The Bernini Bust by Iain Pears

directors, television magnates, noted authors, fashion models and all the other exemplars of local industry were usually remarkably adept at keeping themselves alive.
    It also made him rather nervous. He could not remember the figures, but he was willing to bet that the percentage of homicides where he successfully fixed the handcuffs on the guilty party was pretty small. Ordinarily, this was distressing but had few other consequences. People - and that meant his superiors — understood that a conviction was unlikely and didn’t for a moment attach any blame to him. He arrested people often enough to have earned himself a respectable reputation for general professionalism. He did his best and that was that. Better luck next time.
    But he already had a strong feeling that a very large number of people were going to be keeping their eyes on him over this one. This time, doing his best was not going to be good enough.
    “I was wondering,” he went on, “about the alarm system. You do have alarms, don’t you?”
    Thanet snorted. “Oh yes. This place is wired like Fort Knox.”
    “So can we check if any doors except the main entrance were used?”
    “Sure. In theory the murderer should have been caught on film in the corridor. Although personally, I’m dubious.”
    Thanet explained that their enormously complicated alarm system included concealed cameras in every room of the museum. Although the administrative block was less well endowed, it was still a bit like a maximum security prison. So they trooped off to the central security office, a room on the third floor crammed with enough electronic equipment to equip a small film studio. While they were eyeing it up and wondering where to start, a tall, balding man in his late thirties came in, radiating nervous excitement.
    “Who are you?” said Morelli.
    The man introduced himself as Robert Streeter, chief security executive, and his curiosity turned to alarm when he was brusquely told that his much vaunted system, responsible both for museum security and his salary, had not so far impressed the police.
    “To put it another way,” the detective informed him, “it was a dead loss. If that man Barclay hadn’t discovered the body, no one would have known anything had happened until a hell of a lot later. What good is that?”
    Streeter was also concerned, perhaps even more so than was the detective. After all, his job could depend on this. He had been brought in originally as a consultant when the museum was expanding, to give advice about how to protect the collections. However, as he had discovered, consultancy work was merely an elaborate way of being unemployed, and Streeter’s income had been somewhat erratic at the time. So, spotting his opportunity, he went for it. His report was disdainful, if not devastating. The place was, he concluded, about as secure as the average doll’s house. Not only did he set out a bewildering array of electronic necessities, he accompanied the report with elaborately printed flow diagrams of responsibility structures and integrated fast-response networks to demonstrate how, in the event of a break-in, the felony could be interdicted and the threat neutralised.
    It was all Greek to the museum staff, who accordingly concluded that an integrated fast-response network was an absolute must for anyone who wanted to be on the cutting edge of the museum business. Besides, the man was recommended by Moresby. A college friend of his wife’s or something. So they did the only thing possible, that is, set aside a vast budget, created a new security department and gave Streeter the job of presiding over both. Who began by using the entire allotment to hire secretaries, administrative assistants and liaison personnel in order to lobby for more money.
    He now had a staff of twelve, another six to patrol the museum, enough electronic gadgetry to make the CIA jealous and was beginning to insist on having the final say on where pictures were hung.