The Unknown Masterpiece

by John Brooke

  As for Dieter Taub, aka Greta: One of the frustrating aspects of police work was homicidal monsters who never got the chance to explain because they’d been shot down or shot themselves before being taken. Aliette Nouvelle had shared a bench with the man. She thought Dieter Taub might have said something useful. Not in the sense of justification; more like something to tuck away and use the next time. There was always going to be another homicidal monster.

  And he too had seemed like a decent man…

  The whiny blare of a pan-pon sounded in the street below. Morenz was arriving.

  A subordinate entered first, gun drawn. Aliette smiled. His boss’s sour little face appeared. He did not say hello. She responded in kind; forthwith she told him, ‘Voila, two Swiss victims. Over to you, Inspector. I suspect a young man named Robert Charigot, French citizen, is somewhere in this city. I expect you to find him and return him to us. You’ll probably get a good basic description from the security monitors at the Kunstmuseum. We have our own murder — we need to see him. After we’ve sorted out our business, we’ll gladly send him back to you. Ça va? I’ll say thank you in advance, and, well, maybe we’ll have a long chat about it all in heaven. Even you and I might be friends up there.’

  No response. She shrugged her disdain. Tant pis — tough luck for the rigid little man. Duty discharged, she made to leave.

  One of Morenz’s people blocked the door.

  ‘You are under arrest.’ In German.

  ‘Are you serious?’ Turning, Inspector Nouvelle told Inspector Morenz, ‘As you can see, this was a gun fight, mutual shots exchanged.’ Not her problem.

  ‘You have no business here.’

  ‘I have an international mandate.’

  ‘We’ll talk about it at the station. My boss would like to speak to you.’

  He made a gesture to his man — who put a hand on her arm.

  She stayed calm. ‘Do you really want to drag your boss into an international mess? Because you will, I promise…’

  Morenz met her eyes, daring her.

  Aliette responded, ‘Your boss is only your boss, Inspector. My boss…all my bosses, they will recommend to your Federal people that they conduct an in-depth interview with their team at the checkpoint. They will need to know as much as they can as to how their agent died and I happen to think shoddy service at the border may have been a factor. I have a witness to that.’ She did not mention a roomful of priceless art, the matter of Swiss patrimony, the fact of French possession. But she would. She said, ‘Swiss quality, Inspector. There is much on the line here.’

  She smiled at the man with the grip on her arm. ‘Please?’ He looked to Morenz for instruction. Muttering profanities, Morenz waved a dismissive hand. The steel hand on her was removed. ‘Merci. If I don’t see Robert Charigot back in France within, mm, let’s say a week?’

  In fact, at that moment Robert Charigot was already under sedation in a hospital bed, no ID, still an unknown street person. Somewhere between the dormer apartment and a bus stop along Mulheimer, the Hodler had disappeared. But the French cop did not know that.

  Neither did the Swiss. Apparently.

  Aliette did know she had this nasty man thinking twice. And though she knew in her gut that Dieter Taub was not part of the murder at the ‘beach,’ she also knew she’d have to prove that beyond a shadow if she hoped to close her case. With help from FedPol she would eventually get a home address for Dieter Taub. But something told her that might not be the one she needed.

  She took out a notepad. ‘And I need directions to the home of the lawyer’s widow. A call clearing the way would also be nice.’ Naturally, Morenz balked. She eased him forward. ‘I’m doing you a favour, Inspector. Try to believe it. Before I go back across the border, I need to make very sure you and I are well and truly done. Mm?’

  He saw it. Didn’t like it, but he liked her even less. Morenz scribbled an address. A uniform accompanied her down to the street, sent her and Bernadette in the right direction. On the way she called rue des Bons Enfants and asked to be connected to IJ. She pleaded for one or both of them to make their way to Basel. ‘As fast you can make it. Call me when you’re past the checkpoint.’ Charles Léger promised she would hear from them within the hour.

  Aliette and Bernadette found the address in the posh street. When Aliette pushed the button, the elegant gate opened without the usual disembodied demand for credentials and purpose.

  Danke, Inspector Morenz. But what a pity such efficient cooperation has to be coerced.

  They waited in the tall cool foyer, contemplating the steel couple copulating smoothly and endlessly beneath the skylight. The two cops both seemed to see it at the same moment… they rolled their eyes in rote reaction, oh-la-la! An interesting acquisition. Did Frau Rooten have the faintest clue? Her joyless face suggested she might. Then again, she was grieving the loss of a well-respected and very well-providing husband. Hard to intuit what a grim haute-bourgeoise Swiss did and did not know about her husband’s secret life. Had they ever gone dancing? Aliette got straight to the point. The matter was painful but not complicated. If she had learned anything at all from this sordid business, it was that men have too many pockets for their own good and that wives will tend to go through said pockets and find some telling things. The lady’s French was dull but perfect. Yes, Frau Rooten had found many unknown items in going through the pockets of Frederik’s suits before sending them to charity. A receipt for flowers delivered to a number in Gertegasse made no sense to her — though she’d suspected for a long time that her husband had a lover. Had she shared this with Inspector Morenz? No. Why? ‘Probably some tarty little clerical person from his office.’ But where was Gertegasse? The frau was at a loss.

  ‘Merci, Madame.’ The two French cops left the poor woman to twig to that last detail of her husband’s life in her own good time.

  Desperately trailing a hunch, too aware that Inspector Morenz would be working his way toward the same conclusions, they raced for Klein Basel. Asking a stranger, they received precise directions. Gertegasse was just off Amerbachstrasse. The place was on the third floor of an ungentrified walk-up five minutes from Josephina Perella’s drab domicile, ten minutes from Martin Bettelman’s love nest in Mulheimerstrasse, and a pleasant walk the other way to Zup.

  Entering, there was initial surprise. ‘Is this all?’ You would think a VP Resource Allocations and an establishment attorney would have put much more decorative care into their hideaway. It was too similar to Josephina Perella’s uninspired flat — neglected wood that needed oil, furnished with old accoutrements from a thrift shop. No art on the walls. Beside the bed a photo of Fred and Greta resplendent in their party outfits, alone on the dance floor under the disco ball, grinning, locked in each other’s arms.

  Proof that love is all you need?

  Her phone buzzed. She directed Jean-Marc Pouliot of Identité Juidiciaire as best she could.

  It took two further calls for Jean-Marc to fathom the labyrinthine layout of Klein Basel, but thirty minutes later both he and Charles Léger were busy collecting items, taking reads. Aliette lingered in the bedroom, intrigued by Greta’s dresses and shoes. There was a pair of hiking boots. On the inspector’s order, they packed them for further analysis, a few other pairs of large-sized ladies’ shoes as well. Bed sheets. Hiking togs. Underwear — many choices. All manner of things from the bathroom and the fridge. They did all this in peace… Who knew what (or whom) Morenz might be finding at Dieter Taub’s listed address. It had yet to lead him here.

  As they were leaving, the chintzy cuckoo clock on the vestibule wall was sounding the top of the hour. Two hand-painted dancers, he in a debonair tuxedo, she in a sheath-like golden gown with hair to match, came out of their separate doors, met for a turn, then went back in.

  45

  The Charigot Wall

  Whether good to his word or afraid for his ass, Basel City Inspector Morenz located Robert Charigot and had him returned to France forthwith. France paid t
he bill for the ambulance and medic-attended ride. Robert was placed on a secure ward at Hôtel Dieu, far from his mother. Inspector Nouvelle requested they be kept incommunicado. Christine Charigot had wielded a gilt-framed artwork in a state of obsessed fury and used it to inflict serious damage to the head of Inspector Bernadette Milhau. That fact, and the woman’s manically repeated vow to ‘protect my child,’ gave Aliette good reason to believe both Charigots had acted in concert to do away with Martin Bettelman. It was a question of who did what, and when. She needed to hear Robert’s own story regarding the fatal incident that warm night in late September, then his maman’s pure-hearted corroboration. The inspector began shuttling back and forth between wards, working on her bedside manner, as it were.

  ‘Your mother was there, Robert. We know this…’ Not strictly speaking.

  ‘No. She was working. She’s always working.’

  ‘Your mother helped you kill Martin Bettelman.’

  ‘My mother never helps me at all.’

  ‘She took the painting of the shoemaker and smashed it over Martin’s head.’

  ‘My mother is mental.’

  She could not move Robert past that. Though he divulged certain circumstantially helpful things about his encounters with Martin Bettelman both at the ‘beach’ and in Basel, Robert Charigot remained steadfast on the matter of murder. He could not say for sure, but it had to have been the Swiss. ‘Old. Fat…’ Robert provided a duly graphic replay of his painful date with Dieter Taub/Greta. The inspector patiently directed him back to September. Basic line: Robert had fought with Martin, ‘I didn’t want his ugly painting,’ then he’d watched Martin destroy the shoemaker in a fit of rejected dismay. Robert insisted he’d walked away from this, ‘…the guy was losing it, totally, I didn’t need that,’ and he’d been well away when an unknown man rushed out of the darkness, grappled with Martin, then chased and shot him ‘several times’ before Martin fell in the shallows. Robert claimed he saw that from fifty metres. ‘On my rock.’

  ‘Your rock?’

  He shrugged. The rock by the shore was his usual place.

  Like a hooker’s corner, Aliette was sorely tempted to add. But refrained. Insults had no effect on his seriously dulled heart. ‘And then?’

  ‘I dove in. Swam like crazy…’ If the attacker further smashed the ruined painting over Martin’s lifeless head, Robert did not see it. His mother had nothing to do with it.

  ‘Did you ever take Martin home?’

  ‘Are you nuts? My mother would — ’ But he stopped just there.

  ‘What would she do, Robert?’

  He looked away. ‘Twice,’ he admitted.

  They already knew this. IJ had found good, if disgusting, evidence of Martin in Robert’s less than pristine basement bathroom — where his mother was not allowed. But if she had come in, spying or otherwise, she would certainly have noticed the grubby signs of a visitor with sex and more sex on his mind. Any woman would.

  Push as she might, this hint as to his mother’s fears and volatile reactions was as close as she would come to hearing it from Robert. He knew he’d almost been tricked. From that point on, he denied and denied, always, and ever more definitely turning it back to the possibility of an outraged Dieter/Greta. At least it was clear that Martin Bettelmen knew all about Robert’s obsession. The rejected gift of a stolen shoemaker fit cleanly with a confrontation at the beach.

  Robert was wily but there were tricks he couldn’t beat. Working from the opposite side of what she was sure she already knew, she presented images of Taub — both as shiny bullet-headed corporate VP, and as a less than perfectly conceived Greta.

  ‘It was dark. I only ever saw him with his dress on — that day, at Martin’s? And his wig.’

  ‘But the face… Robert?’ He was distracted, continually smoothing his hair, tracing the lines of his cheeks, examining his fingers, glancing skeptically at the mirror on the bathroom door.

  ‘Ugly. All that makeup.’

  ‘And those eyes — they don’t change.’ Silently reproaching herself. Dieter sitting at his gleaming desk stolidly mulling a murdered employee looked so much like Greta at a table in Zup, slightly worried as she contemplated her debonair and ever-jokey Fred. Aliette had seen it. But not. How could she have? ‘I’m sorry, Robert — what did you say?’

  ‘I said, It was definitely him. Yes.’

  ‘Merci.’ Like most in his position, Robert took the path of least resistance. They always did. And she could always see the easy lie. Whether a deliberate lie or a just calculated guess was harder to assess. She felt Robert Charigot could lie without a smidgen of conscience.

  And he stuck to his story. What should have been a matter of course was anything but.

  Down on Ward 3, Christine Charigot remained severely depressed, offering nothing save lethargic shrugs and tearful stares. Aliette took a chance, hoping the news of Robert’s safe return might jar something loose. It was the opposite. (And another mistake, Inspector?) Christine pined. The fourth night she tried to go to her son, a zombie in a nightgown lost in halls of white, and had to be restrained. She made much pitiful, unearthly noise. Her depression deepened.

  Whereas, plied with these bits of news — ‘Your mother is suffering, Robert.’— her ‘sensitive’ son did not seem bothered in the least.

  With leading queries, it became sadly clear. The star of the beach had nothing but contempt for his mother. Christine Charigot did not properly appreciate Robert’s approach to life. ‘She’s a peasant. No taste! No sense of beauty.’

  Yet he defended her. Strange, strange boy. And beauty was central.

  Everyone who managed to get a meaningful word out of Robert Charigot was beginning to agree that he was not your usual criminal. Money was truly the least of his motives. It was love. Self-love. The man who looked like an angelic boy (until you really looked) was motivated by a consuming sense of personal beauty and its reflection in the images he felt compelled to have. He was self-absorbed, a sensual monstrosity, grooming himself ceaselessly, never pleased. He needed those perfect works of art. But Martin Bettelman’s link to the larger art fraud scheme (a Swiss problem, not ours) was incidental; he was a man caught in a passion for Robert.

  After his third chat with Robert, responding to a befuddled mother’s initial claims, an uncharacteristically grim J-P Blismes said, ‘There is nothing remotely borderline autistic in that room. Emotionally, perhaps there is a resemblance. But really, that’s the biggest load I’ve heard in a long time. I’ll bet my licence. Immature. Rigid. Lazy, mostly — though the romantic obsession with self can be a blind. But nope, a straight case of arrested adolescent narcissism if I ever saw one.’ And J-P, whose normal focus was on young offenders, had seen a few. ‘Says he wants to go to Australia to get away from her. You know how many of my usual clients want to go to Australia to escape their unhappiness? I say leave him in there till he grows up!’

  Aliette blushed. She too wanted to get far away. What did that make her?

  ‘Don’t worry — you will never be one of my usual clients.’

  Merci, J-P.

  The psychiatrist engaged to assess the accused agreed with child psychologist J-P Blismes that Robert Charigot was ‘narcissistic in the extreme.’ While the accused showed disturbing signs of both Antisocial Personality Disorder and what he termed Adjustment Disorder with anxiety, Robert was not unintelligent, he was not addicted to any drug — except the pure wonder of himself. However the eventual charges might be constructed, Robert could be considered ‘responsible’ despite the diagnostic fantasies his poor mother may have picked up at her job.

  Aliette was no psychiatrist. She detected no anxiety in Robert — only in herself. Her need to end this thing, and end it cleanly, presenting the impending charges to the court in a way that accurately served justice was giving her a rash. But who does one tell?

  Not Hilda Gross. The Basel Lands Inspector was not inclined to share information. That included DNA and other findings related to
Justin Aebischer and Josephina Perella. Hilda was none too friendly on the phone, sounding suspiciously like a woman sensing competition from the French police. Or was it female competition? What had Rudi been telling her? A part of Inspector Nouvelle wanted to reassure Hilda, but any feelings of comradely empathy were in deep eclipse at the moment and she refrained from getting all sisterly about it. All she required were the DNA samples.

  And they arrived. Promptly. Of course they did. Thanks to Rudi’s team and network they now knew Robert Charigot’s career as an art thief had started long in advance of Martin Bettelman’s entry into his life and had included thefts from collections across Switzerland and beyond. The pale, slight man in the floopy hoodie had stolen significant paintings in France and Germany, even a small Fra Angelico from a chapel in Milan. Aliette knew Rudi wanted her paltry little murder case resolved even more than she did. Whatever else he may have been accomplishing with Hilda Gross, FedPol Agent Bucholtz would not let a provincial investigator forestall or otherwise undermine his big day in a Basel courtroom telling the world the extent of Robert’s larceny and his own role in retrieving and identifying a substantial cache of major art.

  A thorough collating of gathered signs left Jean-Marc Pouliot and Charles Léger ‘ninety-eight percent sure’ that the international line between two murder cases was at last clearly drawn. ‘Unless he swam in and worked barefoot,’ IJ felt confident in confirming that while Dieter Taub had murdered Justin Aebischer and Josephina Perella, there was nothing of Dieter amongst the things they had collected at the place on French soil where Martin Bettelman had been snuffed three long months before. Certain items retrieved from the Greta/Fred hideaway also revealed that Taub had switched hiking boots with Perella. And that they either shared several pairs of (her) shoes, or he’d helped himself the evening of his visit in the horrible retro-pink wool coat — which would have been only a few hours after he’d used his Special Services knife to put a hole in her compromised heart. Of course, intimate details of the relationship between Dieter and Josephina would remain forever unexplained. But no one really needed to know, least of all investigators on the French side.