The Unknown Masterpiece

by John Brooke

  ***

  Senior Inspector Nouvelle had taken care of her Monday morning duties — two newly constituted teams briefed on two newly opened files: Inspector Patrice Lebeau was to take the lead in the matter of a murder in an HLM where the youth gangs were becoming dangerously territorial; Inspector Ricky Roig would head down to a forestlands park in the Sundagau and try to sort out the gravely serious beating of another gypsy. With a tap on the door, Inspector Milhau arrived. Bernadette’s head was still wrapped in a bandage. Her eye was still swollen and ugly, but she had some painkillers in her pocket and the doctor had cleared her. She was eager.

  ‘Good.’ Aliette tossed the last file on the pile. ‘Let’s get going.’

  But Monique buzzed. ‘A Della…something. Sounds Greek. In Basel?’

  ‘Merci… Yes, Della?’

  It took VigiTec agent Della Kypreosus five irritating minutes in scattered English, almost non-existent French and several lapses into hysterical Greek to make her worries clear.

  The two cops went down to the garage much more quickly than Aliette’s still mending leg would have liked. Bernadette drove like hell for the checkpoint, pushing the battered old heap for all its dubious worth. Aliette called Franck Woerli from the car and woke him from his sorry spell.

  She did not for a moment consider calling Inspector Morenz of Basel City.

  41

  What Robert Knew

  Robert Charigot knew a few things, and none of them involved working very hard. Work was boring. Hard work was horrible — bussing tables at a suddenly busy Basel bar had probably been the most excruciating day of Robert’s life. It was also the day he let Martin Bettelman fall in love with him. Robert knew how to do that without the least bit of work at all.

  He knew how to keep his mother off his ass. Or had. Since the day his papa had taken off when he was ten, Robert had been playing to the notion, planted by her, that he was the only male in her life who cared. Who was there. Who would never leave her stranded. Say the same line for nearly twenty years and you’re bound to get good at it, turn it into poetry in a bitter mother’s ears. Unless you’re a dolt. One of the things his mother insisted on, despite failure at school and in the part-time busboy sector, was that Robert was no dolt. He was sensitive. Extra-sensitive!

  Well, yes. And he loved his pictures. His pictures made his life have meaning.

  All Robert wanted was to be left alone with his pictures — to adore them.

  Except when all he wanted was to be adored.

  Robert knew women were too much like his mother. They never really connected with his pictures. His mother would never speak of them, which was why she was no longer allowed into his room. They’d moved the washer and dryer upstairs to the dining room. The basement was his. Maman had delighted in his first pictures. Now she was throwing them in the river. Hard to trust a person capable of that. But men…they recognized Robert’s soul, which he got from his pictures, and they adored him — or said they did — and Robert let them. Until it got to be too much work. No, Robert was happiest alone with his pictures.

  Finding a new one and bringing it home always brought another rush of joy, a jolt of pleasure.

  And Robert knew the human eye always follows the action. He knew it instinctively, the way any lonely person knows it from watching the world. He knew it because people like Martin Bettelman had made it clear, unwittingly or otherwise. (Martin proposed a new scheme each time he saw him.) He knew it because he had seen it happen from his own very special place: put a most exquisite angel on a rock by the river and every boy in the bushes would be amazed. But if there was the slightest movement in the trees over by the cars, all eyes would immediately (instinctively) go there. Robert had observed this.

  The eye follows the action. He knew it like a magician knows it.

  And like a magician, he knew how to make the most of an elemental human impulse.

  Robert Charigot knew someone would be watching him that morning, from the doorway, or through a camera, so he only waited and gazed, transfixed. Honestly transfixed. Robert truly adored the one called Adoration V. (The name of the painter meant nothing.) And in the back of his mind he knew that honest adoration made his gambit somewhat easier. When the tour came shuffling in to the Swiss Early Modern room, he closed his eyes and ears — and nose. God, how they smelled as they brushed past him, or sat down for a moment on the bench beside him, sometimes touching his knee. It was enough to make him scream. But Robert did as he always did. He hid inside himself till the lecture was done and they shuffled back out.

  As the last of them were exiting, still one or two physically in the room, though their ears were turning the corner with the guide, Robert knew the watching eyes were moving with them, if only for ten seconds. It was exactly then that he rose calmly from the cushioned bench, stepped up to the naked boy kneeling by the river, lifted him off the wall and slid him under his jumper, then sat back down. And gazed transfixed at Adoration III, there on the opposite wall.

  That was the hardest part. Five minutes. Sitting. Waiting to be caught.

  But no one came running. It always worked, at least in museum-sized places like this.

  Robert Charigot knew other ways and means for other places. So many ways, and each worked perfectly — just as there were so many perfect ways to depict a soul alone. As if it were God’s plan. He felt at ease, indeed invisible, as he left the Early Modern room, moved through the formless crowd in the rotunda and out the door into the bright December sun.

  42

  If Franki Hadn’t Been So Sad

  Agent Woerli took the call from Inspector Nouvelle. He listened. He did not argue. He was too heart-weary to complain. He said he would look into it and rang off with the vaguest of goodbyes. Unpacking and preparing a firearm and rounds that had not been used in five years, Franck Woerli felt like a man heading out to his own funeral. He wished she hadn’t called.

  Agent Bucholtz was busy on the phone. Franck loomed in his office door till Rudi put the caller on hold and rather imperiously demanded, ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s your take on this Robert Charigot?’

  Agent Woerli gave little credence to his colleague’s notion of a boyish man at the hub of an international art fraud. The veteran cop heard Rudi Bucholtz’s newfound self-importance oozing behind every word. No, it was not the man described by the French inspector. Rudi’s take just didn’t fit into a box filled with dead professionals. At best, this Robert Charigot was a dupe, his home a safe repository after the dormer apartment in Mulheimerstrasse had been cleaned out. His mother’s home!… if the news had got it right. But Woerli did not argue with Rudi Bucholtz. Not worth the effort. He just nodded a thank you, then headed out. Alone. Not the most prudent way to proceed, but it was how he felt.

  Based on the call from her contact at the museum, Inspector Nouvelle had been sure Robert Charigot would be heading for Mulheimerstrasse , and that Dieter Taub was likely following, albeit at a limp.

  Stepping into Freiestrasse, Woerli went left, toward the Middle Bridge. Leaving from the Kunst, Charigot and Taub would have crossed at the Wettstein Bridge. Woerli’s route would meet theirs halfway. Crossing the bridge, Franck Woerli noted a couple huddled against the river breeze, enjoying a private moment on the small lookout beside the homage to Helvetia. This simple sight caused the ageing FedPol cop to swallow hard. And choke on it. The ubiquitous beauty of the city, the vulnerability of his colleague Josephina. He felt the gun in his pocket as he moved through the Claraplatz, scanning the throng of mid-morning shoppers, face by face, searching for a now well-studied shiny head. He slowed…

  There was Dieter Taub, his bullet-round top an easy mark. He was limping along supported by a cane, sipping coffee from a paper cup, a man in no great hurry. And it was apparent that he was not hiding at all. Franck Woerli adjusted his pace, feeling the stress.

  There was no boyish man to be seen. Taub appeared so utterly relaxed.

  Was he too late? More failure? Woerli f
ollowed, too easily, it seemed.

  The French inspector had promised to be at the Mulheimer address within an hour.

  Franck knew Dieter Taub would not need that long.

  Inspector Nouvelle’s notion of Dieter Taub and Josephina Perella on that bench by the river had struck a chord. Franck Woerli had done as she had asked and looked into it. He hadn’t shared his information. Not yet. There were other things he still needed to know; he was a good Swiss cop, never one to jump to conclusions, indeed afraid of his rusty impulses after blithely running down to Josephina’s office like an eager boy two miserable months before.

  Franck now knew Dieter Taub had spent eight years with the Swiss special forces before being dishonourably dismissed, which usually meant on account of sexual impropriety. Whatever the reason, his very particular military affiliation meant Taub knew how to kill people. Dropping a well-connected attorney known to be involved in many art-related transactions from ‘at least 300 metres’ (one small but tantalizing morsel tossed to begging media and police counterparts by Basel City forensics), and almost ending Hans Grinnell with a second shot from the same place, was not beyond the realm of possibility.

  Stabbing Josephina Perella in close quarters would have been easy.

  Assassinating Justin Aebischer with a company gun. Disappearing FedPol consultant Marcus Streit. Neatly slicing off the ear of the French inspector’s loudmouth plant in that squalid bar before tossing him into the river. And Martin Bettelman, a VigiTec employee who patronized that bar, probably a thief in his own right, a low-level and highly dubious man who provided a ready-made frame. All these possibilities calculated cleanly.

  A near miss on the inspector herself. That fit too.

  What made awful sense was Taub corrupting Josephina. Franck Woerli now accepted Hans Grinnell’s proof. He’d detested Grinnell, but the man was only doing his job. The notion of love fit cruelly. A lunchtime love affair on a riverside bench as the entrée to someone with Perella’s skills and access to police information. A love affair that was a heartless con.

  Surely Dieter Taub had corrupted Josephina.

  Franck Woerli had to act. For Josephina. For himself. For the commitment he and Josephina had made once upon a long-lost time. If this was the last thing he did on this earth, it might just be something a little more useful than tracking businessmen who cheated on their payroll tax.

  A chill wind swirling willy-nilly in a labyrinth of Klein Basel lanes and closes injected energy into an old cop’s step. But it dulled his tracking instincts. Fifteen minutes later Agent Woerli stopped, confused, watching Dieter Taub enter an apartment block in Gertegasse, a tiny lane not far from Mulheimerstrasse, but not at all where the French inspector had thought.

  Franck Woerli stood in the quiet street, suddenly unclear as to where he ought to be.

  Too unclear at a very wrong moment. Fear of failure left Franck afraid to think.

  Twenty precious minutes later, a stout frau with shapeless hair came out the apartment block door wearing a frumpy pink wool coat and toting a flowery market bag. As she marched past him, Woerli gave her a cursory glance before returning his gaze to the window above. He thought he’d seen a bald head up there.

  It was his own fault that no one told Franck Woerli about the woman in the pink coat. He’d been a useless mass of self-pitying emotion when the matter had come to light. He’d wallowed in it and the investigation had passed him by. Standing there, he sensed nothing for too long.

  43

  Greta and the Angel

  Dieter Taub worked on his face with brooding care. Lips first. He tried for beauty, though he knew he fell far short. But it was the thought that counted. It had to be. It was the heart that loved. Not the body… Smudging lipstick, trying again, Dieter felt the anger boiling. He cursed all preternatural beauty, the futile places it led to. It led to weakness. Which led to a fouling of respect. Respect for love. Respect for duty. A weakness for beauty had led Dieter to choose Martin Bettelman from among so many malleable and too-eager men earning an hourly wage. Dieter should never have allowed himself to go anywhere near Martin. One brief night almost three years prior, following his lithe employee to the little club on a dingy street.

  Dieter had been observing Martin on high-tech surveillance cameras for some time by that point. It was an unforgiveable loss of self-control, mixing business with desire. Dieter’s life was marked by these moments of indiscretion. Inside, they felt like explosions. Emotional explosions. Who would ever think it when Herr Taub sat down behind his gleaming desk?

  But Martin had led to Fred. Eventually. After Justin. Adelhard. Some others. Dieter and Fred were a couple, a genuine pair. They understood each other, where they came from, what they needed. They understood passion’s need to rip the bottom out of everything you stand for — at least one night a week. Add a project demanding trust and nerve: stealing priceless art made for some deliriously wonderful sex. Would Dieter have found Fred if he had not followed Martin into Zup? Another time, another place? Life was fraught with chance. Chance made Dieter nervous. Nervous of weakness, loss of self-control. There was a horrid symmetry to it all.

  If the accursed Martin Bettelman had possessed the tiniest jot of self-control, the French police would not have come into it. There’d be no trail to Zup. No reason to lose faith in Fred’s judgment and resolve.

  There. Done. Lipstick should come last but Dieter needed it to be first. A clear statement was always a good starting point, and if nothing else, Dieter’s lips were clear.

  Now Dieter drew the makeup pencil hard and dark along his hairless brow, fretful, comparing one against the other. Symmetrical? Not easy on a face like mine, he thought…

  Symmetry may not be comforting, but it does let us see clearly.

  The enterprise had been working perfectly. Like clockwork. A finely calibrated Swiss clock.

  Did they need it? Of course they didn’t. They only wanted it. It helped them want each other. In that, it was one of life’s necessities. And they were good at it. Justin and a few carefully recruited others were the portal to the major transactions. Dieter and Fred acted as their own runners. Fred, mainly — he had the contacts, he found the buyers through shadowy fences in places one would never dream, while Dieter built their retail inventory, responding to requests passed along by Fred, or calculating trends amongst his well-protected clientele. Martin Bettelman had seemed a right choice, smart enough to obey the rule of silence, savvy enough to fulfill his part without needing every syllable spelled out. A nod and a wink at Zup. Martin would gather quietly indicated works from the storerooms he patrolled, repositories packed with the old bumped aside by the new, works selected on the unlikelihood of their ever being missed, let alone shown again. But all of them worth something to someone. Martin was paid well for his risk — which Dieter controlled at considerable risk to himself.

  Arrogant Justin was the only real threat. They’d dealt with it. They’d have let the thing be a lover’s tragedy, with Martin strangling himself inside the frame. Not difficult to borrow his sidearm from his locker at the Kunst for a couple of hours on a Friday afternoon when Martin was off work. They would’ve dealt with Martin well before any investigation could get that far. Fred’s skills at legal obfuscation could have kept them safe from the damning claims of Marcus Streit, the fiddly words of so-called art experts, that sneaky provincial police officer. The client would have been disappointed, but appreciative. Clients value attention to risk and absolute discretion in the protection of their anonymity. They had got him the Snyders. He knew they could deliver. They would get him a Reubens when they arranged new talent — there was always new talent — when the time was right.

  Meaning safe. Secure. Anonymous.

  And precise. Dieter craved precision, had done since adolescence, when the nervous-making push and pull inside taught him to stay tighter than a drum. Until the inevitable explosion.

  Dieter twitched. The tiny brush flushing out his lashes jolted minutely in his
outsized fingers and left a blotchy fleck that wouldn’t do. He tried to flick it away and made it worse. He wiped his eye, and the tearing there, and started over.

  The inventory at Mulheimerstrasse was a bread-and-butter sideline, a steady and solid hedge against disaster at the high end. Indeed, a source of gloomy comfort as the Federer catastrophe grew beyond saving. Thanks to Martin Bettelman, their bread and butter had been thrown into the Rhine. A shocking waste. Worse, the French fool had not even been stealing from them! This muted shoemaker was as unknown to Dieter and Fred and all their contacts as it was to the French inspector. Martin’s rash freelance adventure had put everyone at risk.

  And with his gun! Martin must have come for his gun just before the closing Friday evening. It was very much against the rules.

  It was worse than that. If Martin Bettelman had remained discreet, Marcus Streit would not be somewhere in a pile of scrap metal, crushed to pulp inside a car that was now compressed to the size of a radio. Josephina could have remained in her support role, helping to deflect Fred’s deft legal manoeuvres ever further off the mark… Poor dumb Josephina, the only woman since his mother with whom he could share shoes. A shameless charade, to be sure. But Dieter did not enjoy killing. He was not a monster. He was civilized. Respectable. Very private. Very Swiss. He was exactly what they’d always told him to be.

  But he would always do what needed to be done.

  The French inspector was an interesting woman. In other circumstances Dieter sensed he would have liked her. Lucky, too. He had not been concentrating properly that wretched night on the docks, half-blinded as he’d been with anger and the need to punish Frederik Rooten. Fred’s louche lack of constancy. Fred’s ugly lust for that oversized buffoon. And Dieter had been more than angry when he’d sliced that grotesque Frenchman’s ear to get that stud for Fred. He’d been in no small amount of agony from a bullet in his buttock. He’d been struggling with a severe pall of encroaching disappointment, hoping against his battered hope. For Fred.