Art of Murder (51 page)

Miss Wood finished studying the works and swung her tiny bag from side to side as she walked round the room. She detested French humanist art in all its forms: from Corbett's 'sincerism' to the 'democratism' of Gerard Garcet and the 'absolute liberalism' of

Jacqueline Treviso. Works that asked permission to go to the bathroom or simply went without asking, outdoor pieces which ran for cover when it started raining, paintings which haggled over how many hours they should work, and even the poses they should adopt, who butted in to your conversations with other people, who had the right to complain if they were upset about something or to share your food if they saw you eating something they fancied. April Wood definitely preferred pure hyperdramatism.

She heard a noise and turned round. Hirum Oslo was coming up the garden path, limping and leaning on his stick. He was wearing cream-coloured trousers and jersey, with a red Arrows shirt. He was a tall, good-looking man. His dark skin seemed at odds with pronounced Anglo-Saxon features inherited from his father. He had short black hair, brushed back off his forehead, where his eyebrows were thick and expressive. Wood found him the same as ever, perhaps a little thinner, with large sad eyes that he got from his Indian mother. She knew he was forty-five, but he looked more like fifty. He was a concerned man, alert to everything going on around him, anxious to find someone with problems to whom he could lend a helping hand. Miss Wood thought it was this outpouring of solidarity that aged him: it was as if part of his good looks had been rubbed off on others.

She walked to the glass doors to greet him. Oslo smiled at her, but first of all stopped to have a word with the Chalboux work.

'Cristine, you can take a rest whenever you like,' he said to her in French.

'Thank you,' the painting smiled, nodding her head. It was only then that Oslo turned to greet Miss Wood. 'Good afternoon, April.'

'Good afternoon, Hirum. Could we talk without the works of art?'

'Of course, let's go to my office.'

His office was not in the house but at the bottom of the garden. Oslo liked to work surrounded by nature. April Wood could see he was still a keen gardener: he grew rare plants and identified each of them with labels as though they were works of art. As he let Miss Wood pass in front of him in a narrow part flanked by tall cactuses, Oslo said to her:

'You look very attractive.'

She smiled without replying. Perhaps to avoid the silence, he went on quickly:

'The withdrawal of Van Tysch's works in Europe has nothing to do with Restoration, does it? But if I'm not mistaken, it has to do with your presence here today?'

'You're not mistaken.'

Because of his limp, Oslo made slow progress, but Miss Wood had no problem keeping in step with him. She seemed to have all the time in the world. The shadows deepened as they reached the coolness of a clump of oaks. A murmur of water could be heard somewhere in the distance.

'How was your journey? Was it easy to find my lair?'

'Yes, I took a plane to Plymouth and rented a car there. Your directions were spot on.'

'That depends on the person,' Oslo said with a smile. 'Some dolts manage to get lost coming out of Two Bridges. Recently I had a visit from one of those artists who want to put music in their works. The poor man was going round and round in circles for two hours.'

'I see you've finally found the perfect refuge: a lonely spot in the middle of nature.'

Oslo was not sure whether or not April Wood's comment was entirely well meant, but he smiled all the same.

'It's much pleasanter than London, of course. And the weather is good. Today though it's been cloudy since dawn. If it rains, I'll put the outdoor pieces inside. I never leave them out in the rain. Oh, and by the way,' - Wood noticed an odd change in his voice -'You're going to get a surprise
...'

They had reached the spot where the sound of water was coming from. It was an artificial pond. In the centre stood an outdoor work of art.

After a pause during which Oslo tried in vain to guess what Miss Wood was feeling, he said:

It's by Debbie Richards. I really think she is a great portraitist. She used a photo of you. Does it bother you?'

The girl was standing on a small platform. The bobbed hair was exactly right, and the Ray-Ban glasses were very similar to the ones she wore, as was the green suit and miniskirt. There was one important difference (Wood could not help noticing it): the naked legs had been corrected and lengthened. They were long and shapely, much more attractive than hers. But it's obvious, painters always make you look more beautiful, she thought, cynically.

The portrait stood motionless in the pose it had been placed in. Behind it was a wall of natural stone, and on its right a small waterfall cascaded. Who could the girl be who looked so like her? Or was it all thanks to cerublastyne?

‘I
thought you didn't like portraits that used ceru,' she commented after a while.

Oslo laughed briefly.

'You're right, I don't. But in this case it was essential for the portrait to look like the original. I've had it for a year now. Are you annoyed I commissioned a portrait of you?' He asked, looking at her anxiously.

'No.'

Then we won't mention it any more. I don't want to make you waste time.'

His office was in a glass summerhouse. Unlike the living room up at the house, it was a jumble of magazines, computers and books piled in unsteady columns. Oslo insisted on clearing his desk a little, and Miss Wood let him do so without a word. Without knowing why exactly, she felt ill at ease. Nothing about her revealed this fact, except that the knuckles on the hand gripping her bag were white.

It had been a low blow, a real low blow. She would never have thought that Oslo still wanted to remember her, least of all in this romantic way. It was absurd, meaningless. She and Hirum had not been seeing each other for years. Of course, they heard news of each other, particularly her of him. Ever since Hirum Oslo had abandoned the Foundation and become the guru of the natural-humanist movement, almost every art magazine mentioned him, either to praise or denigrate him. At that very moment, Oslo was putting away a well-worn copy of his latest book,
Humanism in HD Art,
which Wood had read. During her plane journey she had planned out their meeting, and had decided to comment on some passages from the book - that way they could avoid talking about the past, she thought. But the past was there, in every inch of the office, and no conversation could avoid it. And as if that were not enough, there was that unexpected portrait by Debbie Richards. April Wood turned her head to look out across the garden. She caught sight of it immediately. 'He's placed it so he can see it from his chair while he's working.'

Oslo finished tidying up, and turned to face the pale, slender figure in dark glasses. Is she annoyed? he wondered. She never shows her feelings. You never know what's really going on inside. He decided he could not care less if she were annoyed. She was the last person to reproach him for his memories.

'Sit down. Would you like a drink?'

'No, thanks.'

'I'm preparing my little talk for next week. There's going to be a big retrospective of the French open-air school. There are papers, round tables. I'm also responsible for the conservation of thirty of the works, among them ten underage ones. I'm trying to arrange for the minors to be on show for less time and to have more substitutes. And I still haven't received the site inspection reports. It's in the Bois de Boulogne, but I need to know exactly where. Well
...'

He gestured as though to excuse himself for talking about his own problems. There was a pause. Oslo, who was trying to avoid an embarrassing silence, was relieved when Miss Wood began to speak.

'You're doing well as Chalboux's adviser, I see.'

'I can't complain. French natural-humanism started modestly, but now it's fashionable all over Europe. Here in England we're still reluctant to import it, because of Rayback's influence. And because we tend not to worry so much about other people. But some English artists are already changing their attitude, and have joined the humanist tendency. They've suddenly discovered they can produce great works of art and still respect human beings. In general though it's very difficult here.'

Oslo talked in his usual even tone, but April Wood could detect the emotion behind it. She knew it was something close to his heart.

A moment later, his features relaxed.

'Well, I suppose you haven't come all the way from London to learn about my menial responsibilities. Tell me about you, April.'

April Wood began reluctantly, but eventually spoke much more than she had intended. She began with a few details about her private life. Her father was in his final hours, she told him, and they had phoned her urgently from the hospital to tell her death could come at any moment. She was very busy in Amsterdam but had felt obliged - that was the word she used, 'obliged' - to come to London for a few days, in case anything happened. Yet she was not wasting her time. From her London home she had been able to send faxes and emails, and held lengthy talks with specialists all over the world, as well as with her own team. And she had decided finally to ask Oslo for his help. But she preferred to come and see me, he thought with a sudden rush of emotion.

'We're in crisis, Hirum,' Miss Wood said. 'And time is running out.'

'I'll do whatever I can to help you. Tell me what's happening.'

In less than five minutes, Miss Wood explained the situation to him. She did not go into all the details, but left them to his imagination. Nor did she tell him the titles of the works that had been destroyed. Oslo listened in silence. When she had finished, he asked anxiously:

'What works were they, April?'

Wood looked at him for a while before replying.

'Hirum, what I'm going to tell you is absolutely confidential, as I'm sure you understand. Apart from a small group we've called the "crisis cabinet", nobody knows anything, not even the insurance companies. We're preparing our ground.'

Oslo nodded, his black, sad eyes wide with concern. Miss Wood told him the title of the two works, and there was silence again. The muffled sound of the waterfall in the garden could be heard through the glass windows. Oslo was staring down at the floor. Eventually he said:

'My God
...
that poor child
...
that little girl
..
. I'm not so sorry for those two criminals, but that poor little girl.
..'

Monsters
was just as valuable, if not more so, than
Deflow
ering,
but Miss Wood was well aware of Oslo's ideas. She had not come to discuss them.

'Annek Hollech . . .' Oslo said. 'I last talked to her a couple of years ago. She was charming, but she felt completely lost in that terrible world of human works of art. It wasn't just that lunatic who killed her. We all contributed to her murder.' He turned to face Wood. 'Who? Who can be doing this? And why?'

'That's what I want you to help me find out. You're considered one of the most important specialists in the life and work of Bruno van Tysch. I want you to tell me names and motives. Who could it be, Hirum? I don't mean the person destroying the canvases, but the one who is paying for their destruction. Think of a machine. A machine programmed to annihilate the Maestro's most important creations. Who would have the motive to programme a machine like that?'

'Who do you think it could be?'

'Someone who hates him enough to want to do him as much harm as possible.'

Hirum Oslo leaned back in his chair, blinking.

'Everyone who has ever met Van Tysch both loves and loathes him. Van Tysch succeeds in producing masterpieces precisely because he creates that kind of contradiction in people. You know the main reason why I left him was because I found out how cruel his working methods were. "Hirum," he used to say, "if I treat the canvases as people, I'll never make works of art out of them.'"

Who am I telling this to, Oslo thought. Look at her sitting there, her face sculpted in marble. My God, I reckon the only person who has ever managed to really move her has been Bruno van Tysch.

'It's true that life hasn't helped him to be any different. His father, Maurits van Tysch, was probably even worse. Did you know he collaborated with the Nazis in Amsterdam?
...'

‘I
heard something to that effect.'

'He sold his fellow countrymen, Dutch Jews; he handed them over to the Gestapo. But he was clever about it; he made sure there were hardly any witnesses left. So nothing could ever be proved against him. He knew how to swim with the current.