The Good Thief's Guide to Paris (16 page)

Was it Farmer who’d left me the message on my laptop, I wondered? Had he been in my apartment when Catherine was killed? If it wasn’t him, and I asked him about the message, would that just throw up more complications?

“How do I contact you?” I asked, as we neared the top of the steps.

Farmer reached inside his jacket and removed a small business card. It was ivory coloured, with gold embossed text. The stock was thick and high-quality.

Nathan Farmer
, the card read.
Confidential Services
. Beneath Farmer’s name was a telephone number.

“I have an answering service,” he told me. “You may call me at any time.”

“I’ll see what I can come up with.”

“Please do,” he said, and offered me his hand. “My car is waiting for me,” he added, motioning over my shoulder to where a chauffeur-driven Jaguar had been parked. The car was steel grey, a mirror for the sky.

I felt my forehead crinkle. “But how did you . . .”

He smiled, waving my confusion aside. “Two days Mr Howard.”

He began to walk off, leaving me to stare down at the business card in my hands. I pressed one of the corners into the flesh of my fingertip, then looked up and ran after him.

“Final question,” I said, grabbing his bicep in a way he clearly didn’t appreciate. “Are you for real? Forgive me for asking, but I met a guy a little like you not so long ago. He turned out to be working a con.”

“Ah, yes – you did indeed. I read your little book, you see. Quite the escapade.” He dusted down his arm and straightened his tie. “But I’m afraid this is wholly different, Mr Howard. And I am, as you put it, quite real.”

This time, when he turned, I let him go. His uniformed driver had stepped out of the Jaguar and opened the rear door for him. I watched Farmer ease into the supple leather interior and sit with utter poise while the chauffeur closed his door. Farmer didn’t give me a second glance as he was driven away.

TWENTY

I found my way to the Arc de Triomphe in something of a daze, roused only by the buzz of the Renaults and Citroëns swarming around the twelve-lane roundabout. I’d become entirely caught up in myself, preoccupied with the onset of events. I’d gone to the Champ de Mars to find answers and had come away with yet more questions. Who did Nathan Farmer represent? What did the shadowy people behind him want with the documents hidden in the painting? Was he really capable of manipulating the police in the way he’d suggested?

I simply didn’t know and the frustration was grinding away at me. I could ignore the threat he posed, I guessed, though it didn’t strike me as an altogether sensible approach. I didn’t want to leave Pierre dangling for one thing – and not just because of the number of crimes he could connect me to. I owed him something, a form of loyalty I couldn’t readily explain, and I only hoped he felt the same way about me. From what Nathan Farmer had said, I got the impression Pierre hadn’t told them a great deal just yet, though I had no way of knowing for certain.

More pressing still was the murder investigation I’d become connected to and that was swiftly gathering pace. The painting was tied into it, that much was obvious, and even without the added motivation Farmer had applied, it was something I needed to be wary of. The French police might be many things but I was yet to find out if they were lateral thinkers. If not, they’d stick to the most obvious explanation for the crime. The owner of the apartment where the body had been found, the one who’d gone missing, had to be their killer.

Feeling jaded and luckless, I headed down and then through a dank pedestrian underpass that transported me to the beginning of the Champs-Élysées. I checked my watch. There was still more than an hour until I was due to meet Victoria. I decided to take a stroll along the wide boulevard in the hope the exercise might trigger something inside my brain that, in my more optimistic moments, might be called lucidity.

Who knew if it worked? I didn’t, for one, because I zoned out of my surroundings entirely and only came to again when I nearly stepped off a curb at the Place de la Concorde in front of a tour coach. The driver of the coach leaned on his horn, making me jump backwards and then stand blinking for a moment, recomposing myself and doing my best not to look too embarrassed. I put my hand to my forehead and found I’d broken out in a sweat.

The elaborate topiary and neatly manicured lawns of the Tuileries gardens were just a short distance ahead of me, and on a normal day it was one of my favourite spots in all of Paris, but I didn’t feel up to carrying on. Instead, I staggered down into the nearest métro station and took the underground for two stops, emerging again at the Palais Royal. A group of children were leap-frogging over the monochrome-striped pillars that had been installed in the courtyard beneath the palace and I veered through them and on into the peaceful, galleried gardens beyond. I made it nearly as far as the fountain in the middle, then collapsed on a metal park bench beneath a canopy of boxed lime trees, hugged my arms around my body, closed my eyes and fell asleep.

Something trickled down my ear canal; wet and slow-moving. Something else struck the side of my face, my earlobe, my nostril. My eyelids flickered open and a drop of rain fell smack onto my pupil. I blinked and then squinted as more rain came down. I peered out beyond the crook of my elbow and saw the gardens sideways on, another row of well-tended lime trees, and the circular pool below the ornate fountain dimpled with rain. Groaning, I eased myself upright and smeared some of the rain around my face.

“You were snoring,” said a voice I recognised.

I looked to my left and found that Victoria was sat on a green metal chair with her feet resting on the end of the bench I’d been sleeping on. She was wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt and tan casual slacks. A black plastic artist’s folio, roughly a metre square, was gripped between her knees. I glanced up at the brooding sky above the balconied apartments, raindrops cascading towards me as though I was peering into a grey-scale kaleidoscope.

“What time is it?” I asked, working my jaw around to loosen it.

“Forty minutes after we were due to meet. I decided you could do with the rest. Feeling better?”

I shook my groggy head, then lowered it between my knees. “Worse, if anything,” I mumbled, gripping my hair. “Now all I want to do is sleep some more.”

“You mean you don’t want to know what’s in the folio?”

“What’s in the folio?” I said, speaking into the ground.

“I don’t know. I haven’t opened it yet.”

I looked up. “You’re serious?”

She nodded.

“You’re telling me you’ve sat there for almost three-quarters of an hour and you haven’t taken a single peek?”

“Not once.”

“Wow. Maybe you’re not cut out for this thieving lark after all.”

I gestured for Victoria to slide the folio across to me but she shook her head, lowering her feet to the ground.

“Let’s get out of this rain first. It’s really going to let go in a minute.”

“I think we should look.”

“I think you should remember we’re sat in a public park that just happens to be surrounded on all sides by residential apartments and restaurants. There might not be anyone down here but that doesn’t mean no-one’s watching us.”

“That’s scary – you’re beginning to sound just like me. What do you suggest?”

“Follow me,” she motioned, with a jerk of her head.

And so I did. I followed her beyond an inner quadrant of floral plants and miniature hedgerows, through an archway at the rear of the gardens and out onto a street that connected with Places des Victoires. I didn’t know where she intended to take us. All I could see were boutique stores and pricey bistros, cramped patisseries and cafés. None of them would be any more private than the gardens and might very well leave us more vulnerable to prying eyes. Victoria had been right about the weather, though. The clouds were darkening into a grisly mass and the rain was becoming heavier. It didn’t look as if it would ease up any time soon.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” I asked, pacing along beside her.

“Patience.”

“Want me to carry the folio?”

“I’m fine.”

Without warning, Victoria swerved left, leading me over a glistening pedestrian crossing.

“There,” she said, and pointed to a dark-stoned building up ahead.

“Clever girl,” I told her, and received a backwards glare for my trouble.

The building Victoria had led me to was a church – Notre-Dame des Victoires. It was relatively squat and modest, a stark contrast to its namesake cathedral a few miles away. The oversized wooden doors at the front of the building were unlocked and Victoria went in ahead of me. The place was dimly lit and the temperature was noticeably cool. Smooth flagstones lined the floor beneath our feet, and the soles of Victoria’s flat shoes tapped against them. I looked up above the rows of flickering votive candles in the atrium, past the stained-glass windows and on towards the vaulted stone ceiling, rainwater dripping off my eyebrows and my nose.

“Sanctuary,” I said, in a hushed voice.

“Exactly.”

“You want to sit down?”

“Why not?”

Victoria led me along the central aisle of the nave, in the direction of the altar. The altar was imposing and looked to be made of white marble. I could see a statue of Christ, prone on the Crucifix, as well as a collection of frescoes with scenes of worshippers looking heavenwards. There was nobody else inside the church. Every dark wooden pew was empty.

Victoria peeled off to the left and I followed her, both of us turned sideways and shuffling along between the pews. She neared a side annex lined with a vast number of marble plaques and then sat down, positioning the folio next to her. I sat down too and reached for the plastic clasps on the folio.

“Care to hazard a guess?” I asked.

“Just open it,” she said, clearing the rainwater from her eyes. “It might not even be relevant.”

If you’re wondering where the folio came from, that’s the easy part – it was inside Catherine’s deposit box in the bank vault on Rue Quincampoix. But how did we get it? Well, that’s a little more complicated. First, we needed Catherine’s swipe card, and finding that was why I’d returned to her apartment the previous night. And the place where I found it? Well, that was kind of neat. Like I mentioned, once I saw the object the card was hidden inside, I knew I was right straight away. The fact is I’d found it at the back of the framed photograph of Catherine with the man with the ponytail, the one that had been resting face-down on the surface of her dressing table. When I’d been in her apartment the second time, looking for the painting of Montmartre, I’d assumed the photograph had been put face-down for an emotional reason, maybe because the man with the ponytail had upset her. By the time I returned to look for the swipe card, though, I already knew that Catherine had a tendency to hide things at the back of picture frames. So when my brain finally engaged and I clocked the photograph frame positioned like that, a judder ran through me and I knew without a shred of doubt that it was where I’d find what I was looking for.

After that, I had only to persuade Victoria to visit the Banque Centrale on my behalf. Oh, and to impersonate Catherine Ames. She was reluctant at first, and that was understandable, but once I’d got hold of Bruno on the telephone and he’d confirmed what the arrangements should be, she began to relent. After all, I told her, I really didn’t think Bruno could be Catherine’s killer now he’d agreed to help us. And there was no way I could possibly go to the bank myself, since even in my more metrosexual moments, I was hardly equipped to pass myself off as a French woman. The only real risk was whether the security guard at the beginning of the corridor leading to the bank vault would query Victoria’s ID. As it happened, though, Bruno got his timing spot-on and Victoria found him chatting to his colleague when she arrived. Bruno had handled all of the talking, enabling Victoria to flash Catherine’s driving licence before signing the name “Catherine Ames” in the visitors’ ledger.

In all honesty, during the wait for our meeting, I still hadn’t been certain that Victoria would go through with it or that the plan would pass off without a hitch. But I guess I should have had more faith because everything had worked beautifully and now I had the folio in my hands.

I pressed down on the clasps affixed to the lid of the folio and began to inch out what was inside. It turned out the object was a painting, oil on canvas, and the first glimpse of it very nearly blew my head off.

“Holy crap.”

“Ssshh.” Victoria nudged me and pointed towards a statue of Mary Magdalene to our right. “We’re in a church, remember?”

I swallowed, then nodded and pulled the painting all the way out of the folio. I set the empty folio down on the floor and showed the painting to Victoria. When she still didn’t get it, I whispered the artist’s name into her ear.

“Shit me,” Victoria said, then clamped her hand over her mouth.

I grinned. “Now do you understand?”

Victoria’s eyes had become very large and her mouth was wide open behind her hand. She was shaking her head, utterly astonished.

“It’s not real.”

“You think?”

“It can’t be.”

We traded a look, neither one of us quite sure what to say next. I touched my fingertips to the canvas, feeling the layered imprint of the oils. The painting was a Picasso and it happened to be one of the better-known works from his cubist period.

I said, “The last time I saw this, it was hanging in the modern art museum in the Pompidou Centre.”

“What’s it called?”

“The Guitar Player.”

Victoria pivoted her head and scrunched up her face. “Where’s the guitar?”

“You don’t see it? Here – this part is the hole in the middle of the guitar. And this is the player’s arm. At least, that’s what I’ve always taken it to be.”

“It’s pretty hard to make out.”

“That’s sort of the point. You could spend days looking at this thing and each day you’d find something new.”

Victoria squinted some more, then gave me a defeated look. “You’re the art fan, Charlie. How much is it worth?”

“Difficult to say. On the open market with good provenance . . . I don’t know, tens of millions, perhaps.”

“
Millions
,” Victoria stage-whispered, way too loudly.

I checked behind us, then nodded and raised my hand in a cool-it gesture.

“But we’re not talking about the open market. Selling something like this – if it’s hot, it’s not easy. A painting this famous draws a lot of attention. I don’t know, behind the scenes, maybe one hundred, two hundred thousand tops.”

“That’s some drop.”

“No kidding.”

“And what are the chances it’s genuine?”

I shook my head. “I think we have to assume it’s a fake. I certainly haven’t heard anything about the painting being stolen. It looks like a good reproduction to me but it’s difficult to say without having something to compare it against.”

Victoria nodded, absorbing my words. I reached for the folio and began to slide the painting back inside.

“One thing we do know,” I went on, “is a woman was killed over it.”

“Hey,” Victoria began, “do you think this could have been the painting everyone was really after? Maybe there was a mix-up.”

“No,” I said. “Pierre had a photograph of the painting his client wanted stolen and it was definitely the scene of Montmartre.”

“But this thing has to be connected to it, surely?”

“I agree. I just don’t know quite how. And there’s something else I haven’t told you yet. Things have become even more complicated.”

“In what way?”

“Pierre’s been arrested.”

Victoria’s expression freeze-framed and she reached for my arm. “Arrested?”

“I’m afraid so. He wasn’t there to meet me this morning. Somebody else was instead.”

And at that point I told Victoria all I could about my meeting with Nathan Farmer. I explained what he’d said to me and what he’d threatened to do and then I told her that he was after the painting of Montmartre too. Victoria became confused by some of it, so I had to repeat myself for a time, but once we had everything straight all either of us could do was shake our heads and sigh.