Stone Heart

by Des Ekin

  ‘If I tell you that, will you tell me everything you know? I promise not to write anything before the auction.’

  She looked relieved. ‘On that basis, darling, I’ll tell you the colour of my knickers. Now, spill it. How did you know?’

  Andres took a swallow of Muscadet and gambled on telling the truth. ‘I said I’d tell you everything and I will. I don’t know anything at all. I was just bluffing.’

  The Greek-goddess face broke wide open into a spontaneous grin. Conversations stopped all over the restaurant as Wendy Killegar tossed back her strawberry blonde hair and laughed – not the sort of delicate, tinkling laugh you might have expected, but a loud, alto-pitched belly laugh of genuine, honest amusement.

  She recovered her composure and dabbed her brown eyes with a tissue. ‘That’s quite all right, darling,’ she said at last, ‘because I was bluffing, too. I’m really not wearing any.’

  The coffee was accompanied by fine brandy – cognac for Wendy, Armagnac for Andres. As other diners departed one by one and the restaurant became quieter, Andres told Wendy the truth. Or at least an edited version of the truth.

  ‘So Ann Kennedy, the murdered woman, had a painting of de Blaca’s on the wall at Barnabo,’ he concluded. ‘I think it was one of his Atlantis series. And I had the feeling that a local dealer called Godfrey Villiers was terribly keen to get his hands on it. That’s why I wondered whether something was moving in the art world as regards Michael de Blaca, for up until now he has not exactly been in strong demand.’

  Wendy smiled, broke a petit-four and popped it into her mouth. ‘You were absolutely right, darling. Here’s the full SP from Auntie Wendy. One of the most prestigious art houses in New York has begun secretly buying up early de Blacas. That wouldn’t be remarkable except for two factors – firstly, they’re going to extreme lengths to avoid making it look like a mass buy-up. Every purchase is separate, anonymous and, most importantly, dirt cheap.’

  ‘And the second factor?’

  ‘This is no ordinary art house. This is Cedric Maxwell we’re talking about here.’

  Andres looked blank.

  She sighed. ‘Cedric Maxwell Associates. They supply all the major-league fat cats who are looking for solid, and I mean rock-solid, art investments. You know the sort of people, darling – the merchant bankers and the insurance corporations who don’t appreciate art, but like what appreciates. They want something that looks good in the boardroom, gives the MD something to brag about to the visiting Taiwanese, and still triples in value every five years. No risky stuff. No risky stuff at all.’

  Andres ordered more coffee. ‘But up until now, nobody has wanted to know about de Blaca,’ he objected. ‘He was regarded as old-fashioned, slightly embarrassing. All that passion and expressionism. It was thought very passé.’

  ‘That’s the way it goes, darling. He’s been what the City might describe as a solid but unimpressive performer. If you bought one of his early works twenty years ago, for instance, its value might just have kept pace with inflation.’

  ‘And now?’

  She leaned over and delicately popped the other half of her petit-four in Andres’s mouth. ‘And now…he’s becoming an icon. The usual process. Yesterday’s rebel artist is today’s sound investment and tomorrow’s museum exhibit. Whatever the reason, darling, and I’m not entirely sure what it is, the art world has decided de Blaca has been seriously undervalued. His hour has come. The sky’s the limit.’ She leaned closer and dropped her voice to a husky whisper. ‘The rumour is that, during the last US Presidential visit to Ireland, the First Lady bought one. And that’s what sparked it all off.’

  Andres thought for a moment. ‘So tell me. How much would one of his early paintings be worth now?’

  She brushed the question aside with a wave of her long, elegant fingers. ‘Oh, not a lot. Five thou’, perhaps. It may rise to eight, ten, on the back of this surge, but nothing to get excited about.’

  Andres was confused. He ordered more brandy and tried to make sense of what he was hearing. ‘But you said we were talking hundreds of thousands,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’ She accepted the cognac from the blue-jeaned waiter. ‘My word, he is rather dishy, isn’t he? I wonder if he would like a hand in the winecellar?’ Her loud, sibilant whisper carried across the entire restaurant as clearly as a shout. Over at the till, the waiter flushed and tried to concentrate on marking up their bill. Then, returning to the subject: ‘You did ask me about paintings, darling. I told you about paintings. But we’re not interested in silly old paintings, are we?’

  ‘We’re not?’

  ‘No. Sculptures. That’s what the fuss is all about. My God.’ She stared at him in sudden realisation. ‘You really didn’t know anything, did you?’

  ‘I told you I didn’t,’ Andres said. ‘Sculpture.’

  ‘Yes, sculpture. That’s what the New Yorkers are buying up. Early de Blaca sculptures. They’re paying big money.’

  ‘Does de Blaca know about this?’

  She snorted. ‘He’d be the last to know.’

  ‘The twenty-first. What’s happening at this auction on the twenty-first?’

  Wendy hesitated. ‘A few of us here in Ireland have been tipped off about the big buy-up, and we don’t see why the New Yorkers should have it all their own way with one of our own artists. We’re buying up as many de Blaca sculptures as we can, from collectors and galleries and private owners. Then we’re holding our own joint auction in Manhattan on the twenty-first. If all goes well, we should make megabucks, darling. Unless all the sellers get tipped off first. Which is why you could ruin everything by rushing in with your big, ignorant, clodhopping journalistic feet.’

  Andres accepted the bill from the waiter. ‘This man, Godfrey Villiers, the art dealer in Claremoon Harbour. Have you heard of him?’

  ‘Minor league player. Small time conman. He runs an outfit called the Michael de Blaca Museum and Gallery, or some such nonsense. That’s probably why he’d been contacted by the New Yorkers, who took the name at face value. They didn’t realise that it’s all a grand-sounding cover for a glorified pound shop that specialises in selling badly painted, mass-produced watercolours of Loop Head and the Cliffs of Moher to gullible tourists. Anyway, my theory would be that he has been instructed to prowl around Claremoon Harbour and hoover up as many of de Blaca’s early chippings as he can. Which won’t be very productive, since he didn’t start sculpting until he left there and moved to Paris. Everybody knows that.’

  She discreetly studied the far wall as Andres signed the credit card slip for an amount which would have more than covered the car repairs that Tara Ross, soaking wet and stranded by the side of the road in Galway, needed at that precise moment. When Wendy turned back, Andres had completed the transaction and was looking very thoughtful.

  ‘Suppose I had an early de Blaca sculpture,’ he said at last.

  ‘How early?’

  ‘Let’s say the very first one he did.’

  Wendy laughed. ‘You’re talking about one of the Dirty Dozen – that’s what we call his sheela-na-gig series. You know, all those ugly naked Celtic goddesses, in poses that would embarrass a Bangkok bargirl. Those were his first works. He did twelve of them, but several have gone missing over the years.’

  ‘Yes, those are the ones.’

  Wendy was suddenly serious. ‘Darling, if you had one of the sheela-na-gig series I’d marry you here and now. If you had the first one, guaranteed to be the first one, authenticated by the artist, I would not only marry you but let you sleep with me as well. We’re talking a quarter-million or so. In pounds.’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty thousand.’ Andres hid his surprise with a smile. He changed the subject, trying to give himself time to think. ‘I must say, your price for that particular service has gone up considerably over the years, Wendy.’

  ‘Well, darling, one moves onwards and upwards, doesn’t one?’ She flashed him a good-natured smile. ‘Those were strange days, weren�
�t they, Andres? I still keep a cutting of the article you did about me and the girls when we founded a trade union all those years ago.’

  ‘Professional association,’ Andres reminded her.

  ‘Whatever.’ She drank her cognac. ‘I was in Bonn only the other day and I passed by the old place. It’s become dreadfully seedy, darling. The latest management are even calling it a “sexy kino den”. How tacky. How unimaginative. It’s a far cry from the days when we used to operate under the name of the Holistic Healing and Therapy Centre and some of the most powerful politicians in the land came to get healed every night. Sometimes twice a night. We’d heard of well-heeled politicians, but that was ridiculous.’

  Andres smiled at the memory. ‘I suppose a lot of their political clients have shifted to Berlin. Anyway, you were always meant for more than that, Wendy.’

  ‘Of course I was, darling. Top graduate of my year from art college, and I couldn’t even get a job anywhere in Ireland. And when I ended up broke on the streets of Bonn, it seemed like the only way out.’ She became suddenly serious. ‘I admit I was a bit low in the old self-esteem department when you happened along.’

  Andres dismissed the subject. ‘All I did was take you to hospital.’

  ‘At a time when nobody else gave a damn whether I lived or died. If you hadn’t found me, it would have been curtains for Auntie Wendy. One more hour, the doctors said, and all those paracetamol tablets would have caused irreversible liver damage.’

  ‘But we got over it, didn’t we, Wendy?’

  She smiled and nodded. ‘We did. My only regret was that you didn’t take up my invitation to join me as a partner when I set up that first gallery. We would have made such a wonderful team, darling.’ She took another delicate sip of cognac. ‘And who are you teaming up with these days, Andres? Is there any special lady in your life? Any prospect of your marrying and settling down?’

  He shook his head. ‘You know the reason. We’ve talked about it often enough.’

  Wendy sighed. ‘Andres, you’ve got to stop punishing yourself over Manuela. Repeat after me this simple phrase: It Wasn’t My Fault.’

  ‘But it was my fault, Wendy. I should have been there.’

  ‘Even if you had been there, you couldn’t have prevented it.’

  ‘But I wasn’t there.’ He shook his head defensively. ‘It was not intentional, I was involved with another woman, but…’

  ‘Andres, Andres.’ Wendy was smiling. ‘You’ll have to do a lot more work on your idioms. In English, when a man says he was involved with a woman, it means he was having an affair with her.’

  He looked horrified. ‘It does?’

  ‘Yes. What you’re trying to say is that you were kept occupied by her, detained by her, at a business meeting that lasted longer than you’d intended. I hope you didn’t put it that way to anyone else!’

  Andres looked away, remembering that he’d put it exactly that way to Tara in Paris, just twenty-four hours beforehand.

  Wendy caught his eye and held it. ‘Whatever way you phrase it, Andres, it doesn’t matter. You weren’t to blame, and you can’t go on for ever using this as a pretext to avoid relationships.’

  The Estonian began to move the table condiments around like advancing chess pieces, a sure sign that he was ill at ease with the topic of conversation. ‘I know it’s irrational,’ he said at last. ‘But I can’t risk going through all that again. Besides, it would be unfair to her.’

  ‘Ah, so there is a her,’ said Wendy triumphantly. ‘Who is she? She must be a stunner. Tell me everything about her. You can confide in Auntie Wendy. I’m the soul of discretion. All my gentlemen in the Bundesbank used to say so.’

  Andres shrugged uncomfortably. ‘A young woman I met on an assignment in the west of Ireland. She’s a journalist. She has her own Internet newspaper. And you’re right, she is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, apart from Manuela obviously.’

  Wendy was highly amused. ‘I trust you didn’t say that to her.’

  ‘I haven’t said anything to her. Not about that, anyway.’

  ‘So she doesn’t even know how you feel about her?’ Wendy was exasperated. ‘Andres, this is perfectly ludicrous, even by your standards.’

  Andres said nothing.

  ‘Can’t you see what’s happening?’ Wendy said. ‘You’re playing safe again. Deep down, you feel responsible for Manuela’s death and you feel you’d be betraying her if you had another relationship. So every time you feel yourself attracted to another woman, you disappear off to the Congo or Croatia, or somewhere equally ridiculous, and stand up in front of a machine-gun.’

  ‘That’s playing safe?’ he mocked.

  ‘As far as you’re concerned, it’s a damn sight safer than risking possible heartbreak in another relationship,’ she challenged. ‘You know as well as I do, that’s what’s at the centre of it all. You’re afraid to open yourself up and experience normal emotions again.’

  Andres took a larger-than-usual mouthful of cognac. ‘I did try to tell her,’ he said defensively. ‘Only last night. We’d just flown back from Paris…’

  ‘Paris?’ Wendy’s sculptured eyebrows arched suggestively.

  ‘Business. Purely business. She fell asleep on the flight home, and her head ended up resting on my shoulder. I could feel her hair on my cheek and I could smell her perfume. Flying normally bores me, Wendy,’ he confessed, ‘but on this occasion I wished the flight would never end.’

  Wendy’s lips pursed in a soundless whistle. ‘My, my, we have got it bad, haven’t we? What’s so special about this one? What makes her different to all the others?’

  ‘You mean, apart from the fact that she’s intelligent, talented and exceptionally beautiful?’ He was only half-joking. ‘I don’t know. How does one measure these things?’

  ‘Body shape?’ suggested Wendy. ‘That’s how we used to grade the girls at our place. Ectomorph, endomorph, mesomorph? Tall, slim and leggy? Or Mediterranean type, all tits and bum? Draw me a picture of her, darling.’

  Andres ignored her. ‘She simply intrigues me,’ he said, half to himself. ‘She’s so volatile and moody she irritates the hell out of me, and yet when she tosses her hair back and gives one of those throaty giggles I just feel I want to…’

  His voice trailed off helplessly.

  Wendy gave a tiny, pleasurable shudder. ‘You shouldn’t be telling me these things, Andres. You should be sitting down to dinner with this special lady and telling them to her. Just make sure there’s a candle on the table and gaze into her eyes, darling, and I promise you she’ll melt like butter.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘I can’t, because she’s already involved in a relationship. At least, I think she is.’

  ‘You think, or you know?’

  ‘I know. At least, I think I know.’

  She shook her head despairingly. ‘So you’re just going to give up, and hop on the next plane to Colombia or somewhere?’

  Andres glanced at his watch.

  ‘My God, Andres, you’re insufferable!’ cried Wendy. ‘You are. You’re running away again. You’re catching a flight this very afternoon!’

  He nodded. ‘Five-thirty.’

  Wendy lifted her handbag on to the table. ‘Well, I can’t force you to stay, darling. It’s just that I feel a certain responsibility to save you from yourself. Still, if you’re absolutely determined to play the wounded Fisher King for the rest of your life, there’s absolutely nothing I can do.’

  Andres checkmated the salt with the pepper and avoided her eyes.

  She leant across the table mischievously.

  ‘Nothing, that is, except offer you a quick cup of coffee in my apartment before you leave.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper and she smiled wickedly. ‘No complications. No untidy biscuits, no messy dark chocolate, just pure concentrated coffee. What do you think, darling?’

  Andres took a deep breath. When Wendy sang her siren song, she was almost imp
ossible to resist.

  He smiled and touched her arm affectionately. ‘Thanks, Wendy, but I must refuse. I have to get to the airport two hours before the flight to collect my ticket.’

  Wendy seemed disappointed, but grateful that he’d let her down gently with a plausible lie. ‘Perhaps another time, then.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Andres patted his pockets. ‘Where did I put my syringe? I forgot to take my insulin before lunch. I’d better do it now, before I leave for the airport.’

  ‘Right. Oops, must dash. I have a consultation at the Dáil this afternoon. Can’t keep my politicians waiting.’

  ‘Really?’ Andres stood up. ‘I didn’t think you were giving those sort of consultations any more.’

  She smiled and drained her glass. ‘Not that sort of consultation, silly. An artistic consultation. A genuine one. Some addled nitwit is offering to sell a Jack B Yeats to the nation for an absolute song and my politicians want to know, God bless their cotton socks, whether it would be a waste of public money to buy it. I shall be assuring them that it’s not. I shall then present them with an outrageous bill which will certainly qualify as a waste of public money.’

  She stood up and gave the waiter a dazzling smile. He turned bright scarlet and fetched her coat and her Louis Vuitton briefcase.

  ‘So you see, darling,’ said Wendy as she kissed Andres lightly on the cheek, ‘I’m still screwing politicians. Only nowadays I do it at their place.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  TARA SQUEEZED through the door. She stepped over her friend’s body and checked the hall for signs of immediate danger. It was deserted, but the air was thick with the acrid smell of gunpowder.

  A shotgun lay on the floor near Melanie’s grotesquely-twisted leg. She touched the barrel. It was still warm.

  Tara dashed to the nearby phone and dialled 112, choosing it rather than the more familiar 999 because the number-pulses were shorter and it saved a few vital seconds.