by Estelle Ryan
Colin followed Daniel’s black SUV into a small street lined with snow-covered hedges. Daniel turned into a paved road that led to two houses hidden from the street. He parked behind a police patrol car on the driveway to the smaller of the two houses and got out. Pink joined him on the driveway, shrugging a large backpack onto his shoulders.
Colin parked behind Daniel’s SUV and leaned forward to look at the house. The trimmed hedge surrounding the house was not uncommon in this upmarket area. But the electrified fence was most uncommon. The position of the house so far off the street would make it hard for accidental passers-by to peek into the property.
I zipped up my winter coat, put on my fleece gloves and joined Daniel and Pink on the driveway. The temperature had not increased much from earlier this morning, the air cold against my exposed cheeks. Colin stopped next to me just as one of the two officers standing next to their patrol vehicle by the front gate raised his hand in greeting.
“Dan!” The officer smiled and walked to us, his hand outstretched. The two men exchanged the usual polite pleasantries. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop my impatient demand to enter the house.
Fortunately, Pink pretended to be cold and the officer pressed a remote control button to open the gate. It slid to the side to reveal a landscaped garden covered in snow.
The driveway leading to the house was oddly free of snow, most likely heated. Whatever legal or most probably illegal business Adèle had conducted, it had paid her well enough to allow for luxuries most of France’s population could never afford. The short walk to the front door was much more comfortable not having to walk through snow.
Daniel opened the unlocked front door and waved us in. “They said the crime scene technicians finished yesterday and were planning on releasing it today. We can hold this as a crime scene for as long as we need.”
The central heating in the house was set a bit higher than in my flat. I took off my outerwear and handed it to Colin when he finished hanging his coat and reached for mine. I walked deeper into the house and entered the living area. Like a lot of modern houses, the kitchen, dining and living areas were combined into a well-designed large space.
Adèle had a minimalistic sense of style. The living area looked Scandinavian in design, the wooden floor had a bleached finish, the furniture was in shades of beige and the coffee table was also bleached wood with a frosted glass top. The black grand piano stood out though. I walked to it and wondered how well Adèle had played. And how often.
The lid was open, revealing the beautiful inside. Two music books rested on the stand, the one in front open to a Chopin Étude. I looked at the copper name stamped on the piano. Adèle might have had a minimalistic sense of style, but she’d had expensive taste. This piano was priced at eighty thousand euros.
I looked back at the living area. The only splash of colour came from a large painting against the wall. Colin was already in front of it, inspecting the vibrant work of art.
A nest-like appearance was created by thick amounts of brown and yellow paint drizzled on top of a rectangular board. I wasn’t an art expert, but I felt quite confident that I knew who had painted this.
“This is a Pollock.” Colin leaned closer, his muscles tense. “Shit. This is his Number 5.”
“Authentic?” I asked.
“No.” He straightened. “There has been ongoing speculation that this painting was sold in 2006 for a hundred and forty million dollars, but that deal has never been confirmed.” He looked back at the painting. “This is a brilliant forgery. Since it’s nigh-on impossible to forge Pollock’s dribbles, I reckon this is a 3D print.”
Previously, we’d investigated a case that had introduced me to quality forgeries created by 3D printers. The technology had since developed and I was certain so had the excellence of the forgeries.
“Check all the other paintings in the house, Frey.” Manny walked into the room and frowned at the artwork. “If there is any connection between this victim and Caelan’s friend, there might also be a connection between the reproduced Roubaud in Caelan’s flat and the forged art here.”
I didn’t know how Manny could’ve reached that conclusion, but decided to ignore it. I walked to the kitchen where Adèle had been killed. Every surface in the kitchen had a layer of fingerprint dust on it, making the area look unkempt. But apart from that, it was as minimalistic as the living area. There was no clutter on the counters, no containers holding tea or coffee and no ornaments. Only a coffee machine and a kettle.
To my right was a sliding door that led to a patio now covered in snow. In summer, it would make a beautiful place to enjoy breakfast while overlooking the garden. A round table next to me most likely served as the breakfast nook in the colder months. Usually there would be four chairs around a table like this, but one was missing, the empty space obvious.
“She was found over there.” Daniel pointed to the centre of the kitchen area.
I closed my eyes for a second and took a calming breath when I noticed the rust-coloured stains on the cream tiles. Adèle’s blood. There wasn’t as much blood here as in Jace’s flat. I supposed the killer hadn’t had enough time to cause injuries that bled before Adèle’s heart could no longer take the stress of being tortured.
“Down here!” Vinnie’s muffled voice came from the staircase leading to the top floor and presumably the bedrooms.
I followed Colin and Daniel to the stairs. To the left of the staircase was a door that looked like it would open to a cupboard utilising the space under the stairs. The door opened and Vinnie leaned out. “You gotta see what I found down here, Jen-girl. I hit the jackpot here.”
“This leads to a basement?” Manny asked.
“Yup. I thought it was a cupboard, but look...” Vinnie came out and closed the door. He held up his index finger and pointed to the door when a quiet click sounded behind the door. He opened it to reveal shelves filled with linen and a few pillows. “Now look what happens when I press this button.” He reached inside and pushed a round button hidden underneath a neat stack of towels. The shelves slid sideways into the wall and revealed the stairs going down. “I found this totally by accident. I was searching under the towels when I pressed this and voilà!”
“It’s clear?” Daniel rested his hand on his holstered handgun.
“Yup.” Vinnie looked down the stairs. “Nobody down there. Just lots to learn.”
“She sure as hell didn’t want just any visitor to find their way down there.” Manny waved Vinnie impatiently out of the way. “Move your big arse.”
Vinnie lifted his middle finger at Manny, turned around and walked down the stairs. Manny followed him, grumbling.
Daniel looked at me. “Why don’t you and Colin go check it out? Pink and I will take photos of everything up here, then we’ll join you. If there’s enough space.”
“There’s more than enough space down here, dude!” Vinnie called from below. “It’s the size of a double garage and then some.”
“You guys go.” Daniel smiled. “We’ll be there soon.”
Vinnie’s reassurance about the space made it an easy decision. I went down the brightly lit staircase and entered the windowless basement. A gray industrial carpet covered the floor and two of the walls were lined with built-in cupboards. An L-shaped desk faced the stairs, a laptop and notebook the only things on the surface.
“Hellfire.” Manny was standing in front of one of the cupboards. Three of the four sliding doors were pushed to the side, a large organisational chart surrounded by photos. “Doc, get over here and tell me what I’m looking at.”
There were no shelves in this cupboard. The doors appeared to have been put in place to cover this wall. I walked closer and looked at the chart. Colin didn’t crowd me, but stood close enough to see most of the chart.
This was an impressive and seemingly comprehensive chart. In the centre of a large pinboard was a green cardboard square with the letters ‘FF’. Pink twine was pinned to photos and different-colour
ed squares surrounding the green one. All the squares had a few words written on them, but none of it made sense. It had to be a code of some sort.
“It looks like this was her business model.” Colin was looking at the green square. “That ‘FF’ must stand for Freedom Fragrances. Adèle’s business.”
I looked at the many photos on the board. Some were connected with twine to only one square, others to more than one square. One of the photos linked to the blue square caught my attention. I pointed at it, careful not to touch anything. “This photo is of the self-storage warehouse.”
“So it is.” Colin tilted his head. “The ‘SSS’ on the blue square must stand for Self-Storage Solutions.”
“The place where Jace found the crates.” Vinnie was opening every drawer he could find, rifling through it.
“Frey.” Manny was shaking his index finger at one of the photos. “Look at this. What is that?”
“Artefacts.” Colin pushed in front of Manny and gasped when he inspected the photo. “No way.”
“What?” Manny leaned in and I took a step to the side. I would ask Pink to take photos so I could study all of this in depth in the spacious safety and isolation of my viewing room.
“This photo has—seven, eight, nine—nine artefacts that were stolen from a private collection in Iran.” Colin’s eyes were wide as he turned to Manny. “These are all Persian artefacts.”
“Authentic?” Manny asked.
“I can’t tell just from the photo, but seeing as these pieces were stolen from Iran and taking into consideration where we are, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are.” Colin pointed at the next two photos. “These works are Near Eastern antiquities. The market demand is insanely high for ancient artefacts that have been discovered in the area between the Nile Valley, now Egypt, and Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq.”
“An area that includes Iran,” I said.
“Indeed.” Colin looked at the ceiling for a few seconds. “Iran has a history drenched in amazing cultures and obviously their art spans several millennia. There are almost twenty cultural heritage sites in Iran protected by UNESCO and another forty-nine sites on a tentative list.”
“So what?” Manny shrugged. “Other countries also have amazing history.”
“Yes, but not many countries have been looted by terrorist organisations who then sell these artefacts on the black market to the value of tens of millions of euros to fund their ideologies.”
“Tens of millions?” Vinnie looked up from the small chest of drawers he was searching through. “That’s a shitload of money.”
“Actually, it’s reported that the largest terrorist group has made upwards of eight hundred and fifty million euros for their kitty.” Daniel walked into the room and his eyes widened as he looked around. Pink followed Daniel in and immediately reached for his phone and started taking photos.
“That amount has not been verified.” Colin looked at the photos again. “The players in the black market for these antiquities have learned how to cover their tracks well enough that all we have is a lot of speculation.”
But I could see that Colin believed there was a level of truth in it.
“Well, shit!” Colin put on his driving gloves and moved one of the photos. “The Roubaud.”
“What are you talking about now, Frey?” Manny elbowed Colin out of the way to look at the photo.
Colin lifted the photo away from the pinboard. “This is Roubaud’s The Battle of Elisavetpol.”
“The painting we found under Jace’s bed? Why would she have a photo of it?”
“Good question, Millard.”
“Well, ask it to your Johan Klein.” Manny lowered his chin to glare at Colin. “Soon.”
“I’ve left him another message. Now I have to wait.” Colin took a step back, his eyes not leaving the photo. “What was so important about this painting?”
“And what the hell have we walked into?” Manny looked around, his brow furrowed. “What do you think about all this, Doc?”
Now that there was more space in front of the chart, I moved closer and studied it. Colin was silent next to me as he looked at photos of the artefacts that were to the right of the chart. Above the chart, lines from the squares connected to photos of documents. I squinted as I looked at the documents, but couldn’t make out exactly what kind of documents these were.
Next to two photos of a set of documents was one of a few handwritten notes and a photo of a man walking past a café. A twine linked that photo to two more photos of the same man, one where he was sitting in a restaurant, the other of him talking on his smartphone while waiting at a pedestrian crossing. His face was either turned away or somehow obscured in all the photos. Clearly, he was important in Adèle’s business model. We needed to know who this was. It was going to be a challenge since we wouldn’t be able to use facial recognition software on these photos.
There was an overwhelming wealth of information here and my mind was rushing to process as much as possible. But everything stilled in me when I looked at the photos to the left of the chart. I pointed. “These wine bottles are from the same winery as those Jace took.”
“What on God’s green earth?” Manny stepped closer and I moved away. He looked at the three photos, each a full image of a wine bottle. He turned to Colin. “Since when did Iran become a wine-making country?”
“Iran?” Colin’s eyes widened and stepped closer to look at the photos. “My God, this wine was imported from Iran. And these artefacts were stolen from a private collection in Iran. And look at the photos of the people next to the artefacts. See this man?” He pointed at what looked like a security video screenshot of an overweight, middle-aged man. “He’s Pascal Mayer and well known in black-market art circles for his collection of stolen masterpieces.” He pointed at three other photos. “The same with Fabien Riner, Benjamin Picon and Damian Leveaux. These people have fences, dealers and criminal defence lawyers on speed-dial.”
“Look what I found.” Vinnie smiled when we all turned around. He raised the wine bottle he held in his gloved hand. “Shall we make a toast?”
Colin frowned. “Are there more bottles?”
“Not wine bottles.” He tilted the bottle and looked at the label. “Only this one. It comes from that cupboard.”
As one, we looked at the other cupboard, three of the four sliding doors pushed aside. Unlike the cupboard with the organisational chart, that one had many shelves and drawers. Manny grunted. “We’re going to have to log all of this and go through everything.”
“Better get your pencil sharpened, old man.” Vinnie pointed his thumb at the shelves behind him. “There are millions of perfume bottles.”
“That’s impossible. There is not enough space for—” I frowned and gave Vinnie an irritated look. “You were exaggerating.”
“Only by a bit.” Vinnie showed no sign of contrition. “There are seriously loads of perfume bottles.”
“Not all of them have perfume.” Pink frowned as he opened another box and took out an empty bottle. “Weird.”
I stared from the empty bottle in Pink’s hand to the wine bottle in Vinnie’s and made a decision. The empty perfume bottles were an oddity that had to wait.
I reached into my handbag and took one of the three sets of latex gloves I always had with me. Once both my hands were covered, I took the wine bottle from Vinnie. The screenshots I’d been able to get from Jace’s glasses hadn’t been good enough to give any details of the labels. On that footage the label had appeared to have a solid background, but looking at it now, I was intrigued by the many lines crossing the olive-green background.
It was only a shade or two darker, which gave it a watermark quality. Persia Winery was written in flowing letters above a solid dark green silhouette of a basket of grapes. Colin stood next to me, also staring at the bottle. “I think the wine should be tested.”
“Now we’re talking.” Vinnie smiled. “Let me go get the glasses.”
“Not like that, Vin.
” Colin looked at Daniel. “Did you guys find any wine bottles like this one upstairs?”
Daniel shook his head. “We were talking about the lack of alcohol in the house. We looked through all the cupboards and there’s not one single bottle of any kind of liquor up there. Not even a beer in the fridge.”
The expression on Colin’s face caught my attention. “What are you thinking?”
“A few years ago, there was a case in Italy where a Brazilian man was caught at Fiumicino airport trying to smuggle liquid cocaine in his running shoes.”
“His shoes?” Manny’s frown deepened. “How?”
“He’d injected it into the soles of the shoes to look like shock-absorbing gel.”
“How did they catch him?” Pink asked.
“Stupidity.” Colin huffed. “He packed six pairs of running shoes in his suitcase and nothing else.”
“Idiot.” Vinnie rolled his eyes. “He deserved to be caught.”
Colin lifted his index finger. “Those six pairs of shoes contained a street value of more than two million euros.”
“Wow.” Pink looked suspiciously at the bottle in my hands. “That’s a lot of money.”
Colin was also looking at the bottle. “These bottles come from Iran. It’s right next to Afghanistan, which produces opium that goes into ninety percent of the world’s heroin at the moment. This bottle could contain liquid heroin or cocaine.”
“Bloody hell.”
I tilted the bottle, but the green glass didn’t reveal anything about the colour of the content. “How much heroin could be in this bottle?”
“I would reckon around two hundred grams.” Vinnie smiled when I jerked. “With a street value of around sixty to seventy thousand euros. Per bottle. And if this is quality heroin, it can be diluted and sold for much, much more.”
I handed the bottle to Vinnie and glared at it. “It could kill so many people.”
