Paid and Loving Eyes l-16

by Jonathan Gash

  Looking sideways at Guy, I tried to laugh convincingly for his sake. But it’s still pathetic to visit an ancient church expecting to see the Virgin of the Snows, and instead see a blank frame. The saddest photograph ever published is Time’s, of an Italian pastor with his candle next to a framed photo of that missing masterpiece. She was right. We’d make a formidable partnership, a killing as they say.

  We cemented our relationship that night. I allowed a decent interval, four seconds, before deciding to admit her when she tried the door. This is where I should report that I resisted her advances, stood firm against her seductive wiles, but can’t. Shame and guilt were trumped in a trice. I relished every moment, and she seemed delighted at my willingness. Passion’s nothing going for it except its total ecstasy, paradisical joy unbounded. I have a hundred logics that end up with me forgiven for each sexual transgression; they all depend on it being the woman’s fault. Next morning, Veronique was purring, her wig on the pillow beside her. She was a redhead, I saw with shock. Her eyes were dark brown.

  “Hello, stranger,” were her first words. “Going to give me breakfast?”

  Guy and Veronique, blond and blue-eyed as ever, delivered me—I almost said delivered me up—to Monique’s huge saloon motor at nine-thirty precisely. Veronique seemed chilled, though it was quite mild. She huddled in a swagger jacket, breathing through her teeth the way women do when telling the weather off. Skilled with cosmetics, she’d disguised her neck bruises, thank God. She had kitted me out at an expensive outfitters along Pelikanstrasse. I felt done up like a tuppeny rabbit.

  “You know the drill, Lovejoy,” Veronique told me as the limo drew in. “Say nothing. Agree with Monique whatever she says. Pick out the genuine antiques. A list will be given you at the Repository. Allocate our fakes to storage, and our genuine antiques for forward shipment. That’s all you do. Any questions?”

  “Then what?”

  Veronique smiled. She was worn out, quite on edge. I felt my spirits lifting by the minute now it was starting.

  “Then you report to me.” Guy looked worse than the pair of us put together, and he’d had a good night’s sleep. I wondered what he looked like without his wig, his coloured contacts, his meticulous make-up. He was beyond hearing, all senses stultified. “I’ve planned for us, Lovejoy.”

  “Right. How long’ll I be?”

  “Until Monique says, Lovejoy. We’ll be here. Guy.” His name was like an order. Obediently he tried to pay attention, but it was a sorry show. You see, Lovejoy? Veronique’s eyes asked me.

  The driver was one of the hulks who’d guarded Marimee’s briefing. He said nothing, flattened me against the upholstery by the force of his acceleration. I felt lonely, odd to relate, legitimately free of my watchdogs for the first time.

  “Far to go, have we?” I tried, but got nothing from Suit. His neck was roll upon roll of fat. Underneath would be solid gristle. I’d never tangle with such as he. I sighed, settled back for the ride. Another giver of orders, for immediate compliance.

  It was not all that long. Countryside abounds in Switzerland. Mind you, after Lysette’s tour of Zurich’s grotty grottoes I found that I wasn’t as animose to the boring hills as usual. The Alps can be seen from the city, and I was pleased to get glimpses as we drove. Sherlock Holmes, though, said there’s more sin in pretty countryside than in any sordid town.

  A small village or two out, the motor pulled in and I was transferred to an even huger motor. It contained Monique.

  “Morning,” I said. The Suit shoved me. I almost fell in. No reply. I sat as far away from her as possible. Never disturb a wasps’ nest. A glamorous nest, though. Bonny hair, with a small hat bordering on insolence. You know that sort of encased, sheathed look some women achieve in a smart suit? Well, Monique achieved exactly that. The despond I’d felt when seeing her the first time, at Mentle Marina, returned in waves. Seeing a brilliant woman you know you’ll never have always gets me down.

  “Lovejoy,” she said, speaking slowly as if to an idiot. I was surprised. My name had never sounded nice before. Now I quite liked it. “You have one task this morning.”

  “To agree.”

  “To obey.” A pause for it to sink in. We were driving along a narrow road. I could glimpse a lake, very beautiful. “The Repository. You know it?”

  “Of it, yes.” Taking the silence as invitation to continue, I went diffidently on. “The world’s great auction houses need a place where antiques can be safely stored. It charges buyers, vendors, antique dealers, so much a month.”

  “Yes.”

  More silence, so okay. “It’s security city, really. Vast. You buy an antique anywhere in the world, ship it to the Repository, and simply leave it there. Then sell it, raise loans on it, barter it, all without it moving it an inch. The bills of sale are currency among legits and crooks alike, like dollars.” I began to wax eloquent. “They say that the world’s drug money is laundered via antiques in the Repository while the antiques simply remain there under lock and key. Great scheme. And legal! I’ve seen a possession note change hands for almost half a million pounds, for a George III bureau owned by a SARL—that’s a Société à Responsibilité Limitée…”

  Her eyes held me. I managed silence at last. I’m like this, stupidly unable to stop gabbing, a puppy trying to impress its luscious mistress. Pathetic. Plus I was scared.

  She looked out of the window. “Who is the woman. Lovejoy?”

  “Woman?” She knew Veronique, because Veronique was her employee. Therefore… “She’s a bird — er, a girl I met.” I didn’t say where. Lysette, she meant Lysette. And Gobbie?

  “Where?” She was indifferent. The motor slowed on a steep incline, turned at the top. Lake, trees, distant snow.

  “Actually in Paris. She’s moving to Switzerland, with, er, her grandad. She’s here in Zurich now.” I felt stripped, started a cringe of evasion. “Look, Monique. You don’t know what it’s like. I’m living like a monk. She’s the only chance—”

  “Veronique.” Flat, bored. “You’ve had Veronique.”

  “Yes, well.” I tried hard for moral rectitude. “I don’t want to say things about her when she’s not here, but I think sometimes… I think her bloke Guy’s on drugs. It puts me off. Maybe she shares the habit. You understand?”

  “Brother.”

  “Eh?” That made me draw breath. Then exhale. Then inhale. Then exhale. “Eh?”

  “Her duty was to maintain you.” Was it still mere flat indifference, or was malevolence creeping in?

  “Oh, she did! She did!” I chuckled, only it came out octaves wrong. “Honestly, we’ve had a whale of a time…”

  “Stop it, Lovejoy.” I stopped it, listened soberly. “Today, we are dealers sending in a mass of antiques. They are of course the fakes, reproductions, simulants of the type you approved in Paris. The best of our manufacture. You will mark them for storage. Any that are authentic, genuine antiques, you will mark as requiring shipment. Understand?”

  “Forgeries into store, trues for shipment. A bar?” Her eyebrows rose a fraction. I explained, “Do I cut off the process at a certain number?”

  “Gambling term.” Her mind, classifying away. She must find scruffs like me fascinating specimens. No wonder she was bored by everything. I was narked. I’m no arthropod. Time to tell her.

  “Because”, I found myself giving out nastily, “we don’t want them stealing the wrong lot, do we?”

  “Stealing?”

  “Your loony colonel’s going to pinch the lot, Monique—the forgeries, that is. Plain as the nose—er, as a pikestaff. A kid could see that. Dollop a cran full of fakes. Make sure the Repository catalogues them as genuines. then get a mad mob to storm the building, pinch the fakes, and claim on the insurance.” It’s called a spang in our talk, but telling her so would only set her etymology off again. “The insurers’ll naturally investigate the ones left untouched. Which will of course be the authentic genuine lot I earmark, right?”

  She was smi
ling! Summer radiance covered the motor’s interior. I swear she actually emitted light from her eyes like mediaeval saints did. It was really quite dazzling, for somebody evil.

  “I’d hoped for something really original,” I went on, though now less shakily. “The only original thing is the way you’ve manufactured the fakes. Immigrants, virtual slaves.”

  “I did wonder,” she said. It was all so academic. “You are sympathetic, Lovejoy. You see nothing of what is at stake.”

  “I do not care for what is at stake.” I spoke it from an elocution class I’d never attended. I’d got calmer the more amused she’d become. “Your syndicate are mad. You imagine the issue. It is simply not there.”

  “We are here, Lovejoy.” The car was pulling in. “Your name is Henry Getty. No relation.”

  Getty? “And yours?”

  She nearly smiled. “Mrs. Monique Getty. We are married six years, are American, and own the collection we are now depositing.”

  Three people advanced to meet us, stylish but sober. The Repository serfs, bright with beams of monetary affection.

  “Wait for the chauffeur, Lovejoy.”

  Mistake. I’d started to get out unassisted. “Henry, dwoorlink,” I shot back, stung. “My name’s for my friends.”

  Best I could manage, as the door opened and we went forward into the great unknown.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  « ^ »

  Lorela Chevalier,” the woman said, smart as a pin, steady eyes. Not much change out of her, I thought, giving her my innocent millionaire smile and shaking hands. The other two proved mere serfs, oiling ahead to open doors, snapping into squawk-boxes. “Repository Director.”

  A woman of few words? I wasn’t too sure I liked such novelties, but showed willing.

  “Getty No Relation,” I said, typecast buffoon. “Trade you Henry for Lorela. Deal?”

  “How charming!” she exclaimed, but it was very practised and she kept her eyes on Monique. Women spot where power lies. I was instantly relegated, second-division status.

  “Madame Getty,” I said lamely, out of it.

  “How do you do,” from Monique, no sudden friendships on offer from Monique, thank you.

  “Madame. You received our charges, conditions, prerequisites…?”

  “Certainly.” We moved gently towards the house, me depressed because they’d slipped into French. Lorela broke off to spout a command in sideways German before continuing handling us. A lovely scoop of a face, the sort you’d trust instantly if she wasn’t in antiques. I was among polyglots, handicapped by being an idiot in my own language let alone everybody else’s.

  The house was the carousel one we’d had that garden party in. Except it wasn’t. I bet myself that this one would stay still. A disturbingly similar mansion house, in unsettlingly similar grounds. Copses, statues, lawns, everything within four hundred yards was uncannily similar. Only the sun was angled differently. I inspected the great pile as we strolled chatting along the terrace. Yes, virtually identical. The Commandant had done his groundwork well, down to the shape of the windows, doors, type of brick, even a stone buttress reinforcing the west wing. Typical military: prepare a model, then a precise life-size mock-up of the objective. Then go to war.

  “Lovely house, Lorela,” I interrupted. Monique smiled with woman’s complicity at the director. “Been here long?”

  “Twenty years,” from Lorela. “The building’s history, cited you’ll recollect on the information we dispatched to you, is rather briefer than first-time visitors usually assume from the exterior.”

  “Like many!” I chuckled. “We’ve two or three phoneys too. Right, honey?” I gave Monique a squeeze. She didn’t have me gunned down, but her stare lasered a hole in my skull. “In the Santa Monica Mountains.” I nudged Monique. “Neeky here complains it’s too near J. Paul Getty—you’ve heard of that architectural shambles down those foothills? Everybody’s laughing at it.”

  “They are?” Cool, cool Ms Chevalier. “Isn’t it a breathtaking concept? What did they describe it as, a secular monastery?”

  I laughed, putting a sneer in. “I’m not being critical, ”Rela, when I say that J. Paul G.’s a cardboard cut-out of the real thing—which real thing is me! But d’you see any delight in having to go to Malibu to see the statues, then crawl up a Los Angeles hilltop for one of Cousin P.’s daubs?”

  “Henry,” Monique said sweetly. “Remember what we decided!”

  “Right, Moneekee, right!” Buffoon, grinning, winking. I was repellent. “No relation!”

  “Fully understood,” Lorela said in her slightly American accent. Thank God they’d lapsed into English. (Hang on—why did I register that they’d slipped into French, but then lapsed into English?) “You have brilliantly covered your origins, if I may say.“ To Monique’s raised eyebrows she smoothly added, ”Madame Getty will recall the security cover, detailed in the blue appendix to our advice brochures—”

  “You excavate all possible approaches.” Monique nodded. “I’m relieved to hear that our incognito status held up.”

  “It’s the reason we chose the Repository,” I cut in. “In spite of your charges. They’m punishment, ’Rela, hon!”

  We moved into the grand hall. Balcony, sweeping staircase, hall windows. Identical. Good old Colonel Marimee. His team only needed to stay a week at his country mansion to be able to creep in here at night and move around blindfold. Brilliant. Lorela, her Repository Director’s horns out, instantly launched into a spirited defence of her fees.

  “There are so many expenses!” she battled. “You must be aware of the vast intelligence network the Repository must operate? All staff are security cleared. We have sixteen electronic, seven non-electronic auto systems—”

  “You come strongly recommended, Ms. Chevalier,” Monique said, which got me narked. Here was I getting the whole dump’s security details, and she shuts her up. That’s women all over. They can’t plan. And nothing needs planning like a robbery. Hers or mine.

  “Thank you, Madame,” from Lorela, leading us with the career woman’s defined walk into a drawing room. She hadn’t finished with me. “You could go to cheaper… firms.” She hated having to mention competitors. “Christie’s, Bonhams, or—”

  “Sotheby’s Freeport Geneva, right? Lucky Number 13, Quai du Mont-Blanc?” I gave a sharp bark, digging Monique in the ribs. “She hates the enemy, notice that? Trying to sound they’s all colleagues! I like it! Commitment! Hustle, hustle, make a buck!”

  Lorela gave a glacial nod. Serfs ushered coffee, chocolates, those small sweet things that get your stomach all excited but turn out to be teasing promises. The silver was modern, I noticed, and therefore gunge. Why not go the whole hog, serve plastic from Burger Boss? I scrounged some edibles from habit. The women pretended to taste one. I often wonder if birds think noshing vulgar. “The difference is that the Repository is the Repository, not merely one more imitation.” I whooped in glee at her cool claim to superiority. Lorela Chevalier appraised me levelly. “We have never, never ever, been burgled, Mr Getty. Other firms have. Which is not to say”, she added, critically inspecting a maid’s skill pouring coffee, “that attempts haven’t been made.”

  “Henry adores the ins and outs of commerce,” Monique said distantly, to effect repair.

  “Not me, Mow-Neekee.” I wouldn’t leave the subject. “Hate any kind of work.” I leered grossly at Lorela. “Except one—know what I mean?”

  “Your requirements, Madame,” La Chevalier said, struggling on under my barrage of vulgarity. “Your possessions are to be in two lots, I understand. One group for shipment to a destination to be notified. One, much larger, group for storage until further notice.”

  “Correct.” Monique held a cigarette for villeins to hurl platinum lighters at. “My husband has decided he will select which antiques will go into which group.” She let her withering scorn for me show, peekaboo.

  Lorela smiled, offered me more of the vaporous grub fragments. I took the d
ish from her, irritated, and had the lot, getting hungrier with each mouthful. What narked me was the cleverness of Monique’s ploy. Spring my new identity on me at the last minute, as we enter the Repository, and I’d have no time to devise any alternative ploys. She’d say the play. Me dolt, her the brain—and that’s how Lorela was registering us. I’d done exactly as Monique planned. For the first time I really began to wonder how far they were willing to go in all this, and felt truly disturbed. I was on a raft in the rapids.

  “Your shipments are already in the motor park, Madame,” Lorela said. “My apologies for the delay. The Repository insists on a thorough security scan of each vehicle before it can proceed to our unloading bays.”

  “Had trouble?” I asked, an oaf trying to be shrewd.

  “Over seventy robbery attempts in the past two years, Henry.” No harm in first names now the two women had tacitly agreed on my being a transparent idiot. “Robbers hiding in bureaux, silence-activated robots sealed in a Sheraton commode.”

  I brightened. I’d not heard of a silence-activated robot before. First chance I got, I’d ask Torsion back home if he could knock me one up, have a go at the Ipswich depot. Or had they already tried it in Newcastle? They’re very innovative up there. Torsion’s a Manchester brain, thinks only electronics.

  “How long was its trigger mode?” I tried to work it out. “They used a robot cable-cutter for that Commercial Street spang. It went wrong. Remote control’s overrated, I reckon—”

  “Henry.” Monique viciously stabbed a phoney Lalique-style ashtray with the burning point of her cigarette, and rose. “You don’t want to tire Miss Chevalier with your famous stories. We’ll get on. Come, Henry.” Like come, Paulie.