Chapter Twenty-nine

I STEPPED THROUGH the oak doors and into a night so crisp and clear that the old cobblestones and Renaissance facades seemed almost too vivid, like the landscape of some strange video game. Only the crowds on the streets and the complete lack of taxis convinced me it was real.

I had two calls to make and was waiting for the first to pick up as I headed past the workshop’s exterior cameras and into a wide thoroughfare.

Leyla Cumali answered and, without any preamble, I told her I had a photo showing that Dodge and another person were in the library six minutes before he was killed. There was a stunned silence at the other end.

I filled the empty space by telling her that the director of the Uffizi workshop was preparing a full report which he would send to her with a copy of the photograph.

‘I’ll let my colleagues know, ’ she said finally, unable to keep the defeat out of her voice. I was sure SpongeBob and his buddies were going to be overjoyed.

‘It doesn’t look like we have any choice, ’ she continued. ‘We’ll open a homicide investigation tonight. ’

‘Good, ’ I replied. ‘Good. ’

‘How did you know Dodge wasn’t alone? ’ she asked, a little of the old disdain creeping back.

‘It was the drugs – and the binoculars. Nobody needs binoculars to look at fireworks. ’

‘Then why did he have them? ’

‘You have to take it step by step. Somebody obviously knew how to get on to the estate in secret, ’ I told her, still trying to find a damn cab.

‘They entered the house and found Dodge in the library. It was a friend of his, or at least an acquaintance – if it was a stranger he would have raised the alarm.

‘I’m almost certain the visitor was feigning distress. They told Dodge something that alarmed him enough to cut through his wild libido and the swirling craziness of the drugs. ’

‘What did they tell him? ’ she wanted to know, impatient.

‘If you reread the interviews you carried out with his acquaintances, at least six of them volunteered that he loved his wife very much. ’

‘That’s right, ’ Cumali added.

‘Cameron was out bar-hopping in the JetRanger that night. I think the visitor told him that the helicopter had just crashed in the bay. ’

Silence. Cumali didn’t respond – there was just a sharp intake of breath.

‘Dodge would have believed the visitor without question, ’ I continued. ‘There’s a landing pad on the estate and he would have thought she was on her way home.

‘Trying to sober up, he grabbed the binoculars to search the bay and he and the visitor ran on to the lawn. He wasn’t looking up at fireworks, he was looking out at the water – and the further he went on to the headland, the better chance he had of seeing something. That’s why he chose the spot four yards from the gazebo: there wasn’t any foliage, the only tree was the one he hit halfway down – and he had a much better view of the bay.

‘When he couldn’t see anything – why would he? there was nothing out there – he either stood on the railing or climbed over it.

‘He would have had the binoculars to his eyes when he felt a push on his back. To the killer it probably didn’t even feel like murder – just a gentle helping hand.

‘So gentle, in fact, that when you did the tests with the dummy it was totally consistent with a man falling. ’

I let my voice trail away: there was no point in recounting his plunge down the cliff face and the hit on the rocks – there was no dispute about any of that.

Cumali didn’t respond and finally I had to ask: ‘Are you still there? ’

‘I’m here, ’ she said. ‘I’ll make sure nobody’s passport is returned. We’ll start now. I’ll draw up an expanded list of everyone he had contact with. Like you said – the visitor had to be somebody he knew. ’

‘You can discount Cameron or the others in the helicopter – they couldn’t have visited him in the house, they were supposed to be fighting for their lives in the water. And you were right – I don’t think anybody was paid to do it. The answer lies in the circle of friends. ’

There was another element to the murder she didn’t know about, one she could never know. Call it a tiny signature, but it had made me really angry. I was certain that the thread from Dodge’s chinos had been planted on the railing to make sure the cops would come to the right conclusion.

A case in which the killer had followed exactly the same procedure was featured in my book.