by JOHN YORVIK
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go through it again. If we go back to the first night with Natasha Rok and factor in everything we’ve got so far. Marty set me up with his girlfriend. Amy suggested he was playing games. But why would Natasha go along with it?”
“He gave her no choice.”
“Or it was an open relationship.”
“But she got drunk, right? Not exactly consistent with a sophisticated urban swinger.”
“She was doing it for Marty.”
“Okay. So let’s work it out. The most striking thing when looking at the photofit and the photos of Marty in the paper is how much you and he look alike. You know that. Marty knows that. But no-one at AmizFire or the Chessington Club knew that. You were basically the perfect decoy duck. You could be seen walking home with Natasha allowing Marty to be elsewhere.”
I could see where Dani was going with this and began to get caught up in her caffeine-enhanced enthusiasm.
“Or they were meant to discover that Natasha wasn’t seeing Marty after all, but someone who looks very similar, me.”
“Why?” asked Dani.
“So they would trust Natasha. So Natasha wasn’t associated with Marty,” I said. “But something went wrong.”
“We turned up at AmizFire and Tommy Burns got a good look at you. He worked it out.”
“No,” I said, wracking my brains, and then it came to me. “The Polish guys who attacked us on Old Street. They were following us for Burns. They saw Marty and me together. That’s how they worked it out.”
“Wouldn’t they have seen you and Marty together in the AmBar?” asked Dani.
“We were only together twenty minutes in the AmBar before Marty palmed me off on Natasha,” I said.
“Then Natasha took you somewhere where you were sure to be spotted,” said Dani.
“She took me to an old pub near Islington. There were people there that seemed to know her. They were laughing at her. A bunch of guys. I was drunk and more interested in her. I can’t remember who they were. Maybe one of them was from AmizFire. Maybe even Tommy Burns. I don’t know.”
“But why was Marty targeting AmizFire and not the Chessington itself?” asked Dani. “If it all started at the Chessington Club?”
“Let’s say he had something on Burns. He’d discovered Burns had pulled the trigger for Scott, killing Jack Lewis. Sim Fratelli didn’t know who’d actually killed Lewis. He blamed Jim Scott.”
“Or was Marty’s interest in AmizFire purely financial? Don’t forget the Polish art thread,” said Dani. She opened her spiral notebook and started reading from her notes: “40 per cent of Polish art was plundered during the Second World War and most of it is still missing. The books in Natasha’s flat were mostly catalogues of missing art with photos and/or descriptions.”
“Anything on the language her margin notes were written in?” I asked.
“Nothing. Some of the letters resemble Cyrillic, but not many. We need a linguist.”
“Or a code breaker,” I said.
“Ok. So, back to the speculation,” Dani joked.
“Marty was planning his revenge and found a link between some stolen Polish art and AmizFire. But Burns discovered him and had Natasha killed and then set the police on Marty, who was trying to use me as a decoy. Had Marty planned to inform the police about the stolen art? Had his overtures to the police alerted Tommy Burns to his plan?”
“Probably not. Natasha would have known there is an international commission for plundered Nazi art,” said Dani, holding up a notebook triumphantly. “They work on a level closer to the UN or Interpol, far above the reaches of the Metropolitan Police Force.”
“Do they have a London office?” I asked.
“In Marylebone,” said Dani.
“So, contrary to all my ideas about conspiracy theory, wild speculation has won the day.”
“That, coupled with seven hours of research into looted Polish art.”
“Yes, that and being shadowed by public enemy number one, attacked by a knife-wielding Pole and sneered at by a public school twit.”
“Alright, alright,” said Dani in mock-admonishment, “don’t go on about it.”
“Yes, because everything pales in significance compared to two years of false imprisonment, right Dani?”
Dani looked into the bottom of her glass, angled the glass towards me and then threw what was left of the water in my face, which extinguished my cigarette with a hiss.
* * *
We got to number 14 Marylebone Road at around one o’clock. It was a tall, classical sandstone building with intricate stonework, blackened in parts by exhaust fumes from decades of heavy traffic.
We checked the panel of buzzers. The Commission for Looted Art was on the sixth floor. I pressed the buzzer and the door clicked open. We walked into the grand foyer and stood on mosaic tiling, which depicted an evil looking snake-dragon wrapped around a pole.
“Maybe it was once a home for doctors,” said Dani.
“Even so, what’s that about? Why is medicine represented by a poisonous reptile climbing a greasy pole?”
“We don’t know that it’s greasy. My God, you’re beginning to sound like Rilke,” said Dani, with some satisfaction. She was now the more reasonable one after her conspiracy episode earlier that day.
I called the lift and rehearsed in my head what I was going to tell the Commission. When the golden cage of the lift had glided down in front of us, we got in and Dani pressed the sixth floor button. There was a very sterile smell in the building. Maybe it had been a hospital after all.
We got out of the lift and turned right following the arrows to the Commission’s reception. I knocked on the door and we were buzzed in. Behind the reception desk sat a blonde woman with a strong German accent. When she asked what our business was I told her it was connected to the Natasha Rokitzky case. On hearing the name, several of the staff working in the office space behind reception looked up from their computers. She made a quick phone call and then told us to sit down and wait for one of their agents.
After five minutes, the phone rang on the secretary’s desk. She answered, but she didn’t say anything, only listened while looking over at me and Dani. Then without saying goodbye she put the phone down and announced in her thick German accent: “Agent Greenfield will see you now. It’s down the corridor and the third room on the left.”
We picked up our things and walked down the corridor. Interview Room was written on the door. I knocked and was immediately told to come in.
Sitting behind a small desk was a large man with short hair and a grey goatee beard. He held out his hand to give each of us a firm handshake and then beckoned us to sit down. He didn’t say anything but was nodding slowly while he looked us up and down. Finally he spoke.
“I’m Agent Greenfield. What brings you here?”
“My name’s Lishman. I’m an investigative journalist working for London Free Press. This is Dani, our researcher and photographer. We’ve come in connection with the Natasha Rokitzky case.”
“Natasha Rokitzky?”
“Natasha Rokitzky is or rather was a Polish national, a specialist in Polish art, who was recently murdered in London. We have reason to believe she was investigating a looted art cache shortly before her death. There is also the possibility that her boyfriend, Marty Stewart, now missing, was involved with the investigation.”
Agent Greenfield was holding up the palm of his hand while looking towards the corner of the room.
“Excuse me for breaking up the show, but what evidence do you have that... you know... she was investigating looted art?”
I didn’t want to tell him that there was no evidence but a few art books and indecipherable notes found in a dead girl’s flat. Nor about the disappearing swastikas in the bathroom I’d seen in the dead Natasha photos. So I papered over the cracks in our story.
“I’m afraid I can’t reveal my sources at this stage. But I was hoping that you could either confirm or deny that Nat
asha Rokitzky or her boyfriend, Martin Stewart, had been in touch with you.”
“Never heard of them. Either of them,” said Agent Greenfield with emphasis.
I asked Dani for the photo and she produced the double exposure photo of Marty and Natasha from her bag. I took it and laid it down on the table in front of Agent Greenfield.
“Maybe they used an assumed name,” I said. I expected Agent Greenfield to at least show a flicker of recognition. Marty’s face had been on every newspaper’s front page for the last five days. But Agent Greenfield shook his head again.
“Could you tell me something about the cache your Natasha Rokitzky was investigating? That might tell us something?”
“A cache of looted Polish art in London.”
“U-huh,” said Greenfield, with encouragement.
“We believe it may contain Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man. That’s about all we can disclose.”
Greenfield’s eyes lit up.
“Can you give us a location? The names of the people involved?” he asked, excitedly.
“No, not at the moment.”
“Nothing?” he demanded, showing frustration.
“Nothing.”
“Well in that case...” he took a breath and tried to contain his anger. “You mentioned two names I’ve never heard of. You name dropped a priceless piece of art, part of Hitler’s collection. Unless you reveal something concrete we can’t afford to open a case. You see we get a lot of cranks coming in, wasting our time. That’s how some people get their kicks.”
I was about to say something but decided against it, already feeling foolish enough for coming so unprepared to the meeting. Instead I handed Agent Greenfield my card with my mobile number on the back. Greenfield took my card, inspected it and then with obvious reluctance, passed me his card. With that, we walked out of his office and through to the stairwell.
Going down in the golden lift, Dani said, “That didn’t go as well as expected.”
“I know. Now I need a drink. Let’s find a place to eat round here.”
We found a reasonably priced Italian restaurant in time for the last lunchtime sitting. We both ordered spaghetti and I ordered a bottle of house red. Dani was on bottled water. Just as two piled up plates of spaghetti arrived my phone rang. I answered it and struggled to hear a woman’s voice above the noise of the restaurant.
“Can you talk?” said the voice.
“One moment,” I replied, and walked into the corridor next to the toilets clutching the phone to my ear.
“Yes, what is it?”
“You don’t know me. I work with the Commission. I knew Natasha Rokitzky. And Marty Stewart.”
“The Commission for Looted Art? Have you spoken to Agent Greenfield?”
“Greenfield can’t be trusted. The Commission has been infiltrated. There’s a leak. I’m working in deep cover. The investigation has been suspended since Natasha’s death. These people are just too dangerous. And they’re everywhere.”
“Which people?”
“They don’t have a name. They’re an organisation... Don’t underestimate...”
“Sorry? You’re breaking up.”
“Can you hear me now?”
“Yes, how did you find out about me? How did you get this number?”
“Agent Greenfield was talking about you in the lift. He logged your interview and wrote your number in the file. I accessed it.”
“Can we meet?”
“It’s too dangerous. Did Marty tell you about April 16th?”
“That’s tomorrow.”
“What did he tell you about April 16th?” she insisted.
“How can I know you’re for real? How do I know I can trust you?”
“There is no-one else who you can trust. I’m going to give you a number. Only call it if you have the location, then we can act.”
“What will happen if we confirm the location?”
“Just take down the number...”
I grabbed a pen from my jacket pocket and wrote down the number on the back of the card Agent Greenfield had given me. After I’d read the number back to her the line went dead. I studied the number on the card for a minute to see if it had any special significance, then I shoved it back in the pocket of my jeans and returned to finish my meal.
* * *
Back in Hackney the next morning, I was snoozing on the sofa, when there was a knock on the door. I checked the window. It was one of the raptors, the black guy with bleached hair.
“Best if he doesn’t see me,” I said to Dani, who was in the armchair with a lap full of photographic equipment. Dani put down the camera she was cleaning and fetched an envelope containing 200 pounds from the table top and answered the door. I heard them whispering to each other. The raptor handed Dani a bag with something heavy in it. And then Dani handed over the envelope. I heard the raptor say “sweet” and then Dani closed the door.
As I came out of hiding, Dani was pulling a fairly large Sony laptop out of the plastic bag.
“They said they snatched it when he was at the bar in a Soho pub. He was drunk. The password is ‘underworld’.”
“So,” I said, “should we find out exactly who Mr Rilke’s friends are?”
I walked over to the sofa and sat down next to Dani so I could see what she was doing. Dani took the rag that she’d been using to clean the cameras and gave the laptop a wipe down before switching it on. The laptop took ages to boot up. I imagined Rilke’s computer was badly set up. He was from that generation who had largely missed out on a digital education. This would make it much easier to find something useful. Dani typed in the password and clicked enter.
When the laptop had finally loaded up all the icons onto the desktop, Dani tried to open Outlook Express.
“Great,” she said, “he’s configured Outlook. We have 3,000 emails to go through.”
“Okay, keyword search, AmizFire.”
“Okay... No. Nothing’s come up.”
“Try April 16.”
“Only emails sent or received on the date. No keywords written in the message.”
“Okay. Let’s try Tommy Burns.”
“Nothing.”
“Jim Scott?”
“Nothing. How about we try Lishman?”
Dani typed Lishman into the Outlook search engine and clicked enter.
Three entries came up with the subject matter ‘Lishman’. Dani clicked on the first one. It was from Rilke to an email address made up of a string of symbols: %$·”!!++*@________.web
“Try remembering that one,” I said, “@ seven underscores dot web.”
The message itself read:
Approach from Lishman (Free Press) at book signing. I made sure he was laughed out of the store. He may one day be right, but may he never know when he’s right. That is key.
“It’s bizarrely laconic for a writer like Rilke,” I said. “There must have been more mails or a wider context. Maybe a phone call or a meeting. And... was Rilke expecting me?”
“The Chessington Club connection. Sam McCormick lives in the same building. He must have given Rilke the heads-up,” said Dani. “Matthew Rilke is definitely in the loop.”
“Which loop? The loop of this organisation?” I asked.
I thought back to the strange phone call I’d received yesterday at the Italian restaurant. The mystery caller had used that word ‘organisation’. She said they were an organisation without a name. She’d also told me not to underestimate them. Surely if they were such a powerful organisation, they wouldn’t allow Marty, Dani and myself to be a thorn in their side for much longer. Of course, the death of Natasha Rok was testament to that. I was also intrigued as to why they would allow people like Rilke to associate with them and report what they do.
“Why would they want someone like Rilke in the loop?” I asked.
“In his book Those Underground Rilke says that these cult-like organisations that run the UK live by a moral code: they have to tell the public what they are doing.
He says they will always find an ambiguous way of doing so. Maybe they’ll use a discredited journalist or a writer of fiction. The main thing is that whoever breaks the news can be dismissed as a crackpot.”
“And you think that’s Rilke...?” I said.
“I think that Rilke is the official biographer of this group with no name... that used to be the Chessington Club.”
“There’s a double irony in Rilke being the one to tell us what he’s basically a part of. What is the logic behind announcing to the world what they do?”
“This is what’s strange,” said Dani. “They are crime organisations that live by superstitions, which have evolved into codes.”
“We’re getting into weird territory now, Dani.”
“And there’s no going back.”
I nodded my agreement. “Okay, so what did the mystery messenger reply?”
Dani clicked on the next email in the chain with the address %$·”!!++*@________.web, but there was no visible text.
“Maybe it was written in invisible ink,” said Dani.
“Or self-destructed after 10 seconds,” I said.
We clicked on the third email. It was from Rilke again to the mystery email:
Unlike his friend, he requires no serious medical attention IMHO, but if expedience demands... if problem disappears amidst Scotch mist and Hackney gun smoke. Bye bye problem.
Neither of us spoke. Dani searched Rilke’s Outlook for ‘Hackney’. Nothing came up. She closed Outlook Express and searched his other documents. There was nothing personal. Only manuscripts of his books. After ten minutes of searching in silence, the words ‘Hackney gun smoke’ still hanging in the air, Dani slammed Rilke’s laptop closed.
We turned to face each other and said, almost in unison, “Let’s get out of here!”
We rushed about packing things up. Dani ran upstairs to warn Pippa and Erika to beware of visitors. I boxed all of the photos and papers and searched for a loose floorboard under which to hide them.
Ten minutes later, we were hurrying down the street both carrying medium-sized backpacks. When we got near Hackney station, I pointed Dani in the direction of the park.