Paint Your Dragon by Tom Holt

Author:Tom Holt
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9789085241522
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1995-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

The statues – eight Berninis, three Donatellos, three Celliis, a Canova and the Giambologna Mercury – all went missing from various locations in the space of about eight hours. No sign of forced entry, no arrests, no clues. No visible connection, either.

“Okay, guys. Guys!” Kurt banged on the floor with the butt of his rifle, but nobody took any notice. They were all talking at once, at the tops of their voices, in Italian. With a weary gesture of resignation, Kurt sat down on a packing-chest and waited.

“Finished?” he demanded, ten minutes later. “Good. Now, listen up.”

Sixteen pairs of malevolent eyes fixed on him. I don’t need this, he reflected. I’ve got a nice cosy grave I could be in right now.

“Now then,” he said. “I guess you’re all wondering why – ”

Marvellous language, Italian, for talking very fast in. They should insist all peace conferences should be in Italian; that way, nobody’d ever know what was going on long enough to start the war. “Shuttup!” he cried. Not a blind bit of notice.

“Scuse me.”

He turned. “Well?”

“Looks to me,” David said, “like they’re upset about something.”

Kurt scowled. “What the fuck’ve they got to be upset about, for Chrissakes? I’ve just sprung the suckers, they should be goddamn grateful.”

David made a small head gesture indicative of doubt. “Look at it this way,” he said. “They’re all male figures, all of Italian origin. Maybe standing about all day being admired is what they like doing best.”

The proposition had merit, Kurt admitted, but that wasn’t his affair. He was only, as the expression goes, obeying orders. “HEY!” he said.

“Thank you,” he went on. “All I can tell you is, my instructions said to get you out of those museums and galleries and bring you here. Which I’ve done. From now on, guys, you re on your…”

He stopped, puzzled. Instead of jabbering at him, shaking fists and waving arms, they were standing about like a lot of shop-window dummies.

Maybe that was it; knock off priceless works of art and punt them out at twelve dollars a head to the leading New York department stores. Or maybe not.

“Guys?”

Long silence. Then a statue put its hand up.

“Excuse me,” it said. And, Kurt noticed, in English.

“Shoot,” he said.

“Excuse me,” said the statue – shit, it was a female voice now – “but can you tell us what’s going on, please?”

Kurt swallowed. Spooky no longer worried him. He felt comfortable around spooky. Weird was as familiar to him as a pair of well-worn slippers. But this was strange.

“Hey,” he said. “I just did.”

“Only,” the voice bleated on. “I told my husband the play’d be over by ten and I’d be home in time to make him a late tea. And that was hours ago, and he gets all upset if his meals aren’t when he expects them.”

Gradually, while Kurt was trying to get his larynx working again, the other fifteen joined in, a symphony of bleats and whines forming a baroque fugue around the same main theme.

“I…” Kurt had raised his hand for silence, and obtained it instantly.

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