Batelli looked at her blankly, not recognizing the name of the famous art historian and restorer.
“But it’s fair to say you know a lot about Botticelli and his work?”
“Yes. I also know that the theft of great art is a crime against humanity.” Her tone had the slightest edge to it.
The inspector appeared puzzled. “That’s an unusual view.”
“Not among those who devote their lives to preserving and protecting great works of art. That’s why I came to Florence.”
Batelli frowned. “The illustrations were copies.”
Now Raven leaned forward in her chair. “Those copies were all we had. The full set of original illustrations have been lost. And the copies were beautiful.”
“We?” he repeated, cocking his head to one side. “Who’s we?”
She felt her cheeks flame. “Humanity. Whoever stole them, stole from all of us. Although I’m sure the Emersons are more upset than anyone, except maybe Dottor Vitali.”
“And the Emersons are—?”
“The patrons who lent us the illustrations—Professor Gabriel Emerson and his wife.”
“You know them?”
“Not really. They’re patrons of the orphanage I volunteer at, but I’ve never met them.”
The inspector opened his file and took out a series of printed sheets that had been stapled together. He pushed the pages toward her.
“This is a list of names. Tell me if you know any of them.”
Raven picked up the pages and began reading.
She looked over at the inspector. “I recognize some of the names. They’re patrons of the gallery. But I don’t really know them.”
“None of them?”
“I work in the restoration lab. The patrons don’t interact with us.” She placed the paper back on the desk.
“Would it be correct to say that you recognize all the names, or only some?”
“Only some.”
Batelli uncapped a pen and placed it in front of her. “Please make a mark next to the names you recognize.”
Raven frowned but did as she was told, marking about one-third of the names listed.
Batelli seemed to take restrained interest in what she was doing, but after she finished, he merely placed the papers aside. He withdrew a single sheet from the file and slid it across to her.
“Read that.”
Raven picked up the paper.
The first thing she noticed was that the page was obviously a photocopy of some handwriting. The style of writing was old-fashioned. Very old-fashioned. It was precise, elegant, and very, very beautiful. A work of art in itself.
The second thing she noticed was that the language was Latin. Suddenly a phrase entered her consciousness.
Cassita vulneratus.
“What was that?” Batelli leaned forward suspiciously.
“I didn’t say anything. I’ve read it. Now what?”
“Read it to me.”
“It’s in Latin.” She gave him a questioning look.
“I know that. Read it in Latin, if you can, and translate to Italian.”
Raven turned her attention to the page. “‘Non furtum facies. Mihi vindictam ego retribuam.’” She looked over at the officer. “Non rubare. La vendetta è mia; io ricompensèro. You shall not steal. Vengeance is mine, I will repay.”
Raven placed the paper on top of the desk.
“Why are you showing me part of a Latin manuscript of the Bible?”
“Why do you think it’s from a manuscript of the Bible?”
“I’m not a paleographer, but I can recognize medieval handwriting.” She gestured to the page. “The text sounds like the Bible, but I’m not an expert.”
“Are the words significant to you?” Batelli gave her a questioning look.
“No.”
“Interesting.” He placed the page in his file and closed it. Then he put his hand, palm down, on top of the file.
“What can you tell me about the security systems in the gallery?”
“Almost nothing. I’m only an art restorer.” She gestured to her identification card, which lay on the desk facing him. “I have access to certain rooms when the gallery is open. I don’t have security codes to the building or to the individual exhibit rooms. I’m not sure what security systems the gallery has. It’s all a big mystery.”
“Would your card open the room that held the Botticelli illustrations?”
She shook her head. “I only have access to the rooms connected with my work—the archives, the restoration rooms, and the office I share with some of the other associates.”
“What about keys?”
“Most of the rooms in the Uffizi are accessed by card. Some of the older rooms and the Vasari Corridor can be accessed by keys. But I wasn’t issued keys. Even if I was, I couldn’t access the building when it’s closed.”
“But you work after hours.”
“Sometimes Professor Urbano asks the restoration team to work late, if we’re doing something particularly delicate or time sensitive. But in those cases, the gallery is kept open, or at least the restoration lab is. Security lets us in if we arrive after hours and they escort us from the building when we’re finished.”
The inspector sat back in his chair. He watched her, unblinking, until she looked away.
“Were you working after hours on May seventeenth?”
“No. I’m working exclusively on the Birth of Venus. We’re doing a complete restoration, which means the painting is no longer on display. We work normal hours except when Professor Urbano asks us to stay later. He hasn’t done that for a couple of months.”
“Your face doesn’t match your card or your passport.” He gestured to the identification on the desk. “I take it the photograph in your new passport is recent?”
“It is.” She shifted in her chair.
“It doesn’t look recent. Your employee file indicates that you are handicapped.”
At this, his gaze dropped to her right leg, which was partially obscured by the desk. His eyes lifted to hers. “You don’t look handicapped.”
“The correct term is disabled.” Raven straightened her shoulders. “And I’m not anymore.”
“Explain.”
She pressed her lips together tightly.
“I can’t.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“I can’t.” She lifted her hands in an expression of frustration. “I have no idea what’s happened. I already told you that.”
A knock was heard at the door and Agent Savola entered. He whispered something to Batelli, who appeared disappointed. They exchanged a few quiet words, which Raven strained unsuccessfully to hear.
Agent Savola resumed his place on Batelli’s left, arms crossed over his chest.
Batelli picked up the pen and began tapping it on top of the file.
“Have you seen a doctor?”
Raven shook her head.
“If you think you were drugged, why didn’t you go to the hospital?”
“I felt fine. I was worried about being late for work.”
Batelli scowled. “You have memory loss, a drastic change in appearance, a miraculous restoration of your ability to walk, and you’re worried about being late for work?”
He cursed a few times, tossing the pen onto the desk.
Raven pressed her hand against her forehead.
“We can take you to the hospital.” Agent Savola spoke in English, in a quiet tone.
She shook her head.
“I have to see Professor Urbano. I don’t want to lose my job.” She swallowed hard. “I have my own doctor. I’ll make an appointment to see her.”
Agent Savola nodded sympathetically. “Is your doctor a cosmetic surgeon?”
“No.” Raven’s tone was clipped.
“Only a cosmetic surgeon with great skill could transform you from that”—he pointed to her identification card—“to that.” He gestured to her face.
“Are you tryin
g to be insulting?” she fumed.
“Do you have a psychiatrist, signorina?”
“Of course not!” Raven snapped. “What about you, Agent Savola? Do you have a psychiatrist?”
The agent took a step toward her and swore.
Batelli held up his hands.
“This isn’t helpful,” he said, looking pointedly at Raven and his associate.
She pointed to the file.
“If you have my employee records, you know I’ve had a criminal background check. I’ve also had a psychiatric evaluation.” She glanced in Savola’s direction.
“More importantly, I’ve devoted my life to saving art, to preserving it for future generations. I don’t destroy things and I don’t steal. Art thieves are almost the lowest form of humanity, because they take something beautiful and hide it so the world can’t see it.”
Batelli looked at her with curiosity. “What’s the lowest form of humanity, in your view?”
“Child abusers.”
Both Batelli and Savola appeared taken aback by her remark, but they quickly regained their composure.
Batelli picked up her identification card, her passport, and her other documents. He looked at them closely before holding them out to her.
She reached for them, and for a moment he kept hold of the items, trapping her.
“You’re free to go, after we fingerprint you. It’s simply an effort to confirm your identity, since your appearance doesn’t match your identification. An officer will drive you back to the Uffizi.
“But I should warn you, Signorina Wood, we will want to interview you again. I would strongly urge you to stay in Florence. A note will be made with immigration, should you try to leave the country.”
His eyes flickered to Savola’s and back again. “For your own sake, I suggest you see a doctor.”
Raven took her belongings from his hand and bolted from the room, leaving the door open behind her.
Chapter Six
When Raven finally arrived at the Uffizi, she had to submit to a scan of her fingerprints in order for security to admit her to the building. After that humiliating experience, she went to the office she shared with a number of different researchers. She greeted her colleagues with a tense wave before trudging to her desk, which was in a far corner.
She sank into her chair and looked around the windowless room. The office hummed with conversations and the occasional ringing of a telephone, while her colleagues stared. More than a few of her coworkers stopped by her desk, wondering who she was and demanding to see her identification. She had to summon security and ask them to vouch for her identity. Afterward, her colleagues continued to glance in her direction with expressions that ranged from surprised to censorious.
Her skin crawled under the scrutiny.
A number of messages sat on her desk, including a recent one from Patrick, asking her to text him when she arrived. She ignored them and placed her head in her hands.
She was in trouble.
Were it not for the fact that she felt pain when she pinched herself, she would have thought she was in a nightmare. There were too many incredible and inexplicable events. First, there was the sudden and spontaneous healing of her disability. Second, there was her loss of weight and radical change in physical appearance. Finally, there was her disappearance and lack of memory.
There was also the possibility that her personality had undergone a slight sharpening. Raven couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so angry or rude. She’d always prided herself in being polite and controlled. But at the police station . . .
Raven’s gaze alighted on a leaflet that she’d placed on her desk months before. The flyer included information about the Botticelli illustrations and had been distributed by the gallery to visitors.
She picked it up, glancing at the text.
Wordlessly, she stored her backpack in one of the desk drawers and locked it, looping her identification card, which was hung on a cord, over her head. She picked up her cell phone, which she’d barely been able to charge, clutching it in the same hand as the leaflet. Silently, she bemoaned the fact she was wearing yoga pants, which, although they made her derrière extremely attractive, lacked pockets.
She was supposed to report to the restoration lab for work, but instead she walked in the opposite direction, to where the illustrations had been on display. The exhibition hall was cordoned off, the corridor empty.
The hall boasted walls painted a bright blue in order to display the pen and ink illustrations to better effect. Inside the room was a series of cases, in which the artwork had been kept safe from exposure and human touch.
Raven scanned the now empty cases, noting that each of them, along with the walls and even the floors, had been dusted for fingerprints. Scaffolding stood in one corner, rising to the high ceiling. From the looks of it, someone had dusted the white ceiling as well. Sections of it were smudged with gray and black.
She began reading the description of the exhibit, which was printed on the leaflet. As Ispettor Batelli had mentioned, the illustrations were copies. Botticelli had prepared one hundred drawings of Dante’s Divine Comedy for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, who died in 1503. Unfortunately, eight of them had been lost. The Vatican owned a few of the originals and the rest were owned by the Staatliche Museen in Berlin.
The Emersons’ collection was complete. Yes, they were only copies, but the Emersons owned the full one hundred of the original complement. This fact alone made the collection priceless.
Certainly the Uffizi was more than pleased to exhibit them. It charged extra for visitors to view the exhibition, using the funds to finance some of the restoration projects in the gallery, including the work that Raven and Professor Urbano’s team were doing.
The illustrations had been on loan to the Uffizi for two years, since the summer of 2011. Raven remembered the announcement well, as she’d been researching her dissertation and doing work at the Opificio at the time.
Prior to the announcement, no one knew about the Emersons’ collection. Raven had done some amateur investigation on the subject, but found nothing. For such important works of art, the lack of images or information was surprising.
Dottor Vitali had prepared an account of the illustrations’ provenance, which was reproduced on the leaflet, but his information must have come from the Emersons themselves, for Raven hadn’t found any independent confirmation of the facts presented.
She found this fact curious.
According to the leaflet, the illustrations had been prepared in the sixteenth century, probably by a student of Botticelli. Somehow they’d come to a Swiss family in the nineteenth century. They’d sold the illustrations to Professor Emerson in a private sale a number of years back.
The whereabouts of the illustrations from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries were a complete mystery. Certainly neither the Swiss family nor Professor Emerson had been in a hurry to disclose the existence of the illustrations to the public. It was said that Mrs. Emerson had finally convinced her husband to share the artwork with the world.
And now they’re gone, thought Raven. She looked at the empty display cases and felt tears well up in her eyes.
She was about to report to the restoration lab, when her phone chimed with a text. It was from Patrick.
Where r u?
She quickly typed her reply.
Exhibition hall
She waited for Patrick’s response, but none came.
She scrolled through the texts she’d been sent during the past week, noting that both Patrick and Gina had sent several messages, escalating in concern. She’d missed several e-mails and phone messages as well.
With a sigh she took one last, sad look at the empty cases and exited the room. Down the corridor, she saw Patrick striding toward her.
“How did it go with the police?” His face was creased with worry.
“Not good.”
Patrick cursed.
“Come on.”
He took her hand and led her to one of the back staircases. They climbed the stairs to the second floor and walked to a quiet corner.
He released her hand and crossed his arms over his chest, standing close to her.
“What did they say?”
“They asked me a bunch of questions. They’re suspicious, obviously, and my inability to answer their questions makes me look guilty.” She rubbed at her eyes. “I have no idea where I was last week. My memory is all screwed up.”
“You don’t remember last week at all?” He sounded concerned.
“Nothing since Gina’s party. Maybe somebody slipped me something.” She avoided his eyes, examining her feet.
“No way.” Patrick’s tone was firm. “I was pouring drinks, remember? I know everyone who was there. No one would have slipped you something.”
“Then why can’t I remember?”
“I don’t know.” His expression grew even more tense. “Dottor Vitali wants to see you.”
“What?”
Patrick nodded in the direction of the director’s office. “He’s keeping tabs on everything having to do with the investigation, including your interview. And the Emersons just arrived. I saw the police escort them inside.”
Raven groaned. Of course the Emersons would be upset about the theft. And Professor Gabriel Emerson had a reputation for being a trifle . . . mercurial.
Patrick continued. “I told Professor Urbano you were back, but I didn’t mention the police. He wants to see you after Vitali is done with you.”
“I liked it better when no one noticed me.”
Patrick frowned. “Hey. That’s the second time you’ve said something like that. Look around. I’m worried about you and so is Urbano. We’ve been stressed for a week wondering where you were.”
She chewed at the inside of her mouth. “Maybe you should be suspicious of me. I’m suspicious of me.”
Patrick took a step closer, leaning down so he was at eye level. “Don’t start with that shit. Remember what happened to Amanda Knox?”
Raven shivered. “Yeah.”
“She says she’s innocent. Maybe she is. But she was caught up in an Italian police investigation. By the time they were finished, everyone thought she was guilty. The American consulate can’t help you if you’re charged with a crime. Don’t give the police any ammunition.” Patrick squeezed her arm sympathetically. “You’d better get going. Vitali wants to see you right away.”