The Unknown Masterpiece

by John Brooke

  A single visitor, or two different parties, not one piece remained. It was galling and chilling to equal degree. She had to assume someone was aware of her every move and had responded to her discovery by eliminating it. Her first impulse was to run to Zup. Obviously.

  But no. She would not go back to Zup till she went in as a cop with a warrant, knowing exactly what and who she wanted. She knew in her gut it was not Max the bare-bummed barman. Unless he was a total fool… But again, no. Max had not been the least bit interested in those paintings, much less Martin Bettelman’s ‘work.’ Had he the slightest idea? A security guard wasn’t going to wear his uniform when he went out dancing. A man like Martin Bettelman was not going to let the dull truth get in the way of making himself as attractive as he felt he needed to be. And Max was guileless… No, he had only wanted his music back. He wanted his Addie not to be angry. He wanted to leave le beau Martin behind in the forgotten past.

  But Max may well have gabbed. So, who amongst that happy crowd?

  Aliette hoped her charade as Lise had not put the hapless Max at risk.

  After her meal, in a phone booth on a corner, she said, ‘Claude, I won’t be home tonight.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Working.’

  He hung up. He did not slam it. He just hung up. It was left for her to read it: Patience. Or a man losing hope? She purchased beer from a grocer and headed back up the long stairway. She had no children to put to bed. She had no husband. She had Claude, fading. And she kept having the nagging sense that Gregory Huet had told her something she already knew. But what? She drank beer and moved inside the cold apartment, looking at everything, looking out the window at the night. It was dark up here above the street lights. It was far from anything except her job.

  Eventually, there it was, in front of her nose, stuck on the refrigerator door.

  Good. Merci. One solid thing.

  The inspector slept in Martin Bettelman’s bed that night, in her underwear and coat.

  She might be losing her mind — she probably was — but it would be on her own terms.

  And, strangely, she slept deeply and well.

  14

  Friday at FedPol

  Swiss side

  ‘Can we back up for a moment here?’ FedPol Agent Franck Woerli was persisting in a futile battle. Turning to Agent Rudi Bucholtz, now nominal head of the Cultural Crimes unit. ‘Let’s get this straight. Was Josephina working on anything related to Justin Asebischer?’

  ‘If she was, I was not informed of it.’

  Woerli turned back to Basel Lands Inspector Hans Grinnell: ‘To be clear: These boot prints in Aebischer’s garden. How many sets?’

  ‘One,’ repeated Grinnell, his tone aiming for somewhere between patience and compassion.

  Because Woerli’s persistence was fluctuating between embarrassing and just plain sad.

  They were in the board room at the Freiestrasse office. It was a bright morning. The swill-coloured Rhine actually shone on its way through Basel. A woman had brought coffee and a basket of pastries — sweet kuchen, creamy brioche. Inspector Nouvelle sat with three Swiss police officers: Franck Woerli, looking old and entirely defeated. Hans Grinnell, methodically destroying the credibility of the slain Agent Perella. Rudi Bucholtz, dutifully present but much more interested in the French cop across the table, his soft Saint Bernard eyes brazenly feasting. She ignored him, but she adjusted her hair.

  In deference to their guest, they conversed in French, which, as public officials, they were all able to do. Grinnell was doing most of the talking. He was polite but relentless. He was also lying, or omitting something key — which amounts to the same sin. The French inspector saw it clearly, but had no idea what he was hiding. So she listened.

  Agent Perella had arrived at Oberwil in mid-afternoon. She was not interested in the murder of Justin Aebischer, not per se. ‘She admitted it was not her area of expertise,’ Grinnell noted. He characterized the visit as more of a consultation, ‘to see if she could see something that might help with our investigation. Fair enough. I took her to Biel. She spent a long time going through his desk. And the painting, this Reubens the victim had been restoring, she studied it and declared it authentic. She couldn’t understand why no one had come to claim it — was quite baffled there’d been no contact with the client at all. I told her no one had come forward. I said we’d been trying from many possible angles but had no luck.’ Grinnell laughed softly. ‘Then she gave me righteous hell for leaving such a valuable piece of art in such a vulnerable place.’

  Franck Woerli was irritated. ‘Why is that funny, Inspector?’

  Grinnell stopped smiling. He hesitated. Yes, keeping something back. ‘Your colleague was a bit, well, out of her depth. I mean in regard to the game she was trying to play. I’m sorry she’s dead. I do mean to find the one who killed her. But she was involved in this.’

  Mustering some anger from inside his gloomy torpor, Woerli smacked the table. ‘No!’

  ‘Yes,’ Grinnell replied, calm, totally sure. Josephina Perella had been found on the edge of a farmer’s field on a back road about ten kilometres from Marcus Streit’s chalet. It appeared Streit killed her and left her for the crows. Or Streit and someone else — a third pair of tire tracks at his house. Streit’s house was clean, but Perella had been there. A fine trail of hair from salon to the kitchen. And the footprints. ‘She’d changed to the same hiking boots she wore Friday at Aebischer’s. She was wearing them when they found her.’ Perella’s requisitioned FedPol car had disappeared, along with Streit. And maybe someone else.

  Franck Woerli could not accept it. ‘This is just wrong! Obviously she was onto something. She confronted them. And they killed her. She would never…’ He closed his eyes and breathed. The notion that Josephina Perella had murdered Justin Aebischer was devastating.

  Grinnell shrugged. ‘The pattern on the sole matches the prints on the lawn at Aebischer’s.’

  Woerli flared. ‘Everyone in Switzerland has a pair of those boots and you know it!’

  ‘Matched perfectly,’ Grinnell murmured. ‘We’ve even matched traces of grass from Aebischer’s lawn.’ For Hans Grinnell, the boots sealed it.

  Woerli pleaded, ‘My colleague Josephina Perella was as dedicated and honest as — ’ He stopped. Stopped dead. Stuck for a metaphor to fit on Josephina.

  ‘Agent Woerli, please…’ Grinnell was perplexed by his reaction. He was not trying to be mean. ‘I’m sorry, but sometimes we just don’t know our colleagues.’

  Rudi Bucholtz blinked and seemed to emerge from his erotic trance. ‘She’s a big walker. Sometimes Josephina left early if it was slow. To go walking? Last Friday was nice, as I recall.’

  Hans Grinnell made a note. The look in his eye said, Thanks.

  Bucholtz looked across the table, not sure if he’d said something right or wrong.

  Aliette doubted he was thirty. She liked his long, thick, jet-black hair, lightly gelled to keep it back. His face was deeply serious. Black eyebrows over wide dark eyes created this effect. His lips looked like he’d been lapping up a bowl of soup. Slightly moist. She liked that. But the French cop was dismayed that this adorable Rudi would be so unsavvy where it came to choosing sides. She felt a loyalty to her friend Franki. She countered Rudi’s observation. ‘But Justin Aebsicher was killed with Martin Bettelman’s gun, yes?’

  Grinnell turned, as if just now aware of her presence. ‘And so was Bettelman.’ He had a flat smile, clear blue eyes. In good shape, recent haircut, wholesome. She guessed slightly younger than herself. She could see a wife and kids trailing behind as he led a Sunday hike. ‘But that doesn’t mean Bettelman fired the shot that killed my victim.’

  ‘Well, no,’ she conceded. Of course it didn’t.

  ‘And that was Agent Perella’s pretext for coming to see me,’ Grinnell noted, adding, ‘Yes, our enquiries have confirmed that Aebischer was homosexual and active in the Basel gay community.’

  Woerli blurted,
‘But you have to consider — !’

  ‘That she could have killed this Bettelman too? Sure.’ Grinnell reached for another sweet bun. ‘But Bettelman is not my problem.’ Sitting back in his chair, he nibbled. Sipped coffee.

  The riposte left Franck Woerli limp, as if punched.

  Aliette protested, ‘But surely he is.’ Someone Grinnell should be concerned with. ‘…With what I found at this club and at Bettelman’s apartment, this has to be considered.’

  Maybe encouraged, Woerli asked, ‘And how could Josephina have had Bettelman’s gun?’

  To which she added, ‘Or, par contre, where did Bettelman get Josephina’s boots?’

  Grinnell only shook his clean-cut head, moving on to the next bit of damning circumstantial. ‘And the business cards in her purse confirm beyond any doubt that —’

  Woerli cut him off. ‘Was Martin Bettelman working Friday afternoon?’

  ‘No,’ Bucholtz reported instantly — before checking one of many sheets laid out in front of him. ‘Scheduled for Saturday and Sunday. At the Kunst. He was posted at the Kunst.’

  Woeful but still fighting, Woerli challenged Grinnell. ‘How can you ignore this?’

  Hans Grinnell rolled his eyes, vexed, beginning to lose patience with this Federal policeman.

  But Aliette had to ask, ‘What business cards?’

  Grinnell pulled an envelope from his case, withdrew a business card and put it on the table. ‘We found a box of these in Perella’s purse.’ It read Reubens & Associates. And gave a phone number. Nothing more. The two FedPols hovered over it, Bucholtz bemused, Woerli mystified. ‘More to the point, I have Josephina Perella on surveillance video in the act of removing that box from the desk of my victim.’

  ‘Oh, Lord!’ Again Franck Woerli seemed personally insulted by this fact. ‘When?’

  The Basel Lands inspector offered a snide laugh. ‘When she thought I wasn’t looking.’

  A listless Woerli picked up the card. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Exactly what it appears to be.’

  ‘But there’s no name…no…’

  ‘Justin Aebischer served a special clientele. He didn’t need his name.’

  ‘But the number.’

  ‘An answering service in Geneva. They have no idea who he is. They take messages.’

  Aliette was finally seeing some method behind Grinnell’s apparent disinterest. She asked, ‘If Inspector Perella hadn’t called with the Bettelman link, would you have called her?’

  He smiled. ‘I think we would have seen her at some point. We have the painting, after all.’ Another sniffy laugh. ‘Though I confess I don’t know Reubens from ribbons.’

  Franck Woerli was spiteful, ‘ You were lucky to have her best advice.’

  Grinnell agreed. ‘Before that, all I saw was a picture of a beagle licking its ass.’

  Too mean. More silence. Even Agent Rudi Bucholtz was now looking at his senior colleague as if the man was the greenest junior in the place. Franck Woerli wasn’t getting it.

  ‘She’s guilty,’ Grinnell declared. ‘It’s just a question of how deeply, and why.’

  Frank Woerli was bewildered. ‘Guilty of what?’

  ‘Murder. One or two, we’ll see…We’ll appreciate anything you can help us find.’

  ‘And what else?’ Aliette demanded, feeling her own frustration level rising.

  A polite but completely cryptic smile. ‘Surely murder’s enough at this point, Inspector.’

  It brought another impasse, all energy devolving to the man who’d called the meeting. A tear traced Franck Woerli’s sagging middle-aged cheek. Swaying as if he might be sick, he got up and left the room. Poor Franki. But it was as good a moment as any — Aliette hated to add to his pain. She removed a business card from her own valise and added it to the one on the table. They were the same. ‘It was stuck to the door of the refrigerator at Bettelman’s secret love nest.’

  Finally Hans Grinnell was interested. He jotted another note.

  With Franck Woerli absent, Rudi Bucholtz was their official host. The French cop wondered, ‘Would Agent Perella have legitimate reason to visit Marcus Streit?’

  Rudi seemed pleased with the new responsibility. ‘He consults here often.’

  ‘What was she working on?’

  ‘Usual sort of stuff. An Ernst that surfaced in a gallery in Edinburgh, a family here insists it’s theirs. Paperwork having to do with Nazis hiding art in bank vaults — we normally don’t get any of that, but she’d been getting a bit lately. A phony signature mark, maybe, on a supposedly just-discovered-in-an-attic Millet… I know Marcus was helping her find expert opinions on the Millet last spring.’

  ‘And would Streit know Aebischer?’

  ‘Surely. Old enough to be his father, but it is a small community.’

  Echoing Gregory Huet, almost to the word.

  She asked Grinnell, ‘Any idea where they were headed?’

  ‘The road they found her on is a straight line back to Aebischer’s. An easy half-hour.’

  ‘Perhaps she was thinking of showing him the painting at Aebischer’s.’

  ‘Perhaps. But she would not have got past my security.’

  ‘But if they could, why would they be? Going to see it, I mean.’

  Grinnell sat forward in his chair. He seemed to welcome an intervention by an actual investigator. ‘Why indeed?’

  ‘And why,’ she had to wonder, ‘if this is something bigger than a gay community murder, would Marcus Streit and maybe someone else leave those cards on her person?’

  ‘Two possibilities come to mind, Inspector. Either Streit was unaware she had them and neglected to look before tossing her in the ditch. Or, more likely, this someone else knew we’d find what we found and has probably already killed Herr Streit as well.’

  ‘And there are no traces of this someone else?’

  ‘Not as yet.’

  And it obviously wasn’t Martin Bettelman. But someone had removed all the works from the dormer on Mulheimerstrasse. ‘It means there may be more for us at this club,’ she ventured.

  Inspector Hans Grinnell nodded, maybe even smiled encouragement, but offered nothing by way of strategy. ‘Us country boys know nothing of these things, madame.’ It was his friendly way of saying he did not care about fifty or so paintings that had suddenly gone missing from a secret love nest in Klein Basel, nor the murder on French soil of its proprietor. He apparently felt he didn’t need to care.

  …Then a belated attempt at police diplomacy: ‘Whatever you can dig up at this, Zup? — where on earth would they get a name like that? In any event, send it along, we’ll have a look.’

  Aliette bit her tongue, nodded her agreement. This Hans Grinnell was no ally.

  Twenty awkward minutes later Franck Woerli had not returned to the table.

  Agent Rudi Bucholtz finally suggested, ‘Perhaps we’d better look at Josephina’s files.’

  ***

  The same woman brought a lunch of sandwiches and advised that Agent Woerli had left for the day. Not feeling well. They ate in the airless office, poring through a murdered art cop’s files. Whatever else, Josephina Perella had been carefully professional in keeping records of her moves and contacts. There were over a hundred documents — memos, correspondence, professional opinions — in both electronic and paper form bearing the name Marcus Streit, several as recent as that spring. About the Millet. There was no trace of the name Justin Aebischer in any of their dealings.

  It was barely mid-afternoon when Hans Grinnell snapped his briefcase closed and offered his hand. ‘Inspector, it was a pleasure.’

  Aliette was taken by surprise. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Home. Got two matches after school.’ As he moved to the door, Grinnell proudly explained his two sons’ busy involvement in the junior soccer program at Oberwil. ‘…Apart from the fact I’m helping out with Willy’s group, if I don’t show up it will mean my wife will have to drive in two different directions at the same tim
e. She will not be happy and I will suffer.’

  The French cop blurted, ‘Wait!’

  ‘Yes?’ Was that an order?

  She blushed. ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’

  ‘I hope not.’ Trying for a joke, missing completely. Realizing as much, Grinnell shrugged and stated that because the forensics search at Josephina Perella’s flat had yielded nothing useful, there was nothing more for him here in Basel.

  ‘But the galleries…I need…I mean, surely two of us…’

  Hans Grinnell gestured toward Rudi Bucholtz: there’s your man for the galleries, noting, ‘I’ve done the galleries, Inspector.’ And got nothing.

  ‘But I should have a look around her apartment. You could — ’

  ‘No, that will not be necessary.’ Grinnell was kindly as he moved through the door. ‘Thank you for your help…’ adding, ‘Please. It’s not personal. I’m sure you understand.’

  She followed. ‘Why won’t you tell me what you have?’

  ‘Because you do not need to know.’ He stopped in the foyer. Sighed once. ‘What I mean, with respect, Inspector, I don’t see how you could help.’

  ‘Would you please stop insulting me. Respect?…It does not play well, Herr Inspector.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Another phlegmatic sigh. ‘Here’s the story. Please listen. There is nothing in the Bettelman killing that comes anywhere near Josephina Perella and the role she had to be playing. Beyond her,’ a shrug, ‘it’s all quite Swiss. Has nothing to do with you. It really doesn’t.’ He smiled: not trying to be a nasty bugger here, just averse to wasting precious time. ‘Perhaps my investigation will open a door for yours. But first things first, yes? We’ll be in touch.’

  Then the lift arrived and he was gone.

  Aliette Nouvelle found herself alone with Rudi Bucholtz — watching her, eyes wet and dark, gently quizzical. Waiting. Waiting to be led. ‘Alors, monsieur? No Franki. No Hans…’

  ‘No Josephina. You could call Basel City. Ask them to escort you through her place.’

  ‘Right.’ At least Rudi had been following the flow and (maybe) had a sense of humour. ‘Is there anyone special in her life I should talk to?’