Snatched (10 page)

‘Yes, it's serious – seriously valuable.'

‘Have you any idea of how seriously valuable seriously valuable is?'

‘That's it, what I mean – this adviser.'

‘He told you how much it was worth?' Simberdy said.

‘He did more than that.'

This, Simberdy could have guessed. ‘Yes?' Oh, God.

‘Are you all right?' Olive asked. She went to the kitchen and brought him a glass of water. He spilled a lot on the way to his mouth.

‘He took it off your hands, did he?' Simberdy asked.

‘You're the smart one, aren't you? Yes, he said he'd like to buy it from me. I felt glad. I mean, to be frank, did I know how to market such an item? I could learn, for sure, but just now I'm at the very threshold of this new career. Nothing Known is never too proud to know he needs help on stuff he don't know.' He was silent for a moment. ‘You think they might be on to you, Fatman?' he asked. ‘This line could be tapped. Have you noticed anything like that? And here I am using my real name more than once, and you using it as well. Too late now, though. It's done.'

‘Which adviser?' Simberdy replied.

‘This is someone London way. Oh, very much London way. They got all sorts of art spots, true class there, and proper experts. This is somebody who really got to grips with art from way back. He've heard of them all. You say any painter, all the foreign names, he'll know it – in his head, just like that, he got it. Michael Angelo, he can tell you everything about him up on church ceilings. The
Mona Lisa
?
He could inform you of the size straight off. If there's only a certain space on the wall, the measurements become very important, don't they? Paris – all them galleries – he been there, and paying attention, giving scrutiny, not just a culture stroll. He loves it – art. He knew about Monet, straight off of his own bat. I never told him one thing because he knew it all already. I got a book on art from the library. Monet, in France, painting away there, big beard, well, just like a painter, and into water lilies, he couldn't get enough. First thing in someone's garden, he'd ask, “Any water lilies?” and if no, the day was a washout for him. Really great.'

Simberdy said: ‘What did this sod pay you, Wayne? What's this money about?'

‘Pay? You know what he paid, Fatman. You can work that out easy enough.'

‘Wayne, how the hell would I know? How much?'

‘One thing about Wayne Passow, he looks after his friends right. He splits fair with his partners. Wayne Passow is famed for this,' Wayne Passow said. ‘So, you get twenty grand there for two of you. Ten each. And exactly similar for self.'

‘He paid you thirty thousand?'

‘Beautiful, yes? Surprise? But, like we was saying, this is a very special painting, and he thought the frame pretty good, also: so a bit of a bonus. That Monet, he's what's referred to in art circles as “much sought after”, meaning people collect him. He's called an Impressionist because he sees things – usually lilies – and gets an impression from them, or that's my impression, anyway. This kind of operation – paintings – is a long way up from nicking televisions and cars.'

Simberdy covered the mouthpiece again and half sobbed to Olive: ‘He's sold
L'Isolement
for thirty grand. It's worth how many millions?'

‘And he's ready to help further,' Nothing Known said. ‘I'm real well in with this guy.'

‘Of course. It's why you came back and took the “El Grecos”,' Simberdy said.

‘There'll be another nice little packet for you soon, Fatman. I reckon I have a duty to do what I can for you and Olive. Again I say it – this is a team. All for one and one for all, like. All right, I'm doing most of the actual work, but that don't mean special treatment as regards my share. Straight split. Maybe next time it will be up to you, Vincent, and Olive, to do the selling. So, don't you worry about it at all. Wayne's going to handle the deal. Wayne got it under control. All right, I heard them three might be phoney. Only might. Worth a try? Obvious. This could be an even nicer package – three times as nice. This adviser, he'll know about the other painter for sure. Yes, you can bet he've heard of old El. OK, it's not Monet and so not quite so tip-top, but Monet's not the only big painter in the world. Art spreads itself all ways. This is the great thing re art. No limit.'

‘Where is he, Wayne? What's his name, your fence?'

‘London way.'

‘Yes, you said. But where, exactly?'

‘Art is life to him,' Passow replied. ‘I love to hear him talking about tints and palettes. An eye-opener.'

‘What's his name, Wayne? Look, we're partners. There shouldn't be secrets.'

‘Although most artists have what's called an easel to work on, Michael Angelo obviously wouldn't of been able to use an easel when he was up there painting a chapel's ceiling,' Wayne said.

Legs dangling, wearing her tangerine and blue gear today, Lady Butler-Minton was seated on a roof beam near the gymnasium ceiling, resting before her sauna, when she saw the door from the garden swing slowly open and Neville Falldew, once Palaeontology at the Hulliborn, stand for a second gazing in, then hesitantly enter. Penelope had been idling after a couple of climbs on the hanging rope, chatting to Lip again and explaining why she had decided after all to be fairly expansive in her first meeting with the Butler-Minton biog girl. ‘I can see what it is about Trudy that would activate your juices, Eric. Yet it only came late in your life, didn't it, this taste for big chins?' She stopped talking and watched Falldew. In the old days, when Eric was Director, Falldew and other Keepers and Curators would occasionally turn up, looking for him in the gym to discuss some urgent point of Hulliborn business. She recalled there was even an occasion when Falldew had been conscripted to join with her and Eric in carolling the Egyptian boatmen's shanty.

Falldew had obviously failed to notice her now. He did not look too good, she thought. Had he ever? That eternal, tatty Davy Crockett suede jerkin, with all the greasy, knotted, trailing bits and discoloured zips, plus a college scarf, regardless of weather. It wasn't just his clothes. Penelope had always thought Neville's face seemed to have been squeezed in a vice – the solitary vice, Lip used to allege, despite that long on-off affair with Ursula Wex, Urban Development. The narrowness of Falldew's head made it appear only two dimensional, as though he'd just stepped out from a placard. At parties, Penelope had seen people meeting Nev for the first time actually walk around to the other side of him, checking he
had
another side and didn't depend on
trompe l'oeil
,
as in sculpture shows she'd visited. When worried or sad he would lean forward, nursing his head in both hands, like someone carefully holding a rare LP. Recurrent anxieties seemed to have weakened muscles in key regions of the body, so he could often give the impression he might crumple and break up, the way a newspaper did in the bath, though she'd heard he could now and then force his long legs into quite a gallop. His moustache and beard were brave and well-intentioned but a terrible error: meagre, struggling, dark elements clinging to this angular surface, resembling Marmite on a kitchen knife.

Today, he appeared abnormally bad, special worries digging shallow tracks in what there was of his cheeks: desperate plough marks on a stony field. For a while, he stared about, tugging convulsively at a couple of the rat-tails on his jacket, like a tumbling parachutist searching for the rip cord. He went forward and tapped on the door of the sauna. He waited, then knocked again, harder. Finally, he pulled it open and, crouching, peered in, speaking her name through the clouds of escaping steam. In a while, he gave up and let the door swing shut. Penelope was about to descend on the rope when he seemed to change his mind and, turning back, violently pulled the sauna door open again. Squinting in, he this time began to call not Penelope but Butler-Minton himself, in a low, intense, suddenly joy-filled whisper that only just reached her on the beam. She had begun to shiver a little, partly on account of cooling, but also a reaction to the eeriness of what was happening. All the same, she decided now she must stay and observe.

‘Sir Eric? It's Neville. Neville Falldew, Palaeontology. All right, you were a glistening bastard, but a Hulliborn glistening bastard. That's what counts. I've always known as a certainty you weren't gone for ever. Wonderful to see you there in the Folk the other night, nearly starkers on the floor and in beautifully traditional form. Thank heavens I'd hung on to my museum keys, although thrown out. I'd recognize you anywhere, even from behind, as it were, even in the half dark and wearing those little navy socks. Well, didn't I have that earlier similar occasion as a prompt – the one in the icons room?

‘But the other night in the Folk! Oh, for me such an encounter is a kind of revelation, indeed, an epiphany. And those two people with you, splendidly tumultuous in the straw, so close and chummy. I think I knew them, too – people from their very different centuries, yet so mystically fused, thanks to you, Sir Eric. This was a brilliant demonstration of what museums are for: that fusing of apparently, and
only
apparently, discrete areas of Time. I have to tell you that there have been long hours since the Hulliborn spurned me when I felt sickened, almost deranged by anger, and the need for revenge. Yes, madness came very, very close: a man craves his work, and a museum man craves his contact with the fruitful past. These were torn away from me. But now I know all will be fine, because you are with us still. And stay with us, Sir Eric, please.'

It was a supplication, yet spoken in a voice alight with happiness and confidence. Above all, confidence. Nev grew silent for a minute or two, continuing to look into the sauna. Then he said: ‘Ah, old boatman, still plying your humble but noble trade, I see. Still singing in honour of simple labour and the beauties of creation.' He paused, as though listening – listening and revelling in what he heard. ‘“All together in the chorus,” you jovially command. So be it.' Falldew leant against the sauna doorframe and instantly began at full volume a classic, tuneless, meandering, gobbledegook lyric in would-be Arabic, beating monstrously irrelevant time with one hand and smiling barmily.

It lasted for seven or eight minutes and, at the end, he waved slowly and supremely meaningfully into the sauna with large, sweeping movements, as though across a great spread of water, and closed the door. ‘We shall meet again, venerable harbour person,' he said. Then, after one more glance around the gym, he readjusted his scarf with a considerable flourish and left, his steps now more positive, his body strangely stronger looking.

Lady Butler-Minton slid down the rope, pulled on her Mr Universe sweatshirt, and did some undemanding weights work until the sauna heated up again. ‘Well, Lip, I accept you were a “bastard”, but a “glistening bastard”? Nev was always a bit purple, wasn't he, and now he's flipped. So, what the hell does he think he saw in the Folk? And who was it?'

It was George Lepage's first Founder's Day ball as Director, and, standing in the minstrels' gallery, looking down a bit tensely at the dancers, he wished he could have avoided inviting Neville Falldew. There were others he would willingly have done without, too, but Neville effortlessly claimed top spot as potential supreme master of aggro. His presence meant a chillingly heightened chance of messy public crisis. Lepage dearly wanted to dodge anything of that sort, especially as he had also felt obliged to ask Dr Itagaki and Dr Kanda from the Japanese Arts and Culture Council, as well as the chairman of the local authority, two newspaper editors and several important broadcasting people. Any Hulliborn catastrophe tonight was sure of a good show.

Itagaki and Kanda stood with him now, also gazing down. ‘Here is harmony, here is vibrancy!' Kanda delightedly cried. ‘Could it be surpassed, could it even be paralleled in any other museum? One substantially doubts it.'

‘Oh, yes, one substantially does,' Itagaki said. Her big, blue-framed spectacles twinkled life-lovingly under the revolving coloured lights, brought in for the Ball. ‘Among the Hulliborn's precious artefacts we see cheerful concord and general amity.'

Maybe. The trouble was, revered tradition dictated that, along with all current staff, retired Keepers and Curators should be sent Ball tickets, to commemorate Lord Hulliborn of Nadle-and-Colm, creator of the museum in the nineteenth century. Since nothing had actually been proved against Nev, he could not be excluded. Naturally, an unpleasant debate had erupted about this at a Hebdomadal Conclave, with Angus Beresford, Entomology, sounding off so threateningly and coarsely, plus graphic stiff-arm mime, about Falldew's alleged indiscretion in the Folk. Eventually, a request by Lepage for tolerance and customary Hulliborn saneness of outlook, made entirely against his better judgement, helped get Beresford's case rejected. Ursula had willingly undertaken to police Neville from start to finish. Ursula was resourceful and tough, but could she really manage it?

George had to hope so. As he watched the two of them now dancing together with full, funky energy in the marble surrounds of the Hulliborn Central Hall, he felt for several minutes that things might just turn out OK. Possibly, that warmth between Ursula and Nev would pick up yet again and provide him with some theme to life once more: a healthy and fruitful link with the Hulliborn, not that vile, crazed enmity. It had to be a heartening sign that Nev seemed to have taken the trouble to rent a reasonable tuxedo and mauve cummerbund. Studying Nev's scant face, George Lepage could read no hint of planned mischief and violence against the museum. Perhaps Nev had come to realize that although he might have a grievance, it was not against the Hulliborn but against the philistine political view that the only organizations entitled to helpful treatment were those contributing in a measurable, concrete way to the country's Gross Domestic Product. That was why the Hulliborn had to reduce expenditure. That was why Nev had been flung out of his job early.