by L. S. Hilton
They say that a brisk walk is an effective antidepressant, but then they say a lot of crap. Yet during that walk I sensed a shifting, a lightening, as though all that I had left behind me, in Venice and beyond, had been dropped carelessly into one of those smooth ancient waterways. Not that I didn’t have plenty to be scared of in theory; just that I somehow couldn’t muster the appropriate level of anxiety. Hanging up my spurs hadn’t, I had to admit, proved as amusing as I had anticipated. What do you do when there’s no next thing? I wasn’t the type for extreme windsurfing or charity mountaineering. Ennui might be a romantic disorder, but it’s boring nonetheless.
Seated on the edge of the water, my feet dangling over the stone, I lit a thoughtful fag, sucked the delicious smoke shudderingly deep. Maybe I was getting old, but so much of what I had thought I wanted –safety, security, anonymity –didn’t seem worth bothering with any longer. The canals seamed neatly between the tall, narrow old houses, a molten highway of money. Stolid, secretive Amsterdam, floating the wealth of the known world along her veins. I thought of the pictures in the museum across town, the heaps of things – plate and fans and lobsters, globes, nutmegs, silk drapes, harpsichords, fruit, chests, parasols, purses – all tumbled artfully for the contemplation of the burghers beneath their meticulously painted ruffs. Still-life, framed eternally for display. It bewildered me, that I had stopped, immured myself in Elisabeth like an insect in amber, a dilettante rich girl playing at business. Why had it taken me so long to work out that where I belonged was the edge of the map? I suppose I could blame Caravaggio. We had a lot in common, after all. Murder, for a start. The painter spent much of his life as a fugitive, with a penchant for the Italian coast; he was a chancer with a weakness for flashy clothes, a pragmatist fearless of extremes, who understood that most things, even murder, are forgivable in the cause of beauty. He knew that honour is a language of wounds. But perhaps it would be more accurate to say that most of Caravaggio’s problems were caused by an elevated sense of his own status, a contempt for risk, or perhaps an excessive regard for it. Perhaps risk was all I really understood. I had been off my game so long. Too long. And despite my grief over Masha, or maybe even because of it, I was curious to learn if I still knew how to play.
*
The Hafkenscheid Archive is housed at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. I found it the old-fashioned way, with a miniature map from the tourist office. The archive was once the collection of a nineteenth-century Amsterdam pigment merchant, and is one of the principal research sources of the gums and minerals once used in mixing paint. I thought that since I had to be in Amsterdam for the passport, I could find out something more about how a Caravaggio “drawing” good enough to fool Yermolov could be produced. Presumably he would have sent Dr Kazbich to glean information before buying it, which could have interesting implications. If I could, I wanted to work out how a fraud so extraordinary could be achieved.
Although the breeze from the now-distant sea was fresh over the former port, it was still hot, and I’d dressed carefully, heavy practical boots which gave a gazelle-ish vulnerability to my thighs and a flared denim Margiela MM6 smock with a push-up bra underneath, a few buttons left undone, just for air. I didn’t have an appointment, but I guessed that a custodian of antique turpentine mightn’t see many visitors, and after I’d introduced myself and my ‘project’ while gazing at the elderly docent as though he was the only man I’d ever seen, he waved me through. I’d explained that I was a grad student writing on Tintoretto, quoting the Technical Bulletin of the National Gallery in London as the source for a question on the artist’s use of a particular colour, Naples yellow, which came into use in Italy in the sixteenth century.
Then as now, Venice was a mirage city, its light conjured through so much glass that it shimmered like a vast mirror, an image of heaven on the edge of the world. I had been thinking about the possibility of Caravaggio being there, between his departure from Milan and arrival in Rome. What painter would have wanted to miss Venice, however eagerly he was hurrying along the road to ambition and success? The Venetian professor’s confident dismissal was belied by an earlier writer on Caravaggio, Bellori, who asserted that he had visited the city ‘where he came to enjoy the colours . . . which he then imitated’. I had lived in Venice long enough to know those colours, that quivering light whose crackle only renders its shadows deeper. No one could paint darkness like Caravaggio, no one else could tease out the extremities of shade that give his pictures’ luminescence their lightning shock. So – there was an intriguing gap in the chronicle – he could really have been there. If I knew anything about evidence, it was that the lack of it doesn’t mean something didn’t happen.
*
The pigments were displayed in a long room full of cases, each filled with boxes of samples and printed cards with serial numbers and descriptions. Throwing a smile to the hovering docent, which I hoped might imply the possibility of lunch, I started work. Naples yellow, I knew already, was one of the three original colours introduced by 1600 to augment the limited palette of medieval painting. The recipe was first given in a book by Cipriano Piccolpasso in 1556, a work on ceramic making. It required salt, lead, antimony and ‘lees’, essentially the dregs left at the bottom of wine flasks. I approved of that. Piccolpasso was from the Umbria region of Italy, but he had travelled to Venice, which was the centre for innovation in paint colours at the time, and had actually included a chapter Colori alla Venziana, in his text. Naples yellow was one of the colours mentioned, and laser microspectral analysis (whatever that was) had identified its use in several of Tintoretto’s paintings. Despite the glum professor’s opinion, several of the scholars cited in the book I had studied had suggested that Tintoretto was an influence on Caravaggio, so it was plausible, I considered, that if he had been in Venice, he would have studied not only Tintoretto’s great paintings, but their technical ingredients.
I moved along the cases until I came to a selection of chalks. I had thought that if Caravaggio had made a drawing, he would have used chalk, perhaps a combination of red, white and black, the trois crayons technique introduced by the French to Leonardo in Milan, where Caravaggio learned to paint, at the end of the fifteenth century. But chalk would not have given the portrait Elena had shown me its curiously hard-edged quality, or its depth of colour; more-over, why would someone have used chalk on linen? Linen was essentially canvas, which required a binding medium, a kind of glue known as gesso, on its surface. Chalk was used in under-drawing because once it was sandwiched between the gesso and oil paint it would no longer be seen. To have endured so long on linen, I thought that perhaps whoever made the portrait would have worked directly in the oil, which in turn would have been consistent with Caravaggio’s widely known technique.
Moreover, Caravaggio was poor. Despite the many lucrative commissions that his talent lured before his disgrace, he seemed to have had almost a disdain for money. His hand-me-down fashions were notable for their flash, but he wore them to rags, and besides his equipment he owned almost nothing beyond a few pathetic household utensils and the embittered awe of his rivals. He travelled light. Naples yellow would not have been cheap, but linen, as opposed to fine vellum paper, was. Maybe it was possible, maybe, just, possible that there could be more to the “drawing” than Elena’s vodka-infused fictions.
*
I pouted a couple of earnest questions at the docent, and had to endure an enthusiastic twenty-minute explanation of colour-grinding before I asked if the museum had a visitors’ book. ‘I’d be honoured to sign it. And maybe I could photograph my signature, for my thesis. The examiners are really strict on primary research.’
He produced a fat red leather volume and a Biro. I leafed through curiously, hoping that the archive would be sufficiently under-visited for me to work through the names swiftly. And there it was. Dr Ivan Kazbich, printed in Latin letters, with a signature beside it in Cyrillic and a date in 2011. Bingo. I had a practice at my own new signature and thanked the
old chap profusely.
I couldn’t resist a shivery thrill of excitement, but I dismissed it. I wasn’t exactly planning a relaunch as a Caravaggio scholar. Whether the drawing was real or not, I had to get my hands on it urgently. And if my theory was correct, I was pretty certain that I knew where that drawing was. And it turned out that perhaps I had stolen it after all.
PART TWO
REFRACTION
14
Dave was a man who had faced down Al-Qaeda snipers during his time in the army, but I’d never seen him looking so agitated as he did at the sight of me hunched over a whisky mac in the bar of the Golden Lion, Combe Farleigh. I’d come in on the Eurostar via Lille, another train from Paddington to Bath and then a cab to Dave’s new village. I’d been surprised by the sentimental effect England had on me after so long. The dowdy crowds at the stations, Pret a Manger, leering tabloids, pigeons. I had practically wept when the landlord served me the first proper cup of tea I’d drunk in years, but I had to concede that I wasn’t doing the best job of mingling with the locals. Naturally it was freezing, so I’d bought a fleece on the St Pancras concourse and was bundled into practically all the other clothes I had. The barman looked dubious at my Rom-chic vibe, but cash had secured me a room and I’d called Dave from the pub’s landline.
‘What’s going on? Why are you here, Judith?’
I winced. Complicity is such a rare quality, at least for me. The feeling that someone understands you without speech, that your shared history is such that no explanations will ever be required. Maybe that’s what families have. But if Dave was as appalled as he looked, the entirely inappropriate joy I felt at seeing him once more was one-sided. I’d never been anything but trouble to him really.
‘I bought you a pint,’ I said, as though that explained everything.
‘I’ve been trying to reach you. What’s going on with your phone?’ There was concern in his voice, but hostility too, and a kind of weariness that grieved me.
‘Will we go for a smoke?’
He relented a little. ‘Go on. They’ve got heaters out the back.’
The Lion wasn’t a fancy organic gastro pub. Ugly square fifties brick, football on the telly, microwaved Thai food and a strong whiff of bleach and urine from the prefab toilet block in the car park, where there was also a children’s play set, a couple of benches and a mushroom of a heater. I carried the drinks, Dave limped behind with his stick. The only other smokers were a couple of teenagers sharing a spliff at the top of the slide. They nodded at Dave – ‘All right’ – and sloped off into the dark.
‘Not a social visit then?’
‘Sharp as ever, Dave.’ It felt so good to see him, even like this. I would have told him how much I’d missed him, but it would only have embarrassed him. Green-grey hills, soft rain, the close English sky. It’s not your fault, Judith.
‘Judith?’
I shook myself.
‘Sorry, Dave. Look, I hate to barge in on you like this. You know I wouldn’t unless –’
‘It’s OK. I know.’
I took a deep breath. In the end, it seemed best to keep it simple. I longed to discuss the Caravaggio with Dave, not least because of the pleasure I knew the story would give him, but the less he knew the better.
‘I had an email.’ He interrupted before I could speak.
‘What?’
‘Two actually. Look.’
He held out his phone. The first one was dated a few days ago, just when I had been leaving for Amsterdam. There was no superscription or signature, and the account address was meaningless, just letters and numbers at Gmail. It read:
‘We are urgently attempting to contact Miss Judith Rashleigh. Please reply if you can help us with this request.’
‘I thought it was junk – a con, like those ones you get asking you to send money to Nigeria. But then this one came.’
I held the screen closer to my face in the tangerine glow of the heater. Dated today.
‘Where is she, Dave?’ That was all.
15
I’d only ordered the drink for form’s sake, but now I was glad of it. Dave looked at me expectantly as I took a long gingery swallow.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’
If Yermolov had been able to find Dave’s email, he had probably also found his actual address. And I doubted that Yury or his equivalent would be killing time in the Pump Room with a Bath-bun and a Jane Austen novel.
‘Dave – where’s your wife?’
‘Now? She’s gone to her Zumba – I told her I was coming down the pub to catch the footie results. She’ll be back in about an hour. Why?’
‘You have to go home. Now. You have to get something for me and bring it straight back here. The case. The case I sent you the Richter in, in the post. Have you still got it?’
‘What’s it got to do with my missus? I don’t want you –’
He didn’t need to say it. I don’t want you anywhere near her.
‘Please. If she’s not home, it should be fine.’ I prayed I was telling the truth. Laboriously he rose to his feet. ‘I don’t know if I’ve still got it. That is, when I sold it, I bought a different case, because –’
‘Just please go. Now. Try to hurry.’ It felt bad to say that. Dave would struggle with his bad leg, getting up a ladder or whatever, but I didn’t dare suggest going along to help. His wife might arrive home, and if the place was already being watched, my presence there would do for us all.
‘I’m not happy about this.’
‘I know.’
‘Doesn’t seem like I’ve got much choice though. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ He hadn’t touched his beer. I tried to keep a reassuring smile on my face as he tapped his way out of the pub car park.
How long would he be? How long would it take for Yermolov to get someone down here? Or were they here already? I wrapped my arms around my knees, squeezing myself smaller, wishing I could just fold myself away altogether and disappear.
I was winding back the possibilities in my head. It had to be the Richter. I had “acquired” the picture – well, stolen back, actually – from Moncada, the sale being the bait that had brought Renaud Cleret to Paris. I had taken the small canvas when Renaud murdered the Italian, and after I’d taken care of Renaud, with the help of a Glock 26 provided by Dave, I had ‘sold’ the picture to him, enabling him to fund his new life. It was compensation for my having lost him his job at the House, but also, I had to admit, blood money. Dave had never asked what I intended to do with the gun, and I’d never said, but we both knew that his having accepted the painting was a compromise. Yermolov knew – somehow – about Gentileschi, about my life and identity in Paris, about Moncada’s death, so he could equally well have known about the Richter. Obviously he had come to the same conclusion as me. There had been someone else waiting for Moncada that night in the Place de l’Odéon. The person who was supposed to receive the second picture that had been in the case. The Caravaggio. But that person had never taken it, because I had.
*
I’d thought I’d covered it, taking the hacker’s advice, but I might as well have posted my whereabouts on Instagram. Smart, Judith. The pub door swung behind me and I flinched. Just a bloke with a packet of Bensons and the Daily Mail. He nodded at me and sat down at the furthest of the tables. If Yury was crawling commando-style across the village green, at least there’d be a witness. If Dave had the case, if he got back here, if Yermolov left him alone, just – please, please – left his wife alone, I thought I didn’t much care what happened to me.
No Dave. The man with the newspaper left, the barman came out to switch the heaters off. I shivered, calculated, corkscrewed my hands inside my jacket for warmth, but I couldn’t bear to move. It felt like a sort of penance, that endless moment in the English cold; if I just stayed there, Dave would be OK. Finally I heard the blessed tap of his stick, behind me.
‘Judith? I was looking for you inside,’ he said gently ‘What are you doing freezing out here
? Come on, let’s go in.’
‘Where’s your wife?’
‘She texted, said they’re going to Wagamama for a meal. Lucky, eh?’
‘So you’ve got it?’
‘Come in.’
The bar was now empty, but the landlord still hadn’t called time, though he looked disgusted when we disturbed his viewing of Tottenham vs Man City to request two teas. My hands were so cold I could barely hold the cup.
‘Where is it?’
‘Right here. When we moved down here we got rid of a lot of stuff. It’s amazing how much crap you find hanging around when you move.’
The case was lying next to his jacket on the banquette; he’d left it there when he came to find me. He looked so pleased. Christ.
‘When you sold that picture – you know, that one – how was it listed in the catalogue?’
‘“Property of a Gentleman” of course.’
We both smiled at the joke.
‘But when they dealt with you, paid for it and so on – they had your details, accounts, everything?’
‘Of course – it was legit, wasn’t it?’ He looked panicked again.
‘The sale was fine, don’t worry about that. I’m just trying to work out how they got your address.’
‘So you know who these emails are from?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it to do with what you needed – the Kenya contact?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And?’
What could I tell him? Dave, who’d only ever been good to me. That I’d put him in danger?
‘You’re sure there was no one – hanging around when you went back?’
‘Listen. I’m not going to ask you what it is. I’m not. But if my missus . . .’
‘OK. Do you still have – you know?’
The worry that had been twisting behind his brow eased out and he was suddenly cold, professional.
‘I’ve got a licence for my shotgun, yes. Do a bit of pheasant shooting these days. That bad?’