The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9

by Maxim Jakubowski

“Yes,” I stammer, “I know, but …”

  He cuts me off. “She bought it using an assumed name – V. Kulla.”

  I’m stunned. “I … I didn’t remember that …”

  He shakes his head sadly. “You are determined to make things difficult for yourself, Matt. Do you think you are a tough guy, eh? Did you think you would impress your sister? Why don’t you tell him, Abbie, tell your idiotic young brother to stop playing these games.”

  “Yes,” Abbie sobs. “Matt, please, this is madness. Tell him where the Leonardo is!”

  “She must have it,” I whisper, “Vera Kulla …”

  Dirch gives a grunt of disgust and turns to the skinhead with the brass knuckles and gives him a nod. The man draws back his fist and I close my eyes.

  There is a sudden commotion, a crash, I open my eyes again and see Rich on his feet, gripping his steel chair like a club and swinging it at the men who are stumbling away from him. “Run!” he cries, “Run!” and I realize he’s talking to me. I leap to my feet and shove past the startled Dirch and dive for the door, out into the corridor, turn right, run, then skid to a halt as the manservant appears at the corner ahead of me. I turn back but Brass Knuckles is out now and coming for me. Then a door in front of me opens and the technician peers out, wondering what the commotion is. I shove him back inside and follow, locking the door behind me, and stand there gasping, looking around me.

  This is a different room, dark walls, ceiling and floor, subdued pools of light focused on a series of images hanging on the walls. It is an art gallery, I realize, Martin Gräven’s private collection, and one of the paintings catches my eye. I have seen it before, in an art book, a portrait of a young man with extraordinarily long arms and a red waistcoat, rendered in the broken brushstrokes of Cézanne. Looking around the room I see other paintings which, although I don’t recognize them, are in the style of famous artists – a Rembrandt over there, a Picasso surely, and doesn’t that look like a Vermeer?

  My attention is interrupted by banging on the door, the handle being rattled. I look around, my eyes becoming used to the dim light, and I realize that there is no other exit.

  The technician has backed away, staring at me with wide nervous eyes. Then a voice sounds over some kind of intercom. I recognize Dirch.

  “Matt, you are being very stupid. Open this door at once.”

  “No,” I call back loudly. “I don’t think so.”

  “That room is equipped with a fire suppression system that sucks out all the oxygen and floods the space with carbon dioxide. If you do not open the door I will activate it and you will be suffocated.”

  The technician looks alarmed and calls out, “No, no! Nej! Behaga!”

  I notice that he still has his instruments in the top pocket of his coat, and I leap at him and snatch the scalpel. I call out to the invisible speaker, “Please don’t do that, Dirch. Your conservator here would be very upset, and so would I. And I have his scalpel, and before I die I’ll slice the Cezanne to ribbons, and as many of the others as I can, too.”

  There is a lengthy silence during which I try to work out what my options are. It feels as if I’m playing chess with just one pawn left and my opponent with all his pieces intact. Finally I walk across the room to the Cézanne and say to the technician, “All right, open the door.”

  He does it, and Dirch is standing there flanked by his two heavies. I raise the blade of the technician’s scalpel to the surface of the painting and tell Dirch to get Abbie and Rich. He makes a move forward, into the room, and I jab the tip of the blade into the canvas. He gives a horrified gasp and hesitates.

  “Do as I say, Dirch.”

  He turns abruptly and whispers to the skinheads, who disappear. In a moment they return with the other two. One of the men hands Dirch something and he grabs hold of Abbie’s hair and pulls her into the room.

  “Well now, Matt,” Dirch says. He is trying to remain calm, but he is breathing very heavily. “Here is Abbie, and here …” – he lifts up his hand – “… is my scalpel.” He presses it to Abbie’s throat. “Now let us examine the logic of this situation. If you do not surrender I will cut your sister’s throat. What good will it do you then to damage that painting? Which is more valuable, the painting or your sister? Now be a sensible fellow.”

  He nods one of the skinheads forward, and there is nothing I can do. I hand him the knife and he takes it carefully and then slams his fist hard into my stomach. I double up in agony and through the pain I hear Dirch say, “We could have so easily done a deal. But now, thanks to your stupidity, that is impossible.” Then the skinhead hits me again, and again. I pass out to the sound of Abbie screaming.

  I come round to find that we are slumped together on the floor of a small room, like a prison cell. They have obviously roughed Rich up some more and he looks as bad as I feel.

  “Are you all right, Matt?” Abbie whispers.

  I mumble a yes. Trying to clear my brain, I remember the last words I heard. “What did he mean, that it’s impossible now to do a deal?”

  “Because we saw the paintings,” Abbie says. She sounds exhausted and resigned.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Cézanne Boy in a Red Vest was stolen from a gallery in Switzerland in 2008. The Rembrandt seascape, the only one that he ever painted, was taken from a Boston museum in 1990, along with the Vermeer, which is reckoned to be the most valuable painting that has ever been stolen. And it’s the same for all the others – they’re all masterpieces that have been taken during the past twenty years and never been traced. He can’t let us go now that we’ve seen them here.”

  I groan. “What do you think they’ll do with us?”

  By way of reply, the door opens and Dirch comes in. “There is a 200-metre deep trench in the floor of the Baltic Sea some fifty kilometres south of here,” he says. “Many unwanted things end up down there. Come, it is time to go.”

  We are hauled roughly to our feet and marched up a flight of stairs and out into the cold night air, hands manacled. They lead us across a gravel yard and we pass a truck being loaded with heavy concrete weights, each with a chain attached. We reach a path that descends steeply through woods towards the muffled roar of the sea breaking on a rocky shore. When we reach the foot we see their boat tied up against the jetty. The skinheads prod us forward, and we obey, shuffling like sheep to the slaughter. Then something comes out of the darkness from the trees to our right. I catch only a glimpse of it before the first skinhead drops to his knees with a strangled cry and falls flat on his face. The second whirls around and there is a sudden crackling noise and he too gives a scream and falls, and I see Vera Kulla standing behind him with a Taser gun in her hands.

  “Come on,” she says urgently, and begins running across the rocks into the trees. Behind us on the path, Dirch, who was bringing up the rear, has retreated and is shouting back up the hill for help. We rush after Vera with our bound hands and come to the small dinghy she has pulled in among the rocks. In silent panic we slip and stumble across the wet boulders and fall into the boat and she starts the outboard and we set off.

  It is a tiny boat, and with four of us in it the choppy waves spill over the side and drench us. For several minutes we are alone in the darkness, sawing at our ropes with a knife Vera gives us, but then we see a beam of light to our stern, searching for us. Being so low in the water saves us for a while, and the light veers away to starboard, then swings around, sweeping, probing, until finally it catches us. We look back like dazzled rabbits as it fixes on us and grows brighter as their more powerful boat narrows the distance; all except Vera, I notice, who is staring fixedly ahead. I turn to see what she is staring at, and make out a great shoal of rocks and reefs jutting out of the water ahead, picked out by the spotlight. I remember seeing all this from the air as I flew into Stockholm, the sea scattered with thousands of tiny islands and outcrops of rock.

  Vera heads straight for it without slowing down and I grip the side of the boat tight
with numb fingers, certain that we will crash at any moment. Now we’re into the shoals, swinging wildly from side to side as jagged rocks jump out of the darkness ahead of us. Again and again the aluminium hull scrapes and thumps against outcrops, the engine howling. After ten heart-stopping minutes of this, Vera abruptly throttles back. I realize that the light from the pursuing boat is less bright, and keeps losing track of us. “They’re not coming into the rocks?” I ask Vera, and she nods grimly. She weaves the boat more slowly, further and further into the shoal, the visibility almost nil as the light behind us fades. For perhaps an hour we move cautiously through the maze, until finally the stretches of water become more open, and I notice a glow of light in the sky up ahead – Stockholm! It is another hour before Vera reaches the city and tucks the boat into a mooring between dozens of others and, shaking with cold and cramp, we climb ashore. We are at the western end of Södermalm Island, she tells us, about three kilometres from the city centre to the north, and the same distance to the apartment in the eastern part of Södermalm where I visited her.

  “I have a friend here who will shelter you for tonight. It isn’t safe for you in Stockholm. Gräven’s people will be searching for you. What’s wrong?”

  She says this to Abbie, who is staring at her, seeing her in the light for the first time. “You do look like Lisbeth Salander,” Abbie says.

  Vera shakes her head impatiently. “Tomorrow you must leave.”

  “Yes,” Abbie agrees. “We’ll catch a flight to London.”

  “Not from Stockholm, they’ll be watching for you at the airport and the Central Station. First thing tomorrow my friend will drive you down to Helsingborg, where you can cross over to Denmark, and catch a plane or a train back to England from Copenhagen.”

  She has brought us to the door of a small house, where there are three doorbells. She rings one of them and an Asian girl answers. “This is my friend Miriam,” Vera says, and says something to her friend in Swedish. Miriam gives us a big smile and we stagger thankfully into a small apartment, blissfully warm and welcoming.

  One by one we have hot showers, and Miriam dresses our wounds and gives us hot soup. Abbie is so exhausted after having had only brief snatches of sleep for a week now that she immediately falls into a deep slumber in an armchair. Rich and I talk to Vera for a while until we too are overcome with exhaustion. Rich asks her if she will inform the police about Gräven and his collection of stolen paintings, but she shakes her head. “There’s no point,” she says. “Even if the police agree to get a warrant they will find nothing. One day Martin Gräven will face his punishment, but not over this.” There seems something personal in the way she says this, but she refuses to elaborate. Rich nods and closes his eyes and soon he too falls asleep.

  Then I say, “I have to thank you for saving our lives, Vera. But you put us in danger in the first place, by removing the Leonardo drawing.”

  “No, Matt. You did that by insisting on taking the book to Blood Island. Gräven was never going to let any of you go free, it was too risky for him. All I could do was follow you out there and wait for my chance.”

  I feel very naive and tell her so, thanking her again.

  “Actually it’s your sister and Rich who were naive,” she says. “Very naive to think they could negotiate with Gräven. They should have known – Rich especially – that such a man doesn’t negotiate with people like us, he just gobbles us up.”

  “So, the Leonardo?” I say.

  “Ah yes, the Leonardo …”

  * * *

  It is strange that not once on our return journey to London do either Abbie or Rich mention the Leonardo drawing, and I put it down to their sobering realization of how utterly, dangerously naive their get-rich scheme has been. And maybe a sense of shame too, for Abbie at least, that she could have contemplated such a fraud.

  It’s not until we are safely inside her flat that Abbie finally says, “Well, Matt, I hope your extraordinary friend has more luck with Leonardo’s drawing than we did.” And that’s when I open the backpack Vera gave me and take out the Scandinavia road atlas inside, and open it to the Stockholm page to which a white envelope is taped. I hand it to Abbie and say, “This time, sis, do it right.”

  The next day Abbie takes the drawing in to the gallery where she works and shows it to her boss, together with her report authenticating it as a genuine lost Leonardo da Vinci self-portrait. He is, naturally, astonished and overjoyed. So is the elderly lady who owns the drawing, when it realizes thirty-two million dollars at auction three months later. So also are the numerous friends, charities and dogs’ homes to which the lady promptly gives almost all of the money. And so too is Abbie when her boss, on the strength of her coup, makes her a partner in the firm.

  I’m pretty happy to get a job as a barista in a coffee bar in Covent Garden, and I’m happy too that we see less and less of Rich, who seems to be losing interest in Abbie. He was never right for her, and I say so in my emails home to Mum and Dad, though of course I don’t breathe a word about Sweden and Blood Island, which increasingly seems like a distant and unreal nightmare. I do think about Vera Kulla quite often, and wonder who she really was.

  A week after the auction, Abbie receives a postcard at her gallery with a Swiss stamp on it, postmarked Zurich, from the Foundation E. G. Bührle in that city. It shows a famous painting, The Boy in the Red Vest, by Paul Cézanne, and on the reverse a text explains that on 10 February 2008, four paintings worth $162.5 million were stolen from the Bührle collection. Eight days later two of the paintings were found in a car in a nearby hospital car park, but the remaining two, the Cézanne and a Degas, have never been recovered.

  Beneath this text is a hand printed message.

  To Abbie and Matt, Take care now.

  FEST FATALE

  Alison Bruce

  * * *

  GETTING DRESSED was my first mistake. I chose high heels, an angora sweater and a black pencil skirt. I imagined the event would be glamorous and I wanted to stand out amongst the authors whose books I’d so avidly read. I should have known better: the area behind the bookstall was cramped with no ventilation and nowhere to sit. Every time there was a rush of customers I found myself raking around in the stock boxes beside the sales counter. It was another tiny space and I found it impossible to be down there without my skirt riding up and my knees scraping on the carpet … not that I’m averse to a bit of that in a flash hotel, it’s just not the position I usually end up taking in front of so many strangers.

  No one took any notice of me in any case, it was like being a spectator at a huge love-in; authors, fans and books with only eyes for each other. Even Dan and Chloe from the bookshop were ignoring me.

  I tried a bit of lame conversation. “It’s hot in here.”

  “Mmm,” Chloe managed.

  Dan grinned with the kind of sickly enthusiasm that I’ve only seen from religious nuts and new mothers. “It’s creative energy.”

  He turned back to dear old Chloe like those three words were inspiration enough. Wow.

  I caught a muffled round of applause and knew that the doors leading from the main seminar door were due to open. I grabbed a copy of the nearest novel and the festival programme then dropped to the floor and crawled behind the banqueting cloth skirting the nearest table.

  Dan’s answer was right, but he’d missed the whole point of my irritation. I’d volunteered to work at this event so I could meet these people, learn more about the writers behind the words and get tips on how I could fulfil my own authorly ambitions. I’d worked with Dan and Chloe for three years and doubted they knew my last name, never mind guessed that I had created a trilogy featuring my tattooed axe-wielding detective, Vance Thorn. There would be agents and publishers here. I was damned if I was going to spend the whole time standing behind a shop counter.

  So for the next two and a half hours I hid under it instead.

  The book I’d grabbed was Joli Brown’s latest. I’d chosen it for the cover; her protag
onist, Jack, had a tattoo of a rose and a skull on his right bicep. I was about forty pages in when I noticed the toe of a man’s brogue poking under the table cloth. I stopped reading. He was talking. There was tension in his voice.

  “How are people supposed to buy it if they’re not even aware that it’s been released?”

  “Everyone’s in the same boat.” It was a woman who answered. She was gravel-voiced with that old-fashioned forty-a-day grittiness to her tone.

  “No, they’re not; I see adverts for books on tube posters, magazines, bus stops even …”

  “That’s different, top-selling authors command a bigger advertising budget.”

  “So the rich get richer? Great, it’s the same old story.”

  “Trevor.”

  “No. No. I’m not listening to any more of your attempts to make me settle for less than Scalped deserves. It’s a great book and if the sales don’t reflect that, it will be your fault for failing to give it a fighting chance.”

  R. V. Bold was the author of Scalped and I didn’t remember selling a single copy.

  I put my book away then and quietly opened the event programme. It was R. V. Bold’s debut novel, “following the exploits of a Victorian barber turned sleuth through the poverty-stricken East End of London”. Nope, not my cup of tea either …

  I stayed under the table simply because the toe of R.V.’s brogue was still pointing in my direction and I didn’t fancy getting exposed as an eavesdropping skiver. Then he started talking again and I just couldn’t resist listening.

  “Richard!” He sounded like he was calling to someone at the other end of the room but the answering voice came from close by.

  “Trevor. I’m glad I’ve caught you.”

  “Oh good.”

  I could feel R. V. grinning. It seemed like the same sort of inane grin as Dan’s.

  “No, it’s not, actually,” the other man replied and I could tell he wasn’t grinning at all. “Why in Hell’s name have you published under the name R. V.? I’m R. V., I have been R. V. for ten books. In fact I’ve been R. V. since birth. Richard Victor, and you’re Trevor. Trevor what?”