Art of Murder

by Jose Carlos Somoza

  Neither Bosch nor Miss Wood wanted more coffee. The maid turned to leave, her long skirt making a swooshing sound as she did so. The door opened and closed. Braun sat for a moment staring after her. Then he blinked and came back to reality.

  'We are very pleased to be able to count on the cooperation of the Austrian police, Detective Braun,' Bosch was saying. He had gathered together all the photos on the table (a red lacquer swirl in the shape of a painter's palette) and was taking the tape out of the recorder.

  'I am simply doing my duty,' Braun said. 'My superiors told me to come to the museum to keep you informed, and that is what I've done.'

  'We can perfectly understand you must think the situation is somewhat anomalous.'

  '"Anomalous" is putting it mildly’ Braun said with a smile, trying to make his words sound as cynical as possible. 'First of all, our department does not normally keep information from the press about the activities of a possible psychopath. Tomorrow another young girl could turn up dead in the wood, and we would have a serious problem on our hands.'

  'I understand,' Bosch agreed.

  'Secondly, the fact that we have revealed details of our investigation to individuals such as yourselves is also uncommon for the police, in this country at least. We are not used to collaborating with private security companies, especially to this extent.'

  Further agreement.

  'But ...' Braun spread his hands as if to say: But I've been ordered to come and keep you informed, and that is what I am doing. 'Well, I'm at your service.'

  He had no wish to show his disgust, but could not help it. That morning he had received no less than five phone calls from different departments, each successive one from higher up in the political hierarchy. The last had been from a top-ranking official in the Ministry of the Interior whose name never appeared in the newspapers. Braun had been told on no account to miss his appointment in the MuseumsQuartier, and had been urged to give Miss Wood and Bosch all available information. It was obvious the Van Tysch Foundation had wide-ranging and powerful political influence.

  'Your coffee’ Bosch said, gesturing towards the cup. 'It'll go cold.'

  'Thanks.'

  Braun did not really want any more, but out of politeness lifted the cup and pretended to take a sip. While the two people opposite him exchanged routine remarks, he took a good look at them. He found the man called Bosch more agreeable than his female companion, but that wasn't saying much. He thought he must be around fifty. He looked serious enough, with a shining bald pate ringed with white hair, and distinguished-looking features. When they first met he had confessed to Braun that as a young man he had worked for the Dutch police, so in a way they were almost colleagues. But Miss Wood was something else again. She looked young, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. Her straight black hair was cut short au garçon, and showed a perfect parting on the right-hand side. Her skinny frame was moulded into a sleeveless dress, and at the neckline was the red pass of the Van Tysch Foundation Security Department. Apart from that he could only see tons of make-up and those absurd dark glasses. Unlike her companion, Miss Wood never smiled, and spoke as though everyone around her was there to serve her. Braun felt sorry for Bosch for having to put up with the woman.

  All at once, Felix Braun felt very odd. It was almost as if he had a split personality. He could see himself sitting in a room lit by red bulbs and decorated by a huge photo of two people squashed into a glass box, at a red table in the shape of a painter's palette, opposite two outlandish figures and waited on by a maid like an odalisk. He had just come out of an exhibition of naked, painted youngsters who all gave off different perfumes, and he was finding it hard to work out what a murder detective like him was doing in the middle of all this. He also found it hard to see what all this had to do with the events that had taken place. The ravaged body they had discovered that morning in the Wienerwald was of a poor fourteen-year-old adolescent, brutally murdered in one of the worst acts of sadism Braun had ever encountered. What link was there between that murder and this red room, an odalisk, two ridiculous characters, and a museum?

  'In fact,' he said, and the change in his voice led the other two to break off their conversation and stare at him, 'I still can't quite grasp what role you two have to play in this case, apart from being the directors of a security firm that the main suspect belongs to. A brutal crime has been committed, and that is the sole responsibility of the police.'

  'Do you know what hyperdramatic art is, Detective Braun?' Miss Wood suddenly asked.

  'Who doesn't?' Braun replied. 'I've just seen the "Flowers" exhibition. And I've got a cousin who's bought a book of art for beginners. He wants to practise on all of us: every time I see him he wants to use me as his model...'

  Bosch laughed together with Braun, but Miss Wood was as solemn as ever.

  'Give me a definition,' she said. 'A definition?'

  ‘Yes. What do you think HD art is?'

  'What's she after now?' Braun thought to himself. She made him nervous. He straightened the knot on his tie and cleared his throat, looking around as if he might find the right words in some corner of this red room.

  'I'd say that it is people who stay stock-still and which others call paintings,' he replied.

  His irony bounced off the woman's stern face.

  'It's exactly the opposite,' she retorted. She smiled for the first time. It was the most unpleasant smile Braun had ever seen. 'They are paintings which sometimes move and look like human beings. It's not a question of terminology, but of points of view, and that is the point of view we have at the Foundation.' Miss Wood's voice stung icily, as if each of her words was a veiled threat. 'The Foundation is responsible for protecting and promoting Bruno van Tysch's art throughout the world, and I personally am responsible for the Security Department. My task, and that of my companion here, Mr Lothar Bosch, is to make sure that none of Van Tysch's works suffers the slightest damage. And Annek Hollech was a painting worth much more than all our wages and pension plans put together, Detective Braun. She was called Deflowering, was a Van Tysch original, was considered one of the key works of contemporary painting, and now she has been destroyed.'

  Braun was impressed by the cold fury of her staccato, almost whispering voice. Miss Wood paused before she went on. Her dark glasses stared at Braun, the twin reflection of the table gleaming from them.

  'What you see as a murder is for us a serious attack on one of our works. As you will understand, we therefore feel ourselves intimately involved in the investigation, which is why we have asked to collaborate. Is that clear?'

  'Perfectly.'

  'Don't for a moment imagine we are going to get in your way at all,' Miss Wood went on. 'The police must do as they see fit, and the Foundation will do likewise. But I would ask you to inform us of any developments that may arise in the course of your investigation. Thank you.'

  That was the end of the meeting. Led by the public relations woman who had received him when he arrived, Braun walked back along the labyrinthine corridors of the oval wing of the MuseumsQuartier. It was only when he was out in the street again, in the bright sunlight, that he regained his calm.

  As he drove home, the exact name of the exhibit flashed into his head without warning. Magic Purple.

  That was the name of the bright-red work of art who had the same fragrance as his wife. Scarlet, carmine, blood red.

  3

  The card was a turquoise-blue colour, the colour of magic spells, bluebirds over the rainbow, the azure sea. It glinted in the dining-room light. The phone number was written in the centre in fine black lines. All that was on the card was the number, probably a mobile, although the code was strange. While she was dialling it, Clara noticed that her fingernail was still shining with traces of paint from Girl in Front of a Looking Glass. At the second ring, a young woman's voice answered. 'Yes?' 'Hello, this is Clara Reyes.'

  She was still thinking of what to say next when she realised the other person had hung up. She th
ought it must have been by accident, as sometimes happened with mobiles. They were such ghastly inventions which could be used for anything, even to talk, as Jorge used to joke. She pressed the redial button. The same voice replied, in exactly the same tone.

  'I think we got cut off,' Clara said. 'I. ..'

  Someone hung up again.

  Intrigued, Clara tried a third time. Was hung up on again. She thought about it for a moment. She had just got in from the GS gallery, and the first thing she had done after taking a shower and washing the paint from her hair and body had been to look for the card and make the call. She was sitting in the dining room on the navy-blue tatami, with her legs crossed and a towel wrapped round her body. She had opened the windows, and a cool evening breeze was fanning her back. A gentle blues number was playing on the stereo. It can't be a problem with the phone. This time they hung up at once. They're doing it on purpose, she thought to herself.

  She decided to try another strategy. She used the remote control to switch off the stereo, checked the time on the bookcase clock, and called again.

  This time when the woman answered, Clara said nothing.

  The silence at both ends of the telephone line grew, deepened and became ridiculous. There was no sound, not even of breathing, although it was obvious that this time they had not hung up. But they were not speaking either. How long will I have to wait for them to make up their minds? thought Clara.

  All of a sudden she was disconnected. The clock showed it had taken a minute.

  So the silence was the message. This time it had taken longer, which probably meant they did not want her to speak. But they had hung up anyway.

  Angrily, she swept back the strands of wet blonde hair covering her eyes. It was clear she was facing some kind of stretching test.

  All the great painters stretched their canvases before they began a work. This stretching was the doorway to the hyperdramatic world, a way of preparing the model for what was to come, of warning them that from this point on nothing of what was going to happen would follow a logical pattern or society's accepted norms. Clara was used to being stretched in many different ways. The method usually employed by the artists in The Circle and Gilberto Brentano was the full gamut of sadomasochistic techniques. Georges Chalboux, on the other hand, used more subtle means of stretching. He created emotional upheaval by bringing in specially trained people who pretended to love or hate the models used in his works; these people could by turns be threatening, elusive or affectionate, all of which created a great sense of anxiety. Exceptional painters such as Vicky Lledo used themselves to stretch their canvases. Vicky was particularly cruel, because she used genuine emotions - it was as if she could split her personality, as if there was a Vicky-human being and a Vicky-artist in one and the same person, working completely independently of each other.

  In order to get through the stretching phase, the canvas had to be aware of two things: the only rule was that there were no rules, and the only possible reaction was to go on.

  So it was no use Clara ringing up again and staying silent: she had to take the next step. But in which direction?

  Alex Bassan's signature on her thigh was itching. She scratched herself, taking care not to use her nails, while she considered what to do.

  She had an idea. It was absurd, which made her think it might be correct (that was nearly always how it was in the world of art). She left the receiver on the mat, stood up and went over to the window. Naked beneath the towel, her damp body did not feel cold or uncomfortable as she felt the cool rush of air.

  The rain had washed the night clean. There was no smell of garbage, traffic, or excrement... of the centre of Madrid; instead the smell of the sea in the city, the kind of evening breeze that occasionally makes Madrid seem like a seaside resort. Yet there was traffic. The cars went by sniffing each other's backsides and winking at one another with their big luminous eyes. She looked at the building opposite: three windows on the top floor were still lit, and in one of them, which had cobalt-blue curtains, there were some flowerpots. They looked as though they contained blue hyacinths. Clara leant over her balcony ledge and looked down at the street from the top of her four-storey block. The breeze ruffled her hair like a tired puppeteer.

  There was no sign of anyone watching her. It was absurd to imagine anyone was spying on her.

  Absurd, and therefore correct.

  She picked up the cordless phone, again looked over at the clock, then walked back to the window and called the number on the card another time.

  'Yes?' asked the woman's voice.

  Clara waited in silence, as close as she could get to the window, without moving a muscle. The breeze rippled through the fringe of her blue towel. All of a sudden they hung up. She looked back at the clock. A record, which must mean she had done something right and that, yes, however incredible it might seem, she was being watched. Yet she had still not done everything required of her. She decided to try something new: she phoned once more and, while she was standing at the window, raised a hand and tousled her hair. Almost before she had time to finish the gesture, they hung up.

  She smiled her agreement in silence, staring down at the street. 'Aha, now I've caught you: you want me not to talk, to stand at the window, to remain motionless, and .. . what else?' Bassan sometimes told her that her face could look kind and heartless at the same time, 'like an angel who has nostalgic memories of being a devil'. Right now, her expression was more devilish than angelic. 'What more, eh? What more do you want?'

  It was always the same when she took the first steps in the strange temple that was art, at the beginning of a new work: she felt aroused. It was the greatest feeling in the world. How could anyone want to work in anything else? How could there be people like Jorge, who were not works of art or artists?

  She amused herself by imagining what might come next; her imagination always raced in situations like this. The silence on the phone would last ten minutes if she leaned over her balcony, fifteen if she put one leg down on the ledge, twenty-five if she put the other one there, thirty if she stood up on the ledge, thirty-five if she took a step forward into the void ... perhaps then someone would respond . . . But that would be ruining the canvas, not stretching it.

  She chose another, more modest option. She looked over at the clock again, and then, still standing at the window, dropped the towel to the floor. She dialled the number. Heard the same reply as always. Waited.

  The silence went on and on.

  When she calculated that a good five minutes had passed, she wondered what else she would need to do if they hung up again.

  She did not want to have to think about it. She stood at the window without moving. The silence in her earpiece persisted.

  The black cat was to blame.

  She saw it for the first time in Ibiza, beneath a blazing sun. The cat was staring at her in that strange way all cats do, opening its quartz-crystal eyes wide and challenging her to discover its secret. But she was fourteen years old, was lying on her stomach on a towel with the top half of her bikini undone, and at that moment secrets did not mean much to her. She won the animal's confidence by calling gently to it. Or perhaps the cat was won over by her beauty. Uncle Pablo, who had invited her to spend the summer in Ibiza, used to ask her jokingly who her image consultant was. Someone as beautiful as you must have one, he said. With her long blonde hair, eyes like two tiny marine planets with no shoreline in view, her taut adolescent silhouette perfectly set off by her blooming skin, Clara was well accustomed to admiring glances.

  As a child, the father of a school friend called Borja had given her father a business card, saying he was a TV producer and wanted to offer Clara a screen test. He had never seen anyone like her, he said. Her father got very angry and didn't want to hear any more about it. That night there was a violent argument at home, and Clara's TV career was cut short before it began. This happened when she was seven. At nine, when her father died, it was already too late to disobey him. From then
on, life was hard, because his death had left the family unprotected. The draper's store her mother ran, where Clara helped as soon as she was old enough, enabled them to get by, and provided the funds for her brother Jose Manuel to finish school and enrol to study Law. They could also count on Uncle Pablo's help. He was a businessman married to a young German woman and lived in Barcelona. It was his idea to rescue Clara every summer and take her to his apartment in Cortixera on Ibiza, with her cousins. They were girls, too, but older than Clara and so often left her on her own, but she didn't mind: the mere fact of being able to leave her sad home in Madrid to spend a month in that tiny but immense space, painted bright blue by the sun, was wonderful enough.

  Nevertheless, nothing would have happened but for the black kitten.

  Or perhaps it would, but in a different way: Clara was a believer in the hand of fate. The kitten came over to her, and from being suspicious at first was soon converted into a gleaming velvet ball with deep blue reflections in its fur. This was in the glorious summer of 1996, with its smell of chlorine and sea breeze. But the kitten itself smelt of soap, and it was obvious it belonged to someone because it was too well groomed to have come directly from the wild.