The Bernini Bust. Iain Pears

and began scanning buttons and levers.

      ‘Damn,’ he added.

      ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. You forgot to put a film in?’

      ‘Certainly not,’ Streeter said, manipulating wildly. ‘It doesn’t use film. A visual recording node seems to have malfunctioned.’

      ‘Camera’s bust,’ Thanet said in a loud stage-whisper.

      Streeter rolled back a video, explaining as he did so that the image should come from a camera in the corridor leading to Thanet’s office. Still nothing. Careful checks revealed that it had stopped working at a little after 8.30 p.m. Subsequent investigation revealed that the cause of the problem was nothing more hi-tech than a pâté sandwich stuck over the lens.

      Morelli, who had a deep-seated distrust of all gadgetry, was not in the slightest bit surprised. He would have been much more amazed – pleasantly, admittedly – had the video shown some miscreant trotting down the staircase wiping bloodstained hands on his handkerchief. Fifteen years in the police, however, had taught him that life is rarely so kind. Fortunately, there was always good old-fashioned police procedure to fall back on.

      ‘Who did it?’ he asked Thanet, who looked taken aback by the question.

      ‘I’ve not the faintest idea,’ the director said after a moment to gather his thoughts.

      ‘What happened, then?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      Morelli paused, standard procedural techniques having proven less than immediately effective, and thought a moment.

      ‘Tell me what happened when the body was discovered,’ he said, thinking this might be a good place to start.

      Thanet, with the occasional interruption from Streeter, gave his account. Moresby had arrived at the party, circulated awhile, then was approached by Hector di Souza, who insisted on talking to him.

      Streeter put in that di Souza seemed agitated and had insisted on privacy.

      ‘What were his exact words?’

      ‘Ah, now, there you’ve got me. Ah, he marched up to Mr Moresby, and said something like “I understand you’ve got your Bernini.” Then Mr Moresby nodded and said, “At last,” and di Souza said was he sure? And Moresby said he – di Souza, that is – was going to have to do a lot of explaining.’

      ‘Explaining about what?’

      Streeter shrugged, closely followed by Thanet. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘I’m just telling you what I heard.’

      ‘Time?’

      ‘I’m not entirely certain. Shortly after nine, I’d guess.’

      Morelli turned to Thanet. ‘Do you know what it might have been about?’

      Thanet shook his head. ‘No idea. I had words with di Souza earlier myself. He was upset about the bust, but wouldn’t tell me why. Just said he urgently wanted to talk privately to Moresby about it. Maybe there was some dispute over the price.’

      ‘An odd time to start having second thoughts.’

      Thanet shrugged. No accounting for art dealers.

      ‘You didn’t by any chance have a microphone in the director’s office, did you?’ Morelli asked.

      Streeter looked thunderstruck for a moment, then switched to being outraged. ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘I did once suggest that office space be monitored more closely, but Mr Thanet here said he’d take me to the Supreme Court if necessary to stop me.’

      ‘A monstrous, unconstitutional and illegal idea,’ Thanet huffed. ‘How anyone can so lose sight of basic civilised…’

      ‘Oh, shut up, both of you,’ Morelli said. ‘I’m not interested. Can’t you keep your minds on the fact that Arthur Moresby has been murdered?’

      As they clearly couldn’t, he told them he’d take statements properly later, and got a junior officer to usher them out. Then, taking several deep breaths to calm himself down, he ran his fingers through his hair and began to organise his investigation. Press to be talked to, names to be taken, statements to gather, bodies to be moved, someone to go round immediately and find di Souza. Hours of work stretched before him. And he couldn’t really face it. So, instead he settled down and watched the video of the party, to see if that produced any real leads.

      It didn’t help him, nor did it greatly illuminate more professional analysts who looked it over later. The multiple interaction patterning, as the experts termed it, concluded that Thanet was having an affair with his secretary; that no less than twenty-seven per cent of the guests departed with at least one piece of museum cutlery in their pockets; that Jack Moresby drank too much, that David Barclay, the lawyer, and Hector di Souza, the art dealer, both spent extraordinary amounts of time looking at themselves in mirrors and that Jonathan Argyll was a bit lost and ill at ease most of the evening. They also noted that Mrs Moresby arrived with David Barclay, and didn’t speak to her husband once all the time he was there. Finally, they saw with disappointment that the pâté sandwiches were singularly popular, although no one was seen secreting one about his person for unorthodox purposes.

      They also watched Moresby talking to di Souza and leaving the party with the Spaniard at 9.07 p.m. and later on saw Barclay be summoned to the phone, talk into it, and walk out of the building at 9.58 p.m. The body was discovered moments later and Barclay came back to phone the police at 10.06 p.m. After that, everyone hung around and waited, with the exception of Langton who could be seen on the phone at 10.11 and again at 10.16. Simple enough, he explained later, he was phoning Jack Moresby and then Anne Moresby to inform them of the disaster. He was, it seemed, the only person who even thought of telling them. All the rest were too busy panicking.

      Apart from that, they came up with a list of people who, at various stages of the evening, conversed with Moresby. Surprisingly enough there weren’t all that many; almost everybody greeted him in one way or another, but he responded in such a frigid manner that few had sufficient courage to pursue the dialogue further. The party may have been thrown in his honour, but Arthur Moresby did not look as though he was in a party mood.

      To put it another way, dozens of expert man-hours and all the techniques of advanced social-scientific investigation devoted to analysing the tape produced no useful information whatsoever. And Morelli had known they wouldn’t, all along.

      

      Jonathan Argyll tossed and turned in bed, his mind churning over recent events with a degree of manic obsessiveness. He had sold a Titian; he hadn’t been paid for it; he had to go back to London; the prospective buyer had just been murdered; he wasn’t going to get paid for it; he was going to lose his job; he had nearly been run over; the cheeseburger was in violent dispute with his stomach; Hector di Souza was the likely candidate for gun-toting connoisseur; the Spaniard had smuggled a bust out of Italy.

      And he had no one to talk it all over with. A brief conversation with di Souza himself might have cleared his mind enough for him to get some sleep, but the infernal man was nowhere around. Not in his room, anyway; policemen there were aplenty, but Hector himself had, apparently, come back to the hotel, then left again shortly after someone phoned him. The key was with the reception. Maybe he would turn up for breakfast, unless the police got to him first, in which case he might be otherwise engaged.

      Argyll rolled over in the bed for the thirtieth time, and looked at the clock with eyes that were not in the slightest bit weary, try as he might to convince them that they needed a rest.

      Four in the morning. Which meant that he’d been lying in bed for three and a half hours, eyes open, brain rotating.

      He switched on the light, hesitated and finally took the decision he’d been wanting to take ever since he got back to his hotel room. He had to talk to someone. He picked up the phone.