The Cézanne Chase (43 page)

“Of course you saw it,” LeToque wiggled the pistol. “You killed him.”

“I went to his house to take back Madame DeVilleurs's painting. I gave it to her.”

LeToque looked surprised. “She's paying me to find it.”

“She has it, LeToque. I gave it to her two days ago.”

LeToque cocked his head and stared, disbelieving. “Weisbord owed me, but you killed him. Now you have to pay.”

“How much did he owe you?”

“Sixty thousand francs.”

“A lot of money.” Aukrust rubbed his hands together as if working out a decision. “I'll pay it,” he said, his eyes riveted on LeToque.

LeToque, surprised, relaxed his grip on the gun imperceptively. “When?”

“I can give you five thousand now, it's all I have with me. I'll have the rest tomorrow.”

LeToque was looking at a thin, beguiling smile and listening to a reassuring voice. “Give me the five thousand. Put it there, on the bed.”

Aukrust took out his wallet, opened it, then began dropping five-hundred-franc bills on the bed, one at a time. They floated down haphazardly, and LeToque began to gather them. For an instant, he took his eyes off Aukrust, an instant too long. Aukrust lunged across the bed and wrestled LeToque to the floor. There were two explosions. One bullet shattered a red rose in the wallpaper, the other blew off the tassled old lampshade. Aukrust slammed a fist on LeToque's arm, knocking the gun from his hand. Aukrust swung again at LeToque, but the smaller man twisted free and spun onto his feet before Aukrust could rise to one knee. Loud voices came from the hall outside the bedroom.

“Open the door! Are you hurt?” was followed by a rat-a-tat of fists against the door, which gave way against the feeble lock.

“Stop fighting!” a man shouted. He was tall, fortyish, with long hair combed into a pony tail and tied with a black ribbon. Beside him was Laurent, with others standing in the doorway.

“I am Jean-Pierre, the owner,” he said. “We don't like quarrels to get out of hand. People get hurt, and we get a bad reputation.”

Aukrust got up slowly. He glared first at LeToque, then at Jean-Pierre. Laurent said, pointing to LeToque. “He came to apologize and said he wanted to be forgiven. He said there might be trouble, and he was right.”

“He wouldn't listen,” LeToque said. He moved a step to his right, bent down and picked up the gun. He pointed it at Aukrust, then scooped up the bills from the bed. “You owe me big, filthy bastard. Sixty thousand, less what's here. Pay me, or I use this.” He waved the gun and bolted from the room.

A
ukrust's station wagon was parked inside the entrance to Parc Joseph Jourdan near the city university, less than a mile from the Hôtel Pullman Roi René. He had returned to Aix in the predawn darkness and had been waiting impatiently for more than an hour. During the return drive to Aix he had excised memories of the previous evening and put LeToque in a deep recess of his mind as something to be dealt with at another time. At eight o'clock the passenger door opened and Clyde jumped onto the seat, making a sound between a bark and a growl, followed by Astrid. She slumped deep into the seat and pulled the dog to her, wrapping an arm around its head. “Be a good boy, quiet down.”

“Are you sure you weren't followed?” Peder asked.

“Of course,” she answered bitterly. “Would I have come into the car if I knew someone was watching?”

Makeup covered the bruise under her eye, but no makeup could conceal the sullen look spread over her face. Her eyes strayed off, and her head shook nervously.

“Describe again where you're staying: how many rooms, who is in each one.”

She began, her voice a monotone. She complained that she had told all of it before, that there was nothing new to add. Peder probed for details: Where were the windows and what kind? Had she paced off the distances to the elevator and to the service elevator, and exactly where were they? The phones—where was each placed? Describe the bathroom. Were there doors connecting to other rooms?

He bore on. “Were any police there, in uniform, out of uniform?”

“No, I didn't see any, no one like that.”

“Have you seen the painting?”

“I said before, he keeps it in the wooden box. In the closet in his bedroom. Locked.”

“When is he taking it to the museum?”

Astrid shook her head. “He hasn't said.”

“Has he talked any more about security at the museum, shown any concern, said he was happy about it ... or said he was unhappy about it?”

Again her head shook, her eyes closed. “Before the reception tomorrow Llewellyn will go on a tour of the museum. He invited me to go with him.”

Aukrust nodded, as if putting the information to the side momentarily. “What does his man do? Fraser.”

She sighed. “The same as always, food, errands, the dog.”

“And does the damned dog always bark?”

Astrid tightened her grip on Clyde and said nothing.

Aukrust said, “Albany is frequently with him. He drinks but seems to do his job. Where is his room?”

“It must be very near.”

Aukrust stared directly ahead, oblivious to the stream of students that walked or rode past on bicycles.

“Has there been any mail, any phone calls that seemed unusual?”

Astrid shook her head. She turned to face Aukrust but could not look directly at him. When she tried to speak, she found herself trembing with fear. Finally, the words gushed out. “Peder, you must tell me you love me. I try so hard to do what you ask.”

He didn't answer. He waited until the little sounds caught in her throat subsided. “Everything is the same with us. You hear that?”

She nodded, but her head barely moved.

“Tell me if there have been any unusual phone calls.”

“Of course, he's been on the phone, ordering food, or a newspaper—”

“Something unusual,” he said impatiently.

“No, only—”

“Only what?”

“There was a call from the man I met in New York. Tobias.”

Aukrust stiffened. “What did he want?”

“He's here, in Aix.”

“When did he arrive?”

“He called yesterday.”

“You listened to the conversation?”

“I answered the phone. I listened, but nothing made sense.”

“What did they talk about?”

“Tobias talked about a ‘friend' he brought with him. And about a suitcase. But Americans sometimes use words I don't understand, and they only talked for a minute.”

“Tell me exactly what you remember,” Aukrust demanded.

Astrid tried but could only think of what she had already said, except, “Someone said ‘baby-sit.' I don't know who said it.”

“Did Llewellyn talk to you about his conversation with Tobias?”

Her mouth opened, then closed. Nothing came out.

“Did he?”

Clyde growled softly, and Astrid began stroking his head. Aukrust took her purse, searched through it, and took out the lipstick he had given her in Gatwick Airport. He pulled off the cap and twisted up the lipstick. “Passionately Pink—your color.” Then he twisted the lipstick in the opposite direction and a hypodermic needle appeared.

“I think that you and Llewellyn had a long talk last night, and that you haven't told me everything. Tell me what he said, or you'll go back to Llewellyn with a dead dog in your arms.”

“Don't, Peder!”

He took Clyde from her and put the frightened animal on his lap. He spread the dog's hind legs and aimed the needle at the fleshy inside of the thighs. “What did Llewellyn tell you?”

“He told me that the painting he brought with him is a copy, that Tobias brought the real painting.”

E
lliott Heston stood inside the door to his office and greeted Bud Samuelson with a quick handshake and a wave toward the table in the corner of his office.

“I won't take long,” Samuelson said, “but this way I know the information I've got will get into the right hands, especially Oxby's. I can't locate him. Where the hell is he?”

“I'm afraid I don't know—for the moment,” Heston said with a touch of resignation.

Samuelson placed two neatly handwritten pages in front of Heston. “This was prepared by a woman named Shimada, recently employed by a Japanese art dealer named Kondo. Know them?”

“I'm familiar with both names,” Heston said.

“It says that the residue from what is purportedly the Pinkster self-portrait is a piece of old art that was produced sometime around 1920. The canvas was identified as coming from either Belgium or Holland.” Samuelson read, “The source of the white pigment, or titanium dioxide, identified in the sample by spectrographic analysis, is found only on the west coast of Norway, in the titanated iron ore called ilmenite. Titanium dioxide was first used to produce the whitest of all pigments in 1918 or 1919.”

Samuelson said, “I needn't remind you that Paul Cézanne could not have used it. He died in 1906.”

R
ue du Quatre Septembre ran south from Cours Mirabeau; where it intersected with Rue Cardinale was the Place du Dauphine, center of a quiet residential neighborhood that offered a great deal of old-world charm but precious few places to park a car. A red Fiat appeared and cruised around the square then abruptly turned onto the sidewalk where it came to rest half on and half off the street, its bumper against a fountain known as the Quatre Dauphins. The driver bolted out and sprinted along the narrow street to the Hôtel Cardinal.

Ann Browley came to a halt in the tiny lobby and, breathing heavily, inquired as to the whereabouts of Monsieur Oxby. She was given an envelope on which was written, in the inspector's inimitable scrawl, “Ann's Eyes Only.” A note instructed her to continue on Rue Cardinale to where the street widened to create Place St.-Jean-de-Malte, where, on her right, would be the Musée Granet and, directly ahead, the church of St.-Jean-de-Malte. “I will be on the left side in the tenth row.”

Vigil lights flickered on tables set against the walls along each side aisle in the nave in the old church. When Oxby had arrived earlier, he had put twenty francs in a box, taken a candle, and put its wick into an already burning one, then had placed it in a fluted metal tube. Oxby was not Catholic so his silent message to Miriam was a personal communication that if God and the saints wished would be speeded along to that other place, where he knew she was.

The inside of the old church was dark brown, and a deep patina of sienna covered the big ecclesiastical paintings by Mignard and Finsonius placed high up on the wall. Hourly chimes were not produced automatically, and none struck when ten o'clock came. At fifteen past ten he looked up to see Ann Browley walking briskly toward him.

Oxby greeted her. “Good show, Annie. Everything peaceful at home?”

She sighed with an exaggerated gush of air that indicated that she understood the irony of Oxby's question. “I thought Elliott would pop a carotid artery when I told him I was taking some leave days.”

Oxby replied, “He's under a great deal of pressure and not at all pleased that we're here. But I've sent Jimmy back, which should lower his blood pressure by twenty points.”

Ann unzipped her briefcase and pulled out several pages crammed with single-spaced typing. “Once our International gang learned where to look, they got a super rundown on Llewellyn's girlfriend.”

“Surely you've got the report memorized,” Oxby said, “so spare all but the highlights.”

“If you don't mind, Inspector, I'll give my report the way I had planned.” She punctuated each word as if driving tiny rivets into each one. “All right?”

He glanced quickly at his watch then gave a chastened nod.

Ann began, “Astrid Haraldsen was orphaned when she was nine and was raised by her paternal grandmother until she was fourteen, when her grandmother died. She then was sent to her maternal grandmother, who lived in Trondheim. She was rebellious and had minor skirmishes with the police when she was a teenager, incidents involving petty thefts and shoplifting. Her school record was a splotchy one, some good years, some bad. When she was eighteen she was enrolled in the Statens Kunst Ol Handverks Hoyskole in Oslo to study interior design. But she was poorly prepared academically and lacked ability to sketch or draw. She switched to courses in photography in which she showed aptitude but was dropped from school after the first year.”

Oxby was staring at the altar, then his eyes closed. “Go on,” he said.

Ann's glower softened, and for the next few minutes she sketched in additional details of Astrid's teenage years. “When she was twenty and living in Copenhagen, she was arrested for soliciting, a charge that was subsequently dropped.”

“Did that happen more than once?”

“A second time, with the same result.”

“Soliciting,” Oxby said thoughtfully; “not prostitution? There's a difference you know.”

“Would it matter?” Ann asked.

“I wouldn't think so.” Oxby leaned forward. “You describe an unhappy, undisciplined young person.”

“And things got worse for her,” Ann went on. “She became
involved with drugs about this time. Several arrests but again no convictions. Not until three years ago, when she was twenty-four. She was found guilty of dealing in cocaine, barbiturates, and amphetamines.”

“Incarcerated?”

“She served three months of a two-year sentence then was released on condition that she work with undercover operatives investigating a drug syndicate that had infiltrated the country's hospital system. She was assigned to a former hospital pharmacist who had exposed members of the syndicate and who had been recruited into the drug enforcement agency of the Norwegian national police. That person is referred to in the report as “the Operator.”