The Good Thief's Guide to Paris (24 page)

THIRTY-TWO

“What now?” Victoria asked me, once Nathan Farmer had ducked out of the room, dodging any shrapnel from the bombshell he’d so casually dispatched.

“I don’t know,” I said, in a distracted way. “I think I might be screwed.”

I was staring at the television monitors, as if the various gallery scenes they were screening might trigger something in my mind. My best explanation for who had killed Catherine and why they’d done it had just been blown and I was finding it hard to let go. I kept trying to fit the pieces back together in a way that would make sense but it simply wouldn’t work. Evidently Victoria was going through the same process.

“Pierre being in custody doesn’t necessarily wreck everything,” she said. “I mean, he has a whole list of contacts, right? He has other burglars on his books. What’s to say he doesn’t have killers too?”

I frowned. “A hitman, you mean?”

“Why not?”

“I don’t see it,” I said, shaking my head. “And I didn’t find any evidence of that in Pierre’s apartment. Plus, there’s something else I’d forgotten.”

“Oh?”

“Pierre didn’t know where I lived. At least, I don’t think he did. So even if he hired someone, he wouldn’t have known where to send them.”

“But if he did hire someone, they could have followed you from the moment Pierre hired you to do the job.”

“All of that just to set me up?”

“Absolutely. Do you think we should mention this to Farmer?”

“No,” I said, and dropped into a swivel chair across from Victoria. I pivoted backwards over the cushioned backrest and pressed the heels of my hands against my forehead. “I think we need to ditch the whole Pierre idea.”

“But why? He had those bags and that tape.”

“But no cable ties. And Farmer’s right – if he was the killer, why would he leave them lying around his home?”

“The telephone number then. He had it circled in his telephone directory.”

I sat upright and faced Victoria, doing my best to appear contrite. “No he didn’t.”

“But you said –”

“I know what I said. But the truth is I put the circle there myself. At the time, I really did think Pierre could be the killer but I also knew the evidence was pretty thin. So I figured I’d add another piece to the puzzle.”

Victoria whistled and rolled her eyes. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that, Charlie.”

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with it either. But having it on my conscience seemed a hell of a lot better than serving time in a French jail for a murder I wasn’t guilty of.”

Victoria crossed her arms in front of her chest and inhaled deeply. I gave her a sheepish look, as though I knew I’d overstepped the line, but still not feeling ready to apologise for it either. Trying to work out what could have happened was beginning to drive me a little nuts. It was as if I’d been picking away at a really secure lock in my head and no matter how many pins I thought I’d shifted or how much progress I thought I’d made, the damn thing was still refusing to yield. Maybe the truth was I’d been tackling the lock in the wrong way. In my eagerness to have the mystery resolved, I’d been going at it like an oaf, trying to force the thing instead of taking a more considered approach. Maybe what I needed to do was to step back and think about the problem afresh.

“Forget Pierre,” I said. “Scrub the whole idea. Where does that leave us?”

“You won’t like it.”

“Try me.”

“Okay.” She pressed her hands together and raised them in front of her mouth, fingers steepled. “Like I said before, the killer has to be someone you met early on.”

“Oh crap. Not this again.”

Victoria lowered her hands and twisted her lips.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “But that doesn’t get us anywhere new. None of the people I met early on could have done this.”

“Bruno could have.”

“But why? He sold the painting of Montmartre cheaply. He didn’t know anything else was going on.”

“He didn’t have to. Maybe he just wanted to kill Catherine.”

“In my apartment?”

“Why not?”

I shook my head and stood up from my chair. I moved over to the corner of the room and pressed my palms flat against the wall. I lowered my head and growled.

“Paige then,” Victoria suggested.

“No,” I said, into the wall.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” I said, turning and forming my left hand into a fist, then grinding it into my right palm. “I’m sorry. I know you’re only trying to help but Paige didn’t have any reason to do it.”

“Francesca then. Or one of the crowd from the bookshop.”

“I didn’t meet Francesca until yesterday.”

“So ignore the rules. Ignore everything I’ve said up to now. It has to be someone tied into this thing and Francesca did know about the significance of the painting. She knew all about the heist.”

“And that’s all she was interested in. She didn’t need to kill Catherine.”

“Even if she found out she’d been tricked?”

“But she didn’t find out. If she had done, she wouldn’t have nicked the forgery from down there.”

I pointed at the television monitor, then threw my hands into the air. I turned on the spot and cradled my forehead, trying to free up my mind. I really needed to undo that damn mental lock. Either that, or go crazy trying. Losing my temper with Victoria wasn’t really on but my frustration was getting the better of me. I was beginning to think I’d never find a way through.

“Farmer then,” Victoria whispered, nodding her head towards the door he’d just left by.

“No.”

“You won’t even consider it? Charlie, you can’t rule people out like this.”

“It wasn’t him,” I said, under my breath.

I met Victoria’s eyes and held them for a moment. Then I dropped my head and ran my hand over my inflamed knuckles. I almost welcomed the physical pain; at least it was some form of distraction.

“Anyone else?” I asked, fighting to regain my composure.

Victoria shook her head. “Me?” she offered, with a thin smile.

“Definitely not.”

“Then I’m all out of suspects. Unless it was that girl at your reading. Or the catalogue model in the back of your Faulks novels.”

She laughed faintly and I smiled at her, raising my bandaged fingers to scratch my temple. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply and in that moment it felt as though Victoria had just handed me a golden key to the lock in my mind. I inserted the key and turned it and the lock sprang open as easy as that. I grinned widely, relief flooding my system.

“Do you have your handbag with you?”

“Yes,” she said, cautiously.

“And your mobile?”

She showed it to me.

“Come on,” I said. “I’ve had an idea.”

THIRTY-THREE

I telephoned Bruno at the Banque Centrale and told him we needed to meet. I asked him to contact Paige and he rang me back in under five minutes, saying they would come to the brasserie we’d gone to following my reading. Neither of them had taken much persuading, and I suppose I could have been worried by that, but the truth is I wasn’t surprised. My best guess was they were anxious about how the investigation into Catherine’s death might impact on their lives and they seemed willing to do whatever it took to end their uncertainty.

As we made our way across the Pont Notre Dame and along Rue de la Cité, Victoria begged me to tell her what was on my mind but I asked her to stay quiet and give me a chance to think. I still had a few things to straighten out and I couldn’t do it while she was yammering on. It was hard enough not to get distracted by the kind of thoughts that afflicted me when I caught sight of the city’s police headquarters up ahead or the dark-stoned exterior of the Conciergerie, the former prison where Marie Antoinette and the French Revolutionaries had been detained. Fortunately, by the time we neared the brasserie, it seemed to me like it all fitted. Of course, only Bruno and Paige would be able to tell me if I was right.

I directed Victoria to an outside table beneath an unlit patio heater, where we selected a pair of wicker seats that afforded us a view of the approach Bruno and Paige were likely to take. I signalled the waiter for two espressos and set about lighting a cigarette. Victoria didn’t say anything, though she did waft her hand in front of her face the first time I exhaled. I blew more smoke off to the side, then killed the cigarette. Our coffees arrived and we sipped them in silence. I listened to the purr of vehicle engines from the Quai and the occasional car horn. In the lulls between the vehicle noise and the chatter of the café patrons, I could just catch the background hum of a commentary track on a passing Bateau Mouche. A couple near to us were sharing moules frites and the tang of the lemon juice the woman was squirting over her dish caught in my nostrils. I covered my nose with my finger and tried to concentrate. I was still probing and testing the logic of my theory when I finally saw Bruno and Paige hurrying over a pedestrian crossing in our direction.

“Sit down,” I told them, kicking two wicker chairs out from under the opposite side of the circular table.

“Who’s she?” Paige asked, nodding at Victoria, but declining to make eye contact with her.

“A good friend,” I said. “Bruno has met her before. At the bank.”

Paige turned slowly and treated Victoria to a sour look. She crowded over the table towards me, her eyes protruding out from their sockets and threatening to caress my face.

“What is this? Are you setting us up?” she asked, casting an intent gaze over my shoulder and around the terraced eating area.

“Now why would you think that?”

“It’s pretty sudden, this meeting. Bruno wouldn’t say what you wanted.”

“Because he doesn’t know,” I told her. “But it’s nothing for the two of you to be concerned about. All I need is for you to look at a picture.”

“The painting?” Bruno asked, jutting his head into our inner circle.

“No.” I turned to Victoria. “Do you still have Catherine’s driving licence?”

Victoria held my eyes for a moment, her pupils crammed with question marks. Then she lunged towards the floor to gather her handbag. She lifted the bag onto her lap and undid the buckle that secured the leather flap on the front. Reaching inside, she removed a small plastic card, around the size of a credit card. On the front of the card was Catherine’s name and address, alongside her digital image.

I took the licence from Victoria and handed it to Bruno. He spent a good few moments looking at the image before glancing up at me, an uncertain expression on his face.

“But this is not Catherine,” he said, blinking.

I gestured to Paige and she snatched the card from Bruno’s hand and subjected it to a close examination.

“You know who this is?” she asked, jabbing her finger at the picture.

“Tell me.”

“It’s Sophia.”

“The Estonian lady? The one you said left the bookshop with Francesca’s keys?”

“Uh huh.”

“You happen to know her last name?”

Paige shook her bloodless face. I studied her for a moment longer, then reclaimed the card and slipped it into my trouser pocket.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Never mind,” I told her, rising from my chair and pulling Victoria upright by her elbow. “Excuse us. We have to go.”

“Go?” Bruno said. “But you cannot just leave.”

“Watch me,” I told him. “And don’t look so nervous. Like you said, you guys weren’t involved in all this. So you really shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

I led Victoria away from the café and across the Quai towards the River Seine. We descended a flight of stone steps beside a secondhand poster stall and found an empty bench overlooking the marine-green river, not too far from a gaudy floating restaurant. I glanced back in the direction we’d come from and then all around us to make sure we hadn’t been followed. It seemed safe enough. Even if someone managed to watch over us from above, the wall we were sat against was very high so we couldn’t be overheard.

“Will you tell me what on earth’s going on?” Victoria asked, when I was through working my neck like a marionette’s.

“I’ll try. I’m still figuring some of it out myself.”

“But you have figured it out.”

I nodded. “I think I know who our killer is.”

“So tell me.”

“It’s Catherine.”

Victoria looked at me as if I was insane. She searched behind my eyes for whatever it was she couldn’t quite place.

“I thought you said it wasn’t suicide.”

“I did. And I was right. But the dead woman in my apartment wasn’t Catherine Ames. It was the Sophia woman Paige just mentioned.”

Victoria cradled her forehead with the fingers of both hands. “You’d better explain.”

“It’s a little complicated.”

“You don’t say.”

I smiled in a tired way and glanced sideways at the glistening waters of the river. Further upstream, an industrial barge was approaching the nearest bridge span. The barge was loaded with mounds of aggregate and it looked almost too big to steer. As I faced up to explaining everything to Victoria, I began to think I knew something of what the skipper of the barge was going through.

“It’s difficult to know where to begin. But how about this? To the outside world, Catherine worked as an archivist for the Pompidou, right?”

“Right.”

“But she was also a skilled artist, and more than that, she was a forger.”

“Sure. We know she faked the Picasso. I’m with you on that.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Yeah, and maybe she faked a lot more besides. When I searched through the canvases in her apartment, I didn’t have that in mind. But there were a fair number of different styles now I think back on it and I’d say there’s a chance at least some of them were copies of other works.”

Victoria pouted, as though the information was inconsequential.

“That’s the background,” I went on. “Catherine’s a forger – it’s in her nature. It’s also something she’s good at. So what’s to say she can’t manipulate other images?”

“Like?”

“Like the photo ID on her driving licence. I went through her things twice and during that time I only found two photographs of her. Number one, the driving licence. Number two, the framed photograph that was face-down on her dresser.”

“There could have been others.”

I shook my head. “Believe me, I would have found them. And that’s kind of odd. I mean, here’s someone who’s really into the visual arts . . .”

“So what’s your thinking?” Victoria asked, interrupting me. “She doctored both images? Why would she do that?”

“Preparation. With a modern computer, it wouldn’t have been hard to take an old photograph of herself with Gerard and impose Sophia’s head in place of her own. I’m assuming they look fairly similar in the first place, you understand, or else it wouldn’t have worked.”

Victoria raised her hand and made a huffing noise. “What wouldn’t have worked, Charlie?”

“Killing Sophia and making it seem as if it was Catherine. That’s why she suffocated her with the bag. All the discoloration of her skin and the swelling, it would have disguised her appearance, blurred their differences to some extent. She didn’t just fake a Picasso, Vic – she faked her own death.”

Victoria backed away from me and screwed her eyes tight shut as if she’d just smelled something unpleasant. “But the police aren’t fools. They’d check dental records and the like, wouldn’t they?”

“Not necessarily. Dental records are often a last resort. It’s not a perfect science, no matter what we’re led to believe. So in the first instance they’d go for something much more straightforward.”

“Such as?”

“ID on the body. Things in her purse, for instance.”

She peered at me. “Which you’re saying Catherine could have planted.”

“Yes. But that’s not all. They’d also want someone who knew Catherine to positively identify her.”

“So then you’re screwed.”

“Uh uh,” I said, wagging a finger. “Who’s the first person they’d contact?”

“The spouse, I suppose. But Gerard’s in prison.”

“So? He’s still Catherine’s next of kin. And if he’s in on the scam, all he has to do is say it’s her and turn on the waterworks. Chances are, the authorities won’t look any further, especially if the real victim is a foreigner who happens to have been working as a volunteer at a nutty bookshop in the centre of Paris. Most of the people who stack shelves at Paris Lights are free spirits. It could be months or even years before anyone they know back home raises an alarm. And this Sophia was early fifties, probably single. Maybe there is no-one back home.”

“I don’t know, Charlie . . .”

“It’s audacious, I admit. But so was stealing a Picasso in the first place. Why have alibis that are any less daring?”

“Alibis, plural?” she asked, squinting.

“Absolutely. Gerard gets himself arrested after letting as many people as possible know he hasn’t put his masterplan into effect. Soon after, Catherine looks as if she’s been killed by somebody trying to get their hands on Gerard’s grunt work. So they’re both in the clear.”

“But if what you’re saying is even half-right, it sounds like more than just smoke and mirrors.”

“Not really. First they create the impression that a heist that went ahead without a hitch never happened. Then they make it seem as if they’re both out of the picture. Now all they have to do is wait, what, another sixteen months for Gerard to get out of the clink before they reclaim the Picasso and sell it for a small fortune, funding new lives somewhere else.”

“But hang on, the Picasso was in the vault at Catherine’s bank. And if everyone thought she was dead, she wouldn’t exactly be able to wander in and claim it.”

“I thought of that. But then I realised, who would she have left her things to in her will?”

Victoria sighed. “For your explanation to work, it has to be her husband.”

“Spot on. So when Gerard gets out of prison, he has every right to go and collect Catherine’s belongings.”

Victoria leaned back against the blackened masonry behind her and shook her head from side to side, as though trying to dislodge the doubts that were forming inside her mind. It didn’t seem as though she was having much success.

“If what you’re saying is right,” she began.

“It has to be.”

“Then how do you explain the swipe card to Catherine’s safety deposit box being in the back of that photograph frame? It’s not something she’d want to leave just lying around.”

“It wasn’t just lying around. It was hidden.”

“Not terribly well.”

“Only because the person who went searching for it happened to be a burglar with sufficient motivation to find what he was looking for.”

“I don’t know. It would make more sense if Catherine had kept the swipe card herself. I mean, she couldn’t very well access her apartment once she was supposedly dead, especially considering the police might be checking for any clues as to who killed her.”

“But the police weren’t looking that closely – the idea was to set me up for the murder at the same time as making it seem as though the infamous heist plans had been stolen. I guess Catherine and Gerard figured their apartment would be pretty much untouched until he was released. And like you said, Catherine couldn’t have accessed the bank vault before then because she was meant to be dead.”

Victoria crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Why not just sell the Picasso ahead of time?”

“And risk a leak? An informant? No, this way it was relatively secure. They could maybe risk a leak once Gerard had his freedom and they could trade the painting for enough cash to help them hide. But not before.”

Victoria stood from the bench and walked towards the water’s edge. She looked away after the barge, as though it held some secret answer that might convince her of what I was saying. I guess it was a lot to take in. It had already taken me days to put together. True, maybe Victoria or I would have handled things differently, but that didn’t mean Gerard and Catherine hadn’t done just as I’d said.

“Supposing you have it sussed,” she said, turning back to me. “Supposing I don’t find any holes in all this.”

“You’ll find holes. You always do.”

“Yeah, but supposing you can cover them. Where does that leave you? All you have is a theory and a truly wild one at that. If you’re right and Catherine stays hidden, and Gerard doesn’t confess, you’re still the prime suspect – even if they do happen to identify this Sophia woman.”

“That’s why I need to talk to Nathan Farmer,” I said, delving into my pocket for his business card. “I have to convince him I’m right.”

“And what about proof?”

“Proof’s overrated,” I told her, extending my hand and clicking my fingers for her mobile telephone. “At least, I’ve always thought so.”