by Ian Hamilton
She walked back into the lobby and peered into the restaurant. There were three clusters of men eating what she assumed was sheep and drinking from bottles of what looked like vodka. She imagined they had brought the liquor from the boat. They looked at her with more interest than she liked, and she quickly backed away from the door and headed outside.
It was still drizzling, enough to dampen her hair but not enough to make her really wet. What the hell, she thought, and started up the street.
Sørensen’s house was the fourth on the left. It was a two-storey brick structure, square, solid, with a window on either side of the purple door and three windows in a row above it. The downstairs windows were lit, the occupants shielded by the same type of lace curtains she had seen in Denmark.
The door had a large brass knocker. Ava swung it three times and then waited. The door opened a crack. A pair of bright blue eyes stared at her. A woman’s eyes.
“Hello, my name is Ava Lee. I apologize for dropping in on you like this, but I’m here to speak to Mr. Sørensen about his work. I was given this address by his brother, Ronny, who said it would be all right for me to come.”
The door opened enough for Ava to see who was behind it. This had to be Helga. About five feet tall and almost as broad. She was wearing a floral-patterned muumuu over bare legs and feet that were in sheepskin slippers. Her face was framed by a mass of frizzy light brown hair and her skin was pale and fleshy, with deep wrinkles etched at the corners of eyes that were alert, watchful. “We weren’t expecting anyone.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I would have written but I didn’t have that much time, and I didn’t know how else to contact you.”
“What do you want?”
“As I said, I want to chat with Mr. Sørensen about his work, perhaps buy some pieces. I have a client who has several of his paintings and he’s expressed an interest in buying more.”
“What work?”
“The beach scenes.”
“He doesn’t do those anymore.”
“Then maybe I could see what he has been working on.”
Helga turned her head to look back into the house but didn’t speak.
“We’d pay cash,” Ava said.
“Come in,” Helga said.
From the entrance Ava could see a dining room on the left, its long, empty table surrounded by twelve chairs, the walls covered in paintings. On the right was the living room, which had a wood-slat couch, two chairs, and a coffee table that was as bare as the one in the dining room. Everything was in perfect order, made all the more perfect by the aroma of fresh baking.
“Jan is upstairs; I’ll get him. You can sit there and wait,” she said, motioning to the living room.
More paintings hung there, most of them of the Tjorn harbour and all of which featured a bald man and a woman with bright red nipples. When Jan Sørensen walked into the room, she knew who the bald man was, and she imagined that Helga must have remarkable nipples.
He was only about five foot six and he was fat and soft, not a man used to manual labour or physical exertion of any kind. His eyes were as blue as Helga’s, his skin as fair, and the same lines were etched beside his eyes. They could have been twins if she were taller.
“There was a dealer here from Copenhagen about six months ago. He tried to steal my paintings for next to nothing. Are you with him?” he said aggressively.
Ava stood and offered her hand. “My name is Ava Lee, and I have nothing to do with a dealer in Copenhagen.”
“Then who do you work for?”
So much for easing into this, she thought. “I work for a Chinese collector.”
Sørensen looked baffled. “Chinese? I’ve never sold to any Chinese.”
“They were purchased indirectly.”
He looked at his wife. “I told you that agent was screwing us over.”
“Can I sit?” Ava asked.
“Please,” Helga said. “Can I get you anything? I just baked some muffins, and we have coffee and tea.”
“Coffee would be fine.”
“We only have instant.”
“Perfect,” Ava said.
She sat on one of the chairs and Sørensen sat on the couch facing her. He looked as if he wanted to ask her something, and she prepared herself. But he held back until his wife came back, with one cup of coffee. That’s interesting, Ava thought.
“What paintings did your client buy?” he asked as the cup was placed on the table in front of Ava.
“Some Skagen beach scenes,” she said.
“How much did he pay?”
“It varied.”
“How much?”
Ava couldn’t see how to avoid giving him a number. “On average, about five thousand,” she said.
“Kroner?”
“U.S. dollars.”
“That fucker!” he yelled, leaping to his feet.
Helga tugged at his arm, and for a second Ava was reminded of May Ling Wong trying to calm her husband. There was a strange kind of symmetry.
“He has never paid me more than five thousand kroner — that’s about a thousand dollars!” he said to his wife.
“I know, Jan, I know. Now sit down; you don’t want to scare this young woman.”
He collapsed onto the couch.
Ava looked at the paintings on the wall. How was she going to get from them to Fauvist art? Her decision to walk up the hill had been taken too lightly, she now thought. She normally liked to prepare for meetings, imagining different scenarios and how they would play out. This was all too ad hoc. And now she was stuck.
“Can I speak frankly?” she said, talking to Helga more than her husband.
“Of course,” the woman said.
“I’m going to buy some of Mr. Sørensen’s paintings — the ones hanging here on the wall, if you’ll sell them to me — but they aren’t the real reason I came to see you.”
They both looked at her, faces blank.
“What I really want to know is if Mr. Sørensen has ever dabbled in Fauvist art?”
She had seen photos of cattle getting hit between the eyes with a stun gun. Their reaction wasn’t any different.
Jan slumped back on the couch, his anger replaced by something else. Resignation? Fear? His wife gathered herself more quickly, a determined look settling across her face. “We don’t know what you’re talking about,” Helga said.
“I didn’t come here to cause any harm to you, your husband, or your family,” Ava said quickly. “I’m not the police and I don’t work for any legal authority. I’m just trying to help a client solve a riddle.”
“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” she repeated.
“About five years ago, someone sent a money transfer to your husband for twenty thousand dollars. I believe that money was payment for producing paintings in the style of various Fauvist artists, which were sold as genuine works for considerable amounts of money. Now, I don’t know if the money you received was a down payment or if there were additional payments, but I do know for certain that the payment was made. I have the bank records.”
Helga glanced at her husband. Ava knew the look: her mother had used it often enough with her. It said, I told you so.
“How many paintings did you do?” Ava asked.
Sørensen turned and stared at his wife. She was looking into the dining room. Ava could almost see her calculating how much Ava might actually know. Jan Sørensen wasn’t going to say anything, Ava knew. He was waiting for his wife to assume control.
“Mrs. Sørensen, the people I represent are very wealthy. They believe they’ve been cheated and they’ve hired me to find out what happened and to remedy it. They have no interest in pursuing you or your husband. In fact, they’re prepared to pay you if you’ll assist them in getting to the b
ottom of this. And not only will they pay you, I guarantee that your husband’s name will never be connected to this affair.”
“How much money are you talking about?” Jan said.
His wife shushed him as Ava leapt in. “Twenty thousand.”
“Kroner?”
“Dollars.”
Jan Sørensen started to speak but his wife shushed him again, and this time accompanied it with an elbow into his side. She stared at Ava, searching for a lie.
“We will pay you, and your husband has nothing to fear,” Ava repeated.
Helga Sorensen plucked at the folds of her dress.
She’s calculating, Ava thought. “Money in the bank and absolutely nothing to fear,” she said.
The woman looked at her husband. Ava knew he had been ready to say yes the moment she said twenty thousand. “My husband and I will need to discuss this,” Helga said deliberately. “That is not an admission of anything, you understand. We just need to discuss this.”
“Do you want me to step outside?”
“No, it will take longer than that. Where are you staying? In Tórshavn?”
“No, here, at the fisherman’s hotel.”
“Come by in the morning. The children leave for school at eight twenty. Anytime after that.”
“I’ll be here,” Ava said.
Helga Sørensen walked Ava to the door, opened it, and eased her onto the street without saying another word.
The rain was coming down hard now, and Ava was soaked when she got back to the hotel. Nina was still at the desk. “How did it go?” she asked.
“Better than I expected,” Ava said. “It was worth getting wet. Now I just want to jump into a hot shower.”
“I would do it quickly if I were you. The Russians will finish drinking soon and make a dash for the other bathroom and use up the hot water.”
“I’ll beat them to it, then,” Ava said, heading for her room.
She stripped, showered quickly, towelled herself dry, and climbed into bed in panties and a T-shirt. It had been a long day and now she was exhausted. She thought about calling Uncle and decided it was premature. She had met no-nonsense women like Helga before. She was confident she would be able to cut a deal with the Sørensens, but she wanted to have a dollar amount established and she wanted to have a name before phoning Hong Kong.
She was dozing, barely asleep, when she heard noises in the corridor. She thought about putting tissue in her ears when she heard Nina’s voice. At the same time her door handle turned back and forth. Someone was trying to get into her room.
She walked to the door, and as she did, the handle jerked more violently. She heard men’s voices in what sounded like Russian. She stepped back. Then Nina screamed, a mixture of fear and anger. Ava opened the door, took one step into the corridor, and walked almost directly into Nina.
Three men were to her immediate right, staring at Nina, who in turn was glaring at them and gripping an axe.
“We want to use your bathroom,” one of the men said to Ava in English.
“Get away,” Nina said.
The men were in a tight cluster. They began to separate, forming a semicircle around Nina and Ava. Ava thought they looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties. “Nina, back up. Stand next to me,” she said.
As Nina did, the men inched closer. “Please go away,” Ava said.
None of them were that big. One was close to six feet but wiry; he wore a greasy grey T-shirt. The other two were shorter and looked almost scrawny under their thick black woollen sweaters. Even from several feet away she could smell the odour of fish on them. They were grinning at each other and speaking Russian. She saw them looking at her panties. The taller one moved so close that Ava could smell the liquor on his breath.
“What are they saying?” Ava asked Nina.
“I don’t want to repeat it,” she said, gripping the axe tighter.
“Tell me.”
“They’re saying they have never had . . . never had Chinese cunt.”
“Ah.”
“I’m sorry I said that.”
“Don’t be. I expected it was something like that.”
“I won’t let anything happen,” Nina said, waving the axe.
Ava took another step forward so that she was in front of Nina. “Put that down. I want to look after this without worrying about getting accidently clipped.”
The three men were talking among themselves again. The one to her right laughed and reached out to grab her breast. Ava moved so quickly that his two friends froze as they tried to comprehend why he was on the ground, both hands holding his nose, which was spread across his face and spurting blood.
Before they could react, she took out the tall one, driving a phoenix-eye fist into the top of his belly, where nerve endings are grouped. He convulsed, gagging, as he fell to his knees.
The last one standing yelled something she couldn’t understand and then swung a fist wildly in her direction. She sidestepped him and hammered her middle knuckle into his ear. He collapsed, falling sideways, his head bouncing off the wall and then hitting the floor.
“Good God,” Nina said.
Ava stepped back into the doorway. “Those two will be okay in a while, but I probably broke that one’s nose. He’ll need a doctor.” She stood over the wiry one, the one who had spoken to her in English. “How did you enjoy your Chinese cunt?” she asked.
“Go back into the room,” Nina said. “I’ll get the captain and we’ll clean up this mess.”
Ava stepped into the room and shut the door, turning the lock. She had trouble getting back to sleep. There was lot of commotion in the corridor, but after about half an hour it quieted down. She was finally nodding off when she heard a gentle rap at the door.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
“Nina.”
Ava got up and opened the door. Nina stood there with a bottle of cognac in one hand and two glasses in the other. “My nerves are rattled. I need a drink.”
“I thought that was illegal here,” Ava said.
“The Russians are good for some things.”
“How are they taking this?”
“The captain was furious with those men,” Nina said, walking past Ava into the room. “He will discipline them in his own way. He is a good man. He has been coming here for at least ten years.”
Nina put the glasses on the dresser and filled them. Ava closed the door and turned the lock, then walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. Nina joined her. “Skol,” she said, taking a slug.
Ava took a small sip. Cognac wasn’t her kind of drink.
“Look at me,” Nina said, holding out a hand. “I’m still trembling.”
“It was a shock.”
“Not to you, evidently. Just how did you do that, take out those men?”
“I’ve been training in martial arts since I was a teenager. It was no big deal.”
“I’ve never seen martial arts like that.”
“It’s called bak mei. It’s a very old discipline.”
“And effective.”
“I probably overreacted,” Ava said. “I mean, the three of them were pretty drunk, and not exactly tough guys. But he shouldn’t have reached for my breast.”
“No, I think you were perfect,” Nina said, her cheeks slightly flushed. “I think you are perfect.”
She’s coming on to me, Ava thought. “Nina, I’m tired and I really need to go to sleep.”
“Oh, sure, I am sorry for disturbing you,” she said, now flustered as well as flushed. She rolled her glass between her palms, downed the last of the cognac, and looked awkwardly at Ava.
Ava found the awkwardness endearing. “Do you want to join me?” she asked.
Nina, looking down at her
glass, slowly nodded.
“Then take off your clothes, turn off the light, and get into bed.”
( 17 )
Ava wasn’t sure what time it was when she woke. Nina was perched on the side of the bed, already clothed. She leaned down to kiss Ava on the forehead. “I have to go. There’s a meeting in Tórshavn that I have to be at, which ends with a dinner tonight.”
“I may not be here when you get back. If things go well this morning, I’ll be leaving later today,” Ava said.
“I left my phone number, my email, and my home address on a piece of paper. It’s on the dresser. If you want to keep in touch —”
“I just might.”
Ava checked her watch as Nina closed the door. It was seven o’clock. She hauled herself out of bed and went over to the window. If the sun was up it was doing a good job of keeping out of sight; the sky was so grey it verged on black. She felt like a run — there was nothing like a run after good sex. Then she remembered that her running gear was out of action, and at almost that exact moment the sky opened and the rain began to pelt. It just wasn’t meant to be, she thought.
There was a kettle and two sachets of instant coffee in the room. She boiled the water while she showered and then sat on the bed with a towel wrapped around her and drank two cups in quick succession. She thought about the Sørensens. If there was going to be a deal with them, it would have to be papered, however roughly. If they were going to tell her who had orchestrated the fraud, she wanted it in writing, signed and sealed. She called the front desk and a man answered.
“Nina said I could use the hotel computer,” Ava said. “Can I come down in about fifteen minutes?”
“I don’t see why not. It’s in the back office here.”
She dressed, the second Steinum sweater going over the black Brooks Brothers shirt. Mimi teased her constantly about her almost monochromatic taste in clothes. If it wasn’t black, grey, white, or a muted blue or pink then it wasn’t for Ava. But as she looked at herself in the mirror, all lit up like a Christmas tree, she thought the bright colours suited her and the tight fit showed off her curves.
The man at the desk looked to be about the same age as Nina, and Ava had a passing thought that he might be her husband. He pointed to a door behind the desk and she walked into an office that was only large enough to hold a metal filing cabinet and desk, a photocopier, and a swivel chair. Ava figured four people might be able to squeeze into it if three of them were standing. The walls were bare and there were no pictures on the desk or the cabinet. She sat at the computer and began to type. Twenty minutes later, she printed three copies of a document that left spaces for the dates and names to be filled in.