The Rembrandt Affair (6 page)

10

GLASTONBURY, ENGLAND

T
hey stood shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the landing and stared silently down at the dried blood. "I have photographs," said the detective, "but I'm afraid they're not for the squeamish."

Gabriel wordlessly held out his hand and accepted a stack of eight-by-ten prints--Christopher Liddell, eyes frozen wide in death, a gaping exit wound at the base of his throat, a small entry wound in the center of his forehead. Again, Harkness watched Gabriel intently, plainly intrigued by his failure to register even a hint of revulsion at the sight of a brutally murdered corpse. Gabriel handed the photos to Chiara, who examined them with a similar dispassion before returning them to the detective.

"As you can see," he said, "Liddell was shot twice. Both rounds exited the victim and were recovered. One from the wall, the other from the floor."

Gabriel examined the wall first. The bullet hole was located approximately three feet above the floor, opposite the flight of stairs descending from the studio.

"I assume this is the neck shot?"

"That's correct."

"Nine millimeter?"

"You obviously know your weaponry, Mr. Rossi."

Gabriel looked up toward the third-floor studio. "So the killer fired from the top of the stairs?"

"We don't have a final report yet, but the angle of the wound, combined with the angle that the round entered the wall, would suggest that. The medical examiner says the shot struck the victim in the back of the neck, shattering the fourth cervical vertebra and severing the spinal cord."

Gabriel looked at the crime-scene photographs again. "Judging from the powder burns on Liddell's forehead, the second shot was fired at close range."

"A few inches," Harkness agreed. Then he looked at Gabriel and added provocatively, "I suppose a professional assassin might refer to that one as the control shot."

Gabriel ignored the remark and asked whether any of the neighbors had reported hearing gunshots. Harkness shook his head.

"So the gunman used a suppressor?"

"That would appear to be the case."

Gabriel crouched and, tilting his head to one side, examined the surface of the landing. Just beneath the bullet hole in the wall were several tiny flakes of plaster.
And something else as well
...He remained on his haunches a moment longer, imagining Liddell's death as though it had been painted by the hand of Rembrandt, then announced he had seen enough. The detective switched off the crime-scene lamp, at which point Gabriel reached down and carefully dragged the tip of his gloved finger across the landing. Five minutes later, when he climbed into the Rover with Chiara, the glove was safely in his coat pocket, inside out.

"You've just committed a very serious crime," Chiara said as Gabriel started the engine.

"I'm sure it won't be the last."

"I hope it was worth it."

"It was."

H
ARKNESS STOOD
on the doorstep like a soldier at ease, hands clasped behind his back, eyes following the Rover as it proceeded out of Henley Close at an altogether unacceptable rate of speed.
Rossi
...Harkness had known it was a lie the instant the angel descended from his chariot. It was the eyes that had given him away, those restless green torches that always seemed to be looking right through you.
And that walk
...Walked as though he were leaving the scene of a crime, thought Harkness, or as if he were about to commit one. But what on earth was the angel doing in Glastonbury? And why was he inquiring into the whereabouts of a missing painting? Higher Authority had decreed there would be no such questions. But at least Harkness could wonder. And perhaps one day he might tell his colleagues that he had actually shaken the hand of the legend. He even had a souvenir of the occasion, the gloves worn by the angel and his beautiful wife.

Harkness removed them now from his coat pocket. Strange, but there were only three. Where was the fourth? By the time the taillights of the Rover disappeared around the corner, Harkness had his answer. But what to do? Run after him? Demand it back? Couldn't possibly do that. Higher Authority had spoken. Higher Authority had instructed Harkness to give the angel a wide berth. And so he stood there, trap shut, eyes on the ground, wondering what the angel had hidden in that damn glove.

11

SOMERSET, ENGLAND

G
abriel peered at the tip of his left forefinger.

"What is it?" asked Chiara.

"Lead white, vermilion, and perhaps a touch of natural azurite."

"Flakes of paint?"

"And I can see fabric fibers as well."

"What kind of fabric?"

"Ticking, the kind of heavy cotton or linen that was used for mattress covers and sails in seventeenth-century Holland. Rembrandt used it to fashion his canvases."

"What does the presence of paint flakes and fibers on the landing mean?"

"If I'm correct, it means we're looking for a Rembrandt with a bullet hole in it."

Gabriel blew the material from his fingertip. They were heading westward along a two-lane road through the Polden Hills. Directly ahead, a bright orange sun hung low above the horizon suspended between two thin strata of cloud.

"You're suggesting Liddell fought back?"

Gabriel nodded. "The evidence was all there in his studio."

"Such as?"

"The broken glass and chemical residue, for starters."

"You think it was spilled during a physical struggle?"

"Unlikely. Liddell was smart enough to know not to get into a wrestling match with a well-armed thief. I think he used his solvent as a weapon."

"How?"

"Based on the residue on the floor, I'm guessing Liddell threw it in the thief's face. It would have burned his eyes badly and left him blinded for several seconds--enough time for Liddell to run. But he made one mistake. He took
her
with him."

"The Rembrandt?"

Gabriel nodded. "It's too big to hold with one hand, which means he would have had to grasp it by both vertical lengths of the stretcher." Gabriel demonstrated by gripping the steering wheel at the three o'clock and nine o'clock positions. "It must have been awkward trying to carry it down that narrow staircase, but Liddell almost made it. He was just a couple of steps from the landing when the first shot hit him. That shot exited the front of Liddell's neck and, if I'm correct, pierced the painting before entering the wall. Judging from the composition and color tone of the paint flakes, I'd say the bullet passed through the right side of her face."

"Can a bullet hole be repaired?"

"No problem. You'd be surprised at the idiotic things people do to paintings." Gabriel paused. "Or
for
paintings."

"What does that mean?"

"Christopher was a romantic. When we were in Venice together, he was always falling in love. And invariably he would end up with a broken heart."

"What does that have to do with the Rembrandt?"

"It's all in his restoration notes," Gabriel said. "They're a love letter. Christopher had finally fallen for a woman who wouldn't hurt him. He was obsessed with the girl in that painting. And I believe he died because he wouldn't let her go."

"There's just one thing I don't understand," Chiara said. "Why didn't the thief take any of the other paintings, like the Monet or the Cezanne?"

"Because he was a professional. He came there for the Rembrandt. And he left with it."

"So what do we do now?"

"Sometimes the best way to find a painting is to discover where it's been."

"Where do we start?"

"At the beginning," said Gabriel. "In Amsterdam."

12

MARSEILLES

I
f Maurice Durand were inclined toward introspection, which he was not, he might have concluded that the course of his life was determined the day he first heard the story of Vincenzo Peruggia.

A carpenter from northern Italy, Peruggia entered the Louvre on the afternoon of Sunday, August 20, 1911, and concealed himself in a storage closet. He emerged early the following morning dressed in a workman's white smock and strode into the Salon Carre. He knew the room well; several months earlier, he had helped to construct a special protective case over its most famous attraction, the
Mona Lisa.
Because it was a Monday, the day the Louvre was closed to the public, he had the salon to himself, and it took only a few seconds to lift Leonardo's small panel from the wall and carry it to a nearby stairwell. A few moments later, with the painting concealed beneath his smock, Peruggia walked past an unmanned guard post and struck out across the Louvre's vast center courtyard. And with that the world's most famous work of art vanished into the Paris morning.

Even more remarkable, twenty-four hours would elapse before anyone noticed the picture was missing. When the alert finally went out, the French police launched a massive if somewhat farcical search. Among their first suspects was an avant-garde painter named Pablo Picasso, who was arrested at his Montmartre apartment despite the fact he had been hundreds of miles from Paris at the time of the actual theft.

Eventually, the gendarmes managed to track down Peruggia but quickly cleared him of any suspicion. Had they bothered to look inside the large trunk in his bedroom, the search for the
Mona Lisa
would have ended. Instead, the painting remained hidden there for two years, until Peruggia foolishly tried to sell it to a well-known dealer in Florence. Peruggia was arrested but spent just seven months in jail. Years later, he was actually permitted to return to France. Oddly enough, the man who carried out the greatest art crime in history then opened a paint store in the Haute-Savoie and lived there quietly until his death.

Maurice Durand learned several important lessons from the strange case of Peruggia. He learned that stealing great paintings was not as difficult as one might think, that the authorities were largely indifferent to art crime, and that the penalties generally were light. But the story of Peruggia also whet Durand's appetite. Antique scientific instruments were his birthright--the shop had belonged to his father, and his grandfather before that--but art had always been his great passion. And while it was true there were worse places to spend one's day than the first arrondissement of Paris, the shop was not a particularly exciting way to earn a living. There were times when Durand felt a bit like the trinkets lining his little display window--polished and reasonably attractive but ultimately good for little more than gathering dust.

It was this combination of factors, twenty-five years earlier, that had compelled Durand to steal his first painting from the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg--a small still life by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin that hung in a corner rarely visited by guards or patrons. Using an old-fashioned razor, Durand sliced the painting from its frame and slipped it into his attache case. Later, during the train ride back to Paris, he attempted to recall his emotions at the moment of the crime and realized he had felt nothing other than contentment. It was then that Maurice Durand knew he possessed the qualities of a perfect thief.

Like Peruggia before him, Durand kept his trophy in his Paris apartment, not for two years but for two days. Unlike the Italian, Durand already had a buyer waiting, a disreputable collector who happened to be in the market for a Chardin and wasn't worried about messy details like provenance. Durand was well paid, the client was happy, and a career was born.

It was a career characterized by discipline. Durand never stole paintings to acquire ransom or reward money, only to provide inventory. At first he left the masterpieces to the dreamers and fools, focusing instead on midlevel paintings by quality artists or works that might reasonably be confused for pictures with no problem of provenance. And while Durand occasionally stole from small museums and galleries, he did most of his hunting in private villas and chateaux, which were poorly protected and filled to the roof with valuables.

From his base of operations in Paris he built a far-flung network of contacts, selling to dealers as far away as Hong Kong, New York, Dubai, and Tokyo. Gradually, he set his sights on bigger game--the museum-quality masterpieces valued at tens of millions, or in some cases hundreds of millions, of dollars. But he always operated by a simple rule. No painting was ever stolen unless a buyer was waiting, and he only did business with people he knew. Van Gogh's
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
was now hanging in the palace of a Saudi sheikh who had a penchant for violence involving knives. The Caravaggio had found its way to a factory owner in Shanghai while the Picasso was in the hands of a Mexican billionaire with uncomfortably close ties to the country's drug cartels. All three paintings had one thing in common. They would never be seen again by the public.

Needless to say, it had been many years since Maurice Durand had personally stolen a painting. It was a young man's profession, and he had retired after a skylight assault on a small gallery in Austria resulted in a back injury that left him in constant pain. Ever since then he had been forced to utilize the services of hired professionals. The arrangement was less than ideal for all the obvious reasons, but Durand treated his fieldmen fairly and paid them exceedingly well. As a result, he had never had a single unpleasant complication. Until now.

It was the south that produced the finest wines in France and, in Durand's estimation, its best thieves as well. Nowhere was that more true than the ancient port of Marseilles. Stepping from the Gare de Marseille Saint-Charles, Durand was pleased to find the temperature several degrees warmer than it had been in Paris. He walked quickly through the brilliant sunshine along the Boulevard d'Athenes, then turned to the right and headed down to the Old Port. It was approaching midday. The fishing boats had returned from their morning runs and atop the steel tables lining the port's eastern flank were arrayed all manner of hideous-looking sea creatures, soon to be turned into bouillabaisse by the city's chefs. Normally, Durand would have stopped to survey the contents of each with an appreciation only a Frenchman could manage, but today he headed straight for the table of a gray-haired man dressed in a tattered wool sweater and a rubber apron. By all appearances, he was a fisherman who scrounged a respectable living from a sea now empty of fish. But Pascal Rameau was anything but respectable. And he didn't seem surprised to see Maurice Durand.

"How was the catch, Pascal?"

"Merde,"
Rameau muttered. "It seems like we get a little less every day. Soon..." He pulled his lips downward into a Gallic expression of disgust. "There'll be nothing left but garbage."

"It's the Italians' fault," said Durand.

"Everything is the Italians' fault," Rameau said. "How's your back?"

Durand frowned. "As ever, Pascal."

Rameau made an empathetic face. "Mine, too. I'm not sure how much longer I can work the boat."

"You're the richest man in Marseilles. Why do you still go to sea every morning?"

"I'm
one
of the richest. And I go out for the same reason you go to your shop." Rameau smiled and looked at Durand's attache case. "You brought the money?"

Durand nodded.

"It's not wise to carry large amounts of cash in Marseilles. Haven't you heard, Maurice? This town is full of thieves."

"Very good thieves," Durand agreed. "At least, they used to be."

"A business like ours can be unpredictable."

"Weren't you the one who always told me that blood is bad for business, Pascal?"

"That's true. But sometimes it's unavoidable."

"Where is he?"

Rameau tilted his head to the right. Durand walked along the Quai de Rive Neuve toward the mouth of the harbor. About halfway down the marina was a motor yacht called
Mistral.
Seated on the aft deck, feet propped on the gunwale, eyes concealed by dark glasses, was a man with shoulder-length dark hair pulled into a stubby ponytail. His name was Rene Monjean, among the most gifted of Durand's thieves and usually the most dependable.

"What happened in England, Rene?"

"There were complications."

"What kind of complications?"

Monjean removed the sunglasses and stared at Durand with a pair of bloodred eyes.

"Where's my painting?"

"Where's my money?"

Durand held up the attache case. Monjean put on the glasses and got to his feet.