by Karen Swan
‘Hey, don’t be such a cynic,’ he said, flicking the screen quickly. ‘I think they’re on to something. There’s so much that we don’t see in cities, especially up high or underground . . .’
She remembered the Hermès garden. Xavier Vermeil. Another rash of irritation prickled her skin and she shivered, trying to shake the thought of him off her. ‘Yeah, but what do they do when they get there? I mean, are they like squatters? Do they occupy these buildings they find?’
‘Of course not. The journey is the destination, right? They’re just finding old treasures and trying to return them to the city but there’s no guarantee of success. Some nights they can’t get in, others they get busted. Other times it’s a wasted trip because there’s nothing to find.’
‘So much fun, so little time,’ she sighed, sarcasm tainting every word.
‘Hey, what’s up with you tonight? You OK?’
‘Of course I am,’ she replied, a little too quickly. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
He shrugged, his eyes skipping over her suspiciously, as though her secret was a black stain he could see. ‘I dunno. You just seem tetchy.’
She looked away with a tut, blankly watching a rider do a flip three metres above their heads, but her mind was on Freddie again – wondering what he was doing right now, and with whom. Was he alone, or out with friends? How many of them knew? How many of them would still be friends when it all came out? The thoughts made her feel jittery and she tried to force calm on her body, but her nervous system felt wired, her brain working too fast as the adrenalin began to bite. The truth was that she was far from fine. She’d woken up twice last night, each time believing the charges had been dismissed and feeling crushed when she’d realized that the nightmare was in the waking, not the sleeping.
‘. . . Anyway, some of the hippest architects in the city are looking at these spaces for redevelopment.’
‘What? You mean decommissioned metro tunnels as flats?’ she scoffed.
‘Not flats, no,’ he said patiently. ‘But restaurants, swimming pools . . . Here, look at this,’ Stefan said, sliding his iPad over his lap for her to see some photos. ‘That’s the old Rothschild chateau in Parc de Boulogne. It’s been abandoned since the war. If that was done up, I bet you wouldn’t mind living there.’
‘Well now, that’s different. I’m born to chateaux,’ she shrugged.
His eyes fell to her wry smile. ‘Yeah.’ He looked back at the screen. ‘OK, how about this place?’ he asked, clicking on a vast underground tunnel of vaulted concrete. ‘An old detonator store.’
‘No windows?’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘You know how to live.’
‘But check out those high ceilings! Or what about this one?’ he asked, holding up the tablet to show a desolate red-brick mill with blown-out windows, the masonry scarred black from a fire.
‘Talk about Bleak House,’ she grimaced. ‘Honestly, I still don’t get why anyone would want to go into these places. They must be nutjobs.’
‘Those nutjobs –’ the word sounded funny in his French accent – ‘are professionals from all walks of life, people who see there is more to a city than just shop windows.’
‘Do you know them? These explorers, I mean.’
‘Only my friend. They explore in small numbers and post online anonymously. They have to – the police would have them for trespassing otherwise.’ He clicked on a new link and laughed. ‘Ah, now an asylum!’ he nodded. ‘I can see you in there. Large white space, padded walls, bars at the windows . . . every mod con!’
Flora grinned as she joshed him with her elbow. ‘Stop it.’
‘No? Too edgy? You want something more bourgeois? . . . Oh, wait . . . wait . . . I got it. Home Sweet Home, right?’ He showed her the screen again.
Flora felt the smile slide off her face. ‘No? Man, I thought I nailed it there!’
But Flora couldn’t laugh or smile or talk. She could only stare at the image of the painting, on the bed, in the empty room.
‘How did you get that?’ she demanded, taking the tablet from him.
Stefan blinked. ‘Duh, you know how. You just watched me. You swipe side to side on the screen . . .’ He grinned, as though she were stupid.
‘No, I mean where did you get this picture from? I have to know, Stefan. It’s important.’
Stefan frowned, realizing she was serious, seeing the joke had ended. ‘Flora, you know I can’t tell you that. What does it matter, anyway?’
‘Because it does.’
Stefan glanced back at the photo of the empty apartment. ‘Do you know something about this place?’
‘I can’t tell you that!’ she replied testily, digging in her heels. ‘You’re not the only one with confidentiality issues.’
It was Stefan’s turn to look irritated. ‘Fine,’ he said after a moment. ‘All I can tell you about it is my friend. His name’s Antoine and he does stills photography for us occasionally. He was shooting a story last week and had almost got busted on an expedition at some old munitions factory in St Denis the night before – that’s how we got chatting about it.’
‘Did he go inside that apartment?’
‘Flora, I don’t know—’
‘Would he have sent a letter to the owners?’
‘A letter?’ Stefan repeated incredulously. ‘What for?’
‘Notifying them of its dilapidation. Is that something they do?’
He shrugged hopelessly. ‘I-I dunno. Maybe. He said they see themselves as sort of eco warriors.’
‘Where does he live, your friend?’
‘Uh . . . Montparnasse somewhere, I think – I’d have to check.’
Montparnasse?
Flora blinked as she suddenly remembered the man in the apartment opposite, the climbing rope on the floor beneath the bed . . . his visible interest when he’d seen her on the balcony. A hobby in urban exploring might make you vigilant to abandoned buildings and then sudden activity, especially if it was right across the road from where you lived . . .
Stefan clicked his fingers in front of her, getting her attention. ‘Now your turn. What do you know about that place?’
Flora hesitated. ‘It belongs to some clients, that’s all.’ She tried to keep her tone light, dismissive.
‘What could you possibly be doing for clients there?’ Stefan asked incredulously. ‘The place is empty.’
‘We’re cataloguing the collection.’
Stefan laughed, his eyes on the single painting on the lone bed. ‘Hell of a collection.’
Flora turned towards Stefan, not interested in his sarcasm. ‘Are these pictures on a specific website?’
‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘I told Antoine it sounded interesting and he sent through this selection for me to look at. That’s it. He’s said I can go out with them on their next trip. You want me to ask him?’
Flora shook her head. She didn’t want to alert anyone else to this. It was bad enough the apartment had been found by these ‘urban explorers’. If they found out to whom it belonged, there was no doubt the press would be interested and any kind of publicity would be toxic right now.
She flicked back through the images, trying to find others – were there any of the upstairs apartment? Had they found anything else? Had they removed anything? But there was nothing more than those couple of photos of Apartment 6 and it all looked, to her eye, exactly as she had seen it that day with Natascha.
Still, it rankled with her that it was Apartment 6 these urban explorers had found. Travers had told her the intruders had broken into Apartment 8, upstairs, but what were the chances that these urban explorers were separate from the intruders in Number 8? What were the chances of two break-ins and no apparent thefts, seemingly only weeks apart, for the first time in over seventy years?
Furthermore, she and Angus had been the first people in Apartment 8, of that she was certain. No one else could have walked through the property and, now that she thought about it, Angus’s were the only footprints she had seen i
n the thick carpet of dust.
Flora frowned at the implications. In spite of what Travers had said, the intruders must have broken into Number 6. It was the more logical conclusion. It was also the very apartment the notaries had had the keys for and failed to disclose. But if she was right, if Number 6 was the only apartment that had been broken into – then why was Travers lying about it? And what was he trying to hide?
Chapter Twelve
‘Miss Sykes, welcome to the City of Dreams,’ Noah Haas said in a soft American accent, reaching out a hand as she stepped over the stone threshold. He was casually dressed in jeans and an Oxford shirt but he exuded the low-key sophistication that comes from a life of privilege.
‘Mr Haas,’ she smiled, shaking his hand back. ‘It’s so good of you to agree to meet with me at such short notice.’
‘Not at all. I was intrigued when I got the call from your colleague,’ Noah replied, leading her through to a wide open-plan area with neat cubed sofas that could have accommodated twelve people, expensively distressed silk rugs whose patterns were woven to fade into obsolescence, glimmering underfoot. They were on the top floor of a modern apartment building in Lerchenfeld, a fashionable district of Vienna although not one of the grandest, and it boasted latticed glass walls that swept up and over into the roof, flooding the space with light. Her eyes were automatically drawn to the magnificent view and the traditional wedding-cake apartments opposite. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ he enquired from the kitchen – divided from the living area by a not-full-height marble wall – and holding up two small espresso cups.
‘Lovely,’ she replied, walking back towards him. ‘What a stunning apartment.’
‘Thank you. I preferred having somewhere with more light when I came over.’
‘Yes, Angus said you live in New York?’
‘That’s right. I grew up there but we always spent the summers here when I was growing up.’
‘Do you come back often?’
‘Every summer. It’s good to escape Manhattan in the heat if at all possible. You ever been there?’
‘Oh yes, frequently,’ she smiled, accepting the coffee as he handed it to her. ‘Our head office is based over there and of course, I’m always flying around going to sales or searching out specific pieces for clients.’
‘It sounds like a fascinating job you do, Miss Sykes.’
‘Thank you. I enjoy it. And please call me Flora.’
‘Flora. Ditto, Noah.’
She smiled and took a sip of coffee. ‘So what is it you do?’ she asked, always open to the possibility of procuring a new client. Her success in bringing in new accounts was partly what had brought her to Angus’s attention in the first place.
‘Nothing so exciting, I’m afraid. Asset management.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it has its moments.’
He laughed lightly, his eyes flickering over her quickly before he too drank some coffee. ‘Tell me, do you always dress to match your paintings?’
‘Excuse me?’ she asked, before looking down and seeing that she had put on a yellow dress: it was just above knee length and had cutaway sleeves that bared her shoulders, but it was a yellow dress nonetheless. ‘Oh my goodness, I hadn’t even clocked that!’ she laughed, before quipping, ‘But yes, you’re quite right, I love getting into character. You should see me when I’m selling a Gaugin.’
‘Well now, I think I’d like to,’ he replied, smiling as he watched her.
Flora’s laughter faded – she’d been referring to the sarongs and flowers of Gaugin’s island women, but they were very often topless too and she detected a top note of something more than professional interest. She smiled politely, taking another sip of her coffee. A small silence bloomed and Noah shifted position at the worktop.
‘Would you like to see the painting? You’ve travelled so far to see it.’
‘I’d love to, although I’m working in Paris at the moment so the journey wasn’t too bad.’
‘Really?’ he asked, leading her across the cavernous space towards a door in the far wall. ‘Do you like it there?’ ‘Yes. I have friends in the city so it’s rather like a home-from-home. I probably live there three to four months of the year now.’
‘And where is home-home for you?’
She faltered, although she kept the smile on her face. She wanted to say Little Foxes, Wiltshire but her most recent memory of the place now was that of the devastated faces of her family and it had overwritten in a flash the years of laughter around the kitchen table, bombing in the swimming pool, playing German Spotlight in the garden, the prickle of Christmas-tree needles on her and Freddie’s backs as they hid on Christmas Eve wanting to ‘catch’ Santa, their father reading the paper in his chair in the snug, the sound of The Archers blaring from the radio as their mother hauled the rib of beef from the Aga . . . ‘London,’ she said simply.
‘Knew it. I love that city. I have a flat in Albany. Do you know it?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘It’s just in here,’ he said, opening the door and leading her into a bedroom, immaculately made up in smoke-grey with ivory accents. ‘I would have moved it off the wall for you to see out here, but I’m afraid it’s hard-wired to the alarm. We’d have armed police surrounding the building in two minutes.’
‘Of course.’ Flora’s mouth dropped open as she immediately saw the Renoir hanging opposite the bed. The vibrancy of the woman’s dress was arresting against the bedroom’s dark matte walls, the glow of her pale skin telling of wealth, the shy tilt of her head suggesting feminine power, the rustle of her skirts as she brushed against the flowers almost audible in the silence of this stranger’s room as Flora absorbed its narrative power.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered, walking closer, automatically scanning the canvas for signs of damage or disrepair, anything that might affect a valuation price, but it was pristine, in far better condition than the Vermeils’ piece, which was currently being professionally cleaned. Flora was transfixed by the vividity of colour and she estimated that the layers of dust that had settled over it had muted the palette of the Vermeils’ painting by 30 to 40 per cent.
‘Isn’t it?’ Noah answered. ‘I always say it’s the most beautiful thing in my life.’
Flora glanced across at him, detecting ambiguity in his voice again. He was staring at her and he smiled before looking back at the painting.
‘So you inherited this?’ she asked, walking back towards him.
‘From my mother, yes, but it was bought originally by my great-grandfather. As I told your colleague on the plane, he owned both pieces in the set and when he died, my great-aunt inherited one, my grandfather the other.’
‘Wow,’ she smiled. ‘That’s some inheritance.’
‘Yes, it is.’ He watched her gaze at the painting for a moment, seeming pleased by her reaction. ‘Tell me, are you here because your clients are looking to buy my Renoir – or sell theirs?’
Flora was taken aback by the directness of the question but she hid it with a smile. ‘That would be getting ahead of ourselves. At the moment, we’re merely establishing provenance.’
He gave her a knowing look. ‘Oh, I see. So then I assume you’re having problems tracing it beyond the dealer Franz Von Taschelt too?’
Flora looked at him coolly. ‘That’s right.’
‘And you’re here because you’re hoping I might know something about who he sold it on to, and when.’
‘I am. We don’t think Von Taschelt held on to it for long. In fact, according to the dates we’ve got, we think he flipped it – sold it on – immediately. We thought your family might have retained an interest.’
‘You thought right. I’ve been trying to locate the painting for a number of years – ever since I inherited this one, in fact.’ He put one hand in his pocket.
Flora masked a ripple of impatience. His interest in the painting was irrelevant. ‘And historically? Did your grandfather know what happened to the other one after it was sold?’
‘Sadly not. He was in America by then. I’m sure you know that a lot of Von Taschelt’s records were destroyed during the war? All sorts of documentation was lost due to fires, bombing, looting . . .’
‘Yes,’ she lied, wondering whether he knew that Galerie Von Taschelt’s historic documents were stored at the Attlee & Bergurren Gallery in Saint-Paul. ‘It’s a frustrating process.’
Haas continued watching her, his gaze on her profile. ‘Are you allowed to tell me who your clients are?’
‘Sadly not,’ she demurred, keeping her eyes on the painting.
‘I’d like to meet them. It would be worth their while. I’d make them a serious offer.’
She nodded, glancing over at him. ‘Well, I’ll certainly pass that on to them but as I said, it’s too early to think about anything beyond provenance at this point.’
He gave a small laugh, bemused by her polished rebuffs. ‘You really can’t tell me who they are? Not a small clue?’
She laughed too. ‘I’m afraid not. Not yet, anyway.’ She smiled. She had learned long ago that a smile could disarm most people. ‘So tell me, do you have a full provenance for this painting?’ she asked, changing the subject.
Noah Haas wasn’t fooled but his eyes skipped over her with interest. ‘Yes.’
Another smile, broader. ‘Do you think I could see it?’
He paused, then nodded. ‘Of course.’
They walked out of the bedroom and back into the vast living area where the sun was resting on the floor in gigantic puddles and the giant black TV screen was animated by the city’s reflection. Flora followed him to the far wall which had been clad ceiling-to-floor and wall-to-wall in black wooden shelves. Some of them had been partitioned off, resulting in individually spotlit cubby-holes with various bronze sculptures inside and she clocked a couple of black-and-white photographs, seemingly of Noah as a boy with his parents. No other children – was he an only child?
The book titles she couldn’t decipher, since they were in German, but she logged a couple of author names – Donna Tartt, Philip Roth, E. L. James—