Goodbye Again (8 page)

‘I told you – I’ll consider it. I can’t drop Elsa. I brought her over here. I’ll go pick her up now, and you can meet her later, make up your own mind.’

I wrapped up the picture, said goodbye, went downstairs and walked back to the boat. And then I saw how my father had got all those pictures safely over to Dublin. The Carrara marble he’d shipped from Italy over the years, out of the Carrara port, the finer polished stuff protected in big wooden crates, landed at the Dublin docks, and never opened until they’d been trucked out to his marble works in the suburbs. He’d hidden the paintings in those unopened crates.

The jigsaw was beginning to fit, and the more the pieces came together the more I wondered about Elsa, the more I had doubts about Harry. He didn’t want me to continue with my enquiries about the Nazi art-looting business, was willing to pay me off to see that I didn’t – and had taken against Elsa. Why? Maybe because
he’d been involved in a bit of art looting himself after the war.

Well, perhaps I was crazy, with all these intimations and theories. A dictatorial, difficult, penniless piss-artist – beyond the endurance of the best of women. A real loser. I could chuck it all, turn round, go back to Harry with the picture, let him sell it, and live happily ever after. But I couldn’t do this, because I saw now what was ‘meant’ in all my intimations and theories. My whole life was at stake, as were the lives of my father and mother, and of Katie – and now it seemed of Elsa and Harry as well. They’d all been hiding something. That was the real reason I couldn’t take the money and run, because if I didn’t prove them all liars and deceivers I’d certainly be a loser. Deception was the great leveller for them all, but it wasn’t my style.

SIX

Elsa’s Story

Coming up from the saloon to the wheelhouse, the sun in my eyes, I didn’t see him at first. He was standing by the wheel, gun in hand, waiting for me. ‘Don’t shout.’ The almost apologetic, American voice I remembered in my father’s house in Dublin. Then, with sudden venom, ‘We have to talk.’

It was the same man, in his thirties. You could see this in the tired skin, but at a glance he looked younger. The air of an eternal,
book-swamped
student, dazzled by ideas beyond his reach. A narrow, undernourished face, granny glasses, lank dark dandruffy hair, tired blue eyes, gazing through me as if at some ever-receding holy grail. Baggy white tracksuit bottoms, T-shirt and trainers all at least a size too big for him, so that the movement of his stick-like body and spindly legs inside the swathes of billowy material made him look grotesque. A thin man desperately trying to fill out a fat one. Everything was at odds, didn’t match. He was piteous – and dangerous.

‘It seems –’ He hesitated, an actor unsure of his lines. ‘Seems you thought you could give us the slip, coming over here on his boat like that.’ I didn’t reply. ‘Didn’t you?’ He threatened me with the gun.

‘It wasn’t my idea. It was his. His boat.’

‘Don’t try to get away from us again. We’ll find you … we have people everywhere. We’re watching him right now. His bags and things. Where are they? I don’t have much time.’

‘Down in his cabin, beyond the saloon.’

He gestured me down the stairs, following me through the saloon and into Ben’s cabin. He found his bag, started to go through it quickly. He came on a cloth-bound book, opened it, flicking through the pages. Some sort of journal, written in a scrawled hand, and a scrapbook, with dried leaves and wild flowers stuck between the pages. He stopped at a page. ‘Well, at least you’ve got him that way. Sleeping with him already.’

I turned on him. ‘I haven’t been sleeping with him.’

He showed me the drawing. ‘How did he get to draw you naked in bed like this then?’ I saw the sheet of white paper, tipped into the scrapbook, a pen and ink drawing. It was me. I was mystified. The drawing showed me sleeping, naked, head on a pillow, my face in half-profile.

My spine prickled. It wasn’t me. This was another woman, who looked just like me. Of course – it must have been Ben’s dead
girlfriend
, Katie. It was her scrapbook, and Ben’s drawing of her. I was looking at my double. A dead woman. I turned the pages casually while he carried on looking through the cabin, opening drawers, cupboards. I read a bit of the journal, near the end. ‘I want to stop his pain, and mine, and the only way to do that is to stop “us”.’

Why hadn’t Ben told me Katie looked just like me? What the hell was he up to? I needed to know, and I needed some hard evidence, to confront him with. So I needed this drawing. When the guy wasn’t looking I put it in my bag.

The man found nothing, or nothing he was looking for. ‘I don’t have time.’ He turned, frustrated, mopping his brow in the heat. Then he smiled. ‘He still has the painting, and that’s what really counts.’

‘Why don’t you just take it off him then?’

‘We may have to take it off him, but we want him to do the leg work on this job, lead us to the other paintings. We don’t exist. Remember that. We – and you – we’re here to follow him. So don’t try to give us the slip again.’ He was about to leave, then he turned. ‘Maybe you’ve told him all about us and everything else already?’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Well, don’t. If he finds out we’ll kill you, but as long as he fancies you – well, that’ll make things easier for all of us.’ He came towards me. ‘Don’t try to cut us out again. Remember what we did with your father in Dublin, when he wouldn’t cooperate.’

‘Thank God he died before …’

‘No, you’re wrong there. That was a misfortune – for both of you. My friends were overzealous. If your father had lived a bit longer he would have told us where the rest of those paintings are hidden, and you wouldn’t have been involved, but your father also knew that Ben Contini’s father had told his son where the rest of the paintings were hidden before he died last year – we got that out of Bergen at least.’ He gazed at me. ‘So the trouble is, like I said, this Ben Contini – he knows where the paintings are hidden as well. He’s going after them now, over here, which is why we have to keep tabs on him.’ The man was sweating. He looked over the canal basin, the line of boats on either side shimmering in the heat. He tapped the wheel. ‘So don’t think you can disappear again. I have to be off. You get back with Contini. He’s with his American friend Broughton now. And keep your mouth shut about us. We’re everywhere, all around you, and remember what I told you about Contini. Tell him about us, and we’ll get you. Get on the wrong side of him, and he’ll kill you.’

He left. I called Harry’s number from a nearby phone box, as I’d arranged with Ben. I got through to Harry, then to Ben. Ben said he’d pick me up at the boat in half an hour. He was
enthusiastic
. ‘We’ll have lunch. Lunch in summer, in Paris! What better?’ I liked him again. Ben a killer? Surely not. The little bastard was just trying to frighten me. I was still going to tell Ben everything, so I decided I might as well take the whole journal with me, not just the drawing.

Ben picked me up at the boat half an hour later and we walked down towards the river. He had the Modigliani in its
bubble-wrapped
parcel under his arm. He was impatient, on a high, as if he’d been drinking, his eyes bright and daring, as I’d remembered them at the funeral party in Dublin.

‘Let’s go straight to the Louvre,’ he said, ‘see if we can get any information on the picture. Then there’s a small restaurant I always go to here, La Tourelle, just off the Boul Mich.’

We arrived at the Louvre and waited in the basement entrance under the glass pyramid in the courtyard. Finally we got to see an archivist of French twentieth-century paintings. A languid young man, tall, rather foppish, in a smart linen summer suit. He had a dismissive air that went with his tailoring until he saw the painting and examined it closely. Then he became animated, spoke as if it belonged to the Louvre and we’d stolen it. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘A legacy,’ Ben told him shortly. ‘It’s genuine, isn’t it?’

‘Oh yes, it’s a Modigliani. That winter of 1916 and 17, when he painted so many wonderful nudes.’

‘Any idea who she might be, or where the painting comes from?’

‘No. I’ve never seen this painting before, or heard of it.’ He looked at Ben doubtfully again.

‘Modi gave away many of his paintings,’ Ben said, ‘to girls, to café and restaurant proprietors, for drink and food. Could be one of those.’

‘It could, and most he gave away like that were lost or destroyed afterwards. This one’s survived – that’s what makes it interesting. Astonishing.’ Again the doubtful look.

‘You have my name and address in Dublin – it belongs to me.’ Ben was almost aggressive now. ‘I wouldn’t be here otherwise if it didn’t.’

‘Monsieur, I don’t doubt you. It’s just a surprise. Because you are the second person today to make such enquiries about the
provenance
of a lost Modigliani masterpiece.’

‘I don’t follow?’

‘A man came to see me this morning asked if I knew anything about an unknown Modigliani nude, which he said might have ended up in Dublin after the war. I knew nothing of this, but I told him he might consult Monsieur Broughton here, the American expert on Modigliani’s work.’

‘What did this man look like?’

‘Small, rather fat, English: and here you are a few hours later with the very picture he might have been referring to. You must forgive me if I seem surprised.’ He looked at Ben gravely.

‘Well, there’s no connection. This is my painting and I can prove it.’

‘Of course. Just coincidence.’ A graver look.

‘I’ve seen Monsieur Broughton already, a friend of mine. He knows nothing about it. It there anyone else in Paris who might be able to identify it? Maybe someone still living, from the old days?’

‘Yes, the other man asked me the same question. I told him – Monsieur Martin-Beaumont. He was a young assistant to Madame Weill and worked in her gallery during the Great War. Modigliani had his first and only exhibition there, in 1917.’

‘Is this man still alive?’

‘Yes, he’s an old man.’

‘Can you give me his address?’ The archivist was doubtful again.
‘Look, I’ve given you my name and address. We’re on my boat here, at the Port de Plaisance, the
Sorrento
. You can check it all out. So you needn’t worry. I’m kosher.’

The archivist seemed reassured. He gave Ben Martin-Beaumont’s address. When we got out Ben whispered urgently. ‘Come on, let’s go round and see Martin-Beaumont straightaway. He’s only just over the river from here.’

Martin-Beaumont lived on the left bank, the Rue-des-Saint-Pères, an eighteenth-century
hôtel privé
, now converted into flats. We went through an arched gateway, across a courtyard, towards another arched doorway. A closed-circuit TV camera gazed down at us, with a coded entry system. We rang the concierge’s bell. A young Algerian let us into the hallway. He called Martin-Beaumont on an intercom. No reply.

‘Did he go out?’

‘No, he’s in. He had two people come to see him an hour ago. He’s fairly deaf. May not have heard the buzzer.’

‘Do you mind if we go upstairs? It’s rather important. I have this picture for him to look at.’

‘Go ahead. First floor, apartment two, end of the corridor.’

We walked upstairs. The corridor was silent. The apartment door was at the end, and the door ajar. Ben rang the bell. No answer. He pushed the door open slowly. ‘Monsieur Martin-Beaumont?’ No reply. Pushed it further. A dark hallway. Ben went ahead, towards an open door at the end. I followed. The place was airless, with a faint, tart smell, like lime juice. Ben was in the sitting room now. I was right behind. A big room, comfortable, good furniture, Persian carpets, pictures all round the walls. ‘Monsieur Martin-Beaumont?’

There was no sign of the old man. Then we came on him, lying behind the sofa. I thought he was asleep, he looked so comfortable, stretched out on the carpet. He was dead, his tie round his neck, but not in the right place. Tight round his throat. He’d been strangled.

‘Christ!’ Ben was bending over him, holding his pulse, then touching his brow. ‘Still warm. Not long ago.’

‘Who? Who could have …?’

‘We could have. In fact it was those two men here an hour ago who must have killed him. One of them was a man called O’Higgins, I bet. You smell the lime in the air?’ I nodded. ‘Well, O’Higgins is an antiques dealer in Dublin I sold some furniture to last week, and he was doused in some lime aftershave lotion when he came to see me. Upstairs, in a cabinet of my father’s, he saw a list my father had made of pictures that included the Modi nude. So he came over to Paris to find out more about the painting, first from that archivist in the Louvre who told him about Martin-Beaumont, and then on here. But two of them came up here, the concierge said. The other guy was a hit man. O’Higgins must have become involved with some mob in the stolen art business, to help him find the Modi and all those other masterpieces in my father’s inventory. Just like us, he found out that Martin-Beaumont might give them some information on the painting, and put them on the right trail, but the old man failed to cooperate. In any case it’ll mean the police – a lot of questions. Have to get out of here. Take it slowly, we’ll be on that closed-circuit TV on the way out.’

Downstairs Ben thanked the concierge. ‘Yes, we saw the old man. A bit deaf. He didn’t hear the bell when you called him.’

The concierge nodded. ‘I have a parcel for him, just arrived. Looks like another painting. I’ll take it up to him.’

We let ourselves out and walked casually through the
courtyard
, and once out on the street, we walked fast.

‘Once the concierge gets upstairs and finds the body the police will be right over.’ We turned onto the quay. ‘Come on, we best go see Harry. A safe house.’