Snatched (19 page)

‘It's the “El Grecos”,' Pirie said.

God. ‘Shouldn't we be in the Conclave, James?' Lepage replied.

‘The police have not been sleeping. My understanding is that they're getting damn close: the “El Grecos”, and possibly the Monet, too. You see the reason for my hesitation when you asked if it was bad? One can't be sure what's best for the Hulliborn in this situation.'

No, one couldn't be. ‘On the face of it this is great news, surely, James.'

‘What the police have done is to mount an undercover operation – known, I believe, as a “sting”. One of their people has masqueraded as a dealer – as a fence, in fact. The “El Grecos” were brought to him by someone connected with the theft and, to keep things going, the undercover man gave a hugely inflated estimate of what they would fetch – many millions, I believe. Not bad for three probable fakes. Obviously, the fuzz don't want to pounce too early. They're playing things along by pretending the negotiations are complex so they can net the whole gang, including Mr Big. Or perhaps it should be Mr Gross.' Pirie sniggered.

‘The Fatman?'

‘Exactly. And his woman sidekick, of course.'

‘This is fine work – to have discovered so much, Jimmy.'

Pirie touched his waves with one hand. ‘One cultivates contacts in all walks, Director. Eventually, this pays off. It's something I learned from Flounce.'

‘Sod Flounce,' Lepage said. ‘Sorry, but I seem to be hearing so much of him. Can't we function on our own now?'

‘If we can, it is because of what he taught us,' Pirie said. ‘I see no point in denying that, Director. He left us a heritage, and a duty to look after it well. I think, incidentally, it is a reproach to the Hulliborn that the suggestion for some kind of memorial should have had to come from such a distant, nothing place, as I read in my Heb papers. Kalamazoo! Hell, we've been remiss, abjectly neglectful, even casual. I don't at all single you out for blame on this, although Director. We are all at fault.'

‘Would you want the bust with or without?'

‘Director?'

‘The scar.'

‘I heard Penny bites, you know,' Pirie said.

He'd
heard
?
Or did he have some evidence of it on a non-facial, possibly more tender part of his body? ‘We should go in now, James,' Lepage replied.

When the Conclave reached ‘Kalamazoo Sir Eric Butler-Minton Society' at the end of the agenda, Pirie did his bit again about the slowness of the Hulliborn in organizing something tasteful and enduring, but didn't actually endorse the Kalamazoo offer.

Lepage said: ‘As you'll see from your papers, Lady Butler-Minton is against, and I've told Kalamazoo of her reaction. You'll also see that Kalamazoo is not prepared to take this as the final word.'

‘Nothing by bloody Amy Jessica Pill or bloody Raymond Norville stands in this museum while I'm Keeper of Art,' Youde said.

‘Director, nobody would dispute what the Secretary has eloquently and, if I may say, movingly put to us,' Angus Beresford said. ‘Flounce is a presence, a formidable presence. We all acknowledge this. We do not follow Nev Falldew into his loony excesses, but we do recognize the previous Director's influence. But who wants the bugger on a plinth where we'd have to see him every working day, and where it would appear he was back to watching us? That's another thing altogether. We should listen to Her Ladyship on this.'

‘Right!' Ronnie Acton-Sher said.

Others nodded and kept nodding.

Simberdy said: ‘We're shot of him, more or less. Let's keep it like that.'

There was little further discussion, most of it vehemently negative. At the vote, nobody but Ursula was for the Kalamazoo proposal; she clearly felt that this was how Neville would have reacted if still in the Conclave. Pirie had seemed in general favour of a memorial, though not provided by somewhere as far off as Kalamazoo. In any case, he probably wouldn't dare to come out too definitely in support for fear Lady Butler-Minton should find out and withdraw privileges from him. He abstained.

Lepage said he would write to Kalamazoo declining the offer but heartily thanking the Society and Guild for their interest in Butler-Minton's work.

‘Jubilation!' Dr Kanda said.

‘I tell you this, you could have felled me with a feather,' Dr Itagaki said.

‘We decided to come in person to bring the good news,' Kanda said. ‘Or should it be “in persons”? Two.'

‘Oh, heavens, it's Syntax Day,' she said. ‘The Hulliborn has almost certainly won the medical exhibition. That's the full long and short of it. Yours on a damn plate.'

‘This is wonderful,' Lepage said. ‘It calls for a drink.'

‘Something to lubricate the tonsils, mine being as yet unremoved, regardless of the exhibition,' she said.

Lepage went to his cupboard and brought out the decent brandy. ‘I'll ask Vincent Simberdy to join us in a minute, if I may. Asiatics.'

‘You called?' Itagaki replied, laughing considerably.

Lepage poured, using some fine, antique brandy balloons.

‘Somehow, by means not intimated to us, of course, the Hulliborn seems to have avoided all the usual Tokyo red tape,' Kanda said. ‘One had better term the development a miracle, I believe, for, as we understand it, you are more or less sure to be chosen, and without a final selection procedure. As I think I explained, there was to have been our visits, ahead of a further inspection by the Embassy heavy mob. Well, that second stage has been declared superfluous by someone in Tokyo – and someone mega powerful, I'd guess, so the victory is yours, as long as we encounter no last-minute hitch. The most lavish congratters, Dr Director.' He drank some brandy.

Lepage said: ‘I feel vastly in your debt, and that the Hulliborn is. The report from the two of you must have been very favourable and very effective.'

‘We love this place, that's the straight fact,' Itagaki said, ‘and we did make this damn clear in our recommendation. OK, there's a flasher in the Folk, and old Falldew doing his nut in public – maybe the flashing, too, and I don't say this for the sake of alliteration – plus the “El Greco” thing, and the simmering Youde, Pirie, Lady Butler-Minton
pot pourri
—'

‘Not to mention the mysterious haversack straps,' Kanda said.

‘So you mention them!' Itagaki said. ‘Paralipsis! But so fucking what? These are superficialities. These are, indeed, in some ways endearing quirks, and for all we know at this point the haversack straps, Mrs Cray and the windsock might be pluses, positives. An error to find them off-putting.'

‘Returning on the train after one of our earlier visits, we both came up, independently, with this phrase to describe some of the goings on at the Hulliborn – endearing quirks,' Kanda declared. ‘It was a remarkable moment in the carriage when we leaned across to each other, as if governed by the same impulse and said “endearing quirks”. Other passengers were mystified. “Strange people these Asians, what, Bessy!” One can imagine that kind of Blimpish remark from a passenger to his wife.' He laughed, too, now.

‘These factors are nothing but the marks of a lively and possibly sometimes outré individuality,' Itagaki suggested. ‘Swipe me, Lepage; if an ex-Keeper can't use a bit of body language in his own former museum, where the hell can he? We stressed such points forcefully in our findings. Hulliborn
uber alles
!'

‘You've been very kind,' Lepage said. He rang Simberdy and asked him to look in.

‘But there are other hidden factors, not the smallest doubt,' Itagaki said. ‘I can tell you, Director, it would be stark-staring idiocy to posit that Tokyo has acted solely on the say-so of a couple of travelling nobodies.'

‘I think you are too self-disparaging,' Lepage rushed to say. ‘After all—'

‘Oh, somebody in Tokyo has a feeling for Lady Butler-Minton, I would hazard,' she replied, ‘and that has been extended to the Hulliborn, with which her name is still identified, of course. I always say, “Cherchez la nooky,” when matters as totally inexplicable as—'

‘
Seemingly
as totally inexplicable,' Kanda stated.

‘When well-established, previously slavishly followed procedures are skipped,' Itagaki continued. ‘Butler-Minton and his wife were in Japan quite often, Flounce helping several of our museums with priceless advice, and Penelope – well, Penny radiating in that glorious, questing way of hers. There'd be a lot of time to fill in. And to get filled in.'

‘Forgive us if we seem to be carelessly impugning Lady Butler-Minton's character, Director. But it can safely be said, I think, that she appreciates life.'

‘Zounds! Back to British understatement,' Itagaki said. ‘The fact is, Lady B-M shags like a rattlesnake, but, fair-e-bloody-nough, “appreciates life” will cover it.' Brandy balloon in hand, she did a little tour of the room, giving a nice, formal bow to the platypus, so that her large blue spectacles shifted on her nose and had to be adjusted. ‘I don't make these remarks out of absolutely nowhere, Director. There are signs that Flounce and therefore Penny had some bearing on this decision.'

‘Tokyo feels quite powerfully that there should be a permanent memorial to Sir Eric,' Kanda said. ‘This is an additional reason for our coming to see you today. We have a proposal to put.'

‘It entails a sort of package,' Itagaki explained. ‘The Arts and Culture Council had instructions from the stratosphere level of the embassy to let you know about the probable Hulliborn success—'

‘Very
probable,' Kanda said.

‘And to suggest at the same time that Tokyo wants to show recognition of Butler-Minton's status and help to Japanese institutions by commissioning a bust to stand in the Hulliborn, with a suitable plaque as to its donors,' Itagaki said. ‘Now, please don't puke. I know it's the corniest of notions, but those stuffy old sods in Tokyo can think only in cliché: stone-fucking-memorials in this day and age! I ask you! Any time now, they're going to emerge into the nineteenth century. We're lucky they don't want him on a horse, I suppose.'

‘“A sort of package”?' Lepage asked.

‘They seem to have rolled the two things together – exhibition and bust,' Kanda replied. ‘The plaque would be in stone taken from near Mount Fuji where all the rubble is supposed to have holy significance, you know. It would speak briefly of Sir Eric's vivid career, while also recording permanently the visit of the medical exhibition. I suppose it's a natural thing with museum people that they do seek the enduring, the lasting.'

‘A couple of sculptors have been mooted, as I hear,' Itagaki said, ‘one American, the other a Scot, probably both out-and-out dullards and frights or Tokyo would never have picked them: Amy Jessica Pill and Raymond Norville.'

‘This is
so
interesting,' Lepage said.

Simberdy arrived. He was looking terribly bad these last few days, his cheeks and jowls that worrying grey shade of old mackerel, his great gut no longer assertive and buoyant, but carried laboriously, like a curse. Could such grim damage have been done by the incompetent blows from Quent Youde?

‘We're on course to get the exhibition, Vince,' Lepage trilled. ‘Come and join us in a celebratory drink.'

‘This is grand,' Simberdy replied. ‘It will ensure a fine future for the Hulliborn.' He smiled, but this didn't do much for him.

Lepage waited until Simberdy had sat down, with the brandy balloon safely placed, before adding: ‘Dr Itagaki and Dr Kanda bring a fascinating suggestion from their embassy. Tokyo would like to commission a bust of Flounce for the Hulliborn.'

For someone who'd been at the Conclave where the idea of a memorial sculpture was treated like shit, Simberdy reacted magnificently, regardless of his appearance. ‘But this is, as you say, well, fascinating, Director,' he replied at once. He took a good mouthful of the brandy.

‘It's what could be described, and
has
been described, as a package,' Lepage said. ‘We owe a double debt of gratitude, don't we? Oh, yes.' He answered the question himself so as not to put further strain on Simberdy's nerves. The Keeper of Asiatics would need time to get fully used to the idea that, having rejected the Kalamazoo bust, the Hulliborn must now enthusiastically welcome an identical proposal from the Japanese. The simple, ghastly equation went like this: Hulliborn needed the prestige of winning the exhibition if the museum were to be sure of flourishing and expanding, sure of surviving, in a harsh commercial climate; and, in that harsh commercial climate, the exhibition would come only if Lepage, Simberdy and the rest of the management agreed to terms stipulated by Tokyo.

‘The exhibition could be in place before your tiresome Board of Museums inspection and grading rigmarole,' Kanda pointed out. ‘An advantage, possibly?'

‘Your government has become damn choosy in where it places its largest grants. Hulliborn, with the exhibition, will look a grand place for maximum investment. This will be to support success – the gospel of Mrs Thatcher,' Itagaki said. ‘Snatch the chance, do.' She nodded definitively. ‘Yes, this is how Tokyo would like things to go. We pass the message, as per instruction. But I do sympathize with you. I mean, who the devil wants the head of some old supremo stuck on a stand, as if he'd come back to cast his bullying eye over everything?'

‘My colleagues will be intrigued,' Lepage remarked, with ample joyfulness in his voice. ‘Don't you think so, Vincent?' By now he considered it safe to invite another comment, another slice of acting, from Simberdy.

‘Extremely intrigued,' he said.

‘Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!' Olive Simberdy yelled. Then: ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Oh, my God, YES! Vince, come now! Now!'