‘Mrs Carroll is having breakfast on the terrace,’ she called as she retreated back along the corridor before he could stop her. ‘I’ll let her know you’re here.’

The curtains had been partly drawn, throwing a narrow ribbon of light across the otherwise dark room. This had unravelled along the floor and then spooled up and across the bed, revealing the pale hands of the person lying in it, his face wreathed in darkness.

‘Avner?’ Faulks said, his eyes straining to adjust to the sepulchral half light.

‘Earl, is that you?’ a thin voice rasped from the bed.

‘How are you doing, sport?’ Faulks stepped across to the bed with what he hoped was an encouraging smile.

Klein looked barely alive, his cheeks hollowed out, eyes sunk into the back of his head, hair missing, skin wrinkled and sagging. Wires from several machines disappeared under the white bedclothes that shrouded his body, their monitors flashing up a hieroglyphic stream of numbers and graphs and pulsing dots. There was a drip too, Faulks noticed, the line seeming to vanish somewhere in the direction of Klein’s groin, the livid purple patches along his wizened forearm suggesting that they couldn’t find a vein there any more.

‘I’m dying,’ Klein replied, the very effort of blinking seeming to make him wince in pain.

‘Rubbish,’ Faulks assured him breezily. ‘You’ll be back on your feet in time for the Triple Crown. I’ve got a killer tip on the Derby this year. A guaranteed winner!’

Klein nodded weakly, although his empty smile told Faulks that they both knew he was lying.

‘Thank you for visiting,’ Klein wheezed. ‘I know you’re busy.’

He nodded at the drink next to the bed and Faulks reached across and held it for him, trying not to wrinkle his nose in disgust as Klein’s cracked lips sucked at it greedily, a drop escaping from the corner of his mouth and trickling down his chin like a tear.

‘Never too busy for an old friend.’ A pause. ‘And there is something I wanted to show you.’

‘Oh?’

Rather than curiosity, there was a resigned sadness in Klein’s voice, as if Faulks had somehow confirmed a rumour that he’d been hoping wasn’t true.

‘I knew you wouldn’t want to pass up a chance like this,’ Faulks enthused, opening his wallet and extracting a small Polaroid. ‘Look-’

Klein lifted himself forward and then almost immediately collapsed back on to his pillow, convulsing under the grip of a sudden hacking cough.

‘Verity Bruce wants it,’ Faulks continued through the noise, glancing lovingly at the picture. ‘I’ve brought all the paperwork ready for you to sign. All you need to do is authorise the payment and-’

Faulks broke off as Deena Carroll, Klein’s second wife, stormed into the room behind him, gold bangles and earrings clanging like a Passing Bell.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she said, roasted coffee bean eyes blazing out of a leathered face crowned by a swooping wave of dyed platinum blonde hair.

‘Visiting an old friend,’ Faulks shrugged. ‘I mean, old friends,’ he added with a small bow of his head.

‘You’re no friend,’ she hissed contemptuously, snatching the photograph from him and waving it in his face. ‘Friends don’t try and hawk their grimy trinkets to a dying man.’ She flicked the photograph to the floor. ‘You make me sick, Earl.’

‘Those grimy trinkets have made the Klein-Carroll collection one of the greatest in the world,’ he reminded her tersely as he knelt down stiffly to retrieve the photograph. ‘And now that you’ve donated it to the Met, a permanent monument to your taste and generosity.’ He spat these last two words out, as if he’d just bitten into a bar of soap.

‘We both know what that collection is and where it came from,’ she said with a hollow laugh. ‘And if it’s a monument to anything, it’s to your greed.’

‘Be careful, Deena,’ Faulks said sharply, still smiling. ‘I’ve buried a lot of bodies for Avner over the years and dug up even more. And I can prove it. You should think about how you want him to be remembered.’

She went to answer but said nothing, glancing instead at Klein. Hands clasped together on the crisp sheets, grinning lovingly at her, he had quite clearly not followed a word of their exchange. She walked over to his side and smiled, tears welling as she stroked the few wisps of hair that clung stubbornly to his scalp.

‘Just go, Earl,’ she said in a toneless voice. ‘Find someone else to dig for.’

Lungotevere Gianicolense, Rome 19th March-7.37 a.m.

They had found a battered old Fiat a few streets from Cavalli’s house, Tom preferring it to the Mercedes parked just behind it. It was a suggestion that Allegra was already rather regretting, the rusted suspension jarring with every imperfection in the road as they headed north along the river. And yet she couldn’t fault his logic-the Fiat was coated in a thick layer of rainstreaked dirt that suggested that it hadn’t been used for weeks, and so was less likely to be missed.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked as she suddenly cut across the Ponte Principe Amedei di Savoia and pulled in on the Largo dei Fiorentini. ‘We can’t stop here. We’re still too close. If anyone’s seen us…’

‘If you want to get out, now’s your chance,’ she snapped, leaning across him and pushing his door open. ‘Otherwise, I want some answers.’

‘What sort of answers?’

‘How about a name?’

He sighed, then slammed the door shut.

‘It’s Tom. Tom Kirk.’ He made a point of holding out his hand so that she had to shake it rather formally. ‘Can we do the rest of the Q and A somewhere else?’

‘You said you knew what it was like to be on the run. Why? Who are you?’ she demanded.

‘You really want to do this here?’ he asked, his face screwed into a disbelieving frown. She returned his stare, jaw set firm. ‘Fine,’ he said eventually with a resigned sigh. ‘I…I used to be a thief.’

‘A thief?’ She smiled indulgently before realising that he wasn’t joking.

‘What sort of thief?’

‘Art mainly. Jewellery too. Whatever paid.’

She nodded slowly. It was strange, but it was almost as if she’d been expecting him to say something like this. It certainly seemed to fit him better than being police or FBI.

‘And now?’

‘Now I help recover pieces, advise museums on security, that sort of thing,’ he replied.

‘What’s any of that got to do with Cavalli?’

‘I told you. Jennifer had asked me to help her on a case before she was killed. Cavalli was the best lead I had as to who might have ordered the hit.’

‘So we both went there looking for answers,’ Allegra said with a rueful smile.

‘Why-what’s Cavalli to you?’

‘It’s what he is to Gallo that I care about.’ She turned back to face the front, her hands clutching the wheel.

‘Who’s Gallo?’ Tom frowned. ‘The person you’re running from?’

‘Colonel Massimo Gallo,’ she intoned in a bitter voice. ‘Head of the GICO-the organised crime unit of the Ministry of Finance-and the officer in charge of the two Caravaggio killings.’

‘What?’

‘Ricci and Argento,’ she explained impatiently. ‘The other murders I told you about. Their deaths had been staged to mirror to two Caravaggio paintings.’

‘Jennifer was lured to Las Vegas to help recover a Caravaggio stolen in the 1960s,’ Tom explained with the triumphant finality of someone laying down a winning poker hand.

‘You think…?’

‘Don’t you?’

There was a pause as she let this sink in. First the symbol. Then the mention of the Delian League. Now Caravaggio. Perhaps he was right. These surely couldn’t all be coincidences?

Speaking fast and confidently, she plunged into an account of the past few days-the murders of Ricci and Argento; the choice of locations; the references to Caesar; the Caravaggio staging of the murder scenes; what she knew about Cavalli and his death; Gallo’s cold-blooded execution of Gambetta. It was only when she got to describing Aurelio’s treachery that her voice faltered. The memory of his betrayal was still too fresh, too raw for her to share anything more than the most basic details. Instead she quickly switched to her tortured flight from his apartment and the restless night that she had spent in the grimy airport hotel until, unable to sleep, she had decided to visit Cavalli’s apartment for herself and see what she could find there.