Art of Murder

by Jose Carlos Somoza

  '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.

  7

  'What's this?' asked Jorge. 'It's me,' Clara said.

  He could not believe it. The creature staring at him out of all that yellowness was a being from another planet, a devil from a traveller's tale, a sulphurous spirit. It was Clara, but less than her. Clara the egg yolk. Or a corrected Clara: because he could remember that the curve of her collar bones had never been quite so gentle, the shadow under her cheekbones so ill-defined. And her muscles looked different. And her silhouette. It was her, but not her. And whoever had drawn her like this did not have flesh-coloured pencils, but very pale lemon-yellow ones. He was used to seeing her in an unending carnival of works of art, and so part of his brain did not react. But this thing went beyond painting.

  'If you like, I'll take my clothes off,' she said. Even her voice sounded odd - was there a distant crystal echo? 'But I warn you, the rest is more of the same.'

  Jorge went cautiously over to her. In the creature's face, the slit of the lips curved upwards.

  'I don't bite, you know. And I'm not contagious.'

  She was standing there like a well-behaved schoolgirl, hands behind her back. Her clothes - a top with crossed straps that left her midriff bare, and a creased miniskirt, looked youthful and normal. 'But it's padding,' she explained, 'for works of art to be despatched.' Her shoes were flat enclosed sandals like bedsocks.

  'What have they done to you?'

  'They've primed me.'

  'Primed you?'

  'Aha.'

  Jorge knew of the word, just as Clara knew what an endoscopy or a cardiac scan were. Your partner's language is the first thing you pick up, sometimes the only thing. But there was a slight difference. He always grimaced when he heard her mention things like hyperdramatic, prime or quiescence. He knew it was a bit unfair of him, but unfortunately it was unavoidable. Clara's profession was too much for him. His ex-wife Beatriz also had a job that did not exactly enthuse him (watching bacteria copulate, for God's sake), while that of his sister Arabia (interior design), not to mention his brother Pedro's (an art critic) seemed to him merely eccentric, but biology, design and art criticism are professions one can understand. Being a work of art, though, was beyond his comprehension.

  'I'm sorry, but I seem to remember you've been primed before, or at least that's what you've told me, and it wasn't...'

  'No, it was never like this Jorge, never like this. This is the work of specialists. It was done by F&W, the top people. If I told you all they have done ...'

  'Even your eyes ...'

  ‘Yes, the irises, the conjunctivae, and the retinas. And all the rest of my body, including the holes and uumm . . . cavities’ she ended, sticking out her tongue.

  A quivering stamen poking out from the flower of her lips. Jorge had seen orchids with reproductive organs the same colour as this thing. It was not just her tongue - it was her entire palate. Will it ever come off? was the macho worry that flashed through his mind. She loved producing astonishment like this.

  'Don't worry, the priming is never permanent. I'm the same as ever underneath. But you still haven't seen the best.'

  What else could there be? He blinked, and moved closer.

  'It's not my skin, it's what I've got hanging here’ Clara helped him.

  It was then he saw it. A label dangling between her breasts, hung round her neck by a black thread. Another one similar on her right wrist, and a third round her right ankle. A strong, orange-tinged yellow, the yellow of a Chinese emperor. She had once told him that this colour, this and no other, belonged to labels from ...

  'Aha.' Clara smiled gleefully when she saw he had got it at last. 'I've been contracted by the Van Tysch Foundation!'

  A suitcase - Jorge reasoned - also carries labels of the airline company it is being sent with, but after all, it is a suitcase, so that surprises no one
. But what would anyone think if they could see this girl in her pearl-white top and skirt, her hair and skin like a plastic doll's, stripped of her eyelashes and brows, almost completely devoid of facial features, but attractive despite all that, yes, for some morbid and inexplicable reason even more attractive because of the three yellow labels hanging from her. The latest generation of Japanese toys? A female entertainer for long-haul flights? She could be anything, thought Jorge. A bell-flower with no dragonfly wings; a faery creature freshly painted by one of those Pre-Raphaelites Pedro hated so much, dressed in her summer best.

  'Don't worry’ she reassured him, 'No one is going to see me. I was brought to Barajas in an armour-plated van, and we came in at the freight terminal rather than the one for passengers. They always treat their primed paintings as fragile freight items when they have to travel.' Her eyes gleamed yellow. 'This room is exclusively for artistic material transported by KLM. I have to wait here until they tell me it's time to get on the plane to Holland.'

  There was not much furniture in the room: a yellow bench (where she had been resting before Jorge arrived) and a shelf like a narrow bar all along one wall. They preferred to lean against the shelf.

  'So who's going to paint you ... ? Jorge muttered, as if he were dreaming, too frightened to pronounce the magic word. 'Will it be Van...?'

  Clara, busy fixing her top, stretched out a yellow finger and placed it on his lips, in the centre of his grey moustache. Jorge smelt of chemicals.

  'Don't say it. If you do, it'll be sure to bring me bad luck. Anyway, I'm still not sure. Remember, there are many artists in the Foundation. It could be Rayback, Stein, Mavalaki...'

  'What about the "Rembrandt" collection ...'

  'Yes, yes that's it! It's his collection and there's still time for me to be one of the paintings. But please, don't talk about it! I'm so happy with what I've got that I don't want to think of anything else...'

  They stared at each other. Clara was radiant under the neon lights. Jorge felt dull in comparison. There was nothing he shared with that tiny alien figure, that half-finished piece of porcelain (God, it set his eyes on edge just looking at her, all that yellow was like scraping a fingernail on a blackboard; how he would have loved to be able to add the missing layer of flesh pink). He could understand how excited she was, but he could not go along with her. Who could blame him? He was a forty-five-year-old radiologist, with hair as white and fluffy as the cottonwool used for snow in Christmas cribs. This was, in fact, one of only a pair of bright spots in his life. His moustache, for example, was grey. And five years of a failed marriage to biologist Beatriz Marco had been enough to convince him that his life was no brighter than his moustache. Clara was the other exception. He had met her the previous spring, on a day when it seemed the sun was determined to paint everything yellow. His brother Pedro had invited him to a cocktail party of a collector, a Belgian woman who had settled in Madrid by the name of Edith, who was anxious to show everyone her most recent acquisition: The White Queen, the latest work by Victoria Lledo. At that time, Jorge was preoccupied with his divorce proceedings. He had no shortage of work (his radiology practice was satisfyingly busy) but he was more lonely than the losing chess king. He had no idea that meeting The White Queen would change his life completely. An infallible sixth sense ('You inherited it from your father,' his mother used to say) led him to accept the fateful invitation his brother had made simply to take his mind off things.

  Edith Whatever-weke, resplendent in tunics and perfumes, showed them round her hovel in La Moraleja, pointing out her complete collection of HD works: painted men and women in poses in the living room, the library, on the balcony. What on earth are they doing standing there like that? Jorge wondered, fascinated by the weary beauty of their faces. What are they thinking of when we are looking at them?

  Then she led them out to the garden, where the work by Vicky Lledo was on show.

  It's an outdoor performance,' Edith explained.

  'What does that mean?' Jorge wanted to know.

  'They are HD works in which the figures move and carry out actions planned by the artist,' Pedro said, adopting a professional tone. 'They are called outdoor because that's where they take place, and performance because they follow a plan and are repeated in a continuous cycle with or without the presence of the public. If they were shown like any other dramatic work and the public had to arrive at a certain time to see them, then they would be reunions.'

  'So is this a kind of art-shock?'

  Edith and Pedro exchanged knowing smiles.

  'Art-shocks, dear brother, are interactive reunions, that is, dramatic works put on at a specific time and in which the owner of the work or his friends can take part if they so wish. Most of them involve sex or violence, and are completely illegal. No, don't pull that face, Jorge, because you're not going to be that lucky today: The White Queen isn't an art-shock, it's a non-interactive performance. In other words, a work that will perform an action according to a schedule, but the public will not take part in any direct way. As innocent as can be, isn't that right, Edith?' The Belgian woman agreed with a giggle.

  Jorge got ready to be bored. He had no idea of what he was about to see.

  It was a big garden, protected from prying eyes by a high wall. The work was to take place on the lawn. It consisted of a roofless box with three white walls and a floor of black-and-white tiles. At ground level on the back wall, there was a rectangular opening through which the green grass could be seen. Inside the cubicle were a table, chairs, sandwiches, water and a clothes hanger, all of them painted white. A girl with a glorious mane of blonde hair, wearing a starched white wedding dress, was lying sprawled on the floor tiles. Her face and arms glowed with an ethereal brightness. All of a sudden, as Jorge was taking all this in, the work turned onto all fours, crawled over to the slit in the back wall, put her head into it, withdrew it, put it back again. All this produced a very striking image, like a surrealist film.

  'See?' Edith explained. 'She wants to get out through the hole, but she can't, because her bride's dress won't let her ...'

  'It's a simple metaphor,' Pedro added. 'She's tired of living a bourgeois marriage.'

  More fruitless attempts to push the flounces of the dress through the hole. Back again. Another push. Her waist wriggling, backside in the air, hips stuck in the frame. Looking at her, Jorge felt a stab of sympathy - he could identify with how Beatriz felt.

  'Now the girl understands,' Edith went on, 'that to get out she has to take off her dress ... yes, there she goes, she's taking it off and hanging it on the hanger . .. she's overcome her prejudices, she's stripped naked and can escape.'

  She paused to speak to all her guests: 'Let's go to the other side, shall we, to see what happens next?'

  Jorge's brother had to prod him with his elbow.

  'He's never seen a real live performance,' he laughed.

  'It's good, isn't it?' Edith said, winking at him.

  Jorge felt he was sleepwalking as they moved to the far end of the garden, behind the cubicle. Here there was a square patch of wet sand which was also part of the work. The girl was stretched out on it. She looked happy. The sun sparkled on her painted body like a pointillist painting by Seurat. An open-mouthed Jorge had never seen such a perfect nude. The breasts were not especially large, but they were in perfect harmony with the body and the gentle staircase of her ribcage. The gentle curve of her stomach was real, not the effort of her holding it in. He thought he could encircle her whole waist in his two hands. Her legs went on and on: it is easy to be mistaken when glancing at a pair of legs, but Jorge explored them in slow motion with a radiologist's trained gaze, and could find no fault as they stretched out endlessly like a highway. Not even feet and hands (always so difficult for a painter or for genetics to get right) sounded a jarring note: long, tapering finely, with tendons that stood out to emphasise they were alive, and nothing more. Her cultural archetypes, perfectly in tune with the ideas of beauty held at the end of
the twentieth century and early in the twenty-first, were unanimous: it was a masterpiece.

  But beyond the shape were the gestures Clara made: the contradictory effects produced by a face that was mischievous and disingenuous at the same time; the highlighted joint movements, and the use of muscles which in bodies like Jorge's lay dormant all their lives until finally awakened (perhaps) in death throes. It was the most harmonious composition Jorge had ever seen. The girl was rolling in the wet sand. She stood up and began a wild dance - her hair converted into a frenzy of whipcords - and then began to make a loincloth out of mulberry leaves, placing it round her sinuous waist. Throughout all this furious activity, her body gave off flashes of paint: the light, shiny colour of squeezed lemons which his brother defined as 'gamboge yellow'. In Jorge's feverish state, the word made it sound like a sacred dance. As they went back into the house for a drink before returning quickly to see what was to come next, he muttered to himself: Gamboge. Gamboge. It became an obsessive beat.