by William Shaw
She was right. That’s who it was.
‘It’s a drawing,’ said Cupidi cautiously. ‘It doesn’t prove anything.’
But there was that feeling in her stomach again. The sense of getting close to something dark.
THIRTY-FIVE
‘Oh my God,’ said Ferriter. ‘This is it?’
‘Yes.’
She had done her lipstick two minutes ago. ‘Oh my God. I mean . . .’ Ferriter leaned her head to one side, quizzically.
‘What?’
Ferriter and Cupidi were standing on the Dungeness shingle in front of Astrid Miller’s small shack, by the old front door. A humble-looking wooden shack a little to the north of the old lighthouse, covered in thick layers of paint that had been chipped and repainted over the years.
Ferriter looked gutted. ‘I just mean . . . it’s not what I expected. I mean, he’s a multi-squillionaire. She could afford one of those really cool ones with the big glass windows and the hot tubs. But I suppose she was never into that kind of superficial stuff.’
‘Go on,’ said Cupidi. ‘Ring the bell.’
‘She was always deeper than that. Political, you know? Not shy about telling journalists what she thought. You sure she’s in there?’
‘Someone was last night.’ Cupidi stepped up and pressed the bell. Nobody answered. ‘At least, I thought so.’
‘Maybe we should leave it.’
Cupidi walked round to the other side of the cottage, the side that faced the sea, and tried to remember how the fabric had hung in the big window. Had that gentle fold of material been like that last night? Or was it just a trick of the light that made her think it was different?
She rapped on the glass with her knuckle. Again, nothing.
Heading back to the front of the house, she paused at the side. There was that new lock-up built on the side. Though it was bolted, there was no padlock. Cupidi drew back the bolt and looked inside, and saw it was a store for the property’s green bin. Beyond it, an old door which must lead into the old cottage. The collection around here was on Mondays. She opened the bin and peered in. Neatly wrapped, three small bags. She leaned in and pulled one out. Through the thin black plastic she could see the rubbish it contained: an empty box of fishfingers, a milk carton, cardboard toilet paper tubes. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary. She poked a hole in the bag to read the use-by date on the milk carton.
20 April. It was fresh. She dropped the rubbish back inside the bin and bolted the door again.
She pulled out her mobile, found Astrid Miller’s phone number and called it. The moment it started to ring, she pressed her head against the walls of the summer house.
Clearly, unmistakably, a tiny tremble shook the wood. The vibration stopped as soon as the message kicked in.
She texted: Hi Astrid. I know you’re in there. I am a police officer. I just need to talk about Abir Stein.
She went to the glass door at the front, knocked and waited.
A hand pulled back the curtain, revealing a woman dressed in a polka-dot shirt and a pair of khaki trousers, looking back at Cupidi and Ferriter.
‘It’s bloody her,’ whispered Ferriter. ‘Oh my bloody God.’
Behind her, the wooden room was painted bright, vibrant yellow. An open book sat on a black table in front of a white sofa that looked like it had been slept on, a bright red woollen blanket lying rumpled near it. A bookshelf was full of large books, some with scraps of paper poking out of the pages. On the floor lay lines of flints taken from the beach. The pale white and brown stones were arranged in long curving patterns that snaked into curls and circles, as if they belonged to some strange ritual.
‘Go away,’ the woman called through the glass, hands on slightly cocked hips. There was always something a little absurd about seeing famous people in ordinary places; like hearing an English word suddenly spoken in the middle of a foreigner’s conversation.
‘We need to talk.’ Cupidi held up her police warrant card.
She squinted. ‘Did Evert send you?’
‘No.’
She put the key into the door and turned it, pushed the door open. ‘You don’t look like coppers.’
‘Thanks,’ said Ferriter, with a giggle.
Even un-made-up, with her hair messed, older than she was in the photos, Astrid Miller was unmistakably beautiful. Straight-backed, broad-shouldered, fine-boned, she stood looking defiantly back at them. ‘It’s about the arm, then, is it?’
‘I left messages on your phone. You’ve not been answering them.’
Astrid Miller took a step backwards. ‘I’m on a digital detox. I’m here for privacy, so I’d appreciate if you have something to say, please say it. Tell me, did you find out whose arm it was?’
‘Not yet. Do you have anything you want to tell us about it?’
The woman looked surprised. ‘Why on earth would I?’
‘Or any theories about how an arm got into an artwork of yours?’
‘Of course not. I mean, the whole thing is nuts, isn’t it?’
‘May we come in?’
Astrid Miller breathed in, then out, and took a step backwards. Cupidi moved cautiously into the room, stepping over a line of the stones. ‘To be honest, we’re struggling to understand it ourselves.’
Astrid laughed darkly. ‘Please don’t look to me for help. Right now, I have my own concerns.’
‘Which are . . . ?’
‘. . . none of your business.’
‘But you must have wondered why someone put an arm in something you owned.’
‘Of course I have. But I don’t know why. I really don’t.’ She looked at Cupidi warily.
‘I talked to your husband. He said he doesn’t know where you are.’
She laughed again, more hollowly this time. ‘Did he really? Well, it wouldn’t have been hard for him to find out. Well, would it? After all, you could find me. He knows exactly where I am. You’d do better asking why he doesn’t want you to talk to me.’
‘Why would he want that?’
Astrid sat down on the big white couch, leaving them standing, Ferriter a pace behind Cupidi, unusually silent. ‘You met Evert, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well? Didn’t you spot it?’
‘Spot what?’
‘That he is a total control freak. Everybody knows that.’
Cupidi thought back to the brief time she had spent in Evert’s company. How much of his charm had been a facade? ‘There’s something wrong with your marriage?’
‘I sincerely hope that’s not what you’re here to talk about.’
‘I’m just trying to find out why somebody put an arm in an artwork that belongs to your foundation.’
‘And so am I.’
Cupidi looked around the room at the lines of stones and tried to see some kind of logic in them.
‘Those are just stones.’ Miller seemed to have read her thoughts. ‘I’ve been keeping myself to myself in the day. At night I wander on the beach. Pick up Anything at Your Feet. Do you know that?’
‘Sorry?’
She leaned down and picked up a flint. ‘It was an artwork in the sixties by a man called Ben Vautier. He was part of Fluxus, with Yoko Ono. The work was just an instruction. I find it comforting. Pick up Anything at Your Feet. Round here it’s just stones. So . . . I pick them up, you see?’ Astrid held the stone and smiled. ‘I just come here to be on my own, to think. To refresh myself. To be honest with myself.’
‘And have you come to any conclusions?’
‘We do have enemies, obviously, Evert and I. Evert thought at first it was an attempt to undermine the credibility of our fund.’
‘Did he? He didn’t mention that to me.’
‘Because mentioning it to you would be tantamount to admitting it might be true.’
‘How much have you invested in it?’
She turned one corner of her mouth into a smile; the other stayed where it was. ‘Evert wouldn’t want me to tell you that.’
‘A lot?’
‘As long as you don’t need to liquidate assets in a hurry, art is a good place to leave your spare cash. Evert is a very, very rich man. He likes to be tax-efficient.’
‘So if the reputation of the fund was to drop, you could lose a great deal of money?’
‘Buckets,’ she said.
‘So what if someone is trying to undermine its value?’
‘Well, that would be interesting, wouldn’t it? The value of that piece might rise, through notoriety, obviously, but it does our reputation no good, and the overall value of the fund would take a hit. It hasn’t though, yet, I promise you. The opposite, in fact.’
‘Does Evert have many enemies?’
‘Oh, please. What do you think?’
‘I asked him about that. He gave the impression that he hadn’t thought a great deal about it.’
This time a small laugh bubbled out of Astrid. ‘Of course he did. He would hate you to think he was obsessed by that kind of thing. Men like Evert don’t like to show weakness.’
‘So you think it’s possible that this is something done to attack the art fund?’
‘Obviously it’s possible.’
Cupidi looked around the shack. ‘So you come here a lot?’ she asked.
‘I don’t like to advertise my presence here. It’s surprisingly easy to remain anonymous in Dungeness. The people who’ve always been round here respect each other’s privacy. The new people, the ones with all the money . . . they are barely here anyway, so they don’t know who else is here.’
She didn’t have any problem calling other people ‘the ones with all the money’, Cupidi noticed.
‘I’ve had this place for years. From back when they were cheap and only a few artists were interested. Before I met Evert. When we married, I insisted it stayed in my name. It was part of our prenuptial agreement.’
‘If the fund is an investment vehicle for your husband, what’s in it for you?’
‘You’re very direct, aren’t you? The frustrating thing about being a rich man’s wife is that people immediately assume you have no brain of your own. I hadn’t expected that. All this was a world I was interested in before I met Evert. I resent the idea that it’s my plaything.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Cupidi.
‘It sounded very much like what you meant.’
‘If someone did want to somehow lower the value of the art fund, why would they be doing it?’ asked Cupidi.
Astrid rubbed the back of her neck, rolled her head around as if she was stiff. She took a minute answering. ‘The better question to ask would be, if someone wanted to lower the value of our art fund, would they do it like that? I’d estimate the potential sale price of Funerary Urn has probably doubled since it started appearing in national newspapers. If anything, we’re ahead on this at the moment, though that might change, I suppose, if they do something else to attack us. Do you mind closing the door? I really don’t like people knowing when I’m here.’
Ferriter, who’d been standing with a grin on her face through most of the conversation, sprang into action.
‘The value has increased. I should regard you as a suspect then,’ said Cupidi.
Astrid smiled. ‘I expect you already do. That’s how you work, isn’t it?’ She stretched her arms, then relaxed again. ‘You live here, don’t you?’
‘How did you know?’
‘I recognise you. You have a girl. A teenager. She used to be out here on the beach all the time.’
Cupidi was unsettled by this; she had never seen Astrid before in her life, and she was supposed to be the observant one. Astrid must have picked up on that, because she smiled again and said, ‘See? Most people don’t like it when their privacy is invaded. Why should I be any different, just because of who I am? We’re all the same, us women.’
‘Yes,’ said Ferriter.
‘Do you know where Abir Stein is?’ Cupidi asked.
Astrid looked up sharply. ‘No. Do you?’
Cupidi shook her head. ‘He doesn’t appear to have been in his flat for several weeks.’
‘I know. I’ve been trying to call him.’
‘Has he emailed you? Zoya Gubenko says he’s replied to her on a couple of occasions.’
She frowned. ‘Has he? I’ve had nothing at all from him.’
‘He seems to have left his flat in a hurry.’
‘You’ve been to his place?’
‘We searched it yesterday. His passport was there, but he wasn’t.’
Astrid chewed on her lip. ‘I was in touch with him pretty much on a weekly basis until about three weeks ago but I’ve not managed to reach him since then.’
‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’
‘On one level, it’s not that unusual for him to disappear for a while. He has fingers in pies. It’s not just us he works for.’
‘What kind of pies?’
Astrid Miller looked at her sharply. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you trust him?’
‘The art world is full of gossip and backbiting, much like fashion. I know a bit about them both. If you go around asking, you’ll hear a lot about Abbie. But you’ll never meet a more knowledgeable, passionate man.’ She turned her head away; picked a book off the shelf and started leafing through the pages. ‘You know what? If he hadn’t agreed to work with us, this art fund would never have been as important as it turned out to be. I’ve been involved in art most of my life, and I thought I knew a lot. He’s taught me so much, though.’
‘Did you ever meet the other people he works for?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘Do you think he could have got himself mixed up in something . . . serious?’
‘Yes. Obviously. Art is about honesty, but it’s also about money because of people like us – the patrons. And money is never about honesty. But if he has got mixed up in something like that, it would only be because of his passion. Abir Stein is not . . .’ She tailed off.
‘Is not what?’
‘Whatever you hear, Abir Stein is an honourable man. He cares about truth too much. That’s why he is so good at understanding art. Good art is about honesty.’
‘Is it?’
‘The British think it’s all a scam. That artists are laughing behind our backs, getting one over on them. You hear it in the sneer of the reviewers. But they’re wrong. Artists are truth-tellers. It’s what attracts me to it.’
She dropped from the sofa into a kneeling position and started gathering up the stones, one by one, putting them in a fresh pile.
‘You have no idea where Mr Stein is?’
‘No.’
‘Does that worry you? Because it’s starting to worry me.’
On her hands and knees, she followed a line of the pebbles, picking them up. ‘Of course it worries me.’
She thought about what the constable from the Met’s Art Unit had told her. As far as she had been concerned, Abir Stein was almost certainly handling other people’s money.
Astrid Miller sat back down on the sofa. ‘You think it’s his arm?’
‘I can’t be sure. Yet.’
There was a tremble to her voice when she said, ‘I sincerely hope you’re wrong.’
‘Do you know anyone who had a key to his flat?’
‘No. Why?’
Cupidi ignored the question. ‘I need to get an idea of how the Foundation works, and what his role was in it.’
She sighed. ‘Sometimes I would find work – or come across an artist. Sometimes it would be Abir. Abbie was better at discovering pieces by established practitioners that might become valuable. My interest was always more in emerging artists.’
‘What about your husband?’
‘He isn’t interested in that side. He’s just the money man.’
‘So once you’d find an artist, Evert would do the deal?’
‘With Abir, yes. Evert doesn’t have a clue how to talk to gallerists, still less the artists themselves. It’s n
ot his world. But together, Abir and Evert take care of that. I was less interested in the money, except, of course, for the fact that we were able to return some of it to our artists. If we made a profit, they got it back.’
Ferriter finally spoke. ‘Excuse me. I was wondering, have you heard of an artist called Ross Clough?’
She looked at Ferriter as if she had forgotten she was there, then thought for a while. ‘No. Is he new?’
‘No. He’s quite young. He’s not established. He lives in Margate and—’
‘Oh, God. If it’s who I think it is . . . Kind of pale. Tall-ish. Not a real artist. A bit full of himself.’
Ferriter nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Talks with a smile on his face, like he knows something?’
Ferriter’s laugh was high-pitched. ‘Oh God. That’s him, exactly.’
She addressed Ferriter directly. ‘He’s a stalker,’ she said. ‘He stalked me, as a matter of fact.’
Ferriter looked at Cupidi. Her face said: See? Told you so.
THIRTY-SIX
‘He drew nude pictures of me. He sent them to me via email.’
‘Creep,’ said Ferriter.
‘Yes. After I’d turned him down – as an artist, obviously. As a way of trying to attract my attention, it’s the artistic equivalent of a dick pic. He also does awful sculptures. Contemporary tape-art and mixed materials . . . he’s a quasi Thomas Hirschhorn rip-off.’
Ferriter looked baffled.
‘Hard to explain. Hirschhorn’s very good, very influential. Creates these hyper-saturated installations that are like accretions of his research. He works collaboratively with local communities. This guy doorstepped me once. Came to our house at Long Hill with photographs of his work to try and persuade me to buy it.’
Again, Cupidi and Ferriter exchanged a glance.
‘He’s been there before?’
‘What? Why?’
Ferriter said, ‘He was there this morning. Your security man found him on the premises.’
‘Really? Mulligan found him on our land?’ She looked unsettled.
‘It must happen to you loads and loads. Artists wanting to show you their stuff . . .’