by Matt Drabble
He rounded the corner towards their approach when a thought popped into his head. The young girl had not been wearing heels. His momentum took him around and into the corridor before he could stop. He was suddenly confronted by a very different couple. Both were dressed in professional suits. The man was large and broad with a hard, mean face. The woman was elegant with an athlete’s grace and a dancer’s curves under her expensively tailored outfit.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Umberto said with more authority than he felt.
If the new couple were surprised by his sudden appearance, they did not show it. The man remained motionless and the woman smiled icily.
‘And you shouldn’t be so friendly,’ the woman said.
Umberto saw the man draw a glinting revolver equipped with a silencer. He heard a gentle soft pop as his legs gave way and he crumpled to the floor. He stared up at a fading ceiling. He couldn’t feel his legs. He shivered as icy fingers scraped his spine. As he struggled to breathe he heard the man and the woman walking away, leaving him alone with his girl, safe in the arms of the only place he had ever called home.
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Chris Taylor looked at Vargas, desperately trying to comprehend the man’s words. It wasn’t his heritage that he had a problem with, it was the arithmetic. He had always pegged his boss’ age at late fifties to very early sixties. But if the man was telling the truth, then he was actually ninety-three. It was too impossible that the tall, broad, healthy specimen before him was that old.
‘I see that you’re having trouble with the maths,’ Vargas said.
‘Well, I can think of one or two cosmetic companies, who would pay handsomely for your secret,’ Chris said.
Vargas smiled. ‘Having a father well versed in the black arts certainly helps,’ he said. ‘Well, the hour groweth late, Chris. Time to wrap things up.’
Vargas spoke with regret in his voice and Chris didn’t like the finality in his tone. ‘What is it that you’re looking for? And what about Lochay?’ he said, trying to prolong the conversation for reasons that he couldn’t quite comprehend.
Vargas sighed heavily. ‘It is my duty. My legacy and my birthright.’
Chris had never seen a man so drained.
‘I must have the portrait, Chris. As a man reaches closer to the end of his days, he begins to look at his own mortality. I am well aware that I am blessed with good … shall we say … genes. But I will not live forever and there is still so much of the world to conquer. I have heard the tales of the painting’s curse and the story of my father’s attempt to become immortal. As the grave draws ever closer, Chris, it becomes more and more vital that I possess the painting.’
‘But surely you can’t believe all this nonsense?’ Chris asked incredulously. His was a mind of structure and order and rebelled at the very notion.
‘There is a trail of death and murder that follows that painting wherever it goes, and don’t forget that I am not the only player on the board.’
‘Lochay?’
‘Ah, yes, the good doctor.’ Vargas smiled. ‘Lochay believes in the legend even more vehemently than I do. Mr, sorry, Dr Lochay, represents the opposite side of this particular coin.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He wants to stop me. He wants to protect the painting and stop anyone else from using its power.’
‘Wait a minute, are you telling me that he’s the good guy?’ Chris asked, flinching at the thought of his torture.
‘In a manner of speaking, but I guess that everything’s subjective. And he’s every bit as ruthless as I am. But then I don’t need to tell you that,’ he said, surveying Chris’s injuries.
‘But why Travis? And what does the Goode woman have to do with all this?’ Chris demanded.
‘Mr Parker is a man of singular purpose. He is a man driven by the ghosts of the past, much like myself. The burden of his wife’s passing and the financial incentive to enable him to honour her memory makes him a perfect wind-up toy to be pointed and let loose. Ms Goode however is a different kettle of fish. Dr Lochay sits on the opposing side to my wishes. Can you think of just whose wishes he might represent? If I sit on the side of Hugo Montague then whose side would Dr Lochay be taking in this particular argument?’
‘Eleanor’s,’ Chris said in a moment of inspiration. ‘Hugo’s wife.’
‘Exactly. Lochay represents an organisation that wishes to keep my birthright from me. To hide the painting away and keep it out of my hands,’ Vargas said with clenched teeth. ‘Ms Goode holds a very unique place in plans for shall we say, a little reenactment.’
‘I can’t decide if you’re mad or a monster,’ Chris said, trying to comprehend the impossibility of the situation. Magical paintings, possessions and murder seemed so alien to his ordered mind. ‘Why did you lose track of the painting in the first place if it is so valuable?’
‘I’m afraid that life isn’t perfect, Chris. After my parents’ death our estate was sold, and scattered to the winds. At the time, the suicide of the artist Benedict Worthington gave a boost to the market value of the portrait. And remember, I was just a small boy at the time. Over the years as I rebuilt my father’s fortune I began to dream of the painting. Isn’t that silly? I would dream of that night over and over again, but in the dream it was always the portrait that my eyes were drawn to. I began to be sure that the painting was somehow important to me and to my father. When I started looking into the history of it, you can imagine my surprise at finding such a bloody record. Stories of men losing track of time and developing a heavy limp before strangling their wives. It is almost as if the painting does not want to be found. It’s as though it is forever hiding.’
Just then the door opened and in walked a vision.
‘Janey!’
Chris almost cried with relief as Janey entered, her beautiful face wrinkled with unhappiness and love. Watching disbelievingly as she glided across the stone floor towards him, he was suddenly aware of his state. She must be horrified by his broken and bloody appearance. ‘I’m okay,’ he reassured her.
‘Ah, Mrs Taylor,’ Vargas said. ‘So nice of you to join us.’
Vargas stood up and seemed to fill the room, his aura and power undiminished as he loomed whole again. He was once more a man full of conviction and purpose.
‘Well, it has been nice talking to you, Chris, but time waits for no man – not even me,’ Vargas said, his voice once more imbued with authority. ‘Mrs Taylor, if you would be so kind.’
Chris stared in disbelief as his beautiful wife drew a small elegant handgun from her handbag. The tiny delicate barrel spat fire with a gentleness that befitted its firer. The bullet may have been small, but its impact was deadly.
Watching his loving wife looking down at him impassively and hearing the gentle tones of Vargas’s voice saying softly, ‘No loose ends,’ Chris took his last breath.
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Charlotte and Travis sat in the small back street café. Travis had managed to order the authentic strong coffees that sat before them now. Languages had always been a passion of his, but it was one that had lapsed after the death of his wife. He figured that he had drowned many of his stored memories inside the bottle he had crawled into after Amy passed away, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover that many of his faculties were still intact. His Italian had been far from fluent, but at least what he knew was slowly coming back. He plucked words out of the air and caught the meaning of snippets of conversation as the locals around them chatted inconsequentially.
‘I don’t understand,’ Charlotte said, interrupting his thoughts. ‘I mean, after everything we’ve been through, only to find that we’ve come to a shuddering halt. What the hell was the point of a second painting?’
‘I think we have found out exactly what the point was,’ Travis said. ‘Think about it. What better way to hide the painting than a completely false trail. And it had to be an arduous journey to make it seem worthwhile. Old Hugo may well have been certifiable, but appa
rently he wasn’t stupid. Anyone searching for the portrait would have followed the trail much as we did and perhaps just snatched the painting from the opera house. Finding the portrait powerless would only render your search fruitless and the myth just that.’
‘So what do we do now?’
Travis marvelled at his companion’s new found trust in his opinions. Only a couple of days earlier she had been aggressive and pig-headed, unwilling to listen to anything he had to offer. Now she was looking to him for a plan. The only trouble was that he didn’t have one. They had staked everything on tracking down a fake.
He was still pondering when he heard a phone ring behind the café counter. It was presumably just a call for the owner, but somehow he knew that it wasn’t. The shrill tone of the ring seemed different. It seemed louder and more insistent and it rang for him – of that he was sure. Most of the time he kept the phone Vargas gave him switched off so as to avoid the man’s calls. He had no interest in being bothered by his benefactor’s constant demands for information, but deep down he knew that it was futile to try to avoid detection. Vargas had proved to be a man with a very long and wide reach and Travis was forever within its grasp.
The man behind the counter was a large and gregarious man who held court over his regulars. He was tall and round with bushy facial hair and his face was jovial as he answered his phone. Travis watched the man’s face crumple with confusion then redden with anger before dissolving in fear. Travis knew of only one person who could instil that many conflicting emotions over a long distance – Vargas.
‘Am I boring you?’ Charlotte said as his attention was focused solely on the café owner.
‘That’s for me,’ he said, standing and walking towards the counter.
‘What do you mean it’s for you? Oh no, it’s him, isn’t it?’ she said with dread. ‘How the hell does he keep finding us?’
‘I’ll go and ask him.’
Travis walked to the counter and held out his hand to the café owner who was scanning the room with wide and desperate eyes. The once gregarious man passed over the phone, unconsciously wiping his hand on his apron as though he had touched something vile.
‘That’s some trick you’ve got there, Vargas,’ Travis said.
‘Did you get it?’ Vargas asked. ‘Was it there?’
Travis smiled at the desperation in the man’s voice. For once Vargas seemed overly humanistic, and with it vulnerable. He debated whether or not to tell Vargas the truth about the second copy, but with Chris’s life hanging in the balance he decided to play it safe. ‘It was a Montague Portrait, but not The Montague Portrait.’ The silence on the other end was deafening. ‘Did you hear me, Vargas? It isn’t here.’
‘It is not a good idea to disappoint me, Mr Parker,’ Vargas said, his voice ice cold.
‘Hey, it’s not my damn fault! I want to find the bloody thing as much as you do. Let’s not forget that it’s my friend that Dr Lochay is holding onto.’
‘Ah, about that.’
‘What?’
‘I’m afraid that you no longer have that burden to concern yourself with.’
Travis stared straight ahead, trying to process the news. He felt Charlotte’s reassuring presence at his shoulder as she gripped his arm warmly. ‘What happened?’ he asked Vargas in a whisper.
‘I’m afraid that Dr Lochay is quite the brute. It would appear that when Mr Taylor wasn’t forthcoming in betraying your confidence, they took his life.’
Travis closed his eyes and took a long deep breath. ‘Did Lochay do it himself?’ he asked at last.
‘Oh yes, he’s quite the hands-on manager. Is Ms Goode still with you, and in good health?’
‘Yes,’ Travis replied, still reeling from the news that had been delivered to him so starkly.
‘Well then, what will you do next?’
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Charlotte watched as Travis suddenly slammed the handset down hard, cracking the telephone’s plastic casing. Not more than a couple of seconds went by when the call came back. The shrill ringing seemed to enrage Travis further and he tore the phone from the wall socket and hurled it across the café. The large owner exploded with loud shouts and wildly gesticulating arms. Charlotte quickly steered Travis out of the door despite the loud and growing protests. She threw back a fistful of brightly coloured notes caring little for the denominations; it was Vargas’s money after all.
‘What is it?’ she asked, but he jerked away from her. She grabbed his shoulders hard and stared directly into his eyes. They were wet with tears. ‘Is it your friend? Chris?’ He nodded in response.
She hugged him fiercely and felt his anger. So much pain and suffering had befallen them both. But she had to hold on to her balance. It would serve no purpose for them both to give in to feelings of hate and vengeance, certainly not both at the same time. She ignored the stares from passers-by as she held his sobbing form and tried to think clearly.
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Gabriel Lochay watched from the car as the warehouse disappeared into the distance behind him. He thumped the back of the driver’s seat in harsh frustration. The driver had the good sense not to complain. Vargas, he thought with venom. The man was always getting in the way no matter how careful he was with his plans. Lochay had run the organisation for as long as he could remember, and maybe even before that. The legacy of Eleanor Wheeler had been handed down through the decades. Their job was simple: to protect the painting and keep it hidden from the Montague descendants.
One of the biggest problems with the painting was that it seemed to have a mind and will of its own. After Hugo Montague murdered poor Eleanor, no amount of money or influence would have been enough to save him from the hangman’s noose. The only way out for Hugo was to set his mansion ablaze, while sitting with an exquisite brandy as the fire consumed him and supposedly the portrait.
After that the painting popped up from time to time and a murder always followed. Eleanor’s sister, Genevieve Wheeler had always objected to the marriage and held on to her rage after her sister’s murder. It was Genevieve who looked into Hugo’s dark hobby, uncovering his notes during the trial when he was safely in the courtroom. Genevieve had an open mind; she was only too willing to accept any reason for her sister’s senseless death. After Hugo’s suicide she searched relentlessly for the portrait, refusing to believe that it had been destroyed by the fire. She spent the remainder of her days following a trail of death through her family tree. It was her drive and resources that set up the foundation until her death some twenty years ago now. But she never found the portrait – only death and despair in its wake.
Lochay was a second cousin on somebody’s side; he cared little where his connection lay within the family tree. He was a man of action and bred for leadership. He knew that to protect his relatives, however remote, would take an iron fist to rival Vargas. He ran his organisation with zero tolerance and zero compassion. The lives of the many, especially when they were his family, would always take precedence over the lives of the expendable. He cared little for the myths and legends of the painting. He had no belief in hocus-pocus and the ramblings of the deranged. But he did care a great deal for the wealth and power that his organisation kept at his disposal. He also cared very much for pain and torture. His appetites were dark and seemingly endless and anywhere else he would no doubt be in prison by now. As far as he was concerned the whole concept of the cursed portrait was merely his free ticket to the darkness that lay within him.
It had long been an established belief that The Montague Portrait was beyond destroying. Their job was to find the painting and keep it safe from Vargas. There were many rumours about Vargas’s intentions, but all included the direst of consequences. It was common knowledge that Vargas was the son and heir of Hugo Montague, but Lochay found that very difficult to believe: There was no way that Vargas was in his nineties. This was no doubt yet another fairy-tale for the gullible.
Thanks to Vargas’s computer expert he now had the happy couple
pegged within a small area in Florence. He had long thought the painting was a complete myth, together with the ridiculous stories surrounding it. But Parker and Goode seemed to be making more progress than anyone before them and he was growing increasingly unsure.
His sleek phone vibrated urgently against his thigh and with a manicured hand he deftly slipped it out of his pocket. He looked down at the caller ID and for a second he pondered the nature of the incoming call. Before the interruption he had hoped for a few moments of peace in which to ruminate.
Ah well, he thought, no rest for the wicked.
CHAPTER TWENTY
HALFWAY TO SOMEWHERE
Travis sat on the park bench angered by his sudden loss of control at the café. He could almost hear Vargas’s amusement at his emotions. The only consolation he had was that for just a moment the great man had himself sounded human.
His sense of guilt over Chris was overwhelming. To begin with, his old friend didn’t want to help him, but playing on their long history and plucking at his friend’s guilt he had talked the man into it. He had now lost the two people closest to him in the world. His wife and his best friend were gone.
He had taken Vargas’s case because of his own guilt for letting his wife’s pride and joy fall to rack and ruin. He had promised her that her gallery would be in safe hands and he failed her miserably. After her death his self-pity dragged him to the bottom of a bottle. Vargas’s offer in return for finding a missing painting that was the possible subject of an insurance fraud seemed straight forward. The money was attractive enough and he was weak enough to care little for questions. Now he was stuck in Vargas’s net, Chris was dead and somehow he seemed to have assumed responsibility for … for this … this wildcat. He looked over at Charlotte. Her face was tilted to the late afternoon sun and for once she had found the patience to leave him be for a while.