Gauguin Connection, The (2 page)

“And I assume that identity theft and credit card fraud are still not the biggest of your concerns.”

“You assume correctly.” Manny looked at Phillip. “She’s really bright, this one.”

“Yes, I’m bright. So why are you here? Why am I here? I would much rather be in my viewing room.” I raised my chin a fraction and looked at Phillip. “I did not appreciate the way I was summoned here.”

Manny gave a snort of laughter. The vexed look Phillip gave him sobered him instantly. “The murderer’s weapon is one of the reasons we are here. The gun he shot the girl and himself with was stolen from a Eurocorps cache.”

I lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “That is cause for an internal investigation. By Eurocorps. Why is the EDA involved?”

“I will explain that later.” A frown marred Manny’s tired face and he rubbed his neck a few times. “Eurocorps does have an ongoing investigation into the weapons theft.”

“And you are stressed about this investigation. Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“No. What is obvious is that you don’t feel very confident about the weapons theft investigation. Using only a limited amount of deductive powers, I dare to conclude that there is an internal problem. You”—I pointed at Manny and narrowed my eyes—“suspect someone in either your agency or in Eurocorps. Most likely someone in a very high position.”

Manny stared at me with shock clearly written on his face.

“I told you she was good.” Phillip’s voice held a hint of pride.

“Eurocorps didn’t even know that the weapon was stolen until the local police entered the murder weapon’s serial number into the system. It set off an alarm, which led to the discovery that a large number of weapons are not where they’re supposed to be.” He cleared his throat. “Even worse, Eurocorps doesn’t even know when exactly these weapons disappeared.”

“They don’t keep track of what they have in their warehouses?”

“Of course they do.” His angry answer bounced off the conference room’s walls. For a moment Manny focussed on a painting on the opposite side of the room. He continued in a more modulated tone. “It would seem that someone ordered the stock-take to be postponed in that specific warehouse.”

“And the only person with the authority to do so would be someone much higher up the chain of command.” I added.

“Exactly. It’s been a very long time since the last check. That means we can only hope that these are the only weapons that were taken.” His answer tapered off as if he regretted sharing this much information.

“I assume that you also don’t know if they were taken all at once or systematically over time.” I accepted Manny’s squinted eyes as an affirmative, albeit angry, answer. I turned to Phillip. “This man does not trust me. And yet both of you want me to get involved in this case in a manner that has not been clearly stated to me.”

“Maybe she’s right.” Manny turned his torso away from me toward Phillip. I was hard pushed to not laugh at the unconscious, yet blatant, display of dislike. “Maybe she should not be involved. This is after all hugely sensitive information that requires a high level of security clearance.”

“Who else are you going to ask?” A coldness sharpened Phillip’s question.

Unfortunately, I was familiar with that tone. Phillip didn’t know he used it when he ran out of patience and was about to lay down the law. A law that was expected to be followed unchallenged. One I usually challenged.

“Well—”

“There is no one else, Manny,” interrupted Phillip. “You came to me as a last resort. Don’t think for one minute that I feel flattered that you are here. You are desperate and you have nowhere else to go. You came here because you know that I can be trusted, right?”

Manny nodded, his lips sucked in, totally disappearing from his face.

“If you trust me, you should trust my judgement. I say Genevieve is the only person for this job and that should be enough for you.”

A loaded silence hung in the conference room. It was only through years of training and experience that I knew to wait patiently for the outcome. I used this time to evaluate Manny’s body language and read his internal struggle as clearly as if it were written on a billboard. I knew even before Manny spoke that he was going to accept my help. It was in his body language. Logic also dictated that this was his best option. Yet his visible discomfort with me was reason enough for him to hesitate. Fair enough.

“Fine,” he said with an inelegant sigh. “Tell her the rest.”

The quick appearance of Phillip’s tongue between his lips made me smile. My boss was pleased with himself for winning this round. He turned to me and frowned at my anomalous friendliness. “What?”

“I’m just thinking—”

“Never mind, I don’t want to know.” Most times when he asked he got annoyed with my answers. “Back to the case.”

“I haven’t agreed to be part of this.” I still felt shaken from the photo and my episode. If this case was going to bring back involuntary behaviours that hadn’t been part of my life for more years than I cared to remember, I wasn’t interested.

“Not you too. Just listen to the rest and then you can make a decision. The two of you are worse than dealing with spoiled trust-fund babies. There wasn’t much of an investigation into the murder, since the murderer was in the morgue with his victim. One detective, though, was curious about what the Russian was looking for when he was searching the victim and decided to go through the girl’s belongings with a fine-tooth comb.”

“Why would a comb help?”

“Genevieve,” Phillip answered in the slow voice he used when he was trying to stay patient with my inexhaustible questions, “it is just a manner of speaking. He searched her belongings very thoroughly.”

“He found something,” I stated. The excited lift in Phillip’s voice had been my cue. Why couldn’t people just get to the point? The need people had for a dramatic build-up was a source of great frustration to me.

“A strip from a canvas was carefully sewn into the hem of her coat.”

“What canvas?”

“That’s not of importance now.”

“I disagree.”

Phillip closed his eyes for the time it took him to take a calming breath. “It is a strip cut from the right-hand side of the Still Life, The White Bowl.”

“Which artist?”

“Paul Gauguin.”

My mind was racing. The moment all the pieces fell into place I glared at Phillip. “That piece is insured by us, by Rousseau & Rousseau.”

“Yes, we insured that artwork seven years ago for a client who is extremely private about his art collection. Why he never reported it stolen I would really like to find out.”

“Why weren’t you going to tell me about this?”

“I was going to tell you about this once Manny left.”

“Oh.” I suddenly understood and nodded towards the other man who was quietly assessing us. “You didn’t want him to think that you were more interested in the artwork than in helping him solve his insider problem.”

The moment the
procerus
muscles between Phillip’s eyes pulled both his eyebrows lower and together, I knew I should’ve held my tongue. Manny’s laughter saved me from another sermon on censoring myself. I liked him a little bit more.

“She’s got you there, old friend.” For the first time since I had laid eyes on him, Manny’s facial muscles relaxed. “I don’t blame you for your concern. And just to set the record straight, I did not come to you as a last resort. When that fragment led me to you, I considered it to be a godsend. I know that you have an incredible fraud detection department and that your investigators can teach most law enforcement agencies a few things.”

“How did this land on your desk, Manny?”

I silently applauded Phillip for his question and waited eagerly for the answer. Manny looked like he was arguing with himself. We waited. His brow smoothed as he straightened his shoulders.

“The commander of the Multinational Command Support Brigade at Eurocorps headquarters is a long-time friend of mine. We served together in an investigation division for a few years. I was visiting him and his wife when he got the call about the weapon used in the murder. Eurocorps has been co-operating with the Strasbourg police, but they have gotten nowhere in four weeks. He phoned me last week and asked if I knew an outsider who could help.”

“Why an outsider?” Against my will I was becoming intrigued.

“The storage of light weapons for Eurocorps headquarters’ personnel is also under my friend’s command. That is why he was contacted when the police connected the weapon to Eurocorps. He started looking into it and that’s when he discovered the disappearance of weapons. He also discovered that the inventory had been tampered with. It seemed to have been done at random in the last five years. That is when he first suspected someone powerful enough to interfere with our stock-taking system. It’s the only explanation for how it had gone undetected for such a long time. The system is highly secured, accessed by a select few.” He sighed heavily. “Eurocorps just recovered from a scandal three years ago. He didn’t want to draw any attention to a suspicion that might come to nothing.”

“What suspicion is that?”

“Nothing good. The involvement of a Russian murderer, an artwork and a Eurocorps weapon do not point to anything good. Some years ago a clerk working in the budget and finance department of Eurocorps noticed irregularities in the books. He went to the Deputy Chief of Staff Training and Resources and reported what he had seen. Immediately he was escorted from the building and subsequently fired for insubordination. What the deputy didn’t know was that the clerk had copied all the files for himself. He sent them to three major news agencies, pointing the finger at the deputy and a few enthusiastic helpers. This caused an in-depth investigation, proving that the deputy had been siphoning funds from Eurocorps for years.”

“Greed, one of man’s greatest weaknesses.” Humans disgusted me.

Manny nodded. “By the time this came out into the open, it was four years after the deputy chief had left and the EDA was only a year old. It took Eurocorps three years of layoffs and rigorous PR to recover some of the ground it had lost in the public eye. It was shocking how many soldiers had allowed greed to destroy their morals. Leon transferred from the EDA to Eurocorps and was instrumental in rebuilding its reputation.”

“Who’s Leon?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s the Deputy Chief of Staff for Training and Resources at Eurocorps. Major-General Leon Hofmann.”

This was interesting, but I was getting impatient. “The suspicion?”

“When Leon started looking into this weapons theft, he discovered something else. Every time there had been any tampering, at that same period there was a joint EDA-Eurocorps meeting or conference here in Strasbourg. The coincidence of the stock-take manipulation at the same time as EDA-Eurocorps meetings makes both of us wonder if there are insiders on both sides.”

“And if an investigation was to start at one of the agencies, the other might get wind of it.”

“Hence the need for an outsider.” Manny was the only other person, aside from myself, whom I had ever heard use the word ‘hence’. I liked him a fraction more. He cleared his throat and faced Phillip. “I trust you with this.”

Phillip waved away the sentiment. “Are you sure about an insider in your office?”

“Unfortunately yes. The Head agrees with me about this.”

“Who knows that you’re asking for our assistance?” Phillip asked.

“Only Sarah Crichton, the Head of the EDA, Frederique Dutoit, our Chief Executive and Leon. To quote the Chief, ‘I want this annoying case to close as soon as possible’.”

“As soon as possible or as thoroughly as possible?” I had experience enough to know that those two concepts were more often than not worlds apart.

“The Chief wants it closed as soon as possible.”

“And you?” I asked.

Manny took a moment to answer. “I want this bastard caught and locked up for a long time. I despise people who use their positions of power to further their own agendas. Especially when their agendas lead to this.” He pushed the closed folders far away from him. His anger and earlier displeasure at the whole situation won him points in my book. It was indeed a very interesting case and my curiosity was piqued. For a few moments all three of us contemplated the situation.

“Thank you for trusting me with this.” I knew how difficult it could be for people to trust and also knew that I should be honoured by Manny’s trust. Even when it was begrudging. “I need time.”

“You what?” Manny’s eyebrows drew closer and the corners of his mouth pulled down. He looked at Phillip. “She what?”

“Genevieve—”

I got up. “It was interesting to meet you, Colonel Millard.”

I picked up the sheets of handwritten music, slung my handbag over my shoulder and walked out of the conference room. I needed the safety of my viewing room filled with monitors where I could control the speed and frequency of the behaviour of the people on the screens. In the conference room, human behaviour was all too real. I preferred keeping it confined inside the monitors. In real life, people’s behaviour disconcerted me far too much and far too often.

The expensive carpets in the corridor muted the staccato of my medium-sized heels and I was glad that the other office staff seldom frequented this corridor. The last thing I wanted was to produce a social smile and force myself to practice small talk. I needed a moment alone. At least I was honest enough with myself to acknowledge that my behaviour at this moment was pure avoidance. I was running away.