by Estelle Ryan
“Who is he?” Florian nodded at Luka.
I leaned back. We’d decided Luka would be the one to communicate with Florian. Not me. Luka cleared his throat and when I looked at him, he tilted his head towards Florian. I sighed. “He is the team leader of the equivalent of SWAT.”
Florian nodded. “He looks like a cop.” He swallowed. “I’m sorry I grabbed you.”
I nodded, not knowing how else to respond to an apology for something that had had such a devastating effect on me.
He glanced at Luka again. “I’m totally screwed, aren’t I?”
“You are in legal trouble, but that’s a worry for another day.” Luka’s smile and tone were gentle. “If you help us, your legal trouble might be a lot smaller.”
Florian looked at me. “Are you here to make sure I tell the truth?”
“That would be a very simplified explanation for my presence.”
“I like you.” He sighed. “I don’t plan to lie. Right now, I don’t really care about myself at all. I’m scrappy. I’ll get through all this crap. But you have to help my sister.”
The soft beeping increased and I glanced at the monitor. His heart rate and blood pressure had increased.
“Take a deep breath, Florian.” Luka sat down on the bed and Florian moved his legs slightly to make more room. He trusted Luka.
For a full minute, Florian inhaled and exhaled slowly, his eyes closed. The beeping decreased, but it was still very high.
Florian rested his open palms on his chest as if to monitor his breathing and heart rate. He opened his eyes and swallowed. “This is so very, very far from the way I usually make deals.” He looked at me. “I never work with violent criminals. Never. I’ve never been violent in my life. Not until a few days ago.”
The beeping increased and Florian closed his eyes for another set of deep breaths. This time he didn’t open his eyes. “I sell art. I help people. This Radja family crap is so far out of my league, I might as well be stranded in a different universe with unicorns and little green men.”
I wondered about his lucidity, but his nonverbal cues told me he was attempting humour. He huffed a humourless laugh and looked at me. “I’m in over my head.”
“Tell us what happened. Chronologically.”
“Sure. Yeah. Radja. Hmm. I met Slavko, the father, many years ago. He had four paintings that he wanted...” He looked at Luka and winced. “He wanted to move those paintings.”
“We know you deal in stolen art.” There was no judgement in Luka’s tone or expression. “Right now, I don’t care about it. I only want to know what you can tell us about the Radjas.”
“Okay.” Florian looked back at me. “Slavko asked me to return those four paintings. That was about fifteen years ago. He never told me how he got hold of those paintings, but he wanted their legitimate owners found and those artworks back in their hands. It was one of the easiest jobs I’ve done.”
His smile was genuine, recalling memories. “The thief I hired was confused. Usually, I asked him to take, not give. But... we found the owners, my guy broke in and put the paintings in places they wouldn’t miss. Only one of those made the news. I think the others wanted to keep it quiet.” He shrugged. “Maybe they were scared of more burglaries.”
“Which four paintings did Slavko give you to return?” I needed that confirmation.
“Ah, I can still see those beauties. Becić, Račić, Herman and Kraljević. Three mountainy landscapes and one with a bridge. Beautiful work.” He blinked. “Slavko paid me really well to do this. And I didn’t hear from him for many years. Then his son contacted me. Goran. He wanted to start investing in art and his dad had recommended me. All my deals with Goran were completely legal. He had great taste.” He looked at Luka. “Most of my deals are legal. I’m good at what I do.”
Luka nodded. “We know. We also know what you do with most of your illegal gains. But like I said, that’s not important now. Tell us more about Slavko.”
“I never saw him again.” Florian narrowed his eyes and thought for a few seconds. “His other son walked into my gallery about six or seven years ago. Rene. Hmm. There was something off about him. He wanted to know about the art Goran was buying and if Slavko had bought or sold anything. I had a bad feeling about this and handled him.”
“How did you handle him?” I asked.
“I have good intuition when it comes to people.” He looked at Luka. “I know you’re dangerous, lethal even, but you’re a protector.” He looked at me. “You’re intense. Really intense. But I work with artistic types, so I’m used to it. I don’t have a good read on you, but I do know that you mean me no harm. You have a good heart. Rene didn’t. That man is all kinds of messed up mixed with a bit of evil.”
The beeping increased and Florian took more deep breaths. “I handled him the way I always do when I want to change the topic or, better yet, when I want someone to leave. I avoided his questions with silly chatter about art exhibitions and gossip about guests. When Rene realised he wasn’t going to get any information out of me, he left. Angry. Really angry. And I didn’t see him again. Not until ten days ago.”
The beeping increased again and he closed his eyes. I could see the effort he was putting in to relax his muscles and keep his breathing even. He looked at me. “When Rene came into Beaulieu Art, he was acting crazy. Frenzied. He wanted to know where the four paintings were that I’d returned for his dad. I knew Slavko had died and assumed it had been in his last will and testament.
“Then Rene started talking about a treasure in Croatia that he needed. I had no idea what he was talking about. No, he wasn’t talking. He was shouting. I remember being glad that I had no other clients there.” Tears filled his eyes, his lips pressed into a thin line. The beeping increased. “He said the Collector knew I had worked with Slavko. The Collector wanted the treasure.” The beeping increased even more, but Florian didn’t stop, tears flowing down his cheeks. “The Collector knew... where my sister was, her husband, her three... children. He would... kill...”
“Stop.” The doctor came in, glanced at the machine and spoke in rapid Croatian to Luka. I didn’t need to understand the language to know the message.
Florian was sobbing, his hands over his face, his shoulders shaking. I took a step back. There were so many questions in my mind that I wanted to ask Florian, but it was clear that the doctor would not allow any more. He gestured sharply at Luka, who nodded and looked at me. “We need to leave.”
I didn’t want to. But I also didn’t want to cause Florian to have another cardiac episode. Or even worse.
“No, wait.” Florian reached towards us, even as a nurse came in and told him in English to breathe slowly and deeply. He shook her off and leaned around her to look at me. “Help her. Stop him. Give him the treasure. The clues are on the paintings. Ask Nikki. Give him the treasure. He’ll kill them! Everyone!”
His words were barely audible through his tears. The doctor said something cutting to Luka and pushed Florian against the pillow, his tone soothing. The nurse took both his hands in hers and made him look at her while she breathed slowly with him.
We left just as the doctor prepared an injection that I assumed would sedate Florian and make him unavailable for questioning.
“Bloody hell.” Manny rubbed his hands over his face. “What do you make of that, Doc?”
“He was completely truthful.” I shuddered. “His fear is very real. No... it’s terror. I don’t yet know what this Collector is planning, but Florian is terrified.”
Colin took my hand. “I’m worried about the ‘everyone’ he shouted.”
“Me too.” Luka leaned against the hallway wall. “I get that he’s worried about his sister and her family, but it sounds like the Collector is planning to kill more than just one family.”
“That lines up with what Nikki told us,” Colin said.
“Keep in mind that Nikki related only what she’d heard from Florian.” That concerned me. We needed more information an
d I didn’t know where else to look. Or maybe I did. I pushed Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11 in my mind while the men speculated and went through the information we had so far.
I took my phone from my handbag and tapped the screen twice. The phone rang only once before Francine answered. “Hey, girlfriend, I was just about to phone you.”
“Do you have more information about Rene?”
“Yes, I do. My, my, my. Aren’t you psychic this afternoon. I was going to tell you to get your sexy butt back here so I could tell you more about Rene.” She laughed softly. “Oh, and Vinster wants you to know he baked cookies.”
Chapter EIGHTEEN
“WHAT DID YOU FIND?” I walked straight to the large dining room table and looked at Francine. Colin sat down at the table, Manny and Luka following behind us. It had taken us eleven minutes to get to the villa. Eleven minutes of waiting to hear what Francine had discovered.
“Jen-girl.” Vinnie put a tray with steaming mugs of coffee on the table. Then he pointed at the chair next to Colin. “Sit.” He chuckled. “I sound like the old man now.”
“Bugger off.” Manny sat down, lifted the mug next to his plate and took a long sip of his milky tea. He sighed and nodded at Vinnie. “Thanks.”
“Aw, shucks.” Vinnie laughed when Manny swore at his exaggerated bashful expression.
“Francine.” I’d waited long enough.
“I’m here.” Her smile was wide and genuine. She looked at Zork and Pink, both eating chocolate-chip cookies. There were two large plates in the centre of the table, both with enough cookies to feed more people than were currently seated at the table. “The three of us make a cracking team. We followed many threads. Some hits, some misses, some dead ends...”
“Francine.” Manny lowered his brow and glared at her.
She blew him a kiss and pushed her hair over her shoulder. “Why don’t I just tell you what we found and not how we found it.”
“Why don’t you?” Manny’s question was clearly sardonic.
She winked at him, then looked at me. “Okay, so Rene is brilliant and stupid. I know, I know, but give me a moment to explain. I’ll start with him being an idiotic stupid fool.”
“You’re using redundancies.”
“No, I’m not.” She waved her manicured index finger at me. “This man is incredibly intelligent, but makes one bad decision after the other. He’s also an addict. Drugs and gambling.”
Pink wiped his mouth and put the napkin on his empty plate. “Francine knows her way around forums on the darknet. And marketplaces I didn’t even know existed.”
Zork nodded and reached for another cookie. Nikki was sitting quietly next to Pink, sipping her coffee. Martin wasn’t at the table and I assumed he was resting.
“We followed Rene around the darknet and found that he buys his cocaine from a dealer Zork knows.”
“Firstly, you were the one who did most of the following.” Zork looked at Luka. “Edo.”
“You found him?” Luka looked at Manny. “We only have this dealer’s first name—Edo. He’s been on our radar for many years, but we’ve never been able to locate him.”
“I can track him now.” Zork straightened in his chair, his muscles ready for action. “We’ll catch him.”
Luka nodded. “After we stop this.”
“We also found that Rene likes to gamble. A lot.” Francine’s top lip curled in disgust. “He earns buckets of cash and immediately loses it all in these illegal gambling halls in the darknet.”
I’d seen her micro-expression. “What does he do to earn his buckets of cash?”
“He has a few troll farms.”
“A few what now?” Manny put down his mug, his frown deep.
“Troll farms.” Francine pointed at her tablet.
“So you said.” Manny slumped in his chair. “What the bloody hell does a troll farm do?”
“Their scope is huge,” Pink said. “One example is a Polish troll farm that was uncovered a year ago. Polish teachers were striking because their salaries really suck. The Polish troll farm had loads of very realistic fake accounts that posted how the teachers were being selfish, they were holding the students hostage and that their demands were unjustified. One troll account would post this and others would share it.
“On social media like Facebook, posts that are shared like that get picked up by the platform’s algorithms. The platform then pushes that post to more and more people—this time genuine people. The same Polish troll farm posted a lot of horrid things against the LGBTQ community and it really got around.”
“The danger with troll farms is that they can shape public opinion.” Francine clenched her fists. “They can be right-wing, left-wing, anti-religion, anti-meat, anti-vegan, you name it. They create funny, shareable cartoons or images and spread whatever ideology they want.”
“Misinformation.” It was a growing problem that worried me. “Make it truthful enough to lend it credence, but twist it to support unscientific opinions.”
“Exactly that.” Francine nodded.
“That scares all kinds of everything out of me.” Nikki crossed her arms.
“Okay, so how does this fit in with Rene and our case?” Vinnie asked.
“Well, Rene sold his troll-farming skills to anyone with a bitcoin account.” Francine looked at her tablet. “What interested me was how he got a lot of the identities he used to create fake accounts.”
“Don’t tell me.” Luka sighed. “Identity theft? Catfishing?”
“All of the above and more. But I did a deeper dive and saw that he didn’t just happen upon those identities. In a lot of cases, he used the IoT devices in large office buildings to get access to their servers. That gave him access to the personnel files and voilà! He had more than enough to work with. He created full profiles with those people’s personal data. That made his fake social media accounts appear legit, which makes the bots and algorithms happy.”
“Dude, this is too much for my small brain.” Vinnie pressed his fist against his temple. “Is nothing sacred anymore?”
“Nope.” Francine shook her head slowly. “Any time you enter your credit card info to buy something online, you take the risk of losing everything.”
“Okay, that’s a bit extreme.” Pink frowned at Francine. “There are a lot of cases of identity theft and so on, but overall these situations are far in the minority.”
“I’m telling Roxy to cancel all her online shopping.” Vinnie glared at Francine’s laptop.
Francine burst out laughing. “Please, oh, please, do that. But wait until I’m there to witness it.”
“How long has Rene been stealing identities and trolling?” I wanted us back on point.
“From what we saw, more than six years.” Francine narrowed her eyes. “But I think he only started getting good at the IoT hacking about three years ago. You have to remember IoT is still newish for most people. And this is why Rene is brilliant. He’s ahead of his time with these things and has been so successful with his troll farms that he’s in high demand.”
“But he’s not as brilliant as us.” Zork bumped fists with Pink. “Well, Francine did most of the work, but we managed to hack him and see inside his business.”
Francine nodded. “He’s done trolling work for a few governments, but a lot of his work is for court cases. He works for whomever pays the most. Sometimes he spreads leaked information about a case for the police or prosecution. Sometimes he spreads misinformation about the case for the defence.”
“Wait.” Luka held up both hands. “I have so many questions.”
“Me first.” Manny slumped deeper into his chair. “He’s being hired by the police to do this trolling rubbish?”
Francine and Pink nodded. Zork closed his eyes for a moment, then leaned a bit forward to look at Luka. “Our police, boss.”
“What?” This was the first time I’d heard Luka raise his voice. His eyes were wide, his mouth agape. “Are you sure?”
“Sorry.” Fran
cine tilted her head. “We double-checked.”
“Which case?”
“More than one case, boss.” Zork’s depressor anguli oris muscles pulled the corners of his mouth down. “I didn’t want to be distracted too much, so I stopped counting when I got to twenty-nine.”
“Shit.” Luka grabbed his head between his hands and looked up at the ceiling. “This is not good.”
“True.” Francine waited until he looked at her. “But this means we have more information and like my girl here”—she pointed at me—“always says, we can now make better decisions.”
“We can’t trust anyone, boss.” Zork’s tone sounded lifeless, his expression controlled. But I’d seen the seething anger. “Not when it comes to finding and arresting Rene.”
“You have the names of these officers?”
Zork nodded. “And the prosecutors, their aides, two judges and anyone who had contact with Rene.”
“We’ll be fine.” Manny’s tone was kind. “We are a strong team—all of us here.”
Luka looked at Zork. “Your snooping can’t be traced to us?”
“Excuse me?” Francine pulled her shoulders back and glared at Luka down her nose. “I will choose not to take offense since this is the first time you’ve worked with us. No one knows we’ve been looking.”
Luka relaxed. “My apologies, Francine.”
“Hmph.” She looked at me. “Rene’s main work on the darknet is his troll farms. He also does minor trading on the marketplaces. Nothing serious. He’s sold a few valuables that I’m thinking we’ll be able to trace to some rich person who didn’t report them stolen.” She waved her hand as if to erase the last sentence. “Just my speculation. He also sold data and identities he stole during his IoT invasions. But I think you’ll be more interested in something else he tried to sell on the darknet six weeks ago.”
“The treasure?” Colin had finished his coffee and put the mug on the table.
“Yup.” Francine tapped her tablet screen a few times. “I’m sending screenshots of the offer to your devices.”
I reached around for my handbag that I’d hung over the back of my chair and took out my tablet. I read through the advertisement three times. I didn’t notice anything alarming and looked at Francine. “What’s so important about this ad?”