Pawn (18 page)

“After that, it becomes a giant game of hide and seek, as the buyers’ agents follow the Hennassy’s around for a week or more hoping to find their warehouse, and at the same time trying keep hidden from the others, even as they watch them. But there are no true secrets between them. Everyone knows everyone’s moves. Then someone decides it’s time to stop being so timid. So the Russians make their move when they have the entire family all in one place, hoping to do a grab and run. And of course when the Russians start the rest have to wade in. They can’t let their competitors have the Hennassys all to themselves.”

“That’s what happened at the market. The Russians tried their snatch and grab and the rest had to stop them, kill most of the Hennassys and capture one for themselves. So the bullets and bombs flew, and everybody else just got caught in the crossfire.”

There was silence for a while at the table, as they digested his story. But there weren’t any objections. And why would there be? When his story fitted the facts so perfectly. Except for one.

“What about the beach?” Hopkins was right to ask the question even if Barns didn’t like it. But half of it he could answer.

“The Hennassys still had to kill Rufus. He was their Achilles heel. And Daryl hated him. Always has. So somehow they tracked him down and shot him.” But he already knew what Hopkins’ next question would be. The half he couldn’t answer.

“And the light? The lack of bodies? The woman?”

“Don’t know. That still doesn’t make any sense. But I don’t think it has anything to do with the painting or the rest. If anything it’s the woman. Maybe she’s a stage magician or something. Maybe he was wearing a vest after all.” And maybe there was no logical explanation for what had happened. But the one thing he knew, it wasn’t a crime any longer. Rufus Hennassy was gone, almost certainly dead and his brother was beyond any hope of ever being tried. That case at least had been closed. Except in this motel room.

“This would be the blinding light that was on the news?” Of course the archdeacon knew about it. Everyone did. There hadn’t been a night when it hadn’t been the leading story. And any number of the witnesses were talking about angels and witchcraft and miracles. Still Barns nodded politely to him.

“A woman of surpassing beauty?” Barns nodded again. That was the other, improbable feature of the case, the witnesses. All of them, without exception, spoke of the woman’s great beauty, and the sense of love that radiated from her. How could love radiate from a woman? But still it was rare enough that two eyewitnesses would agree on anything. The fact that forty of them could agree on the woman’s great beauty was somewhat unusual. The fact that absolutely none of them could describe her at all, was more so.

So maybe it had been dark. And maybe it had only been a brief encounter while bullets were flying all around and people were panicking. But still the fact that none of them could describe even the first thing about her was simply mad. They didn’t know what race she was, whether she was tall or short, thin or fat, whether her hair was long or short, dark or light. They knew absolutely nothing about her, except that she was beautiful.

“You realise that you’ve just described Aphrodite. Goddess of love and beauty.”

“Huh?” Had a priest really just said that? Barns looked at the archdeacon in shock and found himself wondering. Just before he grabbed the plunge pot and poured himself a cup of the black gold. He suddenly had the feeling that he was going to need it.

“And?” The agent asked the question for him, looking fascinated rather than shocked as she should have been. In fact she had the same look on her face that a cat did when a mouse walked directly in front of it. She knew something, and Barns didn’t like that one little bit.

“The notes about the painting. About Aphrodite in the Roses. The bishop at the time who found the painting asked Rembrandt how he could have painted it. How he could have painted something so sacrilegious. And how he had hid it from them. They did after all, pay his work a lot of attention.”

“And?” Grief, her eyes were like diamonds, boring into the priest. What was it that she knew? What was she hunting for?

“He said it wasn’t a sacrilegious painting at all. He said she was a real woman. That she’d come to sit for him. And that her name was Aphrodite. He painted her as a goddess because that’s what she was.” Everyone was silent after that. In Barns’ case because he simply didn’t know what to say. Surely that couldn’t have been what the agent was after? But still, it had to be dealt with, and he took another swig of the hot coffee before summoning up the nerve to ask the question he didn’t want answered.

“And you think she’s here, nearly four hundred years later, walking on a beach at night with Rufus Hennassy?” It was madness of course, just as everything else had been up until then. And now that he finally had a crime solved, he didn’t want to go back to madness.

“In any case, she’s not a criminal, and Hopkins we have a crime to solve and some bad guys to stick behind bars, starting with Venner.” He swigged at his coffee, burning himself a little, but not really caring. He had work to do and he wasn’t going to let a mad priest keep him from it.

“Now, if there’s nothing else father?” He got up and prepared to take his leave of them.

“Just one thing.” And with a sinking feeling in his guts Barns turned back to the archdeacon. He knew it was going to be bad.

“How is Daryl Hennassy?”

It was every bit as bad as he’d feared, and the inspector didn’t want to answer the priest. But he had to. In the interest of truth he had to, no matter how bad it sounded.

“Broken.” Which came nowhere near to describing his true condition. Nothing really did. “He doesn’t eat or sleep. He speaks in riddles when he speaks at all. The slightest noise, the faintest shadow and he starts screaming in terror. And when there’s nothing he sits alone in his room and cries. The doctors say he won’t recover.” But that wasn’t the worst. When he’d seen him, sat down with him the only time he had, he’d seen something in his eyes that had scared him.

Daryl Hennassy was a bad man. A bully and a thug. He cared for no one and nothing save himself. And he had done terrible things for no other reason save that he wanted to. There was nothing of goodness or love within him. But there had been a man.

Now though, what lay behind those eyes, was never a man. He didn’t know what it was. A frightened child maybe. An old man on his deathbed, seeing his doom approaching. An alcoholic going through withdrawal and suffering the psychological torment of insects crawling all over him. Whatever lay behind those eyes, it suffered. It suffered terribly.

Maybe it was a form of justice. But if it was, it was something that Barns would never have wished upon anyone. The doctors said he would stay like that for the rest of his life. It would be a mercy for him if his life did not last long. And as to what could do that to a man, he didn’t know and he didn’t want to know.

Ancient Greek goddesses be damned.

“Hopkins, we have work to do.”

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Chapter Nineteen.

Venner hated hospitals. They stank of antiseptic and fake flowers, and of course death. He didn’t like death. Not too close to him at least. And he had the money and the contacts to avoid it. Plutos would keep him alive, as long as he was loyal and useful.

But still it had to be borne, and he walked straight past the nurses station where a couple of bored looking women in white smocks sat staring at the computer screens in front of them, and on down the corridor. They didn’t even look up as he passed, but then why would they? This was a hospital and they were too busy with patients to worry about a visitor carrying a bunch of flowers.

Of course he wasn’t going to visit his sick aunt or whatever, as they’d probably assumed, and at the end of the hallway instead of turning right, he turned left, pushing open the heavy wooden door with its glass inset and stepping into the antechamber that led to Aidan Hennassy’s room. The chair outside the room was empty, just as it was meant to be, the guard on a break as planned, and of course the camera staring down at him and the rest of the room was off. The little red light was a beautiful black. Everything was just as it was meant to be.

After taking a comforting breath or two, Venner stepped into the hospital room itself, satisfied that no one had seen him. No one that hadn’t been paid off by him that was. They wouldn’t talk and of course the hospital’s cameras were down for a few minutes. All that he needed. The power of money at work. He loved it. But sometimes it required things of him, and this was one of those times. Still, he had the strange looking glass vial in his pocket, given to him by his lord, and the task was fairly straight forwards. Simply feed it to his pet thief.

Of course that might not be quite so easy. He discovered that when he finally set eyes on Aidan Hennassy, lying in his bed, covered in bandages from head to foot, and with tubes and a mask covering his face. Getting something down his throat was not going to be easy, especially without setting off the alarms on all the machines he seemed to be plugged into. But still it had to be done.

He walked over to the bed, masking the noise of his footsteps as best he could, though why he didn’t know, and stared at him for a bit.

Aidan Hennassy. His thief, even if he wouldn’t have thought of it that way. Such a hard man, a hard face, and a cold heart. He was never the sort of man you could trust, never somebody you turned your back on, and never someone you would invite over for tea. But he was good at his job, very good. And he was utterly ruthless with it. In fact in all the robberies he’d asked him to carry out over the years, the man had never failed. And he had been paid for it handsomely. Theirs had been an excellent working relationship and his vaults were filled to overflowing with stolen art treasures to prove it.

Until now. Now everything was turning to custard. A family feud had turned what should have been a clean and simple operation into a disaster. It had led the police straight to him, and worse the endless publicity and the press had let all his buyers know of the theft as well. Worse than that, they knew the thieves. That was never supposed to have happened. And now his buyers no longer wanted to pay for the Rembrandt. They wanted it for free. And while his thief’s family had it in their possession, there was always a chance it could happen.

Worse, he knew that the wiry little police inspector was on to him. He had been from the very start. His people were busy rooting through his accounts, thinking that they would not be noticed. They were. Interpol as well seemed to be taking more of an interest in his activities than usual, speaking with his contacts, checking out his businesses, even looking into his taxes. They would find nothing, his accountants were far too good. But still he knew, they would keep trying. Inspector Barns would push them.

Venner truly didn’t like the man. His eyes, always looking straight through you, his face a portrait of suspicion as he listened to every word that was said and counted it as a lie. The inspector had not believed a word he’d said and no amount of evidence would ever change that. He would not be turned away by money either. So maybe it was time that he had a little accident. In the end that would probably be cheaper. Maybe he could get his tame thief here to do a little killing. He wouldn’t mind, and from what Venner knew of his family, they would probably help. If they were still alive.

And the wife, Serena, she could help. She was a cold, cold woman with eyes that stared straight through you. She was never the sort he would have wanted to get involved with, in any way. But she had a genius when it came to spying. She was a master when it came to intrigue and cunning. And she would never, absolutely never, pull back from a job when it came time to finish things. Rather she would take huge pleasure in the act of sticking one of those horribly sharp knives of hers into an unsuspecting man’s back. And there was another back he needed stabbed.

He had an enemy. He knew it. Plutos knew it and even who it was, though he refused to share that knowledge with him. Someone was leaking information he didn’t want leaked. The stuff about the dead boy. That he didn’t care about. It was just a nuisance, a smokescreen adding to the confusion. But the rest. The information the inspector was being fed. The stuff about the Hennassy’s and their hideouts. That was different. Someone was meddling with his plans, and while Plutos might not be concerned, he absolutely was. A nice quick death would be well in order.

And Aidan here was his chance to do just that.

Carefully, Venner reached out with his hand and lifted up the edge of his mask, uncovering just the side of his mouth. That would be enough he hope, and he was worried that if he did something wrong, the man’s heart might stop or a lead would fall off, and the machines would start screaming, calling the nurses. They weren’t all in his pay.

Then, slowly and carefully he cracked open his mouth a tiny bit, unstoppered the vial, and let the first few drops of the smoky elixir trickle on to his teeth. Just a little, he didn’t want to spill any. Plutos had been very insistent that he drank it all, and Venner did not want to fail him. Without his support he would never have become the billionaire he was, and he knew his lord could take all of that wealth away from him in a heartbeat. He could do a lot more as well and he would without a second thought. Venner could not afford to fail.

A few drops went down, and then a few more, and slowly little by little the strange looking vial was emptying. That was good. If it didn’t work, it would not be because of him. But it was working too. He could see that in the colour that was returning to the hard man’s face. Whatever it was that he’d been given, it could work miracles. But then what else could he expect of an actual, living god? The most powerful of them all.

Even though it had been thirty years since he had been found by Plutos, a runaway with no prospects who he’d then nurtured into an international businessman and a force of commerce, he sometimes found it hard to believe that the ancient gods still walked the world. But he didn’t doubt their powers, or their silly rivalry. Plutos was the most powerful of course, but he still had to bow down to Zeus, something that Venner didn’t understand and Plutos hated. But that was all about to change. For centuries his lord had been working towards taking Zeus’ place, and now his plans were all coming together.

With the sale of the painting Venner would also seal an accord between rival businesses, and form a new crime empire. The largest and most powerful in the history of the world. Gun runners, drug cartels, criminal gangs of all stripes and all countries, coming together under him. Working together, working for him, and all making money. The world would be theirs, it would be his, and of course through him, his lord’s. And with that sort of power behind him, Plutos would be unstoppable. He would kick Zeus aside and rule, and finally the world would be under the control of the markets.

No more terrorists. They would have no money, and without it, they would quickly be destroyed. No more silly rules and laws. Money would be the law. The rich would do as they always should have done, whatever they wanted, and the rest would serve them or starve. No more whinging environmentalists, or bleeding heart charities. Those people would soon find out that such causes took money, and without it they would fall. And as for the tramps and wino’s and other human scum that kept fouling up the streets, filling the hospital beds, and draining the coffers of the governments, no more of them either. Those who couldn’t work deserved to starve in their ghettos, and the police should finally do their duty, and let them. Their purpose was to protect the important people.

It would be a perfect world. If this worked. And if it didn’t, Plutos would be very angry. But above all else, it would not be his fault. Venner was going to make absolutely sure of that.

A few more minutes was all it took, and when he finally upended the vial into the thief’s mouth and let the last few drops trickle into his mouth, he watched as the man’s eyes opened. Not only cured but awake. Now that was a miracle.

“Shush.” He put his finger over his thief’s mouth like a boy playing secrets, and it seemed to get the message across.

“There was a gun battle. You were shot and nearly killed. I’ve saved you with the help of a very expensive drug, but there are things you need to do. Things that will help you escape from the police and punish those who harmed you and yours. Things that will make us all a lot of money.” And that last was what really mattered, to both of them. They weren’t fools. Things like love and beauty were the delusions of fools. The things that the masses lapped up with their cornflakes. He knew better. He could buy all the love he needed, and he owned so many beautiful treasures that others could only dream about. They were all lies. The only thing that really counted was power, and power came through wealth. That mattered.

“I’ve put some instructions in this envelope. It’ll tell you when the guards are next off and the monitors down. And once you’re out of here, it’ll tell you where to go and what to do.” And if Plutos was true to his word, it would tell his thief who needed to be dead.

“Rest for a bit. Recover your strength. Your chance to leave here will come in a couple of hours. It’s all in the envelope.” He was sure of that. The only thing he wasn’t completely certain of, was that Plutos hadn’t added a little extra instruction or two. Something about harming him. He was an angry god, and a vengeful one when he wanted to be, and he wasn’t happy of late. As long as he didn’t blame him for any of the mistakes. But Venner wouldn’t dare open the envelope to check. Plutos would know.

Still as he left the room, his job done, he had to feel a little good about things. He had done what he’d been told. He’d done it perfectly. Plutos had to be pleased about that. Didn’t he?

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