The Unknown Masterpiece

by John Brooke

  The woman stepped back, shocked, and Aliette knew the shield of propriety had been breached. Guilt or not, she had to get back home. The car. The car must be returned.

  She handed the woman a card. ‘If you see that woman again, please call me.’

  ‘But this is in France.’

  ‘We’ll accept the charges.’

  ‘What about the man?’

  ‘The man is under control.’

  Not really. Never really. Safely in the car and away, she punched a number into her cellphone. A woman answered. Rudi was in bed. Not well. But the French police were persistent, and eventually he came. When asked for a description of the woman in the pink coat, FedPol Agent Bucholtz breathed, ‘Stay the fuck away from me,’ and cut the line.

  She probably deserved it. Maybe needed it too.

  …But she needed Rudi. Or would.

  Heading across the bridge and through the checkpoint back into France, the inspector tried to visualize the fifty or so works of art she had flipped through with such (unnecessarily) hurried disbelief four nights ago in the squalid pied-à-terre on Mulheimerstrasse. Perhaps she had looked at some Early Modern naïf representations, some ultra-metaphysical Romantic images as well. But she couldn’t really remember, and even if she could, she didn’t really know. In any event, she doubted a stolid Flemish shoemaker taking a break for tea fit either category.

  Perhaps that was why he’d been so rudely treated. And Martin Bettelman killed.

  Part 3

  Search for R

  22

  Rather Blakean

  Inspector Nouvelle left the requisitioned car in front of the garage door in the courtyard at rue des Bons Enfants, deserted on a Sunday afternoon, and walked home. Leaving the old quarter, she crossed at the rond-point and let herself into her almost empty apartment. She showered for the second time that day. Feeling sullied? Her raison d’être was disappearance, personal erasure with a minimum of pain, a maximum of love escaped. But you need far more than a careless weekend in another world to self-inflict an existential coup de grâce. The problem was having to discuss everything twice — once at breakfast, and again at the office. Then she sat alone, idly towelling her hair. Along with much else, her dryer was in the north end.

  There was a knock and she froze. Would Claude come looking for her?

  ‘Mademoiselle Nouvelle?’ Madame Camus used the formalities of a previous generation. The inspector relaxed and greeted the aging, sometimes snarky, but always honest widow who filled the double role of landlord and concierge. ‘I heard movement. Just wanted to make sure.’

  Which is exactly what concierges are meant to do. ‘No, it’s only me.’

  It would be nice to cast Madame Camus as the kindly older confidante, but life is not so pat. Aliette informed Madame that she might be hearing more movement in the coming days. She said nothing of Piaf, nor Claude, and Madame did not ask. The rent was paid, the place was clean, the woman would never dream of enquiring after her tenant’s private affairs and likely wouldn’t want to know — one always sensed Madame Camus had made her own mistakes. She wished Mademoiselle a pleasant Sunday and went back downstairs… Hair dry, Aliette went out to Madame Chong’s to pick up some beer, bread, a hunk of Cantal, saucisson. Madame Chong said it had been a while. No cat food today? Not today, thanks. She cried as she walked back.

  At her Monday morning briefing, Claude said, ‘I thought you wanted children.’

  It was far from an opportune time and place for such a statement, but he could not say it in the privacy of their shared home. Because she had not returned to their shared home.

  ‘So did I,’ she replied. Then added, ‘I do…but I don’t.’ Then added, ‘Sitting there all day?’

  These opaque silences between disconnected thoughts. This stop/start rhythm, no direction.

  ‘It changes your point of view,’ Claude said.

  She agreed it probably did. He was sad but, no tyrant, did not pursue it. She managed to let him understand that she would remain at the south end of the park for the next little while, then headed back to her office, where she wrote her report, submitted her expenses.

  Gas, mostly. She had slept for free since Thursday.

  She vaguely wondered about Martin Bettelman’s credit card. She would wait and see.

  She sent an email to Inspector Grinnell at the Basel Lands police detachment at Oberwil summarizing her conversation with Josephina Perella’s neighbour, the return of the woman in the pink coat, her retreat when Rudi had passed by. She sensed an email would be more efficient than a phone call so soon after the fact. She added ‘Call me!’ to her sign-off. She sent separate emails to FedPol Agents Woerli and Bucholtz outlining the ‘real progress’ they had made in isolating Martin Bettelman on the Kunstmuseum surveillance tapes in the proximity of a pale-skinned museum patron who was definitely a person of interest, and promised to continue to pursue the matter on ‘this side’ (France). In her communication to Rudi she did not specifically mention Saturday night or Hans Grinnell — only that she would appreciate anything salient regarding the pink-coated woman. She added ‘Call me!’ to her sign-off… She emailed Herr Taub at VigiTec and thanked him, mentioning that he was very fortunate to have Della Kypreosus on his team. She promised to keep him informed about their progress in restoring the shoemaker and the search for his true home. Formulating, then sending these various communications left her exhausted. For all her angst and effort, the only communication coming back was a memo, handed to her by Monique. From the desk of J-P Blismes: He would be delighted to make some time for her. The psychologist specialized in young offenders but consulted to all departments housed at rue des Bons Enfants. Monique let it be known the request had gone out via Claude.

  Aliette was touched. Claude Néon was not what you’d call a touchy-feely sort of man. But she doubted J-P Blismes could remedy their situation. Notre crise de couple. A problem with our relationship. So normal. So totally unique.

  She knew passion would not be passion if it didn’t die. Still, one believes in the foundations laid within passion’s throes. Or one tries. And if there is permanence, it’s a permanence of recurring signs. She’d been convinced that two cops’ paths had converged to a perfect match. What did Claude communicate now? They no longer worked together — not actually, they way they had. There has to be an actual for there to be a sign, a shared symbol from one day to the next. A belief? A belief in us? How vague and ambiguous it all seemed after a weekend of sex and other games in Basel. She could hear herself confessing to J-P Blismes. She could see him nodding, the way he did. And smiling with his huge teeth. J-P never stopped smiling.

  No, won’t work… Aliette put the memo in her pocket and got on with her job.

  She mulled a plan. She ran it by Chief Magistrate Gérard Richand.

  He agreed it could be the cleanest (i.e., least-encumbered) means of moving forward.

  Bon. The inspector summoned Inspector Milhau. Bernadette was a handsome, large-boned woman from the south. And tough. She had no problem offering an encouraging shove to police ‘clients’ who needed one. She would cheerfully wave her sidearm under any hard man’s nose. After a rocky start (a tactical screw-up in the matter of the Hashish Twins) Inspectors Nouvelle and Milhau had become allies, if not friends. Natural for the only two women on a small PJ brigade. She was Aliette’s instinctive choice as a partner for her intended operation. The young cop was attentive and unquestioning as she instructed, ‘We need to put someone inside Zup — this club in Klein Basel. Someone who fits.’ Problem was, there was no one on the PJ roster who ‘fit.’ At least not that they knew about. Nor, as far as they knew, anyone on the Municipal force downstairs. A very straight police force guarding a very conservative Alsatian city.

  Bernadette suggested they might find a match within the PJ ranks at Strasbourg.

  The inspector and the judge had considered the notion of seconding a gay inspector from the regional capital. Then backed away. Too much politics. Too much
risk in that. ‘We’re thinking it would be better if this someone actually knew Martin Bettelman, even if only marginally.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘Our judge is waiting to conduct interviews.’

  ‘Got it.’ Inspector Milhau went into the streets in search of suitable interviewees.

  Aliette turned her attention elsewhere. Two busy days planning a bust in a warehouse in Saint-Louis, then, because she needed to be busy, she led the team. The operation was not fun — one killed, one badly wounded, but it was successful. She watched from a distance as Inspector Richard Roig led the guys through their brutal steps. The operation took place three blocks from the Bettelman residence but Aliette did not stop by to see how Lise was getting along. It could have been guilt concerning the credit card. Or just no interest in that woman? She drove straight back and got working on the next thing. A quarrel in the Vietnamese community over a family resto that was turning violent. Being busy helped her resist a simmering urge to sit in front of J-P Blismes and tell him about running away to Switzerland and having sex with the Swiss Police.

  Evenings, she sulked in her apartment, trying to see it clearly. How? Why?

  Then Monique walked in with a printout of an electronically transmitted image of a partially obscured white face at the entrance of the Basel Kunstmuseum. And a full-figure image of a slouching figure in sloppy jeans and oversized hoodie. Thank you, Dieter and Della!

  She had the police artist down on the second floor do a rendering combining these elements to make a pale boyish man, naked on a rock, a three-quarter view from behind.

  ‘Rather Blakean,’ opined Chief Magistrate Gérard Richand.

  Though none of the three images were at all specific, when placed together on a poster-sized sheet that included an official plea for help from the public, it felt like another small step. A step that helped her justify her weekend in Basel — at least for another day.

  Inspector Milhau was also busy. Gérard Richand interviewed two dozen members of the local gay community. They ran the social gamut, from an eminent chemical engineering prof at the École Supérieure, three respected members of the legal community, a popular gynecologist, an array of service industry types — a plumber, a postman, waiters, an executive chef, a bus driver — to a handful of lowlifes known to the police. Each was rounded up on the strength of an anonymous tip and delivered to the Palais de Justice on an interpellation order. Not all were willing, for obvious reasons. But the Police Judiciaire have powers of interrogation and the public is obliged to comply in aid or furtherance of an enquiry. Once they understood their lifestyles and livelihoods were not at issue per se, most cooperated without a fuss.

  They all expressed varying opinions and emotions as to the violent end of Martin Bettelman — the news was now public. (Had there been a moment of silence at Zup?) But none admitted to knowing him. It seemed Bettelman had sowed his wild oats in Basel.

  On the other hand, when presented with the composite image, several interviewees admitted hearing tell of this pale-skinned, youngish man. A few had seen him — dancing, chatting at a table, and yes, swimming at the ‘beach.’ None had had the pleasure of being introduced. He was indeed beautiful, interesting stories had circulated.

  He was known only as R — from a garish, gothic-styled tattoo on his shoulder blade. The inspector had not discerned this from thirty metres that one spell-binding moment in the middle of the night. She had the police artist add an R to their man on the rock.

  But without a Bettelman friend or former lover, Gérard Richand did not yet feel they had the proper asset. Maybe he had no friends. Maybe lovers were only conquests. That had been the implied message from the guys at Zup. Aliette told Bernadette Milhau, ‘There has to someone around here. Martin Bettelman was a swordsman. Bring me another like-minded swordsman.’

  Perhaps their swords had crossed.

  ***

  She requisitioned a car and took their poster down to the communities closest to the scene.

  First stop, Kembs. ‘We believe he might be local. If you happened to see him at the baker’s?’

  Gregory Huet shrugged and put the image aside. Despite the industrial-grade air-filter mask he insisted she put on, his work area exuded the cool, searing reek of solvents combined with the familiar thick and not unpleasant odour of leaded paint. ‘I’ve barely started,’ cautioned Huet, ever so gently lifting the gauze-like wrapping in which the shoemaker was now swathed. ‘Three more weeks, a month before he’s halfway presentable.’ Yes, he knew it was the case, not the painting, that had priority. He assured her that he was proceeding as quickly as professional integrity would allow. ‘But there is one thing I can tell you, if it still matters. This work is not a fake.’

  ‘It still matters.’

  Huet had cleaned away the layer of silty film. The workshop scene was brighter, more details of a life fixing shoes and boots were now apparent. The dull grey green of the smock was now revealed to be a well-worn blue denim, the bib of the apron a rich chocolate leather.

  But new clarity did nothing to reveal the mystery of the shoemaker’s rapt gaze. The stolid eyes would be forever looking down through the lenses of his rimless specs at the flow of tea from the spout of a copper teapot into the cradle of a silvery glazed bowl, and people like herself would be left forever wondering what was on his mind.

  He seemed smaller now, without his ornate gilt frame.

  ‘He’s the same size as the Mona Lisa,’ Huet noted.

  ‘Smaller but brighter.’

  ‘Likely too much so.’ He moved his hand along the shadowy space above the shoemaker’s lamp, the central source of light. ‘I cleaned all the varnish away, all on account of the gash…’ He lifted the shoemaker and turned him. The rip was mended with a swatch of cloth affixed to the back of the canvas. Huet carefully set him back. ‘It’ll take several layers of paint or the gash will always be a scar. We’ll have to put some kind of varnish on to get back that muted quality. I can make a varnish that will be much like the one this painter used.’

  ‘Does that give us a better sense of where he’s from? Our judge insists he’s French.’

  ‘I still say Dutch.’

  ‘Not Flemish?’ From behind her protective mask Aliette smiled at Gregory Huet’s educated guessing. Like everyone else, he had no idea. She imagined the shoemaker was pleased by that.

  It did not seem Huet would offer tea and kugelhopf this time. She was backing away, leaving him to it, when he mentioned, ‘I heard Justin had some trouble. With his work.’

  ‘Really?’

  The eyes above the rim of the mask met hers. ‘A friend who works at the museum. There’s a cop over there — not in Basel, down where Justin lived. I heard he’s been bringing a parade of people like me — what they call experts in the field — through some private gallery.’

  Why play games? She trusted him. She conceded with a shrug. ‘Surprised?’

  ‘Not really. Not anymore.’

  ‘How many Justin Aebischers are there?’

  ‘I don’t know. A lot. More than is good.’

  Aliette risked telling him, ‘It’s not sure. They still have to prove it.’

  ‘Of course. And that could take forever. Justin was very good.’

  ***

  She drove on to Village-Neuf. Her knock on the door in circle Georges-Simenon was met with resistance. ‘Please, not now, he’s actually doing his work.’ A small miracle. But it was very important, about the case, it would only take a minute, she promised… With a huffy sigh, Madame Hunspach relented and allowed her son to be yanked away from his homework.

  He studied the poster. On the one hand, a beautiful man naked on a rock. On the other, a shambling male figure in droopy garb, face mostly hidden from the world. Hubert Hunspach was uncertain. ‘Could be…I mean…’ The difference was disturbing: the one an inspiration, the other a… a nothing. Hubert did not want to think the two were one and the same. But he agreed they could be.

  ‘You ke
ep this. And you keep your eyes open. He might come walking into the local McDo. You’re my eyes. OK?’

  He was not high. There was no music in his ears framing the romance of true crime. In his still too-stuffy room, Hubert’s smile was snide. ‘You mean your cousin?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  He was dryly accusing. ‘But you won’t lift a finger if someone kills me. I’ve seen cousins a thousand times. They all end with their faces bashed, lying in piles of trash.’

  ‘This is not TV, Hubert. No one’s going to kill you. No one’s going to know but me.’ But it gave her pause. ‘Is there a reason someone might want to kill you?’

  ‘Hope not.’

  He accompanied her out to the car. She strolled for an extra minute with her young informant, trying to help him understand the reality of looking for a single person amongst sixty-odd million French. Add in seven million Swiss… ‘See what I’m up against? Television only takes an hour. Where could he be?’

  The boy seemed suitably deflated. ‘Not in the clubs?’

  ‘Apparently not. But you’ve seen him more than once. Right?…Well, I’m betting he’s a local boy. Like you.’

  Like me? You could see the river from the foot of the circle. Hubert thought about it, trying to imagine another local boy’s life. ‘I bet he’s in jail.’

  ‘I would have told you, Hubert.’

  ‘Not your jail. I mean his mother would have him all tied up at home.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Big fateful adolescent shrug. ‘I mean, if he really is like me.’

  Hubert Hunspach stunned her with his elemental sense.