The Rainaldi Quartet (11 page)

‘Killer?' I said, glancing at Guastafeste.

‘I'm afraid it's looking more and more like a homicide,' Guastafeste replied.

‘Thank you for your help, Signor Castiglione,' Spadina said. ‘We'll need a full statement from you later. Now, if you'll excuse me.' He went back across to Forlani's body.

Guastafeste looked at the display case in the centre of the room. ‘Why didn't he take that one, the Guarneri that belonged to Louis Spohr? It must surely be the most valuable in the collection.'

‘That's a fake,' I said, not really thinking about what I was saying.

Guastafeste turned and squinted at me. ‘Pardon?'

I hesitated. ‘It's a fake.'

‘How can you tell?'

I took my time replying, wondering why I'd told him, whether it was too late to withdraw the remark. But I
wanted
him to know. I kept my voice low, so the other police officers wouldn't hear.

‘Because
I
made it.'

*   *   *

When you look back at your life from my age it's difficult to be sure at exactly what point key events happened. Our memories are unreliable, the ebb and flow of our existence so blended together that it's impossible to distinguish the tide which led on to greater – or lesser – things. For most of us the greater things rarely come. Our lives are a continual process of coming to terms with failure. We all want to make our mark somewhere, to leave some trace of our passing. But how do we make that mark?

I was seven years old when I started to learn the violin. By the age of twelve I could play Bach and Haydn concerti. At fourteen I could play the Mendelssohn. I used to dream of being the next Paganini, of making a career as a concert virtuoso. At what point did I realise that dream would never be fulfilled? There was no single, identifiable point. We cling on to our ambitions until they are wrenched away from us. I am sixty-three years old with greying hair and creaking joints, but I still daydream about scoring the winning goal for Italy in the World Cup final the way I did when I was ten. I still dream about playing the Brahms concerto at Carnegie Hall. Why shouldn't I? Our lives would be unbearable without illusions.

But in reality? I knew in my teens that I would never be a concert soloist. I might have made a rank-and-file orchestral player, but that is a life of frustration and dissatisfaction, as my friend Rainaldi discovered. It comes as a shock, the realisation of your own limitations. But if you're sensible, you put the disappointment behind you and turn to other things, something you
can
excel at. That's when I turned to violin-making.

At fifteen I was apprenticed to a local Cremona luthier named Bartolomeo Ruffino. I made his coffee, sharpened his tools, swept the wood shavings from the floor for several months, then he let me have a go at making an instrument myself. At sixteen I finished my first violin. It was not very good, but I persevered. The next one was better. I discovered I had a gift.

It was at that moment too that I understood there was more to Ruffino than met the eye. He was a well respected luthier whose instruments were highly regarded in both violin-making circles and in the marketplace. But working alongside him each day, it gradually dawned on me that my apprentice master was not simply a maker of new violins: he was also a faker of old violins. He made no attempt to conceal from me what he was up to. Indeed, he made it clear that he expected me to help him in his nefarious activities, thus becoming complicit in his dishonesty. Because if I was involved, I too was tainted and therefore less likely to betray him.

‘What choice did I have?' I said to Guastafeste. ‘I was just a boy, an apprentice. Ruffino paid my wages. I wanted desperately to learn how to make violins – not fakes, but instruments of my own. In retrospect, I know I should have left, refused to have anything to do with his schemes, but I was young, pliable. Apprenticeships were not easy to come by and I didn't want to jeopardise my career.'

Guastafeste studied me intently. He was finding it hard to absorb what I was telling him. We were in a cafe in one of the squares near Forlani's house, sitting out on the terrace with a couple of glasses of mineral water on the table between us.

‘I was with Ruffino for nine years,' I said. ‘When I was twenty-four I left and set up on my own. I didn't make another fake after that. Except for the Spohr “del Gesù”.'

‘You really made that Guarneri?' Guastafeste said incredulously. ‘And you got away with it? Didn't Forlani have it examined, checked over by an expert?'

‘Oh, yes. It was examined by an expert all right. One of Italy's leading authorities on Cremonese violins.'

‘Who?'

‘Me.'

‘What!'

‘You are a policeman, Antonio,' I said. ‘But you are an innocent when it comes to the world of violin dealing. The criminals you encounter, the thugs, the thieves, the dregs of society, are paragons of virtue compared to your average violin dealer.'

‘You authenticated your own fake?'

‘Wonderful, isn't it? Yes, I forged the violin and then I was called in as an expert to verify its provenance.'

‘Called in by whom?'

‘By the dealer who was selling it, Vincenzo Serafin.'

‘Couldn't Serafin tell it was a fake?'

‘Serafin knew it was a fake. It was Serafin who asked me to make it in the first place.'

Guastafeste gaped at me. This was more than he could handle.

‘Serafin asked you to make it? You mean he's a crook?'

‘Of course he's a crook, he's a dealer,' I said.

‘Vincenzo Serafin, the respected Milanese businessman who mixes with politicians and opera stars and goodness knows who, who hosts a glittering annual fundraising event for children's charities and all that kind of bullshit … is no more than a common criminal?'

‘Not common,' I said. ‘He'd be appalled at the suggestion. Serafin is a very sophisticated criminal.'

‘Who sells fake violins.'

‘Only a few fakes. Most of them are genuine. You have to be careful.'

‘And how long has he been doing this?'

‘Oh, years. His father did it before him. Selling fakes is in his blood.'

‘And he's got away with it all this time? How come no one has found out?'

‘You have to remember that in this business there is no such thing as an independent expert. The people who sell violins authenticate them. That's how it works. If Vincenzo Serafin tells you a violin is a Guarneri “del Gesù”, then it is. You could take the instrument somewhere else, to a dealer in London or New York and get a second opinion, but they're unlikely to want to contradict Serafin's opinion. They're all at the same game and it's a very small pitch. If they undermine Serafin's reputation, they know it won't be long before he starts undermining theirs and that's not good for any of them.'

‘So none of them can be trusted?' Guastafeste said.

‘You can never trust someone who wants to sell you something.'

Guastafeste took a sip of his mineral water. He had few illusions about human nature. He knew that no one is completely honest, that hypocrisy is the oil that lubricates our relations with other people. But nevertheless I could tell he was shocked; that he was seeing me suddenly in a new light.

‘Why, Gianni? Why did you do it?'

‘Serafin pressured me. After Ruffino died, Serafin lost his master forger. He wanted someone to take his place. He knew I could do it. He kept on at me for years, trying to persuade me to cooperate, but I always resisted. Until seven years ago. When Caterina became ill.'

I thought back to that time. Those long months of watching my wife slowly fade away. Watching her suffer so much that I prayed every night for the end to come so that she might find peace.

‘We needed the money,' I said. ‘For nursing care, for treatment. I thought moving out of the city might also help her. Caterina had always wanted to live in the country. So I faked a violin for Serafin and used my share of the proceeds to buy our house.'

‘What did Forlani say he paid? Two million dollars, wasn't it?'

My face clouded for a moment. ‘Yes, that was a revelation to me. Serafin said he only made eight hundred thousand.'

‘So he cheated you too?'

‘Like I said, you can trust no one in this business.'

I wondered why I'd told Guastafeste. To clear my conscience, to purge a secret that had been festering inside me perhaps. Certainly I felt cleaner for getting it off my chest.

‘Don't think ill of me, Antonio. I know it was wrong. I'm ashamed of what I did. You're a policeman. You must do what you think best.'

Guastafeste stared at me. ‘You think I'd turn you in? What do you think I am? You're my friend. What do I care that that miserable old man paid two million dollars for a fake violin? But now he's dead, someone else will examine that Guarneri. I don't want you to get caught, Gianni.'

‘I won't get caught.'

‘I thought there were ways of detecting fakes now, scientific ways that can give a true, independent assessment of when a violin was made.'

‘There's dendrochronology,' I said. ‘A technique for analysing and dating the tree rings in a piece of wood. But that only gives the age of the wood, not the age of the violin.'

‘You used old wood?'

‘Of course. Ruffino bequeathed me a store of old wood when he died. I don't know where he got it from. Forlani's Guarneri “del Gesù” was made from wood cut in the early eighteenth century. A dendrochronological investigation of the instrument would confirm unequivocally that the wood was of the right period for Guarneri to have used it. Every tool I used, every technique was exactly the same as the ones Guarneri used. I doubt there's an expert on earth who wouldn't be fooled by it.'

‘And the sound? Does it sound like a Guarneri?'

‘Ah, now that's the question. No, it doesn't sound like a Guarneri. I can copy the appearance of a “del Gesù” but, alas, I cannot give it the touch of genius that produces that special, wonderful tone. If I could, I would be another Giuseppe Guarneri instead of a Giovanni Battista Castiglione. But Forlani was a collector. He didn't play the violin. He didn't buy the “del Gesù” to listen to, he bought it to look at, to gloat over.'

Guastafeste looked away across the square, watching the tourists passing through with their cameras and guidebooks. An elderly lady dressed all in black shuffled past clutching a string bag of vegetables. We could hear the low wheeze of her breathing from where we were sitting.

‘It's ironical, isn't it?' Guastafeste said. ‘Forlani had all those violins, yet the one he prized most was a fake.'

‘Believe me,' I said, ‘he would much rather have had a fake he believed to be genuine than the other way round.'

‘You think so?'

‘I know it. I've seen it many times. People come to my workshop with a violin. They tell me it's a Gagliano or a Pressenda or something. The label inside seems to confirm that. I examine the instrument and tell them it's a fake. It's not a Gagliano, it's a nineteenth-century German copy. They go away despondent. Why? The violin hasn't changed. It looks the same as before, it sounds the same. But to them it's different. It now looks and sounds like an inferior instrument.'

‘But it's worth much less.'

‘That's true. On the open market its value has suddenly plummeted. But as a violin to play, why should its worth have changed? Because when people buy a good violin they aren't just buying an instrument, they're buying a name. They're buying a dream, an association with greatness. I think of it as the Holy Grail Syndrome. Wanting to possess, to touch something that some great figure of the past has touched. Like all those gullible souls in the Middle Ages who bought the bones of saints or strips from the shroud that covered Christ in the belief that they were genuine. Or like those people today who pay ridiculous sums for celebrity memorabilia. You know, the cup that Elvis Presley once drank a Coke from, Marilyn Monroe's childhood teddy bear, John Lennon's toenail clippings, that sort of thing. What on earth do they do it for? Is it because they hope some of the magic that made those people famous will rub off on them?'

‘Is that why you chose Louis Spohr?' Guastafeste said.

‘Yes. Collectors want something special. They have plenty of money so any old Guarneri won't do. They want one with a name, with a history attached to it. And in the violin world the most celebrated Guarneri – after Paganini's
Cannone,
which is in the town hall in Genoa – is Spohr's stolen “del Gesù”.'

‘Wasn't it a bit risky?'

I shrugged. ‘It was a private sale, not through auction, so there was no public scrutiny. The documentation – also fake, of course – was so thorough and convincing that even I half believed it. Serafin forged letters, bills of sale, certificates, a whole pile of papers to explain what happened to the violin after Spohr lost it, to account for its sudden reappearance in a junk shop in Warsaw.'

‘In Warsaw?'

‘Eastern Europe, former Communist bloc, in turmoil for centuries. It's an ideal place for lost violins to surface. With a con you have to think big. Look at Konrad Kujau who forged the Hitler diaries. If he'd forged a couple, or even a dozen, people would have been instantly suspicious. But he forged fifty-eight volumes. No one could believe anyone would go to that kind of trouble for a scam so they thought they were genuine. Or back in the 1920s a Czech nobleman successfully sold the Eiffel Tower for scrap. Twice. We are an astonishingly easy species to dupe.'

‘But Forlani? A rich, shrewd businessman like him.'

‘Can be the easiest to fool, if you pitch the con right. If you go to a financier with some small plan to open a shop that will bring only a modest return, he'll go over your business plan with a magnifying glass, ask you hundreds of searching questions. But go in asking for fifty million for some unproven crackpot scheme that looks as if it may pay out big in a year and he'll fall over himself to give you the money. Look at the dot.com bubbles. People are greedy, they want their money to come easily. So make your con special, that's what hooks them. Appeal to that greed.'