by L. S. Hilton
*
Elena took me through the entry code twice, then went to meet Carlotta for lunch. I went back to St Moritz, packed my things and set out what I would need for the evening. I messaged Jovana the confirmation; at 6 p.m. the screens in Belgrade would open their eyes. I sent a Snapcode to Kenya.
There was one thing left to do, the hardest one. I had to call my mother. There might never be another chance. Some of the exuberance I had felt with Elena still fizzed inside me; the fear was building, but still low level, subsumed by the thrill of risk. In that moment, my mother’s voice felt more intimidating than the confrontation with Yermolov and Balensky. If I’d had to describe my feelings for her, I might have said ‘complex’ or ‘fierce’, but the meaning collapsed in the saying. My mother had never protected me, but then she was barely capable of taking care of herself. I pitied her, in many ways despised her, but I had always tried to be dutiful towards her. Because, for reasons I wasn’t prepared to think about right then, I also admired her. She was weak, but she was quick. We were alike, she and I. Good at improvising.
Get it over with.
I lay next to the Caravaggio on the bed and punched in her number.
‘All right, Mum?’
‘Judy! How are you, love?’
Things came and went all the time in our house. A slow, permanent slippage, a leaking trail with its own centrifugal logic. The Christmas tree would stay up until May, then one morning I’d come down to find the telly gone.
‘Fine. Working hard.’
‘It’s all going well then?’
Once there was a bread machine she’d got on the Tesco stamps. The house smelled like an advert – for a while.
‘Really well, Mum. How about you, what have you been up to?’
Sometimes it was stereo speakers so I’d know she’d picked someone up in the pub. I didn’t blame my mother for trying to live a bit, even if she wanted to do it to Crystal Gale.
‘Oh, not much. The usual. I’ve got a new couch.’
It was the grotesque carnival of the attempt that I couldn’t bear, the swim of scattered clothes on the living room floor, the unspeakable stains on the sofa.
‘That’s lovely.’
The money I had sent to my mother since I moved to Italy had relieved her of her intermittent attempts at employment. Enough each month to keep her comfortable without arousing suspicion; my plan had been to wait until I’d been in Venice a while, got the gallery established so it wouldn’t look too obvious, then buy her a place on Gentileschi’s money. In the meantime, I’d asked if there was anywhere she’d like to go, anything she’d like to do, but she seemed happy enough with a bit of online shopping and going down the pub. I’d come, slowly, to realise that she didn’t want a new home, she was happy enough in her tarted-up council flat, with no worries and money for booze. It pained and exasperated me that that was all she wanted. But my mum really thought her life was OK.
The vodka and Radio 1 on her old digital clock radio, red minutes ticking down the twilit afternoons.
There was a pause on the line. There were a whole load of things I would have liked to say to my mother, but they would never be said. Never might just be coming a bit quicker, I supposed.
‘Weather nice?’ she asked eventually. My mum had never gone south of Birmingham. She thought I lived in the tropics.
‘Fine, bit cold now it’s winter.’
‘That’s nice then.’ I could hear the telly. Busy mums go to Iceland at Christmas! It was barely November. I gulped air.
‘Just wanted to see you’re OK.’
‘Fine, love.’
‘Bye then. Best not run up the bill.’
‘Yeah. Bye, Judy. Love you.’
She didn’t used to say that. She’d learned it, from TV. I wanted to say it back, but my thumb cut the call before the words came. I sat up and looked around the room, but there wasn’t much to break.
*
Why had I assembled this tottering stack of contingencies? To protect what? Dave? To make things right for Timothy? It wasn’t that, quite. Yermolov had taken away the most important thing I had ever had. Not money, not my gallery, not Masha. Yermolov had seen through me, through the laboured carapace which had taken me so long to construct. Pictures were the only pure thing I had ever known, but he had scraped away my faith in them sure as a restorer lifts a panel with a razor. I needed to catch him out, certainly, to make all this stop. But I wanted to make him own something ugly, something vulgar and crass and despicable. Something that I had made. He thought he’d shown me up, but he was wrong about me. At least I was going to keep on telling myself that.
Taking the bolster from the bed, I wrapped my arms around it, squeezing and squeezing until the place behind my eyes turned red and my thoughts went quiet.
23
No security, no staff, or no show had been my instructions. The darkened glass of the Yermolov home at Pontresina seemed as still as black ice, yet I paused outside for a few achingly freezing minutes, searching out any sign of an ambush. Without Elena, the huge house felt Gothic, the graceful pine-covered slopes in their sparkling mantle of snow a horror-movie backdrop. Yermolov could easily have positioned a sniper in the wood, but I had to assume he wouldn’t be so foolhardy as to take me out without ascertaining the whereabouts of the Caravaggio. The lift was lined with tiny mother-of-pearl tiles. I counted them, their cool lustre, as I rode up. As promised, the house felt empty, though I held my breath and listened again to a silence magnified by my knowledge of the massive peaks outside in the dark.
Entering the hallway at 5.55 p.m., I waited out the last five minutes in shadow. Then I sent a message from my phone to the device suspended in the tangled net of the chandelier. I watched for the tiny red star to illuminate. One of Jovana’s tech-artists had installed a modified version of Livestream, preset with a timer which I could activate. Whatever happened could be watched by her and her team through an encrypted link and would also be recorded on film. I was nervous about it, but collaboration had never been my thing. I had to trust her breezy reassurances. The film was an insurance policy, a built-in plan B. Hopefully it wouldn’t be necessary.
Once it was working, I fiddled with the complicated system of switches by the lift, raising and lowering the lights until I’d found a suitably dramatic level. I tried to listen for a vehicle on the road below, but the thickness of the walls and the snow padding insulated me so thoroughly that I could hear the low whisper of my own breath. Then, faintly, the smooth whine of the elevator, descending. I had counted thirty-two luminous squares on the climb, one per second, which meant they’d be inside in just over a minute.
There was a small comic struggle between the tall man and the short as they each attempted to exit the lift first.
‘Where is she?’ asked Balensky in Russian.
‘Vot,’ I answered. Here. I switched to English. ‘I have the picture, as I said.’ Balensky advanced, close enough for me to smell the spicy cologne in the folds of his heavy cashmere coat.
‘Where is it?’
‘Just hand it over, please, Miss Teerlinc. The sooner we get this charade over with, the better.’
Yermolov’s voice was weary rather than angry. Had he and Balensky decided to play good cop, bad cop?
‘Before I give it to you, I have some conditions. You are here, obviously, because your . . . colleague Ivan Kazbich gave you a message. From Dejan Raznatovic, in Serbia. I went to see him, as you know. I know that you’ve been flipping art for arms. I don’t give a toss about that, but quite a lot of other people will. What I want is for you to stop fucking about in my life. In any way whatsoever. I’ll give you the picture. In return, you’ – I pointed to Yermolov – ‘will give the Jameson Botticellis to your wife. And you both have my silence. Easy, no?’
Yermolov snorted, which threw me off a bit.
Balensky advanced even closer, the sandalwood of his cologne overwhelmed by the rotten stench of his breath.
‘I think it is
clear that this is not a joke. You have no evidence for these absurd threats.’
‘You’re here though, aren’t you?’
‘We came for the picture. Hand it over. Now.’
He dropped his gaze, I followed his eyes. A snub metal snout protruded from his coat. Not a lady’s gun. Oh well, plan B it was.
‘You do know that your picture is a fake?’ I addressed him, watching both of their faces in the low light. Yermolov looked entirely unsurprised.
He knows. He knows. So why?
I was recalculating even as Balensky’s face stilled, then exploded into rage. He shouted something in rapid Russian I couldn’t follow. Yermolov merely shrugged, those pale eyes calm. I caught the name Kazbich in Balensky’s tirade.
‘Yes, you might want to ask Dr Kazbich some questions,’ I interrupted. ‘Only a child would have believed those provenances. Your picture is a piece of worthless crap.’ Why wasn’t Yermolov reacting?
Balensky raised the gun. As planned, I had dressed very carefully for the performance, my black pants and a black Dolce jacket purloined from Carlotta, wasp-waisted with a stiffened kick of peplum, a high, revered white leather collar. Beneath, my breasts were bound tight under linen, but I still figured that Balensky could see my heart pumping. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t even thirty either, but I was really, really tired of being fucked about. And having a loaded barrel aimed at one’s aorta does awaken a sense of life’s rich possibilities, so I did what any girl would in such dire circumstances. I started to take off my clothes.
As the first button fell open, Balensky let out a long, quivering sigh, but it wasn’t the prospect of a glimpse of my tits that was doing it for him. Under my jacket, I was wearing the Caravaggio.
*
The inventories of the painter’s works made in his own time include many pictures which have been lost, canvases that disappeared or were ignorantly destroyed. These vanished paintings occasionally resurface – in an attic in Toulouse, a dining room in Dublin – some to be astonishingly authenticated and hung like treasures, and others, unproven, driving their fanatically convinced owners slowly insane. Kazbich had quoted one such inventory in his provenances: ‘a picture made for the woman who had given him lodging’. An adaptation of the well-known convention of the artist paying in kind, scrawling a hasty masterpiece on the tablecloth to pay for his wine; in this case, Caravaggio had supposedly drawn his Venetian landlady – perhaps also one of his many lovers – using her loose under-shift as an improvised canvas.
It was the Serbian icons which had explained the last element of Kazbich’s forgery. When I had opened the case back in England I had been confused to find that the ‘Caravaggio’ was on a piece of clothing. But the museum Raznatovic had helped to establish in Belgrade contained examples of ecclesiastical dress from the region’s monasteries, copes and surplices hand-stitched by generations of patient nuns. I knew nothing about textile history, but presumably Kazbich had filched one. Gingerly shaking out the garment, I could discern tiny holes where the original embroidery had been carefully unpicked, creating a blank canvas of authentically dated period cloth on the simple sleeveless garment. The folds of the fabric were stiff and liverish, but linen can survive a long, long time. I had guessed right at the chalk at the archive in Amsterdam, and been spot on about the Naples yellow. It was only then, when I saw Kazbich’s signature, that I realised where it must be. What had stalled me was how Moncada could possibly have concealed another painting at our meeting in the hotel room. But if it was on linen – a possibility which it seemed Kazbich had also considered – then it could have been carefully rolled into a briefcase, hiding it not only from airport security, but also from me. Pretty clever. The portrait had been built up to resemble the sly, inquiring head of the girl in The Gypsy Fortune Teller, one of the first pictures with which Caravaggio had astounded the sensation-hungry art collectors of Rome. Kazbich had drawn a poetic connection between the face of the forgotten Venetian woman and the playful knowingness of the gypsy girl’s features. The ardour of greed, he must have hoped, would do the rest.
Balensky gaped at my forged breastplate.
‘You can shoot me,’ I continued, ‘but you’ll never get the blood out. Want to try?’
His mouth was working, but he was still aiming the gun.
‘Or I can tear it off. It’s very fragile, this old cloth. And then you can shoot me. But you still won’t have your picture.’
‘What do you want?’ He was wavering. ‘Money?’
‘I don’t need money. I want you to stop. Just leave it alone. And him –’ I angled my chin over Balensky’s shoulder at Yermolov – ‘he is going to give his paintings to his wife. The Jameson Botticellis, as I said. I’m going to walk out of here just the way I came in, with this thing on me. When Elena Yermolov is sure of the pictures, you can have it back, for what it’s worth. Which is nothing.’
Yermolov appeared to be stifling a giggle, which wasn’t quite the reaction I’d been expecting.
‘Ona bezumna,’ muttered Balensky. She’s insane.
‘Possibly,’ said Yermolov, in English. ‘But not entirely stupid. As you know. Get rid of her if you want. You know the picture’s worthless.
Balensky turned slowly to the other man, pivoting like a mechanical toy. Both his hands now hung limply by his sides. He watched Yermolov, who simply shrugged, then looked down at the gun as though bewildered to find himself holding it.
‘We need to talk.’ Balensky was clearly struggling for composure, but there was a crazed desperation to him now. He wasn’t at all intimidating, more absurd. As absurd as an angry geriatric with a loaded gun can ever be.
‘No. You really don’t.’ I put my hands to the collar of the shift, feeling the cloth crackle with the strain. ‘Do you want it or not? Shall I count to ten?’
I knew Balensky couldn’t shoot me. Even the cleanest aim to the head would drench the picture with my brains before he had a chance to ease it off my body. It wasn’t the supposed monetary worth of the thing that would prevent him either. Desire was a currency I’d dealt in for a long time. He couldn’t shoot me because of his craving to possess this thing, with a passion whose blindness only rendered it more overwhelming.
Then Balensky shot me.
*
An echo of stillness before the bullet’s report cracked deafeningly off the walls. Something heavy thudded against my chest, no time to feel even surprise as Balensky’s skull bounced against my collarbone and the gun clattered to the floor in a crisp tinkle of breaking china. He made a small, gentle sound, the exhalation of old bones rising from a chair. Yermolov was supporting him with his left arm from behind, in his right hand a heavy ormolu ashtray. Balensky’s arms swung bonelessly as his knees folded and Yermolov crouched forward, lowering him neatly to the stone. He pushed aside the swirling fabric of his overcoat and felt for the pulse behind Balensky’s ear with a practised three fingers. Then there was an embarrassingly long silence.
*
‘We had better call an ambulance,’ said Yermolov eventually. ‘Mr Balensky appears to have had a heart attack. And I think he must have hit his head when he collapsed. How dreadful.’
Quietly, he set down the ashtray next to the body. Quietly, he picked up the gun.
My synapses were going off like the Fourth of July and my shoulders were in spasm, the whole of my body still twitching in disbelief that the shot had gone wide. The floor was covered in tiny fragments of porcelain. The horse. Balensky had shot the horse, then died of an ashtray. Smoking was allowed indoors then? Yay. Jesus, Judith.
‘He shot the horse,’ I blurted uselessly.
Yermolov held the gun in his right hand. With his left he reached into his pocket for his phone.
‘The same –’ My mouth was arid, I gathered saliva and tried again, but all I could manage was a high, winded gasp. I squeezed my throat together, controlled my voice. ‘The same kind of heart attack Edouard Guiche suffered when your goon pushed him out of a fifth-floor windo
w? The same kind Masha died from? Am I going to have one too?’ I was talking too fast for him. He looked confused, but he didn’t pull the phone out.
The Caravaggio was drenched in sweat, but I was freezing. I continued, ‘You should know that what you have just done has been filmed. Live stream, real time. A whole shitload of witnesses. He’s got a wound the size of your fucking fist in the back of his head. Heart attack?’
I didn’t feel the need to mention that Jovana and company believed they were watching a mock-up.
Yermolov’s hand was clutching my throat before I even saw it move. The back of my tongue was contracting, but I squeezed out the words. ‘You can do what you like, but it won’t help.’
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘Let go.’ He eased his grip but didn’t release me. ‘You have just committed murder on a live webcam. Do you understand?’
Very slowly, the fingers round my neck relaxed. My heels reconnected with the floor. I sucked air.
Interesting, how rage works. I was pretty familiar with it myself. Yermolov’s voice was as cold as the steppe in January, yet his tone was almost conversational. ‘What reason do I have to believe you?’
I smiled as sweetly as I could. ‘Mr Yermolov. This is not a job interview. But, OK. I have your picture, despite your best efforts. I found out about your little racket in Serbia. I found Raznatovic, all by myself. And I got you here. Call me a pleaser, but why doubt me?’
‘Where is this camera?’ he asked slowly.
I took a step back. ‘Up there.’ I jerked my head at the dangling bones. ‘I imagine you’re a good shot, you could probably take it out in one, but it’s too late. As I said, what just happened was streamed. Not on the Web, mind you. It was, however, taped. So you have a choice.’