magazine on the desk in his study.
The daily paper was lying on the hand-tooled leather surface, and he picked it up
to see if there was any additional information about the murder of the academic,
or more pertinently if the Italian police were claiming they were following any
solid leads as to the identities of the killers. The leader article was clearly
little more than a rehash of the story which had been on the front page the previous
day, just with the addition of a few encouraging but non-specific comments – ‘it
is believed’, ‘police suspect the involvement of’, and that kind of thing – but
nothing solid. Nothing for him or the two Italians to worry about.
Then his eyes were drawn to a small article at the bottom of
the front page, and unconsciously he gripped the sheet of newsprint more firmly
as he read every word of this report. He tossed the paper down on the desk and simply
stared blankly at the white-painted wall opposite. After a few moments, he picked
up the paper again and read the article once more.
But there was no mistake. In that brief article of a hundred
and fifty words or so – because a report of vandalism, even vandalism inside the
ancient portals of the Basilica of Santa Croce – didn’t merit more than that when
there was still a brutal murder to be solved, he had read what he’d been hoping
not to.
Somebody else had come to the same conclusion as him. There was
another group, at least another two men, on the trail of the relic.
Suddenly, his hunt for the object had turned into a race, and
he knew he would have to act as quickly as possible if he was to succeed in his
quest.
Chapter 12
‘This might sound like a silly idea,’ Lombardi said, somewhat
tentatively, ‘but as Dante’s cenotaph has already been broken into, is it worth
mounting some kind of watch – either a couple of uniformed officers, or maybe just
a surveillance camera – on some of the other sites here in Florence that are associated
with the poet?’
Perini thought from moment before he replied.
‘It isn’t a silly idea,’ he replied, ‘and if we were dealing
with regular vandalism I’d agree with you. But I doubt if any of them will be targets
of these people. I think the cenotaph was a fairly obvious target because it was
essentially a locked room, a sealed space in which whatever these people are looking
for could conceivably have been hidden. But when you look at the other stuff here
in Florence which is related to Dante, as far as I’m aware none of them offer any
possible hiding places. I mean, off the top of my head there’s a statue of Dante
in the Piazza di Santa Croce, and another one in the Uffizi, a mural in the same
place, a fresco in the Palazzo dei Giudici and a few paintings in other museums. But they’re all
individual objects, just paintings – which obviously offer no possible hiding places
– or statues, and most of those are carved from solid stone. So, again, I think
we’d just be wasting our time and resources.’
‘Actually, I wasn’t thinking about those so much as one particular
relic which is intimately associated with Dante, and which does seem to me to be
a better fit for what is described in those verses than anything else I’m aware
of here in Florence. And you could also hide something in it.’
‘Now you’ve certainly got my attention,’ Perini said, swinging
his chair around to look at the younger man. ‘What you talking about, exactly?’
Lombardi shook his head and gave a slightly rueful smile.
‘First, let me explain the way I’ve been thinking,’ he said.
‘The thing that seems perhaps the most unusual about those verses is that reference
to the “animal of the Greeks”. When we were talking about it earlier, you said if
you asked most people the question, the majority would probably say the animal of
the Greeks was either a goat or a donkey, because those are the two creatures which
always seem to be most closely
The daily paper was lying on the hand-tooled leather surface, and he picked it up
to see if there was any additional information about the murder of the academic,
or more pertinently if the Italian police were claiming they were following any
solid leads as to the identities of the killers. The leader article was clearly
little more than a rehash of the story which had been on the front page the previous
day, just with the addition of a few encouraging but non-specific comments – ‘it
is believed’, ‘police suspect the involvement of’, and that kind of thing – but
nothing solid. Nothing for him or the two Italians to worry about.
Then his eyes were drawn to a small article at the bottom of
the front page, and unconsciously he gripped the sheet of newsprint more firmly
as he read every word of this report. He tossed the paper down on the desk and simply
stared blankly at the white-painted wall opposite. After a few moments, he picked
up the paper again and read the article once more.
But there was no mistake. In that brief article of a hundred
and fifty words or so – because a report of vandalism, even vandalism inside the
ancient portals of the Basilica of Santa Croce – didn’t merit more than that when
there was still a brutal murder to be solved, he had read what he’d been hoping
not to.
Somebody else had come to the same conclusion as him. There was
another group, at least another two men, on the trail of the relic.
Suddenly, his hunt for the object had turned into a race, and
he knew he would have to act as quickly as possible if he was to succeed in his
quest.
Chapter 12
‘This might sound like a silly idea,’ Lombardi said, somewhat
tentatively, ‘but as Dante’s cenotaph has already been broken into, is it worth
mounting some kind of watch – either a couple of uniformed officers, or maybe just
a surveillance camera – on some of the other sites here in Florence that are associated
with the poet?’
Perini thought from moment before he replied.
‘It isn’t a silly idea,’ he replied, ‘and if we were dealing
with regular vandalism I’d agree with you. But I doubt if any of them will be targets
of these people. I think the cenotaph was a fairly obvious target because it was
essentially a locked room, a sealed space in which whatever these people are looking
for could conceivably have been hidden. But when you look at the other stuff here
in Florence which is related to Dante, as far as I’m aware none of them offer any
possible hiding places. I mean, off the top of my head there’s a statue of Dante
in the Piazza di Santa Croce, and another one in the Uffizi, a mural in the same
place, a fresco in the Palazzo dei Giudici and a few paintings in other museums. But they’re all
individual objects, just paintings – which obviously offer no possible hiding places
– or statues, and most of those are carved from solid stone. So, again, I think
we’d just be wasting our time and resources.’
‘Actually, I wasn’t thinking about those so much as one particular
relic which is intimately associated with Dante, and which does seem to me to be
a better fit for what is described in those verses than anything else I’m aware
of here in Florence. And you could also hide something in it.’
‘Now you’ve certainly got my attention,’ Perini said, swinging
his chair around to look at the younger man. ‘What you talking about, exactly?’
Lombardi shook his head and gave a slightly rueful smile.
‘First, let me explain the way I’ve been thinking,’ he said.
‘The thing that seems perhaps the most unusual about those verses is that reference
to the “animal of the Greeks”. When we were talking about it earlier, you said if
you asked most people the question, the majority would probably say the animal of
the Greeks was either a goat or a donkey, because those are the two creatures which
always seem to be most closely
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