The Modigliani Scandal by Ken Follett

a little more now, so that although they were still close to the group, they no longer seemed part of it.
    Tom said: ″I have the feeling you′re the star guest.″ He offered her a long cigarette.
    ″Yeah.″ She bent to his lighter. ″So what does that make you?″
    ″Token working-class representative.″
    ″There′s nothing working-class about that lighter.″ It was slender, monogrammed, and seemed to be gold.
    He broadened his London accent: ″Wide boy, ain′t I?″ Samantha laughed, and he switched to a plum-in-the-mouth accent to say: ″More champagne, madam?″
    They walked over to the buffet table, where he filled her glass and offered her a plate of small biscuits, each with a dab of caviar in its center. She shook her head.
    ″Ah, well.″ He put two in his mouth at once.
    ″How did you meet Mary?″ Samantha asked curiously.
    He grinned again. ″What you mean is, how does she come to be associated with a roughneck like me? We both went to Madame Clair′s Charm School in Romford. It cost my mother blood, sweat and tears to send me there once a week—much good did it do me. I could never be an actor.″
    ″What do you do?″
    ″Told you, didn′t I? I′m a wide boy.″
    ″I don′t believe you. I think you′re an architect, or a solicitor, or something.″
    He took a flat tin from his hip pocket, opened it, and palmed two blue capsules. ″You don′t believe these are drugs, either, do you?″
    ″No.″
    ″Ever done speed?″
    She shook her head again. ″Only hash.″
    ″You only need one, then.″ He pressed a capsule into her hand.
    She watched as he swallowed three, washing them down with champagne. She slipped the blue oval into her mouth, took a large sip from her glass, and swallowed with difficulty. When she could no longer feel the capsule in her throat she said: ″See? Nothing.″
    ″Give it a few minutes, you′ll be taking your clothes off.″
    She narrowed her eyes. ″Is that what you did it for?″
    He did his cockney accent again. ″I wasn′t even there, Inspector.″
    Samantha began to fidget, tapping her foot to nonexistent music. ″I bet you′d run a mile if I did,″ she said, and laughed loudly.
    Tom gave a knowing smile. ″Here it comes″
    She felt suddenly full of energy. Her eyes widened and a slight flush came to her cheeks. ″I′m sick of this bloody party,″ she said a little too loudly. ″I want to dance.″
    Tom put his arm around her waist. ″Let′s go.″

PART TWO
    The Landscape
″Mickey Mouse does not look very much like a real mouse, yet people do not write indignant letters to the papers about the length of his tail.″
    E. H. GOMBRlCH,
art historian

I
    THE TRAIN ROLLED SLOWLY through the north of Italy. The brilliant sunshine had given way to a heavy, chill cloud layer, and the scenery was misty and damp-smelling. Factories and vineyards alternated until they shimmered into a hazed blur.
    Dee′s elation had dissipated gradually on the journey. She did not yet have a find, she realized, only the smell of one. Without the picture at the end of the trail, what she had found out was worth no more than a footnote in a learned exegesis.
    Her money was now running low. She had never asked Mike for any; nor had she given him any reason to think she needed it. On the contrary, she had always given him the impression that her income was rather higher than it really was. Now she regretted the mild deception.
    She had enough to stay in Livorno for a few days, and for her fare home. She turned away from the mundanity of cash and lit a cigarette. In the clouds of smoke she daydreamed what she would do if she found the lost Modigliani. It would be the explosive beginning to her doctoral thesis on the relationship between drugs and art.
    On second thought, it might be worth rather more than that: it could make the centerpiece of an article on how wrong everyone else was about the greatest Italian painter of the twentieth century. There was bound to be