‘Right,’ she said. ‘Definitely the right front leg.’

‘You don’t sound too certain.’

‘I’m certain.’

Mounted on a bracket high in a corner, the small black eye of a security camera was watching them. Ben stepped away from the plinth and looked casual as he slipped into the camera’s blind spot and along the wall beneath it. He looked up. Then he walked back to the piano and stepped straight over the cordon. ‘The camera’s useless,’ he said to Leigh with a smile. ‘It’s almost as old as these pianos, and half the wires are disconnected at the back.’

‘That’s so typically Italian,’ Leigh replied.

‘Don’t knock it.’ He knelt down next to the piano and examined the front right leg up close. The instrument had been carefully restored and was in such perfect condition that it was hard to believe it was almost two centuries old. Ben couldn’t see anything. But then his eye picked out a small crack in the varnish three-quarters of the way up the leg. He scratched with his nail. Tiny scales of varnish flaked away to reveal what seemed to be a hairline saw-mark. He scratched a bit more. The saw-line extended right round the leg, but it was barely visible. Had someone been at the instrument since the last restoration, removed the hollowed-out leg, replaced it and then painted over the join with clear varnish?

There was only one way to find out.

Belgium

The same day

Philippe Aragon had been reading policy documents and signing letters at his study desk all morning, and the stack of papers at his elbow was a foot high. He liked to work from home whenever he could. He’d designed and built the house himself, back in his architect days. The Aragon family home near Brussels was simple and modest by his father’s billionaire standards, not at all like the fabulous chateau in which Philippe had spent his childhood. But Philippe was tired of opulence. Opulence was anyone’s for the money. It meant nothing.

As he worked, his eyes drifted from time to time to the framed pictures that sat on his desk. He had a whole collection of them, clustered together. His parents, his wife Colette. Vincent, his boy, riding the bicycle he’d had for his tenth birthday. Delphine, their beautiful four-year-old daughter, swinging on her swing with a glittering smile. And Roger. Dear old Roger.

Philippe was suddenly filled with sadness all over again as he thought about him. He laid down his pen and picked up the framed picture, studying it. His old friend and mentor looked up at him. He’d had such kind eyes. It was still hard to accept what had happened. Or to understand it.

To the political world, the man in the photo had been the Swiss-French former politician and highly respected statesman Roger Bazin. To Philippe, who had known him all his life, he was like an uncle. He’d taught Philippe a great deal, even though their political stance had radically diverged as Philippe got older. Roger hadn’t ever been completely comfortable with his protégé’s socialist and environmentalist leanings, and they’d spent many a night debating over a bottle of cognac. They might have agreed on less and less as time went by, but those intellectual wrestling matches with the elder statesman had proved an immensely valuable training ground for the young politician, shaping and sharpening his mind for the battles to come. Philippe had always considered Roger as part of the bedrock of his life, something that would never go away, like the old oak tree he could see from his study window.

It still hurt that he was gone. It hurt a great deal. And it hurt even more to think that Roger might have been involved in what had happened that night.

Those events of the previous winter were still, and would always remain, fresh and sharp in Philippe Aragon’s mind. He remembered the chalet in Cortina as though he’d been there just yesterday.

It had been one of those rare moments in his hectic new political career when he’d been able to reserve a whole six days to get away with Colette and the children. He’d been so happy to see the kids looking forward to it. He’d been planning to teach them to ski. More than anything, he’d been looking forward to spending time with Colette, the way they used to before things had got so crazy.

The nineteenth-century chalet was perfect, something out of a fairy-tale. Far away from anything, total silence, nothing around except mountains, forests, and clean, clean air.

On the second day he’d had the phone call. Few people had his private mobile number, just Colette, his secretary and a handful of family members and close friends.

It was Roger Bazin on the line. It had been the first time in a while that Philippe had heard from him. He’d sounded odd, his words a little slurred as though he’d been drinking. That was peculiar in itself, but there was something else, something stranger. It was the note of fear that Philippe had picked up on instantly. A tortured edge to Bazin’s voice that the younger man hadn’t heard before. What was wrong?

‘Philippe, where are you?’

‘I’m on vacation. Remember?’

‘Yes, but where are you now? This moment?’

Philippe had frowned, confused. ‘I’m in the chalet. We’re just about to have dinner. What’s wrong, Roger?’

A hesitant pause. Heavy, stressed breathing. Then: ‘Get out of there.’

‘What?’

‘Get out of there. All of you. Run. As far as you can. Now.’

Philippe was left gaping at a dead phone. He turned to look at his family.

In the next room, Colette was opening a bottle of wine ready for dinner and laughing at something Delphine had just said.

He’d hesitated for a few seconds. It seemed absurd, insane. But then he ran over to her and grabbed her by the shoulders. The wine smashed on the floor. He’d yelled for Vincent to come quick, and he’d scooped the little girl up under his arm, and they’d all run out into the garden, Colette asking what was wrong, what was wrong.

They had all run like lunatics. At the bottom of the garden, deep in snow, they’d reached the edge of the pine forest and stood looking back at the house. The kids had realized it wasn’t a game from the look on their father’s face. Colette was screaming at him now: What’s wrong, have you gone nuts?

As he stood there in the cold, still clutching his mobile phone, he thought that maybe he had gone nuts. Or that Roger had gone nuts. Or was this some kind of stupid, reckless, tasteless joke? That wouldn’t be like Roger.

‘It’s freezing out here,’ Colette said. ‘The kids-’

He blew out his cheeks, exasperated with himself. ‘I must be insane,’ he said. ‘Shit, your shoes.’ Colette’s suede moccasins were soaked, snow clinging in clumps to her ankles.

‘What did you think was happening?’ she demanded.

‘I don’t know,’ he sighed. ‘Christ, maybe the stress is getting to me or something. I’m sorry. It was stupid. Let’s go back.’

‘Daddy’s crazy!’ Vincent sang. ‘Daddy’s crazy!’ Delphine had started to cry and Colette picked her up, shooting fierce looks at her husband.

Aragon took his wife’s hand apologetically. They started walking back to the house.

And were thrown backwards by the force of the explosion.

The chalet had just disintegrated in front of Aragon’s eyes. The night sky was lit up as the house erupted in a massive rolling fireball that mushroomed upwards and sent wreckage spinning for hundreds of yards around. He saw the roof lift off and the walls burst outwards. Bricks and wrecked timbers and flying glass rained down across the snow. He’d tried to shield Colette and the children with his body as secondary explosions ripped through the shattered building, levelling it.

Nothing had been left of the house or anything standing nearby. The outbuildings, the garage and the car were reduced to smoking shells.