Paint Gold and Blood

by Michael Gilbert

  She said, “I missed the rush-hour traffic going up, but, by God, I caught it coming back. People seem to stop work at half-past four these days. Idle slobs. I thought I should never get off the M4. What are you doing with those timetables?”

  “I’m working on an idea which involves going to Paris. If we can get through to Peter and tell him what we suspect he may be able to modify his own plans—”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” said Stewart crossly. “But if he hasn’t got this vital piece of information he’ll be working blind.”

  “All right. Sorry I spoke.”

  “If we can’t get through to him, some more drastic action is called for—”

  The idea seemed to please him, thought Lisa. Drastic action. Direct intervention. The master mind at work. Clear up the position here. Rehouse the Chaytors. Dash across to Paris.

  “I have already made certain preparations. I got Agazadeh Zaman’s new address from Mrs. Chaytor, a closely guarded secret, I imagine. Then I borrowed from her husband the letter from the travel agents which he annexed.” He produced the flimsy and handed it to Lisa. “I’ve been studying the departure times from Heathrow and Gatwick. Although Gatwick’s further from here, the new Terminal seems very efficient. A shuttle to Paris every hour, on the hour, until midnight. I’m going for the eight o’clock plane. Gets to Paris at ten o’clock French time. That means I can stop here until half-past six in case Peter gets through. If you can hang on for a bit after I go – until nine o’clock if you can bear the thought—”

  “Not a moment later,” said Lisa with a shudder. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  At that moment the telephone shrilled. It made them both jump. Stewart grabbed the receiver. The voice which had spoken before said, “Your Bordeaux number is now ringing. Owing to pressure on this line your call will be limited to five minutes. It is ringing for you now.”

  Someone at the other end – it was a girl’s voice – said in French, “Who is that, if you please.”

  “Je veux parler à Pierre,” said Stewart.

  The voice switched immediately to English. “You wish for Peter? He is in his room. I will fetch him.”

  “Please be quick. We haven’t much time.”

  There was no answer. The girl must already have scurried off. Stewart glanced anxiously at his watch. Two minutes gone. Three. There was a curious drumming noise in the background, interspersed with crackling. Then Peter’s voice, only just audible. He said, “Yes. Who is it?”

  “Stewart here. Calls are being rationed. No time to waste. We think that Meyer is aiming to double-cross the Iranians. He’s sold up his house, all the furniture and pictures and has bought a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires and Santiago, leaving Paris at noon tomorrow. Taking the loot with him, no doubt.”

  “I missed that last bit. Taking what with him?”

  “The loot. His own money and the ransom money. It will all be in the same bank. He can pick up one draft for the lot. Did you get that?”

  The crackling on the line was so bad that Stewart found himself shouting. The official voice said, “Your time is up. We will reconnect you as soon as circumstances permit.”

  A click and the purring of the telephone.

  “Well,” said Stewart. “That’s that. I hope he understood. But we can’t take any chances. I’m for Paris.”

  “What are you going to do when you get there?”

  “I’ve got a valuable piece of information to sell. Zaman must have some method of contacting those thugs. If he will guarantee Peter’s safety, he shall have the information. It’s as simple as that.”

  It didn’t seem to Lisa to be simple at all. It was wildly impracticable and unlikely to succeed, but she realised that it was useless to say so. She said, “All right I’ll stop here in case they reconnect us, so that I can tell Peter what you’re up to. But I’m not staying long.”

  When the sound of Stewart’s car had died away she sat staring at the darkening window. She was uncertain whether she wanted to laugh at Stewart’s heroics or cry for Peter’s peril. In the end she compromised by going out into the kitchen and putting on the kettle.

  9

  The great forest of the Landes had come down in the world. A mixture of hornbeam, beech, oak and Scots pine, it had been cultivated for centuries with care and forethought; the trunks of the trees for the builder and the carpenter, the lops and tops to keep the home fires burning in a country which had little coal.

  The development of synthetic materials and alternative forms of heating had seen the gradual abandonment of this careful husbandry. The neglected trees had crowded together, shooting ever higher in competition for the sun, whilst round their feet the invaders had crept in; yew, alder and holly, brambles and bindweed, the heralds of carelessness and neglect.

  It was into such a forest that Peter followed Laure as dusk deepened towards night. After crossing the main road they had left their bicycles with one of Laure’s forester friends and gone forward on foot.

  At first they were on something which might once have been a road and which developed, after about a mile, into a main street, with cottages on either side; but they were derelict and roofless and clearly long deserted.

  “Roquillac,” said Laure. “My grandmother was born here.”

  From this point they left the road and plunged forward among the trees. Laure, who seemed to be able to pick some sort of path through the undergrowth, hardly slackened her pace. When Peter had twice tripped over snaring roots and fallen onto his knees he uttered a protest. “I don’t know how you can see where you’re going. How do you avoid these bloody roots and brambles?”

  “I keep my eyes open.”

  “Then they’re a damned sight better eyes than mine. Can’t we slow it down a bit?”

  “I thought I was going slowly.”

  “Then go slower still then.”

  He found he was arguing with her exactly as though she had been a boy of his own age. This seemed normal at the time. It was only when he thought about it afterwards that it appeared odd.

  From that point onwards, either because they did go at a more reasonable pace, or because his eyes were becoming used to the dark, he stumbled but never actually fell. After twenty minutes of cautious progress they came out of the trees into another clearing which had once contained a village. This was even more derelict than Roquillac. What had once been cottages were now lumps of brick overgrown with ivy and thorn. A single chimney-stack pointed defiantly at the sky.

  “Laugnan,” said Laure. “The camp is named from it. You will be able to see it in a moment.”

  What Peter saw next was an impenetrable screen of bushes and undergrowth woven into a rusty barbed-wire fence.

  “How do we get through that?” he said.

  “We don’t,” said Laure. “There is a gate where the road enters.”

  “Why on earth did they bother to put up a barricade like that if the camp is deserted?”

  “When the military left – it was just after the war, a time of great shortages, you understand – the local people went in and started to pull down the huts. The wood was valuable. That had to be stopped.”

  “Best way of disposing of the camp, I’d have thought.”

  “They might have wanted to use it again, might they not?”

  “Simple French obstructionism, if you ask me.”

  “I suppose the English would have said, ‘Come and help yourselves’.”

  “Probably.”

  During these exchanges they were cautiously circling the camp site. On the eastern side the remains of an approach road, deeply rutted, ran up to a double gate, topped with a roll of barbed-wire. Peter, stooping to examine it, found that, although the chain which passed through the uprights of the gate was as rusty as everything else, the padlock which held the ends of the chain together was new.

  He said, “What they did, no doubt, was to saw off the old padlock and put in a new one of their own.”

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sp; Laure was not listening. She was some yards away, on her hands and knees.

  “It’s somewhere here,” she said. “I found it last summer when I was exploring.”

  “Found what?”

  “A way in, of course. Unless you would care to try climbing the gate.”

  Peter looked at the roll of rusty barbed-wire on top and said, “Thank you, no.”

  “Come along then.” She had crawled along another ten yards and was now pulling out small shoots and weeds. Peter, crouching beside her, saw what looked like the entrance to a fox’s earth.

  “Fox or badger,” said Laure, “looking for scraps, no doubt. The bottom strand of wire is loose – I propped it up with a stick. It’s still there.”

  The next moment all he could see was her bottom as she wriggled under the wire. He followed and found progress messy, but surprisingly easy. Emerging, they pushed on, heading back towards the track which ran down the centre of the camp.

  Something loomed in front of them. A Peugeot van, of the sort used by travellers for their samples, was parked among the bushes beside the track. By the light of the moon, which had now cleared the tree tops, he could see the Bordeaux number plate and could read the legend, painted on the side, ‘Gentilhomme et Cie, Lesparre’.

  “Garments for women,” said Laure. She was whispering now. “They must have stolen it when they arrived.”

  Peter was trying to work out why the men should have risked stealing a van when they could easily have brought their own car, but Laure was already padding ahead down the track.

  It was evident that the pillagers had, sensibly, started dismantling the huts at the point nearest to the gate. Of the six huts fronting the central track the first two on each side had been completely demolished, the next three partly. The only complete huts left standing were the end ones in each line. They approached with care. If the two men were there, it was likely that they were housed in one or other of them.

  There was no light visible in either.

  “Let’s try the one on the right first,” whispered Peter. He noticed that Laure, who had been in the lead throughout, had now fallen back into the shadows. He tried the hut door. It was unlocked, but sagging on its hinges. When he pushed it open it screamed a protest.

  He peered in. At the far end of the hut a line of light showed through the door of an inner room. As he stepped forward something whipped round his throat.

  He was unable to utter a sound and could only put up a feeble resistance against the throttling arm. There was a red mist behind his eyes and a drumming of blood in his ears. As consciousness slipped away he realised that the inner door had been opened, letting in a flood of light and that a man was speaking. It was a voice he had heard before, in the church of St. Brieuc des Caves. Now it said, in tones of amusement, “Don’t kill the boy, Mahmoud. Remember, he is our meal ticket.”

  The pressure on his throat relaxed. He drew in grateful lungfuls of air. A hand on his arm steered him forward, through the door and into the inner room. It was bare of furniture except for two rusty and decrepit iron beds which looked as though they had been left behind when the camp was abandoned. On them, sacks full of straw served as mattresses. There was a pressure lamp and some enamel plates and mugs, on a packing case which served as a table. The three outside walls had been draped with what looked like sections cut from an army tent. This was, presumably, to keep out the draughts which would otherwise have whistled through the rotten planking of the walls.

  It looked primitive, but habitable.

  “You are admiring our little nest,” said Rasim. “As you see, we are soldiers. We have the art of making ourselves comfortable.”

  “But we do not plan to stay here long,” said Goraji. “No longer than we have to. And you are going to help us. Yes?”

  “Yes,” croaked Peter.

  “The boy has a rhume,” said Rasim. “Doubtless the night air is bad for his constitution.”

  “He is somewhat pale,” agreed Goraji. “We must not keep him any longer than is necessary from the comforts of the château. To work, then.”

  He unfolded on top of the packing case a plan of the sort which was handed out to tourists by the Syndicat d’Initiative. It showed all the named vineyards of the Médoc, with the major and minor access roads boldly plotted.

  “It is the road D103 to which you will pay attention. As you will see, it runs on the west side of the Lambrécie chateau and alongside its vineyards. It crosses the D102 at that point.”

  “I know it,” said Peter. His voice was coming back.

  “He knows it, good. As you proceed south from that point, you reach the village of Courbian and a bridge across the canal. Right? Three hundred metres further on, as you will observe, the road skirts the south-west corner of the château vineyard. That is the place appointed for our meeting. We shall be there at ten o’clock. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Quite clear.”

  “We shall there exchange Monsieur Wellborn’s beautiful picture for a banker’s draft—”

  “Equally beautiful,” said Rasim.

  “—for five million francs. And let me warn you of one thing. Should you be so stupid as to arrange for an intervention by, perhaps, the police, it would still be quite easy—” he produced a cigarette lighter from his pocket and clicked it on “—to destroy the picture before any such interruption could become effective.”

  “I don’t think you need worry about the police,” said Peter.

  “The boy is a thinker,” said Rasim. “He has been educated. He uses his brains.”

  “One thing more. In addition to the draft it has been agreed that you will hand over an envelope, addressed to the Banque de La Guyane in Paris, eighty-three Rue Etienne-Marcel. The envelope will be marked for express delivery and appropriately stamped. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is important. Because the letter must be in the post before half-past ten. There must be no slip-up on that point.”

  “I can assure you,” said Peter, “that Monsieur Wellborn will follow your instructions implicitly, as he has done throughout.”

  “Monsieur Wellborn is a man of sense,” agreed Goraji. There was an unconcealed sneer in his voice. “I do not imagine that he would wish to be present at the exchange.”

  “I’m quite sure that he wouldn’t.”

  “In that case, you will bring the gosse with you.”

  “The gosse?”

  “The Gobard child. Her presence there will ensure that no one starts a shooting match, yes?”

  “I will see if I can persuade her to come.”

  “You will not see if you can. You will ensure that she does come. If we do not see her beside the road when we arrive, we drive straight through and the deal is off. Understood?”

  “Very well,” said Peter. “There is just one thing more. I should like to examine the picture.”

  “You think we may have substituted a copy?”

  “The boy has brains,” said Rasim. “I have already commented on it. He is a pretty boy, too. No doubt a great favourite with the girls.”

  Goraji ignored this. He went over to the corner of the hut and drew out, from under a pile of blankets, something wrapped in brown paper. He undid the wrapping and brought across to Peter the picture which he had last seen in the uncle’s drawing-room. It was no substitute. It was the Titian masterpiece, one of the greatest pictures that master had painted. The virgin mother had a look on her face in which adoration was mingled with an unmistakable touch of surprise.

  Rasim said, “You would think she is displeased with us for handling her so roughly.”

  Peter had turned the painting over and was examining the back of the wooden stretcher. Sure enough, by each of the new copper nails was the filled-in hole where the old iron nails had been driven through and removed.

  “You see something there?” said Rasim.

  “Only what I have been told to look for.”

  “What a boon is education.”r />
  “All right,” said Goraji sharply, “then if you are satisfied, we will get on with it.” He led the way out of the hut. The moon was playing hide-and-seek among the black clouds and there was a tingling feeling in the air.

  “Rain coming,” said Rasim. “A storm perhaps.”

  “So waste no time,” said Goraji. He unlocked the padlock and forced the gate open far enough for Peter to squeeze through. Before he could do so Goraji stopped him. “I meant to enquire,” he said. “How did you get in?”

  Peter had seen this coming. He said, “There are plenty of places where the wire can be climbed.”

  “An athlete,” said Rasim, “as well as a thinker.” He stroked Peter’s arm, as though he were feeling his biceps. Peter jerked himself free, squeezed through the gap in the gates and started to walk quickly down the path towards the main road. He was conscious that the two men were standing there watching him. He heard one of them say something. The other man laughed. As soon as he was out of sight of the camp, Laure materialised beside him. She gestured him to follow her. Abandoning the track, she made a beeline through the trees, without hesitating and without speaking, until they were back in the ghost village of Laugnan. Here she opened her mouth for the first time.

  She said, “These men are savages, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Peter. The muscles of his throat still felt sore. “Do I understand that you were listening?”

  “Of course. I was behind that piece of canvas which they have hung up.”

  “You mean you were actually inside the hut?”

  “Certainly. There are holes in the wall a horse could get through. Some of the things which were said I did not understand. Why do they want this envelope?”

  “Once they have the money – the bank draft – their instructions are to post it straight to a bank in Paris. It must be there by tomorrow morning.”

  “And you are worried about that. Why?”

  Peter thought before speaking. Then, having come to the conclusion that his ally was both reliable and intelligent, he told her the whole story. They were through Roquillac and heading for the main road before he had finished. Laure was silent for some minutes. Then she said, “If this person Meyer goes to South America and takes all the money with him, what will these men do?”