks which my father had referred to. Marked high on the rock
face, quite simply, was an X, like something from a child’s adventure book. X marks the spot.

O’Higgins beamed. ‘So, that cross must mark the opening to a cave!’

‘Yes. Those two quarries must have been my father’s. He must have hidden all the paintings there after the war, in a cave in some old workings, which he knew wouldn’t be disturbed later.’

‘And this Colonnata – where is it?’

‘It’s the marble village, end of the road, about six miles up the mountains from here.’

‘These twin peaks … they must be visible from the church tower.’

‘Probably, but that X on the drawing looks high up on the mountain. Could be difficult to get at.’

‘I have the men to get at it, trained in quarry and mountain work down at the marina, and a boat to get the stuff away.’

Elsa and I were guarded overnight by our minders, locked into our separate bedrooms. I couldn’t talk to her. Next morning one of the minders stayed behind in the hotel guarding Elsa, while O’Higgins and I – with the other minder, and two new men up from the marina – left for Colonnata in a big Toyota Land Cruiser. The new men, Italians, had the air of professionals. One of them versed in mining engineering, I thought, since he had a theodolite, tripods and other electronic equipment with him in the back of the truck. The second man a mountaineer, for the back of the truck was full of big coils of nylon rope, pitons, picks, pulleys, hammers and iron stakes.

We drove up the twisting mountain road, lush green trees to either side, another of those hot blue Tuscan mornings, a whole arc of sky opening above us as we approached the great white scarred peaks. We stopped in the tiny square at Colonnata. A dozen old red-tiled houses, a village hall with a church and a church tower, with three small stone pinnacles, above the piazza.

‘Well, that’s one confirmation,’ O’Higgins said. ‘The middle pinnacle, looking south-west.’

It took some time, asking at the café-grocery in the square, to get the key of the church tower. We waited outside the café while the minder went to look for the verger. The square was empty.

‘The locals all work down in Carrara, or in the quarries,’ I said.

We could hear the faint roar of machine saws and dump trucks above us, down the valley, but not on the twin-peaked mountain to the south-west, which we could see in the distance now, old white scars on it, the rest unworked. One of the Italians gazed at the mountain through powerful binoculars. He turned to O’Higgins.

‘No sign of any current workings,’ he said in English. ‘All old workings, and you can see a hairpin track, cut into the mountain, leading up to the most recent of them: but the track stops far below the summit, and way beneath that rock face where the oldest workings are, where the cross on that map is likely to be.’ He handed O’Higgins the binoculars, and consulted a large-scale map. ‘And if I’m right, the only way to get at that high rock face would be from above.’

The minder came back with the verger who opened the church and we climbed the steps inside the tower with the theodolite, tripod and camera, because they’d said they wanted to take photographs from the tower for an Italian travel magazine.

At the top there was a marvellous view, and a clearer sight of the twin peaks. They set up the theodolite just above the middle pinnacle of the tower, moved the lens first into the horizontal degree which my father had given in his directions, and then raised it into the vertical angle. The second Italian gazed through the lens, moving it slightly from side to side, then up and down, until finally he was satisfied.

‘Yes, the cross-hairs focus exactly on that rock face, the old workings, thirty or forty metres down from the plateau between
the two peaks.’ He moved to gaze through the binoculars, which had been set on another tripod. After a minute he said, ‘There’s a line of old workings there. Partly cut blocks of marble, on narrow terraces down the rock face, dropping for about fifty metres, and then there’s a sheer drop, no way up to the old terraces. Those high workings must have given out, so they started again, to the side or lower down the mountain. There’s no way to get at those old workings except from above.’

‘Do you have the exact part of the rock face – identifiable by one of those marble blocks – where that cross is on the map?’

‘Almost exactly. It’s the second terrace down, about thirty metres down and fifty metres along from the western end of the terrace, with quite a bit of partly cut marble blocks at that point. Somewhere there, behind those loose blocks – there must be an entrance.’

‘Good. Good.’

O’Higgins was sweating, fidgeting with anticipation.

We drove out of the village, up one rough track and then along another, followed by a succession of rising hairpin bends, down through a small valley to the left of the twin peaks, then turning up behind them, to the west, along another twisting track that ended at an old disused quarry working. We had to go on foot at this stage, carrying the ropes and other equipment, up a slippery scree of old marble chippings, moving between the two peaks towards the level ridge, among alpine lichens now on bare craggy rock. At the top of the ridge, at three or four thousand feet, there was a sensational view. Carrara in the distance, the hazy pale-blue sea beyond.

We moved down towards the edge of the ridge, gingerly, because we were on a slope now and the stones were loose. The ridge ended in a sheer precipice. We stopped. One of the Italians crawled forward on his belly, looked over the edge, then crawled back, stood up, dusted his hands.

‘Yes, it’s there, the rock face we want and the terrace of old marble blocks – about thirty metres beneath us.’ He hacked the rock beneath the loose stones with the heel of his boot.

‘Absolutely solid. A couple of stakes, abseil down.’

The two Italians inspected the terrain thoroughly, and hacked the loose rock away with small picks, finding a secure place to hammer their stakes in. They uncoiled two lengths of nylon rope, attached them to pulleys at the top of each stake, now deeply embedded in the rock, and put on body harnesses and belts carrying pitons, small picks and torches. Then, feet first, they eased themselves towards the precipice, played out their ropes and disappeared over the edge.

O’Higgins, myself and the minder waited above in the fierce sun. After about fifteen minutes we saw the pulleys moving on the stakes. The two men returned, sweating, but pleased. The first man, who had the best English, spoke to O’Higgins. ‘There’s an opening between two half-cut marble blocks, the second terrace down, about fifty metres in from the southern end. There are no other possible openings anywhere along the terrace, all solid blocks, partly cut into the rock face. So that must be it.’

‘How wide is the opening?’ O’Higgins was excited.

‘Several metres.’

‘And how high?’

‘About two metres.’

‘That must be it. Tall and wide enough to get big canvases in. Did you go inside?’

‘Yes.’

‘How far?’

‘Only a few metres. The entrance was closed then by a block of solid marble, but there is a narrow entrance beside the block, just wide enough to get through.’

‘Well, that’s the way in. So go down again, squeeze in and see what’s inside.’

The two men crawled back, feet first, and disappeared over the edge again.

O’Higgins fidgeted, impatient. A gust of wind took his straw hat and it sailed away over the cliff, swirling about like a kite, before drifting down into the huge valley below. O’Higgins put a hand to his bald pate quickly, trying to cover it, as if his private parts had been exposed. The minder, mopping his brow, sat down on the rock near me. I rolled a cigarette. The three of us waited in the hot sun. Five, ten minutes, fifteen.

Then the explosion. Deafening. Just below our feet, it seemed. A cracking series of explosions, or it may have been the echoes reverberating round the valley, for half a minute. Finally silence.

‘My God!’ O’Higgins yelped. And then, to the minder, ‘See if you can see anything below.’

The man crawled forward, and leant over the edge.

‘Can you see anything?’ O’Higgins called out.

The man half-turned. ‘No, I can’t see –’

And that was all he said before the entire edge of the precipice, loosened by the explosion just beneath, gave way and disappeared. We heard his screams on the way down.

That just left me and O’Higgins. I looked at him, appraisingly. I was bigger than him. He was frightened. Thinking of help from below he started to tug at one of the two ropes, but there was no weight on it. He did the same with the other rope, pulling it all the way up. Just blackened fibre strands at the end. He pulled the first rope up. It was in the same state.

I turned to O’Higgins, shaking one of the scorched ends at him. ‘The entrance was booby-trapped.’ I said.

I wondered if O’Higgins had a gun on him. I waited a moment. Clearly he hadn’t. He would have got it out by now. Guns had been the minder’s job. And, yes, I was bigger and younger and tougher than O’Higgins. I moved towards him, with menace.

‘Don’t!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t throw me over there! For the love of God!’

‘I think you’d do well,’ I said, ‘to follow your hat.’