Maestra (28 page)

‘I thought you might like a drink.’

He didn’t speak, just slid along beside me on the broad seat of the Mercedes. I leaned forward and asked the driver to take us to the Ritz.

‘Rue Cambon? I have a feeling for the Hemingway.’

He had been silent all along the Rue de Rivoli; now he turned to face me. He looked weary, but faintly amused.

‘As you like.’

We waited while the bartender fussed impeccably, setting water glasses with floating cucumber and redcurrants on frilled coasters, producing a rose martini for me and a gin and tonic for him. As he reached forward to taste his drink his shabby jacket fell open over the slight swell of his belly, the absurd monogram. I felt a swift, alien spasm of desire.

‘So. Shall we begin?’

‘Where?’

‘Well, since you’ve already fucked me, perhaps we can dispense with polite conversation.’

He raised an eyebrow, rather well.

‘The monogram. On your shirt? The party at the townhouse in Montmartre. I believe you know Julien? At least you went to his club to check up on me, La Lumière on the Rue Thérèse?’

He inclined his head, faintly gallant. ‘Indeed.’

For a moment, neither of us spoke. I’d worked it out a few weeks ago. We’d met at the club, that night we both behaved so naughtily in the darkroom. What I couldn’t work out was the sting. Until I knew exactly what he wanted, I couldn’t play this. But then, we knew one another already, he and I. That dim incense-scented room, the burn of the leather on my palms, his teeth in my neck . . .

I shook myself back into the present, took a long swallow of my drink. God, I wanted a cigarette; I wanted to be able to exhale a slow plume of smoke in his eyes. ‘You remember?’

‘How could I forget?’

There was something absurdly unreal about this Bogart-and-Bacall routine we seemed to be pulling. Stick to the point, Judith. So what if he’s already banged you months ago in some lousy swingers’ club? I sat up straighter, tried for a hard, flat tone.

‘You were following me, then? Because you are now, obviously.’

‘No, not then. Not exactly. But it seemed a – pleasing coincidence.’

‘I want to know why.’

‘I should have thought that was obvious.’

‘Cheap shot. Why are you following me?’

‘Because you killed Cameron Fitzpatrick.’

Now I really wanted a fucking fag.

‘That’s absurd.’

He sat back a little, drank some water and remarked conversationally, ‘I know that you killed Cameron Fitzpatrick because I saw you do it.’

For a few seconds, I truly thought I might faint. I stared at the cocktail stick spearing the pale pink rose balanced on the edge of my glass. I wished I could faint. My instinct had been right, that sudden frisson of fear, the sense that I was being watched there, back under the bridge. A rat, sure enough. A rat who scented blood.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Please tell me, now, why you are following me.’

He reached forward and gently touched the back of my hand.

‘Don’t worry. Finish your drink. I haven’t got a squad of cops outside. Then maybe we can go somewhere more private.’

‘I don’t have to listen to a word you say. You have no right –’

‘No, you don’t. No, I don’t. But I think you will. Now finish your drink.’

I let him pay the bill and walk me through the long corridors, glowing pink like the inside of a shell, past the naff glass cases of jewellery and scarves, past the disdainful porters, to the Place Vendôme. I followed him mutely round the square, across to the arcades of Rue Castiglione, right to Concorde. It was chilly now, and my low heels were beginning to rub after so much walking. I was glad when he sat down on a bench at the locked entrance to the Tuileries.

‘Take this.’ He handed me his jacket; I was shivering. I let him arrange it around my shoulders, a waft of sweat breezing from the synthetic lining, my eyes fixed on the lights of a bus crawling up the Champs. I tried to light a cigarette, put the filter in my mouth. Smooth.

‘So, Mademoiselle No-Name, you can call me Renaud. I’ll call you Judith, unless you prefer Lauren?’

‘It’s my middle name, Lauren. My mother was a fan of Lauren Bacall. Cool, no?’

‘OK, Judith then. Now, I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen.’ He took my lighter from my shaking hand and lit my fag. ‘OK?’

‘You speak excellent English.’

‘Thank you. Now I’m going to show you a picture. That’s him, right, Cameron?’

I had to squint in the traffic glow from the crossroads. He held my lighter to the screen. It was. Caught on Renaud’s phone, coming down the Spanish Steps, his face dipped away from the Roman sun. I had managed not to think of his face for so long.

‘You know it’s him.’

‘Yes, but what you don’t know is that his name wasn’t Cameron Fitzpatrick. It was Tommaso Bianchetti.’

All that Oirish charm.

‘He was pretty good, then,’ was all I said.

‘Yes, he was. Very good. Irish mother, maid in a Roman hotel. Anyway, this is what I need to explain to you. Bianchetti washed money for . . . associates in Italy. He’d been doing it for years.’

‘The Mafia?’

Renaud gave me a pitying look. ‘’Ndrangheta, Camorra . . . Only amateurs say Mafia.’

My feeling about Moncada had been right then, too. ‘Excuse me.’ Weirdly, I was starting to feel better.

‘Your old colleague, Rupert, he didn’t call Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick called Rupert. Nice little scheme, one he’s pulled hundreds of times. Real stuff mostly, not bothered with the effort of fakes. But times were getting a little tough in Italy, and the mark-up on a fake piece was so much better. Rinse the picture and the money. That’s how I got involved.’

‘I thought you were working for him. For Rupert.’

‘I wonder who could have told you that? We’ll leave that for a minute, shall we? I was hired by an extremely angry American. Banker, Goldman Sachs. Found out that the Rothko he’d been showing off at his pad in the Hamptons was a fake. Wanted his money back. Which led me to Alonso Moncada.’

‘Moncada deals fakes then?’

‘Sometimes yes, sometimes no.’

‘Why you?’

‘What did you think I was, some old-school shamus? I chase money, for people who want to get it back quietly.’

I couldn’t help glancing at his terrible shirt, the awful shoes. ‘You don’t look like someone who chases money.’

‘Yes. And you do.’

I took that one on the chin.

‘Bianchetti was one of several guys who worked for Moncada. Moncada acquires the piece for cash, provided from a small Roman bank controlled by . . . associates. Covered as a business loan. They shift it to a private client for a profit, the client can keep it as an asset or auction it legitimately. Moncada provided the funds, Bianchetti the provenance. Everyone makes money. Very neat.’

‘So?’

‘So I went to the gallery where my man picked up his Rothko, talked them into giving me the name of the previous owner and persuaded him – no, actually, it was a
her
, nice woman, three children – to give me Moncada. She had no idea she’d been duped either. It took a long while to track him down, and in the meantime I began to pick up Bianchetti’s name, under the Fitzpatrick alias. I went to London to trace him – Bianchetti, that is – followed him to Rome, and then you pulled your little stunt – don’t interrupt – and I followed you to Moncada. It was the first time I’d been able to set eyes on him. Obviously I was quite intrigued by you, too. But I didn’t know what it was you’d made off with, however you did it.’

‘I didn’t –’

‘Shut up.’ He scrolled through a file on his phone, showed me another picture, myself and Moncada, apparently enjoying a pizza. I was surprised by how calm I looked in the photo.

‘So then, finally, the Stubbs comes up last winter, and it has Fitzpatrick – now tragically deceased – amongst the provenances. So then I knew what you had sold to Moncada.’

‘But Rupert?’

‘Well, by then I was considerably more than intrigued by you. So I had a look at the police report, found your name. I guessed you’d have something to do with art. I knew you were English. So I started at the top. Two calls.’

Only two auction houses in London worth bothering about . . .

‘The nice girls on reception hadn’t heard of you, so I spoke to the heads of department, in turn. And came up with your old employer.’

‘Go on.’

‘So, I went along for a little talk.’ He gave a half-smile. I hadn’t noticed that I had started shaking again, but he had. He pulled the jacket more tightly around me, solicitous.

‘It gave Rupert a bit of a shock when I mentioned Fitzpatrick. I told him that I had seen his department’s name alongside Fitzpatrick’s with the provenance of the picture. And then I asked about you. When he heard you’d been in Italy he practically exploded. He was very eager to employ me, on the side,
comme on dit
, to find you. So he showed me your picture. I needed to check you were the same girl I’d seen, naturally. And there you were. The beautiful girl from Rome. You do have an unforgettable face.’

‘Thanks. How romantic. And the townhouse? What were you doing at Julien’s?’

‘Blind luck. A lot of people know Julien, a lot of powerful people. I like to check up on him while I’m here, and one must amuse oneself now and again, no? We are in Paris, after all,
chérie
. I’d been trying to find you in London, nothing. Your mother didn’t know anymore.’

‘My mother?’

‘Not hard to find. Social services.’

I swallowed in shock. ‘Was she . . . was she OK?’

‘You mean was she drunk? No. Just fine. I didn’t say anything to worry her. But then I drew a blank. You see, your flatmates just said you’d sent a cheque for the rent, gone abroad. Soo and Pai. Nice quiet girls, the medical students. They suggested that you enjoyed going to parties. Not their sort of thing. Very much mine though. I was over here – just catching up with some friends for the weekend – and there you were again.’

‘As you said, what a coincidence.’

‘You perhaps need to be a bit more discreet. In your . . . amusements.’

‘What about Leanne?’

‘Ah. Leanne. Well, your face is very memorable, as I said. I’d seen your photo in London, seen someone who looked very much like you in Paris, but the lighting at Julien’s parties is always so . . . considerate.’

He switched to French.

‘
Encore
, I needed to be certain that it was the same girl. Julien didn’t have a name for you, except Lauren, but he gave me the details of several professional girls who share your – er – proclivities. Girls with international reputations, to use the old-fashioned phrase. Again, it took me a while, I had to track down each of the girls individually and eventually one recognised you. I found your friend Ashley at your other former place of employment.’

‘The Gstaad Club.’

‘
Précisément.
And then Rupert seems to have found your friend Leanne about the same time, in the very same place. It suited him to use her – he didn’t want your connection with British Pictures coming up any more than it had to. I came here with Leanne. She gave me a photo from the club to show Julien, to check. It was hardly a betrayal – we were both looking for you. She just didn’t know the reason.’

I didn’t dare to say another word. Fucking moronic selfies: the two of us snapped on her phone on a quiet night, gurning for the camera.

‘You don’t need to worry about them, Judith. Forget about Rupert. He’s got too much to lose; he made a dumb call on something that was bigger than he knew. Leanne was just some junkie semi-hooker, right?’

‘Was?’

‘Judith, please. It wasn’t very polite of you to leave a dead body in a hotel room I was paying for. Nice touch, though, leaving the dealer’s number. The police were pretty happy to have him.’

‘The police? I thought you said –’

‘I said I wasn’t a cop. That doesn’t mean I don’t have friends at the
préfecture
. I need them, in my line. How do you think I got your address?’

‘I thought you followed me.’

‘Form. Crossing the t’s, that’s all. Isn’t that what you say?’ He looked pleased with the idiom. ‘They had plenty of questions for your Stéphane. I told my friend that Leanne was just some girl I’d picked up, didn’t know her, didn’t know she was using. They’ll find her through the consulate eventually, ship her back. Don’t sweat.’ Another English phrase. I could hear his accent come through.

‘Anyway, Rupert. I think he just wanted to keep an eye on you, make sure you weren’t talking. You might even find a few doors open to you now, if you wanted to go back to London.’

I shook my head numbly. All that time. Over and over, I had thought myself so clever, and Cleret had only been waiting for me to stumble into his sights. I forced myself to speak.

‘What do you want?’

‘I want Moncada. I want my client’s money and I want my fee. That’s all.’

‘You know who he is, where he is. Why not just find him?’

‘I want him here, in Paris. He’s too dangerous in Rome.’

‘So what can I do?’

‘Sell him a painting, of course.’

‘And then?’

‘You deliver Moncada, you’re in the clear. We can even split the profit on your deal with him.’

I thought about that for a while.

‘But if I do, then won’t Moncada and his “associates” come after me? They won’t want to pay up for the Rothko, the one that belonged to your banker. And you say he’s dangerous.’

I hated the way I was feeling: childish, desperate, out of control.

‘Who would you rather have looking for you – them or the police? Anyway, I can arrange the details for you. I know a guy in Amsterdam, he’s good with passports. You’ll have to disappear for a while, leave Paris. But I don’t think you have a lot of choice, do you?’

I thought about
that
for a while. I could protest, deny what I hadn’t even admitted; I could run. As I said, I don’t like games, unless they’re ones I can win. He didn’t seem to care about Cameron or Leanne, at least not if I did what he wanted.

‘So you want Moncada here? That’s all? And I walk?’

‘I need to find a way of speaking to him in private. They’re wary, these people. You’re getting the hang of this, Judith.’