‘Could you show me these canvases?’ Fabel asked, making his tone businesslike. ‘The ones in storage?’
Anja Koetzing let her held-out wrists drop, shrugged and said, ‘Sure . . .’
*
Fabel left Glasmacher and Hechtner talking to the forensics team leader in the studio and followed Anja Koetzing out into the double-height reception hall. Like the studio the walls were whitewashed to maximize the abundant light and to emphasize the intense colours of the large canvases hanging in the reception, illuminated by the huge tent of skylights. Despite the size of the reception hall, even here the rich, oily aroma of paint and turpentine slicked the air.
‘Did Herr Traxinger buy the studio?’
‘No, it’s rented. I always thought it was too far out of town, but he liked it.’
Fabel examined the canvases in the reception hall. Again there was an odd, unpleasant stirring in his gut. Traxinger’s style seemed very familiar, but he couldn’t work out why. The artist’s use of colour was very striking – deep reds and dark greens, velvet blues – and he was clearly accomplished, but Fabel didn’t care for Traxinger’s work at all. There was an overdone Gothicism to it, making it almost adolescent. He paused in front of one canvas, a scene of the Gothic Revival spire of the Sankt Nikolai church. In the painting, as in reality, the Nikolai was a shattered ruin. The spire was silhouetted blue-black against a fractured sky of umber, orange and deep red. The effect was to make the sky look like the diffuse but still intense glow of a great fire through lozenges of stained glass; the lead between the panels formed by the dark trails of British bombers. It was a clumsily done metaphor and, Fabel thought, bordering on comic-book art.
‘How much would this sell for?’ he asked Koetzing.
‘That one? About a hundred and fifty thousand euros.’
‘How much?’ Fabel was astounded and leaned closer to the canvas, as if he had missed something in it. ‘But it’s only about a square metre.’
Koetzing laughed. She moved over beside Fabel to look at the picture. Again she stood too close. ‘We don’t sell art by the square centimetre, Herr Fabel. This will sell . . .’ she waved a dismissive hand at the picture, ‘eventually. What a lot of people don’t understand about the art business is that the real money is made by selling prints, and that the prohibitive price of original artwork is to allow us to sell limited-edition prints for what seems a reasonably proportionate price. Before this is bought, I will have sold one thousand numbered prints, each at six hundred euros each. The same goes for the rest of the work, so I stand to make a lot of money. Are you sure you don’t want to give me the third degree? I’m sure you could break me . . .’
Despite himself, Fabel laughed again.
‘Can I see some of the other work?’ he asked.
*
Koetzing led Fabel through the entrance hall and into the other half of the building. She explained that it had in turn been divided into two areas: a spacious, bright gallery and a darkened storeroom, where the canvases not on display were stored. The gallery was a large, square space, again with light coming in from a river-facing wall that was almost all glass and from a row of wide skylights in the roof. The exhibition hall had been turned into a maze of partition walls designed to increase the hanging space available. Fabel, with Anja Koetzing close behind him, walked around the collection, examining each canvas briefly, feeling he was becoming lost in the maze. There seemed little variation, other than in subject matter, in the works. He guessed that Traxinger had found a formula that sold, a ‘brand’, and had stuck with it.
*
Fabel felt something leap in his chest as he looked at the painting. He now was right at the centre of the exhibition and, although it was clearly Traxinger’s work, there was a distinct difference in the tone of this picture. As he stood gazing at it, Fabel felt his heart pick up pace and he was transported back somewhere he did not want to be.
The painting was huge; much bigger than the version he had seen in print form. And seeing the full-size original painting, he could see that which a print could never capture. There was a three-dimensionality to the picture: the oil paint had been applied thickly, sometimes layer upon layer, and Fabel guessed that for much of the work Traxinger had used a palette knife rather than a brush. It was a painting that had been built as much as painted.
‘Are you all right?’ Anja Koetzing had obviously noticed Fabel’s startled expression. He didn’t answer for a moment, instead staring at the picture.
‘It’s the same one . . .’ he said eventually, stepping closer and examining the signature at the bottom right of the canvas. ‘Exactly the same one . . .’
‘The same what?’
Fabel made an effort to pull himself together. ‘I’ve seen this painting before.’
‘You can’t have,’ said Koetzing. ‘This was one of Detlev’s darlings. This is one of the oldest paintings here, done long before I met Detlev. It’s never been out on exhibition anywhere other than here. And see . . .’ She pointed to a red dot stuck to the wall next to the painting. ‘He marked it sold, even though it wasn’t, just so no one would pester him with enquiries. But he was proud enough of it – egotistical enough – that he wanted people to see it here in his collection. There’s simply no way you could have seen it.’
‘Not this,’ Fabel said frustratedly. ‘Not the original – I saw a print of it.’
‘That’s not possible either.’ Koetzing was emphatic. ‘I would know if Detlev had run off any prints.’
‘I’m telling you, I saw it.’ Fabel raised his voice slightly, then, taking a breath, controlled himself. ‘Listen, Frau Koetzing, I know that I saw this painting – exactly this painting – in print form. Believe me, it was in a very challenging situation, one I am never likely to forget.’ He leaned forward and examined the word written carefully and delicately in white paint at the bottom of the picture. ‘I remember that too. Charon. To start with I thought it was the artist’s signature. Then I realized it referred to the figure in the picture: Charon the boatman. And I thought the river was the Styx. But it’s not. It’s the Elbe.’
Fabel took out his cell phone and called Anna, telling her that he needed her to come down to Traxinger’s studio right away. When he was finished, he turned back to Koetzing.
‘Why did Traxinger title this painting Charon? All the others have nothing other than his monogram, his initials.’
‘I don’t know. Like I said before, Detlev experimented with different forms, different themes. He had this thing where he believed his art fell into distinct areas. He didn’t do a lot of alternative stuff, mainly because he refused to sell it later, but what he did was all this kind of thing, overlaying classical or Gothic themes on a contemporary Hamburg. I really don’t know why he titled this piece or what significance the character Charon had for him.’ Koetzing paused for a moment, frowning something back into her recall. ‘There was another painting I saw once. Again I wasn’t meant to see it because it was a work in progress and Detlev kept those covered up. It was some kind of historical study of a woman, but she was more outline than anything. I remember seeing he had written a title for it at the bottom, but I can’t remember what the title was and I never saw the painting again. I guess he scrapped it or painted over it.’
‘Do you know if Herr Traxinger ever mentioned someone called Jost Schalthoff?’
Koetzing looked shocked. ‘No . . . Christ no. Isn’t that the creep who killed that little kiddie in Altona?’
‘He never mentioned him?’
‘No. Of course he didn’t. What on earth has Schalthoff got to do with Detlev?’
‘That’s where I saw the print. On the wall of Schalthoff’s apartment. Ever since I first saw Traxinger’s paintings I knew they reminded me of something.’ He nodded towards the painting. ‘That’s it. That’s what it was.’
‘I just don’t see—’
‘I’d like to see the other paintings,’ Fabel said abruptly. ‘The ones in the storeroom . .
.’
32
The bookstore event lasted longer than he had thought it would. He was grateful that it had, in a way. Being the horror author Alan Edgar for a couple of hours gave him temporary refuge from being Werner Hensler and from the ghosts that haunted that identity.
The reading had gone well. The Q and A session afterwards had been okay too: nothing too demanding, except for one, well-intentioned but irritatingly penetrating question. Werner knew that his writing, just like his Alan Edgar identity, did not possess the depth for close scrutiny.
The Demon’s Devices was the latest in the Alan Edgar oeuvre. Like all of his novels, it was set in America, in a fictitious New England town. The last three novels had been about a centuries-old family of vampires who had settled there and who now struggled between their consciences and their thirst for human blood. Werner’s opinion of his own work, or more correctly of ‘Alan Edgar’s’ work, was very clear: it was complete and utter crap. And it sold by the bucketload. Hardbacks, paperbacks, audio books – they all flew off the shelves. E-books too – from whatever e-books flew off.
To start with, his readers, when they came to events such as this, were disappointed to find that the American ‘Alan Edgar’ was really Werner Hensler from just outside Buxtehude; but as time went by his sales and his fan base grew exponentially, making him one of Germany’s most popular authors, although his American-set novels under his Anglo-Saxon pseudonym were never published outside the Federal Republic, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland.
The only mildly awkward question from the audience came from a late-middle-aged woman sitting right at the front, which suggested that she had arrived before the others. The manner in which she posed the question too suggested it had been prepared and rehearsed in advance:
‘Why is it, do you think, that we as a society seem obsessed with Gothic horror – with the undead, with vampires, boy wizards, werewolves and zombies? And do you think that your writing is a natural continuation of the works of Poe, Shelley, Polidori and Stoker?’
Werner had smiled his best Alan Edgar smile. ‘I think as a society we have always been fascinated with the Gothic, even if that hasn’t always been the name we have given it. Our oral and folk traditions, through the stories collected by the brothers Grimm, the Gothic greats you mentioned, the marvellous Expressionist films made here in Germany in the twenties and thirties, even into film noir and crime fiction, through to the great horror writers of today . . . there is a clear continuum of expression. The truth is that there always has been and always will be a dark side to human nature. We keep that dark side under lock and key, in some shadowed place deep within ourselves. But the truth is that sometimes we like to unlock the door and peer in. That’s what Gothic horror is. What it always has been.’
The answer sounded good, as it always did, every time he used it. The audience actually applauded. The middle-aged poser of the question beamed as if her cast line had hooked a bigger fish than she had hoped.
Alan Edgar smiled back; Werner Hensler screamed deep and silent. You stupid, stupid old bitch. Do you honestly think the shit I write is comparable to Poe? Do you think Hollywood movies full of cartoon-computer-effects about boy wizards, zombies, and mopey teenage fucking vampires have ANYTHING to do with classic Gothic literature? He wanted to scream in her face, to spit her own stupidity back at her. Instead, after the applause, he said,
‘Very good question, thank you.’
The woman beamed some more.
*
It was already getting dark by the time Alan Edgar transformed once more into Werner Hensler. The reason the event had taken so long was the number of books laid before him at the signing desk, always a sign of how successful an appearance had been. He had written a special dedication in the three copies of his work presented to him by the stupid bitch who thought Poe could be compared to anyone writing contemporary horror fiction, far less himself.
Poe, he had wanted to tell her, had been his god and his devil, his inspiration and his tormentor. In his childhood, Werner had consumed Poe’s work over and over again. His discovery, at thirteen, of The Pit and the Pendulum had been like striking the earth and it splitting open to reveal a seam of pure gold. In Poe, the young Werner had found a mind that mirrored his: a labyrinth of shadowed corners and sudden, unexpected dark places. In his twenties, Werner had dreamt of becoming the new Poe but had slowly, inexorably, come to realize that he could never be the great man’s equal. Not even close. Poe’s mind remained an intricate Daedalean labyrinth of bewildering complexity in which one could lose one’s sanity; Werner’s mind, in comparison, was a simple garden maze.
The day arrived when Werner came face to face with his own mediocrity. And at least he had acknowledged it, then embraced it. His former friend from university, Detlev Traxinger, had been an almost perfect analogue in the world of visual art: a mediocrity with a talent for making money out of his banality. The difference between them, as far as Werner could see, was that Detlev seemed to believe his own propaganda. Mind you, from the outside looking in, maybe people would think the same about Werner. The truth was that every time Werner completed a novel and submitted it to his enthusiastic publishers, he felt as if he had voided his gut. And every now and again, he would reread Poe to remind himself of his own poverty of genius.
The pseudonym had been his revenge.
It was an obvious reference, a clumsy device, for a horror writer to use Poe’s first names, albeit in reverse order, as a nom de plume. Poe had, after all, died wearing another man’s clothes and using another man’s name. It seemed ironically fitting to Werner that he should put Poe’s name, at least in part, to his own brand of predictable, shallow horror fiction, while keeping his own, Werner Hensler, unsullied. One day, he had promised himself, one day he would write something worthwhile. And he would write it under his own name.
As he reached his car, thin needles of rain had started to fall. He had just unlocked the car with the remote fob when he was aware of someone behind him. Before he could turn, an arm looped around his throat, holding him firm. There was a sting in his neck and something cold flowed into his veins. He wrestled free from his assailant, who loosened their grip without a struggle.
Werner turned and thought he saw a face he hadn’t seen in such a long time, but the world was already darkening. His legs began to give way and firm hands guided him around to the passenger seat, easing him into the car.
He vaguely heard the driver’s door shut and the engine kick into life, but these noises already sounded like he was hearing them from some great distance. He felt himself fall into a deep, lightless, total blackness.
His last thought was: I am falling into the Pit.
33
The storeroom, unlike the rest of the studio and gallery, was not flooded with natural light. Shutters had been fitted and closed over the window wall facing the river and the skylights were black-shrouded with blinds. In any case, it was beginning to get dark outside so Anja Koetzing hit a switch just inside the door and angled spotlights flickered into life.
‘They’re angled to illuminate each painting when you pull it out, but it’s really not the best light for looking at pictures. Of course that’s not the function here. This is just a store.’
Fabel could see that canvases were arranged in rows in floor-to-ceiling rack units, each unit stacked two rows high.
‘You remember the kind of boxes colour slides used to be stored in . . . you know, photographic transparencies?’ Anja Koetzing asked as she walked over to the nearest unit. ‘Or even the carriage in an old slide projector? Well, the principle is the same, just on a much bigger scale. It means canvases can be stored upright in compact units and we can cram lots into the space – but if you want to look at any one of them, you just pull the sliding tray out.’
‘Very clever,’ said Fabel. ‘Your system?’
‘The strange thing about Detlev,’ Anja Koetzing said as she went to the first unit, ‘is that his entire life
was complete chaos. Everything about it was totally fucked up in a way you could only manage if you were really working at it. But this . . .’ She yanked on a metal handle and the first stored canvas slid out, held upright in its metal carriage. ‘All of this has nothing to do with me. Detlev planned it, designed it, practically built it. In everything else he was a fuck-up, but with his art, with his studio, he was fastidious to the point of obsession. As you can see, he was very prolific but only chose a few canvases at a time for exhibition and sale. He wasn’t prolific because he rushed his work, it was because he was very disciplined with working. A tough guy to figure out.’
‘So you say these canvases wouldn’t be rotated with the ones on display?’
‘Not really. Or at least not all of them. Most of the art in here falls into three categories: a stock of satisfactory work for future sale, the stuff he wasn’t happy with but wanted to revisit in the future, and his “alternative” works – different styles and different ideas, mainly what you could say were personal favourites. There are a couple of paintings here that I can’t wait to sell, because some of them really are much better than his usual output.’
‘And will you? Sell all of these?’
‘You bet. Not all at once, and none until the exhibition work has been sold. By that time the Detlev Traxinger brand will sell at a premium. You think I’m a cold-hearted bitch, don’t you?’
‘I don’t make judgements like that, Frau Koetzing,’ said Fabel, but the truth was her hard-headedness was beginning to cause him to think about checking her alibi again.
The door opened behind them and Anna Wolff stepped in. ‘You wanted me, Chef?’
‘Frau Koetzing, this is Criminal Chief Commissar Wolff . . . Anna, this is Frau Koetzing. Herr Traxinger’s business manager.’
The two women shook hands. Fabel thought he picked up an odd vibe from Anja Koetzing, her smile on the grudging side of perfunctory. The dynamics of inter-female relationships was the one mystery Fabel had never been able to solve, more elusive for him than quantum physics. He shook the feeling off and turned to Anna.
The Ghosts of Altona Page 16