The Perfect Landscape (8 page)

“Icelanders own more mobile phones per capita than any other nation,” the minister continues. Hrafn doesn’t listen to him but quickly runs his eyes down the auction house web page. Some paintings have been added; one of them seems familiar. He looks at it more closely; the artist is listed as unknown. He tries to work out who it could be. Enlarging some of the detail on the screen, he looks carefully at the brushstrokes, but he can’t be sure. It’s a landscape painting, probably Danish but could be Icelandic. Or a painting by some Icelandic artist who trained in Denmark. He checks the value and the work’s origins. The value is very low and the ownership history seems convincing; the painting has been in the same family for years. The auction is just about to begin, and he puts in a generous bid. He could be onto something. A faint scent of perfume stirs his senses; behind him sits the owner of the gallery where the art side of this business conference is housed.

She wears her dyed blonde hair up in a plait, and her lips are bright red. Hrafn has not been introduced to her, but the
minister pointed her out to him before the meeting. “Mariya Kovaleva,” he’d said. “One of the wealthiest women in Russia today.” Hrafn’s interest had been aroused and he’d resolved to talk to her before the day was out.

“I think we can say without a doubt that Icelandic business is booming like never before,” the minister says in closing. Hrafn glances back at his screen; there’s something about this painting that interests him.

There is a dinner at the Hotel Kosmopolitan that evening, in a restaurant on the twenty-fifth floor with a view over the city. Hrafn is sitting next to Mariya Kovaleva and a young woman called Larisa, who seems to be her personal assistant. Stanislav is also at the table, along with the minister, two bankers, and their wives. It’s a veritable banquet, and there are lavish quantities of food and drink. Hrafn is used to this sort of thing and he knows how to manage an event like this; he drinks mineral water and eats little. He observes the others around the table who do not employ quite the same table manners as he does. He is a polite man, modest by nature and not given to pushing himself forward. His open face has a classic bone structure; he has a sportsman’s build and a rare smile. He is accustomed to attracting looks from both men and women no matter where he is. But he is not talkative, and this evening he only talks to Stanislav or remains silent. He pays attention to the conversation around the table without taking part. From time to time he catches Larisa’s eye or smiles at Mariya Kovaleva across the large round table, raising his glass to a toast.

His fellow diners have been celebrating since the opening at Mariya Kovaleva’s gallery this afternoon. The gallery is enormous; it is in a new building in the city center right next to the
Pushkin Museum. It currently houses an exhibit of contemporary Russian artists alongside Icelandic artists. Many delegates from the conference attended the opening, but Hrafn talked almost exclusively to Vasya. Not about business, but about the family. Hrafn told him he was expecting his third child. Vasya talked about his wife’s illness. Hrafn asked if there was anything he could do, offered to cover the medical costs at a private clinic in America, but Vasya refused.

The evening is wearing on, and the banker’s wife sitting next to Hrafn is tired and tipsy. She has tried various topics of conversation with Hrafn with little success before discovering that he is a horseman. They have something in common. Hrafn listens politely as she talks about her horses and her riding.

“So you obviously don’t eat horse meat, do you?” she asks, leaning in toward him, somewhat red-eyed with tousled hair and circles under her eyes. Her husband watches her out of the corner of his eye. But Hrafn is not interested in this woman or in talking to her about horses; he is contemplating moving so he can talk to Mariya and Larisa.

“Only fillet,” he says, pushing his chair from the table in order to extricate himself from this gathering and move away. He hears the banker’s wife repeating his words to her husband.

“He’s hardly likely to eat his own horses,” replies the husband, and then their words are drowned out in the general babble.

“Mr. Arnason? Mr. Arnason!” Mariya calls to him, and Hrafn walks over to her and takes her outstretched hand. She shakes his hand warmly, too warmly in Hrafn’s view, and too long. He is curious but says nothing.

“This is Larisa,” says Mariya without further explanation. “We’re off to a private party. Come and join us.” At this Larisa obediently gets up from the table, up from the dessert, profiteroles—choux pastry filled with whipped cream—which are just being served. The cream puffs are shaped like swans, and Mariya reaches out for one, biting off its head and smiling up at Hrafn.

“I hear you’re an art collector,” she says in her stiff English with a marked accent, stuffing the remains of the swan into her mouth. “The minister told me. I must show you my private collection.”

Hrafn allows himself to be led away from the table without saying good-bye to his fellow diners, who are still drinking; he makes do with patting Stanislav lightly on the shoulder. He is relieved to get away; he finds eating and drinking with people he has no interest in getting to know a waste of time. He has already got all he needs in life. But he can’t resist a business opportunity and is sure that getting to know Mariya, or Masha as she has asked him to call her, will provide new breaks into the Russian market, although he doesn’t yet know what sort. She is well connected at any rate.

On their way out Masha signals to two men who are about to follow them. Speaking in undertones, she says something in Russian, and they shake their heads but let the matter drop. They look like bodyguards. Larisa takes Hrafn’s arm and smiles without saying anything. She is blonde with brown eyes and has a dimple in her heart-shaped face. They go out of the back entrance and into a black car waiting there; the windows are tinted.

Hrafn loses his sense of direction almost immediately and doesn’t know where they are. For a second he sees lit-up
buildings reflected in the Moscow River,
Reka Moskva
, then for some time the car winds its way along poorly lit back streets. Hrafn feels Larisa’s hand resting gently on his knee. He doesn’t react; he is waiting to see how this will turn out. The car comes to a standstill outside a block of flats on a side street. Mariya and Larisa quickly jump out, and Hrafn follows them. The car glides away, virtually silent. Masha gets out her key, which she slips into the lock, and opens the door to the main entrance with a flourish. Once inside, they don’t go into the luxury flat Hrafn sees through an open door off the richly carpeted hallway, but straight up to the next floor. Again Masha opens up with the key. There is some coming and going down below, and they hear someone rushing toward the stairs. Masha calls something down in Russian, and the footsteps fade away again.

They enter a darkened room with parquet flooring. Hrafn picks out a faint smell of oil paints and linseed oil varnish, as though they’ve come into an artist’s studio. When Larisa switches on the light, the sheer volume of paintings on the walls takes him by surprise. The sliding doors between the large, spacious rooms are open, rooms that are like small exhibition spaces in a gallery. Hrafn looks twice at Larisa. She has taken off the jacket she wore over her cocktail dress; the dress is beautiful, but not as beautiful as she is. He concentrates on the paintings on the walls; he is familiar with the subject matter—Russian landscapes in nineteenth-century style. Hrafn points to one of them.

“Shishkin?” he asks, naming the one Russian painter that comes to mind. Shishkin was around in the nineteenth century, and his paintings are among the more expensive ones on the market. Smiling, Larisa nods. Together they walk through
three large rooms full of paintings; Larisa lets their art speak for itself. Hrafn has never seen a private collection on par with this. The most famous artists in history. Rembrandt, Velazquez, Goya, Matisse, Picasso. The collection is clearly extraordinarily valuable and to invite him in is most unusual. Someone who owns a collection like this would hardly be inclined to advertise the fact to a stranger, and Hrafn guesses that there are security guards on the lower floor.

Masha has disappeared. Larisa settles down on a leather sofa over in the far corner and invites him to come and sit next to her, but Hrafn declines. She is open about what she has in mind, but he has never cheated on his wife. In his eyes, cheating is a sign of instability and immaturity. Nor does he trust business colleagues who are unfaithful to their wives. Larisa accepts his refusal with exceptional courtesy, as though nothing had happened. She simply gets up, leads the way back, and slips her jacket back on without him noticing.

“This is the largest private collection of nineteenth-century Russian paintings inside Russia,” says Larisa as she takes a bottle of champagne from the table and pours them each a glass. Hrafn takes the glass but does not drink. He sees. Sees that Mariya is rich and powerful—she has servants, bodyguards, refined and educated escorts on her payroll—and Larisa is an art historian. What’s Mariya’s game?

Hrafn smiles at Larisa and thanks her for inviting him. It was an honor to view this beautiful and remarkable collection. But he must be off now; he has a number of taxing meetings ahead of him tomorrow. Larisa asks him to wait a moment, then disappears. Shortly after a man dressed in black comes and escorts Hrafn to the door. The same black car is waiting for
him out on the street. The man in black hurries Hrafn out and into the car as if a hidden marksman were around the corner, waiting for his moment.

Hanna intends to fulfill her promise to Steinn and call Denmark today; he is not keen on this sort of phone call. She isn’t entirely sure which approach to take with the auction house in Copenhagen where Elisabet Valsdottir bought
The Birches
, artist currently unknown, but she intends to get what she needs. Steinn is tenacious, she thinks to herself, but I don’t give up so easily either.

They both want to know who put
The Birches
up for auction, who profited nearly eight million Icelandic kronur from its sale. Hanna will need to be cunning but courteous; she must sheath her foil. Auction houses are invariably on their guard. There is always someone who is trying to get forged paintings onto the market. She doesn’t want to be too pushy and have the person on the other end get defensive as a result.

Steinn is still waiting for the X-rays. He knows someone who works in the radiology department at the hospital, but he has not found time to X-ray the painting yet. In the meantime,
they will have to look for clues elsewhere by tracing the painting’s history, looking for inconsistencies, something that doesn’t ring true.

Finally Hanna takes the plunge and dials the number. She starts off trying to make do with her high school Danish in the hopes that any Dane would be pleased to hear an Icelander trying to speak Danish. The auction house’s phone number is on the home page; she has the website open in front of her on the screen as she dials.

“Vabeha?”

The voice on the other end is impatient, and Hanna decides straightaway not to attempt any further Danish and switches over to English. That works better, and the voice softens very slightly.

“The painting was attributed to the Icelandic painter Gudrun Johannsdottir,” she repeats in English, but the man at the auction house is not really listening. Hanna tries her best to pronounce the name in some sort of international way that could be understood anywhere. “Gudrun Johannsdottir.” She pronounces the
j
as
dj
as she would in English. “Djo-hanns-dot-tir,” she repeats, trying to remain as friendly and polite as she can. She feels that a member of staff at the auction house should recognize the name. Gudrun was very much a key player among Icelandic painters and exhibited a lot abroad. Mostly in Paris but also in Scandinavia. Evidently before this man’s time, because he now asks her to spell the name. In her head Hanna quickly tries to find words to match the letters in Gudrun’s name while spelling it correctly. “
G
as in George.
U
as in...” She falls silent for a moment.
U
as in what, an English or a Danish word? “
U
as in under,” she says hesitantly, but the
message seems to transmit across the sea. “
D
as in David.” She continues to spell Gudrun’s name out in full. “And
dottir
like the Danish word
datter
,” she says finally, but the man on the other end doesn’t understand what she means and so she has to spell
dottir
, daughter, as well.

“And when was the painting purchased?” The man on the other end is clearly jotting down her inquiry about the painting’s ownership history. He is probably just someone who answers the phone; at least that’s how he comes across. Judging by the range of items on offer on their website, it is a big auction house that operates on a considerable scale—it is hardly likely the staff are all specialist art historians. The auction house has much more than paintings on offer, and Hanna looks through the selection of goods for sale while she is talking. The collectors’ pages remind her of the Duke of Berry’s treasures. She is attracted by a Russian damask doll, embroidered with a crown and a monogram. It costs around one hundred thousand Icelandic kronur. Someone has bid nearly fifty thousand. While she is answering the man’s questions, Hanna tries to imagine what sort of person buys these things.

“I think it was purchased just before New Year’s, but I don’t have an exact date,” she says. She can hear the keyboard tapping. He is searching. Hanna clicks on a picture of a decorative Chinese tree with flowers and leaves made of valuable stones. The tree is set to go for around forty thousand Icelandic kronur. However, a monk’s figurine carved from wood from the seventeenth century is valued at well over a hundred thousand. Would she give Frederico something like that for Christmas if they were rich? She smiles to herself until she remembers. Depending on whether they have another Christmas together.