Art of Murder

6

Briseida Canchares woke up with a gun to her head. Seen from so close up, the barrel looked like a small metal coffin pressed against her temple. The finger on the trigger had its nail painted viridian green. Briseida looked up the bare forearm and discovered it belonged to a blonde woman. It was the emerald-eyed cat dressed in the tiny camouflage outfit who had asked Roger for a light at the Roquentins. It had happened while she was looking at the painting Invisible Orbit by Elmer Fludd, and a guard had immediately come over and warned the woman: 'You can't smoke here, miss. The smoke gets in the paintings' eyes, and makes them cough.' She had given Roger a crooked smile as she handed him back his lighter. Then she had vanished into the crowd and Briseida had not seen her again. Until now.

The blonde woman was dressed in the same combat gear, and smiled in the same way. The only difference was the gun. She raised a finger to her lips, still training the pistol on Briseida (I'm not to speak, Briseida translated this to mean) then signalled with her other hand (I'm to get up). She suspected it was all a dream, so she obeyed, because she liked doing fascinating things in her dreams. She pulled back the sheets and stood up. The gun pressed to her temple moved as she did, as if her head were made of metal and the pistol were a magnet. Briseida turned to the side and placed her feet on the cool carpet of Roger's apartment floor as delicately as a space module landing on the moon. She was completely naked, and felt a bit chilly. It was still night (she didn't know the exact time, because the alarm clock was on Roger's side of the bed), and the room was lit only by the bedside lamp. She remembered having gone to bed very late and sharing moments of enthusiasm and struggle with Roger (that mouth of his, with its aftertaste of vintage champagne and velvety Havana cigar, his tongue a green marijuana rug) before night covered them in its cloak of drunkenness and… That's right. Where was Roger?

She discovered him sitting at the far end of the room. All he was wearing was the ring on the little finger of his left hand. The same ring that had left marks on Briseida's backside, but which he said he could not remove because that brought bad luck. He had got it in some remote corner of Brazil, stealing it from a shaman who could tell people's secrets. It contained a tiny emerald that glinted in its setting like a jungle-green drop of pus. According to Roger, it had great powers, although he was not sure exactly what they were. He claimed there were only five or six jewels like it in the whole world. What an incredible guy Roger was. A bit of a bastard too, of course, but Briseida had never met anyone with that amount of money who wasn't also a bastard.

At that moment it seemed not even the ring's powers could help him. A pincer in the shape of a hand was clamped so fiercely on his jaw his cheeks were puffed up. The pincer-like hand belonged to a spectacular woman, similar to the blonde but much more impressive, like the ones Roger liked to fuck only at weekends. She was jabbing a silver-plated military pistol into his throat. Its barrel made his Adam's apple stand out starkly. This woman was wearing baize-green jacket and trousers, olive-green kerchief and beret, and pistachio-coloured gloves. One of her legs was thrust between Roger's thighs (perhaps her knee was crushing his genitals, and this was causing the look of desperation on his face), the other was firmly planted on the floor in shooting position. She was not looking at Roger but at Briseida, as if it were up to her to decide what she should do next. Her eyes were of the kind it is hard to forget. The kind, thought Briseida, you stare into a second before you see nothing any more.

Even so, she had to admit that the make-up and the combination of greens (jacket-trousers, gloves-beret, eyes-shadow) were perfect. A paramilitary catwalk! Pret-a-porter terrorism! What prevented police SWAT teams, army commandos or any other ad hoc armed group keeping up with the demands of fashion? Briseida wondered.

The blonde woman was still signalling to her to stand up. She glanced over at Roger, who raised his hand as if to say: Do as she tells you, so she got up from the bed, still keeping her eyes on everyone in the room.

Are they burglars or cops? Have they come to kidnap Roger? Let's see. What did we get up to? Last night we were at that party…

God, how her head hurt. She could not think straight. Perhaps that was because of the mix of alcohol, hashish and pills she had taken at the Roquentins. Besides, the scene before her was so odd that the terror she could feel starting to beat in her chest was still muffled. It looked as if it had all been set up by the God of Art: a combination of the fascinating – the blonde in her camouflage outfit; the ridiculous – Roger and her stark naked, still clammy from their dense dreams; and the absurd – the heavily made-up model in her combat gear. It was like a Cezanne painting in green – cobalt green, military green, turquoise green, green carpet, apple green of the bedroom walls. If she were to die young, thought Briseida, she would choose exactly this green moment.

It was a shame this aesthetic impression faded a little when the blonde woman pushed her towards the men waiting in the dining room.

They pinioned her arms, and pushed her down on to a chair in front of what appeared to be a blank computer screen. Briseida had shouted out as she was being hustled into the room, and had apparently broken some code of silence, because a few seconds later she heard noises and words in Dutch from the bedroom, then more noises in the corridor. But the next words were in English and were directed at her.

'Don't do that again,' Fascinating Eyes Blondie said, bending over her. 'And don't try to stand up.'

She could not have done so even if she had wanted to: two pairs of iron gloves were forcing her down on her seat.

'Here's a glass of water. Drink some if you like. I'm going to press a key on the computer and a person will appear on the screen to ask you some questions. Reply loudly and clearly. Don't avoid any of the questions, and don't take too much time over them. If you don't know the answer, or want time to think about it, say so. We know you speak good English, but if there's something you don't understand, say so too.'

The blonde pressed a key, and the face of an elderly man, bald except for some white tufts above the ears, appeared on the screen. In the top left-hand corner there also appeared an insert of a young woman with tanned brown skin, hair the colour of coal, prominent cheekbones and plump lips, gripped by the shoulders and arms by four gloved hands, and with naked breasts. Briseida realised it was her. They were filming her and sending the images in real time to heaven knows what damned spot on the planet. Diagonally across the screen from this, a timing device ticked off the seconds.

Hallucinatory effects produced by the chaotic consumption of toxic products: that was how Stan Coleman, her unforgettable, wealthy (and asshole) professor of Contemporary Art at Columbia described all the strange things that happened after an orgy of soft drugs. That was what this must be. It could not really be happening to her.

'Good morning. I'm sorry if we've disturbed you, but we need to know something urgently, and we're counting on your generous cooperation.'

The man spoke English with an undeniable continental accent, perhaps German or Dutch. At the bottom half of the screen, his neck and the knot of his tie were obscured by subtitles of what he was saying in French and German. Briseida did not need any more languages to feel terrified.

'We know a lot about you: you're twenty-six, born in Bogota, have an art degree from a New York university, you father is his country's cultural attache at the United Nations… Let's see, what else?' The man bent forward, and for a few seconds the screen became a globe featuring his polished bald head. 'Ah yes, you're engaged on a research project for the university about painters and their collections… this year you have been in the Netherlands to study the objects Rembrandt collected in his house in Amsterdam. And now you're in Paris, with our good friend Roger Levin. Last night you went with him to a party at Leo Roquentin's. All this is correct, isn't it?'

Briseida was about to answer yes when the fairy godmother of computers dissolved the image with an explosion of green flashes and replaced it with another face: a thin woman with her hair cut in a boyish bob, wearing dark glasses. Her subtitles were in green.

'Hello there, I'm the bad cop.' Her accent was more English than the man's, and her voice was more disturbing. Her smile was like a scythe blade. 'I just wanted to say hello. Some place Leo Roquentin has, doesn't he? I think the salon is from the eighteenth century, and the ceiling frescoes were painted by the maestro Luc Ducet and tell the story of Samson and Delilah. In the west wing, in a room with two ceiling roundels, the story of the Flood is depicted, from the building of the Ark to the return of the dove with the olive branch in its beak. We know Leo Roquentin very well… His HD collection is also excellent, especially the Elmer Fludd paintings in the main room. But they are just the tip of the iceberg. Did you take part in the art-shock that was going on in the huge basement underneath the mansion? It was called Art-Chess, and was created by Michel Gros. Twenty-four young people of both sexes, and plastic material… the figures, completely naked and painted in various shades of green, are pieces on a thirty-metre-square chessboard. The guests suggest the moves they should make. Any piece that gets taken is handed over to the guests to do what they like with. You didn't play the game? Of course, your little friend Roger mustn't have told you anything about it. You would have simply seen the paintings upstairs: the art-shock was for a select few. Leo astonishes them with these interactive performances, then offers them irresistible deals with even more prohibited works.'

Was what that woman was saying true? It was certainly true that Roger had disappeared for a long while to talk with Roquentin while Briseida wandered from one corner to another across green carpets, on the billiard table of guests, contemplating the magnificent oils by Elmer Fludd. Then when he returned she had told him he looked a bit nervous. And his shirt collar was undone. An art-shock consisting of a game of chess with human pieces… she said to herself. Why hadn't Roger told her anything? What was going on in the basement of the world, beneath the feet of all those rich people?

The woman paused, and gave another of her unpleasant smiles.

'Don't worry, men are always the same. They like to keep secrets. We women are more sincere, aren't we? At least I hope you are, Miss Canchares. I'm going to leave you with my friend the Good Cop, who's going to ask you some questions. If your replies are convincing, we'll unplug the computer, go home and we'll all be good friends. If they're not, it'll be the Good Cop who'll leave, and the Bad Cop, i.e. me, who will be back. Understood? 'Yes.'

'I'm delighted to have met you, Miss Canchares. I hope we don't meet again.' 'My pleasure,' stammered Briseida.

She didn't know what to think about the woman's warnings. Were they just idle threats? And what about all this fantasy with military uniforms? Were they trying to stir up her atavistic fear of guerrillas? All of a sudden she thought she was in the midst of a carnival, an artistically organised farce. What was the neologism Stan had invented? An imagic, a magical image, a cultural archetype to project our fear or passion on to, because – according to Stan – nowadays everything, absolutely everything, from publicity to massacres, from food aid for Third World countries to torture, is done with a sense of style.

Carnival or not, this performance was achieving its objective: she was terrorised. She felt close to pissing on Roger's sofa, to throwing up on Roger's carpet. A green explosion. The man again. This is the question… listen closely…'

Briseida stiffened as much as she could under the grip of the claw-like hands on her shoulders and arms. Her thighs were aching from the effort she made to press them together to conceal her sex from view. All at once she was conscious of her total nudity.

'We know you are a close friend of Oscar Diaz. I'll repeat the name: Oscar Diaz. The question is: where is Oscar now?'

Some part of the cerebral cortex of Briseida Canchares -twenty-five years old (the man had been mistaken, she would not be twenty-six until 3 August) with a degree in Art History -carried out a swift calculation and came up with a list of provisional conclusions: Oscar Diaz; something to do with Oscar; Oscar has done something bad; they're going to do something bad to Oscar… 'Where is you friend Oscar?' the man repeated. 'I don't know.'

Immediately, the screen was covered in a green slime that reminded Briseida of the time she had carried out chemical experiments for the restoration of paintings. A set of teeth emerged out of the green. A smile. The face of the woman in dark glasses. 'Wrong answer.'

A tuft of her scalp suddenly seemed to spring to life. She screamed, and her eyes imagined a fiesta with firecrackers, a New Year's Eve party in a hotel somewhere in the green jungle. Her neck was twisted back; her vertebra only escaped destruction thanks to the aerobics she practised every day. Two strange green planets swam into her universe (Venus was always green in the pulp science-fiction books Stan Coleman read by the sackful), and she found herself staring at a stylish and undoubtedly very expensive instrument. It was a chrome metal pencil with a sharpened tip on the end of which glistened a drop of martian blood.

'This toy is an optical laser brush’ the blonde said, an inch away from her face. 'I'll not bore you with all the technical details. Let's just say it's an improved version of the brushes painters use to work on the retinas of their primed canvases. The retina is the pigmented layer on the back of our eyes, which among other things allows us to distinguish colours. Usually it is very boring, but it's very useful when we want to see the world. I'm going to paint your retinas dark green. First your left eye, then the right one. The problem is, I'm going to use permanent paint, which is totally unadvisable in this kind of situation. You won't have any scars or external bruising, it will all be very aesthetic and so on. But by the time I've finished, you'll be so blind you'll have to suck your fingers to be sure they're yours. But it will be a very beautiful blindness, everything will look a wonderful bottle-green colour. Now, don't move.'

The order was not necessary. All Briseida could move was her mouth and her right eyelid. Something was forcing open her left eyelid to the point where she was on the verge of tears. It smelt of imitation leather: a glove. Leather vultures had seized her wrists, knees, ankles, throat, and hair. She wanted to say something in English, but all that came out was mangled Spanish. But she had to speak English. English is vital in situations like this, when you are being tortured by a foreigner. OK, Johnson family at holidays. Mary Johnson is in the kitchen. Where's Mary Johnson? Then, along the left-hand side of her optic nerve there appeared a spectacular universe of such a kitsch green and red colour it reminded her of a phosphorescent buddha she had seen in a street market. Or the postcards by Pierre amp; Gilles she used to send her parents from Europe. She thought she was going blind.

At that point the hand pulling her hair back let go, and another one pressed down on the back of her neck forcing her head forward as though wanting to smash it into the computer screen. She found herself with her nose pressed up against the French and German subtitles. She fought back a sudden wave of nausea.

'Your second opportunity.' It was the woman again. 'Our colleague simply brought the brush close to your pupil… Listen, and don't scream… if you give the wrong answer again, she will draw a comma on your retina… after she's done that, you'll be able to see a green crescent moon even in the light of day. A curious aesthetic effect, don't you agree? Stop snivelling and pay attention… After this second session, you might as well keep your left retina in a jar. I can assure you, it will glow green in the night like one of those virgins of Lourdes… So please, concentrate. The prize is your eyesight.' 'The same question again.' It was the man once more.

Since the hands clasping her shoulders and arms were still there, and the one on the back of her neck was still pressing her down, Briseida was convinced her cervical vertebra was about to crack apart like rotten wood. She decided that would be the best thing that could happen.

'I don't know, I swear, please, I don't know, I swear I've no idea, in Vienna, yes, in Vienna, but I don't really know, ‘ swear, I swear…!' Saliva, tears and words came pouring from her face as if her glands were secreting them: 'I've no idea where, it's true, I've no idea where, I swear it, please, please, please, plea A bout of vomiting cut her off.

Seated at his portable computer in the MuseumsQuartier office, Lothar Bosch pressed a button on his mobile memory and called the number that appeared. He had a brief but forceful discussion with one of his men in Paris. Miss Wood had her back turned to him, and was staring out at the Vienna dawn through the glass wall. Bosch noticed she was smoking one of her disgusting ecological cigarettes, the mentholated green smoke formed halos on the window round her head.

'Mr Lothar Bosch, always a gentleman where ladies are concerned,' he heard her say.

'Don't you think we've scared her enough with that game of the optical brush?' Bosch snapped back, wounded by his colleague's cold irony. 'That's no way to start a conversation. We won't get anything out of her like that.'

Her eye was undamaged. They were quite kind to her, really. They had even let go of her so she could vomit more easily.

Briseida was sick as she used to be as a child: with one hand on her forehead, and the other clutching her stomach. That was how it always was with her. Strange moment this bilious deja vu. According to her mother, she threw up like a cat. Her grandmother said it was because she didn't know how to be sick. The little kitten would suffer all her life because she did not know how to vomit properly. She didn't take after her father in that, especially after he had been boozing. Stan was also an expert in vomiting, it was easy, prolonged and abundant. The same was true of most of the fluids emanating from her Art Professor. The same could not be said of Luigi, her Aesthetics Professor, whose stomach was toughened by a diet of pizzas laced with chilli: he was stiff, repressed and impotent. By their vomit shall ye know them, not by their ejaculations. Sneezing, vomiting and death were the only three truly unforeseeable, uncontrollable and instantaneous reactions of the body. Semi-colon, fullstop; new paragraph, full stop, end of dictation about life: as a teacher at her Swiss school had once told her.

She stemmed her retching with a sip of cold water. God, what a state she had left Roger's dining-room carpet in. A man with such an aesthetic sense as Roger (could it be true he had played chess last night with twenty-four human pieces?) and just look what she had deposited on his carpet, it looked like radish juice all over his spotless Italian floor. Briseida was forced to separate her knees to avoid the pool, and in doing so opened her thighs. But since they were no longer holding her down, she could cover her sex with her hands. The Good Computer (or was it the Good Cop?) was waiting, a gold Montblanc pressed against the side of his head. The blonde and the soldiers had retreated to behind the chair, ready to swing into action at any moment. A Windows icon called 'Bad Cop' crouched in the opposite corner to Briseida's. But Good Cop had told her that, for the moment, Baddie wanted a rest. 'Feeling better?'

'Yes. Can I put some clothes on?' A moment's hesitation.

'This will soon be over, I promise you. Now tell me all you know about Oscar.'

She began to talk freely. A string of unemotional, technical terms about art (this helped her relax). She did not look at the screen as she spoke, nor at the floor (the vomit), but at a fruit bowl on the table behind the computer: green apples and pears as calming as an infusion.

'I met him at MoMA in New York last spring. He was looking after Bust, a Van Tysch etching. I suppose you know the work I'm talking about, but I can describe it for you… it's a preparatory study for Deflowering. A twelve-year-old girl in a black-painted box with a slit at the top. The slit allows you to see only her face and shoulders, painted in faint greys on her skin primed with acids, like a human etching. To see the work, the public have to file in one by one, climb the two steps in front of the box, and stand only a hand's breadth away from her face. The girl stares out without ever blinking, her eyes painted coal black; her expression is almost… almost supernatural… it's an incredible work…'

'The sensation is like going into a confessional and finding that the priest has the features of your sins,' a Spanish critic had written about Bust, but Briseida left out that comment because she did not want to appear to be giving an art lecture. The work had made a huge impression during its American tour, especially because Deflowering had been banned by a censorship committee in the United States.

'Oscar was in charge of the security for Bust. One day he saw me waiting my turn at the end of a long line of people. I had gone to MoMA to study an Elmer Fludd on show in the next gallery, but I didn't want to leave without having a look at Van Tysch's etching. The previous weekend I had fallen badly playing basketball and was on crutches. When he saw me, Oscar came over and offered to take me to the front of the queue. He led me up and into the box. He was a real gentleman.' 'So you became friends?' asked the man. 'Yes, we began to see each other quite often.'

They started to go for long walks, which almost invariably ended up in Central Park. He loved trees, fields, all of nature. He was expert at photographing landscapes, and had all the equipment: a 35mm Reflex, two tripods, filters, zoom lens. He was very knowledgeable about light, atmosphere, and reflections on water, but had no real interest in any life forms bigger than insects. Oscar was green as a shoot, and perhaps as unripe.

'He took photos of me everywhere: by the ponds, the lakes, feeding the ducks…' 'Did he ever talk about his job?'

'Not often. He said he had been a guard in the Brooke's chain before he was taken on by the Van Tysch Foundation in New York, based on Fifth Avenue. His boss was a woman called Ripstein. He earned a fortune, but lived on his own. And he said he hated the Foundation's aesthetic mania: that they forced him to wear a toupee for months, for example.' 'What did he say about that?'

'That if he was bald, or starting to lose his hair, that was nobody else's business. Why on earth had they told him to wear a toupee. "All the big bosses are bald, except for Stein, and nobody cares," he told me. "But the rest of us have to look good." And he said the Van Tysch Foundation was like a meal in a designer restaurant: bags of image, taste, very expensive, but when you left you still had room for a couple of hotdogs and a bag of French fries.' 'He told you that?' 'Yes.'

Was that a smile on the man's face, or simply a distorted image?

'He also said he could never consider the people he was looking after as works of art… to him, they were human beings, and he felt very sorry for some of them… he told me about one in particular… I don't remember her name… a model who spent hours crouched in a box, an original painted by Buncher, one of the 'Claustrophiles'. He said he had been her guard several times, and that she was an intelligent, pleasant young girl who used to write poems like Sappho of Lesbos in her free time…'

'"But who the fuck is interested in that aspect of her?" Oscar would complain. "To the public, she's no more than a figure on show in a box for eight hours a day." "But it's a beautiful work, Oscar," I'd reply. "Don't you think the 'Claustrophiles' are beautiful? And what about Bust? A twelve-year-old girl shut into that dark cubicle… when you think about it, you say: the poor girl, what a travesty. But when you get up close to her and see her grey-painted face, that expression of hers… My God, Oscar, that's art! I also feel sorry at shutting up a girl inside a box like that, but… what can we do if the result is so… so beautiful?'"

Those were the kind of discussions we had. I ended up asking him: "So why do you carry on guarding paintings, Oscar?" He replied: "Because they pay me better than anywhere else." But what he really liked was to learn things about me. I told him about my family in Bogota, my studies… he was pleased we might be able to see each other again this year in Amsterdam, because he was working in Europe

…' 'Did he say what kind of work?'

'Looking after paintings on the tour of Bruno van Tysch's 'Flowers' collection. 'Did he talk about that?'

'Not much… he saw it as just another job. He told me he'd be in Europe a year, and that he'd be spending the first months between Amsterdam and Berlin… he wanted me to talk about my research… he was thrilled when I told him that Rembrandt collected things like dried crocodiles, families of shells, tribal necklaces and arrows… and I was hoping he could get me a pass to visit Edenburg castle.' 'Why did you want to visit Edenburg?'

To see if it was true what they say about Van Tysch: that he collects empty spaces. People who have been inside Edenburg say there is no furniture or decoration, just bare rooms. I don't know whether it's true or not, but I thought it might make a good… a good appendix to my thesis…'

'You went on seeing Oscar in Amsterdam, didn't you?' the man asked.

'Just once. The rest were phone calls. He was constantly on the move with the collection, from Berlin to Hamburg, Hamburg to Cologne. .. He didn't have much time off.' Briseida rubbed her arms. She felt cold, but tried to keep her mind on the questions. 'What did he say on the phone?'

'He wanted to know how I was feeling. He wanted to see me. But I think that our relationship, if there ever was one, was finished.' 'What about when you met?'

'It was back in May. Oscar was in Vienna. He had been given a week off and called me. I was living in Leiden, and we arranged to meet in Amsterdam. He stayed in a small hotel off Dam square.' 'That was a bit of a rushed trip, wasn't it?'

'He was bored in Europe. All his friends were in the United States.' 'What did you do in Amsterdam?'

'We walked along the canals, ate in an Indonesian restaurant…' Briseida decided it was time to lose her patience. 'What more do you want me to tell you! I'm tired and nervous! Please…'

The Bad Cop's window turned into the woman in black glasses. Briseida nearly jumped out of her seat.

'And I supposed you fucked as well, didn't you? I mean, in between all those interesting conversations about art and landscape photography…' No reply.

'Do you know what I'm talking about?' said the woman. 'The old whambang males and females get up to, sometimes the males on one side and the females on the other, sometimes together.'

Briseida decided this unknown woman was the most unpleasant person she had ever seen. Even at the distance of a computer screen from her, with her squashed, two-dimensional, luminous face, her head shrunken by the jibaros of software, the woman was unbearable. 'Did you fuck or not?' 'Yes.'

'Was it an investment, or on current account?' ‘I don't follow you.'

'I'm asking if you got anything in exchange, such as entrance tickets to Edenburg, or if you did it because you were fascinated by the lower half of Oscar's body.'

'Get lost.' The words poured out of Briseida effortlessly, fearlessly, like a pair of desperate lovers. 'Get lost, will you? Burn my eyes if you like, but get lost.'

She was expecting revenge, but to her surprise, nothing happened.

'Was there love? Between Oscar and you?' Briseida looked across at the green walls of Roger's apartment.

'I've no intention of responding to that question.'

This time there was a reaction, so quick that her eyes flitted from the green of the wall to the green brush in one movement. All of a sudden she found herself immobilised and open, like a woman giving birth for the first time. Thick gardening gloves smothered her face. Her jaw was held so firmly she could scarcely shout that yes she would answer, of course she'd answer all the questions they wanted to ask, please, please… She heard a click, a tiny buzzing sound, and once again could feel her eye was intact.

'No! There was no love! I don't know! I don't know if he loved me!… I just thought of him as a friend!…' The soles of her feet felt wet and sticky. She realised she had trodden in her own vomit, but what did that matter now she was in tears, and that woman (an unmoving bust on the screen, splintered by her tears) was watching her cry. 'Please, let me go!… I've told you all I know!…'

'Come on, admit it’ the woman said. 'There was an ulterior motive, wasn't there? Otherwise, what kind of attraction would you feel for a bald guy who had been forced to wear a toupee at work, and who talked to you about landscapes and Sappho of Lesbos? As far as I can see, you don't have problems with men: you only had to wiggle your ass a bit in Amsterdam for Roger Levin to notice and invite you to stay at his place. Isn't that right?'

It was a cruel way to describe what had happened. A week earlier, in Amsterdam, Briseida had gone to see the 'Pleasures' exhibition by Maurice Marchal. He was a painter who interested her because he collected fetishes and only painted men with erections. That afternoon, Roger Levin was also in the gallery by chance, as he explained to her later. He had gone to Amsterdam to try to interview the Foundation bosses to get information on the much-awaited launch of the 'Rembrandt' exhibition scheduled for 15 July. While he was there, he was thinking of buying a Marchal for a girlfriend of his. According to Roger, what first attracted him to Briseida was the dark mane of hair spreading across her pert buttocks. Briseida had bent down to get a closer look at one of the works, a muscular young man squatting with a perfectly vertical penis, painted Veronese green. Roger had made use of the symmetrical effect to come over and comment in English that her posture was exactly the same as the work of art. It was not a particularly smart comment, but it was a lot better than most of the chat-up lines she had heard. Levin had a pleasant, childish face and was wearing a suit with a waistcoat. His hair looked like a nursery of gelled snails. He was irresistible, even in the context they found themselves in, with more than a dozen painted, naked young men standing there with their penises in the air. But Roger's chief attraction was his father, whom he mentioned soon enough. Briseida knew that Gaston Levin was one of the most important dealers in France. With the same spontaneity that seemed to characterise everything he did, Roger suggested that Briseida might like to go back to Paris with him and stay for a few days at his chrome-plated home on the rive gauche. Why not? she thought. It was a unique opportunity for her to get a close look at a great family that dealt in works of art. Luckily, the Bad Cop had vanished again.

'Did you not see Diaz again after Amsterdam?' the man went on.

'No. The last time he called was a fortnight ago… on Sunday the eighteenth, I think…' 'Did he have any news?'

'He wanted to ask me how you obtained a residency permit for a country in the European Union. He knew I'd got one thanks to the grant from my university.'*Why was he interested in that?'

'He said he had recently met someone who had no papers, and he wanted to help them.'

Briseida sensed she had said something important to them. The tension of the man on the screen was well-nigh tangible. 'Did he say who this person was?' 'No. I think it was a woman, but I'm not sure.' 'Why do you think that?'

'That's the way Oscar is,' Briseida said with a smile. 'He loves helping ladies.' 'What were his exact words?'

'It's an immigrant, but they have no papers,' was what Oscar had said. 'Since you've been living in Europe for several months, I thought you might know how to get some kind of visa.' He hadn't wanted to give any further details, but Briseida was almost certain it was a woman he was talking about. And that had been all. 'Did you say you would call each other again?'

'He said he'd phone me, but didn't say when. When I left Amsterdam, I left Roger's number with my friends so that Oscar could find me, but he hasn't called yet.'

'Did you try to find out any of the information he was asking for?'

‘I asked at my embassy, but I didn't get very far with it… can I blow my nose, please?'

'That's all we're going to get from her. Tell Thea to make sure everything is cleaned up, the kiddies are given some sweets as reward, and then everyone gets out of there,' Miss Wood muttered, slamming her computer shut.

Giving the kiddies their sweets would not be that easy, as Bosch knew very well. Roger Levin was a cretin, but by now he must be incensed at having been hauled out of bed while he was busy enjoying his latest conquest, and had probably already called that wonderful father of his. It was true that while his son was playing chess in the basement of the Roquentin mansion (and was trying his hardest to take the white bishop, one Solange Tandrot, eighteen years old, a bony blonde with curls and an anorexia problem – unsuccessfully, as it turned out – and in the end having to console himself by taking Robert Leyoler, a sturdy nineteen-year-old pawn) Gaston had been told on the phone what was going to happen. Bosch had explained to him they were only interested in the Colombian girl, and that they were not going to touch his son (this was a lie, of course; they wanted to interrogate them separately). Levin Senior had given his consent, but even so they had to be very careful. Levin's influence was something to take into account. He was a second-grade dealer, but he was very astute, and lived in luxury in an Art-Deco building on the Quai Voltaire. It was said his wife hung her clothes on the outstretched arms of a Max Kalima original, Judith, which Annie Engels modelled next to the fireplace in the salon. But the Levin family was not to be taken lightly. Fortunately, Bosch knew his weak point. Levin was in love with some originals from the Maestro's early period. He claimed he wanted to acquire them at a special price so that he could sell them on in the United States. Negotiations with Stein had stalled: Levin knew that if he did not behave, Stein would block the sale. The Van Tysch Foundation was not to be taken lightly either.

'Who were they, Roger? They weren't the police, were they? Did you know them?'

Roger was staring in the mirror at a huge bruise on his shoulder blade, probably the female soldier's handiwork. It hurt, whoever had done it. He felt humiliated by what had happened, and his legs were still shaking, but he consoled himself with the thought that it had not been – as he had at first feared – a raid by real cops (he had a sealed room downstairs where he kept his collection of illegal ornaments, which even his father was unaware of) and that they had not ruined any of the beautiful paintings he kept upstairs.

'They were… they were people from my world,' he replied. His father had forbidden him to talk to the girl about the incident. 'From your world?'

'Yes, like the people you saw yesterday at the Roquentin mansion! Assholes who get paid to carry guns and guard paintings! Anyway, what does it matter who they were!'

'They were looking for a friend of mine who works in the Van Tysch Foundation… Why…?' 'How should I know!' 'We must go to the police.'

'No, better to let things lie,' said Roger. 'Business is business, you know…'

Briseida went on drying herself without another word. She had just taken a shower and been able to check that she was unharmed after the incredible painting session. Or torture session. She was thinking that as soon as she got dressed, she would pack her things and get out of Roger Levin's apartment. Accepting his invitation had been a mistake. She was almost sure the responsibility for what had gone on lay mostly with Roger and the gangsters surrounding him.

What about Oscar? She sincerely wished nothing had happened to him, but a sense of foreboding she could not shake off told her she would never see him again.

'I'm increasingly convinced Diaz had nothing to do with this,' said Miss Wood.

'So why has he disappeared?' Bosch asked. That's what I can't understand.'

Stubbed out in the ashtray, her ecological cigarette was a mass of green wrinkles.