The Last Weynfeldt (26 page)

This way he managed to keep steering his thoughts away from the letter. And above all from wondering if Lorena had betrayed him. A very good question. Because she was the only one who knew.

The only one apart from Rolf Strasser. A better question: Was it Rolf, playing a joke, reminding him he was also in on this job. When Adrian failed to steer his thoughts from the Lorena question back to the raindrops, the Strasser question saved him. And when that didn't work there was also the third scenario.

Scenario three was that a third party, independent of the other two, had worked it out for themselves. Not a layperson, a specialist. A great many had spent time in front of the painting. If he had noticed, why shouldn't another expert have noticed?

The drop left his narrow field of vision. Adrian focused on another.

He could have called the number, then he would know more now. He could still call it. It wasn't very late. Eleven perhaps. He had no desire to look at the time.

If he called, he'd have certainty. But did he want that? Who wants certainty when it's a question of love or betrayal?

The drop became fuller and heavier. It didn't stop long, and when it finally broke away, plummeting, not slipping, it left a trail of tiny droplets, which soon smoothed out into a thin film.

The voice on the answering machine had sounded familiar. If he listened again he might be able to identify it. But he refused to listen to the messages again.

Tomorrow, perhaps. Tomorrow.

Weynfeldt didn't call the number the next day either. He resisted waking up, because his subconscious told him a bad memory was waiting for him. When he finally got under the shower, and allowed his thoughts free reign, he decided not to call.

If the letter wasn't simply a joke, its author would be in touch again. He clearly had Weynfeldt's number. Till then the principle of innocent till proven guilty applied to all suspects. Especially to Lorena.

Nothing unusual happened in the office. No calls from journalists, experts or police. No call from the man with the familiar voice. But no call from Lorena either.

Actually, there was one unusual thing worthy of note: Véronique didn't leave the office once all morning for her usual refreshment breaks. When he left for lunch, she wished him “
bon appétit
” in the recriminating tone he recognized from her diet phases. He didn't react; he had other concerns.

One of them was already sitting at the Thursday lunch club table in Agustoni's and greeted him with a kiss which caused a stir among the staff and brought Adrian a huge relief. If Lorena had anything to do with this business, she wouldn't be here. Or if so, she certainly wouldn't be as carefree and exuberant.

Her exuberance infected the other guests, who arrived one by one now. The Thursday lunch club celebrated the Vallotton record—
La Salamandre
had achieved the highest price for a Vallotton to date—as if they were all profiting from it personally. And when Lorena had the idea of ordering a glass of champagne to toast
La Salamandre
, everyone else switched to champagne too, till Agustoni's modest reserves were exhausted and he tried to persuade the indignant group to drink his Prosecco.

Strasser joined in along with the others. He seemed so genuinely pleased about the price, Weynfeldt suspected Rolf might have made a percentage-based deal with Baier, the fee for his work greater according to the result of the auction.

The thing with the letter and the message was now just a tiny irritant at the back of Weynfeldt's mind. He couldn't remember ever having experienced such a pleasant, easy-going Thursday lunch. He arranged to meet Lorena that evening at his place—discreetly, but not discreetly enough that Alice Waldner didn't notice, acknowledging it with an equally discreet smile.

There was nothing to suggest how disastrously the day would later unfold.

He returned to the office late, with a spring in his step. Véronique greeted him in the mood of a fat woman with an empty stomach. She had put all the pending documents on his desk: four neatly stacked piles. One consisting of printed e-mails, one of opened letters clipped to their envelopes, one of internal memos and one of messages, sorted according to their urgency.

The most urgent was the request for a return call from Hartmann, the branch director of the bank which rented Weynfeldt's building.

He called back and was put straight through. Could he come by quickly after closing time? There was an, erm, unfortunate matter, which in their mutual interests should be concluded as swiftly as possible. Hartmann always talked like this. Weynfeldt promised to come by at half past five.

The second most urgent message went: “Not calling back is not the solution. Greetings from the man from the answering machine and from the Belotel, room 212.” Alongside it was a cell phone number and Véronique's note: “The exact words he asked me to write down and read back to him. You know some interesting people!”

Weynfeldt pushed his right hand through his hair and massaged his scalp with his five fingers. As if he could speed up his thought processes like this.

What did this mean, what did this mean, what did this mean? It was Lorena's shady debt collector. But how had he found out about the painting? Lorena had told him. But why? She still hadn't got him off her back. She still owed him money. She was still under his thumb. He had put pressure on her. And she had given him the tip about the painting. That wasn't nice. Was it forgivable? It was understandable; he had met the man twice. He could scare you. So it was understandable. And everything understandable was forgivable. Right? That's the way it is: if it's understandable it's forgivable.

“Are you alright?” Véronique's voice called from the door.

“Why?”

“You've gone white as a sheet.”

“I feel a bit sick.”

“Try eating and drinking more at lunchtime,” she bitched. “Go home and have a rest,” she added more gently. “The last few days have been very stressful.”

Weynfeldt did indeed get up from his desk and go home.

Perhaps a bad idea. The apartment was full of construction workers behind schedule and suppliers ahead of schedule. Frau Hauser was in the midst of preparing a
dîner tête-à-tête
as she had called it, somewhat salaciously, after he ordered “a little something for myself and Frau Steiner.”

As he stood with her in the corridor, still protected with plastic sheeting, getting in the workers' way, and said, “I'd prefer not to be disturbed for a while,” she remarked scathingly: “Who wouldn't prefer that around here?”

He withdrew to his study and tried to think clearly. But the same series of unanswered questions kept returning:

How had he found out about the painting? Had she still not gotten rid of him? Did she still owe him money? Was it forgivable? Was it understandable? Was everything understandable forgivable?

Suddenly he had the phone in his hand, and heard it ring at the other end, his heart beating.

“Yes?” the familiar voice said.

“Weynfeldt,” he said.

“At last.”

“What do you want?”

“The same as last time.”

“Okay.”

“Times ten.”

Adrian fell silent. Then he said, “That's 1.2 million.”

“Well done.”

“That's absurd.”

“It's reasonable.”

“How?”

“Considering the risk.”

“What risk?”

“Yours. If you don't pay.”

“I think you're overestimating it. A glitch. It's happened at all major auction houses.”

“A scandal. First a record price, then a forgery.”

Weynfeldt asked the one question which really interested him. “How did you discover?”

“Three guesses.”

“What have you got on Frau Steiner?”

The man hesitated. Then he laughed. “Enough. Since you ask.”

Weynfeldt asked for time. The man gave him twenty-four hours.

After he hung up, Adrian was hit by a leaden exhaustion. He recognized it from earlier catastrophes in his life. His father's death, his fox terrier's death, the split with Daphne, Daphne's death, his mother's death. He had spent most of his time during these crises in bed. It was that time again.

He dragged himself down the corridor, still hectic at the other end, walked into his bedroom, took his shoes and jacket off, fell onto his bed and sank, or rather plunged, into a bottomless sleep.

Frau Hauser woke him. She was standing next to his bed holding the cordless telephone, her hand enclosing the microphone tightly. “Herr Hartmann—he believes you had an appointment.”

Weynfeldt took the phone. “Excuse my impertinence,” Hartmann said, sounding less apologetic than impatient, “but our security observed you returning home two hours ago, and I'm therefore taking the liberty of inquiring if you had perhaps forgotten …”

“I had to lie down briefly, must have fallen asleep. I'll be right with you.”

Hartmann's office was furnished with the kind of pseudo-modernist corporate design which would have wounded Weynfeldt's aesthetic sensibilities sorely on any other day. Today he didn't care about the greenish, matte glass tabletops and cabinet doors, the excess of chrome, and the hi-tech boss's chair. He sat down at the conference table after the usual formulaic greetings and apologies were over, and waited.

Alongside Hartmann, another man was present, in an ill-fitting suit with an oversized necktie-knot. He appeared nervous, and was introduced as Herr Schwartz, head of security.

On the table stood a small monitor, which Herr Schwartz now started fiddling with.

Hartmann was squirming slightly, making his language all the more convoluted. “I must ask you first and foremost not to misunderstand us; nothing could be further from our intention than to interfere with your private liaisons; you can rest assured we are concerned solely with our responsibility to provide security, and you have been able to rely on our comprehensive discretion so far, am I not right, and will in the future too. Discretion is, as it were,” he smiled, “the core of our business.”

Weynfeldt did not help him out.

“During his routine examination of the SC material, that is to say, the recordings from our surveillance cameras, Herr Schwartz made an observation which we feel obliged to bring to your attention.”

Herr Hartmann, the director, hesitated now and rescued himself with the sentence, “Perhaps you should show us the material, Herr Schwartz.”

Schwartz took over: “The camera in question is E4, mounted above the entrance you use, Herr Weynfeldt. The material concerns your guest Samba.” At this he grinned sheepishly. “We give regular visitors code names; so the material shows Samba in the company of a …” He looked for assistance to Hartmann, who chimed in again.

“I hope you will not form the impression that we are spying on you here; all of this is carried out using the strictest discretion solely for the purpose of the security of all concerned; the material is destroyed after two months. However … we were of the opinion … we felt ourselves obliged to make you aware of the situation, the aforementioned visitor is clearly involved with a person known to Herr Schwartz from his previous work with the city's police force. Herr Schwartz, if you would.”

Schwartz pressed a button, and a black and white image of impressive quality appeared. It showed the hood and trunk of two cars, and the sidewalk in front of Weynfeldt's heavy front door. Everything still as in a photo.

Suddenly Lorena appeared in the frame. She was shortened due to the angle of the camera mounted above the door, but there was no doubt this was Lorena. She was wearing the coat he had taken from her the last night she had visited him, when she had reconstructed the Vallotton.

She seemed to be talking, to be looking back at someone, calling him over.

A man came into the picture.

“Theo L. Pedroni, previous convictions for fraudulent bankruptcy, falsifying documents, drug dealing …”

Adrian no longer heard what the security man was saying. In the picture he could clearly see the man from the car outside the cash point and the room at the Belotel.

Lorena took his hand, pulled him toward her, grabbed his tie and kissed him on the lips. Not for long, but long enough that both Herr Hartmann, the director, and Herr Schwartz, head of security, had time to clear their throats.

Pedroni gave Lorena a slap on the bottom and vanished from the picture. Lorena shouted something after him, laughing.

Then she pressed the doorbell.

S
TRANGE
:
NORMALLY HIS LIMBS WOULD HAVE BECOME
heavy, his brain fogged. But as soon as he was inside the elevator he noticed his body was wide awake; his mind clear as crystal. Even before the elevator stopped at his floor, he knew what he had to do.

Outside his apartment there were mountains of packaging from the fitness machines, and in the corridor the workers were busy rolling up the floor liner. Behind them, a team with professional cleaning machines was waiting to get to work.

Frau Hauser stood at the entrance, sighing. “The dust they're stirring up—I'll never get rid of it.”

Adrian patted her supportively on the back. “In a few days no one will see it.”

“You might not; I will.” She scrutinized him. “Everything okay?”

“Right as rain,” he confirmed.

She looked at him distrustfully. Then she said, “I need to check that everything is in order, otherwise this gang won't be gone by the time Frau Steiner arrives.” She walked off down the corridor. Adrian watched her. She had become a little fragile, despite her energetic gait.

Adrian went into the bathroom. He shaved, showered, moisturized, blow-dried his hair, manicured his toe- and fingernails, freshened up with
eau de toilette
and slipped on his lightweight cashmere tuxedo.