by Rose Edmunds
‘Before we start, can I pop to the loo?’
Happily it was upstairs, which gave me a great opportunity to nose around. But the bedrooms were more of the same—Ikea furniture and uninspired pictures—and the wardrobes contained only men’s clothes.
‘Does Mel know you’re here?’ he asked when I returned.
‘No,’ I lied. ‘You know you’ve broken her heart?’
Which wasn’t true, but no harm in turning the screws and making him suffer. Though on hearing this, he had the cheek to burst out laughing.
‘Oh no—not her. She’s a born con woman, and I was her next mark.’
‘No, Maurice was her next mark,’ I corrected him.
‘How about that drink? What would you like?’
I vacillated. I didn’t feel unsafe, but now was not the time to become complacent. I fingered the rape alarm in my pocket, and calculated that unless he laced my drink with cyanide I’d have time to pull the pin. And if he did lace my drink with cyanide—tough tits, at least it would be over in a few seconds.
‘Glass of wine if you’ve got one.’
He was as chilled as the bottle of Chablis he opened and displayed no discernible anxiety over being outed. Maybe, improbable as it seemed, he would provide a reasonable explanation for his behaviour.
‘Do put me out of my misery,’ he said. ‘How did you find me?’
So I told him, and without a doubt he was impressed.
‘Mel says you deliberately left her a clue.’
‘I’m not that clever—although I do like Mel, she’s got something special. Under different conditions… Hey, well, the conditions are different now. I wonder if we could start over. Do you think she’d take me back as Tom instead of Mo?’
Somehow, I was very much afraid she would.
‘She might, but for starters, your explanation for dumping her would need to be pitch perfect. And she’d have to be willing to date a criminal.’
Though knowing Mel, his ownership of a priceless Picasso would smooth the path of reconciliation.
‘Oh but I’m not a criminal,’ he said, with an indignation almost worthy of his Beresford character. ‘I told you—I can explain everything.’
His protestations of innocence sounded hollow to me—at the very least he’d stolen Beresford’s passport. Still, I should give him the chance to justify his actions.
‘OK go on then. And it had better be good.’
I sipped at my wine—one glass only tonight—a second drink drive conviction in a week would be a disaster.
‘First off, I left Mel because I was worried for her safety.’
‘Ha—and you didn’t see fit to mention this to her. Nice one.’
‘The less she knew the better—there are dangerous criminals after the Picasso.’
‘But you’re the one who stole it.’
‘I didn’t steal it. I’m just keeping it safely.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Look,’ he said, responding to my cynicism. ‘Shall I start at the beginning? Then everything will make more sense.’
Admittedly, it was hard to see things making less sense.
‘I’m an actor by training,’ he began. ‘And though I say it myself, rather a fine one.’
I shrank from boosting his ego by agreeing, but privately hailed his performance as Maurice Beresford as flawless. Not only had he imitated Beresford physically, but had manipulated the emotions of his audience in line with their perceptions of the character. We had all seen in him what we expected to see, and therein lay his genius.
‘But it’s a difficult line of work—most of us stagger along with a few stage roles, often in pantomime, interspersed with bit parts in TV dramas. So I developed a side line in using my acting skills as a means to other ends.’
‘Like stealing pictures.’
‘I wish you’d stop interrupting, Amy. You’re destroying the narrative arc of my story.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Over the years, I’ve developed a reputation for reliability and undertaken several assignments for prominent individuals, of which this has been one of the most taxing. And the most lucrative.’
I resisted the urge to interrupt again.
‘In essence, someone keen to purchase the Picasso self-portrait asked me to locate it for a fee.’
‘Am I allowed to ask who?’
‘You can probably guess. In fact if you recall, you suggested my client might be your attacker and Živsa’s murderer.’
‘Ah yes, got you—that Russian oligarch Ivanov, who spent a hundred million dollars on the other painting.’
‘One and the same, and he’s not your average oligarch, spending a load of dough solely to prove to others he can. He has a personal agenda.’
‘Yes—his great-grandfather. I’m aware of the history.’
By now, I’d done a fair bit of research into Ivanov. Most oligarchs were former Communist Party officials who leveraged off their connections to profit from privatisations, but Ivanov had a distinguished pedigree. His great-grandfather had been a rich industrialist in St Petersburg, a patron of Picasso during his Blue Period, and the original owner of the pair of paintings. When he fled to Paris during the revolution, the Bolsheviks confiscated all his assets, and later sold certain artworks to keep the Soviet economy afloat. But his son—a teenage rebel—stayed in Russia and disguised his origins to avoid persecution. Boris Ivanov therefore grew up in a small Moscow apartment, unaware of his ancestry until after the Soviet Union collapsed. By then he was an up and coming young businessman going from strength to strength in the burgeoning capitalist economy. By the millennium, Ivanov was among the wealthiest men in Russia.
When the portrait of Fernande Olivier mysteriously resurfaced in the early 2000s, Boris Ivanov sought restitution, but lost the court case on the grounds that the confiscation and later sale were legal acts of the Soviet State. In the end he was forced to bid at auction for the painting once owned by his ancestor.
‘It always frustrated Boris not to own the pair, and he never accepted that the self-portrait had been destroyed. He kept a close eye on the art world, but nothing happened until Novak’s hoard appeared, when he was quick to spot several of the pieces had come from Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume. This of course was the last known location of the Picasso self-portrait. So he put two and two together, and decided Novak, being a hoarder, might have more art stashed away somewhere. And that’s where I came in. He hired me for a finder’s fee to impersonate Beresford and find the painting—a considerable fee, I might add.’
‘OK.’
So far, this all stacked up, except for one not so minor detail.
‘Why the impersonation?’
‘Ivanov felt it might enhance my credibility with Stanislav Novak, and that sending a conventional private eye along would be counterproductive. But as it happened, my character didn’t make much of an impact either.’
‘Mainly because Stan had already come across the real Beresford,’ I said.
‘Whoops. I wonder why Stan didn’t blow the whistle.’
‘Stan’s a strange person—he seems to hoard information as well as physical stuff.’
‘Anyway,’ Hardacre continued, ‘it was a huge relief when you showed up and began to make progress.’
I must say I didn’t wholly buy the story. By any standards, George and me showing up was a major stroke of luck. But if I believed Hardacre, then Ivanov could not have killed Živsa. In which case, who did?
‘That’s the next chapter in the story,’ he replied, after I’d asked him this question. ‘When Živsa got shot, I reckoned something was up.’
‘Not when I had my “accident”?’
‘Well,’ he said, hesitantly. ‘I wasn’t sure. I mean, you are Crazy Amy.’
I opened my mouth to give a withering riposte, but thought better of it.
‘After Živsa’s murder I contacted Boris, and he said the culprit could be trying to prevent him from having the pair, and he had a shrewd
idea who it might be.’
‘Who?’
‘Alexander Lytkin.’
‘I know him,’ I said, amazed at the smallness of the world. ‘Or rather, I know of him.’
He was a close associate of Yuri Netrusov, another oligarch and one of my clients at Pearson Malone. Lytkin was rumoured to be linked with the Russian Mafia, and we’d almost declined to act for Netrusov because of concerns about his connection with Lytkin. But the lucrative nature of the account had encouraged a pragmatic approach.
‘Lytkin and Ivanov are bitter enemies,’ said Hardacre. ‘They’re embroiled in a major court battle over a joint venture gone sour. So if Lytkin obtained something Ivanov had set his heart on, he’d be one-upping him in a major way. Ivanov was certain Lytkin had murdered Živsa.’
This rang true. These oligarchs were hugely competitive with each other even without any animosity between them. And, if the rumours about Lytkin’s Russian Mafia involvement had any substance, he could well be responsible for the murder.
And yet Hardacre had dashed off to Zurich heedless of the danger.
‘Weren’t you afraid, knowing all this?’ I asked.
‘Not at first. When it came out that Živsa knew nothing of the artwork, I felt safe to go to Zurich.’
‘Though you left George and me in danger.’
Hardacre ignored my jibe and continued with his story.
‘When we arrived at the vault, I saw they’d caught up with us, and knew how it would play out. They would have forced Hana to return to the vault with them and stolen the picture from her.’
‘Instead of which, you stole it.’
‘Not stole,’ he protested. ‘I took it into safe keeping, until I could notify the authorities. So I told Hana it was going to the university for cleaning and authentication, hopped in a taxi and asked the driver to lose the tail. Then I came straight back to the UK.’
‘Leaving Mel in great danger…’
‘Not really, because they knew I had the painting.’
I remembered Mel’s mysterious visitor at the hotel.
‘But they might have assumed Mel was involved as well.’
‘Look, she didn’t come to any harm, so I must have been right.’
‘It depends what you mean by harm. Whatever you say, Mel’s been through the wringer emotionally. So then where did you go?’
‘It wouldn’t take Einstein to work out I’d be heading back to England, so I boarded a train to Paris, travelling on my real passport. And from there I took Eurostar. ’
‘How the hell did you get such a valuable work of art past Customs?’
‘Easy as pie—I put it in a frame with a cheap print to disguise it and would have declared the value as £200 if I’d been challenged. And it’s not here in case you were wondering—it’s in a safe place.’
‘So in fact you haven’t alerted the authorities yet?’ I asked, fixing him with a beady eye.
He came across a shade shifty as he replied, ‘No—not yet. But I was planning to.’
Like hell—I reckoned Hardacre had grabbed the picture when presented with the opportunity, intending to sell it to Ivanov.
‘And what about Mel? Will you spin her the line about your concerns for her safety, and beg her forgiveness?’
‘Would she go for it?’
‘Why don’t you ask her yourself? She’s in the car outside.’
‘But you said…’
‘You’re not the only one who can lie, Tom.’
‘Is she mad at me?’
‘What do you reckon? You deceive her about who you are, cut and run and leave her in the lurch. And then there’s your wife.’
‘What wife?’
‘The woman you were with when you viewed Molly’s Lodge.’
‘Oh dear. Does Mel know about her?’
‘Yes,’ I said stonily. ‘She does.’
‘Well, you’ve got that wrong. She wasn’t my wife—just a friend.’
I didn’t believe a word of it and neither, if she had any intelligence, would Mel. Though to be fair, the lack of female stuff in the house did lend support to his statement.
‘You can tell all that to Mel, she’s champing at the bit to rant and rave at you.’
He hesitated for a long time.
‘I guess I owe her an apology at least.’
‘Shall I fetch her then?’
‘OK—go on.’
It would inevitably be a tense encounter, though I wasn’t totally convinced Mel would out and out reject him. But as it was, I never found out.
The car was empty, apart from an envelope on the driver’s seat. I tore it open. Inside was a note.
THE GIRL IN EXCHANGE FOR THE PAINTING – WE WILL BE IN TOUCH
33
For a minute or so, Tom and I sat in stunned silence.
It flashed through my mind that Mel had staged this to get back at Tom, but I immediately discounted the possibility. What would she have to gain from such a ploy? She must realise he wouldn’t give a shit.
Tom evidently had similar thoughts, and went straight on the offensive.
‘Have you two cooked this up together as revenge?’
I decided moral outrage was the best antidote to his cynicism.
‘What an awful thing to say—how can you even think it? Mel is in danger, and you don’t care.’
‘Of course I care,’ he said, and even sounded sincere. But given his profession, this meant nothing.
‘I’ll call the police,’ I said.
‘You can’t.’
Even with all his acting skills, he couldn’t disguise his horror at the suggestion.
‘Why on earth not? If you plan to hand over the picture to the authorities, what’s your problem?’
‘Actually, it’s rather awkward, having to explain why I was masquerading as Beresford.’
To my mind, this only demonstrated how little he cared about Mel, who would no doubt soon be imprisoned in a windowless room, terrified for her life. Responsibility for Mel’s predicament lay squarely on Hardacre’s shoulders, yet here he was, trying to avoid any inconvenience, or disruption to his criminal plans.
‘Tough luck.’
I pulled out my phone, and started to call 999 before reconsidering. Mel was not exactly squeaky clean either, and no doubt her false identity wouldn’t stand up to detailed scrutiny.
‘On reflection, you may be right,’ I said. ‘Mel’s position is complicated too.’
His relief was palpable.
‘Aha—I thought as much—Maurice Beresford wasn’t her first mark.’
‘And I hope he won’t be the last.’
There had to be more behind Hardacre’s nervousness at police involvement than he let on, but it suited me not to challenge him. Otherwise I might be forced to share more information on Mel’s chequered past, and she wouldn’t thank me for that.
‘I guess Mel’s safe for the moment,’ I conjectured, trying to justify the decision. ‘You have something her kidnapper wants, and there’s little point in them harming her until they’ve ascertained whether we’ll provide it. There’s no value in her as a corpse.’
I considered calling Lytkin’s friend Netrusov to ask for his help. I shuddered at the thought, as he hadn’t been the easiest client to handle. The horror of one incident in particular would be etched on my mind forever. Four transactions had to be completed in a certain order to avoid a hefty tax bill, but the funds from transaction number four were needed for transaction number one, and neither of the parties trusted each other an inch. They refused to take any financial risk, even though the series of deals would be signed within minutes of each other. I found a nifty workaround, acceptable to both parties, but not before Netrusov had bawled me out and threatened to withdraw all his business from the firm. How would he react to a call from me asking him to intervene in the kidnap of my friend by his friend? Much would depend on what lies Pearson Malone had told him about Crazy Amy, and whether he had his own vested interests. It seemed entirely possi
ble I’d be placing Mel in even more danger.
‘But what should we do?’ he asked.
‘Isn’t it obvious? We wait for them to make contact and hand over the goods.’
‘But surely there must be another way…’
I watched as Tom weighed up the loss of his finder’s fee against Mel’s safety, and it didn’t appear to be a clear-cut decision. While not actively wishing Mel any harm, he was loath to lose his money.
‘There is no other way,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s very simple.’
‘It may be simple for you, but it’ll complicate my life no end. If Ivanov learns that I gave Lytkin the painting, I’m dead meat on the slab.’
Based on my knowledge of Ivanov, I felt sure this was an exaggeration, but guessed Hardacre found it a more acceptable reason for foot-dragging than financial loss.
‘And Mel dies if you don’t. Bottom line is this—do you want to save her?’
Tom wrestled with an irreconcilable trio of conscience, greed and incredibly, somewhere in the mix, what appeared to be sincere affection for Mel.
‘My finder’s fee would have set me up for life,’ he said mournfully. ‘Mel is more important, obviously, but if we can find a way to save her and keep in good odour with Ivanov...’
I suspected Mel was not that important, but he wasn’t heartless enough to sacrifice her life for his fee. So if he found a way to pull off the seemingly impossible feat of rescuing her and collecting the money, he would go for it. But equally, if it came down to his life or Mel’s he’d let her go to the wall. I put this to him in stark terms.
‘That’s harsh,’ he said, which appeared to be his stock response when confronted with his venal nature.
‘If you’re worried about Ivanov turning ugly, your best option is to tell him the truth. From what I’ve read of him, he seems like a reasonable man.’
‘Mightn’t he go to the police himself?’
‘It’s a risk we have to take,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you call him and explain?’
‘No,’ said Tom. ‘It would be better if we eyeballed him.’
‘We?’
‘Well you were the one who was shot. You can wipe a little tear from your eye, and I’ll tell him how terrified I felt in Zurich.’