Rogue's Gallery

by Robert Barnard

  Semyon immediately and at enormous speed started explaining in Russian, Chechnyan or something. The operative held up her hand to him and immediately turned to us and started to explain in prim, textbook English.

  ‘I will explain. What you are seeing here is the most up-to-date process of reproduction, developed in Moscow, which can make a copy of a picture or a document which is undistinguishable, except to experts, from the original. I will not explicate further for reasons of commercial confidentialness. In Russia, misfortunately, is much thievery from museums and galleries, and today we are using very much this process to provide visitors with perfect copies to keep safe the precious originals.’

  ‘I see,’ said Svein. ‘But this picture—’

  ‘Does not come from a museum, no. We are expanding our operation into Europe and America to provide service to museums and private collectors. I receive phone call from Mr – is difficult.’

  ‘Fjørtoft?’ suggested Svein.

  ‘Exactly. It was from this Mr Something’s secretary. He want our perfect copies of his entire collection of Munch lithographs, watercolours, oils and cetera. One will be brought each week until the collection of copies is complete. I ask for signed authorisation and some payment in advance, and she send it. This one is the seventh I undertake.’

  ‘The seventh. I see. And the secretary’s name?’

  ‘Is Miss Olsen.’

  ‘I see. A common name. However not the name of anyone in Hr Fjørtoft’s employment.’

  She looked, or perhaps pretended to look, surprised. She offered no resistance when Svein, having pointed out that she’d been duped and should have checked the authorisation and signature, removed Semyon and his framed Munch to the car. He phoned the University Russian Department, asking them if they could provide a student interpreter. We picked him up in the car, and then began the drive out to Fredshavn.

  I have to say that Svein was doing rather well so far. The boy was learning, obviously from working all the time with me. With time he could make a perfectly competent assistant. However his conversation in the car – not greatly helped by the Bolshie interpreter, who was obviously convinced that Svein was setting the boy up in order to get him expelled from the country – got nowhere very interesting. It was only when we arrived at Fredshavn and went through the ridiculous business with the gates that he really got to the nub of the matter.

  ‘So this was simply a matter of getting paid to do the job,’ he asked him. ‘Who paid you?’

  ‘The teacher,’ said the interpreter after consultation.

  ‘And did she act as the go-between with the pictures?’

  Again there was an incomprehensible discussion.

  ‘No – it was the younger one.’

  ‘Ah, the young one,’ said Svein.

  ‘The younger one.’

  We were coasting through the nail-scissored lawns towards the facade of the house when I saw some way away, under a cherry tree I itched to water, Anne-Marie. She was talking to Vidar the main gardener. Body language did not suggest they were talking about topsoil or slug control. Good for her, I thought. She’s found a way out of the icebox.

  We were met again by Mats the major-domo at the front door, and Svein asked if the whole household could be assembled in the dining room.

  ‘You mean the servants?’ Mats asked, frowning. ‘I’m not sure that Herr Fjørtoft—’

  ‘I mean the whole house, family and servants. I believe Herr Fjørtoft is in Oslo, so what he doesn’t know—’

  Mats looked as if what he didn’t know usually didn’t remain unknown for long, but he nodded. I was rather surprised when he went out on to the steps and with a gesture summoned Anne-Marie and Vidar to the house. No prizes for guessing who was the freezer of the household, and why everyone was so much more relaxed when he was not there. Svein dallied for a moment, let Anne-Marie pass into the house first – quite the gentleman – and then he went in himself with the gardener. We and he both qualified as ‘outside help’, I suppose.

  They all sat around the table, looking at us. Svein fetched a couple of chairs and set them by the door for Semyon and his interpreter. We stood there for a moment by the door, looking at the household: all female, apart from Mats and Vidar. Chris Farraday the governess was smiling a secretive, confident smile. Ingrid was less sure of herself, on the surface, but she gave encouraging smiles to Chris. I flopped down on the floor with a truly canine sense of drama. Now, after I’ve done all the hard work, I seemed to be saying, it’s all up to Svein.

  ‘I’ve brought you all here today,’ said Svein, ‘because there’s been an important development in the matter of the Munch pictures, and I think you all ought to hear about it. I have discovered that your assistant gardener from Chechnya’ – he gestured towards the door – ‘has been taking pictures from the Munch room in to Bergen, to a firm which offers an unusual service: a new and revolutionary process developed in Russia to provide near-perfect copies of pictures and documents – copies that only prolonged and intensive inspection can distinguish from the real thing.’ There was a buzz of conversation, and much looking at Semyon. Only Anne-Marie looked bored: the body language said that she’d had it up to here with Munch. ‘I may say that I have no evidence of Semyon – I won’t attempt the surname – of Semyon’s involvement other than as carrier. He was paid a small sum to take the pictures backwards and forwards. Paid by Miss Farraday here.’

  ‘So he says,’ said Chris Farraday, apparently unperturbed.

  ‘Exactly. But I think it would be much easier for you, Miss Farraday, to gain admittance to the collection. I have not heard of Semyon going anywhere in the house other than the kitchen. Mostly he’s kept out in the stables.’

  ‘We used to say the attics were for mice and the north Norwegians,’ said Anne-Marie, suddenly waking up. ‘Dear Hans-Egil goes one step further for asylum seekers.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Svein, quite eloquently. ‘Now Semyon also says that the pictures to be copied were conveyed to him by young Ingrid here. If he’s telling the truth, that is very serious: the governess using her under-age pupil as part of a plan to gradually rob the family of its very important and valuable collection.’

  I stirred uneasily. Anne-Marie started to say something, but her eye was caught by her daughter, standing up at her place around the table.

  ‘This is too silly,’ she said, standing tall and losing all trace of girlish manner or lack of confidence. ‘You followed me the other day, didn’t you? I slipped into a dark doorway and saw you driving round and round Bergen’s one-way streets. You’d think an ex-policeman could do better than that, wouldn’t you? In fact, you were generally a little bit bamboozled. You thought you were following a schoolgirl dressed up as an adult in stuff from her mother’s wardrobe, didn’t you?’

  ‘Your governess’s wardrobe, more like,’ said Svein sourly.

  ‘Neither. You see, when I’m in fancy dress is when I’m here, being Daddy’s little girl.’ She put her hands up to her chin in a girlish gesture and fluttered her eyelids at us. Even Svein realised that while she had been talking she had been growing before our eyes into her real age. ‘You see, Daddy has a problem – boy! Does he have a problem! He only fancies little girls. Mummy had me when she was fifteen, though they were married in Thailand and have always lied about her age here. Mummy’s problem has been the same as mine: she’s grown up. I seem to have gained about a year since I was eleven, though that was six years ago now. Daddy’s been so awfully careful of me, so keen on shielding me from premature adult experience. Pity he didn’t realise that Chris and I were discovering an adult relationship he hadn’t even considered a danger.’

  She stood before us, a young woman in girl’s clothing, a sort of goddess of revenge, her eyes glinting, her face glowing with a long-delayed satisfaction at being who she really was. She went and stood behind Chris, her hands on her shoulders, proudly, and she suddenly gave the impression of being in reality the dominant partner.

  ‘A
nd do you know,’ she said, ‘just as exciting as finding out who I was and what I wanted, was the knowledge that Chris had done her degree at Middlesborough University on ‘The Economics of Art’. All the money side was child’s play to her.’

  A car drew up outside. Her father got out and strode towards the house. Ingrid left her place and went towards the door. When it opened she threw her arms around her father’s neck, a schoolgirl again.

  ‘Hello Daddy! It’s lovely to have you home! I’m just telling all the people here about our little games together – all the funny little things you do to me. Of course I know it’s always been our own precious secret, but I think most of them could guess, don’t you, when I was never allowed to grow up. And of course I had my own little game, that you never guessed about: slipping into your room to get the key to the Munch room at night when you were drunk to the world. This nasty man has accused me and Chris of stealing the Munchs, when really I was only taking payment for all my services rendered. Payment that will finance Chris and my life together.’

  She looked at him triumphantly. At the table Anne-Marie’s hand was clutching Vidar’s. For a moment Fjørtoft’s face was absolutely and characteristically blank. Then, unnervingly, he sank to his knees and started to blubber. It was a horrible sound, like a little boy refused a second helping of rømmegraut with currants. Svein watched for a moment, then went over and spoke close to his ear.

  ‘What you do now is up to you. Call the police or hush it up, it’s your choice. Hushing it up will be more expensive, but calling the police will be nastier. I shall be sending in my bill, and it will be large.’

  Then he beckoned to Semyon and his interpreter and we went through the hallway and out of the front door. In the fresh air the interpreter went straight to the car. Semyon thought for a moment, then went towards the stable. I think the interpreter had been translating all that had been said into Russian, and he sensed he might be on to a good thing.

  I stood for a moment or two. The last time I had had a pee had been outside the photocopying shop. I raised my leg beside the door frame and out it came. On and on it went. On and on. My bladder was very full, but I think I was also making an existential statement: the harder you push the plug in on nature, the more it will look for a way to burst exuberantly forth.

  I jumped into the front seat of the car and we drove towards town.

  THE PATH TO THE SHROUD

  Violetta knew she had made a mistake almost as soon as she got into the shop. She had come in because she noticed a sign saying ‘English Books’ in the window. English newspapers had been easy to obtain in Parma, books less so. Now she was inside the shop she realised just from casting her eyes around the covers of books on display that she was in a religious bookshop. Not at all what she needed. She was in Italy for experiences, but not for religious ones, or not Christian ones. She dawdled around the pokey interior only to avoid the ungraciousness of walking straight out again.

  The face hit her before she even found the section of English books. The sepia image of a bearded man, infinitely kind, unendingly forgiving: the picture of a man (Violetta thought) who grieved for the sufferings and forgave the transgressions of his fellow men – strong, loving, understanding. Who was he? She struggled with the title of the book: II Sudario di Torino. She frowned. Torino she knew. It was one of the places she had put among the possibilities on her itinerary: Turin. Then ‘sudario’ – but of course! She didn’t even need to scrabble in her bag for her pocket dictionary: this must be the face of the man on the Turin Shroud.

  She looked again, concentrating on the face. The man seemed to look back, equally intent on her. Again she felt that the eyes of the man saw, saw into, understood. It was as if her whole life, her rackety, unstructured, uncertain journey through this and that enthusiasm or commitment, was in this man’s brain as he gazed at her, and as if his insight gave the whole messy cycle a meaning and a purpose.

  ‘Do you have this book in English?’ Violetta asked the woman behind the counter. She shook her head slowly, but went over to the two or three shelves of English books to check. Then she shook her head more decidedly.

  ‘Is not ’ere in Eenglish. In Torino maybe you find.’

  ‘I’m going to Turin,’ said Violetta, suddenly definite.

  ‘Turin, yes. You find there per’aps. We ’ave phamplet in four languages. Maybe you like, so you read a little first?’

  Violetta took the proffered ‘phamplet’, and immediately decided to pay the four thousand lire demanded for it. The face was on the front page, and English was one of the four languages, along with French, Spanish and German. She went out into the morning sunlight with a strange feeling of lightness, almost of happiness. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt almost happy.

  She didn’t look at the pamphlet when she got back to her hotel room. She saved it up. She showered, made herself up as if going to a party, then went back into town and made for the great square in front of the cathedral and baptistery. She walked purposefully across its cobbled expanse to the Angiol d’Oro nestling in the corner. She had been saving up one of the few remaining good restaurants of Parma, and tonight was certainly the night. She had no need of a book to console her loneliness. She watched the other customers, relished the food slowly, and dreamt of the bearded face that had somehow – miraculously? – been preserved on the shroud. She ended with the best gorgonzola she had ever had in her life, relished the last of the wine, then headed back to her hotel.

  The pamphlet was still nestling in the big, shabby old bag she always took with her on these exploratory holidays. She took it out, then sat on her bed feeling replete, contented, and above all full of anticipation.

  She read the text of the pamphlet first. It was aimed at the faithful – and Violetta had never been that, in any sense. It did not shrink, however, from the findings of modern research. Scientists were of the opinion (they did avoid the word ‘proved’) that the shroud was in fact of thirteenth-or fourteenth-century provenance, just the period when mentions of this wonderful relic of Christ’s death began to be recorded. The image of the man was not made by any conventional paint, stain or other artist’s material. Indeed, it seemed that science was unable to suggest what the image consisted of at all, other than with such (unscientific, surely?) images as ‘a burst of radiant energy’. That conjecture tickled Violetta’s interest almost as much as the face itself. She looked back at the cover.

  Violetta was a great frequenter of art galleries – hence Italy, hence the Italian cities slightly off the usual tourist trail. Her interest in art was amateur but intense. And she could swear that the image of the man on the shroud was like no image of a man in any thirteenth- or fourteenth-century painting. It was too realistic, not stylised enough. This was a man you could touch, imagine embracing. It was like an old sepia photograph of one’s great-grandfather as a young or youngish man. Even if the image were of paint, Violetta could not have believed it was made in the thirteenth century.

  As it was, it was not of paint; it was made by some substance or process unknown even to modern science, and it was an image startlingly modern in its realism.

  Violetta got up and poured herself a whisky from the litre bottle she had had to trail around Parma to find. She had been devastated to discover at Heathrow that duty-free bottles were no longer available to travellers within Europe.

  ‘Bugger the Common Market!’ she had shouted at the girl behind the till. Still, she had at last found a supply in Parma, and would get more before moving on, just in case.

  Walking around her hotel room, whisky and water in hand, Violetta decided that she was rather pleased the shroud was of medieval material. It removed the religious trappings which roused no resonances in her own mind. It left, though, the image of a medieval man, and the mystery of an image of him projected on to his shroud by no known means. That was exciting.

  Violetta had always felt she had a gift for the paranormal, just as she had had a series of flirtations
with alternative therapies and folk medicines. Karmas and Eastern thought systems and even simple hypnotism were things that fascinated her, and she had been ‘into’ many of them with great thoroughness, before passing on to the next enthusiasm. She had no problem with an image, whether of Christ or of some medieval man, projected after death on to the shroud in which his body was wrapped. She definitely preferred the idea of its being a man of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Christ was a known factor: both the worshipper and the sceptic had a picture of him based on things he did, things he said – or was supposed to have done and said. But the medieval man had mystery: the nature of this figure who lived life so intensely that his image projected itself after death onto his shroud was no problem to absorb for one who had taken spirit manifestations and advice from the great beyond in her stride. Its attraction was that she could create him from his image. From the fact, that body, she could mould a figure in whom she could believe.

  ‘A man of Turin,’ she said out loud. ‘Perhaps the ancestor of a man, even many men, living in Turin today.’

  Two whiskies later, as she drifted off into sleep, the image of the man was gaining substance. A man who filled every minute with vitality, experience, passion; one who ‘loaded every rift with ore’ because he sensed that his life would be short. A man who lived and understood life so completely and intensely would be one who understood others, saw through to their essence, knew and forgave them because life was not for the saints and the mystics and the hermits. It was a messy business for all the rest – people who tried to engage with it totally.

  The next day Violetta took the train to Turin. Coming out of the magnificent station she saw the Grand Palace Hotel. Somewhere a little bit grander than she was used to. Somewhere where she might entertain people … someone. She walked across, found they had a room vacant, and took it.