The Gauguin Connection

by Estelle Ryan

  I sat back in my chair and stared at the bank of monitors in front of me. It was noon and I had been at it for five hours. I felt like pulling at my hair in frustration, but settled for a deep sigh. After a restless night, I had left my sparkling apartment very early to start my search for some connection with the girl. The EDA database proved to be completely useless and no matter which approach I took, I simply couldn’t find anything to connect the girl to the poets, the EDA or even the Gauguin. Not having her name made for a very short search.

  There had to be something else. I hated to admit to myself that I had allowed Colin and all his cryptic clues to influence my usual manner of working things out. The balance that I had managed to find between my natural way of working and the input of my education and experience had stood me in good stead until now. Why would I change that?

  With a decisive change of posture, I cleared the monitors and my mind. Leaning my head back, I closed my eyes. Without anyone there to pull my thoughts into another direction, where would I look next? I went through the list. The girl had led nowhere, so that was out. I had found out everything possible about the Gauguin, including its connection to Colin. The weapons were not my concern at the moment, not while Manny and his friend continued their investigation. Again Colin had managed to sneak in here, connecting himself with his suspicions. The Russian murderer was of no real interest to me, but Colin insisted that there was a connection. Then there were the ships that Colin hinted at. And the Russian connection that only he seemed to know about. I groaned. All I had received from Colin was frustrating non-clues.

  My eyes flew open and I frowned. The one thing connecting all the dots I had just listed was not a thing; it was a who. Colin. And that was the thread I was going to pull until I could unravel this mystery. My fingers hovered over the computer keyboard while I decided which of the clues to follow first. It felt like only an hour later when the door to my viewing room whooshed open.

  “You haven’t eaten today.” Phillip walked in with a plastic bag emitting the mouth-watering smell of Chinese take-away.

  “It’s not healthy food.”

  “And we both love it.” He smiled knowingly when I rushed to put a large sheet of paper on the desk. I might love Chinese take-out, but it left horrid grease stains. Taking care to use no other space than the large sheet, he unpacked enough little boxes to feed a party of five. “I thought I would get a big enough selection for whatever you were in the mood for.”

  My stomach chose that moment to growl its need for sustenance. I opened a few of the small boxes and smiled. “Ah, Chicken Lo Mein. Perfect. Thank you, Phillip.”

  He took his time to choose his meal, dragged a chair closer and sat down with tired sigh. “It’s been a hard day.”

  “What’s the time?” I broke apart the chopsticks and started eating the greasy chicken dish.

  “It’s three o’clock.” He looked up from his food. “How are you doing?”

  “I’ve discovered quite a few things.” I noticed Phillip shaking his head. “Oh, you mean how am I doing after the last few days. I’m fine. I’m focussed again, so you don’t have to worry about me.”

  “But I do. You’ve been here since six thirty this morning and you haven’t taken a break.”

  “You’re checking up on me.” I hated that I had once again lost track of time. The knowledge that Phillip was keeping an eye on me also didn’t sit well with me. I hoped that the stabbing pain in my heart region didn’t show on my face. “Don’t you trust me anymore? That whole episode won’t happen again. I promise.”

  “Of course I trust you. And I don’t care if you have another episode, as you call it. At least we know how to handle it. All I care about is that you look after yourself. I don’t want you to lock yourself in here again for two days.” His voice was gruff and he looked angry that he had to admit to caring about me.

  “Well, that won’t happen again either.” I pointed at my computer. “I set an alarm for eating and going home. I decided to skip lunch today, but the moment it is time to go home, I’m going home.”

  Phillip chuckled. “Only you would do that.”

  “What? Set an alarm? It’s a logical solution.” We ate in companionable silence for a while, until a ping from my computer sounded through the viewing room. “I hope that is my manifests.”

  “What manifests?”

  I turned to my computer and opened my email inbox. “Oh, it is an email from Manny.”

  “You emailed Manny?” Suddenly Phillip was sitting up in his chair, sounding troubled.

  “Yes,” I answered absently while I waited for the email to open. Sometimes my computer was too slow. I seriously had to consider upgrading it. “I wanted to get all the shipping manifests from Russia to Europe.”

  “Why?” He sounded even more troubled.

  “Oh. Manny seems to be using sarcasm again. Does that mean he’s angry? And he says that he can’t give them to me.” I didn’t understand this.

  Phillip sighed heavily. “Let me have a look at that email.” He looked at one of the wall monitors when I put the email up there. It took him longer than necessary to read through it before he sat back in his chair with closed eyes.

  “What?”

  “I think you should allow me to do all the communication from now on.”

  “Did I make a social faux pas?” It would be the only explanation why Phillip would suggest this intervention.

  “Writing to someone who barely knows you and struggles to trust you that you expect all shipping manifests in your inbox by the end of the day is not a good way to encourage friendly co-operation. And you didn’t even say hello or goodbye.”

  “It’s superfluous.” The moment I said it, I realised how wrong it was and lifted both my hands, palms up. “You’re right. I wasn’t thinking. I was just so busy working through all the possible links that I didn’t take the moment it needed to be more polite. I’m sorry.”

  “No wonder Manny got his hackles raised. I’ll take care of this.”

  “Thank you, Phillip.” He always protected the world from me.

  “So, tell me about the ships.”

  “That is a possible lead that I want to follow up on.”

  “Why? How do ships fit into this? And ships from Russia to Europe?”

  “Um…” My breathing became much shallower and I had to focus not to touch my throat in a pacifying gesture. “I received a tip.”

  “Genevieve, it is not like you to not answer a question concisely. What happened?”

  “The poet broke into my house.” The words just poured out of me and the relief to tell the truth was tremendous. I relayed all the details of Colin’s visit including the six hours of cleaning that followed. Throughout my rushed report of what took place, Phillip looked increasingly distressed until I felt compelled to stop. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” His voice shook with controlled emotion. “What’s wrong? A thief broke into your apartment and sat down to have a chat with you is what’s wrong. You couldn’t phone the police is what’s wrong. You allowed him to stay in your apartment is what’s wrong.”

  “I read him. I could see that he wasn’t there to do me physical harm.” I wondered if I had made a mistake telling Phillip. He was uncommonly upset.

  “Genevieve,” he said in a fractionally calmer voice, “your confidence in your abilities is well placed, but in a situation like this you should always run.”

  “But then I would not have learned so much. His visit might have been unsolicited and unwelcome, but it was enlightening. He said quite a few things that helped me find some new information today.”

  “I can’t believe I’m going to ask, but how did that thief help?”

  “Well, he said something that made me think he’d been stealing back art for at least eleven years, so that is how far back I’ve looked. There are most likely more, but the ones I found were reported in the media. The owners were all very grateful. So far I’ve found reports of forty-seve
n artefacts discovered, recovered, identified and magically resurfacing.”

  “Forty-seven?” Phillip’s eyebrows almost touched his receding hairline.

  “Yes. Some of them had reportedly been stolen during some or another conflict and others in robberies. He seems to be stealing back artworks and delivering them to their rightful owners.”

  “A modern day Robin Hood.”

  “What a wonderful analogy.” My momentary smile was quickly replaced by a frown. “But he’s still a thief.”

  “True. But didn’t he also say that a few of those works were forgeries?”

  “Not many of the works that he recovered. Most of those seemed to be the authentic pieces.” I turned to my computer, changed a few windows until I found the right one and put it on one of the large wall monitors. “On fifteen occasions, as you’ll see here, he said the pieces were forgeries and he was right each time.”

  “Then he must have an incredible eye for a fake.”

  “I don’t think he’s a professional expert. Maybe he’s developed his discernment because he’s a criminal. Maybe he forges some artefacts himself and that’s how he can recognise this.”

  “You should ask him when you see him again,” Phillip said absently.

  “I will not see him again.” The mere thought of that criminal breaking into my apartment again and lounging in my reading chair outraged me. “I told him that he was not to return at all. Ever.”

  “Calm down, Genevieve. It was a careless comment.”

  I took a calming breath. “He also told me about thirteen deaths of artists that he knows about.”

  “Thirteen?”

  “Yes. I followed that line for a while, but couldn’t find anything more. I think that I should tell Manny to look deeper into that.”

  “I will tell Manny.” It was an order.

  “Of course. I will just offend him.” I sighed. “Also tell him to get the ballistic information on these cases.”

  “He was one of the best military investigators in his day, Genevieve. Trust him to do his job.”

  I made a noncommittal sound. “I decided to look for more artwork with the reasoning that maybe the poets had recovered even more works. Then I started seeing another pattern. A different pattern. A lot of previously lost and stolen artworks mysteriously turned up at auctions. These works were not all lost during a period of conflict. It is a combination of heists, single burglaries, long lost pieces and so on. These were sold at art auctions held by very reputable auction houses.” I named a few of the auction houses.

  “I’ve recommended clients to use a few of those.” He swallowed a few times. “Genevieve, are we in trouble?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you are finding artworks that had been insured by companies similar to ours. Artworks that were authenticated by the same institutions we use. Artworks that are forgeries. I’m beginning to worry about the pieces that we’re insuring.”

  “I haven’t found anything from Rousseau & Rousseau yet, but the way it looks, there’s a high probability that something we’ve ensured might be a forgery.”

  “We always worked with that risk. I just hoped it would never actually happen. Tell me what else you’ve found.”

  “I started looking for reports on how these pieces were found, but none of those connected to Colin. They all just mysteriously appeared.”

  “Interesting. But is there a connection between all of this and our case? You, we, can’t afford to be wasting time on whimsical searches.”

  I gasped. “Whimsical? How could you say this is whimsical? Of course there is a connection.”

  “Okay. Then tell me more about the mysteriously rediscovered artworks that are not connected to your thief.”

  “He’s not mine.” I exhaled angrily through my nose and waved my hands in the air as if to remove this topic from our conversation. “What I discovered was that during interviews with a few of the owners, they said that their artworks were found by private investigators. This came up in eight different cases. None of them wanted to name the agency or investigator working for them. I found that extremely strange. Not many people are so private that they don’t want to let on who worked for them. There are people like that, but statistically it is improbable that such a large number of the people interviewed would be equally secretive about who had found the art for them.”

  “And you don’t think it is the poet?”

  “Colin? No, I didn’t even consider him to be involved in this.”

  “Why not?”

  “For a start, he would have been too busy stealing back his own artworks to be doing this work as well. It wasn’t even worth thinking about further.”

  “I don’t follow your logic.”

  Often I had to explain my reasoning to others. Every time it was exhausting to simplify my logic enough to make it understandable. “I did a lot of cross-checking. While the poet was in one country, these specific art pieces were discovered in another country. And Colin exposes forgeries, he doesn’t sell them.”

  Phillip thought about this. “Weren’t those forgeries he named of high quality?”

  “Indeed, they were. They were masterpieces in their own right. Many of them passed the authentication process with flying colours.”

  “If they were sold as reproductions, they most likely would’ve fetched a very healthy sum on the open market.”

  “Most likely.”

  “But since they are sold as the real thing, it makes it an unforgivable crime. It seems like dumb luck that none of the pieces we’ve insured have been discovered to be forgeries so far.”

  “There is no such thing as dumb luck.” A look at his lowered eyebrows made me realise that my comment had annoyed him. “Sorry. To return to my previous topic, I started looking for investigators or agencies in the cities and areas where these pieces turned up, but could find none. At least not anyone that would specialise in finding missing art. Some of these people talked about the private investigator being local, yet I couldn’t find anyone or any agency registered locally. Again, it wouldn’t have been uncommon, but it stood out as a highly unlikely coincidence when it happened in each and every case.”

  “I have to agree with you on that.” He sounded reluctant. “I’m still hoping for a connection here, Genevieve. You seem to have strayed from the original case.”

  I stared at the wall monitors for a few moments while collecting my thoughts. “There is a connection. I know it.” I turned to Phillip. “Please give me more time to pursue all the clues that Colin gave me.”

  “How sure are you about the connections?”

  “When have I ever had a suspicion that turned out to be nothing?”

  “Hmm. Point taken. Next question. How sure are you about Colin?”

  It took me a moment to reply. “As much as it pains me to admit this about a thief, I believe he was being straightforward with me.”

  “Genevieve, you have to be sure about this. Having this thug know your address and him being very able to break in again is not safe. You should really consider phoning the police.”

  “He is definitely not a thug. The Russian murderer was a thug. Colin is, well, he is suave.”

  “Suave. As in James Bond suave? I never had you pegged as a romantic.”

  “Are you out to insult me today? First you call my search whimsical and now you call me a romantic. My assessment of Colin was purely professional. How could you even think any different?”

  Phillip did not answer me for almost a minute. He stood up and faced me. “I did not mean to offend you. There are moments that I forget what an extraordinary person you are. You know, law enforcement agencies often make use of criminals to help them solve cases. Maybe you should consider asking this Colin for his help.”

  “Never!” The denial exploded through my whole system. “He’s everything I abhor. There is a reason why society has laws. Anyone thinking he is above the law shows a clear lack of respect. I will not invite that kind of
behaviour and mentality into my life. No way.”

  A small smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Never say never.”

  “He so much as suggested that we’ll be working together and I told him, in no uncertain terms, that we will not be working together.”

  Just as Phillip started to say something, the cell phone in his hand started ringing. He gave the screen a quick glance and moved towards the door. “I have to take this.”

  My acceptance or an answer was not required, so I returned to my computer. There was a lot more research to be done. Five minutes later Phillip was back in my viewing room with his cell phone still against his ear, speaking into it.

  “Yes, I’m with her now. Just hold on a moment.” He pressed the phone against the front of his tailor-made suit jacket. “It’s Manny. He wants to speak to both of us.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t say anything about Colin,” I whispered urgently.

  “I was planning on doing that. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Phillip, please.” I didn’t need the added complication of Manny having his two cents worth about Colin’s visit. For all I knew, he would want me to somehow welcome Colin back into my apartment so that he could arrest him.

  “Give me one good reason not to tell him.”

  I needed to tell Phillip my true reason, but was loathe to. I seldom had felt as conflicted as this. Colin was, after all, a criminal. Yet, the man who had seen something in me no one else had deserved an honest answer. “He challenges me. He intrigues me. And I know I can learn from him. If Manny finds out about Colin, he will take him away from me.”

  Some time back I had greatly offended Phillip when I had bemoaned the lack of interesting people in my life. Once he had moved past the unintentional insult, he had understood that for me most people are tediously predictable. For me most people held no mystery. Not Colin.

  Phillip shook his head. “You had to go and pick the only reason why I wouldn’t tell him.”

  An insistent sound penetrated the confines of Phillip’s jacket. It was the voice of an irate Manny calling to us. Phillip gave a wry smile and with a nod put Manny on speaker.

  “Answer me! You bloody … ”

  “Manny, you’re on speaker,” Phillip said, quickly interrupting any further tirade.

  “Oh. Why did you make me wait so long?” His voice dripped with suspicion.

  “Genevieve and I had to clarify something.”

  “To do with the case?”

  “With another issue.” Technically he wasn’t lying and I wished that this kind of quick thinking came natural to me. I was simply not a good liar. Which was why I was so proud of my success with Jacques.

  “Oh,” Manny said again and cleared his throat. “Well then, hello, Doc.”

  “Hello, Manny.”

  “Yes. Well.” His inappropriate response made me smile. Time away had not made him any more comfortable with me. He cleared his throat again. “I received more test results from the autopsy on the girl.”

  “Have you identified her yet?” I knew that the girl’s identity was a key that would lead to many new avenues to pursue.

  “No. My people are working on it, as well as the local police, but no one has found anything yet.”

  “You’ve had four weeks. How can you not have found anything?”

  “What Genevieve wants to say,” Phillip interrupted and gave me a warning glare, “is that the girl’s identity will answer a lot of questions.”

  “I know that.” By the sound of his voice, I was sure his face was red, his cheeks puffed, a vein popping out on his forehead and his hands balled in tight fists. The man was fuming. “May I continue with the results?”

  “Please do.” I guessed he was being sarcastic again.

  “In the first autopsy report, the doctor said that she had had,” there was a rustle of papers, “carpal tunnel syndrome. The doc reckoned that she had done some repetitive work with her hands.”

  “It is a very painful condition for anyone to have. All that pressure on the median nerve,” I said.

  “What’s the median nerve?” Phillip looked interested.

  “It’s the nerve that makes the thumb-side of the hand feel and move. The area in the wrist where the nerve enters the hand is called the carpal tunnel. When there is excessive pressure, from typing, writing, painting or any other work involving the hands, it causes swelling in this area, which pinches the nerve.”

  “You just had to go and ask,” Manny groaned.

  “She was rather young for this.” I ignored him. “It usually appears in people over thirty. Did the doctor say how bad it was?”

  More papers rustled through the speaker of the cell phone. “I can’t see anything in the report here. I’ll have to ask him. Is it important?”

  “Most likely not. Knowing this is enough. But that was in the first report. What did the new results render?”

  “Render?” Manny said the word as if trying it for the first time. “It rendered a lot of different chemicals deeply imbedded in the folds of her skin. Deep enough to make the scientist-people believe that she was working with this stuff every day.”

  “What stuff? Could you please be more factual?” I turned away from another one of Phillip’s warning glances. I needed as many facts as possible if I were to prove that a connection between it all, a pattern, existed.

  “I can’t even pronounce half of the stuff, so I’ll just put it on the network and you can access it from your EDA computer. But the scientist-people told me that all those chemicals combined pointed to materials that artists would use, especially painters.”

  “I knew it.” I couldn’t keep the triumph out of my voice.

  “You knew what? Phillip, what did she know? What didn’t you tell me? No, why didn’t you tell me?” It sounded like Manny was ready to climb through the phone.

  “Manny, she didn’t know anything. Yesterday she did a lot of research and found some things that made her suspect that the girl was an artist.”

  “What things?”

  “Just a few rather unspecific things.” To my own ears I sounded like I was lying. I really didn’t want to tell Manny about the murdered artists. That would lead to questions that could not be answered without mentioning certain poets who declared artworks forgeries. With only my facial expressions I appealed to Phillip to support me in this. When he didn’t look particularly impressed, I mouthed the words, “Please trust me.”

  He rolled his eyes and turned his head away from me. “She just had a hunch. Since there was no evidence to back it up I didn’t even consider telling you about it.”

  “Are the ships from Russia also a hunch?” Manny sounded justifiably suspicious.

  “Yes.”

  “Hmph.” There was a long pregnant silence on the phone. “I’ll send you what I managed to get at such short notice. I don’t suggest you print this out. You’ll destroy an entire forest. Would it be too much to ask for a report on all you’ve unearthed so far?”

  “I’ll get Genevieve to send it to you as soon as possible.”

  “I understand that it’s late Friday afternoon, but could I have it by tomorrow?”

  “To do what with?” I immediately regretted my quick mouth.

  “To investigate.” He broke the last word into sharply enunciated syllables.

  “No problem. I’ll send it.” My grimace brought a smile to Phillip’s face.

  “And I will come in on Monday so that we can discuss the report and also any new discoveries you might make over the weekend.”

  “I’m not going to work this weekend.” I took great exception at the tone Manny used to deliver what should have been a request. “I’ve already put an immense number of hours into this case. I need a weekend to relax.”

  Phillips eyes stretched at my uncharacteristic need for relaxation. “Maybe you could make an exception this weekend, Genevieve. I’m sure Manny would like us to make more progress than they’ve managed. Of course you’ll be compensate
d for this.”

  “Only because you asked, I will do it.” I moved closer and addressed the cell phone. “I don’t take orders from anyone.”

  There was a long silence. Phillip switched the speakerphone off and left the viewing room, most likely to placate Manny. I shook my head at the complexities of social and professional relations and waited for Phillip to return. I didn’t have to wait very long.

  “Did you have to provoke him like that?”

  “I only spoke my mind, Phillip.”

  “Which in Manny’s world is extreme provocation even on a good day.” He sat down with a sigh. “What are you going to put in your report?”

  “Everything I have found so far with the exception of the poets and the murdered artists.” It was much easier to be deceptive in writing.

  “Don’t you think he ought to know about the artists? You were the one who pointed out that they had been murdered with Eurocorps weapons.”

  “And you were the one who pointed out that we had no proof that those were Eurocorps weapons.”

  “Genevieve.” My name held the frustrated acceptance that he was fighting a losing battle.

  “Give me this weekend. I will send the report to Manny tonight and work on the rest over the weekend. He’s sending me the ship information. Hopefully between that and some other ideas I have, I will be able to give him more on Monday.”

  “You have until Monday. When Manny arrives here on Monday you are going to tell him everything that you’ve discovered so far.” He stopped me with a lifted hand when I wanted to speak. “This is not a simple art fraud case, Genevieve. There has been the murder of this girl and, if you are correct, many more murders. We are working under the greatest confidence looking into a possible case of the abuse of power in the EDA and Eurocorps. For the love of god, there is even the theft of who knows how many weapons,” he all but shouted.

  “Eight hundred and thirty-seven. That they know of.”

  “What?” Phillip looked disoriented. His eyes widened with comprehension and if possible he looked even more serious. “Oh, yes of course. What I’m trying to get through to you is that this is different. You can’t look at it as one of our usual cases. Please, for my sake, be careful. I didn’t anticipate this case to be dangerous.”

  “Phillip,” I said with a frown, “it started with a murder. How could you possibly think that it was not dangerous?”

  “You’re right.” He looked defeated. “And if I had the smallest hope that it would do any good, I would try to take you off this case. But I know you too well. You’ve got your teeth into this and won’t let go. At least just promise me if that thief comes around this weekend, you’ll be careful. Don’t hesitate to scream and run. Give me your word.”

  Knowing how much stock Phillip placed in my word, I thought about this carefully before committing myself to anything. “Agreed. I give you my word that I will be careful. If anything happens that could even possibly put my life in danger, I will first phone you, then the police.”

  “You do that,” he said gruffly and got out of his chair. Suddenly he looked every one of his sixty-one years. “And take care of yourself this weekend. Do something other than just work on this case.”

  “No promises on that one.” I was glad to see my comment tease a tired smile from him. “But I promise to take regular breaks, sleep and deliver something on Monday.”

  Phillip only uttered a grunt and left the viewing room without a backward glance. The silence of the soundproof room surrounded me like a well-worn coat. This room and my apartment in a leafy and quiet area were the two places where I felt the safest. The noise of city traffic completely overwhelmed me and even the noise of a few colleagues chatting in the kitchen sometimes proved too much for my sound sensitivity.

  I turned back to my computer, deciding whether to finish what I had started here or to pack everything up and continue at home. After a complex fifteen minute debate with myself, I settled on working at home and began collecting everything I would need to take with me. While I performed this mindless task, my mind wandered to Colin. I had warned him to never enter my apartment again. Yet, my ability to read people had been inerrant on so many occasions that I knew I was going to have to face him again sometime soon. Everything about him communicated unlimited self-confidence and pertinacity.

  At least I had the half hour commute home to work on a strategy to handle him. With a man who had eluded authorities for more than a decade, I knew that I needed a plan. I wanted him to comprehend that I would never work or even associate with a criminal. Even if his motives were noble and said criminal intrigued me.

  Chapter SIX