Lost Children

by Willa Bergman

  I tell him I’m fine, that everyone had made far too much out of what happened yesterday. I make a good show of dismissing it all as a non-event, although I’m more than a little annoyed that news of my episode has already made its way to him.

  In the last ten years Geoffrey Webb has been involved in just about all of the most significant and high profile restitution and repatriation of artwork cases. Six years ago he founded the Daedalus Group, a specialist organisation providing art recovery services. He was financed by a group of venture capitalists, people he’d helped with their own art situations over the years. With their financial backing and his network of contacts, he put together a team of art historians and ex-detectives that gave him the ability to find and deliver works of art in a way that no other organisation could. And ever since the Daedalus Group has dominated the headlines for major art recoveries. Earlier this year he led the team that was responsible for the recovery of Cezanne’s View of Auvers-sur-Oise from Omar Oubec, a reclusive art dealer with ties to a Balkan crime syndicate.

  You wouldn’t believe it to look at the man. Tall and thin with a bookish demeanour, he looks like he was the kid who had his lunch money stolen at school. He must be in his early fifties, but he still looks young. His face is almost boyish and apart from some greying on the sides his hair is still mostly black, which he wears slicked back.

  “I do hope your new responsibilities aren’t getting the better of you.” He drawls. He speaks like an effete public school boy, which in fairness is probably exactly what he is.

  When it comes to art recovery I am not in his league. I am at best the pretender to his throne. But I take some pleasure from the knowledge that I’m enough of a threat to him that he deigns to come over here from time to time to try and trash talk me. I don’t know what’s made him decide to come and seek me out this morning but these chance meetings are never a mere coincidence. Today’s appearance though seems particularly forced, just outside my office and nowhere near his.

  “So I hear on the grapevine that you’ve been asked to track down the Portrait of the Lost Child.”

  He just comes out and says it, he doesn’t even try to be subtle. But how can he possibly know about it already? I’m convinced there’s someone on his payroll at Roth.

  “Oh yes, word gets around pretty quickly with these sorts of things. I hope you didn’t think you’d just have a free pass at it all on your own?”

  “I guess I did.”

  “Surely he told you there would be other interested parties?”

  Cute.

  He’s really laying it on thick now, “Very prestigious, very difficult. Quite a coup… if you can pull it off.”

  Last year one of my clients chose Roth for a recovery commission, rather than using Daedalus. This was one of the first of these types of commissions we’d taken so Geoffrey was hoping (or assuming) we were going to fall flat on our faces. But we delivered and ever since Mr Webb seems to have taken a very personal dislike to us, and me in particular.

  “I’m afraid I can’t talk about any commissions which the Roth Auction House may or may not have taken on for our clients.”

  “Good girl, play by the rules. I myself have always taken a slightly more laissez-faire approach. I only ask because I thought maybe we might want to join forces on this one.”

  I’m not expecting that. I’d be flattered if I didn’t know him better. Under different circumstances I might actually even be saying yes to his offer, despite any personal feelings I have about the man. If I needed to find a painting there is quite literally no one in the world, myself included unfortunately, more skilled in doing it than him. Whatever the reason he’s offering me this though, ultimately it’s irrelevant. I don’t want this painting to be found so I’m not going to enter into a partnership with him to look for it. If I’m working with Geoffrey I lose control over the search and I can’t let that happen. Why is he offering to partner up though? There must be an angle here, I just can’t see it yet.

  “That’s very kind of you Geoffrey, but we’re not looking to enter into any kind of partnerships or joint ventures at this time.”

  He raises his nose, clearly put out at the rejection, something I confess I take some small pleasure in seeing.

  “May I ask why?”

  “Consider it a professional discourtesy”.

  That probably wasn’t necessary, but it just seemed the right thing to say. In his face I can see suppressed anger boiling up inside him. He moves his face close into mine. Seething he hisses, “You need to watch yourself little girl or you’re going to find your time at the top table is very short-lived.”

  I didn’t think that would set him off quite like that, I was going for mild annoyance.

  “Quite the little corporate climber aren’t we. Tell me, how was Victoria after you’d stabbed her in the back and stolen her job?”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with Victoria leaving.”

  “You love to play the sweet little girl, don’t you? But you’ve shown your true colours now.”

  And then suddenly I realise what it is. Why he was so easy to rattle. It’s because he hasn’t been commissioned by Masoud and Interpol. He’s irked that he’s been snubbed for this job. After all the condescension and sneering he’s sent my way for the last two years it’s hard not to enjoy this just a little bit.

  “Geoffrey, it’s not my fault if someone’s seen fit to pick Roth for a job rather than you. You can’t expect to win them all. Maybe they had an issue with some of your methods.”

  That last part strikes another nerve. His ‘questionable methods’, they’ve cost him in the past; allegations about unethical practices he was using to retrieve stolen art. He’d originally started out as a family lawyer negotiating title disputes between wealthy divorcees squabbling over marital assets, but he had a particular aptitude for cases where one of the parties was believed to be withholding certain assets, often valuable works of art. After a few years his notoriety had grown to the extent that he was better known for unearthing the hidden art than he was for the actual legal work he was doing. The Institute for the Restitution of Art and Antiquities came calling for him and he said yes. At the Institute he quickly built up a reputation for developing new and ingenious methods for recovering artworks. He was made their youngest ever director and was being groomed for the top job. But just when it all seemed to have come together for him, things began to unravel. Allegations emerged about bribes, coercion and unlawful surveillance being used in his cases and less than a year later he had parted ways with the Institute under a cloud.

  He looks at me with real anger, his eyes burning.

  “You’re nothing but an over-confident little upstart. What makes you think you can just walk into my world and take these commissions?”

  “Your world? Upstart? I’ve been doing this for four years. The commission came to us. It has nothing to do with you so you just need to walk on and forget about it.”

  “Forget about it? Oh I don’t think so. If you think I’m just going to sit back and watch from the sidelines on this you are very much mistaken. The painting is still a lost painting and when it’s found it will be to the victor the spoils so don’t be so pleased with yourself just yet little girl. I’m going to make this painting my own pet project. It will get whatever resources my team needs. And when we find it, because you can rest assured it will be us who find it, Interpol will be paying us the recovery fee and they will see that they do not have a need for a team of auctioneers who thought they’d have a go at treasure-hunting. Your boss Viktor has the right idea, Roth should stick to what it knows. Leave the recovery of stolen art to the professionals.”

  I suddenly realise I’ve made a mistake, I didn’t need to make him angry and I’m deeply regretting my momentary lapse in judgement just to win a point over him. He’s suddenly made this very personal and that is the last thing I need it to be.

  “Well at least now Roth have put you in charge perhaps you’ll be able to affor
d something a little better than that hovel you live in over in Hackney.”

  I flinch.

  “No? Oh what a pity. If you can’t even do a good job negotiating your own salary darling, how did you ever think you were going to be able to deliver the Portrait of the Lost Child?”

  With that he turns away and gets into a car that is there waiting for him. As soon as he’s out of sight I start heading back to the office. I’ve barely begun my search for this painting and already my plans have to change. Not finding the painting is no longer an option because Geoffrey Webb is now looking for it too and given enough time he will find it, he is too good at what he does. My only option now is to find the painting first. If I can find whoever has it before Geoffrey, then I can warn them he’s coming. I can prep them for the bag of tricks he has at his disposal to try and retrieve it. And most importantly I can tell them that there is no buyer’s pot of gold at the end of Geoffrey’s rainbow, only Interpol. However in order to do all that I need to first find the painting and find it before Geoffrey does. It’s a race now and Geoffrey is the man I have to beat.

  I get back to the office as quickly as I can. I want to get the search started (properly started) immediately but I have my meeting with Jo and I can’t get out of it. It’s our weekly sit down to go through the team’s numbers. I twist and fidget through every moment of it but she seems pleased enough with how the team is doing. She just keeps on telling me how we need to keep pushing on our numbers. I get the feeling Viktor would have no problem shutting us down completely and we’re needing to justify our existence at the moment. Right now though I don’t care about any of that. All I can think about is Daedalus and Geoffrey Fucking Webb, so I raise it with Jo.

  “Why does he care about this painting? Daedalus must get dozens of these types of request every month.” I ask her.

  “You know what these powerful men are like, they’re control freaks. And all they’re worried about is losing their power. He sees this new girl on the block, getting asked to work with Interpol and he’s worried, because he doesn’t know why they didn’t come to him. He’s worried they’re coming to you because you’re the shiny new thing in the industry and he thinks everyone is going to start wanting to use you instead of him.”

  “That’s very flattering but let’s be honest, I’m hardly setting the world alight.”

  “Right now maybe. But it’s still early days. He’s thinking this is just the start, that you’re going to start winning more of these commissions and that eventually you’ll genuinely be able to compete with Daedalus. But if he shuts you down now, makes you look bad before it’s too late, when he still has the advantage, then he’ll never have to compete with you on an even playing field. So you can’t let him win. This is a test for you and Roth and the industry will be watching.”

  Great. As if there wasn’t enough pressure on me to find this fucking painting already. I leave Jo and begin the to do list. First I need to get more help. Geoffrey will already have a team of at least ten people working on it. I can get one more person to help me but any more than that Jo will start asking questions. I pull Kim into my office and tell her to drop all the other jobs she’s working on. I tell her to start pulling all the case file information we have on the painting, to review every news article she can find from the time of the theft and then to start calling everyone we know to see if anyone has information we can use. It probably won’t yield anything but it’s work that has to be done. To do it all will take Kim at least a week though. Geoffrey’s team will be doing the same and they’ll have it done by tomorrow. And it will be the same for every step in the process, he will be better and faster than we are because he has more resources at his disposal than we do. He, like me, also already knows who stole the painting. However given that it was my mother who stole it I have one very big advantage over him, I know where she is. The only question is, how much she will be able to tell me.

  8

  My mother’s care home is in Highbury. I visit her most Tuesdays and Thursdays after work and on weekends but I’m not waiting till after work for this visit.

  Her stroke left her paralysed on the right side of her body. She was also diagnosed with vascular dementia six months after she had her stroke, it’s quite common for people who have a serious stroke to develop it, and she now struggles to remember things. It’s been aggressive and unforgiving on her. They look after her well enough at the care home, god bless Clement Atlee and the NHS, but I wish I could do more for her. It doesn’t sit right with me that she’s here and not with us. For a long time when she got sick we tried to make it work, Jack and I looking after her. But the care she needed was non-stop, it broke us. When the authorities came to check on her they said she needed to be moved. It’s a nice enough place but for all their efforts I know there are better places for her and I wish I could put her in them. But this place is expensive enough as it is (not even the NHS is free these days it seems) and I just don’t have the money for anything better.

  Jack insisted on joining me for the visit. Ever since I told him about Joseph Masoud he’s suddenly taken a very active interest in my job (something he’s never been guilty of in the past). He means well but it’s a risk getting him involved. He’s a liability at the best of times and there’s simply too much at stake here to risk him messing things up. But the two of us coming to visit our mother seems pretty low risk so I relent and tell him he can join.

  It’s late morning by the time we arrive. The sun is already up and it’s getting hot. I look up at a clear blue sky above with only the planes cutting small white tears in the blue expanse. Usually when I come to see her, especially on days like this when the weather’s good, we sit out in the garden at the back of the building and try to play a few games. She can still remember how to play draughts, which I can never understand as she’s barely able to make a sentence now, it must be a different part of the brain or something. I like playing it with her though, it’s the closest I get to feeling like she never had her stroke, like she’s still all there. But I’m not here for that today, because right now there’s only one thing that matters. Today I’m only here about the painting.

  We walk in and are greeted by Laura the receptionist who knows me and asks me how I’m doing. This is off my usual visiting schedule and she asks if everything's okay. I tell her I had the day off and we thought we’d come up for a visit.

  My mother’s in her room. When we walk in she’s sitting there alone in her armchair. There’s some terrible daytime television show playing on the TV but she isn’t watching it. She’s just staring vacantly out of the window. The window looks out onto a small courtyard and the road beyond. It’s not much but at least there’s a bit of life out there she can see.

  I give her a big hug and hold her. She leans in to me and suddenly, just like that, it feels good to be here. Then I let go and return to the sterile space she lives in. We’ve done our best to try and make the place homely for her, but they tell you to get rid of anything that ‘clutters up the place’.

  I look around the sparsely decorated room, if there’s a clue to be found about the painting it won’t be in here. An armchair in the near corner points at a small television mounted on the wall and there’s a small desk with no drawers and nothing on it. In the far corner of the room there’s a wardrobe and a chest of drawers next to the hospital bed. A couple of little paintings hanging on the walls that Jack picked up at a flea market and a picture of the three of us on her bedside table are about the only signs this is not just another hospital room.

  “It’s a nice day today.” I tell her, somewhat awkwardly.

  “Nice day.” She replies.

  I don’t know how to start this conversation with her, or if it’s going to be any kind of conversation at all. I walk round so I’m standing in front of her and then crouch down so my eyes are level with hers. I fix my eyes so she’s looking right at me, I need her as focused as possible.

  “Mum, I need to ask you something. It’s very
important so I really need you to focus.”

  She stares at me but says nothing.

  “There isn’t an easy way to say this, so I just have to ask you. Who did you sell the Portrait of the Lost Child to?”

  I wait for a response. For a moment she looks like she wants to say something but then all that comes out is, “Nice day.”

  I try again, “Mum this is important. Someone is looking for the painting and I need to find who has it before they do.”

  Again I wait. I put my hands on her shoulders and look in her eyes but they seem vacant and unaware. I don’t even get a response this time. Jack tells me to forget it, that I’m wasting my time. I stand up and look out the window, quietly admitting to myself that he’s right and that I’m not going to get any answers from her.

  My mother’s reticence or incapacity is a disappointment but if I’m honest it’s what I’d expected. What I really came here for is the basement storage unit that she keeps here, where a lot of her stuff is boxed away (I know because my brother and I had to move it all here). I speak with one of the nurses who I know reasonably well and tell her I need to get a couple of things from our mother’s storage unit. She tells me that’s no trouble, gives me a key to the unit and Jack and I make our way down to the basement.

  It’s cold and dark as we walk down the stairs before the fluorescent lights flicker into life. Each one of our steps echoes around off the concrete floor and walls. There’s a long row of storage unit doors and her unit is near the end. The unit isn’t large but her things don’t fill even half the space. My first thought is how sad it is to see her life packaged away into these few things, just a bunch of boxes stacked on top of each other. Resting against the wall there’s an empty painting frame which provides a nice dose of irony to the occasion. I don’t want to spend any more time down here than I have to, but it’s easier for us to go through it all down here than cart it upstairs, so we settle in and begin opening the boxes.