The Girl on Paper (27 page)

‘Excuse me.’

It was a three-word email from Carole saying, ‘Look at this!’ followed by a link.

He clicked on the touch screen with his sticky fingers and was taken to a site where you could search the catalogues of booksellers specialising in rare or second-hand books. If the information on here was correct, a bookstore in Greenwich Village had just put the book he was looking for up for sale!

Just as he finished reading, he got a text from Carole.

Meet in Manhattan?

He wrote straight back.

On my way.

He undid his apron, put it down on the counter and bolted out of the restaurant.

‘Hey! What about my dessert?’

Billie was making a remarkable recovery. She was off the ventilator; the drains and various electrodes had been removed, and she was back on the ward. Clouseau came to see her every day, looking out for any signs of infection or internal bleeding, but everything seemed to be under control.

As for me, the hospital had become a kind of annexe to my office. From 7.30 a.m. to 7 p.m., I put my headphones in and worked on my laptop in the ground-floor cafeteria. At lunchtime, I got my meals from the staff self-service canteen, using Clouseau’s smart card – did the guy ever sleep? Or eat? It was a mystery – and I’d been given a bed in Billie’s room, which meant we could carry on spending the evenings together.

I’d never been so in love.

I’d never found it so easy to write.

Carole was the first to arrive outside the little bookshop on Greene Street.

Kerouac & Co. Bookseller

She looked in the window and couldn’t believe her eyes. The book was right there!

It lay open on a stand, with a label saying ‘only copy’, and shared the window with a collection of Emily Dickinson poems and a poster for
The Misfits
, signed by Marilyn Monroe.

She sensed Milo coming up behind her.

‘I have to give you credit for keeping going,’ he said as he approached the window. ‘I never thought we’d find it again.’

‘Do you think that’s definitely it?’

‘Let’s find out,’ he said, walking into the store.

The shop was about to close. Kenneth Andrews was putting the books he had just dusted back on the shelves. He paused to welcome his customers.

‘What can I do for you?’

‘We’d like to take a look at one of your books,’ said Carole, pointing out Tom’s novel.

‘Oh yes, it’s unique!’ exclaimed the bookseller, taking the book out of the window and handling it as carefully as if it were written on papyrus.

Milo examined it from every angle, surprised to see how its different readers had made it their own.

‘So?’ said Carole nervously.

‘This is the one, all right.’

‘We’ll take it!’ she said firmly.

She felt filled with emotion and proud of herself. Thanks to her, Billie was out of danger!

‘Excellent choice. I’ll wrap it up for you. How would you like to pay?’

‘Um, how much is it?’

Ever the pro, Kenneth Andrews had sensed how keen these customers were, and quoted an outrageous price.

‘It’s $6,000, ma’am.’

‘
What?
Are you serious?’ choked Milo.

‘It’s one of a kind,’ the bookseller said by way of justification.

‘It’s daylight robbery, that’s what it is!’

The old man showed them the door. ‘Well, I won’t hold you back.’

‘Fine! You can stick your book—’ fumed Milo.

‘Very well, sir, and have a wonderful evening yourself,’ retorted Andrews, returning the book to its stand.

‘Wait a second!’ pleaded Carole, trying to calm things down. ‘I’ll pay it.’

She took out her wallet and held out her credit card.

‘That’s very kind, ma’am,’ he said, taking hold of the little piece of plastic.

‘Can I go home now? I’m so bored of just lying here!’ moaned Billie.

Professor Clouseau shot her a stern look.

‘Does it hurt when I press here?’ he asked, palpating her breastbone.

‘A little bit.’

The doctor was concerned. Billie had a fever. Her scar was
inflamed and hadn’t knitted together properly. It might just be a superficial infection, but he ordered some tests just in case.

‘What do you mean, “declined”?’ thundered Milo.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kenneth Andrews, flustered, ‘but there seems to be a slight problem with your wife’s card.’

‘I’m not his wife,’ Carole corrected him.

She turned towards Milo.

‘I must have maxed out my credit card buying those flights, but there’s still money in my savings account.’

‘This is crazy,’ said Milo, urging her to see sense, ‘you can’t just bankrupt yourself.’

But Carole wouldn’t be swayed.

‘I just have to call my bank and get them to do a transfer, but it’s Friday and it might take some time,’ she explained.

‘No problem, call in whenever you can.’

‘This book is very important to us,’ she stressed.

‘I’ll keep it aside until the end of Monday,’ promised Andrews, taking it out of the window and placing it on the counter.

‘Can I rely on you?’

‘You have my word, ma’am.’

‘Ow!’ Billie cried out when the nurse placed a heat pad over her breastbone.

This time, the pain was more acute. She’d had a temperature
all weekend and Professor Clouseau had moved her back from the ward to the cardiology unit.

The doctor stood at her bedside and examined the scar; it was all puffed up and the wound was seeping. Clouseau feared an inflammation of the bone and bone marrow: mediastinitis, a rare but serious bacterial infection that could be a complication of cardiac surgery.

None of the tests he had ordered had come back with conclusive results. The chest X-ray showed that two steel threads had snapped, but this was hard to interpret because of the bruising caused by the operation itself. Maybe it was nothing to worry about.

He thought about it, before deciding to carry out one last examination himself. He inserted a fine needle into the cavity between Billie’s lungs to draw off some of the mediastinal fluid. To the naked eye, the sample looked like pus. He prescribed a course of intravenous antibiotics and sent the sample to the lab for urgent analysis.

The multimillionaire Oleg Mordhorov stopped at a little café on Broome Street to order a cappuccino, just as he did every morning when he was in New York. He stepped back onto the pavement holding his paper cup and turned down Greene Street.

The autumn sun cast a gentle light on the buildings of Manhattan. Oleg liked strolling through the streets – but he wasn’t just killing time. On the contrary, these were moments when he could reflect and when he sometimes took
life-changing
decisions.

He had a meeting at 11 a.m. to finalise a real-estate
transaction. The group he headed was about to buy up office buildings and warehouses in Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Coney Island to turn them into luxury homes. The locals weren’t all that keen on the idea, but that really wasn’t his problem.

Oleg was forty-four, but his slightly chubby face made him appear younger. Wearing jeans, a cord jacket and a hoodie, he didn’t look like one of the richest men in Russia. He didn’t go in for displays of wealth, he didn’t drive around in the limousine of an oligarch, and his bodyguard knew how to keep his distance and stay out of sight.

At the age of twenty-six, while teaching philosophy in Avacha Bay, Oleg had been approached to join the council of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a port city in eastern Russia. He’d become very involved in local life, until perestroika and Yeltsin’s reforms led him into business. He’d become involved with some rather shady businessmen who had helped him profit from the policy of privatising state-owned assets.

At the beginning, he didn’t have much in the way of business credentials, and his rivals had been taken in by the fact that he appeared to be a harmless dreamer, but this impression belied his cold, hard determination. He’d come a long way since then, cutting loose a few bothersome acquaintances in the process. He had property in London, New York and Dubai, a yacht, a private jet, a professional basketball team and a Formula 1 team.

Oleg stopped outside the window of the little bookshop Kerouac & Co. The autographed
Misfits
poster had caught his eye.

A gift for Marieke maybe. Why not?

He was dating Marieke Van Eden, a twenty-four-year-old Dutch supermodel who for the last two years had been on the cover of every fashion magazine.

‘Hi,’ he said, walking into the shop.

‘May I help you, sir?’ Kenneth Andrews greeted him.

‘That Marilyn autograph. Is it genuine?’

‘But of course, sir. It comes with a certificate of authenticity. It’s a fantastic piece—’

‘What’s it worth?’

‘Three thousand five hundred dollars, sir.’

‘OK,’ said Oleg, without trying to haggle. ‘It’s a present – could you wrap it for me?’

‘Right away.’

While the bookseller carefully rolled up the poster, Oleg took out his Platinum card and put it down on the counter, just next to a book with a blue leather cover.

Tom Boyd – The Angel Trilogy
.

That’s Marieke’s favourite writer
.

He opened the book and flicked through it.

‘How much for this?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, that’s one’s not for sale.’

Oleg smiled. In business, the only things he was interested in buying were those which were supposedly not for sale.

‘How much?’ he asked again.

His round face no longer looked so good natured. There was a worrying intensity in his eyes.

‘It’s already sold, sir,’ Andrews explained calmly.

‘If it’s already sold, what’s it still doing here?’

‘The customer’s coming back to collect it.’

‘So it hasn’t been paid for yet.’

‘No, but I gave the customer my word.’

‘And how much is your word worth?’

‘My word, sir, is not for sale,’ the bookseller replied firmly.

Andrews suddenly felt uncomfortable. There was something threatening, something violent about this guy’s manner. He put through the credit card and handed the Russian his package
and receipt, relieved to be concluding the exchange.

Only Oleg didn’t see it that way. He didn’t leave, settling instead in a tawny leather armchair facing the counter.

‘Everything has a price, doesn’t it?’

‘I don’t think so, sir.’

‘What was it Shakespeare said?’ Oleg asked, trying to remember the quotation. ‘“Money makes foul fair, old young, wrong right, base noble …”’

‘You must admit that’s a very cynical view of mankind.’

‘Name something money can’t buy,’ Oleg challenged him.

‘Well, it’s obvious: friendship, love, dignity—’

Oleg swept his argument aside.

‘Humans are weak and corruptible.’

‘Surely you’d allow that there are some moral and spiritual values that escape self-interest.’

‘Every man has his price.’

This time, Andrews showed him the door.

‘Have a good day, won’t you.’

But Oleg didn’t move an inch.

‘Every man has his price,’ he said again. ‘What’s yours?’

‘What the hell is this?’ railed Milo, arriving outside the shop.

Carole couldn’t believe her eyes. Not only had the shutters been pulled down, but a hastily scrawled sign informed potential customers:

She felt tears welling up. She sat on the kerb, despondent, letting her head drop into her hands. She’d just cashed the $6,000. A quarter of an hour earlier she’d been on the phone to Tom telling him the good news. And now the book had slipped through her fingers once again.

Milo shook the shutters, enraged, but Carole stood up to try to reason with him.

‘You can break whatever you want – it won’t change anything.’

She took out the $6,000 in bills and handed most of them to him

‘Listen, I need to get back to work, but you should go and help Tom in Paris. That’s the most useful thing we can do now.’

And that was that. Downbeat, they shared a taxi to JFK airport and went their separate ways: Carole to Los Angeles and Milo to Paris.

A few miles away at another New York airport, multimillionaire Oleg Mordhorov’s private jet was taking off for Europe. He’d decided to make a flying visit to surprise Marieke in Paris.

It was the first week of October and the young model was strutting her stuff in the French capital for Fashion Week. All the fashion houses fought to dress her in their new collections. A classically beautiful and sophisticated woman, she had a special spark, as if the gods of Mount Olympus had allowed a flicker of the eternal flame to pass down to Earth.

Comfortably settled in his seat, Oleg flicked through the Tom Boyd book absent-mindedly, before slipping it inside a
padded envelope with a ribbon around it.

It’s an original gift
, he thought to himself.
I hope she’ll like it
.

He spent the rest of the journey sorting out some paperwork before allowing himself a couple of hours’ sleep.

‘Damned hospital bugs!’ Clouseau cursed as he came into the room.

Knocked out by fever and fatigue, Billie hadn’t woken up since the previous day.

‘Bad news?’ I guessed.

‘Very bad indeed. We’ve found bacteria in the fluid we took from Billie. She’s developing mediastinitis, a very serious infection which needs to be treated immediately.’

‘Will you have to operate again?’

‘Yes, we’re taking her up to theatre straight away.’

Oleg Mordhorov’s jet landed at Orly Sud at 6 a.m. An
ordinary-looking
car was waiting to take him to Île Saint-Louis, right in the heart of Paris.