The Science of Theft

Chapter 1 - Galleria dell'Accadmia

Copyright Ⓒ 2019 by B. R. BaileyAll Rights Reserved

Darkness presses around him, filling his wondering mind with ghosts of the past haunting the instruments of the hall, playing melancholy tunes as they read the room.

Off to his left, Jack can hear Detective Lovough breathing through his nose as he struggles to fight the urge to smoke. One whole week without a cigarette was a lot to ask for the 30-year blue blood, but he did it uphold the power of his badge.

Tonight was the night.

After years of tracking down the perp, tonight they would finally catch him.

If he ever deigned to show up. Taking the job meant you'd get the item, but there was no telling when the thief would go through and take it. Sometimes Hamlet would get it within a few months, other times a few years.

His mentor had hoped to catch Hamlet, the name he gave this flighty, unpredictable ghost, before retiring, but never managed it. After his wife got sick, he gave up his job to spend all of the time with her that he could.

Leaving the catching to his partner, Jack O'Connell, who was presently pressed up against the wall in the Galleria dell'Accademia, among the Grand Ducal Collection.

Security was tight in this place, it had to be with the art stored here. Even so, Hamlet had succeeded in other thefts among private and public collections.

Lately, Hamlet had been involved with music, risking prison for the oldest and most revered works of wonder, from original sheet music to the instruments they were first played on.

After months of collaboration, Jack and Gilly, his old partner, had concluded that Hamlet would have to strike here eventually. The Luigi Cherubini Conservatory collection was among the best in the world.

Comprising about 50 instruments, the tenor viola made by Antonia Stradivari would be on Hamlets shopping list. It is, after all, one of a kind and the only viola from 1690 that is completely preserved with all of the original parts.

Hopefully, his double was doing well in Italy at the resort he had booked. It wasn't easy not was it cheap, but Jack had known he needed to be crafty to throw off Hamlet.

It had better have worked because his wife, 7 months pregnant and in no mood to be having the family vacation with a fake look-a-like Jack, would kill him if he had changed plans and husband swapped her for nothing.

Normally mild-mannered and rational, Ashley had been angrier than he had anticipated at his proposition. Just recalling the fight made sweat break out across his forehead, trickling down his temple.

A brief thought of having his double stand-in for the fight made his gut clench with guilt.

No, no he couldn't pay to have someone else take the fall for his actions. He had switched out and was missing their first international family vacation that Edmond would remember.

At 4 years old, the memories might be hazy, but they would be there for the rest of his life. Ashley, on the other hand, has no such problem with her memories.

Ashley, Jacks angry wife who was currently angrily cracking walnuts on the porch of the villa Jack had rented, possessed an eidetic memory. It was what first caught his interest in her.

He hadn't many many people with minds like his own, certainly, none who could laugh as they quoted Shakespeare while in tennis shoes at a museum opening while every other woman was in 6-inch heels or sensible kitten heels.