Art of Murder

by Jose Carlos Somoza

  'I'm beginning to know your habits’ he said.

  The papers were trembling between his fingers, but his voice sounded firm enough. Miss Wood leaned forward on the desk, head in hands, as she listened to him.

  'We said the other day that there were three legs to this particular construction, didn't we? The first, Annek; the second, Oscar Diaz; and the third what we could call the Competition.' He saw Wood nod in agreement, and went on: 'Well, the first has produced no results. Annek's life was a mess, but I haven't found anyone capable of harming her for any personal reason. Her father, Pieter Hollech, is a madman. At the moment he's in jail in Switzerland after causing a traffic accident while drunk-driving. Annek's mother, Yvonne Neullern, divorced him and got custody of Annek when she was four. She works as a press photographer, specialising in animals. She's in Borneo. Conservation has been in touch with her to tell her the news ...'

  'OK, so the painting's family had nothing to do with it. Go on.'

  'Annek's previous buyers don't offer much either.'

  'Wallberg fell in love with the canvas, didn't he?'

  'Yes, he liked Annek,' agreed Bosch. 'Wallberg bought Annek in three works: Confessions, Door Ajar, and Summer. The last of these was a performance. Do you recall the meeting we had with Benoit, when he insisted we should find out what Wallberg really felt for Annek? ... No, that's not quite right. "We have to distinguish between Mr Wallberg's artistic and erotic passions" ...'

  The baying laugh (cut short by Wood) pleased him. So his Benoit impression had gone down well. 'My God, I'm making her laugh. That's fantastic'

  All at once the sense of satisfaction drained from Bosch's face: it was as sudden as a dark cloud passing in front of the sun. His grin faded; his mouth turned down at the corners.

  'Poor Annek,' he said.

  He blinked several times, then shuffled the papers on the table in front of him.

  'Whatever the truth, Wallberg is on his deathbed in a hospital in Berkeley, California. Lung cancer. There's nothing suspicious about any of her other purchasers either: Okomoto is in the States, searching for paintings; Cardenas is still in Colombia, and his record is as dubious as ever, but he didn't bother Annek when she was on show in Garland, and he hasn't touched any of the substitutes ...' He coughed, and his finger pointed to the next paragraph. 'As for all the other madmen ... according to our information, almost all of them are either in hospital or serving prison sentences. A few are still on the loose, like that crazy Englishman who covered the facade of the New Atelier with stickers accusing the Foundation of dealing in child pornography ...'

  'What's he got to do with this?'

  'He used a photo from Deflowering on the stickers.'

  'OK.'

  'His whereabouts are unknown. But we'll continue investigating. So that's all for the "Annek" leg.' 'Nothing there. What about Diaz?' 'Well, there's Briseida Canchares ...'

  'Count her out too. That art nymphomaniac has nothing to do with it. The most interesting thing she said was about that person with no papers. Go on.' Wood was playing with her cigarette lighter - a lovely black steel miniature Dunhill. Her long, slender fingers made it flick over and over like a magician's playing card.

  'Diaz's friends in New York say he's a simple, goodhearted sort. The guards on tour with him are more "scientific" as you would call it: according to them, he's a loner. He didn't like making friends, and preferred his own company. Our second search of his New York apartment turned up nothing. Everything to do with photography, but nothing related to any supposed obsession with destroying paintings or even with art. In his room at the Kirchberggasse we found Briseida's address and phone number in Leiden and . . . listen to this ... a notebook with landscape photos which, in fact, is ... a diary.'

  Miss Wood's head, with its cap of cropped hair shiny as patent leather, snapped back so quickly Bosch was afraid her skull would come loose. He immediately reassured her:

  'But it doesn't offer us any leads: Diaz took snapshots of places so he could go back there later on when the light was better. Sometimes he mentions Briseida or a friend, but they are completely ordinary references. He also writes about his love of the countryside. There's even a poem. Plus a few references to his work, along the lines of "I see them as people, not as works of art". The last entry is on 7 June.' Bosch raised his eyebrows. 'I'm sorry: there's nothing about anyone without papers, man or woman.' 'Shit.'

  'Exactly. But I do have some good news. We've found a cafe near the Marriott hotel here in Vienna where the barman remembers Diaz. Apparently, it was one of the places he used to go to when he left the paintings in their hotel. The barman says he used to ask for bourbon, which was unusual for his customers, and that was why he noticed him, as well as because of his American accent and his dark skin.'

  'New York completely corrupted our poor landscape photographer,' commented Wood. Her fingers were smoothing down her hair. To Bosch, they looked like the hands of a medium: it was not Wood's mind directing those soft, irreproachably aesthetic gestures that were so typical of her. No, her mind was focused on Bosch's words (not on me, on my words, don't get confused, kid) with the look of a shipwrecked mariner who thinks they can glimpse the lights of a ship in the dark night.

  'But there is one odd detail,' Bosch said. 'The barman swears that the last time he saw him was exactly a fortnight ago, on 15 June. He remembers the exact date thanks to another coincidence: it was a friend's birthday, and he had made arrangements to leave the bar early. He says Diaz was at the bar chatting to a girl he had never seen before - she was dark, thin, attractive, wore a lot of make-up. He reckons they were speaking in English. The waiters cannot really remember her, because there were a lot of customers that night. Diaz and her left together, and the barman has not seen either of them since.'

  'When did Diaz ring his Colombian friend to ask for information about residence permits?'

  'On Sunday 18 June, according to Briseida.'

  Wood's outline seemed sculpted in stone.

  'Three days: more than enough time to get close. Our friend Oscar took pity on our Colombian friend in a lot less.'

  That's true,' Bosch admitted, 'but if we put Unknown Girl into the mix, it could be that Diaz is completely innocent. Just imagine for a moment she is working with accomplices. They manage to get information out of Diaz about when and how he is picking the painting up, then on Wednesday they forced their way into the van and make Diaz drive to the Wienerwald.' 'So where is Diaz now?'

  'They've taken him with them, as a hostage . ..'

  'And run the risk he might escape and give the game away? No, if Diaz isn't guilty, that can mean only one thing: he's dead. That seems to me the obvious conclusion. The fundamental question is: why hasn't his body appeared yet? That's what I don't get. Even if we admit they may have needed him to drive the van, why wasn't he found in it? Where have they taken him? Why would they want to hide Diaz's body?'

  'That means you think Diaz is part of this.'

  'If we forget about the girl with no papers, what are we left with?'

  'In that case, the police's theory is the most likely one: Diaz makes the recording, and cuts Annek up inside the van. Then he drives to a remote spot, wraps Annek in the plastic sheet, dumps her on the grass and strips her. Then he puts the cassette at her feet and drives another forty kilometres north, where another car is waiting for him.'

  ‘I don't buy that theory either.'

  ‘Why not?'

  'Diaz is a ninny,' Miss Wood declared. 'He writes little poems, takes photos of landscapes and gets taken in by girls like Briseida. If he's involved in this, he wasn't alone.'

  'But he was a very efficient security guard,' Bosch objected. 'Remember, we only choose the best for transporting paintings to their hotels.'

  Tm not saying he was bad at his job. I'm saying he's a ninny. A country bumpkin. He can't have organised all this on his own.'

  Soft knocks at the door, and a waft of perfume. The server was not a Trolley or any other pr
oper piece of furniture, but a Decoration, a wretched thing that worked on Mondays (the day off for the works of art in the MuseumsQuartier) one of the objects dreamt up by the Decorative Arts Department to fill an empty room - and the lack of experience showed when it came to him serving their coffee. It took Bosch several seconds to realise it was a young male, about eighteen or nineteen years old. His hair was a symmetrical mass of blue-black scrolled curls pierced by silvery feathers. His long, tubular tunic in black velvet was cut almost too drastically at the back, and revealed the top half of a pair of black buttocks painted chestnut brown as was all the rest of the body. He placed two cups of coffee on the table. His make-up gave no clues as to what he might be thinking or feeling: it was the mask of a Polynesian warrior, a voodoo priest. The white label hanging round his neck read 'Michel'. The signature low down on his back was by someone called Garth. He was wearing ear-protectors.

  When he turned towards Bosch, he got a good view of his hands: they glowed a deep bronze colour, with onyx fingernails.

  'It's all too perfect, Lothar,' Miss Wood was saying. 'A second car waiting in the Wienerwald, false papers ... in other words, a carefully laid plan. I could accept he might have been paid to take the painting to the Wienerwald, but even that seems farfetched to me.'

  'So you want us to reject the "Diaz" leg as well. That means the whole construction is in danger of collapsing ...'

  'We can't eliminate Diaz altogether. I think his role was that of scapegoat. What I can't understand is why he's disappeared.'

  They could have hidden his body so that suspicion would fall on him, while the real criminal made his getaway,' Bosch reasoned.

  Miss Wood had leaned forward to examine the ornament's lower back and the signature. The ornament stood perfectly still while she did so. The label said he could be touched, so Wood slipped a hand round his waist and down towards his gleaming bronze buttocks. Her expression, with her brows knitted intently, was that of an expert judging the value of a porcelain vase. As she was doing this, she responded to Bosch.

  'That's the most likely theory. But my question is: where is he? The police have combed several kilometres round the area, Lothar. They've used dogs and all kinds of sophisticated search equipment. So where's Diaz's body? And where did they kill him? The van offered no clues at all: no signs of struggle, not a drop of blood. And consider this for a moment: he destroys the painting, then wastes time taking all her clothes off out in the wood, running the risk of being discovered. On the other hand, whoever it was, worked out a detailed escape plan and managed to divert all the suspicion on to the security guard who was looking after the work. Does that seem logical to you?'

  'No, you're right, it doesn't.'

  Miss Wood stopped fondling the ornament's backside. She raised her arm, got hold of the neck label and pulled it down towards her, obliging the ornament to lean forward so she could read it. As well as the model's name, the label gave details of the craftsman who made it, and its specifications. Bosch knew that April Wood bought ornaments and utensils for her London house. Despite an official ban on the sale of human handicrafts, it still went on, and many people of a certain social level bought them just as they did soft drugs.

  When she had finished reading the information, Miss Wood let go of the label. The ornament straightened up, turned on his heels in the darkness and walked out noiselessly, his bare feet gliding across the thick black carpet. Miss Wood grimaced as she sipped her hot coffee.

  ‘I’m sure Diaz is dead,' she insisted. 'The problem is how his death fits in with everything else.'

  'We still haven't considered the Competition and Rivals.' Bosch riffled through his papers. 'I have to admit this is where I get lost, April. I can't find anything. The people behind BAH, for example, are not up to much. You know Pamela O'Connor wrote a book about Annek . . .'

  'The Truth About Annek Hollech,' Wood concurred. 'Pretentious nonsense. What she does is use Annek as an example to denounce the use of underage models in supposedly obscene works of art.'

  'We're also investigating the Christian Association Against Hyperdramatic Art; the International Society For Tradition and Classical Art; the European Society Against Hyperdramatic Art...'

  'You're leaving out the real competition,' said Wood. 'Art Enterprises, for example, has become a serious enemy. Stein says they would do anything to throw a spoke in our wheels, and, in fact, they are taking investors from us. Just imagine if what happened to Deflowering is only part of a master plan to discredit our security system.'

  'But that doesn't fit in with what happened. A bullet in the back of the head would have had the same effect. Why all the sadism?'

  'What do you mean exactly?'

  The question filled Bosch with horror.

  'Good God, April, he cut her up with... look, here is the autopsy report. Braun sent it to me this morning. Look at these photos ... the lab tests confirmed it: whoever it was used a portable canvas cutter ... do you know what that is? ... a saw with a cylindrical handle and serrated edges that fits into one hand. Artists who still work with canvases and old picture restorers use them to change the size and shape of paintings. It's a powerful gadget - with the right fittings, you can cut a normal tabletop in half in five seconds ... and he made ten cuts with it, April...'

  Wood had lit one of her ecological cigarettes. The dark green smoke produced by the vaporising of coloured water that was guaranteed harmless, curled up towards the ceiling. Bosch remembered when it had become fashionable to use these fake cigarettes in order to give up smoking. He had succeeded in giving up thanks to the classic nicotine patches, and regarded this other method as unnecessarily showy.

  'Look at it this way’ she said. 'They want public opinion to think that Oscar Diaz was raving mad. So, if they can say we take on psychopaths to look after our most expensive works of art, then no one will be able to trust us, and so on and so forth.'

  'But if that was what they were after, why on earth didn't they kill her before they cut her up? According to the autopsy report, they sedated her with an intramuscular injection of a neuroleptic drug, probably using a hypodermic pistol to the back of her neck. The dose was strong enough for her not to be able to defend herself, but not to anaesthetise her. I don't get it. I mean .. . and forgive me for insisting, April, but it seems to me ... if all this was simply a bit of theatre, why go so far? The murder would have been just as regrettable, but... it would have been ... there would have been ... I mean, imagine I wanted to pretend it was the work of a sadist. . . Well then, first I get rid of her, I inject her with something, anaesthetise her .. . then I do all the other things .. . but there's a limit that never ... Money has got nothing to do with it, April. I won't make any more money by doing that. There's a limit which ...' 'Lothar.'

  ‘Don't tell me they only did it for money, April! I may be getting old, but I'm not completely gaga yet! And I am experienced: I used to be a police inspector, so I know about criminals ... they're not as sadistic as all those films would have us believe. They're human beings ... I'm not saying there are no exceptions, but...'

  'Lothar.'

  'That guy wasn't trying to fool anyone: he wanted to do what he did, and in just the way he did it! We're not facing some underhand ruse by the competition - we're trying to track down a monster! . .. He cut her face and left her writhing while he made ready to ... to cut her breast off!... Would you like me to read you the report... ?'

  'Lothar,' came the weary, deep voice. 'Can I say something?'

  'Sorry.'

  Bosch had difficulty recovering control of his emotions. 'Come on, kid, calm down. What's got into you?'

  Miss Wood stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. She lifted her hand; leaving a green thing there, a steaming, crushed broad bean. She exhaled the last of the green smoke through her nostrils. The Dragon's Poisonous Breath.

  'She was a painting. There's no need to look any further than that, Lothar. Deflowering was a painting. I'll prove it to you.' She pounced on one of
Annek's studio photos and thrust it in Bosch's face. 'She looks like an adolescent, doesn't she? She has the shape of an adolescent, when she was alive she walked and talked like an adolescent. She was called Annek. But if she had really been an adolescent, she wouldn't have been worth even five hundred dollars. Her death would not have interested the Ministry of the Interior of a foreign country, or mobilised a whole army of police and special forces, or led to high-level discussions in at least two European capitals, or meant that our positions in the Foundation are on the line. If this had been only a girl, who the shit would have been interested in what happened to her? Her mother and four bored policemen in the Wienerwald district. Things like that happen every day in this world of ours. People die horrible deaths all around us, and nobody could care less. But people do care about the death of this girl. And do you know why? Because this, this’ she shook the photo in his face, 'which apparently shows a young girl, is not a girl at all. It cost more than fifty million dollars.' She repeated the words again, emphasising them with a pause between each one. 'Fifty. Million. Dollars.'