‘Looks like it. We’ve got people checking out his apartment building now and trying to find out if he’s been sighted. And we’re digging up what info we can.’
‘Time isn’t on your side.’
‘You’re telling me.’
‘I’m going to try to track down Myles. If you bastards can’t find her, it’s time to bring in the SAS.’
‘I didn’t hear that,’ said Pooley.
‘Sorry. Of course you didn’t, since I never said it. What I said was that Jack’s close friend Myles needs to know she’s disappeared. Is there a number for him among whatever material you took out of their flat?’
‘Don’t think so. It’s very much a pied-à-terre. No papers to speak of. Mary Lou might have some idea.’
***
Miss Stamp was trying to keep calm. ‘I’ve searched high and low but I can’t find the mistress’ address book, Mr. Amiss. She must have had it with her. And I can’t get into her computer because I don’t know her password. I’ve tried variations on Troutbeck and St. Martha’s, but no luck. But then I wouldn’t know what numbers to add. I tried the year of her birth, but that didn’t work either.’
‘If I had to guess I’d think of British military triumphs, Miss Stamp. Try Waterloo1815 or Trafalgar1805.
She giggled rather forlornly. ‘That would be like her, Mr. Amiss. I’ll try them and telephone you back.’
It took five minutes before a disconsolate Miss Stamp reported in the negative. However Amiss’ next suggestion, ‘Agincourt1415,’ did the trick. It took only a couple of minutes for her to find Myles Cavendish’s email address and phone number. Amiss sent an email as well as text and voice messages into the blue and went out to pace around the park, leaving Plutarch draped over his computer, shedding hair all over his keyboard and desk.
***
The baroness had never watched Big Brother and no one but Anastasia and Charlie Briggs admitted having seen it, but they had told stories that gave everyone a flavour of what was to be expected from a game. By now they were all ready to hear they might be required to dress up in skin-tight lurex cat-suits and perform ungraceful dances, or dress as pastry chefs and throw pies at each other. However the news that this game was to be conducted in the nude caused a minor sensation.
‘I won’t do it,’ shouted Henry Fortune. ‘I will not sacrifice my dignity.’
‘Me neither,’ said Hortense.
‘You play game,’ said the voice of Big Brother. ‘Or evicted. If evicted, die.’
‘He can’t really mean that,’ wailed Pringle. ‘Can he? Is that what happened to Jake?’
Eight heads turned towards the baroness.
‘You said he’d been taken ill,’ said Pringle.
She thought of trying to keep the fiction going, but realised Sarkovsky’s intervention had made it pointless. ‘He was evicted. And no, I don’t know if that means he’s been killed, but I doubt it. However, just in case, I guess it makes sense to do what Big Brother wants.’
‘That way we lose our dignity and then we die anyway,’ said Fortune.
‘Perhaps,’ said the baroness. ‘But perhaps not. Big Brother may well be joking. Best to keep the options open, I’d say.’
‘Oh, Bubbles, you must, you must, you must. It’s not as if we’re on television. No one will see us.’
There was what sounded like a low snigger.
‘Oh, God,’ cried Fortune. ‘Maybe we are.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Henry,’ said the baroness, ‘if we were on television it would be good news. It would make us easier to find. Now if I were you, I’d focus on survival and do what we’ve been asked to do.
‘In the hatch, I’m told, are canvasses and pots of paint. We get a canvas each and we are to paint it using our naked body as the only means of transferring paint to surface. Shall we fetch the materials now and lay them out? Then we can disrobe.’
The baroness regretted that the knot of dread that would not unravel had stifled her sense of humour, for, at other times, she would have been mightily amused by what went on that afternoon. It was Hortense who had said maybe the thing was to attempt to emulate Jackson Pollock and his drip paintings and with Fortune and Truss produced dollops of pretentious guff on the subject, with a bit of a disagreement about whether he was a genius because of the fractal dimensions of his work or because of his role as a progressive purifier of form.
The baroness, who had been known to throw her newspaper at the wall when she read that yet another Pollock jumble had gone for nine figures, had pointed out rather coldly that they had to go a stage further than the maestro since Big Brother insisted that they couldn’t pour paint on the canvas but actually had to apply it with bits of their body. What’s more, he had forbidden them to use their digits to apply paint to canvas. Hands were out, and so were toes, though they could be used to put paint on their bodies. And what was even more challenging, no two people were to use the same bit of their body and no one could help anyone else. This information induced a kind of terrified paralysis among several of the gathering.
‘We’ll have to negotiate who uses what,’ said the baroness. ‘First come, first served, I think.’
‘If I wanted to make a mint out of this in my past life,’ observed Anastasia, ‘I’d have stuck paint up my fanny and let it drip out.’
‘I don’t want to act as the health and safety officer, Anastasia, but I’d confine paint to the outside rather than the inside if I were you. Any other suggestions?’
‘Isn’t there some Russian Sheila who paints with her breasts? I once thought about trying that.’
‘Now’s your chance,’ said the baroness, ‘unless Marilyn or Hortense want to counter bid?’
They shook their heads. ‘Elbow,’ said Marilyn. ‘Knee,’ said Herblock. ‘Shoulder blades,’ said Hortense. ‘Head,’ said Truss.
‘Didn’t that Riverdance bloke put paint on the soles of his shoes and tap dance on a canvas?’ asked Briggs.
‘You won’t be wearing shoes, Charlie, but there’s no reason not to try that if no one objects.’
No one did. ‘Bum,’ said the baroness. ‘As in, I’ll paint with it. Now that leaves just Henry and Jason. I’m afraid there aren’t many options left for you.’
‘I was too shocked to think,’ said Fortune. ‘What’s left?’
‘Your stomach?’
‘How can I paint with my stomach, you madwoman?’
‘Just slap a few colours on and move the canvass around it.’
‘Oh, all right. I suppose I could do that.’
‘What about me?’ screamed Pringle. ‘Am I supposed to use my willie?’
There was a silence until the baroness said, ‘Unless you can think of anything else.’
‘I can’t,’ sobbed Pringle.
Anastasia patted him on the back. ‘You won’t be the first to do it, Jason. There’s a drongo back home calls himself “Pricasso.” He makes a living out of it and it doesn’t seem to do him any harm.’
The baroness stood up and clapped her hands. ‘Excellent. That’s all settled. Now, shall we make a start? It might be less daunting if we all do it together.’
Apart from Anastasia and Briggs, they were as unappetising a collection as might have been found in any naturist encampment for seniors. At one extreme were the scrawny, like Pringle and Marilyn, and at the other the portly, like Fortune and the baroness. By unspoken agreement, they tried to avoid looking at each other.
Anastasia went to work with a will. After trial and error, her favoured approach was to dip each breast in paint of a different colour and press the canvas against first one, then the other, and then rub it with both. Since he found it difficult to keep within the constraints of the canvas, Briggs seems more like a dancer on hot-coals than another Michael Flatley, but he became quite interest
ed in the process and kept going back for more paint to smear on his feet.
Marilyn’s sharp elbow proved to be a precision instrument. She chose black paint exclusively and aimed for geometric patterns. Herblock’s knee was less successful, not least because at the beginning he tried to do it standing on one leg and fell over twice. Hortense obviously hadn’t thought her choice through properly. It caused her acute discomfort actually to get enough paint from hand to shoulder blade, and it proved even more difficult to find a way of transferring it to the canvas.
Being shaven, Truss’ choice of head had been sensible, though sometimes he miscalculated the density of the paint and ended up with much of it running down his face before he could bend over to apply it to the canvas. The baroness approached her task stoically, smearing different colours onto her buttocks and then rubbing the canvas up down and across them. Watching her technique gave Fortune courage and inspiration, and he completed his picture quickly, which gave him the time and psychic space to urge Pringle on. ‘No, Jay. Not the tip. Just smear it along the sides and rub it in sideways. That’s it. You’ve got it. You’ve got it. That’s the way.’
***
‘You can’t talk to Ellis about this, Mary Lou.’
‘I know I can’t. He’d have to turn us in if he knew we were looking to getting a private army on to this. Yet I don’t think legal methods are likely to work, do you?’
‘Can’t say I’m very hopeful, especially at the pace at which they’re going. They’ve only just got started on looking for a property that Sarkovsky might own through a company. And apparently there was a long discussion about whether the wheels should be set in motion to ask the security services to track Sarkovsky’s phone. Anyway, there’s no harm in talking to Myles about it. He’ll make his own decisions.’
‘Do you by any chance have an alternative number for Myles? I’ve heard nothing back.’
‘Nope. I barely know him.’
‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? They’ve been an item—well, a sort of an item—for years, but we almost never see him.’
‘I think they both like it that way. It’s a relationship that allows them to do whatever the hell they like and I fancy he’s as secretive and compartmentalised as she is.’
‘I just hope he’s as resourceful.’
‘Me too,’ said Mary Lou. ‘This sucks. This really really sucks.’
***
On his way home, Martin Conroy read yet another of those property articles about what the mega-rich went in for. He had seen several about the new fashion for digging deep under big houses to create an enormous basement for one’s swimming pool, gym, and spa. Apparently now real opulence had become the name of the game, with Turkish baths, Italianate spas, movie theatres, and golf-simulation centres. He wondered if the house in north London that had been bought by the latest Sarkovsky company he had tracked down had been a likely candidate for such improvements. Certainly, enormous sums had been spent until the money suddenly dried up.
Conroy didn’t yet know what overall was the state of Sarkovsky’s finances, but things looked terrible. The bloke must be getting really desperate. He decided to see what builders he’d been using and if they were legit.
***
‘Max Thorogood’s been very helpful,’ said Pooley to Milton, who was slumped, exhausted, at his desk. ‘Turned out he was Jake’s only heir, so what with the solicitor, the accountant, the bank, and his newspaper, I’ve already got an idea of what was going on with him financially. His salary was £80,000, but he had extra income over the past few years in the region of a quarter-of-a-million for consultancy services to Jason Pringle.’
‘And consultancy means?’
‘Shady authentication for Pringle, I suppose.’
‘Well, he’s certainly paid a heavy price. Sarkovsky, if it’s him, is clearly not a forgiving man. And all the information I’m getting about him suggests that even as oligarchs go, he’s a ruthless bastard.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s ten o’clock, Ellis. We’ve been here for more than fourteen hours. God knows what horrors tomorrow will bring. Let’s go home and get some sleep.’
***
Bizarrely, the shared ludicrous task had for the first time induced some sense of community spirit. Being naked and covered with paint was a great leveller. The baroness briefly revelled in the absence of hate. It was short-lived, for Sarkovsky had decreed that there must be another argument before bedtime. And before she was required to choose the worst.
When Hortense and Pringle, the stragglers, had finished, the baroness clapped her hands and said, ‘Big Brother wants us to decide who has created art.’
‘I have,’ said Anastasia, displaying her smears. ‘If I think it’s art, it’s art. Isn’t that what we’ve been told to believe?’
‘Is it true, Henry?’
‘If she thinks it is, it is.’
‘That’s the kind of fatuous nonsense that has ruined our galleries and art schools,’ said the baroness. ‘If everything’s art, nothing’s art.’
Somehow, the mainly middle-aged or elderly paint-spattered people couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to argue. Duty called the baroness. ‘Is this art?’ she asked, presenting her multi-coloured bottom to the audience.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ said Hortense. ‘Of course it isn’t. You’re not an artist.’
‘If it was Anastasia’s bottom—leaving the aesthetic out of it—would it be art?’
‘It would have to be selected by a gallery,’ said Pringle. ‘There has to be a filter operated by people who know.’
‘People like you?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Tell me, Jason, if the Mona Lisa was lying outside your gallery in the gutter, would it be art?’
‘Of course. It has been validated and exhibited.’
‘If that had never happened, it wouldn’t be art?’
‘This is puerile,’ said Fortune.
‘This is totalitarian,’ said the baroness. ‘You people have set yourselves up as arbiters of taste, and you made arbitrary decisions that suit you professionally. That is why Charlie—in his innocence—spent five million quid on something that when your world comes to its senses, will be a joke. For that amount of money he could have bought a Georgian country house, roomfuls of beautiful furniture, good silver, fine sculpture, and paintings his children would have been proud of.’
‘Did we really sleep in art last night, Jason?’ asked Briggs.
‘Of course not, it was counterfeit Tracey, not original.’’
‘Do we know that?’ asked Briggs. ‘Maybe Big Brother bought the original.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Hortense. ‘It’s not for sale.’
‘But suppose it had been, and he’d bought it, and created four identical copies. Would the original have been art and all the others not?’ enquired the baroness.
‘Of course,’ said Hortense.
‘Yes,’ said Fortune.
‘Yes,’ said Truss.
‘Everyone agree?’
‘Not me,’ said Anastasia.
‘Or me,’ said Briggs. ‘Now I think about it, it’s all a ginormous con trick.’
‘Like the Olafur Eliasson nonsense for the Olympics London Festival,’ said the baroness.
Pringle produced another signature scream.
‘You are unremittingly ignorant, aren’t you?’ said Fortune. ‘The concept is thrilling.’
‘Rubbish. The fellow’s a fraud.’
Seven shocked faces looked at her, but Anastasia seemed amused. ‘A fraud,’cried the baroness. ‘A hundred carat fraud. He’s been given a million quid to encourage people around the world to breathe. What bollocks!’
‘Oh, dear, oh dear,’ said Fortune. ‘Clearly, you’ve missed the point of Take a Deep Breath.’ He shook his head patronisingly
. ‘Such an astonishing, uplifting end to the Olympics. He will encourage global connectivity.’
‘Global connectivity my arse. He will encourage global derision for British culture. Only we could be mad enough to hire a Danish charlatan to produce an invisible piece of art and call it a tribute to British culture.’ She slammed her glass down on Trixie. ‘It isn’t even bloody original. Y’all being experts presumably remember our friend Piero Manzoni’s Artist’s Breath—those balloons filled with his own breath that he used to flog before he opted for the more lucrative shit.
‘My God,’ she said, warming to her theme, ‘don’t you realise this is a perfect example of emperor’s new clothes? A piece of art that doesn’t actually exist? An artistic equivalent of that wally John Cage’s piece of silent music.’
Hortense Wilde’s face darkened. ‘If you wish to describe one of the musical geniuses of the twentieth century as a wally, I suppose I can’t stop you. You merely show your ignorance. You are, I suppose, in your crass way, referring to his magnificent 4’33.’
‘His what?’ asked Anastasia.
‘The master’s favourite work,’ said Hortense reverentially. ‘The high-point of his exploration of indeterminacy. A musical counterpoint to Rauschenberg’s White Paintings.’
‘Huh?’
‘Rauschenberg was a modernist who exhibited blank canvasses that inspired Cage,’ said the baroness. ‘Cage’s contribution to pretending nothing was something consisted of four minutes and thirty-three seconds when musicians sat there not playing.
‘The silence was performed at various times by anything from a solitary pianist to a full symphony orchestra.’
‘But that’s crazy,’ said Anastasia.
‘Sounds funny to me,’ said Charlie Briggs.
‘You don’t understand,’ broke in Pringle. ‘The sounds the audience make become the music. It varies from performance to performance. Genius. As Rauschenberg’s white paintings could register lighting.’
‘Sounds like this dickhead who’s getting the world to breathe so he doesn’t have to make anything,’ said Anastasia.
‘Anyone who doesn’t appreciate Cage and Eliasson has no imagination,’ said Hortense. ‘In art the progressive is all.’
Killing the Emperors Page 14
