by Bill James
She tried on one of the balaclavas before the mirror. Her voice became muffled, but Simberdy thought she said: ‘Could we let you undertake something like this alone, Vince? He might turn nasty. You, too, love that museum, and I love you. We must act as a team. It will inspire us.’
Simberdy considered that the almost total black sheen of Olive’s outfit – only her eyes breaking it, now she had the balaclava on – made her look overwhelmingly desirable. As well as the wonderful ear, she had a sumptuous arse, somehow tonight given additional ripeness and mystery by those dark, conspiratorial trousers. Would there be time to get all these clothes off, and his own cripplingly tight garments, before they set out? But, if her uniform was what had given him special excitement, perhaps he didn’t want it off, beyond the necessary. Ignoring exceptional cases such as working Eskimos, he’d bet not many men had given it to a woman wearing a balaclava.
He put an arm around Olive’s waist and, turning her towards him, kissed lightly through the gap on both eyelids and the top of her nose. She responded, as she always responded when he touched her, clinging hard to his bulk and thrusting her face up towards his. Behind the thick wool he could just make out her lips, soft, warm, open. But he didn’t care for what they said.
‘Darling, Vince, you do realize that Nothing Known will be here in a couple of minutes?’ she murmured.
‘What? Oh, him.’
‘He’ll expect us to be ready, and looking professional. He’s meticulous.’
Olive was a solicitor and, in case of physical aggravation from Falldew, had recruited one of her firm’s most gifted clients to help tonight, as bodyguard – bodies’ guard: Wayne Passow, noted burglar and general criminal, often prosecuted, never convicted and, as his nickname told, with no police record.
Simberdy released her, and she pulled off the balaclava. ‘Wayne can only stay a few hours,’ she said. ‘He’s going on to a late-night date.’
‘Lucky lad.’
‘He seems to have something really nice under way,’ she replied. ‘He’s very keen.’
Simberdy put on black silk gloves to go with his black trousers and black, roll-top sweater. He felt very committed and effective. This adventure was turning out to be a tonic, as Olive had said it would. Optimism had always come easily to him, like weight.
Passow arrived. He was short, gymnast-wiry, about thirty, in a dark three-piece suit, blue bobble hat, black lace-up shoes, burgundy open-necked shirt. His features were small, neat, would-be-winsome.
In the car, Simberdy said: ‘We want no violence, Wayne, unless Falldew becomes rough himself. We – I mean museum folk – we have our own ways, conditioned by a respect for others and for the gentle beneficence of Time; and we do these things by force of words and logic, nothing cruder.’
Passow said: ‘Lovely evening for it. Don’t like that obstreperous moon, though. I’m taking risks for you, Ol, if he does turn heavy. And not a sausage in it for Wayne boy at all.’
Olive’s chummy face now took on a prosecutor’s sharpness. She could move with ease through her many personas. ‘Think of what you’re doing as repayment,’ she said.
‘For what?’ Nothing Known said.
‘For the practice getting you off so often,’ Olive said.
‘That’s what lawyers are for, isn’t it?’ Passow replied.
‘Some lawyers are fussy about whom they take on,’ Olive said.
‘Fussy how?’ Nothing Known said.
‘They’re careful,’ Olive said.
‘I hope so,’ he said.
‘Have you come across the word “recidivist” at all?’ Olive asked.
‘I’m always amazed at how many words there are around,’ Nothing Known replied.
‘It means someone who’s been convicted and then reoffends and reoffends,’ Olive said.
‘This don’t apply to me because I never been convicted,’ he said. Passow spoke this casually, no argumentative bite, as if what he said was so obvious and indisputable that it didn’t need reinforcement.
‘I know – thanks to the practice,’ she answered.
‘Just police trying to frame me non-stop,’ he said. ‘All you got to do is show the truth. Innocence can sometimes speak for itself, but sometimes requires a lawyer or two. Innocence is powerful. This is famed. It’s in The Song Of Sullivan in the actual Bible. A tip for tonight? Leave the car open and the keys in for a fast exit. You never know with this kind of sortie. Half seconds can be important. Crucial.’
‘Is that in The Song Of Sullivan, too?’ Simberdy replied.
In the museum grounds, they stood together for a while under a larch, watching for any movement near the great spread of dark Hulliborn buildings. ‘What kind of trouble from him would you expect?’ Passow asked.
‘Graffiti daubings – insults in quick-drying, very luminous paint, yellow or red. Breakages,’ Simberdy said.
‘I never took much notice of museums,’ Nothing Known said. ‘Yet I hear they got paintings in some of them worth a stack of noughts. Is that so, Vince?’
‘You’re here for a specific task, Wayne,’ Olive told him.
‘Sure, sure,’ he said. ‘Only using this waiting time to learn – art’s quite a topic, nobody can deny it.’
‘Yes, a stack of noughts, but only if they’re the right pictures, or, alternatively, if the Art wallah in the museum is a cunt and shells out daft when buying,’ Simberdy said.
‘Who says what’s right?’ Wayne replied. ‘How do you tell?’
‘The big, big question,’ Simberdy said. ‘Some can’t tell. Ask Dr D.Q. Youde.’
‘Who’s he?’ Nothing Known replied.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Simberdy said.
‘It sounds like he makes you ratty, though,’ Passow said, ‘but in an artistic fashion.’
‘We don’t get ratty – not museum folk. Disappointed, perhaps,’ Simberdy said.
‘Let down,’ Olive said.
‘But if the doctors of art and that can’t get it right, what chance the rest of us?’ Nothing Known said. ‘Just pot luck?’
‘Probably,’ Simberdy said. ‘Fine art’s nine-tenths auctioneers’ bullshit, and the rest leg-pull.’
‘Is this him?’ Olive whispered, and they all drew their balaclavas close. But it was only the wind spinning some dumped porno mags across the grass.
‘I’ll do a bit of a recce,’ Passow replied. ‘Make the most of our forces.’
‘Reassemble in ten,’ Olive said.
‘Jawohl mein Kapitan,’ Nothing Known said.
After half an hour, he had not returned. Off-and-on clouds covered the moon, and light rain fell. Simberdy said: ‘If he runs into poor Nev when we’re not there to insist on restraint … My God, what’s that?’ They’d both heard the sound of glass shattering on the far side of the buildings, what could be a large window. All the Hulliborn’s alarms started to scream.
‘Vincent, we should get out. I mean, dressed like this, how will it look?’ Although he heard this through two layers of balaclava, his and hers, fright made him get her message very well.
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘This is uncatered for.’
They ran back across the grounds towards the car, Olive holding his arm to help him keep going. Above the alarms’ din, Simberdy thought he caught the blare of police sirens. There seemed to be flashing blue lights as well, but he felt these might be internal only, springing from his terror and blood pressure.
‘Not far now, darling,’ Olive said. He groaned. ‘There’s the car,’ she added. Simberdy muttered two prayers of thanks: one, because they had almost reached it, and two, for Nothing Known’s back-alley wisdom in making sure there’d be no delay messing about with keys. But what about Nothing Known? Where was he? Nothing was known. Well, they couldn’t wait for him. He would have to look after himself. He’d broken the arrangement. Maybe broken more than that. Now, it had to be sauve qui peut.
They’d almost reached the gates of the grounds and the road when Olive shrieked, ‘Ba
stard! Recidivist bastard.’ It would be easy to forget she ever looked inoffensive. Again Simberdy heard with the foul clarity of crisis. His head had fallen forward in exhaustion as he staggered on, but when he forced it half up off his chest for a second he saw their Vauxhall suddenly pull out ahead, lightless, tyres screeching, and race away from them. There seemed to be only the driver in it, probably a man, crouched forward and possibly wearing a black balaclava. Simberdy’s brain was not in a state to do much with these facts, half facts. But he felt a vast gratitude that further running for the car must be hopeless.
He stopped and clung to the perimeter railings. His legs felt filleted, his chest alight. The balaclava obstructed his breathing, and he tore at it with weak fingers, striving to clear an air route. Olive had run a few useless steps after the car, waving her black-clad arms furiously and still yelling curses. Simberdy thought he had seen something like it in Wagner – The Ring? He considered she appeared wonderfully demonic and maudite and would have loved to stand with her and yell, too, but he needed his strength to fight the fucking wool and wipe away sweat and slobber, which had begun to course down under the helmet’s neck piece and soak his roll-top.
In a while, Olive returned and helped him take off the balaclava. She removed hers, too, and threw them both into the bushes. ‘We ought to vamoose from the area, love,’ she said. ‘You’re doing fine.’
‘Am I honestly, Ol?’
‘Fine.’
‘It’s a bit of derring-do, anyway.’
‘Of course it is. Wouldn’t have missed it,’ she said. Even in the dark he could see her face was back to sweetness and empathy.
‘He’ll get to his date on time, I suppose – in our car. And if he’s pinched anything from the Hulliborn he can hide it, or them, in the boot.’
‘He’s very cautious. And so, nothing’s known about Nothing Known,’ Olive replied.
Six
George Lepage also heard the sound of breaking glass, followed by the alarms. If anything, he felt even more troubled than Olive and Vincent Simberdy. The noises reached him with greater force because he was on museum premises at the time, seated alone in his office, waiting for a personal telephone call on the direct, non-switchboard line.
Instinctively, he stood and faced towards where the noise had seemed to come from, like a dog pointing. Art? The Raybould Gallery? There was no repetition, and after a few minutes he decided he’d have to go and investigate. For a reasonably quiet approach over the board floors, he took off his shoes and socks, then left the Director’s suite and hurried towards the spiral staircase. A few dim security lights shone. God, was this Falldew again? How deep could injury and the thirst for vengeance go?
As he made his way, he wondered how Flounce would have dealt with the intriguing, apparently growing trickiness of this situation. More than once lately Lepage had tried to invoke the memory of Butler-Minton. Although he might feel only very limited admiration for his predecessor, he would concede that Butler-Minton never panicked. There was, for instance, the famous tale from early in his career when he walked naked into a Meknes restaurant and demanded couscous and barley water, after being jumped by a gang of robbers as he left an excavation. More recently, Flounce had still managed to land that knighthood, despite the vol-au-vents tainted with Stain-Out! and fed to the Minister and his entourage on Founding Day in the Octagon Room during Flounce’s Directorship; despite, too, the unsettling rumours about Mrs Cray, the haversack straps and so on.
Lepage had met nobody yet and seen nothing extraordinary, although the alarms still clanged and whined. Because of this noise and his lack of shoes, he could not hear his footsteps and seemed to progress silently, effortlessly, like dreaming. Further, the urgency, plus the feel of the fine old timbers on his soles, strangely exhilarated him. There was something invigorating about striding barefoot and fast through these chambers of eternally motionless antiquities, and for a moment he even experienced a little sympathy for Neville’s performance in the Folk. Mightn’t that have been only another fleshly assertion of vibrant life, and of the thrillingly pressure-filled present? Again, Lepage wondered whether he really did want early retirement. Apart from this sudden plunge into rich tension tonight, what chance would he have, if he left this job, of meeting and talking on quite intimate terms with someone as lovely as Kate Avis, the targeted lady from Kidderminster? This was important because it could be lonely and very demoralizing sometimes at home, now Julia stayed out late to grab a quota of the post-pub trade at Spud-O’-My-Life, and sometimes exceptionally late, as though the night’s goings-on did not end when she shut up shop. Julia might offer vague explanations – a club turning out well after midnight and people wanting a snack – and Lepage was not the sort to quiz and interrogate.
He entered the Raybould Gallery and realized straight away that his early placing of the broken-glass noise had been correct. First evidence of something wrong was a wave of much colder air on his feet: cold and possibly touched with moisture. Looking to the end of the Raybould, he saw that one of the lower panes in the window had almost totally gone. The wind rattled a few jagged remnants of glass sticking up at the bottom, and carried rain in, scattering drops across the gallery. Lepage stood for a little while, doing an assessment. He was confused. The space where the three ‘El Grecos’ had hung was empty, except for the caption sheet, with its carefully ambiguous, agonizingly hatched words about their provenance. On the opposite gallery wall he saw another gap and felt virtually sure that the museum’s most valuable, unquestionably genuine Monet normally occupied that spot: L’Isolement, a mostly blue, mauve and shimmeringly silver job, plus all the usual Monetian frigging about with light and shade. What baffled Lepage as he gazed around was that a thief, or thieves, smart enough to snatch the Monet should also bother to cart off Quentin Youde’s triptych of likely duds.
He hurried towards the window but could not get very close for fear of cutting his feet on the glass splinters littering the floor. Staring out, he thought he saw disappearing among the trees on the south side of the grounds a running, agile man wearing some sort of mask or balaclava helmet and carrying under his two arms what might be four or five framed pictures. Lepage turned and did another inventory of the Raybould. So, four pictures. The galloping figure could be Neville Falldew, but he hoped not. Things had become a little grave. Above the sound of the alarms, he thought he heard a car start somewhere and then drive off fast. A moment afterwards he certainly made out approaching police sirens and glimpsed flashing blue lights.
Although he had not wanted it known that he was in the building so late, waiting for his call, he remained at the broken window until Security arrived. He told them what he’d seen and heard. One of the guards went to let the police in and to kill the alarms. Lepage returned to his suite. His phone was ringing as he arrived. ‘Kate?’ he said, putting his shoes and socks back on.
‘I haven’t been able to call earlier, Dr Lepage.’
‘Please, we did agree on “George”, didn’t we?’
‘Thanks … George. But isn’t it a bore for you, waiting there? Wouldn’t it be better if I phoned you at home?’
‘Probably not.’ Most bloody assuredly not. He never knew when Julia was going to pop in from the kiosk. She wouldn’t understand. Yes, she would understand. ‘I can’t ring you, can I?’ he said.
‘The phones here don’t take incomings.’
Someone knocked on Lepage’s door. He covered the mouthpiece and said, ‘Yes?’
A uniformed police inspector and sergeant appeared. He waved them to chairs.
‘George, I’m still very troubled by what happened,’ Kate Avis said.
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t want to sound precious, unduly sheltered. I’m not a child. But it was the setting, George. The abuse, not so much of me, but of history. A slur on scholarship. This is bound to disturb me.’
She was doing a postgraduate degree at Worcester on something medieval and lived at present in a student bloc
k. ‘Why he did it, I’m afraid, Kate. He hates us all.’
‘You were so kind to me following. The spiral staircase. Sherry.’
‘The least I could do, in the circumstances.’
‘You have a lovely room. That stuffed creature.’
‘The duck-billed platypus. It belonged to my predecessor. Sometimes I need to feel I’m still in touch with him. The platypus does help. He could be difficult and mysterious, but capable, all the same.’
‘I’ve been thinking about your suggestion. I said I’d call about it.’
‘Yes?’ Yes!
Kate said: ‘That I should go back into the peasant breakfast room, see it in its normal state, exorcize the unpleasant experience and show I’ve come through it whole.’
‘Wise: the way pilots in the war went straight up after a crash, before their nerve was affected.’
The police inspector cut in: ‘Excuse me, sir, but we ought to make some moves. We have a possible offence to look at. Will you be long?’
Lepage waved a hand reassuringly.
‘Who’s there Dr Le— Who’s there, George?’
‘Police.’
‘Police? About that?’
‘No. We have some bother.’
‘So, not the incident?’
‘No, different, quite different.’
‘At night? It seems a very … a very, well, active place. I mean, for a museum.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Look, George, perhaps I’d be willing to go back into the room, but would you accompany me – at first, anyway?’
‘Oh.’ Yes, yes, yes. ‘If you think it necessary.’
‘I would like it.’
‘Well, certainly.’ Certainly, certainly, certainly.
‘Is it all normal there now?’ Kate said. ‘I mean, the old peasant is the real old peasant. Or rather, not real, but a real model, if you understand. Not live.’