The Art Thief: A Novel

by Noah Charney

  An hour and a half later, and Van Der Mier was trying to get some work done. With at least two officers present at all times, and the pressure of the situation at hand, it was difficult to stay focused. Through all of this, she had a museum to run, and had to make the public feel that nothing was wrong. There was a stack of loan requests to consider. MoMA wanted a Picasso, the Tate Modern down the river was assembling a retrospective and wanted a Barbara Hepworth sketchbook, and the Vigeland Museum in Oslo wanted a clay mock-up for one of Vigeland’s monumental outdoor sculptures, which was in the National Gallery of Modern Art’s collection. There were three years’ worth of upcoming exhibitions to plan, letters to write, loan requests to be made, publicity, a curatorship to be filled. Van Der Mier sent a few emails, met with the Contemporary Drawings curator, did some paperwork. She did not touch her phone, but could not keep her eyes off it for long.

  And then it rang.

  The two officers in the room snapped to attention and met Van Der Mier’s worried, questioning gaze. One of them whispered into a walkie-talkie, while another sat down in front of the laptop and put on headphones. By the third ring Wickenden and two other officers had swept into the room, and all put on headphones. Then Wickenden nodded to Van Der Mier, who picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” The officers hung in wait, exchanging glances and checking the tracing and recording monitors. Wickenden silently encouraged. They waited, as Van Der Mier listened, the receiver to her ear.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake! No, I don’t want to go to lunch!” Van Der Mier slammed the phone down. Perspiration beaded, like tears, along her neck.

  “What…was that?” Wickenden and her officers stared.

  “That was the director of marketing! She doesn’t know about the…”

  “I see.”

  “Sorry, I’m…”

  “No, it’s all right. Believe it or not, you’re calmer than many I’ve dealt with.” Wickenden sat down, eyes still on Van Der Mier. “Well, if she didn’t know about the theft yet, she’s probably suspicious that something’s up now.”

  Van Der Mier slumped into her chair. As her posterior touched the leather of the seat, she heard a ding.

  “Oh, you’re not going to believe this…” Van Der Mier was staring at something on her desk. “A motherfucking email. Jesus H. Christ.” She was almost smiling. Almost. Wickenden was not.

  The officers gathered around the back of Van Der Mier’s enormous glass-and-mahogany desk, and collectively peered at her laptop screen. Van Der Mier double-clicked on the new letter.

  “How did they get an email address with our domain?”

  “Must have set it up when they hacked you last week, in anticipation,” said an officer, hoping to be helpful.

  “They have a goddamned sense of humor, don’t they?” Wickenden did not.

  To: Elizabeth Van Der Mier

  From: Kasimir Malevich

  Thank you for excepting our ransom offer. You will transfer £6.3 million into a numbered bank account, as listed below. On Saturday, at 10 in the morning, one museum representative will go to a location that we will specify in a future contact. We will then tell that representative where the painting is hidden, and you will be free to retrieve it. Do not bring policemen with you. Tell the policemen reading this email that we will not tolerate interference. We will not strike again. We will keep our word, as long as you do. Cor 13:7

  If the money is not in the account by the end of the Friday workday, then our offer will not stand, and the painting will be destroyed.

  Then we will steal another one.

  Thank you for cooperating, and have a nice day.

  “Those cheeky monkeys,” whispered Van Der Mier. Wickenden eyed her expression, somewhere between a laugh and scream, perhaps a little of both, on the inside. “Did you notice that they spelled accepting incorrectly. Or, rather, they used the wrong word. They wrote ‘excepting.’ That’s odd. And it’s so polite.”

  Wickenden’s mustache crept into the faintest smile before drooping once more.

  “Like a student’s request for an internship,” Van Der Mier mumbled.

  “Harry, what do you make of this?” an officer asked, holding up a printout of the email.

  Wickenden took the paper in hand and moved with it around the room.

  “So much of this suggests art-world amateurs. Highly intelligent, skillful, low-class amateurs. It all profiles into expert thieves from outside the arts, trying their hand at art theft. They’ve clearly considered carefully how the ransom exchange will pan out. But the price choice and the misspelling, and the tone…”

  “Is it possible that they’re just very polite?” Van Der Mier spoke in a joking manner, but the question was genuine. She gained confidence, and continued. “I mean, who’s to say that ransom notes must be matter-of-fact and brusque.”

  “Don’t forget that they do threaten. Destruction and future thefts…”

  “Yes, I noticed that, Inspector. That part puts my knickers in a twist, but I have to say that I have trouble wholly hating these people. They put the art into art theft.”

  “And the theft,” remarked an officer.

  “I just wish that I was not their victim. Then I might admire…” Van Der Mier stared out her bay window across the London skyscape.

  “The word choice error is…what? Carelessness?” Wickenden was very still. “It’s almost too much.”

  An officer offered: “It could be a red herring.”

  “You think so?”

  “I mean, all of these profiling characteristics that we’re pointing out, they could be plants, meant to lead us to the wrong conclusions.”

  “I don’t know,” answered another officer. “I don’t think so. They’ve done such a bang-up job with the theft, and keeping their distance with the ransom and all…To divert the profile seems like an unnecessary precaution.”

  “I don’t hear enough hate in your voices, lads,” Wickenden cautioned. “Don’t go soft on me. We’re out to nail these wankers. I don’t find the way they mock us endearing. One way to look at this letter is as polite, good-natured criminals who are just out to make some dosh. But I see it as taunting, and I don’t bloody-well like it.” He was looking at the printout. “It says ‘Cor 13:7.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Van Der Mier crossed to him, and looked at the handout. “Cor 13:7…that looks like a…is it a ref…is it a Bible reference, chapter and verse?” She looked around the room, at a series of blank faces. “Doesn’t anyone go to church anymore? Jesus H. Christ!”

  Wickenden scanned the officers in the room. “Can you find us a Bible?”

  A few minutes later, an officer reentered the room, a Bible in hand.

  “Took long enough. Where did you find it?” Wickenden asked.

  “Stole it from a hotel across the street.”

  “Right.” The officer handed it to Van Der Mier, who opened to the index at the front. Van Der Mier ran her finger along the soft paper.

  “‘Placed here by the Gideons.’ Well, they won’t miss it.” Van Der Mier smiled. “Ah, Corinthians, of course. What is it? Thirteen-seven?”

  Wickenden looked up, then read from the printout. “Thirteen-seven.”

  “Right.” Van Der Mier cascaded the skin-thin fresh white pages. “Chapter thirteen, verse seven…oh, that cheeky…”

  “What is it,” Wickenden approached, and looked over Van Der Mier’s shoulder. “‘Now I pray to God that ye do no evil; not that we should appear approved, but that ye should do that which is honest, though we be as reprobates…’ what the…Must be a group of religious zealots.”

  “Do you think it’s a right-wing religious group?” Van Der Mier began. “I mean, Malevich’s White on White was famously iconoclastic. It was made all white, in fact, to negate the icon. When it was first displayed, it was hung in a high corner of the room, the traditional place where Russian families would keep icons, old paintings of
Mary and Jesus. Replacing Mary and Jesus with a white painting is the ultimate in iconoclasm. Maybe it’s a statement against that iconoclasm.”

  “Maybe,” said Wickenden, “but they’re still asking for money. These ransomers are asking for cash, and lots of it. But it certainly does skew the profile.”

  “If you don’t mind, Inspector, let’s call in the Malevich Society expert, Geneviève Delacloche, so she can examine the painting when we get it back. And I’d better keep Lord Harkness abreast.” Van Der Mier picked up her phone, which caused all of the surveillance and tracing instruments to whir into action. Van Der Mier rolled her eyes and dialed.

  CHAPTER 26

  By ten on Saturday morning, Portobello Road was choked. A blitz of stalls and wares and buyers, wanderers, tourists, everyone and everything, a claustrophobic vastness, a joyful mess, a bargain-hunter’s dream, a boiling pool of treasures buried amidst the vertiginous jungle of crap. It was said that absolutely anything could be bought, and had been bought, at Portobello Road.

  For those gawk-eyed tourists, with Hard Rock Café shirts and broad mindless smiles and brass voices, it was a spectacle to behold. They, in turn, were hungrily beheld by the stall-lurking sellers. It is true, there were bargains to be had, but there were also buyers to be had.

  The true treasures were off the main road. Portobello Road itself suffocated with stalls dripping junk. Although there probably were many illicit goings-on, most of the fleecing was gentle and benevolent. Truth was not volunteered, but neither was it maliciously avoided. If someone asked, they would be told that the eighteenth-century map of England that they admired was a photocopy of an original that would have cost many times more than the £25 asking price. But many buyers, tourists in the main, did not bother to ask, so the seller did not bother to tell.

  When Van Der Mier had come to London for the first time, as a young girl, her parents had taken her to Portobello Road. She vividly remembered playing “I Spy” with her father and brother, and was jaw-dropped at the list of objects spied. One in particular, a blackface minstrel monkey lamp with a base made from antler, ingrained in her mind as strangest of all. Portobello Road had been something of a fantasy world to her. Frightening for the swarms of bodies, in which a child could easily get lost, but not so foreign; extraterrestrial in a way that inspires awe, not fear. The smells recalled: damp and mothballs and mildew and old books and metal polish and bodies and sunlight and beer and coffee and yellowing lace, and summoned flashbacks of her study of Proust in Professor McCatty’s class at university.

  She had once concocted a story, never written. She’d imagined that somewhere, in the deepest, darkest heart of the Portobello Road moonscape, amidst the endless clutter and saturated tabletops, a booth lay in wait. This booth consisted only of a table, with just one object on it. And for whoever approached the booth, the object on the table was the one thing that they had been looking for. The man behind the booth had a red-and-white goatee and a silvery glint in his eye. The price for the object was always just a little more than the buyer had on him. So, the seller would be more than willing to barter a deal…

  She’d been to Portobello Road only a handful of times, as a child. Her Dutch father was an attorney who was renowned for his work in the War Crimes Tribunal, and split time between London and The Hague. Her British mother had brought up her and her brother at home, spending summers in Holland, and the rest of the year in Kent, a short commute from London’s center, but very much in the countryside. But from an early age, Elizabeth had been to boarding school in America, and to university there. She’d returned only ten years earlier, to accept a lucrative curatorial position, and had remained ever since.

  The few trips to Portobello Road were fresh in her mind, as she now walked the endless road, full of things that no one really needed but nevertheless convinced themselves to buy.

  Van Der Mier’s educated eye could now separate the wheat from the chaff. It was unlikely that one would find anything of great value, and the sellers knew more about their wares than buyers hoped, but good prices were assured, haggling welcome, and jewels to be found within the sand. She skimmed over photocopies, shined-up silvery steel, homely antiques, wormy books, and latched on to original prints, silver objects, and crisp, dry tomes. To a trained eye, promising objects are nimbused.

  Van Der Mier checked her watch: 10:03. Her mobile phone was still on. Good. Why hadn’t they called?

  She wove through a forest of people, padded along the gray pavement, with the sun glinting off car tops and crates of silver, the sound of hundreds of voices like the shudder of wings.

  The phone rang.

  “Yes?”

  It was Wickenden. “We just got the email. The money has been confirmed. The painting is inside one of the arcades, one with a green door, on a corner. The message says that the painting’s in the basement, across from a bear.”

  “A bear? As in…a bear? Do you think that’s a joke?”

  “I don’t know. There can’t be a…what do you think it means?” There was a pause, and the sound of voices in the distance. “None of us have ideas, for the moment. Stay on the line, though.”

  “Don’t worry, I will.”

  “You’ll like this. They sign off the letter with ‘best wishes.’”

  “Cheeky bastards. How do you read this politesse?”

  “I think that we’re dealing with a handful of wankers.”

  “Ah.” Van Der Mier was two long blocks into Portobello Road, the crowds increasing in density. Stalls on both sides of the street narrowed the pedestrian way. She felt the claustrophobia of dense bodies below an open blue sky.

  Wickenden continued. “Do you know the arcade they mean? With the green door?”

  “I do. It’s got two levels, so the basement direction makes sense. It’s just up ahead. Do you think they misspelled ‘bear’? Or meant ‘bare’? After the last message, I wouldn’t put it past them.”

  “I don’t…no, we think…that wouldn’t make any more sense, but I…ah, who the hell knows?”

  “I know how you feel.”

  “Sorry, Ms. Van Der Mer. It’s just that, if someone acts logically, then you can think logically and anticipate and solve. But if you don’t trust them to be logical…”

  “Then all bets are off. I agree. What a pain in the ass.”

  Van Der Mier stopped in front of an ornately carved doorway, painted mint green, which stretched wide, like a great yawning mouth. She recognized the location. The true deals to be found were in the warren of indoor stalls, off the touristy road, like mine shafts running into a mountain. It was easy to lose oneself, retrace steps, vision blurred by watches, cigarette cases, pewter mugs, and blackface minstrel monkey lamps with a bases made from antler. Van Der Mier smiled to herself, briefly.

  “How should I go inside?”

  “It just says that it’s in the basement. Is there more than one entrance?”

  “If I remember this place correctly, there are several. It’s like a beehive. I’ll just try one and see if it leads to stairs going down.” The mobile phone pressed to her ear, Van Der Mier entered.

  There were no stairs in sight. Booths oozing books and knickknacks on all sides, but no stairs. People brushed past, laughing and talking. The dizzying array of passersby, and excess of objects, disoriented. Mixed with nerves, Van Der Mier felt light-headed. She chose a direction and walked it. Meters farther on, she turned left, and a trident of paths opened before her. She looked back and could no longer see the door through which she’d come.

  “I think I should have brought some yarn, or a GPS tracker, or something…hello? Hello?” Her phone had cut off. She looked at the monitor. No service. Then she looked up at the ceiling. She made a mental note to switch to a new phone server.

  The middle path seemed as good a choice as any. She wound along it, and was confronted only with more options, none of them down. She met eyes with a woman at a stall, selling delicate costume jewelry from a glass vitrine.


  “Do you know how to reach the basement?”

  “I’ve no feckin’ idea, luv.”

  “Well, thank you, anyway. Do you, by any chance, know where someone might be selling…a bear?”

  “The stalls change each week, luv, so I’ve no idea. But bear baitin’ is illegal, so I’d watch who you ask.”

  “Right. Cheers.”

  “It’s no trouble at all, dear.”

  Van Der Mier spun down another corridor rife with shops. She looked at her phone once more. Still no service. People stood all around, but no basement in sight, and no bears. A line from Coleridge came into her mind. She felt thirsty. Elizabeth looked up to her left. There was a small, creamy porcelain statue of a saint. Apt, she thought.

  She hadn’t remembered her past trips to Portobello Road Market as quite so labyrinthine. Perhaps it was because she had never been looking for anything particular before. It’s best to visit without an agenda. The more specific the object desired, the more frustrating the visit could become. Better to wander aimlessly. That’s when you don’t get lost, she thought. It’s only when you’ve a place to be…

  She stopped at another booth to ask for directions.

  “Oh, sure. The cellar’s that way. You go to the end of the walk, turn left, go a few paces, but not down the long way, just the short one, it’s a little hop to the right, then a jog a few paces, past a point where the paint is sort of peelin’ down off the ceiling like, and it’s just on your left. Can’t miss it.”

  “Right…”

  Van Der Mier followed the directions as best she could. End of the walk. Left turn. A few paces farther. A corridor opened up before her, but she did not follow it. Instead, she curled to the right. About a meter along, she saw something strange on the ground. It looked like piled clips of white paper. Then she looked up at the ceiling. Flakes of paint dangled precariously overhead. Damoclean swords. She looked to her left. There were stairs leading down to the dark.