Domina

by L. S. Hilton

  The gun hung loosely from his hand, relaxed, familiar.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he hissed. ‘You stupid little bitch.’

  ‘You can throttle me, or shoot me. See what happens. You murdered two people for your fucking painting. Oh, sorry, three. Well, here it is.’

  I shook my jacket to the floor and eased the shift slowly over my head, tossed it to one side. I’d put two sports bras underneath to make it fit. I jerked my head at the crumpled heap of cloth lying next to Balensky.

  ‘All yours.’

  Yermolov changed tack. ‘I was in no way responsible for the death of Edouard Guiche and I have no idea who is this Masha. I have no interest in that . . . thing.’

  ‘Why should I believe you? Why did you pay for it if you don’t want it? Why did you . . . ?’

  I was feeling distinctly peculiar, so I lay down on the floor next to Balensky’s corpse. Yermolov turned away from me and walked a lap of the room, fists clenched in his pockets, like a bad actor doing a big decision.

  ‘I would very much like a drink. Would you care to join me?’

  ‘Maybe. Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Perhaps, first, you would switch off the camera, please?’ His voice was soothing, coaxing. The kind of voice you would use to a dangerous lunatic. ‘You are in no danger. And then I’ll fetch you a drink.’ We were humouring one another now, each uncertain of the other’s next move.

  ‘I’ll need my phone. In my bag, over there.’ I wiped my hand on my trousers and called the silenced device, which would cut the timer and hence the link. Yermolov watched with interest. Then I messaged Jovana:

  All done. Did it work?

  Seemed to. Weird stuff! she pinged back.

  I know, right? Speak tomorrow, thanks.

  I replaced the phone and lay back with my eyes closed. Yermolov was gone so long that I thought he might be calling reinforcements. He could have come back with a rocket launcher and an iron maiden, I wouldn’t have noticed. He knew it was a fake. He knew. So why? Doors banged somewhere in the depths of the house. I remembered Carlotta, lost in her own kitchen.

  ‘Here.’

  I sat up and took the cold glass Yermolov handed me. Elena’s favourite.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He lit a cigarette and handed me the pack.

  ‘So. Tell me about this film.’ He was still using the lunatic voice.

  I took a long slug, relishing the frozen burn.

  ‘I commissioned it for you. Either it’s an artwork, or it’s evidence. It doesn’t have a title yet. If you want to buy it, the price is 200K euros. Plus my commission, ten per cent.’

  ‘You said it was live. Witnesses.’

  ‘Indeed. I’m sure you’ve heard of socially critical photography? The witnesses are artists. They think this is staged – a comment on the power of capital to subvert materiality. Or some shit like that. Surreal.’

  ‘Riiight.’ Maybe I did sound a bit mad.

  ‘So you buy the tapes, a unique artwork. The other condition still stands. Your Botticellis go to your wife. Your call.’

  He lit a cigarette and handed me the pack.

  ‘And you are doing this because . . .?’

  ‘I want you to stop – meddling. Leave me alone, as I said to your friend. Stop killing people into the bargain, maybe.’

  ‘Don’t be tedious. I did not kill anyone. Not this Masha person, not Guiche.’

  ‘You destroyed my gallery in Venice.’ I reached across Balensky for the bruised ashtray.

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘To threaten me. Because you wanted the picture.’

  ‘The fake Caravaggio? He wanted it.’

  Balensky had looked terrified, furious, confused, but Yermolov was none of those things. He looked bored. It’s difficult to fake bored, one tends to overdo it. So suddenly, shatteringly, I knew that he was telling the truth.

  *

  An elevated sense of his own status. Throughout the ramshackle triumphs of his progress, Caravaggio experienced success as confinement. Desire fulfilled became desire disdained. The claustrophobic interiority of his pictures, their reduction of the world to the confines of a single room, they perform their deceits even as they cajole us into believing we see clearly. There is nothing else, so how can we be deluded? And yet, so possessed are we by looking that we blind ourselves to the simultaneous realities of his scenes. Painting is cheating. Beware of what you think you see. I let my head fall back on the floor, a brief flash of the kilim in my flat in Venice. No. I remembered a line I had read somewhere, that the moment of communication in an artwork appears as a sudden salience on the surface of the psyche. It was all so swiftly, stupidly clear. Ever since that moment in Paris when Renaud had whipped the garrotte around Moncada’s neck, I had placed myself at the centre, when in fact I had only ever been a satellite, peripheral to an entirely different materiality. Others – Kazbich, Balensky, Yermolov, Moncada himself – were playing alternate odds. The surface had been muddied, and I just couldn’t see.

  I groaned. I wished Balensky had shot me. I had been wrong. Wrong about all of it.

  24

  Yermolov’s story took several hours to unravel. As he talked, we lay on our elbows like Romans at a feast. The huge house had seemed so menacing earlier, but now, as we lay on the heated floor with our vodka, it felt cosy, a cocoon in a duvet of snow. All quite friendly. But as he spoke I felt myself shrivelling, desiccated by my own conceit.

  ‘I knew Balensky was a cheat for a long time,’ Yermolov explained. ‘Him and Kazbich.’

  ‘I worked that out – Balensky took a fake Rothko from him, for a start.’

  Yermolov was polite enough to look genuinely impressed. ‘You spotted that? Otlichno.’ Excellent.

  That might have been the moment to ask him why his opinion of my skills had been so low, but I needed information from him more than reassurance. I ignored the compliment, asked him why he had continued to associate with Balensky.

  ‘We had many connections. We had worked together in the past, in Russia. It was complicated.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But I knew as soon as he came to me with the Caravaggio deal that it was a fake. Only an – an ignoramus would believe that story. But he – he didn’t know pictures, didn’t love them. They were just things to him, objects to sell.’ He leaned forward confidentially, ‘The only picture he really loved was a Safronov portrait of himself.’

  ‘Ouch.’ Nikas Safronov specialised in fake-classic swagger portraits. He had done the Russian president as Francois I. ‘As Napoleon?’

  ‘Funny. Peter the Great.’

  ‘Double ouch. So why did you go along with it? Why did you agree to buy the Caravaggio?’

  ‘Balensky needed money. He’s broke.’

  ‘Broke?’

  ‘It happens. The government in Russia froze his assets. If he returns he will be arrested. Not an uncommon occurrence.’

  ‘One that you’ve managed to avoid.’

  For some time Yermolov had been aware of what I had worked out from Guiche’s papers. Kazbich had been dealing more than pictures to Balensky – using paintings as a cover and Raznatovic as a supplier he had indeed also been moving arms. Yermolov was not involved. What I didn’t know was that Balensky had become an inconvenience to the Russian authorities. Like many of his predecessors in the post-Soviet gold-rush, his fortune had been too flamboyantly and violently acquired to suit Moscow’s new order. And so his assets had been frozen. Balensky was therefore living on credit, desperate for money, hence the Caravaggio scheme, which he and Kazbich had cooked up together. Kazbich would sell the picture, supposedly to Balensky and Yermolov, then Balensky and Kazbich would split Yermolov’s part of the fee. Smoke and mirrors. Balensky’s pretended ‘investment’ was supposed to convince Yermolov. Hence Balensky’s panic when I announced the picture to be a fake. It had been for Yermolov’s benefit. Perhaps he had even frantically chanced that by shooting me, he could still persuade Yermolov
the picture was real.

  ‘But if you knew it was all nonsense, why did you go along with it? Why did you come here today?’

  ‘Politics.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I needed to stay close to Balensky. You know that I have . . . political connections in Russia? They – we – considered that it would be more convenient for all concerned if Balensky was arrested in the West. For fraud. This Caravaggio scheme was a perfect solution – he built his own trap.’

  ‘So that was why you paid over the money?’

  ‘I knew I would get it back. It wasn’t so much.’ Fifty million dollars. I supposed it wasn’t, to a man like him.

  I was reminded of a phrase I had read in Bruce Eakin’s book: ‘For my friends, everything – for my enemies, the law!’

  ‘But – what about Balensky’s people? I saw him with a bodyguard last night.’

  ‘There are very few left. He kept up appearances.’

  The emails Dave had received. The burglaries. There had been something . . . amateurish about them. As if I could have run so easily if Yermolov had really been after me.

  Kazbich, ignorant that Yermolov was playing him, had been equally desperate for Yermolov to buy.

  ‘But he had been your dealer. You trusted him?’

  ‘Once, yes. He was no longer of any interest to me. I was to see the thing through with Balensky, that was all.’

  ‘You weren’t angry? He’d cheated you. You didn’t want revenge?’

  ‘Revenge is not something I have a use for. It’s not effective.’ He caught my eye as he raised his glass, and a tiny fizz of electromagnetism bounced between us.

  Kazbich had known I was in the Place de l’Odéon, and had thought I must know where the piece was. He had suggested the ‘valuation’, had tried to goad Yermolov into pursuing me, but that had failed when I turned Yermolov down. Yermolov didn’t much care about finding the piece itself, as between the provenances and the payment Balensky was already entrapped, but Kazbich had been frantic to go ahead and get Yermolov to hand over the rest of the money. So he had begun exerting pressure – trying to mess with my head. Which, it turned out, he had done, spectacularly. Yermolov thought he must have been responsible for the ‘ghosts’ in my flat. And then Elena had interfered.

  ‘Elena. Yes.’

  ‘Judith, as I say, I am not without principles. Whatever Elena told you, she is the mother of my sons. I would never threaten her. She is . . . a difficult woman. Hysterical, frustrated. She drinks – impossible. I sent her to doctors, to clinics, but nothing worked.’

  ‘I’ve seen worse.’ My own mother, for example.

  ‘Please accept that there are some things you simply do not know.’

  ‘But you are going to divorce her?’

  ‘Yes. And I am not going to give her my Botticellis, though I must say I appreciate the romance of your request. Elena will be well cared for. But I do not think that you did this’ – he waved his hand at the chandelier – ‘for Elena’s sake?’

  ‘Elena wanted to use me, to get the picture. That’s why she’s in St Moritz. She had an idea that without it she would be in danger. But because of what she knew, what you both knew, returning it wouldn’t have been enough. I needed to know how you had found out, and to have something – something to bargain with. That’s why I went to Raznatovic. I thought you and Balensky were in the arms thing together.’

  ‘I knew about the dead men. One in Paris, one in Rome. The Italians? But I also knew that you had stolen nothing, for all you had changed your name.’

  ‘But still.’

  Yermolov rolled his eyes. ‘Miss Teerlinc –’

  ‘You can call me Judith if you like. It is my name.’

  ‘Judith. This is not a game. I know what people think of us – oligarchs and murderers, locking people in the Lubyanka and throwing away the key. But we don’t all go about with our pockets full of polonium. I do have principles. I may not be a saint, which is why, frankly, your terrible past is of little interest to me. But neither am I a cartoon.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ I said, looking over at Balensky, ‘I can see that. How did you learn about the . . . incident in Paris though?’

  ‘Kazbich, naturally.’

  But how did Kazbich know who I was and what I was doing there?

  ‘Elena told me that you were dangerous. And then I thought you killed Masha, smashed up the gallery, killed Guiche. So I thought you were serious. I thought you were coming for me.’

  ‘But why did you think this?’

  ‘Yury. I saw Yury. In Venice, then in Paris.’

  ‘I know Yury. But he works for Kazbich, never for me. I asked Kazbich to have him keep an eye on Elena. When she drinks, things can get ugly. I knew nothing about Masha. I heard Edouard Guiche had committed suicide.’

  ‘Balensky thought he had the painting,’ I said slowly. ‘It wasn’t suicide.’

  ‘Guiche would not be the first man who worked for Balensky who ended that way.’

  We were quiet for a moment.

  ‘There’s another reason,’ I said. ‘Because . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  If I had learned one thing from Caravaggio, it was to suit your techniques to your circumstances. ‘Because I could. Because I had talked myself into believing that you were pursuing me. Because I was angry with you. I wanted to humiliate you. Because it was – exciting, I suppose.’

  ‘Masha was your friend?’

  ‘Sort of. Yes. Enough for it to matter.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your gallery too.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter actually. I’m sorry about your horse.’

  ‘That does, rather.’

  *

  We had temporarily forgotten Balensky, the silent guest at our little drinks party. I raised my glass at the pile of cashmere on the floor. ‘How come he’s not bleeding?’

  ‘I was a professional, once.’

  ‘You and Elena were made for each other, you know?’

  ‘Once.’

  Yermolov rose to his feet, stretched athletically. He caught me noticing.

  ‘So now you and your clever artist friends have me over the keg?’

  ‘Barrel.’

  Yermolov looked amused. ‘You are very thorough. And do you intend to pursue this rather dramatic blackmail?’

  ‘No. But I did promise some money to my artists. I will need that. And to someone else. Elena knows about it.’ I pinched the bridge of my nose. I would have time to think about my own colossal stupidity later. ‘And we still have to get rid of Balensky.’

  ‘As I said, a heart attack. He was an old man.’ Yermolov was pacing, as though the hallway was a cage.

  ‘But your people in Moscow wanted to bang him up. Put him in prison, that is. They won’t be too thrilled by this.’

  ‘It is . . . inconvenient.’

  ‘That’s where the someone comes in. I think you’ll like this.’

  ‘You’re telling me how to dispose of a body?’

  ‘Don’t get me started.’

  *

  Yermolov had driven himself from the airstrip that afternoon in an Audi station wagon, collecting Balensky from the Palace on his way. The Caravaggio came in useful as a temporary shroud – we wrapped it round Balensky’s neck and head in a snood to conceal the wound, then fastened his overcoat tightly to prop his head in place. The loose papery skin of the throat was still warm. There was plenty of space for the body in the boot, and after we’d hoicked him down in the lift and rolled him into the car we didn’t need to speak anymore as we drove back to St Moritz between thick-walled old farmhouses and modern condominiums gleaming out of the snow like stalagmites. I broke the silence only to give directions to the hostel.

  ‘We’ll have to carry him. Get his arms round our necks as we get him out. Make like he’s drunk.’

  I had done that before, when I had taken care of Leanne in Paris.

  ‘You are sure this is the best way?’Yermolov a
sked.

  ‘What does your government hate even more than dissent?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Homosexuals.’ He looked at me blankly. ‘You didn’t know Balensky was gay?’

  ‘I had no idea.’ Pride and, I had to admit, a little disgust were in his voice.

  I thought ruefully of my precautions with Dave’s grey hat in Kenya. There I’d been casting Yermolov as some kind of omnipotent supervillain, and he was ignorant of stuff he could have read in Grazia.

  ‘Well, he was. Wait until you meet my friend Timothy. I think your friends in Moscow are going to be very pleased with you.’

  Timothy’s room was on the second floor. I took a quick peek into the lobby. I knew from dropping Timothy off that the stairs were on the right, with the reception desk built into a cubicle at a right angle. There were no guests in evidence, just a woman in a thick yellow roll-neck jumper leafing through a magazine behind the desk. The entrance was directly in her sight-line. I had a map-pin loaded on my phone with directions to a house I had randomly selected down by the lake.

  ‘I’m going to go in and ask her for directions. When we get outside, you take him in, OK?’

  ‘No problem.’

  I approached the desk and began to explain in the few words of German I had that I was meeting a friend at the hostel and that we didn’t know how to get to our host’s chalet. Perhaps glad of the distraction on a boring shift, the woman smiled helpfully and pored over the location on my phone, switching to perfect English when I seemed confused. She led me outside and began an efficient explanation of how to get down the hill, bearing right until I passed the supermarket on my left, from where I would see the lake. I switched the phone off in my pocket as we passed through the doors, figuring that the time it took to reopen it once outside would give Yermolov his chance. The two of us shivered on the porch until the screen came back to life. The receptionist traced her finger along the route I should take.

  ‘Thank you so much! I’ll just go up and see if my friend’s ready.’ I could see the hem of Balensky’s coat drooping up the stairwell like a dragon’s tail.