The Night Gate

Chapter Six

Ever since lockdown had first been enforced in March, Zoom had become the universal go-to means of internet communication between friends and family. Enzo had never heard of it before, but Dominique downloaded the software, and it had rapidly developed into their daily means of communication with Kirsty in Paris and Sophie here in Cahors, at a time when no one was even allowed to leave the house. It was easy to use and you could, it seemed, have unlimited numbers of participants in a single session, their images appearing in tiles across the screen, with whoever was speaking coming automatically to the fore. Ten years ago, Enzo thought, such technology might have been considered space age. But it was now taken completely for granted. All part of what everyone was calling the new normal.

On this session there were just three participants. Enzo in Cahors, with Dominique looking on, and Nicole in Gaillac. Nicole had effectively been Enzo’s research assistant during his investigations into the Raffin murders, his star pupil at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse where he had established a department of forensic science. Had she ever chosen to measure it, her IQ would probably have been off the scale, and Enzo knew no one better able to winkle information out of the ether through her extraordinary manipulation of the internet. Sadly, from Enzo’s perspective, she had not pursued a career in forensic science, choosing instead to marry a winemaker she had met in Gaillac, and have what seemed like an army of children.

In fact there were only three of them. It just felt like more as they ran around behind her shrieking and throwing things. He heard Fabien’s sharp admonishments in the background, the strain in his voice suggesting that paternal patience was wearing thin.

Nicole, however, appeared oblivious, chattering away at the screen without pause. It was some time since they had last spoken. He had emailed her earlier in the day, asking if she could dig up information for him on the victim and suspect in the Carennac case, then set up an evening session for them on Zoom. Now he found himself fielding a barrage of questions about Sophie and her pregnancy, Bertrand and whether or not his gym would survive the pandemic, Kirsty and Raffin and little Alexis in Paris, and of course Laurent — who was strumming Enzo’s guitar loudly on the other side of the room.

‘Nicole, Nicole, can we get back to the murder?’ Over his shoulder he shouted at Laurent, ‘Will you knock that off?’ But the guitar only seemed to get louder.

‘Oh, Monsieur Macleod, you’re no fun. Work, work, work. For someone who retired five years ago, you still seem obsessed by it.’

‘Oh, this is brand new, Nicole,’ Dominique said. ‘For months he’s been kicking his heels around the apartment complaining about boredom, and reminiscing about the good old days when people were trying to kill him.’

Enzo scowled at her. ‘I have not!’

She laughed and told Nicole, ‘At least this investigation seems unlikely to produce any attempts on his life.’

‘Emile Narcisse,’ Enzo said emphatically. ‘What can you tell me about him?’

Nicole frowned and scanned her screen, navigating away from Zoom to her research document. ‘Emile Narcisse...’ Her eyes flickered from one side of the screen to the other. ‘Born 1955, in a small industrial town called Annonay, near Lyon. Only child of an art teacher and a local fonctionnaire.’ She re-focused on Enzo. ‘Did you know that Annonay was the home of the Montgolfier brothers who invented hot-air ballooning?’

‘No, Nicole, I did not.’ Enzo sighed. ‘Emile Narcisse,’ he prompted, in an attempt to get her back on track.

‘Yes, yes, getting to it.’ Now her head moved up and down as she scanned a document. ‘Encouraged by his mother, apparently he bought his first painting at the age of fourteen. By the time he opened his private collection to public view in 2005, it comprised more than 1300 pieces. In 2008 he donated 300 paintings from his collection to the French state. Worth, at that time, somewhere in the region of 63 million euros.’

Enzo whistled softly.

‘Evidently he was a man of considerable means, then,’ Dominique said.

Nicole confirmed. ‘His personal wealth has been estimated at more than 500 million.’

Enzo said, ‘Well, there’s motive straight away. Who stood to inherit?’

Nicole shook her head. ‘No one. He was an only child, never married, lived alone.’

Dominique said, ‘You can bet that some second cousin somewhere will come crawling out of the woodwork to stake a claim.’

Nicole seemed to be flicking through more documents, her eyes darting about the screen. ‘He had a gallery in New York City, and recently acquired a second Parisian gallery in the Rue des Filles du Calvaire in the Marais. Although his training was in classical art, he has traded almost exclusively for the last few years in modern contemporary, exhibiting a lot of new young American painters. He was a huge name in the world of international art, Monsieur Macleod, although you and I would never have heard of him. But he came to the attention of the general public about seven years ago, when he uncovered a haul of looted Nazi art in Switzerland.’

Dominique blew air through pursed lips. ‘I remember reading about that.’

‘Found in an apartment in Geneva,’ Nicole said. ‘It had belonged to the son of one of Hitler’s art dealers, a man called Anton Weber, who had been trickle-trading them in the marketplace for years to finance a very handsome lifestyle. Narcisse had sold a number of them, unaware, he claimed, of their provenance. The discovery was made when Narcisse flew to Geneva to keep a long-standing lunch appointment with Weber. When the man failed to turn up, Narcisse went to his apartment, where he got no reply. But a smell of gas prompted him to alert the authorities. The police broke in and found him dead.’

‘Suicide?’

‘Apparently. But anyway, it turned out the apartment was chock-full of looted Second World War art. Much of it stolen from Jewish collectors in France by Hitler’s art thieves, an organisation called ERR. Do you want to know what that stands for?’ Nicole was nothing if not thorough.

‘You’re going to tell me anyway,’ Enzo said.

‘Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg,’ she said carefully. ‘The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce. Alfred Rosenberg was the Nazi’s chief ideologue, and he set up the ERR to appropriate cultural property from occupied countries during World War Two. In Weber’s apartment there were paintings by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch, and lots of other star names. Worth so much they couldn’t even put a figure on it. Narcisse was appointed to track down the heirs of their rightful owners, and if no heirs were found to send them to auction. Mostly they were bought by museums and art galleries, and a few private collectors.’

‘With Narcisse picking up the commission, no doubt,’ Enzo said.

Nicole nodded. ‘Exactly. He was active in the art market right up until... well... until he was murdered. Working from his base at the Marais gallery.’

Enzo scratched his head thoughtfully. What was a man like Narcisse doing in an old lady’s house in a tiny village in south-west France? He said, ‘What about Hans Bauer?’

Nicole pulled a face. ‘Not nearly so much online about Herr Bauer, Monsieur Macleod. Twenty-five years old. Graduate of the Universität der Künste, Berlin. That’s the University of the Arts. I had to look it up. He got into a lot of trouble as a teenager and earned himself a conviction for assault when he was eighteen. From the newspaper cuttings I was able to find, it seems that it was only his mother’s money and influence that managed to keep him out of jail. But he appears to have put his wild days behind him and is now the director of a small Berlin art gallery owned by his mother.’

A crash and a shriek drew her focus away from the screen.

‘Oh God!’ she said. ‘What a mess!’ And turned back to Enzo. ‘I’m going to have to run, Monsieur Macleod. Delphine has just dropped her dinner on the floor. I think Fabien is going to kill her!’

And her screen went blank. Dominique leaned in to shut down the application and glanced at Enzo. ‘So what do you think?’

He shook his head. ‘No idea. But if I were to hazard a guess — which I won’t — I might think it had something to do with art.’

She grinned. ‘You don’t say.’

He leaned back in his seat and interlocked his fingers behind his head. ‘The thing that still troubles me about the crime scene, though, is how Bauer managed to get himself covered in so much blood. I’m sure I’m missing something.’ He tipped forward again. ‘But we’ll not get anywhere until we find out why the two of them were in that house.’

Laurent was still strumming at his father’s guitar, trying to link an unlikely sequence of chords. Enzo turned and gazed at him fondly. ‘Try F sharp minor 7th after the E,’ he suggested.

Laurent looked at him as if he were mad. ‘What?’

‘Try it.’

The boy focused his concentration on making the right shape with his fingers, played his father’s suggested chord once, then tried it in the sequence. His face lit up. ‘That works!’

Enzo just smiled.

Dominique said, ‘Will I put the fish under the grill now?’

Enzo had prepared the dish before the Zoom call. White fish fillet in lime juice and ginger with sliced white grapes. The potatoes were already boiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Five or six minutes is all it needs. I just want to have a look at those pics I took in the house at Carennac.’ And as Dominique went through to the kitchen he crossed to the table and opened up his iPad. The photographs taken with his phone had already synced and he was able to look at them more closely on the larger screen. Again he shook his head. It made no sense. Bauer had attacked his victim face-on, slashing across his throat, probably with the missing kitchen knife. Narcisse had fallen in a pool of his own blood in the narrow passage between the table and the sink. Why would Bauer try to squeeze past, rather than make his escape through the side door behind him?

Enzo slipped half-moon reading glasses on to the end of his nose and peered more closely at the blood spatter on the floor, a frown slowly forming itself in two deep creases between his eyes.