by Joseph Hone
Ben was thinking of something else. ‘Geoff, a drug-runner? Didn’t seem the type.’
‘No? He was suspicious from the start about the boat. So keen to hire it, no deposit, cut rate and without even checking your yachtsman’s papers in the end. And dead keen to get out of Paris as soon as he could – with those two backpacks stuffed with heroin, no doubt. And that explains the man in the Panama hat and his woman. Geoff was supposed to pay them, with cash or with that heroin, but he double-crossed them. So they went after him on his barge, but caught up with us instead.’
‘Okay, but why did Geoff want us to get the barge – and the rest of the heroin presumably – to the patron of Le Coq d’Or in Bar-le-Duc when he could just have disappeared with his heroin, and without renting the barge to us or anyone else?’
‘Maybe he had a firm deal to deliver half the stuff to the patron, feared him and didn’t want to disappoint, and saw us as carriers.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Anyway, one thing is sure – we have to get away now, dump this barge before we’re in worse trouble.’
‘Yes.’ At last he agreed with me about this. ‘But we can’t leave in the middle of the night.’
‘First thing in the morning then.’
He was resigned. ‘Okay, I’ll feed the cats. I left them to run about in the hold.’
‘I’ll open a tin.’ I was happy to show willing about the cats, at least.
We went down to the hold. Ben turned the light on.
‘Puss, puss, puss?’
‘Where are they?’
‘They were here when I left this afternoon. Puss, puss?’
‘Maybe up on the stage, behind the curtain.’
I walked forward, pulled the bottom of the curtain aside, and saw one of the cats. It was nestling at the foot of a man’s shoe, some costume stuff left there, I supposed. ‘Come on, puss, food.’ I had the plate in my hand. It didn’t seem hungry. It was purring, nuzzling the shoe, playing with the laces. I pulled the curtain some more, and saw a trouser leg attached to the shoe, then the hem of a linen jacket. Then I looked up and screamed.
The man in the Panama hat. A motionless Buddha now, his round, ivory-hued face looking down at me. I screamed again.
‘No!’ The statue sprang to life. ‘Don’t scream again.’ He came down from the stage, surprisingly agile, confronting us with a gun in his hand. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘at last we may talk of things.’ We turned for the wheelhouse. ‘No, here – we will talk down here. Privately.’
We sat opposite him on some benches in the gloom of the hold. And talked.
His speech, his choice of words, his English – all were refined, polished, well-nigh perfect, if archaic, and with that slight accent – German? Dutch? He might have been an Englishman of the old school – discreet, courteous, benign.
When we finished our explanations, that we were simply tourists who had hired the barge from Geoff Wakefield in Paris and were to leave it at Bar-le-Duc, the man said ‘Come now, if all that’s the case, why, when you were out shopping and I came on board, did I find nearly three thousand pounds in £50 notes in the bag in your cabin – and an automatic in the wheelhouse locker? Why did I find that you’d already opened some of the “stuff ” beneath the kitchen sink? And especially,’ he turned to me, ‘why, when you saw us in Vitry this afternoon, did you run into the museum and hide from us? Why all this, if you are just tourists and have nothing to do with Geoff and know nothing of all this business? I am not a fool, you know.’
‘I – we – can explain,’ Ben said at last. But clearly he couldn’t, unless we brought up the real business of why we were here.
The man stood up, paced the hold. ‘Yes? I am waiting.’ Ben said nothing. ‘Why not tell the truth? It’s clear that Geoff, having received part payment for the ‘stuff’ he was supposed to deliver us in Paris, decided to run away with the cash and most of the consignment. But that he paid you three thousand pounds, and shared out the heroin with you, so that you could disappear with both, on his boat. All of you – you have double-crossed us. Why … beat about the bush?’ He used the expression with mild pride, a small smile, as if it were an English expression he’d learnt long ago, and had been waiting all these years for an appropriate occasion to use. Emboldened by his success he used another one. ‘You are not coming clean I think, Mr…?’
‘Hayward. George Hayward,’ Ben replied at once.
The man smiled again. ‘No, Sir, Mr Hayward. More Mr Benjamin Contini, I think, or so your passport has it, in your bag. Though a false name perhaps. With “Painter” listed as occupation. A nice touch, that. An artist, I assume? Not of houses?’
Ben glowered. ‘Of houses.’
‘Come Mr Contini!’ He sat down again. ‘You do yourself an injustice – that fine nude you must have painted, which I found under the bed in your friend’s cabin.’ He turned to me. ‘Of you, possibly, Miss Elsa Bergen, according to your passport at least. Yes, a very intimate painting. Lovers, no doubt. I’m sorry you seem to have had a falling out … keeping separate cabins. No honour among thieves, or just a lovers’ tiff?’ He returned to the bench. ‘No matter.’ It was hot and close in the hold. He wouldn’t take his jacket off, or his hat, but he wiped his face with a big spotted handkerchief. ‘Let us to business. I have a proposition – at least I hope you will see it as such, well met like this as we are. I need just such innocent transport as you pair of estranged lovebirds will provide on the barge here. Transport for myself, the cash and the remains of the heroin.’
‘Back to Paris?’
‘No. To Strasbourg, then across the border, on the Rhine, into Germany.’ Ben looked put out. ‘You were not aware that this canal leads straight onto the Rhine?’
‘No. Well, yes, but that would take some time – a week, two weeks.’
‘I – we – are not in any hurry.’
‘You could take the boat yourself. It’s easy to work, I can show you.’
‘But without my partner, who crewed with me on the boat we followed you in, how could I manage alone? There are probably twenty or thirty locks between here and Strasbourg. A man of my advancing years … you could hardly expect me to work all those locks by myself, and drive the boat?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Besides, after that little fracas at the museum today …’ He turned to me, ‘Where you so savagely assaulted my friend, Miss Bergen, attracting the attention of half the police in the area – I need to “lie doggo” with suitable cover, and what better cover than that which you two innocents and the good ship L’Etoile will provide?’
‘And when we get to Germany, what then for us?’
‘That depends on if we get to Germany, and on your navigation. And discretion.’ He stood up. ‘But come, we are all tired. We should retire. We need to make an early start.’
He gestured us forward with the gun, down the hold towards the cabins. Ben stopped at his. ‘No,’ the man said. ‘I can’t keep an eye on you both separately. I’m afraid I’m going to have to play Cupid. You are going to have to make things up with your girlfriend, Mr Contini – in the same cabin. The double bed. And what better way, they say, to make up a “lovers’ tiff ” than in a bed?’
‘Now what?’ I asked, when the door was locked behind us.
‘At least he doesn’t know the painting is by Modigliani. Obviously knows nothing about all that business.’
I was furious. ‘That’s a great plus!’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’
‘This is ridiculous!’ I stamped my foot. ‘We’ve swapped one hole for another! And now we’re cooped up together in this tiny stuffy space.’
‘At least we’re cooped up with a double bed, a tepid shower and a Sanilav. Could be worse.’
I could have throttled him. ‘And you intend to drive this guy all the way to Germany?’ I was almost shouting.
‘No, he does. And we don’t drive, we sail. He has a gun, Elsa. Two guns. And keep your voice down.’
I lowered my vo
ice. ‘Maybe we could drop him someway, or call the police at a lock?’
‘You forget the police are looking for us too. We have to play along with him. Which side of the bed do you like?’
I was furious again. ‘Damnit! You might have contrived all this yourself, just to get me into bed.’
‘Yes, I contrived it all myself, just to get you into bed with me.’ He gave me that look, half-glare, half-smile. ‘But I’m sure as hell not going to sleep on the floor – or what there is of a floor.’
‘Nor am I!’
‘Right then, we can sleep head to tail.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake! Why don’t you put a sock in it?’
He laughed. ‘Real Angela Brazil, riot-in-the-girls’-dorm phrase that. You should use it with the guy in the Panama hat. He seems to collect them.’
We eventually slept, head to head under the gilded cupids, far apart, in our pants. What little sleeping we did, for it was hot. Though I did doze off properly towards dawn. When I woke I found myself right over his side of the bed, almost next to him. He was already awake. ‘Better be careful,’ he said seriously. ‘When I woke you had your arm right over on me.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No. It was great.’
We left shortly after sunrise, Ben at the wheel, moving with the first of the other boats into the lock at the village of Ponthion. Then out again, in procession.
The English family, with Sophie on the prow of their cruiser, waved at us. Ben waved back. Everything was so normal, except for the man in the Panama hat sitting in a cane chair behind Ben, out of sight, gun in his lap.
I brought up some coffee. The canal was straight now, heavily wooded to our left. Ben gazed out at the trees, which came right down to the bank. The man stood up.
‘Thinking of jumping ship, Mr Contini? Good cover in those woods,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Something like that?’
‘No. I was thinking you’re not the sort to be in the drug-running business.’
‘Nor you two.’
‘We’re not in it, I told you.’
‘No, of course not. Nor am I then. We’re all just having a holiday, making for Strasbourg and the Rhine.’
‘You’re German, must be.’
‘If you like to think that. So why not call me – Kurt? Good solid German name. Better have a name, hadn’t I, if we are to spend a week or more together. Kurt, Ben and Elsa. That’s better isn’t it? Though none of those are our real names, of course, but one needs to name things. One can’t live with the unnameable.’
‘Can’t live with a lot of damn lies either,’ Ben said. ‘You’re not Kurt, you’re the man in the Panama hat. And we’re not drug-runners. That’s the only sure thing. So I’ll call you Panama.’
‘Your privilege.’ He bowed slightly.
‘Your English is remarkably good.’
‘Yes, I –’ He was about to give something away, so he stopped.
‘You must have lived in England.’
‘I might have done. I might not.’
‘Cagey.’
‘You can’t expect me to come clean with you, when you won’t with me.’
‘All right then, we’re drug-runners. Working with Geoff. We double-crossed you. So now what about you?’
He pondered this, a slight smile.
‘Funny, in your admitting that at last, I feel I don’t believe you.’
‘Well, like your living in England – maybe we are drug-runners. Maybe not.’
‘Indeed. Truth is so ambiguous, isn’t it.’
‘I’ve never thought so. And I’m not ready to be persuaded.’
‘You will be.’
We came into the open lock at Germaize-les-Bains early in the afternoon. A newspaper seller called out above us, catering to the English tourists.
The lock gate closed behind us. Panama shouted up to him as the boat rose and gave him some money when we were almost level with the top. Buying two English papers, he took them into wheelhouse while we made fast to the quay.
When we got back on board, Panama, in his cane chair, was engrossed in the papers. We set off again, through the open lock and out onto the canal. Five minutes later we heard a loud guffaw. We turned. Panama was flourishing the Telegraph at us.
‘I did you both an injustice, thinking you were drug-runners: you’re obviously into something far bigger.’ He read from an inside page. ‘“Modigliani Nude Murder on Paris Left Bank” – lovely headline, the sub-editor must have dreamed of writing a headline like that all his life – “The couple with the Modigliani nude visited the Louvre just after midday, where M. Blois, one of the archivists, confirming the painting to be genuine, then gave them the name and address of M. Martin-Beaumont, the well-known art historian and collector living on the rue des Saint-Pères … a CCTV recording shows … the concierge found M. Martin-Beaumont dead from strangulation shortly after they left … The couple didn’t leave Paris in their own boat but have gone to ground … The man gave his name as a Mr Contini. The woman is American. French police are continuing their search throughout northern France … The painting, one of Modigliani’s finest nudes, is thought to have been stolen and was valued at between fifteen and twenty million dollars.”’
Panama put the paper down. ‘“Fifteen to twenty million dollars”! That puts my business in the shade. “One of Modigliani’s finest nudes.” I got it all wrong! Nothing so vulgar as drug-running. You’re in the major-league art heist business. And strangulation …’ He fingered his neck gingerly. ‘My goodness, I better be careful.’ Ben was speechless.
‘And yet you see,’ leaning forward, Panama helped him out enthusiastically, ‘somehow I don’t quite believe it all.’
‘Why not? You don’t look or behave like a drug-runner.’
‘Ah, but unlike you artists, in my business I have to look as conventional as any bank manager or dentist.’
‘I see.’
‘Good, but I don’t. Because if you’d stolen that picture the last thing you’d do would have been to go to the Louvre with it, giving the archivist your name and address. And then you didn’t return to your own boat, this Sorrento. Instead you escaped on Geoff’s barge, when my friend and I took another boat, following you to Vitry. So all right, you’re not drug-running for Geoff, but clearly you must be guilty of something?’
‘Our deal was just to take you into Germany.’
‘Never mind. Meanwhile, since clearly we’re both on the run we could help each other out. I could put my gun, and yours, away.’
‘I’m surprised. If you go by the facts in the paper, guns aren’t our style. One of us might strangle you.’
‘Yes, and I should fear that. Except I don’t. I know the strangler type. Neither of you remotely fills that bill. So I’ll tell you what’s much more likely. Somebody else strangled this Martin-Beaumont, before you got there.’ He smiled. Ben said nothing. ‘And they strangled him because they wanted information from him. They applied the pressure, literally. Some very important information, which only he possessed, but didn’t give them. Now do you see where this is leading?’
‘No. I don’t.’
‘No, perhaps not, because, like the others, you failed to get this vital information out of him. But what information? “Martin-Beaumont: well-known art historian who, in his youth, knew Modigliani”. Yes, Ben, now it all fits. The information Martin-Beaumont had can only have been about establishing the background of the nude, for his killers and for you.’
‘Yes, all right, that’s it.’ Ben could no longer keep silent. ‘We were trying to establish the provenance of the painting with Martin-Beaumont.’
‘Now we are getting somewhere, but we face another problem. If you didn’t steal the painting then it must be yours. It’s not a crime to try and identify the origins of one’s own property, yet you are behaving very much as if it was. In a most guilty manner, if I may say so. So there are some vital pieces missing in the puzzle.’
‘Why no
t cut the cackle? What do you want?’
‘“Cut the cackle”! – I like that. I told you, we could help each other.’
‘You mean you want the painting. And fifteen or twenty million dollars, or whatever you can get for it from some crooked buyer.’
‘Yes, exactly, but I’d cut you in on it. And when we get to Germany I’d see you both safe out of Europe. Plenty of money, new names, passports. I have friends in high places. Think about it.’ He stood up, still covering us with his gun. ‘And while you’re thinking about it, I think the painting would be safer under my cabin bed, rather than yours. Would you bring it up for me please, Elsa?’
I went down and brought it up to him. He gazed at it. ‘Sensuous, erotic, but all so understated. Who is she?’
‘I don’t know. That’s what we were trying to find out.’
‘Well, it hardly matters. She won’t be going on public view.’
‘Wait a moment, I haven’t agreed about giving you the painting, or your selling it on. I’ve only agreed to take you into Germany.’
He looked at Ben, a kindly gaze. ‘You are hardly in a position to refuse any of my requests.’ He looked down at his gun, surprised, as if only then was he aware that he had it in his hand. That seemed about it. We were stuck with the genial bastard, right through to Germany.
In the hot days that followed, dawns rising to pink and pale-blue skies, and then the burning orange of midday, to midge-filled twilights and late deep dark, we fell into a routine where it was difficult to avoid feeling that the three of us were colleagues, at least, on holiday, cruising the lovely canal, through little towns and poppy fields with the other tourist boats.
A routine of opening and closing locks, moored by the bank in the midday heat, a snack lunch, mugs of tea and biscuits at teatime in the wheelhouse, wine in the evening with whatever decent meals I could manage. Panama was always polite. He praised my cooking and Ben’s navigation.
Stuck with him? No, we were his prisoners. He kept an eye and his gun on us all the time. Except when he let me off the boat at some canal-side town or village to buy provisions. ‘Remember, I have your “partner” here,’ he would say before I left. ‘So don’t do anything rash. Like contacting the police, for example. I’ll shoot your friend if you do.’
