Art of Murder (22 page)

'It's all too perfect, Lothar,' Miss Wood was saying. 'A second car waiting in the Wienerwald, false papers
...
in other words, a carefully laid plan. I could accept he might have been paid to take the painting to the Wienerwald, but even that seems farfetched to me.'

'So you want us to reject the "Diaz" leg as well. That means the whole construction is in danger of collapsing
...'

'We can't eliminate Diaz altogether. I think his role was that of scapegoat. What I can't understand is why he's disappeared.'

They could have hidden his body so that suspicion would fall on him, while the real criminal made his getaway,' Bosch reasoned.

Miss Wood had leaned forward to examine the ornament's lower back and the signature. The ornament stood perfectly still while she did so. The label said he could be touched, so Wood slipped a hand round his waist and down towards his gleaming bronze buttocks. Her expression, with her brows knitted intently, was that of an expert judging the value of a porcelain vase. As she was doing this, she responded to Bosch.

'That's the most likely theory. But my question is:
where is he?
The police have combed several kilometres round the area, Lothar. They've used dogs and all kinds of sophisticated search equipment. So where's Diaz's body? And where did they kill him? The van offered no clues at all: no signs of struggle, not a drop of blood. And consider this for a moment: he destroys the painting, then wastes time taking all her clothes off out in the wood, running the risk of being discovered. On the other hand, whoever it was, worked out a detailed escape plan and managed to divert all the suspicion on to the security guard who was looking after the work. Does that seem logical to you?'

'No, you're right, it doesn't.'

Miss Wood stopped fondling the ornament's backside. She raised her arm, got hold of the neck label and pulled it down towards her, obliging the ornament to lean forward so she could read it. As well as the model's name, the label gave details of the craftsman who made it, and its specifications. Bosch knew that April Wood bought ornaments and utensils for her London house. Despite an official ban on the sale of human handicrafts, it still went on, and many people of a certain social level bought them just as they did soft drugs.

When she had finished reading the information, Miss Wood let go of the label. The ornament straightened up, turned on his heels in the darkness and walked out noiselessly, his bare feet gliding across the thick black carpet. Miss Wood grimaced as she sipped her hot coffee.

‘I’
m sure Diaz is dead,' she insisted. 'The problem is how his death fits in with everything else.'

'We still haven't considered the Competition and Rivals.' Bosch riffled through his papers. 'I have to admit this is where I get lost, April. I can't find anything. The people behind BAH, for example, are not up to much. You know Pamela O'Connor wrote a book about Annek . . .'

'The Truth About Ann
ek Hollech,'
Wood concurred. 'Pretentious nonsense. What she does is use Annek as an example to denounce the use of underage models in supposedly obscene works of art.'

'We're also investigating the Christian Association Against Hyperdramatic Art; the International Society For Tradition and Classical Art; the European Society Against Hyperdramatic
Art...'

'You're leaving out the real competition,' said Wood. 'Art Enterprises, for example, has become a serious enemy. Stein says they would do anything to throw a spoke in our wheels, and, in fact, they are taking investors from us. Just imagine if what happened to
Deflowering
is only part of a master plan to discredit our security system.'

'But that doesn't fit in with what happened. A bullet in the back of the head would have had the same effect. Why all the sadism?'

'What do you mean exactly?'

The question filled Bosch with horror.

'Good God, April, he cut her up with
...
look, here is the autopsy report. Braun sent it to me this morning. Look at these photos
...
the lab tests confirmed it: whoever it was used a portable canvas cutter
...
do you know what that is?
...
a saw with a cylindrical handle and serrated edges that fits into one hand. Artists who still work with canvases and old picture restorers use them to change the size and shape of paintings. It's a powerful gadget - with the right fittings, you can cut a normal tabletop in half in five seconds
...
and he made ten cuts with it, April
...'

Wood had lit one of her ecological cigarettes. The dark green smoke produced by the vaporising of coloured water that was guaranteed harmless, curled up towards the ceiling. Bosch remembered when it had become fashionable to use these fake cigarettes in order to give up smoking. He had succeeded in giving up thanks to the classic nicotine patches, and regarded this other method as unnecessarily showy.

'Look at it this way
’
she said. 'They want public opinion to think that Oscar Diaz was raving mad. So, if they can say we take on psychopaths to look after our most expensive works of art, then no one will be able to trust us, and so on and so forth.'

'But if that was what they were after, why on earth didn't they kill her
before
they cut her up? According to the autopsy report, they sedated her with an intramuscular injection of a neuroleptic drug, probably using a hypodermic pistol to the back of her neck. The dose was strong enough for her not to be able to defend herself, but not to anaesthetise her. I don't get it. I mean
..
. and forgive me for insisting, April, but it seems to me
...
if all this was simply a bit of theatre, why go so far? The murder would have been just as regrettable, but
...
it would have been
...
there would have been
...
I mean, imagine I wanted to pretend it was the work of a sadist. . . Well then, first I get rid of her, I inject her with something, anaesthetise her
..
. then I do all the other things
..
. but there's a limit that never
...
Money has got nothing to do with it, April. I won't make any
more money
by doing
that.
There's a limit which
...'
'Lothar.'

‘D
on't tell me they
only
did it for money, April! I
may be getting old, but I'm not completely gaga yet! And I am experienced: I used to be a police inspector, so I know about criminals
...
they're not as sadistic as all those films would have us believe. They're human beings
...
I'm not saying there are no exceptions, but
...'

'Lothar.'

'That guy wasn't trying to fool anyone: he
wanted
to do what he did, and in just the way he did it! We're not facing some underhand ruse by the competition - we're trying to track down a monster! .
..
He cut her face and left her writhing while he made ready to
...
to cut her breast
off!...
Would you like me to read you the report
...
?'

'Lothar,' came the weary, deep voice. 'Can I say something?'

'Sorry.'

Bosch had difficulty recovering control of his emotions. 'Come on, kid, calm down. What's got into you?'

Miss Wood stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. She lifted her hand; leaving a green thing there, a steaming, crushed broad bean. She exhaled the last of
the green smoke through her nos
trils. The Dragon's Poisonous Breath.

'She was a
painting.
There's no need to look any further than that, Lothar.
Deflowering
was a painting. I'll prove it to you.' She pounced on one of Annek's studio photos and thrust it in Bosch's face. 'She looks like an adolescent, doesn't she? She has the shape of an adolescent, when she was alive she walked and talked like an adolescent. She was called Annek. But if she had really been an adolescent, she wouldn't have been worth even five hundred dollars. Her death would not have interested the Ministry of the Interior of a foreign country, or mobilised a whole army of police and special forces, or led to high-level discussions in at least two European capitals, or meant that our positions in the Foundation are on the line. If
this
had been only a girl, who the shit would have been interested in what happened to her? Her mother and four bored policemen in the Wienerwald district. Things like that happen every day in this world of ours. People die horrible deaths all around us, and nobody could care less. But people do care about the death of this girl. And do you know why? Because this,
this
’
she shook the photo in his face, 'which apparently shows a young girl, is
not a girl at all.
It cost more than fifty million dollars.' She repeated the words again, emphasising them with a pause between each one. 'Fifty. Million. Dollars.'

'However much the work cost, she was still a young girl, April.'

That's where you're wrong. It cost that much precisely because it was not a girl. It was a painting, Lothar. A masterpiece. Do you still not get it? We are what other people pay us to be. You used to be a policeman, and that's what you were paid to be; now they pay you to work as an employee for a private company, and that's what you are.
This
was once a girl. Then someone paid to turn her into a painting. Paintings are paintings, and people can destroy them with portable canvas cutters just as you might destroy documents in your shredding machine, without worrying about it. To put it simply,
they are not people.
Not for the person who did this to her, and not for us. Do I make myself clear?'

Bosch was staring at a fixed point - he had chosen April Wood's anthracite-coloured hair, and in particular the fiercely drawn parting on the right side of her head. He kept his eyes on it as he nodded agreement.

'Lothar?'

'Yes, I understood.'

'Which means we have to keep an eye on the competition.' 'We will,' said Bosch.

'And there's also the anonymous madman,' Miss Wood sighed, and her thin shoulders hunched. 'That would be the worst of all: a freshly baked psychopath, just like all that Viennese bread. Is there anything else in the forensic report?'

Bosch blinked and looked down at his papers. She's not being cruel, he told himself. She doesn't talk like that out of cruelty. She's not cruel. It's the world which is. All of us are.

'Yes
..
.' Bosch looked several pages further on. 'There is one curious detail. Of course, the analysis of the painting's skin is very detailed: the forensic experts don't know much about the priming process, so they haven't picked up on this. Near the wound in the breast they found traces of a substance which
...
I'll read you what it says
...
"the composition of which, while being similar to silicon, is different in several fundamental aspects .
.."
Then they give the full name of the chemical molecule: "dimethyl-tetrahydro . . ." well it's an enormously long name. Guess what it is?'

'Cerublastyne
...'
said Miss Wood, her eyes wide open.

'Bingo. The report says it must have been part of the painting's priming, but we know that
Deflowering
did not have any cerublastyne on it. We called Hoffmann and he confirmed it: the cerublastyne cannot have come from the painting.'

'My God,' Wood whispered. 'He disguises himself.'

'That seems most likely. A few touches of cerublastyne would have been enough to change his looks completely'

This news had suddenly made Miss Wood uneasy. She had got up, and was pacing to and fro about the room. Bosch looked at her with concern. Good God, she hardly ever eats, she's a skeleton. She'll make herself ill if she carries on like this
...
A different voice, also part of him, counterattacked: Don't pretend. Look at the light reflected on her breasts, look at that tight arse and those legs of hers. You're crazy about her. You like her just like you did Hendrickje, perhaps more even. You like her the way you liked Hendrickje's portrait later on. Nonsense, the other Bosch replied. And
..
. why not say it? the other voice came back. You like her
intelligence.
Her sharpness, her personality, the fact she is a thousand times more intelligent than you.

It was true, April Wood was a precision instrument. In the five years they had worked together, Bosch had not seen her make a single mistake. Stein called her the 'guard dog'. Everyone in the Foundation respected her. Even Benoit seemed cowed in her presence. He often said: 'She's so skinny her soul is too big for her.' Her record was brilliant. Even though she had not been able to avoid all the attacks on the works during her five years as head of security (it was impossible to prevent them all), those responsible had been found and dealt with, sometimes even before the police had heard about the incident. The guard dog knew how to bite. Nobody was in any doubt (Bosch least of all) that now she would also find whoever it was who had destroyed
Deflowering.