Art of Murder (52 page)

'Everything could have ended there: a child mistreated by his parents who later perhaps might have become another restorer and frustrated artist
...
worse even than Maurits, because Bruno couldn't even draw properly,' Oslo giggled nervously. 'Whereas we know his father could
...
Zericky showed me some water-colours Maurits did that Van Tysch had given him: they're very good
...
But then the miracle happened, the "fairytale" as the Foundation's history calls it: Richard Tysch, the North American millionaire, crossed his path. And everything was changed forever.'

Wood was writing some of this down in a notebook she had taken out of her bag. Oslo paused, and gazed out of the window at the encroaching dusk in the garden.

'Richard Tysch was the person who made it possible for the Maestro to become the boss of an empire. He was a madman, a useless and eccentric millionaire who inherited a fortune that he threw away and several steel firms he sold as soon as his father died. He was born in Pittsburgh, but he saw himself as the direct descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers, those Puritan pioneers to the United States. He was obsessed with finding out about his family. He investigated where his name came from. Apparently, the Van Tyschs of Rotterdam split into two branches during the heyday of the Dutch West India Company. One ancestor went to North America, and founded the line that became steel and business barons. Richard Tysch wanted to find out about the "other branch", the European side of his family. At that time, the only two people of that name were Bruno's father and his Aunt Dina, who lived in The Hague. In 1968, Tysch went to Holland and paid a surprise visit to Maurits. He had been planning just a short, uneventful visit. He wanted to talk to Maurits about art (he had learnt he was a restorer), pick up some mementoes, and return to the United States loaded down with photos and historic "roots". But then he met Bruno van Tysch.'

Oslo was staring down at the filigree inlay on the knob of his cane. He caressed it absent-mindedly as he went on with his story.

'Have you seen photos of Bruno as a child? He was incredibly attractive, with his thick black hair, pale face and dark eyes, that mixture of Latin and Anglo-Saxon he has. A real young faun. His eyes had a strange fire to them. Victor Zericky says, and I believe him, that he could hypnotise people. All the girls in the village were crazy about him, even the older ones. And quite a few men felt the same, I can tell you. He was thirteen at the time.

Richard Tysch met him and fell for him. He invited him to go and spend the summer in his Californian mansion, and Bruno accepted. I suppose Maurits saw nothing wrong with it, especially considering how generous this god from the other side of the Atlantic had been. From then on, the two of them saw each other every summer, and kept up an extensive correspondence while Bruno was at school. Van Tysch later destroyed the letters. Some people say they had a Socrates-Alcibiades kind of relationship, others put it more crudely. All we can be sure of is that six years later, Richard Tysch left Bruno his entire fortune, and shot himself in the mouth with his shotgun. They found him propped on the trunk of a column in his
palazzo
on the outskirts of Rome. His brain was decorating the wall mosaics. Now the
palazzo
belongs to Van Tysch, as do all his other European properties. His will came as quite a surprise, as you can imagine. Of course, what relatives he had, all of whom had quarrelled with him, challenged it, but without success. Add to this the fact that Maurits had died two years earlier, and we can conclude that all of a sudden Bruno found himself with all the money and freedom in the world.'

Oslo's attention was caught by something that brought him to a halt: two workmen were out in the garden helping the model portraying Miss Wood out of the tank. Her hours on show were over. Oslo continued watching the removal of the portrait as he carried on speaking.

‘I
have to admit that Bruno made the most of both. He travelled all over Europe and America, and set himself up for a time in New York, where he met Jacob Stein. Before that he had been in London and Paris, where he had been in touch with Tanagorsky, Kalima and Buncher. It's hardly strange that he should have been so enthusiastic about hyperdramatic art: he was born to tell other people what they should do. He had always been a painter of people, even before Kalima started to build a theory around the new movement. Bruno used his fortune to make HD the most important art of this century. The truth is, we owe a lot to Van Tysch,' Oslo ended, perhaps more cynically than he had intended.

'This is getting us nowhere,' said Miss Wood, tapping her notebook with her pen. 'From what you tell me, Van Tysch could have as many enemies as he does admirers.' 'Exactly.'

'We'll have to approach it differently.'

Out in the garden, the Debbie Richards model was now completely naked, and one of the workmen was carefully folding up the painted clothing while the other helped her into her robe. Miss Wood studied the girl's physique (even barefoot, she was several centimetres taller) and vaguely wondered if Oslo thought she was equally attractive. The cerublastyne joins around the neck were clearly visible. What could her real face be like? Miss Wood did not know and did not want to know.

As she was thinking this, she took off her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes. Oslo thought: My God, she's so thin, so skinny. Me guessed that April Wood's nervous problems about eating must have increased in recent years. The 'guard-dog' was all skin and bone.

He had known her as a puppy.

It was in Rome in 2001, during a series of courses Oslo was giving on the conservation of outdoor pieces. He had never worked out what it was about this slender girl of only twenty-three that had attracted him so much. At first sight, it seemed easy enough: April Wood was beautiful, she dressed with striking elegance, and her culture and intelligence were obvious. Yet there was something within her that led people to immediately reject her. In those days she was working as the security chief for Ferrucioli, and despite the fact that she was already wealthy, she lived on her own and had no close friends. Oslo thought he had discovered what kept her isolated: a deep, slowburning hatred that was like a hidden poison. April Wood emanated hate through every pore.

With the infinite patience he had always shown when it came to helping others, Oslo took it on himself to find the antidote. He managed to find out something about her life. He learnt that her father, an English art dealer living in Rome, had put pressure on April as an adolescent to become a canvas. He also learnt that she was being treated for a problem of nervous anorexia that dated from the time when her father wanted at all costs to make her into a work of art. 'He would call second-rate painters to sketch me in the nude
’
April confessed to him one day. 'Then he took photos of me and sent them to the great masters. But I discovered just in time I didn't have the patience to be a canvas. So I devoted myself to protecting them instead.' But to her, 'protecting canvases' meant exactly that. It was as though she did not see them as human beings. The two of them often had arguments about it. Finally Oslo understood that Miss Wood's worst poison was
Miss Wood.
An antidote to that poison would only have done her more harm.

When April Wood joined the Foundation as its new security director, the distance between them grew. In 2002 they saw each other still less, and by 2003 absence threw its chilly mantle over them both. The word 'end' had never been pronounced. They were still friends, but knew that anything there might have been between the two of them had finished.

Oslo thought he was still in love with her.

Wood put her glasses on the desk and looked at him.

'Hirum, I'll be straight with you: the person destroying the canvases has the advantage over me.'

'Has the advantage?'

'One of our own people is helping him. Someone from the Foundation.'

'My God
’
murmured Oslo.

For a tiny instant, a split second, he thought she had become a little girl once more. Oslo knew that behind her indomitable will there was concealed a poor, lonely and frightened creature which occasionally surfaced in her gaze, but which he was astounded to see at this very moment. But that moment soon passed. Wood took control of her facial expression once more. Not even an expert in cerublastyne could mould a mask as perfect as April Wood's
real
features, thought Hirum Oslo.

‘I
have no idea who it is
’
she went on. 'It could be someone in the pay of our competitors. Someone anyway who is in a position to pass on
restricted
information about when our security people are working, the places where we have our models for safe-keeping, and lots more. We're being
sold,
Hirum, from inside and outside the Foundation.'

'Does Stein know?'

'He was the first person I told. But he refused to help. He's not even going to try to get the next exhibition postponed. Neither Stein nor the Maestro wants to get mixed up in this. The problem when you work for great artists is that you have to sort your life out for yourself. They're on another plane. They see me as a guard dog - they even call me that - and I don't blame them: that is exactly what they employ me to be. And until now they've been happy with what I've done. But now I'm on my own. And I need help.'

'You've always had me, April. And I'm here for you now.'

They heard laughter out in the garden. It came from young people of both sexes. They were talking and laughing like students on a picnic as they came up to the summerhouse. They were wearing sports clothes and carrying bags on their shoulders, but their skin looked as shiny as polished mirrors in the light from the electric bulbs that had just come on among the trees. They had an almost supernatural appearance, like angels with well-defined bodies, beings from a far-off universe that Hirum Oslo and Miss Wood felt exiled from. They found it hard to look on them without regret. Oslo muttered an apology to Miss Wood, and went to the door.

Wood understood at once that this must be a daily ritual: Oslo's paintings were saying goodbye to him. He talked to them, smiled and joked. She thought of her own house back in London. She had more than forty artworks, almost half of them human ornaments. Some of them were so expensive they carried on in their poses even when she was not there, even if she was away for several weeks. But Miss Wood never said a word to any of them. She crushed out her cigarettes in Ashtrays that were naked men, lit Lamps that were adolescents with depilated, virgin sexual organs, slept next to a painting of three youngsters painted blue who were in perpetual balance, washed alongside two kneeling girls who held gold soap dishes in their mouths, but at no time, not even when they finally left her house at the end of a long day's work, did it ever occur to her to talk to them. But here was Oslo, relating to his paintings like an affectionate father.

After saying goodbye to them, Hirum Oslo sat down again, and lit the desk lamp. The light flamed in Miss Wood's cold blue eyes.

'What time do you have to leave?' he asked.