The Art of Deception

by The Art of Deception (retail) (epub)

  The fax had put Julian’s mind at ease, but not released the tension strumming in the flat. Anatoli was alive, so who was the victim in the Moscow street? Dyadya or Igor? Who was the killer, who the killed? Had Igor sided with Anatoli and been killed by the Uzbek for his betrayal, leaving the two senior partners facing one another, armocked in the last stages of their battle for control? On the whole, this was the explanation I favoured. An alternative hypothesis was that Anatoli was the victor, outwitting his captor and arranging a violent revenge. He was capable of it, I was sure. I had received evidence of his ruthlessness when we were incarcerated together, the blow to the guard’s head, the burning of the horses. I did not discuss the various possibilities that went through my mind.

  On Friday morning I went to the office. The phone rang as I was leaving home and I picked up the receiver in passing. A man asked for Miss Bennet. I called Julian, and continued on my way to the lift. Although the speaker did not greet me, I recognised his voice. It was that of Tom Naish.

  I try to remember my state of mind that day of Anatoli’s return. Was I really as unaware as I appeared to be? The answer is yes. All the evidence was there, like the scientific data on the Litvak Vermeer, but I had not looked at it. So when what happened, happened, it was less a surprise than a shock, almost recognition.

  Julian took her coat in the car to Heathrow. It was a raw evening and she would need its warmth on the walk from the car park to the terminal. During the drive, it lay across her lap like a sleeping animal. I had already phoned to find out if the plane was on time, for she had insisted that we should be there for the touch-down.

  ‘It’ll take him hours to collect his luggage and go through passport control,’ I had protested.

  ‘They sometimes land early,’ she had affirmed. ‘And you can get through very fast. He might only have hand luggage. Or his bags may be the first off the plane.’

  So we were there when the Landed sign flashed on the monitors. She was right; we did not have to wait long. About fifteen minutes later, Anatoli emerged through the controls, carrying only a small valise.

  The bruises on his face had gone; the swelling had subsided; the smashed cheek had healed to a neat scar. Only his nose looked a little distorted: a bit of western surgery needed there. He was dressed, expensively, in a cashmere coat worn open over a jacket and tie and flannel trousers, looking like any prosperous banker. Julian spotted him instantly amid the families pushing trolleys loaded with suitcases and duty-free carrier bags, and moved forward to greet him as he came out of customs. I remained where I was, to let them have their meeting uninterrupted.

  Anatoli put his hand out, resting it on her shoulder. She lifted her cheek. They exchanged kisses, coldly, old friends meeting after a year’s separation. Anatoli dropped his hand. Julian drew back. He was speaking, searching for someone else in the crowd. They both seemed ill at ease, needing a third person to break the tension between them. With relief, I realised that my imagined reunion, the race into one another’s arms, was not going to take place. A third person stepped into the sphere of embarrassment that surrounded them; I recognised the ubiquitous Tom Naish.

  I came forward now, frowning. There was some confusion. I had consulted Tom about the dangers to Julian from Dyadya and here he was, in the wrong context. Other men joined him. We now made a circle, with Julian and Anatoli at its hub, which blocked the flow of passengers out of the customs halls. They divided like water round a rock, pressing on to their own reunions, ignoring us.

  ‘Come with me, sir,’ I heard Tom say.

  ‘Tom,’ I said. ‘There must be a mistake.’

  ‘Nicholas, keep out of this.’

  ‘No, no mistake.’

  Julian and Tom spoke simultaneously and I saw their complicity: the lunch meetings, the phone calls, leading up to Julian’s kiss on the victim’s cheek.

  ‘But what…’

  One of Tom Naish’s companions had his shoulder between me and Anatoli. ‘We are asking Mr Vozkresensky to accompany us to answer a few questions. Nothing more.’

  ‘What about? What questions?’ I was surprised by the indignation I felt. Had I survived the Uzbek’s attack and saved Anatoli in Moscow to see him arrested, kidnapped once again, by Tom Naish? ‘Is this really necessary, Tom? Couldn’t you have called him tomorrow? If there’s some question about the Bank, does it have to be settled here, like this?’

  ‘Attempted murder’s a serious matter, sir.’

  ‘Murder? Who’s been murdered?’

  ‘Attempted murder. We are talking about the attempted murder of Miss Bennet on the night of 11 September last.’

  My rejection of this was instantaneous. Anatoli was a ruthless man, but he had not arranged to have Julian killed, of that I was certain. It made no sense at all. As she herself had said, if he had wanted to kill her, she would be dead. His attitude to her was the cruellest, the indifference of an ex-lover. It would be easier to bear death, I thought; at least the separation is involuntary.

  And here I saw the explanation of what was happening. It was not a question of Anatoli’s guilt, but Julian’s rage. She had plotted this. It explained her calm, her acceptance of not seeing him in Moscow, her meetings with Tom Naish. And at the same time I saw that the past was not over. My fury was so great that, at first, silence was necessary to contain it. I was afraid that if I voiced my anger at her deceit I would destroy everything. I did not want to do that, yet. The world had shifted and all the landmarks in it had taken up new relations to one another. I saw the past and the future in a new perspective.

  Anatoli was led off by Tom Naish and we drove back to London, each of us entombed in silence. Heavy clouds darkened the sky. I kept my eyes on the moving tail lights in front of me and did not look at her, yet I could feel her tense body beside me, as if sensed by an alternative receptor in the brain. Incidents coalesced in my memory to form the pattern of this evening’s betrayal.

  Tom. I had put her in touch with him to ensure her safety and she had taken him as her weapon of revenge against Anatoli. I thought of the mysterious meetings and phone calls between them in the last few weeks. That led me back to the period before our visit to Moscow. She had done her deal with Tom then. Her part of the bargain must have been to entice Anatoli back onto British soil, so that the arrest could be made. That was why she had been so insistent on persuading him to come to London. My thoughts went further back. For a long time she had resisted going to the police. She had been charmingly uncooperative with them at the time of the mugging and the break-in. What had changed her mind?

  Ahead of us the traffic was slowing to a half. We were in for a long crawl over the Hammersmith flyover. We decelerated into immobility, rolling forward every few minutes. It began to rain. My rage calmed. I glanced at her. She was facing straight ahead, impassive. I had hoped for some expression as a clue to her state of mind.

  ‘Julian,’ I asked. ‘Why’ve you done this?’

  She made no attempt to deny her part in the capture of Anatoli. ‘Why do you think? Can’t you see anything?’

  ‘Revenge, because he left you,’ I said flatly. ‘As simple as that.’

  ‘It was because of Sveta.’

  ‘Sveta? What has she got to do with it?’ The car slid forward and I almost hit the bumper of the dark red Passat estate in front of us. Children waved like prisoners from within.

  ‘You can’t imagine the pain,’ she said, ‘when I saw him with Sveta in Paris that evening we dined together at La Belle Pelletiere. Do you remember? He’d left me without explanation, without saying goodbye. I didn’t know what had happened. I heard nothing, nothing. Perhaps he would come back. Perhaps he couldn’t get out, like Dyadya. Everything was provisional. There were the attacks on me; I didn’t know why. But I suspected that Sveta… When I went back to Paris with you, I thought I would try to find out where he was. You’ve seen yourself, he can be very evasive if he wants to. I found no news of him anywhere. Then that evening Sveta was playing Chopin, the same s
ong I’d heard before. Anatoli was there with her. Did you understand?’

  I understood that one of my happiest moments with Julian, sitting with her wrist in my fingers, was when she had experienced the acutest pain. In the train on the way home through northern France, by the isolated cemetery, she had first agreed to go to the police and started to tell me her story. In Moscow she had used me to persuade Anatoli to come to England, and she had intended to use me again, as the witness of the mugging who would testify against him. I had been lied to and manipulated throughout.

  ‘You don’t really think he was responsible for the attacks on you?’

  ‘Of course, I do,’ she snapped angrily. ‘He was the only person with any interest in getting rid of me. He wanted me gone from every point of view, financial, emotional…’

  ‘Why have you never suggested this before?’

  We had reached the crest of the flyover by now and were inching our way down. I was mesmerised by the lights in the rain. Those in front of us flashed red, on and off, on and off, as the brakes were released and reapplied. The white lights of the traffic on the opposite side slid into long streamers on my oily windscreen. The wiper blades shifted the water and skewed the light, pulling it out into curving strands.

  ‘We must put all this right, Julian,’ I said.

  ‘We have,’ she replied. ‘You said we should call the police and I’ve done it. I’ve put everything into their hands.’

  ‘Fine. But that’s not the same as making these accusations against Anatoli. He didn’t try to kill you. We’ve known all along it was the Uzbek. When you think what happened in Moscow…’ But she didn’t know what had happened in Moscow. She did not pick this up.

  ‘If you mean that, when you asked him, Anatoli agreed it was Dyadya, of course he did. He’s not likely to have said to you, “You’ve got it wrong. I’m the one trying to kill her.’ Of course, it was Anatoli. He had to kill me. I know too much. I’m in the way. He needed a clean sheet.’

  I am always open to reason, and Julian was supremely reasonable. She spoke without emotion as she described why Anatoli should want to murder her. I felt the creeping sensation of doubt. Could it have been Anatoli who was responsible for the mugging? It was true he no longer cared for her and was irritated by her financial meddling. I had constructed a complete hypothesis to explain what had happened and I was reluctant to give it up. I had to like Anatoli. I did not want him to be a murderer.

  Victor was on duty at the desk. Who knew more about whom, I wondered, as Julian, all smiles, stopped to chat. The lifts were out of order and we walked up the four flights of stairs to the flat. I saw the papers I had put out on the table before we left and remembered that Minna was coming round. Discussing art seemed impossible after what had happened that evening, but so did ringing her up and putting her off. That would have appeared like a failure of nerve. I said to Julian, ‘Minna’ll be here quite soon. I don’t suppose she’ll stay long.’

  Julian disappeared into our bedroom. I did not follow her, but sat down in front of the television. I flicked through several channels, looking for the news, but found nothing. I turned the machine off and picked up my papers. I could not concentrate on them. I kept thinking of Anatoli imprisoned by the British police. I had abandoned him at the airport without making the slightest effort to help him.

  I dialled Jamie’s number. The least I could do was to get some help for Anatoli. Luckily, my cousin was at home. I explained the situation and asked him to arrange for the best solicitor.

  ‘Can you get someone there tonight, as soon as possible?’

  I put down the phone with a feeling of spite. Tom Naish would not be expecting such prompt support.

  I glanced at my watch. No Minna for another hour and a half. Julian had now changed into a red dress. She took the key to her own apartment out of the drawer in the hall table. ‘I’m just going next door,’ she said.

  ‘Julian?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘There’s nothing to be done.’ She went out.

  38

  I told the story of what happened next many times in various forms to various people in the months to come. Not many of them believed me.

  After Julian left I was studying my papers when I was roused by a knock at the door. I went to open it, expecting to see Minna’s robust form and found myself face to face with a man I didn’t recognise. He was tall, as tall as I, but lanky and a good deal younger than me, with a gaunt, large-boned face, without flesh, so that the skin sculpted the angles of his temples, eye-sockets and jaw. As soon as he spoke, his accent placed him.

  ‘I’ve come to see Julian,’ he said. I stood back to let him into the hall. He walked in, looking round.

  ‘So you weren’t killed in Moscow,’ I said. ‘She’ll be relieved.’

  ‘You think so?’ Igor sounded amused. ‘She’ll be surprised. How did you hear about that?’

  ‘It was reported in the British press. But no name was given, so we didn’t know who, which of you, it was.’

  Igor was smiling. ‘She thought it was Anatoli?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She thought he’d slipped through her fingers at the last moment.’ I must have shown my surprise at his words. ‘You didn’t realise what she was doing? There’s a lot you didn’t realise.’

  ‘Do you want to sit down?’ I gestured at the door to the drawing room. I could have taken him straight across to Julian’s apartment, but I saw an opportunity to learn about what was going on that wasn’t filtered through her. He went in ahead of me and something about the back of his neck, boyishly thin, seemed familiar to me. Had I seen him somewhere in Moscow? Had he been at the Mafia restaurant? He sat down in one of my mother’s chairs without taking his raincoat off. His hands were in his pockets.

  ‘Let me get you a drink.’

  ‘You wont have any cold vodka.’ He stated it as a deplorable but unalterable fact about British households. ‘So I’ll have whisky, please. With ice, no water.’

  I poured us both the same, making Igor’s strong. I remembered Julian’s descriptions of his drinking.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me what’s going on. What happened in Moscow?’ I asked.

  Igor took a large swig. ‘What’s going on is that Julian is trying to take over the Bank, at the London end.’

  I sat down opposite him. I did not have to simulate laughter. ‘No, no,’ I said. That’s impossible. I know Anatoli and the Uzbek have been struggling for supremacy. I’m not quite sure where you come in all this. But I can’t believe Julian is a player at that level.’

  Igor was unmoved by my scepticism. He pulled a packet of cigarettes from his mackintosh pocket and lit up without asking permission, using matches, carefully replacing the spent one in the box.

  ‘What do you think has been happening all these months, then? What’s she been doing, according to you?’ he asked.

  ‘She hasn’t been doing anything. She was stunned by the loss of Anatoli.’

  ‘Fff.’ He exhaled a jet of nicotine, contemptuous of my naivete. ‘It’s true she was fucked up about Sveta. Sveta broke them up, Julian and Anatoli, and made things very bitter between then. But Julian hasn’t been fighting to get Anatoli back, she’s been doing her best to get him out.’

  ‘Out?’

  ‘Out of the Bank. She wants revenge and she’s been trying to cut him out. She had her hands on a lot of what was going on here in London, in any case. But she wanted more. She wanted his balls. Not just to control his property, but to damage him in person.’

  ‘I don’t believe a word of this,’ I said.

  ‘What do you know?’

  What did I know? My knowledge had already been undermined by an earthquake this evening. But what Julian had done at the airport was rapidly appearing venial, an act of passion, in comparison with Igor’s monstrous accusations. Her betrayal of Anatoli to Tom Naish could have been done in good faith. She could have believed he was respons
ible for the attacks on her. At the worst, she could have been acting with the fury of an abandoned lover. Now Igor put all her actions into a new light, of ruthless calculation, which forced me to reinterpret everything she had ever told me. I rubbed my hand over my forehead.

  ‘I can’t sit here and listen to this without her. She must be able to defend herself.’

  ‘She’ll defend herself and you’ll believe her. You might as well hear me first.’

  ‘Begin at the beginning. The mugging…’

  ‘That wasn’t the beginning. The beginning was Julian and Anatoli setting up the London end of the business together.’

  ‘She didn’t know what was going on: she refused to know. When she did begin to suspect, she wanted to get out, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave Anatoli.’

  ‘True, true, she was like you; she didn’t want to know. Money was what fell from the sky when Anatoli walked past. But when I had made her see, she was in there: the drugs deals with the Colombians using the Vladivostok route, for example, that was Julian. She saw that transport was the thing. Dyadya had always controlled the railways; he could move anything, so why not really high value goods.’

  ‘You’re trying to shift the guilt onto Julian and it simply isn’t plausible. The arms dealing. How would someone like Julian have known where to begin. It’s nonsense. Two or three years ago, no one here knew who a Chechen was.’

  ‘Exactly. She got us into that shit through Mr Iman, you know about him? Her first guest, she always called him. They got on well together. Anatoli and I wouldn’t have touched it. We knew about the Chechens in Moscow, but she didn’t. She got us in because she didn’t know what a Chechen was. And then she convinced Dyadya to go ahead. He isn’t a Russian, he’s an Uzbek, and couldn’t care a fuck if Russia breaks up. Her timing was incredible. We went to Istanbul in the spring of 1994. You know when the Chechen war broke out? That autumn. It was no coincidence, I promise you.’