Dark Oceans

by Mark Macrossan

  46.

  A fire engine raced by, somewhere.

  And then she remembered where she was. In London, not Paris, not anymore. She got confused sometimes. That’s what happens when you spend your whole life moving, flat to flat, city to city…

  The moonlight shining through the window caused the silhouetted wooden framework to form a pattern of oddly stretched rectangles on the floor. The moon was the same everywhere, but this particular moonbeam, it was just for her…

  He may as well have been keeping her locked underground, she had that little contact with the outside world. Felt like he’d been ‘keeping’ her for years now – decades – yet she knew it had only been five weeks. It was always cold too, there was something wrong with the central heating. She would tell him. She’d already told him, but she’d tell him again.

  The sound of a key in the front door. Speak of the devil.

  47.

  Runion and Bridges. They could have been a firm of solicitors. Partners. They almost were. But for Bridges at least, this latest news was a blow.

  Runion was showing Bridges a painting he’d especially wanted him to see – they were in Runion’s gallery in Mayfair, Bridges was ‘dropping in’ on his way back from Paris – and Runion suddenly lowered his voice and muttered something under his breath which Bridges didn’t quite catch.

  ‘Sorry?’ Bridges asked.

  Runion looked around, apparently to make sure no-one was listening.

  ‘He’s your problem,’ he said, more clearly this time.

  ‘Who is?’

  Runion indicated the painting in front of him with his finger in a stabbing motion. It was a painting of a mermaid.

  ‘She is?’ Bridges said, confused.

  ‘He is.’

  An extraordinary work of art well ahead of its time, painted in the early sixteenth century. It showed a mermaid sitting on a grim, stony shore and combing her long crimson locks that fell wetly over her breasts, with a dark, moss-coloured sea lapping at the tips of her fishtail. She was casting a sensuous smile in the direction of the observer, presumably the artist himself. Himself. It was, in fact, the same artist responsible for a painting Bridges had purchased from Runion’s gallery only a month ago.

  ‘The artist?’

  Runion nodded.

  ‘How is he my problem?’

  ‘He knows who you are. And me. Which could be a problem. Because―’

  ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ Bridges said, completely lost now. ‘What are you talking about. The artist died in 1593. And you’re saying he knows who I am?’

  ‘No. I mean yes. The artist does, yes, but…’ Runion trailed off.

  What was with Runion today? Was he drunk? Depressed? Should Bridges be―

  ‘You see, Lawrence…’ Runion went on. He looked like he was in pain. Was he dying of something? ‘The artist who painted this portrait is not who you think it is.’

  ‘You mean not who you told me it is.’

  Runion nodded, guiltily, if Bridges was any judge of human body language. Which, he had to admit, he was not.

  ‘Yes Richard,’ Bridges said, by now both interested and pissed off in equal measures. ‘Do go on. You have my full attention.’

  Runion drew a deep breath. ‘The man who painted this is alive and well and living in Islington.’

  ‘North London.’

  ‘Well it’s not bloody North Paris is it.’

  ‘Hey. Richard. You’re the one changing your story here. You’re the art dealer passing off forgeries―’

  ‘Will you keep your voice down.’

  Runion looked genuinely upset, Bridges observed, but who the bloody hell was the one who’d recently, it would now seem, spent a hundred and twenty K on a Spanish fake?

  ‘Listen. Lawrence. We shouldn’t talk about this in here.’

  ‘I’ll bet,’ Bridges said grumpily. And then he saw something in Runion’s eyes that pulled him up. ‘I don’t like that look. At least tell me… is there some kind of threat?’

  Runion nodded.

  ‘Of a… pecuniary nature? Or is it… physical. Pertaining to… one’s health.’

  ‘The latter.’

  ‘To my health? Am I in danger?’

  Runion tilted his head from one side to the other – a maybe-maybe-not.

  ‘Great―’

  ‘We both could be,’ Runion muttered. ‘Especially here…’

  ‘What? Speak up.’

  ‘Especially. Here. Can you do lunch?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Meet me at the club.’

  ‘The Garrick?’

  ‘Yes. No. The Travellers. At shall we say… one?’

  The next day, Thursday October 24th, Bridges caught a glimpse of his future while he was waiting for Runion to show up at their rendezvous. It wasn’t a person he saw, or anything so literal – it wasn’t, for example, the sad old man with a walking stick easing himself into the tired leather armchair in the corner of the reading room – but rather it was the garden. Looking out through the double doors of the reading room – he far preferred the Garrick to these showy clubs on Pall Mall – he could see a garden desperate for a longer summer, tired of the ruthlessness of the English climate, already looking forward to next spring, and no doubt trying not to think about (if plants could think, perhaps they could) the inevitable cold weather on its way. Trying not to feel, if plants could feel, the weight of an evil future about to take its toll.

  And that’s exactly how Bridges felt as he waited for Runion at the Traveller’s Club.

  A squirrel gaily bounded across the lawn, pretending to be a gazelle. Was it happy? Happier than I, certainly, he thought. He was probably, in fact, the unhappiest man in London at that precise moment, although he had to concede that one was usually worrying when one shouldn’t be, and was usually happy when one shouldn’t be as well. Take that squirrel for example. Its future wasn’t a pretty one, not on paper at least, it was a grey, and greys were universally hated across the country, regarded as vermin, and just about everyone Bridges knew had honed their shooting skills on the poor old grey squirrel, so the maths were against it. (Whatever you do, don’t go calling them “poor old grey squirrels” over dinner with friends, they’ll murder you with their forks). The grey was doomed, all this human fury would catch up with it eventually. Bridges on the other hand was destined for greatness.

  Or had been. What now? This latest business sounded bad. What was the latest impediment to Bridge’s well-deserved success – and his health! – that his good friend had uncovered this time?

  Bridges’ confused thoughts were interrupted by a member of staff.

  ‘Mr Bridges, sir? There is a message for you.’

  Good grief. Turned out Runion had to move their lunch to the Garrick after all. No explanation given, all very mysterious, but never mind that. The Garrick was a far better choice. One had to be grateful for small mercies.

  Bridges, in his pin-striped navy suit, sans overcoat, strolled down Garrick Street in Covent Garden. He refused to rush: whatever the problem was, he wasn’t Runion’s servant boy. A light, misty rain was falling – if falling was the right word, floating gently downwards would have been a better description – and the stone of the buildings took on an oily sheen.

  He threw a sharp right under the monolithic arched entrance, up the four shallow stone steps he knew so well, a sharp push on the polished iron bar and he was through the glass-panelled wooden doors and into the quiet, comforting embrace of the Garrick Club.

  48.

  Runion was waiting for him in the main sitting room. Bridges gave him a curt smile and joined him. And so there they sat, next to the large window, which at the same time both sucked in and repelled the greyness of the street outside. In no time at all (the staff were excellent here, beyond compare), they were cradling drinks – lemonades for both of them, which indicated the seriousness of the situation better than anything – and occasionally glancing up at the paintings that kept them company, a
lmost every one a portrait from another time. There was no-one else in the room, so only the subjects of the paintings were there to observe them.

  ‘Why the change of venue?’ Bridges asked.

  ‘Word reached me about a particular person lunching there today. To do with… all of this. Could have been awkward.’

  ‘Right.’

  Bridges waited to see if Runion would be more forthcoming. But nothing came. He continued:

  ‘So come on, tell me. The artist then. It sounds as though I can safely assume it’s not Corrientes.’

  Runion stared into his drink for a long time. Clinked the ice. Poked at the slice of lemon with his straw.

  ‘It’s hard to know where to start,’ he eventually said.

  ‘Do your best.’

  ‘Have you heard of Norton Rattatroop?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A Venice art dealer, originally Armenian. Norton’s anglicized… although you’d think he would have chosen Nick or something, wouldn’t you. Anyway, his real name’s Nishan. Nishan Rattatroop? No? He recently disappeared. Here in London.’

  ‘That’s rotten luck.’

  ‘Wife’s just reported him missing.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘What about Aleksei Denisovsky ?’

  ‘Aleksei…?’

  ‘Denisovsky. Russian. Or Ukrainian, in fact. In the antiquities business. Young and successful. Used to work for a friend of mine in Venice. He rang me a couple of weeks ago, from Perth. Australia. I’m not exactly sure why he was there, and it was a bit out of the blue, I hadn’t spoken to him in months. More than a year actually. He was the one, you see…’ Runion paused and stared out at veils of drizzle sweeping past beyond the window pane. ‘He sold me the painting I sold to you.’

  ‘Here we go.’

  ‘Listen. When I sold it to you, I had no idea it wasn’t a Corrientes. I’d swear to that on a stack of King James bibles. It was only since then…’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Not long ago. A few days―’

  ‘You were just about to ring me, obviously.’

  Runion smiled grimly at Bridges’ sarcasm.

  ‘Anyway,’ Bridges said. ‘I thought you said he was in the antiquities business.’

  ‘He was. But he handled any art – paintings, jewellery, whatever, as long as it was old. And profitable.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now he doesn’t do much.’

  ‘Lucky him.’

  ‘Not really. He’s dead.’

  ‘Ah. There’s always a catch.’

  ‘Or believed to be dead. Went missing in the desert over there. With his girlfriend. But there’s a bit of a smell to it. They weren’t sightseeing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s complicated. And this is where your painting comes into it. There’s been a battle for supremacy going on, of late, for control of the black market in art and antiquities. Worldwide. It’s always been spread pretty thinly that business – with the exception of the Nazis in the thirties and forties, of course, and the odd foray by the Italian mafia – but lately groups from the old Soviet bloc have been making inroads.’

  ‘What’s any of this got to do with my painting?’

  ‘Wait. I’m coming to that. The point is, there’s a huge amount of cross-over right now, between art theft, art forgery and the antiquities black market. Which wouldn’t matter in itself, except that the people gaining the upper hand are not pleasant people. As in, exceptionally unpleasant. To them, human lives are just another currency, slotting in somewhere between the rouble and the rupee, I suspect. A life, to them, is only worth as much as it takes to snuff it out without being caught. In other words, bugger all. Your Corrientes, would, no doubt, be worth more than a dozen lives.

  ‘That’s if it weren’t a fake, I presume. How many lives would I get for it now?’

  ‘Lawrence, I do believe the bad news concerning the provenance of the painting is blinding you to the gravity of the situation.’

  ‘No doubt, Richard, no doubt.’

  Runion sighed, and continued. ‘I won’t bore you with the finer points of how I came to suspect the forgery―’

  ‘Oh you’re not boring me, believe me.’

  ‘And just remember I still own one myself. La Sirena, which you saw yesterday. Anyway I got my chap onto this, who managed to track down the forgerer. To Islington, as I said. A very sad little flat I have to say, but there you have it. They usually are.’

  ‘Anyway.’

  ‘Yes, anyway. The reception I received from this Mr Smith as he calls himself… ha ha… It was, shall we say, less than cordial. Made no attempt to deny it, though. He simply said I’d better watch my back… and so had anyone I’d mentioned this to. He has nasty friends. So he said and I believe him.’

  ‘So how did he find out about me?’

  ‘Not through me, I assure you. He seemed to know already. Having said that, I did initially warn him… this was before his counter threat… that I would have to inform anyone I’d already sold a painting to.’

  ‘I can see where this is going,’ said Bridges, who was becoming more miserable by the minute. Feeling increasingly squirrel-like.

  ‘It goes without saying that these people won’t think twice about causing someone to, um… disappear should their operation be endangered. It’s a new breed, Lawrence. A new breed.’

  ‘So how was it left? Détente? Or armies amassing at the border? I hope you brought your legendary diplomatic powers of persuasion to bear. Please tell me you did, Richard.’

  ‘An uneasy truce is the highest I could, in all good conscience, put it.’

  Bridges took a long slow breath in, and emitted a slow long exhalation.

  ‘So,’ continued Runion. ‘The first thing is to not tell a soul until we manage to sort this out.’

  ‘And how are we going to do that? Sort it out, I mean.’

  ‘Well I have my chap looking into a few aspects, subtly putting out feelers, that kind of thing. Finding out what the upshot of the whole blasted business is likely to be.’

  ‘Sounds like a busy chap, your chap.’

  ‘I do hope so, with the amount I’ve been forking out.’

  ‘Really? How long have you been―?’

  ‘There is one very interesting little piece of information we’ve found out though. Someone’s supposedly recovered the Isfahan Decagon from a wreck off Namibia.’

  ‘The Isfahan Decagon? Really? That’s a bit of a coincidence isn’t it, we were just talking about it… it must have been…’

  ‘Last week, we were. Exactly. Anyway, the Prospero’s Dancer, heard of it?’

  ‘Vaguely. Wasn’t it… one of the… opium―’

  ‘…opium clippers, exactly. It sank off Namibia and that’s where the Decagon was recovered. Someone on the Prospero’s Dancer acquired it in Macau, it seems. This is all according to a PhD student working at the British Museum. The legendary Isfahan Decagon, can you believe it? Mathematical mysteries bound up in its geometry and all of that, obviously worth an absolute bomb.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Bridges. ‘So what’s the latest on that again? Why is it different from the other Islamic designs, girih designs, made in…. When was it?’

  ‘Late fifteenth. Around 1480. Well. As I understand it, and I’m no expert, but there are three essential differences. Firstly, it employs different underlying shapes in its design… the geometry’s more complex in other words. Secondly, its internal patterns and the way the layers relate to each other is different. Stop me if I’m losing you.’

  ‘No I understand, I think.’ Bridges, didn’t, but he’d google it later. He was impressed enough with himself as it was, for remembering the word girih.

  ‘In the case of the Decagon,’ Runion went on, ‘there is… or there’s supposed to be, no-one’s seen the bloody thing in five hundred years or whatever… but there’s supposedly a subtle and complex interrelation between the layers in the way they repeat themselves in a fracta
l manner, but also seem to build in subtle changes as well.’

  ‘Right. And the third thing?’

  ‘The third one’s a bit more contentious. There are supposed to be hidden images embedded in its design… at least if you extend the design out far enough. It’s a non-repetitive design that can be extended out to infinity, so I’m not sure how far you have to go, but―’

  ‘Images of what?’

  ‘It’s unclear. One claim is a portrait of a woman or a goddess… some even say God himself. Or herself.’

  ‘Pffff,’ Bridges scoffed. ‘Talk about horses for courses.’

  ‘Well yes, because another claim is it contains some kind of map or key to who knows what. But whether you believe those wilder assertions, the general consensus seems to be that the Isfahan Decagon is the first and only one of its kind: perfect tiling with a perfect golden ratio, infinite non-repeating pattern, and a layered shifting geometry unsurpassed even today. As such, it is most highly prized, much sought after, and extremely valuable. So you can imagine why the employers of our friend Mr Smith over in Islington were keen to get their grubby hands on it.’

  ‘They’re the ones who salvaged it? Well none of us’ll get to see it now.’

  ‘Possibly but it’s not as simple as that because… and this is where, I have to say, my chap has done an absolutely stellar job… someone’s stolen it. Possibly a member of a rival organisation.’

  ‘Ha! And what’s Interpol been doing during all of this? Just playing catch up as usual?’

  ‘I’d like to say they’re too busy preventing the sale of forged sixteenth century Spanish paintings, but clearly…’

  Runion trailed off as someone else entered the room. He checked to see he didn’t know him. Bridges looked around too. A bespectacled, pallid, slightly corpulent man in a charcoal grey suit, wandered over and picked up a copy of The Times, nodded to his two fellow members, sat down in the far corner of the room and noisily opened his paper. Runion and Bridges continued their conversation at a lower volume.