The Brodsky Affair: Murder is a Dying Art (3 page)

Pushing open the door of the pub, he walked into fireside warmth that filled the air with the scent of smouldering pine logs. He ordered a pint of London Pride before dumping aside his hat, coat, red knitted scarf, and sitting down in a worn but comfortable armchair. Faithful to his routine, he flipped open the lid of his laptop with more urgency than usual, accessed the Internet, and commenced his daily work of scouring the world art markets and auctions. He never knew what he might find. This time he had to get lucky. He became aware of a niggling inside of him, an overwhelming sensation close to panic.

He hadn’t in the past been without small successes, plus one major event.

That morning, Manton’s thought of being forty-five on his next birthday caused him concern. He worked out for two hours, twice a week at the gym, swam countless lengths on the same days, and on weekends gave fencing lessons down at the local British Fencing Association club. Besides a few grey hairs, for his age, he knew he was fit. But time, he understood, was already eroding away what prowess remained.

Apart from rescuing his financial predicament, he couldn’t help craving the buzz, the excitement of discovery or adventure, and the possibility of making a fortune. Life was meant for challenges, obstacles to overcome, like debts, banks to satisfy and contesting unreasonable tax demands. The only questions he could ask himself were what, when and how?

Sipping his pint, he continued to surf through an array of North European auction houses until his concentration became distracted by a blast of cold air breezing down his neck. The door swung open and Tamsin Greene walked in.

“I thought I’d find you here.” She swung her hand aloft for a high-five, leant forward and stuck her tongue energetically into his ear. “Hi Jack, how’s it going?”

He experienced a feeling of irritation at being interrupted. Tamsin stood back looking at him. At thirty-four, her slender figure stood at five-feet-eight-inches, and when she took off her raincoat, she attracted admiring glances from the few men in the bar.

As usual, she seemed not to notice. Her dark hair was prettily dishevelled. She made even the simple gesture of brushing the damp from her cheeks look stunning. Her femininity shone through liquid brown eyes that many thought made her look vulnerable. He knew her well enough to know
that
was not true. There wasn’t much Jack Manton didn’t know about her. Tamsin’s father, Igor Beauvais, had been a French-Russian whose own father had fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Her mother, Bonita, was pure Spanish. During her early years, they had lived in Seville and Tamsin was one of three children, with an older sister, and a younger brother.

Tamsin had easily learned the family linguistic interplay of Russian, French and Spanish. Her father, a banker, had died tragically in a train crash when she was fourteen. Although he left the family well provided for, her mother never recovered from the trauma. Three years to the day, she committed suicide by overdosing on barbiturates.

Tamsin was left emotionally scarred. For a time after that, she had not cared whether she lived or died, nor did she ever want to study again. In spite of that, she was awarded a scholarship to study applied linguistics at London University. Yet, academic success failed to free her from the feeling that she could never trust anyone totally. The tragic loss of her parents and the wreckage of her marriage to a husband, who was revealed as a serial adulterer, had changed her outlook on life.

She reasoned that whatever or whoever you loved, it would at some time in the future be separated from you and cause pain. Behind that steely disposition though, she hid a deeper yearning for a stable and lasting relationship.

Later, she worked as a language tutor in a foreign language school in central London. She spoke four languages fluently including Russian, her major, and could manage most others with little difficulty. They had met at a cultural exchange evening held at the Russian Embassy.

He looked up at her. “I might have guessed.” He refused to smile. “Want a drink?”

“Well, I’m not here for ballroom dancing.”

“White wine spritzer please, George.”

George nodded. “Ice?”

Tamsin turned. “No thanks, it’s too bloody cold out there. Well, how’s it going today, Big Shot? Is the art world trembling at your discoveries?”

Manton grimaced. “No, but I shall be unless I come up with something quick.”

“Usual problem?”

“More so. It’s the bank’s turn this morning.”

“Don’t they ever leave you alone?” She sounded mollified and put her arm around his shoulder.

“Tams… I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t have time to chat. I’m up to my neck in shit right now and I have to get on… please.” He pulled her arm away from him.

“You can be a right tetchy bastard at times, Manton. I’ll drink up and leave you to it. Look, I’ve class to take in an hour and I’m finishing early tonight. So when I’m done, why don’t we meet up for a curry?”

He didn’t look up. “Okay. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“Great.” In less than five minutes, she gulped back her drink, leant forward, puckered her lips and kissed him hard on his unshaven cheek. “Be lucky. See you later.” She turned and headed out of the door, sending another gust of cold damp air across the bar.

He watched her leave.
Damn it
.
I really ought to chill out a bit.

Their relationship had grown and now they were partners. He knew that without her he wouldn’t be doing what he was doing now, and wouldn’t have discovered the Nicholson painting. In retrospect, he recognised her subtlety in steering him towards a path of sanity, and getting him off his excessive use of the bottle. That would have had him joining up with Mac in the alleyway.

Whenever he thought of why he had fallen in love with her, his list never quite encapsulated her spirit. She had numerous talents – artistic, cultural and physical
-
and of course, a natural wisdom and a sinful wit. Her friends had been so, for years, and she had never found it difficult to make new ones. He could sit with her for hours without a word being spoken, and they both knew that was not hostility, but a genuine compatibility with each other. When things got bad, she encouraged him with an energetic optimism. But he didn’t fool himself. He knew at times their relationship got stretched out too far for comfort. His intensity with his work often placed her in a secondary role. That had caused near breakups. Her threats of leaving him had increased over the last six months, and he didn’t want that to happen.

Her lovemaking could be soft, gentle, also outrageous and shocking. Once, she had hunkered up to him in a crowded London tube train and went through a routine as if she had been a porn star, oblivious or not caring whether anybody could see or not. Nothing he could say defined Tamsin. She had a way of seeing her world, and his, and linking them together in her own particular way. She was unique.

He’d nurtured the idea that she found in him a wild or unconventional potential. She had convinced him, even with the danger of financial catastrophe stretching over him, that better things lay ahead. He wondered at times whether beneath her unconventional persona and the traumas of her earlier life, if she yearned for a simple, uncomplicated life.

Another hour slipped away, and yet another pint of London Pride sat alongside him. It didn’t look like anything of value were coming up for sale. But before he decided to switch off, he found himself clicking on images at the badly-constructed website of an Australian auction house, Zimmerman’s, situated in Perth, Western Australia. Jack had never heard of them and doubted if anyone else had either. But sometimes, with these smaller houses, you could get lucky.

He clicked on the ‘Paintings & Works of Art’ section, and began his customary quick-view technique - skimming through dozens of thumbnails - a method he’d perfected. For an obscure house, they had a surprising number of works coming up for auction, three hundred in total. Scrolling through the lots, he noted the customary rubbish, amateur, pretty, ‘chocolate-box’ views – vases of flowers, cute kittens and puppies, followed by varied attempts by would-be artists to emulate Van Gogh and other Impressionists.

He began thinking that the exercise had become a waste of time, but as he had been trained to do so, he pressed on. He reached lot 275, then lot 279… then he stopped. An alarm rang inside his brain. He scrolled back to 275. Enlarging the view, he found himself looking at an indistinct image on his screen. Lot 275 represented a pair of paintings. Moving the cursor across, he read the catalogue entry:

A pair of European oil paintings, 60 cm x 80 cm, Nightly Performance and Dancing Women at Rest. Signed, not decipherable. Circa 1930s, approx. $300-500.

That didn’t tell him much. He enlarged the view before further magnifying various areas. Leaning back in the armchair, not certain of the genre, he allowed his gaze to sweep over both…
without a doubt 1930s avant-garde influence with cubist elements…
blocks of colour, black, red, and yellow hues split by rods of light, interspersed by straight lines of purple and shades of blue. The suggestion was of two women lounging on a sofa, smoking, drinking from bottles, one had her hand on the other’s breast.
Nightly Performance
had exactly the same colours, the same quality, but with more energy, depicting the same women, with the implication of interlocked arms suggesting a dance on what looked like a floating stage. Their abstracted faces suggested mechanical expressions of bored indifference.

Manton allowed himself to be lured in by the paintings and their compelling qualities. He leant over and pulled an oversized magnifying glass from his bag. He then scoured the works like a scientist looking through a microscope, before he allowed himself to examine the signature. Craning his neck close to the lens, with one eye shut, he attempted to decipher the artist’s signature. Both appeared identical, although hard to read, nebulous. The artist had signed them in the left hand corner using a dark purple colour.

The first initial had a small downward sweep, with a marked curve which tapered off into a sharp point. He wasn’t sure if it was a letter
Ў,
but the first section could be an
Н
or an
М.
The surname was also difficult to decipher, and appeared to be abbreviated. The first letter had to be a
Б,
followed possibly by an apostrophe, leaving remaining two letters, a
р
, and an
г,
or either an
Ю
or
Д
, followed by a
С,
then
Ж
or
к,
then
ю,
or it could be
Ҹ И
with a full stop.

The paintings shouted Russian. He bookmarked the page. He knew enough about his trade to have an inkling that the paintings in front of him were not forgeries and were worth closer inspection. A few notions had already crossed his mind. Looking only at a screen, it was impossible to tell with accuracy.

He shut down his laptop, pulled on his coat, and headed out the door, back to his spacious apartment in Philbeach Gardens.

Chapter Three

Vasilievskii Island, Saint Petersburg, the same night

D
arkness, like a blanket.

At 2:30 a.m. not even a boat moved on the black waters of the Neva.

Vladimir Novikov’s objective, the large post-Gorbachev house of Alexsandr Molotov, stood silent, lit by ground-mounted floodlights. A wall made of heavy stone, four metres high and topped with razor wire surrounded the property. Its only visible entrance were two massive ornate wrought-iron gates. It looked designed to withstand a lengthy siege. From where he stood, he could see a uniformed guard wearing a black beret, matching his military style uniform. He sat in a heated cabin, with a window looking directly out of the front gates. He was reading, and propped up on the desk was the mandatory Kalashnikov.

Novikov decided not to climb the wall. He turned the ignition key, fired up the engine and the small black unmarked van crawled towards the entrance.

Looking suspicious, the guard had moved to the front of the gate. The Kalashnikov pointed towards him. Novikov brought the van to a halt, opened the door, got out, and at a brisk pace walked to the floodlit gates. He spoke loudly, his breath in the cold air, mushrooming skywards in a white billowing mist.

“Sorry to startle you, comrade, but is this the house of Alexsandr Molotov?”

“Yes, it is. Who are you and what do you want at this time of morning?” The snub of the Kalashnikov rattled across the iron railings.

“Good news. I’ve driven all the way up from Borovichi. I’ve an important package for Molotov and was told it must be delivered immediately, whatever the time.” He held up a thick, brown envelope. “It has to be signed for by him personally.”

“Don’t be so stupid. If you think I’m waking him at this hour, you are mistaken. Let me see that.” He stretched out his hand between the railings.

Novikov dropped the packet, and with a hard grip, seized the guard’s outstretched wrist and with his other hand produced a large hypodermic syringe, plunging its contents into the back of the startled man’s hand. It took less than ten seconds before his eyelids began to flutter. He slumped forward, prevented from falling by Novikov’s fierce grip. Class Z drugs… they rarely fail
. He’ll be out until later in the morning.

Before he let the man drop, he removed the keys from his belt to open the gates and drive in. Once inside, he entered the guard’s cabin and was pleased to see it also held the controls for the entire security system. He recognised the make and model, and with two swift flicks on an array of switches, he deactivated them.

He drove the van into the grounds, halting in front of a narrow veranda floored with expensive decking. He got out and stood where he could see the odd solitary vehicle passing by below, their sounds broken only by the whine of a decelerating jet descending into Pulkovo airport. Ahead stood a small cloister of bare trees, through which a cinder path led up to the main house which had an immense wooden door with a hefty brass handle. It surprised him that the door hadn’t been locked, and it opened with ease.