“And your people are quite certain that he was seen leaving the places where the painters lived before the painters were killed,” Nancy asked.
“Quite sure, yes. He visited the painters between nine am and four pm on the day before they were killed. On the day after his visit, the painters were killed in the evening at around 9 pm.”
“Are you saying all three painters were killed at around the same time?”
“Yes,” commissaire Brice confirmed. “We are certain that the killings were done by three separate teams. Actually, there were four teams, but the fourth team either failed and the painter managed to escape, or they kidnapped him or killed him at a different location. We don’t know.”
“Was anything stolen?” Tony asked.
“Not as far as we could establish. Their places were thoroughly searched, this was obvious, but this was not done in a chaotic rush. If something was removed, it certainly was nothing what burglars usually go for. No paintings, no TV, no music equipment, probably not even cash was removed.”
“These painters, were they wealthy?”
“You could call them wealthy. Each of them had around half a million euros in his bank account, but you would not have suspected this by looking at their apartments. The living areas in their apartments were modest, just big enough to cook, eat, live and sleep. However, the studios in their apartments, the places were they worked, were impressive.”
“What made them impressive?”
“The rooms were big, there was plenty of natural light, there was expensive artificial light; you could not see a shade when all the lights were switched on at night. But most impressively, the rooms were clean and everything looked very orderly and well organised.”
“And nothing was touched?”
“Oh no! Everything was touched, but nothing was damaged. You could see that all the paintings, the shelving units, every container, just simply every item was looked at and in the process placed somewhere else. The search was thorough and methodical.”
21
Once Mike and Christina commenced their sex life, it turned out that it was not without its challenges. Christina called Mike a lazy lover and he called her a lover in a hurry. As far as the foreplay was concerned, they read from the same page of the same book. They loved to hug, kiss, touch and cuddle for what seemed like hours. It wasn’t for hours, of course, that’s exaggerated, but a one hour foreplay was not unusual. Mike was in no hurry to let the outstanding part of his body do its work and for Christina it was perfectly all right to let herself be happily tortured by Mike’s fingers. Coming close to an orgasm several times during the foreplay was what she enjoyed, but then, instead of letting Mike’s fingers finish their work or inviting Mike’s best friend, as he sometimes called his penis, do the job that was meant to be done, she allowed her orgasms to slip away and continued with hugging, kissing and touching.
When the time had arrived for Mike to enter they were at once as close to each other as a man and woman could be. That’s how things remained and it was at this stage that the challenge began. Mike became, according to Christina, lazy; Christina became, according to Mike, impatient. She wanted him to get on with his job now. She was so close to a major orgasm, all Mike would have had to do was what most men can’t wait to do: thrust forward and move backward a dozen times and by the time he would have had his orgasm Christina would easily have had hers too. But Mike was lazy, which is not quite correct. He was not in a hurry. He enjoyed it to be as deep in her as humanly possible and stay in this position, with little or no movement, for at least five minutes, better for ten. If it had been possible, he would have crawled inside her. For Christina this was sheer torture. She had been close to an orgasm several times during the foreplay and now, for her, the time had come to let her body explode and the earth move.
Five to ten minutes later, we are now talking about specifics …
They were lying beside each other, both exhausted and satisfied. She had her head on Mike’s chest and said, “One of these days you’ll kill me.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry! Is this all you have to say for yourself?”
“I am afraid I can’t think of anything else.”
“You could promise to get it done and over with once you are inside me, not to keep me hostage for what seems like a never ending fuck.”
“Sorry, can’t do that.”
“Because you are a selfish devil who thinks he has to squeeze the last bit of male enjoyment out of every fuck no matter how tough this is for me.”
“Sorry, that’s not true, it is more like …”
“I know, I know, I have heard all your excuses. I am a magnet who doesn’t let you move. Once inside me you are paralysed. What else was there? There are little greedy hands inside my vagina that hold on to your penis and don’t let go.”
“Sorry, but that’s how it is.”
For a while neither of them said anything. They were happy and content. They had a bottle of red wine and dark chocolate beside the bed and Mike poured wine into two glasses. They sipped wine and Mike ate a piece of chocolate now and then.
“I’m concerned about your safety,” he said. “They must know that we are an item and assume that you know what I know, which means your life is as much in danger as mine.”
“You should be concerned about yourself.”
“I am, but this is nothing new to me.”
“Me neither,” Christina replied.
“Tell me about it.”
“Okay. Do you remember, a bit less than a year ago two drug bosses were found dead in room 412 in the Shoroto Hotel and a young and inexperienced drug enforcement officer was found badly injured at the scene?”
“I do. Until today the circumstances of this event are unresolved.”
“They are resolved, only the public was left in the dark.”
“I’m listening.”
“This is what happened,” Christina continued. “That young officer, his name is Marc Benson, was in a hurry. He wanted a promotion a few years ahead when his boss thought he might be ready for one. He had access to classified information and knew about the meeting of the two syndicate bosses, decided to arrest them, and in the process make a name for himself. What he didn’t know was that I was also at the scene. Not exactly at the scene, I was in a room three doors away from where the meeting took place. I was listening to the big bosses’ discussion and I was recording what they were talking about. It was all about how to share the cake; about who was to operate where and how things would be dealt with when someone ignored the demarcation line.”
“Don’t tell me that young officer barged into the room and told the two big bosses to get their hands above their heads?”
“That’s exactly what he did. I listened to it. I heard it all. At first I didn’t realize that he was one of us. I thought one of the two bosses was playing a dirty game. It was only when I heard Marc Benson yelling something along the lines of ‘everything that you say may be used against you’ that I understood what was going on. What options did I have?”
“You did what he had done, right? That’s crazy.”
“Exactly. I pulled my gun, sprinted along the corridor and barged into the room as if this was the most natural thing to do. By the time I arrived that young idiot already had three bullets in his body. Of the next five bullets that were shot in the room that day three were aimed at me, two of the three missed and one scratched along my hip; you’ve seen the scar.”
“And the other two bullets, don’t tell me,” Mike interrupted, “they found their mark and the two syndicate bosses were no more.”
“How did you guess?”
“My lucky day,” Mike replied. “Imagine, if you had missed, you would not be here and I would not even know what I had missed.”
“Let’s call it our lucky day.”
“Right. So, what are you saying, I shouldn’t worry about you? – You know how to look after yourself.”
“Mike, I know how
to look after myself just as you do. But that’s not a guarantee. Not for you and not for me. We both know that. No matter how guarded we are, no matter how good we think we are, something can go wrong every day.”
“Okay. We are both fools. I am glad you told me what had happened in room number 412. To know this makes me feel a lot better.”
“It should make you feel worried.”
“I know, because the woman in my bed is very dangerous.”
“Very dangerous.”
“And with little hands in her vagina.”
“Stop it Mike!”
“Exactly the kind of danger I love and can’t get enough of.”
They kept sipping red wine and now and then Mike allowed a piece of dark chocolate to melt in his mouth. There was music coming from somewhere, children’s laughter could be heard, a car driver beeped his horn.
“Mike, now that I’ve told you something which, strictly speaking, I shouldn’t have told you, can I ask you a very personal question?”
Mike looked at Christina surprised. ‘… can I ask you a personal question?’ – somehow this didn’t sound good. Almost reluctantly, although this was not recognizable by the tone of his voice, he replied, “Sure. What would you like to know?”
22
Chief Inspector Neil Norman wasn’t a happy man. He had his best people working on a case and there was no progress. “Let’s reflect on how much we know about the publisher’s journeys to Europe and the Middle East,” Christina suggested.
“We know which countries and cities he visited. We know when these visits took place. We also know which hotels he stayed at and how much money he spent on airfares and accommodation, but we know nothing about the purpose of his trips and about the people he may have met,” Mike replied.
“Were there certain cities which he visited more often than others?”
“No. He travelled 21 times and he stayed in 21 different cities. He visited each city once. The cities were Paris, Marseille, Madrid, Barcelona, Monaco, Rome, Florence, Istanbul, Ankara, Athens, Budapest, Bucharest, Belgrade, Nicosia, Damascus, Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, Jerusalem, Amman and Teheran.”
“Bravo! 21 cities. Did you memorise them?” the chief inspector asked.
“Not deliberately,” Mike replied. “I mulled over each of these cities in libraries, on the Internet, and with the help of Lonely Planet books.”
“With your eyes open and closed, I assume.”
“More open than closed.”
“And?”
“These cities have a lot in common; lots of tourism, lots of history. Crime. But the one thing they have in common and that we may be interested in is this; they all have been the homes of philosophers and religious leaders, many of whom are famous, many are regarded as controversial and many whose departures from this world remain shrouded in mystery.”
“It would probably be easy to find another 21 cities for which the same criteria apply.”
“True, and if Mr Rose had stayed alive, who knows, he might have visited them too.”
“Okay. – Are you saying our dead publisher visited cities in which in the past the people lived who wrote or might have written the books he was interested in?”
“I am suggesting that this may be one relevant aspect.”
“But how does that help us?”
“Not a lot, except that it would be fair to assume that he visited these cities with the intention of unearthing the kinds of books and manuscript he was seeking for his business.”
“What do you suggest?” the chief inspector asked.
“I suggest that Christina and I visit these cities, one after the other, that we spend one or two weeks in each one, and see what we can come up with.”
“What a great idea! Would you mind if I came along and carried your suitcases?”
“No. In fact, I was hoping you would offer your services and take your taxpayer financed credit card along as well.”
Nobody laughed, although under other circumstances this could have been accepted as a reasonable joke. For several minutes the conversation came to a stop. Christina paged through one of the reports, the chief inspector played with or looked something up in his iPhone and Mike was just sitting there with his eyes half closed, half opened.
When he fully opened his eyes again he said, “I am going to arrange for an identikit of the dead publisher to be sent to the police in the 21 cities and ask them to help us with our enquiries.”
“We have to be specific about what we want, otherwise the police in some of the cities on our list may not lift a finger,” Christina replied.
“That should be okay. We can tell them when our man was in their city, we can provide them with his name, passport details, a photograph and the name of the hotel where he stayed and we can ask them to focus their enquiries on places like libraries, antique book stores and other businesses that deal with antique items.”
“Okay, go ahead,” the chief inspector agreed, “but we have one more possibility to get on top of this case.”
“We do,” Mike replied. “We have someone they want to see dead.”
“Exactly; and the next time they try to kill that someone we have to catch them.”
“Preferably before …”
“Yes, of course Mike; preferably before they get you.”
The chief inspector had hardly finished his sentence when they heard an explosion coming from the car park in front of the building. They jumped up and rushed to the window and looked at the cars four stories below.
“This is … this is …,” Christina said.
Mike nodded and confirmed, “Yes. Damn it! Damn it! You are right.”
“This is getting expensive!” the chief inspector yelled, “Mike, this is the second car in two days!”
23
“How do you know about the fourth painter?” Tony asked commissaire Daniel Brice, “and may I also ask how the dead painters were discovered?”
“You should have become a detective,” the commissaire replied. “So far you’re doing a good job asking all the relevant questions.”
“Sorry … I think this is sort of very interesting. I am also angry about these murders. I don’t mind if bad guys kill bad guys, but killing painters is a bit like killing poets and musicians. It shouldn’t happen.”
“Are you a poet or a musician?”
“Not really, but I like poetry, good books and good music.”
“Lots of murders happen every day that shouldn’t happen,” the commissaire remarked. “In fact, murders shouldn’t happen at all. Full Stop!”
“I guess, yes.”
“I’m happy to tell you what I know. So far there are no secrets which the public is not meant to know. Who knows, one of you may just come up with an idea or a new angle of looking at these things which may be helpful.”
“Thanks,” Nancy replied, “you’re an unusual policeman.”
Two waiters served the main course and a third poured the remaining wine from the first bottle into Tony’s glass. Less then half a minute later he placed a second bottle of the same red wine on to the table. The cork was removed and the waiter said, “It would be good if we could have allowed it to breathe for a few hours, but it should not make a huge difference.”
“You could have poured the wine into a carafe,” Nancy said.
“Oh no!” both the waiter and commissaire Daniel Brice said almost concurrently.
“Why not?”
“Pouring wine into a carafe is not the same as allowing it to breathe slowly in the bottle.”
“It does the trick, doesn’t it?” Tony commented.
“Yes and no,” the commissaire explained. “It’s a bit like doing CPR on a person who has had a heart attack. It does the trick; it gets air into the person’s lungs, but it is not the same as breathing naturally. Of course on a person who’s had a heart attack you have to force air in and out of his lungs, but when it comes to good wine, force definitely should be avoided.”
“Tha
nk you,” the waiter said to the commissaire, “I could not have explained it so elegantly.”
“Bulldust,” Nancy laughed after the waiter had left.
“You are probably right,” the commissaire replied, “but this doesn’t mean that the waiter and I don’t have a valid point.”
“May the murderers be caught soon,” Tony changed the subject and raised his glass.
The commissaire and Nancy followed his example before they slowly sipped the wine. A thought flashed through Tony’s mind: This wine and talking about murdered painters is not compatible. But as soon as the thought had entered his mind he pushed it aside.
“The first dead painter was discovered the next morning by a woman he had hired to prepare his meals. When she found him dead with a bullet in his head she called the police. One of the female forensic officers who arrived at the scene soon afterwards was an art enthusiast. She knew the painter, not personally, but she knew enough about him to remember the court case that had taken place a few years earlier. She also remembered the names of the other three painters that were involved in the court case.”
“You are talking about my court case?” Nancy interrupted.
“Yes, I am,” the commissaire confirmed. “Immediately police officers were dispatched to the addresses of the other three painters. Two of them were found dead, each with a bullet in his head. The fourth one was not at home, but it was obvious that his place had been just as thoroughly searched as the homes of the murdered painters.”
“Was there blood or were there signs of a fight at the fourth painter’s place?”
“No, but two people living in the same apartment building said they heard a commotion in the staircase area at around nine pm, like someone running down the steps and someone following.”
“So, the fourth painter may have surprised the intruder or intruders at his place and then perhaps managed to escape, or maybe got caught.”
“We don’t know.”
“What do you think the killers were looking for?” asked Nancy.
“I don’t know.” The commissaire’s reply came slowly, as if he had to think carefully about each word he spoke.
An Almighty Conspiracy – A novel, a thriller, four people doing the unexpected Page 8