by Peter May
‘Where are we going?’ she said eventually. She had seen several road signs for Chichester.
Her voice had evidently interrupted some inner dialogue, for he looked at her as if surprised to find he had a passenger. ‘RAF Tangmere,’ he said.
‘What’s there?’
‘It’s one of the airfields the British are using to fight off the Luftwaffe. If they can’t stop the Germans in the air, it won’t be long before the land invasion will come across the Channel.’
Georgette had never seriously considered the possibility of Britain falling to the Nazis. It seemed unthinkable, somehow. But neither could she imagine her precious Paris under the heel of the invader. It made her feel sick.
It was dark by the time they reached the tiny village of Tangmere, driving through its blacked-out main street, to pull up finally outside an ivy-covered cottage opposite the gates to the airfield.
‘This is us,’ said her driver.
‘This is us where?’
‘Where I’ve been told to drop you.’ He nodded towards the cottage. ‘You’re expected.’
When she stepped out of the Citroën, she felt the air much softer than it had been on the Isle of Lewis, as if autumn had not yet reached the southern extremes of the British Isles. On the airfield opposite, she could see rows of planes in dark silhouette on the tarmac, the constant roar of engines as fighters came and went, the huddled shapes of hangars against a clear sky. She turned as her car drove off – her driver had not even said goodbye – and looked at this quintessentially English cottage, its ivy already turning rust red. The windows on both ground and upper floors were blacked out, and it wasn’t until she knocked on the door that any light at all spilled out into the night. A young man in a leather flying jacket pulled her quickly inside to shut the door behind her. ‘This way. Miss Pignal, is it?’ For once someone had pronounced her name correctly.
‘That’s right.’
He steered her into a brightly lit sitting room. Comfortable, well-worn leather armchairs lined the walls, angled towards a large fireplace where the embers of a coal fire glowed in the hearth. Beer bottles stood along the mantelpiece, two placed on the top of a large wooden clock that was chiming as she entered. Tattered paperback and hardback books lined bookshelves along the fireplace wall. A model airplane stood on the top one, next to a framed headshot of Churchill. It was warm and welcoming here.
The young man turned and she saw him clearly for the first time. Sandy brown hair swept back from a high brow. Well-defined eyebrows and sad eyes. He reached out a hand to shake hers. ‘Squadron Leader Hugh Verity,’ he said. ‘You can get a cup of tea in the kitchen, and change upstairs if you like. I’ll be flying you later.’
This was all happening so quickly. ‘Flying me where?’
‘To France, of course. We’ll be taking off a little after midnight. We had a full moon about three nights ago, and the forecast’s good, so conditions should be perfect.’
The black-painted Lysander banked against a sky so clear Georgette felt as if she could reach out and touch the stars. She had never seen the Milky Way so well defined before, like smoke and a shower of silver sparks rising from a galaxy on fire. Moonlight had reflected itself on the dark waters of la Manche all the way across, and washed now over the plains of northern France which lay below in random patterns of farmers’ fields and dark Loire Valley forest.
The flight had been exhilarating, but it was time now to set herself in preparation for landing. Space in the rear cockpit was tight, with the bulkiness of her coat, and barely enough room for her case. The same battered suitcase that had accompanied her all the way north to the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. There was a short ladder attached to the fuselage below her cockpit, and she knew that once they had touched down she had to get out and down it fast. She had no idea what awaited her on the ground, and as they banked again to swoop low over a freshly shorn hayfield to land, exhilaration turned to fear, and she found it almost choking her.
The landing was even bumpier than she had expected, and the Lysander seemed to bounce several times before settling its wheels to rattle over rutted ground. As it came, finally, to a stop, Verity turned, and all she saw was the palest of smiles as he said, ‘Good luck.’ And she was out and down the ladder, throwing her case ahead of her, and jumping the last metre. Almost before she hit the ground, she heard the squadron leader gunning the Lysander’s engine and setting off to trundle it to the far end of the field where he swung it through a tight turn in preparation for taking off again.
A single dark figure emerged from the woods away to her left, and she picked up her case and hurried towards it, aware of the Lysander gathering speed behind her. She looked back momentarily as it soared off once more into the magnificence of the night sky.
She met her contact halfway towards the trees. He was a short, unshaven man in his mid-thirties, dressed in shabby country clothes and wearing a sweat-stained flat cap. He grabbed her case. ‘Follow me.’ And they set off as quickly as they could for the cover and safety of the woods.
It took some moments for Georgette’s eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness. The man was jogging through the undergrowth just ahead of her, following some kind of well-beaten animal track. They kept going until she thought her lungs would burst, before suddenly he jumped down into the bed of a dry stream and crouched among the rocks gathered along one bank. She climbed down beside him, her coat trailing among the boulders, and he put a finger to his lips.
They remained there in silence for several minutes, until their breathing had subsided. The distant drone of the Lysander’s engine was gone now, and a silence so thick you could almost touch it settled on the forest.
Moonlight fell in dappled patches on the boulders all around them, and the man turned to Georgette, his face strained with tension. ‘Welcome to the Free French Zone,’ he said in a voice laden with sarcasm. ‘Only it’s not like any France you might ever have known, and it’s certainly not free. I’m Lucien.’
He shook her hand, and it felt coarse and cold.
‘We’ve not received your papers yet, so you can’t go to Paris.’
‘Paris? I thought the artworks had all come here, to the Loire.’
He shook his head. ‘I know nothing about that. You’ve to go to Paris. But not yet.’
The disappointment of his words hit her hard. ‘Well, what am I supposed to do?’
‘We’ve prepared a bed for you in the attic of a farmhouse about five kilometres from here. You’ll have to stay there, hidden, until your papers come.’
‘How long will that be?’
‘Mademoiselle, your guess is as good as mine. It could be days. It could be weeks. Even months. Who knows?’
And she felt a crushing sense of despair descend on her from the heavens.
CHAPTER SIX
Ever since lockdown had first been enforced in March, Zoom had become the universal go-to means of internet communication between friends and family. Enzo had never heard of it before, but Dominique downloaded the software, and it had rapidly developed into their daily means of communication with Kirsty in Paris and Sophie here in Cahors, at a time when no one was even allowed to leave the house. It was easy to use and you could, it seemed, have unlimited numbers of participants in a single session, their images appearing in tiles across the screen, with whoever was speaking coming automatically to the fore. Ten years ago, Enzo thought, such technology might have been considered space age. But it was now taken completely for granted. All part of what everyone was calling the new normal.
On this session there were just three participants. Enzo in Cahors, with Dominique looking on, and Nicole in Gaillac. Nicole had effectively been Enzo’s research assistant during his investigations into the Raffin murders, his star pupil at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse where he had established a department of forensic science. Had she ever chosen to measure it, her IQ would
probably have been off the scale, and Enzo knew no one better able to winkle information out of the ether through her extraordinary manipulation of the internet. Sadly, from Enzo’s perspective, she had not pursued a career in forensic science, choosing instead to marry a winemaker she had met in Gaillac, and have what seemed like an army of children.
In fact there were only three of them. It just felt like more as they ran around behind her shrieking and throwing things. He heard Fabien’s sharp admonishments in the background, the strain in his voice suggesting that paternal patience was wearing thin.
Nicole, however, appeared oblivious, chattering away at the screen without pause. It was some time since they had last spoken. He had emailed her earlier in the day, asking if she could dig up information for him on the victim and suspect in the Carennac case, then set up an evening session for them on Zoom. Now he found himself fielding a barrage of questions about Sophie and her pregnancy, Bertrand and whether or not his gym would survive the pandemic, Kirsty and Raffin and little Alexis in Paris, and of course Laurent – who was strumming Enzo’s guitar loudly on the other side of the room.
‘Nicole, Nicole, can we get back to the murder?’ Over his shoulder he shouted at Laurent, ‘Will you knock that off?’ But the guitar only seemed to get louder.
‘Oh, Monsieur Macleod, you’re no fun. Work, work, work. For someone who retired five years ago, you still seem obsessed by it.’
‘Oh, this is brand new, Nicole,’ Dominique said. ‘For months he’s been kicking his heels around the apartment complaining about boredom, and reminiscing about the good old days when people were trying to kill him.’
Enzo scowled at her. ‘I have not!’
She laughed and told Nicole, ‘At least this investigation seems unlikely to produce any attempts on his life.’
‘Emile Narcisse,’ Enzo said emphatically. ‘What can you tell me about him?’
Nicole frowned and scanned her screen, navigating away from Zoom to her research document. ‘Emile Narcisse . . .’ Her eyes flickered from one side of the screen to the other. ‘Born 1955, in a small industrial town called Annonay, near Lyon. Only child of an art teacher and a local fonctionnaire.’ She re-
focused on Enzo. ‘Did you know that Annonay was the home of the Montgolfier brothers who invented hot-air ballooning?’
‘No, Nicole, I did not.’ Enzo sighed. ‘Emile Narcisse,’ he prompted, in an attempt to get her back on track.
‘Yes, yes, getting to it.’ Now her head moved up and down as she scanned a document. ‘Encouraged by his mother, apparently he bought his first painting at the age of fourteen. By the time he opened his private collection to public view in 2005, it comprised more than 1300 pieces. In 2008 he donated 300 paintings from his collection to the French state. Worth, at that time, somewhere in the region of 63 million euros.’
Enzo whistled softly.
‘Evidently he was a man of considerable means, then,’ Dominique said.
Nicole confirmed. ‘His personal wealth has been estimated at more than 500 million.’
Enzo said, ‘Well, there’s motive straight away. Who stood to inherit?’
Nicole shook her head. ‘No one. He was an only child, never married, lived alone.’
Dominique said, ‘You can bet that some second cousin somewhere will come crawling out of the woodwork to stake a claim.’
Nicole seemed to be flicking through more documents, her eyes darting about the screen. ‘He had a gallery in New York City, and recently acquired a second Parisian gallery in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire in the Marais. Although his training was in classical art, he has traded almost exclusively for the last few years in modern contemporary, exhibiting a lot of new young American painters. He was a huge name in the world of international art, Monsieur Macleod, although you and I would never have heard of him. But he came to the attention of the general public about seven years ago, when he uncovered a haul of looted Nazi art in Switzerland.’
Dominique blew air through pursed lips. ‘I remember reading about that.’
‘Found in an apartment in Geneva,’ Nicole said. ‘It had belonged to the son of one of Hitler’s art dealers, a man called Anton Weber, who had been trickle-trading them in the marketplace for years to finance a very handsome lifestyle. Narcisse had sold a number of them, unaware, he claimed, of their provenance. The discovery was made when Narcisse flew to Geneva to keep a long-standing lunch appointment with Weber. When the man failed to turn up, Narcisse went to his apartment, where he got no reply. But a smell of gas prompted him to alert the authorities. The police broke in and found him dead.’
‘Suicide?’
‘Apparently. But anyway, it turned out the apartment was chock-full of looted Second World War art. Much of it stolen from Jewish collectors in France by Hitler’s art thieves, an organisation called ERR. Do you want to know what that stands for?’ Nicole was nothing if not thorough.
‘You’re going to tell me anyway,’ Enzo said.
‘Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg,’ she said carefully. ‘The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce. Alfred Rosenberg was the Nazi’s chief ideologue, and he set up the ERR to appropriate cultural property from occupied countries during World War Two. In Weber’s apartment there were paintings by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch, and lots of other star names. Worth so much they couldn’t even put a figure on it. Narcisse was appointed to track down the heirs of their rightful owners, and if no heirs were found to send them to auction. Mostly they were bought by museums and art galleries, and a few private collectors.’
‘With Narcisse picking up the commission, no doubt,’ Enzo said.
Nicole nodded. ‘Exactly. He was active in the art market right up until . . . well . . . until he was murdered. Working from his base at the Marais gallery.’
Enzo scratched his head thoughtfully. What was a man like Narcisse doing in an old lady’s house in a tiny village in south-west France? He said, ‘What about Hans Bauer?’
Nicole pulled a face. ‘Not nearly so much online about Herr Bauer, Monsieur Macleod. Twenty-five years old. Graduate of the Universität der Künste, Berlin. That’s the University of the Arts. I had to look it up. He got into a lot of trouble as a teenager and earned himself a conviction for assault when he was eighteen. From the newspaper cuttings I was able to find, it seems that it was only his mother’s money and influence that managed to keep him out of jail. But he appears to have put his wild days behind him and is now the director of a small Berlin art gallery owned by his mother.’
A crash and a shriek drew her focus away from the screen.
‘Oh God!’ she said. ‘What a mess!’ And turned back to Enzo. ‘I’m going to have to run, Monsieur Macleod. Delphine has just dropped her dinner on the floor. I think Fabien is going to kill her!’
And her screen went blank. Dominique leaned in to shut down the application and glanced at Enzo. ‘So what do you think?’
He shook his head. ‘No idea. But if I were to hazard a guess – which I won’t – I might think it had something to do with art.’
She grinned. ‘You don’t say.’
He leaned back in his seat and interlocked his fingers behind his head. ‘The thing that still troubles me about the crime scene, though, is how Bauer managed to get himself covered in so much blood. I’m sure I’m missing something.’ He tipped forward again. ‘But we’ll not get anywhere until we find out why the two of them were in that house.’
Laurent was still strumming at his father’s guitar, trying to link an unlikely sequence of chords. Enzo turned and gazed at him fondly. ‘Try F sharp minor 7th after the E,’ he suggested.
Laurent looked at him as if he were mad. ‘What?’
‘Try it.’
The boy focused his concentration on making the right shape with his fingers, played his father’s suggested chord once, then tried it in th
e sequence. His face lit up. ‘That works!’
Enzo just smiled.
Dominique said, ‘Will I put the fish under the grill now?’
Enzo had prepared the dish before the Zoom call. White fish fillet in lime juice and ginger with sliced white grapes. The potatoes were already boiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Five or six minutes is all it needs. I just want to have a look at those pics I took in the house at Carennac.’ And as Dominique went through to the kitchen he crossed to the table and opened up his iPad. The photographs taken with his phone had already synced and he was able to look at them more closely on the larger screen. Again he shook his head. It made no sense. Bauer had attacked his victim face-on, slashing across his throat, probably with the missing kitchen knife. Narcisse had fallen in a pool of his own blood in the narrow passage between the table and the sink. Why would Bauer try to squeeze past, rather than make his escape through the side door behind him?
Enzo slipped half-moon reading glasses on to the end of his nose and peered more closely at the blood spatter on the floor, a frown slowly forming itself in two deep creases between his eyes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Berlin, Germany,
ten days before the murder
Bauer was in his tiny office at the back of the gallery when he received the news that his mother was dead.
He replaced the phone in its cradle and tipped back in his seat, swivelling to look out of the large window that gave on to the exhibition space below. His reflection in it was pale. He thought he looked like a ghost, with his blond hair drawn back from the too white skin of his forehead. He forced himself to jump focus to the gallery beyond. White walls, white ceiling, white floor, all burned out by dilated pupils. A row of ceiling lights was angled towards the walls, and the work of an aspiring young German artist whom Bauer had discovered at the end of last year. But what should have been a startling debut exhibition had been ruined by the pandemic.