The Art of Deception

by The Art of Deception (retail) (epub)

  When we returned, I realised that Julian was in hiding. We no longer went to the little restaurants that she loved, or to the cinema or to concerts. It took a week of excuses for me to understand that this was more than dislike of the film or not feeling like Lebanese food. It was much more than the occasional nervousness that she had shown previously; it was a consistent refusal to leave the flat. Every day I looked around the square for someone watching our building, but I could see nothing out of the ordinary. I made a point of asking Victor when I came in at night if Julian was upstairs, or if she had been out. His reply was always, ‘I couldn’t say.’ Yet if she was afraid, she did not show it in any way beyond refusing to go out. Her self-control remained rigid. She did not stride up and down, or peer out from behind the curtains. She was calm as always, never irritable.

  I could only guess at why she behaved in this way. The people she feared must be Russians. Was it Anatoli, the former lover, who was persecuting her? I had only indirect allusions in her conversation to go on, references to incidents in the past in which she was unlikely to have been alone; Anatoli must have been there with her. Under the surface of the story an x-ray would reveal another figure, a pentimento, who once made part of the artist’s concept of his composition, now painted out. Or did the threat come from the other man, of whom I had found no trace, the naked sleeper? Why would they want to harm her? In every interpretation of events that I tried out for myself, I only ever thought of her as an innocent victim.

  She came into the kitchen one evening to drink a glass of wine and talk to me as I peered at a duck’s breast I was cooking. I had just discovered that you could buy ready cooked fried potatoes so dinner was more interesting than usual.

  ‘Julian. I want to talk to you about going out.’ Her smile did not disappear; it was simply fixed, as if she was skipping this scene.

  ‘Going out?’

  ‘Why don’t you leave the flat? What’s out there? Who are you afraid of?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Nick.’

  ‘Then why do we never go out in the evening any more? No concerts. No films.’

  ‘Because I don’t feel like it. Don’t you like spending the evening at home with me?’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  I could not make her admit that there was anything wrong. Her self-imprisonment made my appointment at Blackfriars especially important Colin Trevor met me in his glass booth, in which the air was stifling. Outside it was savagely cold. An Arctic high was hanging over southern England and the air was like a knife from Siberia, striking the lungs. He sat in his shirt sleeves with my file in front of him.

  ‘I’m afraid to tell you, Professor Ochterlonie, that we have had, er, certain difficulties with this case and we haven’t been as successful in accumulating as much material as I would have expected.’

  ‘Ah.’ I was reprieved. Unsuccessful spying did not count. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘I won’t trouble you with all the problems we encountered, because it would sound as if I was trying to make excuses for our performance, and I don’t want to do that. We pride ourselves on delivering what the client asks for. And what you wanted was very straightforward: background information on two named individuals, addresses supplied. In a case like that, there’s usually a lot of sources we can access to build up a dossier but, unfortunately…’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Just tell me what you have found. What have you got on Mr Vozkresensky?’

  He was visibly relieved that I was a co-operative rather than a retributive client.

  ‘Anatoli Vozkresensky is a partner in a Russian bank. We’ve been able to find out a little about why Scotland Yard was making enquiries about him. It’s not the Fraud Squad, as you suggested, but the Home Office, and it’s not Vozkresensky himself, but one of his partners who interests them. Another of the directors of the bank is called Muzafarov and he has had a block put on his visa, because MI6 claim he was a notorious KGB operative in the old days of the Soviet Union.’ He stopped speaking, nervously ruffling the top right-hand edge of the papers in the file.

  I sat absorbing this information. So Anatoli was Vozkresensky. So who was AФ? The naked sleeper? Or was Muzafarov the sleeper? No, because he couldn’t get a visa… And Trevor was wrong about Scotland Yard. Tom Naish (Fraud), as he called himself, was enquiring about Vozkresensky, not Muzafarov. It looked as if Trevor had found nothing on Anatoli, but was offering something on one of his partners as a make-weight.

  ‘And where is Vozkresensky now? Did you manage to discover that?’ Was he living around the corner in London? Or was he on the other side of the world? Did Julian still see him?

  ‘We have to assume he’s in Russia. At least, he’s not here, as far as we know. Just now.’ Then with a burst of frankness, ‘Though we did discover that he has a multiple entry visa for the UK, valid for a year from last June. So he could be moving in and out all the time.’

  ‘Do you know what he looks like?’

  ‘Yes, yes, we do.’ His eagerness was too much. ‘We had success there very rapidly. Almost as soon as we started the investigation.’

  He was turning through his papers. He handed over to me a photocopy of a press cutting. Anatoli, the same Anatoli who appeared in all Julian’s holiday photos, his smile, gleaming, amiable underneath his thick moustache, was shaking hands with someone. His suit fitted him impeccably; his shirt was a bold bankers’ stripe; the shot cuff of his outstretched hand showed a cuff link the size of a traffic light.

  ‘All this must be very disappointing to you, Professor, I realise, and in the light of our failure we’re going to waive all charges. Please don’t mention it It’s not often we have such lack of success. Our name is made on customer recommendation.’

  I could not have cared less how much they were charging. ‘I said at the beginning that time was not the essential factor for me. I dare say you’ll get better results next go. Perhaps the Bank…’

  ‘No, Professor. I feel this is a case we’re not going to be able to help with.’

  I looked at him more attentively now. He stared back at me with defiant unease.

  ‘We’ve not produced what you wanted, for which I apologise unreservedly. But it has enabled us to see the nature of the investigation and we have come to the conclusion that it would not be worth going any further.’

  ‘Ah. I’m disappointed. But if you think so…’

  ‘We do.’ The plural pronoun gave him authority.

  ‘I was going to ask your advice about a new development. I hope you’ll let me put it to you, even though you don’t intend to continue.’

  His reluctance was manifest, as he said, ‘By all means, I’ll be glad to listen.’

  ‘Miss Bennet. I didn’t tell you before, because I hadn’t realised… She’s now nervous. She seems to be afraid of… an attack, say. I wondered…’

  Colin Trevor, his aged boyish face flushed, was on his feet. ‘My advice to you, Professor, is to go to the police. Much the best thing to do.’ He was already at his glass door, ushering me through the whispering open-plan offices.

  I took the bus back to give myself time to think about this interview. It had clouded over since I left home and the sky was threatening. I sat on the top of the number 11 and looked down at the scurrying figures in the Strand, streaming across the road at the traffic lights, pouring down the steps into the warmth of the tube.

  That man was frightened, I thought. I’ve never known anyone less conscious of emotion, his own or anyone else’s, Prisca had said. But I recognised fear in Colin Trevor.

  The bus trudged round Parliament Square and began its journey up Victoria Street. I emerged from my thoughts when it stopped at the Strutton Ground lights. I ran down the stairs, jumping off the platform accompanied by the angry shout of the conductor. I strode down Broadway towards the sign in the middle of the pavement that proclaimed New Scotland Yard. At the desk in the entrance I asked if I could see Detective Constable Tom Naish.

  ‘I haven’t an appoin
tment,’ I explained. ‘He came to see me a few weeks ago and I just wanted to go over something again with him, if he’s free. Here’s my card.’

  He might be out, away, abroad, in a meeting. How often do you find someone in his office, drinking tea, available? But he was. I was sent high up in the building and was impressed that a mere Detective Constable, which did not sound a very powerful rank in the hierarchy, commanded a secretary and a room, albeit a small one, of his own. He met me at the door and shook hands.

  ‘Come in, Professor Ochterlonie. I’m better briefed than I was when I came to call on you before Christmas. I know who you are this time. Tea, coffee?’

  I wanted neither, but accepted tea in an attempt to ease the interview.

  ‘The wiser choice. I’ll arrange it.’

  While he was gone, I looked around. A computer stood on his desk, but this was not a paper-free office. Piles of it lay on every surface. A stream of it, like unrolled lavatory paper, had recently issued from the fax opposite me. He came back carrying two mugs with some concentration on not spilling the contents.

  ‘I hope it was milk, no sugar. I forgot to ask.’

  It was hard to tell whether the disadvantage that he felt at our last meeting was going to work to my benefit. He sat down; we both clutched our mugs of tea, and paused.

  ‘I was hoping, Professor, that you had something to tell me about your neighbour. A sighting, perhaps.’

  ‘No, I’ve not seen him. At least, I wouldn’t know if I had. You haven’t got a mug shot, I suppose.’

  He went to his desk and spoke briefly into the intercom.

  ‘No one’s moved back in next door,’ I said, to fill in time. ‘It’s being renovated, but no occupants.’ The door opened and the secretary brought in a box file from which Naish took out a newspaper cutting and handed it over to me. It was the same one that Colin Trevor had shown me an hour earlier.

  ‘Have you seen him before?’

  ‘I’ve never seen him in the building.’

  The problem was explaining Julian. I had come because I was determined to do something to protect her and I hoped that Naish might have some advice. I was also acting on Trevor’s desperate words, go to the police. I put down my tea.

  ‘You’re probably well informed about all this now, so what I’m saying won’t come as a surprise to you. There was another occupant of the flat opposite me, a woman called Julian Bennet. I mentioned her before.’ I half-expected him to confirm his knowledge by saying something like, ‘Ah, yes, the tart.’ But perhaps his information was even more detailed. I waited to see if I was going to have to start from the beginning.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She moved into the flat with him right from the start, I understand. And stayed on there even after he disappeared.’

  ‘That’s right. She’s now living in fear, which I think is connected with her former… partner. She thinks she’s being stalked. There was the wrecking of her flat. Before that she was mugged. It looks as if someone is threatening her. In fact, trying to kill her.’

  His first and obvious question was whether she had told the police about her fears. I had to admit that the answer was no and that she had told me nothing either. I was hoping he would provide me with the information she would not give.

  It was easy to see why Naish had joined the police force. As an interrogator he had the extractive power of a vacuum cleaner. He drew from me what I knew about Julian, her tenure of the next-door flat and her relations with Anatoli. He gave me back nothing, while maintaining the friendliest attitude.

  ‘The best thing you can do, Professor Ochterlonie, is to persuade Ms Bennet to come to us, to tell us everything she knows and let us see what we can do to help her.’

  I sighed in exasperation and he said patiently, ‘We have no idea whether it’s her former partner who is threatening her or someone else. We don’t know what they want, whether it is revenge or intimidation. We don’t know how intimately she is involved. Until we know the background, where the threat comes from, there’s little we can do. But you did right to see me. Now I’m briefed, I’m ready at any time to come to your assistance.’

  ‘You can’t give me any idea whether the threat is real, serious, I mean, from your knowledge of the case?’ It was my last, feeble attempt to gain information.

  We were standing now. He was smiling affably. ‘If you mean you came here hoping I would say that these aren’t killers and all this – bother – is for show, I’m afraid I can’t give you any such assurance. On the contrary, everything I know suggests they’re very violent men. Our aim is to block and then eliminate their operations in this country and in Europe as a whole.’

  He had been very agreeable, but the visit had not been a success. All that could be said was that I had opened my lines to the police. If I could persuade Julian to seek help, I had someone I could turn to.

  14

  Julian’s folder of photocopies from the Litvak archives was made of laminated cardboard. It was mauve, decorated with star bursts in green and yellow, a child’s folder, the kind of thing that Cordelia spent her pocket money on and filled with secret papers. I had barely glanced at it since Julian had brought it home in November, because of my unease about the way it had been obtained.

  Early in January, however, Minna had written a deeply disobliging review of the Coulounieix lectures, now finished, for an Arts edition of the Times Literary Supplement. This goaded me into deciding I would put together my case and use the conference in Moscow in March to present my thesis. There was ample scope within my very general title, submitted months ago, to discuss the Lady in a Pelisse.

  One day during the period of Julian’s self-imprisonment, I took out the file. As it would take me all day to read, I decided to work at home and persuade her to come out to lunch with me. I ate my breakfast alone. She was still asleep when I settled down in the dressing room, where I had set up a desk large enough to lay out my papers.

  I began with the early stuff, about the sale of the painting to Litvak by Schall. The seller was not mentioned by name anywhere in the correspondence, and it was made a condition of the sale that his identity should not be revealed. This could have been protection for a great family, shamed at selling off its treasures in the hard times after the First World War. Or it could have been a useful cover for the painting’s lack of provenance. Litvak had relied first on Schall’s name and reputation and then, after he had seen the painting for himself, on his own expertise. It was obvious that he had fallen in love with the Lady and had been determined to have it. Schall had made him pay for his passion. The facts that the dealer was Schall, with his record of selling fakes, and that the seller was anonymous were weights in the scale against the painting’s authenticity.

  At about eleven o’clock Julian emerged from the bedroom to make herself some coffee. She brought me a mug and stood beside me, looking at the papers I was working on, her arm draped over my shoulder. She was still wearing her nightshirt and her dark hair stuck up in a cockatoo’s crest above her forehead.

  ‘What are you doing at home?’

  ‘I’m going to take you out to lunch, then we’ll go to the exhibition at the Hayward this afternoon. You can’t stay here all the time.’

  She ignored my last comment. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Where do you want to eat? It’s starvation if we stay at home.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  I put my arm around her legs and kissed her waist which was at lip level. ‘Go away now and come back to distract me later.’

  I went methodically through the papers, which were arranged chronologically, rather than by subject. I resisted the temptation to skip these less important parts of its story, even though I knew from flicking through the file that further on were charts, the scientific tests that Minna had mentioned. The papers traced the painting’s history, its purchase, first cleaning, hanging in the Litvak home in Berlin, transport to Britain, storage during the war, rehanging. There were several notes in Lit
vak’s own hand on the file about arrangements for the picture, including one about its hanging. ‘It should be placed at such a height that the eyes, which look directly at you, should reveal all the truth of the soul,’ he wrote. He, clearly, thought it was real.

  The temperature outside was minus five and Julian wrapped herself in her coat.

  ‘I worry about your wearing that beast in case you are…’ I was going to say ‘attacked’. ‘In case you get a can of paint slung at you.’

  ‘I could put a notice on my back saying “Fake”. Rather neat, don’t you think, to wear the real thing and tell everyone it’s false?’

  When we came back Victor was already on duty. In the lift I said, ‘He seems a bit off colour. Is he all right?’ Julian was training me to notice other people’s states of mind.

  ‘He’s worried about Rose, his granddaughter. He’s frightened she might be kidnapped or something.’

  ‘That seems a bit exaggerated. By her mother, you mean? I can’t keep up with this. I thought she wanted Victor to keep her.’

  ‘She does. No, he’s a bit neurotic about it just now.’ The doors opened. ‘I think the mugging affected him. He sees danger in the streets. And then the burglary didn’t help.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ I said. ‘How have we managed to employ a nervous night porter?’

  ‘He’s not normally nervous. It’s just his granddaughter.’

  I sat down again in my dressing room. Julian was moving around for a time; the murmur of her voice on the phone came from behind the closed door of the bedroom. I had been studying her as well as living with her and I had convinced myself that she was the real thing. I had no doubt there was something very odd in her past, which was still alive and active in the present, but whatever it was she was not colluding with it. I was sure she was truthful in what she said and what she did, in her precise words and her involuntary cries. Neither was faked. What had persuaded me was what she did not say. She almost never used endearments. She never affirmed love. This logical exactitude suggested she gave what she could and no more and that I could take it for what it was and nothing else.