Death and Restoration Read Online Free Page B

Giulia out would mean masses of extra paperwork for everyone else. But the very presence of Mary Verney in Rome rattled her. She nodded, nonetheless.
    Bottando grunted. “Good. Now, is there anything else? Thank you,” he said to his secretary as she slid into the room and deposited a vast file on his desk. He transferred it immediately to a drawer, which he closed with a satisfying slam. “Because if not, I’m going for a coffee.”
    She stopped and looked carefully at him. “You all right?”’ she asked. “You don’t seem your normal self at all this morning. Did they give you food poisoning or something yesterday?”’
    He grimaced, and hesitated, and then gave into the temptation. “Come back in and sit down. I need to tell you something,” he said with a sigh.
    “Sounds bad,” she said as she settled back on the armchair.
    “Maybe, maybe not. I haven’t figured it out yet. I’m being promoted. I think.”
    Flavia blinked and looked at him as she tried to think of the right thing to say. “You sound uncertain. These things are normally clear. Am I meant to congratulate or commiserate?”’
    “I don’t know. But basically I was given the option of being promoted and taking over some useless new department which seems to have been set up solely to soak up more money from the European taxpayer, or being booted out. With all the consequences for pay and pension that entails. I’ve been making some phone calls and I don’t as yet see any way out.”
    She leant back in her chair and bit her thumbnail as she thought this one through.
    “But you stay here?”’
    He nodded. “Nominally. That brings me to you.”
    “Oh, yes?”’ she said cautiously.
    “Essentially, you have two choices. Stay here and take over the day-to-day running of the department, where you will have to spend much more time in administration. Or help me set up this new Euro-nonsense. Where you would have to be junior to some Englishman or Dutchman or something and still have to spend much more time in administration. The second option will be exceptionally well paid, of course. Riches beyond the dreams of avarice. Tax free, as well. And more regular hours.”
    “Which do you recommend?”’
    He shrugged. “I hope I have your services either way. Apart from that, you’ll have to make up your own mind on the matter.”
    “When do I have to make up my mind?”’
    He made an expansive, all-the-time-in-the-world gesture. “End of the week? I hate to rush you, but I have to lay my plans. You can get some practice in this week. I’m going to be busy writing memos. Consider yourself on your own. And the eyes of the ministry are on us at the moment. If you could fend off all raids on the national gallery and the Presidential art collection until this is sorted out, I’d be grateful. And it would be best if raids we’ve been told about in advance didn’t happen.”
    “Looks bad, you think?”’
    “Not ideal. Not ideal.”
    Dan Menzies was a painstaking, methodical worker, labouring in a fashion which was totally at odds with both his bulk and his reputation. Despite the flamboyant gestures and the frequent use in his speech of dramatic metaphors—always talking about expunging this or that part in his campaigns of restoration—when engaged on a job he went slowly and extraordinarily carefully. Normally, of course, he commanded small armies of people, and it was typical of him that he talked in military terms while his more subtle colleagues headed teams. But that was for large projects, with lots of money. Then he would behave like an artistic General Patton, rushing from one place to another, shouting encouragement and advice and orders. But in this church he was on his own. He found it all strangely restful; he was restoring, he felt, more than the pictures. It was many a year now since he had worked alone, just him and the paint, trying to feel his way with his scalpel and his chemicals back to an instinctive idea of what