The Sirani Connection

by Estelle Ryan

“I’ve done a ton of research on this, but my information at the moment is only academic. I’ve yet to find an art thief or fence willing to talk to me about this.”

  “If you find a thief willing to talk, he will not be someone with reliable information.” Colin lifted one shoulder. “I wouldn’t trust a thief if I were you.”

  Manny snorted.

  “So, sadly, I don’t have much to tell you.”

  I studied her. Then recalled every micro-expression I’d seen on her face since the first time I’d noticed her in the police station. She was embarrassed, but she was being truthful. But I had many questions, most of which I doubted she could answer. So I thought about ones she could. “How did you know to go to Antonin Korn’s gallery?”

  “Oh, that was one of two things Tomas told me.” She raised her chin when Manny swore. “You’ve been shouting at me so much, you didn’t give me time to tell you what Tomas said.”

  “Well, we’re bloody waiting, your highness.”

  “Only in my dreams.” She smiled when Francine laughed. “Seriously though, no matter what and how I asked Tomas, he only said that I should go to Korn’s Art and that I should stay out of this altogether. Those were the two things he repeated a few times.”

  “What was your impression of him?” I wondered what her abilities were when it came to reading people.

  She thought about this for a few seconds. “He’s full of himself. But I got the impression that under all his bravado, he was scared. I don’t know. There was something off in the way he treated me like a bimbo one moment, telling me I should back away and go find something else to write about. Then the next moment, he would glance at the door and tell me I should visit Korn’s Art while I was visiting Prague.”

  “If you’re so innocent, why did you run?” Vinnie asked.

  “Gut feeling?” She shrugged. “Something is off here. And now that I know you guys are looking into this, I know my gut was right. This is going to be quite the story.”

  “That you will not tell until you have full permission.” Manny stared at her until she nodded. “Not a word.”

  Bree rolled her eyes. “Yes, Master.”

  “Ooh, I like her.” Francine laughed. “Can we keep her?”

  “No, you can’t.” Bree got up. “I’m going to my hotel to freak Tobie out about the AI. And just to spare you the trouble, I’m staying at the Castle Hotel, room 416.”

  Her micro-expression gave me pause. I pointed at her face. “You plan something.”

  “Oh, for all the saints on this planet.” Manny got up, both hands resting on his hips as he scowled at her. “Missy, I’m telling you this only once. If I find you doing something stupid, I will lock you up.”

  “Then I’d better make sure you don’t catch me.” She winked at Manny, smiled at Francine, then looked at me. “I plan to do as much research as I can without making anyone take notice.” She turned to Manny. “I’ve built a career on the trust of people who don’t always follow the rules. I will reach out to those contacts. Maybe I’ll find something that could help you.”

  “Or maybe you’ll do or say something that will jeopardise our investigation or get you killed,” Vinnie said.

  “Let her go.” Manny’s nonchalance was convincing, but not genuine. “We’ll be in touch if we need her.”

  “Or maybe I’ll contact you first.” Bree smiled as Phillip got up and walked to her. “I would love for us to have lunch.”

  “No!” Manny’s and Vinnie’s answers boomed through the room. Manny stepped between Phillip and Bree, glaring at her. “You’re not speaking to one of us unless all of us are there.”

  “Scared of little ol’ me?” She laughed, then walked to the door. “I have that effect on people.”

  The door barely closed behind her when Colin turned to Manny. “I know someone here in Prague.”

  “Do you trust them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do it.”

  “Um, what are we doing?” Roxy pulled her feet under her on the sofa.

  “We’re getting Bree protection.” Vinnie nodded at Colin. “Ty is perfect for this. I swear the dude is invisible.”

  “Nothing criminal, Frey.” Manny sat down heavily on the sofa. “My drugged brain can only handle so much stress before I lock every bloody one of you up.”

  “How’re you feeling?” Roxy leaned a bit forward to look into Manny’s eyes.

  He recoiled and turned away from her. “Irritated.”

  “Back to normal, then.” Roxy giggled and got up. “I feel a bit er... overdressed here. I’m going to get ready for the day.”

  “I don’t suppose you got milk?” Manny looked at Vinnie.

  “Of course I did.” Vinnie turned to the kitchen. “But breakfast is ruined.”

  “Or we could just have everything else you prepared,” Francine said. “There’s a lot of fruit, cereals and yogurt in the fridge as well. I’m sure we’ll survive.”

  Vinnie scratched the back of his neck, then rolled his shoulders as if uncomfortable. “Look, if no one is going to say anything, I’ll just come out and say it. She’s a dude!”

  “Vin!” Francine kicked out at him, but missed. “That’s just ignorant.”

  “What? She’s gorgeous.” He glanced at the room he shared with Roxy. “Not as beautiful as my Rox, but I would never have pegged her as anything but a woman.”

  “That’s because she is a woman.” Francine shook her head. “You know my friend, Lucille?”

  “The blonde hacker?”

  “She’s also transgender.”

  “No fucking way!”

  “Oh, yes way.” Francine went into a lengthy explanation of her friend’s journey to make peace with who she was and live her life as normally as she could.

  The transgender conversation would be interesting, but now I was more concerned about Phillip. I looked at him, still standing where he’d stopped before Bree had left. “Phillip?”

  He looked down at me for a few seconds. He shook his head. “She looks so much like her mother. Lighter skin and those blue eyes, but her smile and gestures—one hundred percent Laura.”

  I wanted to say something supportive, but everything I’d heard other people say sounded trite. I didn’t know how to support my friends. Instead I just stared at Phillip.

  His cheeks lifted in a smile. “I’m fine, Genevieve. Bree has brought back a lot of memories, mostly good. I didn’t even get to ask her where Laura is now. Or how she’s doing.” He glanced at Vinnie and Manny arguing. “After this I’ll make time to catch up with her.”

  I thought of what he’d said. And of my relationship with Colin. “It’s good to have someone who understands you.”

  “It was. But I was honest when I said it would never have worked out between us if we’d become romantically involved.” He watched the others bicker for a few seconds, then looked at me. “Everything turned out well for me. I’m now surrounded by people who understand me. My new family.”

  Chapter TEN

  “AT BLOODY LAST.” MANNY took a sip of his milky tea and sighed deeply. “Thanks, big guy.”

  “No problem, old man.” Vinnie smirked when Manny grumbled. “There’s a lot more food if you want.”

  Vinnie had laid out a large breakfast on the kitchenette counter. I’d only had a bowl of fruit and yogurt, but Roxy and Francine were both on their third croissants with strawberry jam. Vinnie had reluctantly included his pastries, complaining that he’d wanted to serve them straight from the oven. They were all still warm.

  Ivan and Daniel had joined us three minutes ago, both still standing at the counter, filling their plates.

  “You outdid yourself, Vin.” Colin rubbed his stomach. “Those little pastries with the bacon were really good.”

  “They are good.” Daniel walked to where we were sitting on the sofas, taking another bite of the small pastry and nodding at Vinnie.

  “Okay, so where were we?” Ivan sat down next to Daniel.

  “Well, that
’s pretty much it.” Francine smiled at Phillip, who’d been elected to brief Daniel and Ivan on our meeting with Bree. Manny had insisted that Phillip would be the one to least irritate him. I’d agreed.

  “At least now we know who sent that email,” Ivan said.

  “Technically, it wasn’t Bree who sent it. Her AI did.” Francine’s smile widened. “But I’m not going to split hairs. Not on this one. I actually like the woman.”

  “Only because you liked her clothes.” Manny shook his head. “Why don’t you be more useful and tell us what you found in your research.”

  She laughed. “Okey-dokey. Tell me who you would like me to start with.”

  “Jan Novotný,” I said before Manny could answer. For once I hoped we could stay on track and even follow the evidence in chronological order, the way we discovered the information.

  “Doctor Jan Novotný.” Francine winked at me and looked at her tablet. “I looked far and wide, but didn’t find anything significant to add to his social life. The man lived for his work and only his work, it seems. And boy, am I now excited about his work.” She shifted on the sofa, her eyes wide. “He wasn’t working on just a boring old cure for opioid addiction. He did his research and discoveries using AI and deep learning.”

  “Deep learning?” Ivan asked.

  “You don’t know what deep learning is? Ooh!” She clapped her hands. “I get to explain it. Okay, deep learning is when AI has networks that can extrapolate data that is unstructured or not labelled. This helps us then to train AI to predict an outcome or outputs when it is given inputs.”

  “Holy hell.” Manny’s top lip curled in disgust. “That doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “Maybe I can simplify it.” Roxy said. “Deep learning is when computers learn by example. Facial recognition is a perfect illustration of deep learning. Once the computer correctly recognises a face, it goes a level deeper, taking the first lesson with it to build on top of that. Each success is stored and used as a reference.”

  Francine looked at me. “You should understand. It works like our brain. Deep learning even uses the term ‘artificial neural networks’. It’s essential to voice control in phones, tablets and even the AI that sent Bree’s email to Phillip.”

  “It’s an exciting development in the medical field,” Roxy said. “Deep learning is being used to find cures for cancer. It can do the work of many scientists, doctors or experts in minimal time. And sometimes the accuracy exceeds that of human experts.”

  “Yet a scientist from a Houston university has recently warned peers about using this.” I’d been alarmed when I’d read that article. “She found numerous instances where the results given from deep learning were misleading and often wrong. She called it a crisis in science.”

  Ivan blinked a few times. “Look, I consider myself quite smart, but this just flew right over my head.”

  “You and me both, dude.” Vinnie scratched his head and the two men laughed.

  “Hmm.” Manny looked at me. “Doc? Is this useful? Do we need to understand this twaddle?”

  “I don’t know yet.” We still had far too little data. My theory about how Jan Novotný’s victimology could differ so much from the Strasbourg case was still fluid, without any evidence.

  “I have more technical detail about Doctor Jan’s work.” Francine looked at Manny. “Should I continue or would you rather hear about Patrik?”

  “Patrik.”

  “Doc.” Manny’s lips twitched. “I might get a complex if you keep answering for me.”

  “You won’t.”

  Everyone laughed. Manny smiled.

  “Okey-dokey.” She looked at her tablet. “Patrik registered here in Prague as a resident under his new name, but the address turned out to be a home-sharing place.”

  “My team checked it out and found no trace of Patrik,” Ivan said.

  “He never revealed any location on his few social media posts.” Francine’s eyes stretched with disbelief. “What kind of student isn’t active on social media? Mind you, he wasn’t really posting that often before he ran away from his dad. Once here in Prague, he posted a few times on Instagram and Twitter, but nothing significant. The only friends he had were classmates. His posts were months apart, the longest period three months and a few days. But he hasn’t posted in six months.”

  “Six months.” Colin leaned back in the sofa and looked at the ceiling. “Jan Novotný went on a sabbatical six months ago. Coincidence?”

  “Okay, so what do we think happened to him?” Ivan asked, looking at me.

  Francine snapped her fingers to get his attention. “You are so asking the wrong person. Genevieve doesn’t speculate. But I do. I really do. Want to hear my theory?”

  “Oh, boy.” Roxy smiled when Manny swore and Ivan nodded.

  “So...” Francine wriggled in her seat. “Six months ago, Shahab wanted Doctor Jan to do something for him.” She lifted her manicured index finger. “I don’t know what yet, but I’m working on a theory for that too. Anyhoo. Doctor Jan gave Shahab a hard no. Shahab didn’t like that and looked for leverage to convince Doctor Jan. He found Patrik.”

  “You think Shahab kidnapped Patrik to get Doctor Novotný to work for him?” Ivan rubbed the scar on his hand.

  “But what would Shahab want from Doctor Novotný?” Daniel asked. “I mean, Shahab has been dealing in heroin for a decade and looting his own country’s art for a few years. What would he want with someone who is working on a way to end an international epidemic? A way to nullify the effects of the drugs he was selling?”

  No one answered Daniel. I assumed it was a rhetorical question since we had no means to find an answer. Not yet. It remained quiet in the large room for a few more seconds.

  Manny turned to Francine. “What did you learn about the Korn Art fellow?”

  “I learned that no one on this planet should work without any computer.” She rolled her eyes. “Apart from that, I was looking through those lists Genevieve found.” She looked at me. “You were right. The one list is the names of clients. I haven’t done a deep-deep dive into these people, but my light-deep dive tells me all of the people on the list are on the up and up.”

  “Light-deep?” I knew my expression conveyed my dismay. “You’re too intelligent to be using such a contradictory term.”

  “Pah. Everyone knows what I mean.” She glanced at her tablet again. “But the second list is the interesting one. It definitely has some suspicious characters. I sent the list to Ivan.”

  “My people are checking through it. Already Antonin’s correspondence has given us a lot of useable evidence against numerous individuals.”

  Francine looked at me. “These are the people on the list you thought could be Ant’s suppliers.”

  “So far we think you were right about this as well.” Ivan smiled at me. “There are seven names of people we’ve already suspected deal in black-market art. We are looking into the other names, but I’m confident we’ll find enough to make my superiors very happy.”

  I took a moment to analyse his nonverbal cues. There was something connected to his superiors that made Ivan uncomfortable. I wondered if this was related to the issue he had asked us to refrain from pursuing for the time being.

  Then I thought about something else. “Have you received information about Doctor Jan Novotný’s autopsy?”

  “I did.” He took his smartphone from his trouser pocket and swiped the screen a few times. “Ah, here it is. He died from a fatal dose of opioids, but the ME said that if that hadn’t killed him, his injuries would have. He had seven broken ribs and two of those ribs didn’t just puncture his left lung, they tore through it. The damage was terrible. His spleen, liver and one kidney were so badly injured that he could’ve died from any of those internal traumas as well.”

  “There is something else,” I said when he paused. His creased forehead and tilted head revealed his puzzlement.

  “It will really take me a long time to get used to being so easi
ly read.” His smile was genuine. “You’re right. Of course. The ME was a bit mystified by what he’d found. He took a good look at it and told me that he’s convinced it was self-inflicted.” He tapped on his phone and turned it towards me. “This is a photo of Doctor Novotný’s left hip.”

  I leaned forward, but the screen was small and I couldn’t see the detail. What I could see was letters and numbers on the skin—red and risen as if they were burn wounds. I shuddered and shifted as far back on the sofa as I could. “What am I looking at?”

  He tapped the screen a few times. “I’m sending this to Francine and she can forward this to you for a better look.” He looked at his phone again. “The ME thinks Doctor Novotný burned these letters and numbers onto his skin with acid.”

  “Bloody hell.” Manny pushed back into the sofa. “That had to hurt.”

  “Oh, the ME assured me it did,” Ivan said. “But this happened around the same time as the torture, so Doctor Novotný was already in great pain.”

  “Why didn’t the dude just use a sharpie?” Vinnie grimaced as if he was feeling the acid burning on his skin.

  “No idea.” Ivan shrugged. “Maybe he was scared it would wash off? I really don’t know. What I am sure of is that this had to be something very important for him to put this onto his body for us to see.”

  “How do we know he did it for us to see?” Manny asked.

  “Good question. I’m working on the assumption that he knew he was going to die and he was hoping that the police would find his body and there would be an autopsy that would reveal this... key? Password?”

  Francine finished tapping her phone’s screen. “PY%7H-A07P. I’m thinking this is a password for something. If this is GPS coordinates or an IP address, we would need another key to decipher this. Which kind of makes it stupid. Yup, I’m thinking password.”

  “Do we have his devices?” Colin asked Ivan.

  “The forensics team went through his house yesterday afternoon while we were at the hospital and didn’t find any personal devices.” The corners of Ivan’s mouth turned down. “They did find Patrik’s room. At least now we know where he lived. There were also no devices there. It is most unusual to not find a single computer, tablet or phone in someone’s house. We know that Doctor Novotný sent a lot of emails, so we know that he used a computer.”