The Seven Stars Read online

  ‘Tombaroli,’ said Flora, using the Italian word for grave-robbers.

  ‘I know,’ said Moretti, standing with his arms hanging limply by his side and staring in abject disbelief at the remains of what had been potentially one of the finds of the century. ‘I know,’ he repeated, as if talking to himself. ‘But I don’t understand is why.’

  ‘Greed, ignorance: those are the usual reasons.’

  ‘No, it’s not that. If they were after gold or statuary, something solid, then I could understand why they’d use a digger. But if they were after fragile pieces of written work, and especially working in the dark, all they’d do is smash everything into a pulp.’

  ‘Which is what they’ve done,’ she said, crouching down to sift through the tumbled remains with her bare hands.

  The Sovrintendente in charge of the crime scene came over to join them and Moretti introduced himself. ‘Did anyone see anything? Anyone in the neighbouring flats?’ he asked the policeman.

  In response he looked at Moretti in a way that seemed to say, this is southern Italy, you’re on a building site owned by the Camorra where the work’s being done by companies owned by the Camorra, and you ask if anyone saw anything? Are you quite mad? Instead, he merely shook his head. ‘We’ve asked around. One or two people said they heard the sound of the digger in the night but just thought someone was putting in overtime.

  ‘Overtime?’ said Moretti, incredulous. ‘In the middle of the night?’

  The policeman shrugged. ‘That’s what they said.’

  ‘And do you believe them?’ asked Moretti, his face colouring with anger.

  ‘What choice do I have, sir?’

  ‘And none of your patrols saw anything?’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘Come on, Flora, we’re wasting our time here.’ he said. ‘I’ve got to break the news to my team and get them started on seeing if there’s anything we can salvage.’ They ducked back under the single strand of police tape and into the Via Tenente Ravallese.

  ‘So what happens now?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll need to talk to the police and the Carabinieri again, but in the mean time, if you can let me have copies of what you’ve got left from yesterday – you know, scans of the copper grids, images of finds, anything that’ll help us identify what’s missing.’ Moretti suddenly stopped walking and Flora almost bumped into him as he stood gazing vacantly into space once more.

  ‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘Do you want me to call Donald and ask him to do the same?’ She could tell that his attention was miles away and he hadn’t heard a word she’d just said. ‘Francesco?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I said, do you want me to call Donald and ask him to bring in what he’s got too?’

  He looked at her as though trying to work out who she was and what she’d just said. ‘Yes. Thank you. That would help.’

  She put her head on one side and looked at him intently. ‘Francesco, don’t you think you ought to go home? You’re no use to anyone in this state.’

  ‘No. That wouldn’t help.’

  ‘Look, let’s forget this evening. It was a nice thought but why don’t you call Anna and get her to come home or you go to her?’

  ‘I can’t, Flora, she’s not coming home.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She’s left me, Flora. Taken the children and gone back to her parents in Turin.’

  ‘Oh, Francesco, I’m so sorry,’ she said, putting a consoling hand on his arm. ‘I had no idea. When did this happen?’

  ‘Three months ago. She wants a divorce.’ He turned to face her again. The incongruity of having such a conversation between two rows of parked cars in a scruffy Pompeii side-street somehow didn’t seem to matter. ‘I thought I was coping OK, but this business with the break-in and now this…’ his voice trailed away and Flora could see he was close to tears. ‘Now you see why I don’t want to go back to the flat and all the reminders – at least if I come in to work, I can keep busy. Stops me thinking about it.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said, releasing his arm. ‘Look, I’m going back to have a shower and make myself semi-presentable and I’ll see you at the lab in an hour say. How’s that?’

  ‘Perfect,’ he said with an attempt at a half-smile.

  When Flora returned to the lab she was greeted by the disagreeable spectacle of Donald Sumter sitting at the desk in what had been her temporary office. He looked up from his laptop and nodded vaguely in what she took for a greeting but neither of them spoke. Eventually, she broke the silence. ‘Have you been to the dig site yet?’

  ‘No. Why would I do that?’

  The question left her temporarily speechless. Finally, she said, ‘Oh, it’s worth a look, Donald – it’s an absolute mess, completely robbed out.’

  ‘So Francesco tells me.’

  I’ve met more talkative furniture, thought Flora, trying not to let her irritation show. ‘Did you have much on your laptop?’ she asked.

  ‘A fair amount, but not much that would be useful to the police.’

  ‘What about the translations you’ve done?’

  He shook his head. ‘Still in hard-copy: I left most of it here overnight and it’s all gone.’

  She sat on the corner of what had been her desk, something she guessed rightly would annoy him; anything to get a reaction from the wretched man. ‘You seem remarkably calm about the loss of what could have been one of the most important archaeological finds in history.’

  He looked up at her with large, brown, disdainful eyes. ‘I fail to see what my joining in the screaming and shouting would do to help. Anyway, I prefer to leave that sort of behaviour to the Italians.’

  Flora gritted her teeth, determined not to take the bait. ‘Can you show me what you do have left?’

  ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘Although as I told you yesterday, I still have no reason to believe what we were looking at was necessarily written by Josephus.’

  She glared back at him. ‘So not worth stealing then, Donald?’

  ‘Clearly it was,’ he said, with a reptilian smile. ‘Anything old and rare has a market value. Look at the Devil’s Codex for example and think how many bogus copies of that there are in circulation. And nearly all of it indecipherable gibberish.’

  Sidestepping his gibe at the work she’d done the previous day, she peered at his laptop screen. ‘You’ve been here nearly a month and that’s it?’ she said. ‘Three scanned pages from The Wars and some notes?’

  ‘I told you, the rest I left here overnight on my desk. I prefer to work long-hand. Stopping to type is an unnecessary distraction. After all, what I’m doing isn’t merely an extension of high-school chemistry – ’

  ‘Nor is palaeography,’ she replied, at once cursing herself for taking the bait.

  A self-satisfied smile crossed Sumter’s lips. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘But it is a far more mechanical approach than linguistic and textual analysis, as I’m sure you’d agree.’ They’d had the argument many times before and only the arrival of Moretti, accompanied by a Carabinieri lieutenant, prevented it breaking out again. Flora ran an approving eye over the newcomer: a tall, fair-haired man in his late twenties, introduced himself as Antonio Lombardi from the Carabinieri’s Commando per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale or TPC, a specialist unit devoted to solving crimes involving Italy’s cultural heritage.

  ‘Am I really going to have to answer the same silly questions all over again?’ said Sumter. ‘I’ve already spoken to these people twice already, not to mention the local police; and the interpreter said he was going home –’

  ‘You’ve no need for concerns on that score, sir,’ said Lombardi in English with an accent that seemed to owe more to New England than to Italy. ‘I’ll try to take up as little of your precious time as possible, but we’d be grateful for any help you can give us.’ He turned and spoke to Moretti in Italian who nodded in agreement.

  ‘I’m not sure what you expect me to do, lieutenant,’ he said.
‘I’ve told your people what little I know and all my notes have gone. I take it you’ve no objections to my leaving the country and going home now there’s nothing more for me to do here?’

  Lombardi showed no outward reaction. ‘By all means, sir,’ he replied. ‘You’re under no obligation to do anything you don’t want to and you’re free to come and go as you please.’ Sumter grunted and Lombardi continued, ‘If you wouldn’t mind leaving us your contact details, just in case we need to follow up, that would be most kind.’

  Sumter stood up. ‘I’ve already given them twice this morning,’ he said. ‘And now if nobody objects, I will bid you all goodbye.’

  ‘Where are you going, Donald?’ asked Moretti.

  ‘Back to my hotel and then, to the airport. There’s nothing more for me to do here and so I’m going home.’ Open-mouthed, Flora and Moretti watched him pack up his laptop and walk out of the door without another word.

  Flora felt that she had to say something. ‘I’m sorry, lieutenant, he’s not always like that. It’s just that he’s taken the loss of the documents rather badly.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Lombardi. And turning to Moretti, said, ‘You’ll be pleased to know that my people have replaced the local police at the dig.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think there’s much left to protect, it’s completely robbed out.’

  ‘It’s a shame you never told us it was there,’ said Lombardi. ‘We could easily have included it in our standing patrols but we can’t protect what we don’t know about.’

  Moretti recoiled in surprise. ‘Nobody told you about the dig? Are you kidding me?’

  ‘No. The first we heard was when we got the 112 call.’

  ‘But that’s not possible. I filled in all the paperwork myself – it’s something I’ve done hundreds of times – and I gave it to one of my team to process.’

  ‘Well, we never got it. Who did you give it to?’

  ‘Our chief clerk: guy called Greco. He was as reliable as they come – he’d been with us for years.’

  ‘Was reliable?’

  ‘Yes. He’s just left us – retired. Let’s think…the finds were reported to us a couple of months ago so we’d have filled in the paperwork then, and he went about a week later. I remember because we had a little party for him, you know, drinks, a few nibbles, everyone chipped in for a leaving present, that kind of thing.’

  Lombardi nodded. ‘Do you have a copy of the notification on file?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure, I can get it now if you like.’

  ‘No rush. Do you have an address where I can contact Greco?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  Later that evening, looking tired and pale, Moretti arrived at Flora’s hotel. He was fifteen minutes late and still wearing his work clothes. ‘I’d given you up for lost,’ she said as he came into reception. ‘What’s happened? You look dreadful.’

  ‘I’ve only just left the Carabinieri.’

  ‘Why, what’s happened?’

  ‘You remember I mentioned Greco, our chief clerk?’

  ‘The one who retired?’

  ‘That’s him. Well, he never came back from walking the dog this afternoon. The dog found its way home still with its lead attached, but there’s no sign of Greco and his wife’s reported him missing.’

  ‘And Lombardi doesn’t think it’s a coincidence?’

  ‘Well he might have done if we’d been able to find the paperwork notifying the TPC about the dig. That’s gone missing too.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ said Flora. ‘You don’t think it’s an inside job, do you?’

  Moretti looked down at his feet. ‘I don’t want to believe it, but it looks that way…but Greco, after all those years. He never so much as took home a pencil. He was the straightest guy I knew.’

  ‘Maybe someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.’

  ‘That’s not funny, Flora. Not round here, anyway.’

  ‘Sorry, Francesco. Let’s go and eat, you can tell me all about it then. Come on, I’m starving.’

  As they walked through the streets, the evening ritual of the passeggiata was coming to an end but a few remaining groups of locals were strolling in the cool of the evening, standing out in their finery from the more casually-dressed tourists.

  Flora stopped to look in a shop window. ‘I might be leaving too,’ she said.

  ‘Surely not yet.’ Moretti sounded almost hurt.

  ‘Well if the Carabinieri have finished with me, there’s nothing really I can do and the longer I stay, the more it costs the university. I called Oxford today to talk to Professor Braithwaite. You’ve met Stephen, haven’t you?’

  They walked on, imperceptibly closer now. ‘Yeah, I think so,’ said Moretti. ‘Older guy, big bushy eyebrows, speaks excellent Italian.’

  ‘That’s him. He’s a lovely man, I couldn’t wish for a better boss.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘Not much,’ replied Flora. ‘I told him about the break in – he seemed as upset about it as we are – and he told me to come home if there was nothing useful for me to do.’

  Moretti smiled, the first time she had seen him do so that evening. He turned to look at her. ‘Then we’ll have to find something for you to do – something to keep you here.’ He paused. ‘I forgot to say earlier, you look great in that dress, Flora, it really suits you.’

  She smiled at the compliment. With her dark hair and skin that turned brown even under an English sun, had it not been for her pale blue eyes, Flora could have passed for Italian. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said. ‘It’s nice to be able to go to work and wear what you like, but I do like to dress up every now and then.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re out on the town in Oxford every night,’ he said, giving her a playful nudge.

  ‘On my salary? You must be joking.’

  Moretti shrugged. ‘Find someone else to pay. That’s what Italian girls do.’

  ‘My inner feminist doesn’t really agree with that, but now you mention it, I think they’re on to something. Principles are ok up to a point, but I’m not one for overdoing things.’

  ‘So who’s paying the bills at the moment?’

  ‘Me. Just me,’ she replied, gazing into the middle-distance.

  The conversation was cut short by their arrival at the restaurant. A small neon sign, saying “Al Peschereccio”, pointed the way up a set of narrow stairs that looked more like the entrance to a strip-joint than one of Campania’s finest seafood restaurants. As they turned the corner at the top of the stairs, a wall of sound hit them – the small dining area was packed with far more people than the fire regulations could ever have permitted, all of whom seemed to be shouting. ‘It’s full,’ said Flora. ‘We’ll have to go somewhere else.’

  Moretti tapped the side of his nose. ‘Don’t worry, I know the right people: only way you’ll ever get a table here.’

  A waiter showed them to a table by a window which at least gave them a welcome breeze. ‘So if we can’t find an excuse for keeping you here, when do you think you’ll leave?’ asked Moretti.

  ‘Not for a couple of days. I’m going to help out sifting through the spoil tips at the dig and Lombardi wants to talk to me about the missing codices.’

  Moretti smiled. ‘Yes, I saw you’d taken a bit of a shine to him,’ he said.

  ‘Whatever gave you that idea,’ she said, her cheeks starting to flush.

  ‘Oh, I notice things, that’s all.’

  ‘Well he is rather fanciable – never could resist a man in uniform,’ she replied, returning his smile.

  ‘So you’ve told me. What happened to yours?’

  ‘He’s still in the RAF and still an utter bastard.’

  ‘So it’s all off then?’

  ‘Has been for a couple of months now. As the old saying goes, there wasn’t room in the relationship for three.’

  ‘Another woman? Surely not –’

  ‘No. His ego – kind of crowded everything else out
.’

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘No, but give it ten years or so, keep me away from sharp objects and pet rabbits and I might get over it. More importantly, what about you and Anna?’ The look in his eyes brought her up short. ‘Sorry, Francesco, if you’d rather not talk about it I’ll shut up.’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing to tell really. No other man, no super-sized ego, just a poorly-paid southern archaeologist with a wife from a wealthy northern family who got bored being cooped up in a tiny flat in a backwater like Pompeii with two screaming kids while her husband worked twelve-hour days.’

  ‘But you were a poorly-paid archaeologist when she met you.’

  Now it was Moretti’s turn to gaze distractedly into the middle-distance. ‘Yes I was,’ he said. ‘So there must’ve been something else but whatever it was clearly isn’t there any more. Not for Anna, anyway.’

  Flora reached out a consoling hand. ‘You want her back, don’t you?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. I’ve told her but she doesn’t want anything to do with me. My children… our children are in Turin and it’s a long way and a lot of time and money each time I go to see them. She’s even turned her parents against me and I have to stay in a hotel.’

  ‘Why don’t you take some leave?’

  ‘I was going to and then all this happened. Couldn’t have come at a worse time.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Work, talk to you, work some more, sleep, get drunk. Anything to take my mind off it,’ he said. Flora decided it was time to change the subject.

  As Moretti had predicted, the food at “Al Peschereccio” was superb, and after the meal he and Flora strolled back towards her hotel in silence, both enjoying the other’s company and both willing the evening not to come to an end. ‘It’s still early. Would you like to go for a drink somewhere, or maybe come back to my place?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ she replied. ‘We’ve both got an early start tomorrow. Why don’t you leave me here? It’s only a few hundred metres and I’ll be quite safe.’