The Modigliani Scandal - Ken Follett [27]
″What do you do?″
″Told you, didn′t I? I′m a wide boy.″
″I don′t believe you. I think you′re an architect, or a solicitor, or something.″
He took a flat tin from his hip pocket, opened it, and palmed two blue capsules. ″You don′t believe these are drugs, either, do you?″
″No.″
″Ever done speed?″
She shook her head again. ″Only hash.″
″You only need one, then.″ He pressed a capsule into her hand.
She watched as he swallowed three, washing them down with champagne. She slipped the blue oval into her mouth, took a large sip from her glass, and swallowed with difficulty. When she could no longer feel the capsule in her throat she said: ″See? Nothing.″
″Give it a few minutes, you′ll be taking your clothes off.″
She narrowed her eyes. ″Is that what you did it for?″
He did his cockney accent again. ″I wasn′t even there, Inspector.″
Samantha began to fidget, tapping her foot to nonexistent music. ″I bet you′d run a mile if I did,″ she said, and laughed loudly.
Tom gave a knowing smile. ″Here it comes″
She felt suddenly full of energy. Her eyes widened and a slight flush came to her cheeks. ″I′m sick of this bloody party,″ she said a little too loudly. ″I want to dance.″
Tom put his arm around her waist. ″Let′s go.″
PART TWO
The Landscape
″Mickey Mouse does not look very much like a real mouse, yet people do not write indignant letters to the papers about the length of his tail.″
E. H. GOMBRlCH,
art historian
I
THE TRAIN ROLLED SLOWLY through the north of Italy. The brilliant sunshine had given way to a heavy, chill cloud layer, and the scenery was misty and damp-smelling. Factories and vineyards alternated until they shimmered into a hazed blur.
Dee′s elation had dissipated gradually on the journey. She did not yet have a find, she realized, only the smell of one. Without the picture at the end of the trail, what she had found out was worth no more than a footnote in a learned exegesis.
Her money was now running low. She had never asked Mike for any; nor had she given him any reason to think she needed it. On the contrary, she had always given him the impression that her income was rather higher than it really was. Now she regretted the mild deception.
She had enough to stay in Livorno for a few days, and for her fare home. She turned away from the mundanity of cash and lit a cigarette. In the clouds of smoke she daydreamed what she would do if she found the lost Modigliani. It would be the explosive beginning to her doctoral thesis on the relationship between drugs and art.
On second thought, it might be worth rather more than that: it could make the centerpiece of an article on how wrong everyone else was about the greatest Italian painter of the twentieth century. There was bound to be enough of interest in the picture to start half-a-dozen academic disputes.
It might even become known as the Sleign Modigliani—it would make her name. Her career would be secure for the rest of her life.
It might, of course, turn out to be a moderately good line drawing like hundreds of others Modigliani had done. No, that was hardly possible: the picture had been given away as an example of work done under the influence of hashish.
It had to be something strange, heterodox, ahead of its time, revolutionary even. What if it were an abstract—a turn-of-the-century Jackson Pollock?
The art history world would be ringing up Miss Delia Sleign and collectively asking for directions to Livorno. She would have to publish an article saying exactly where the work was to be found. Or she could carry it in triumph to the town museum. Or to Rome. Or she could buy it and surprise the world by—
Yes, she could buy it. What a thought.
Then she could take it to London, and—
″My God,″ she said aloud. ″I could sell it.″
Livorno was a shock. Dee had been expecting a small market town, with half-a-dozen churches, a main street, and a local character who knew everything about everyone who had lived here during the last 100 years. She found a town rather like Cardiff: docks, factories, a steelworks, and tourist